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Deaths Blamed on Mysterious Microbe with Anthrax Genes By Kate RuderPosted: June 4, 2004 Last year two hospital patients from different cities in Texas died of severe pneumonia that appeared to be caused by inhalation anthrax. Yet neither patient was infected with the bacterium that causes anthrax, Bacillus anthracis. Instead, DNA tests indicated that both patients became infected by another species of bacteria that carried the lethal anthrax genes. The bacterium, called Bacillus cereus, typically causes mild food poisoning. B. cereus from Louisiana patient (top) and B. anthracis. Both microbes have capsules that may protect them from a person's...

New owners preparing to decontaminate Boca building hit by anthrax in 2001 By Kathy Bushouse and Neil Santaniello Staff Writers July 18, 2003 Moon-suited crews will re-enter the former American Media Inc. headquarters in the coming weeks to collect anthrax samples, destroy documents, and begin formulating a plan to decontaminate the quarantined building. Once inside, teams also will destroy computers and documents hastily left behind when American Media Inc. employees evacuated after tabloid photo editor Bob Stevens died from inhalation anthrax in October 2001. ... The computers' hard drives will be removed, dipped into a bleach-and-water solution.... AMI's files, their...

12/6/02DM Jets Grounded For Safety (AP) The skies over Tucson will be quieter Friday.Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is one of more than a dozen bases across the country under orders to take the day off from flying. Instead, they are to focus on training and flight safety.The one-day shutdown comes after a string of recent serious crashes, including Wednesday's deadly collision of two A-10's in Nevada.The Air National Guard, however, is not covered by the Air Force order. So, it's [sic] F-16's based in Tucson are scheduled to fly as usual.

Archive Number 20020918.5346 Published Date 18-SEP-2002 Subject PRO> Anthrax, human - USA: paper cross-contamination (02) ANTHRAX, HUMAN - USA: PAPER CROSS-CONTAMINATION (02) ************************************************* [1] Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 13:22:17 EDT From: Dave Lesak The rebuttal issues raised after the initial post are quite relevant. There are many issues regarding the entire field of WMD and many examples of the loss of institutional memory and reinventing the wheel. Further, not only are the points about the paper being wrapped etc. perfectly accurate, there are other questions as well. The primary question is what makes small particulates cling to surfaces as...

Request for Update on FBI Anthrax Investigation The Honorable John Ashcroft Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001 Dear General Ashcroft: As you may recall, I was one of three members of the House of Representatives whose offices were contaminated with anthrax in October 2001.  As a result, I am often approached by my colleagues in the Congress inquiring as to the status of the anthrax investigation.   As a Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, I am troubled by the apparent lack of progress in the FBI's current investigation.  Accordingly, I...

+3 Jun 2002 18:22:30 +0200 From: WHO Outbreak Response Team <outbreak@who.ch> Smallpox rumors - Pakistan: NOT ----------------------- Rumours reported by the media of a cluster of smallpox cases in Swabi district, Pakistan have been investigated by a team from National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad, health officials from the North West Frontier Province and WHO. All cases were children and showed typical features of chickenpox. No evidence of smallpox was found. Samples are being tested at NIH. -- Outbreak Verification Team Department of Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response (CSR) World Health Organization Geneva <outbreak@who.ch> [Many thanks to the WHO...

— By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As many as 5,000 letters may have been cross-contaminated with spores from anthrax-laced letters sent in attacks in the United States late last year, experts said on Monday. That cross-contamination can explain the deaths of two women, they said in releasing a mathematical model showing how spores from letters sent to news organizations and U.S. senators last year may have transferred onto other pieces of mail and infected the pair. "If there were ever another outbreak this could help us more rapidly control it and maybe more quickly identify...

May 4, 2002 Liberty TV gets snowed by Foggy Bottom Alexander Rose National Post At 10 a.m. GMT on Wednesday, the plug was pulled on satellite broadcasts beamed in to a repressed country where the government restricts the free flow of information. Which country? No, not Canada -- where the regime already jams foreign satellite signals to prevent cultural pollution -- but Iraq.Established last August, "Liberty TV" was financially administered by the U.S. State Department using funds authorized by Congress under the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, but owned and operated by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella group opposed...

Title: Czech Minister Doubts US Reports Questioning Atta's Contacts With Iraqi Agent Prague Lidove Noviny (Internet Version-WWW) in Czech 03 May 02 pp 1, 3 Subslug: Report by Petr Kolar and Silvie Blechova: "The United States Casts Doubt on the Czech Information on Atta" [FBIS Translated Excerpt] Prague/Washington -- Czech authorities' reports on one of the 11 September hijackers, Muhammad Atta, meeting with Iraqi agent al-Ani in Prague, suffered another setback. Quoting "unnamed US officials," two prestigious western media expressed doubts that the meeting had taken place at all. However, Interior Minister Stanislav Gross insists that the meeting took place....

Six months after inhaling anthrax spores, several of the mail workers who survived the deadly disease have yet to make a full recovery and are experiencing serious fatigue and memory loss.... The only survivor who appears to have made a full recovery is Ernesto Blanco.... [This MSNBC.com article has a Washington Post byline, so click on the link to read the whole article.]

Here is my description of the information at the web site above: An anonymous person has, through a FOIA request, obtained copies of the FBI photographs of three of the anthrax letters and envelopes. High-quality scans are posted on the web site in TIFF format. These are much higher quality than the images on the FBI web site, and the photos include rulers next to the letters, so the sizes can be measured. The images are much too big to be posted here. Go to the web site and download them if you are interested. (Links to the TIFF images...

Cure or Poison? The economic crisis that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 caused Cuba to depend more on tourism as a way of attracting revenues for the country's faltering economy. It also began to neglect the nurturing of its nascent biotechnology industry, writes José de la Fuente, a former director of research and development at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, in the October Nature Biotechnology.Recently Cuba sold to Iran the "prized fruits" of its development efforts, de la Fuente notes: production technologies for several pharmaceuticals, including a recombinant hepatitis B vaccine. "There is no ...

Scientist fell to his death by accidentBy Lawrence Buser and Thomas JordanAuthorities said Sunday that the November death of an internationally recognized Harvard scientist was the result of an accidental fall from the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and not a homicide. Shelby County Medical Examiner Dr. O. C. Smith gave to police Sunday his findings in the death of Dr. Don C. Wiley, 57. Smith said the cause of death was a fall from the bridge and the manner of death was accidental. He said the accidental death followed a minor motor vehicle accident on the bridge. Police could announce details ...

Sunday, January 13, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific Giving the GOP an image boost: Party wants to attract more voters in suburbs By David Postman Seattle Times political reporter State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance says he wants to "rebrand" the GOP in the Seattle suburbs. He's armed with election returns, polls and focus groups that tell him Republicans are losing elections there because they don't talk about what matters to suburbanites. And they're seen as a bunch of old, cold, white men out of touch with their communities. The party is losing its base among upper-income, more educated voters who, ...

Originally published on Monday, December 03, 2001 in the News section of The Harvard Crimson. Wiley's Family Says Suicide Highly Unlikely By DANIEL K. ROSENHECK and ELISABETH S. THEODORE SPECIAL TO THE CRIMSON MEMPHIS- While police have emphasized the possibility that missing Harvard professor Don C. Wiley committed suicide, Wiley's family members said Saturday that investigators have told them there is no evidence besides his rental car -- found abandoned on a bridge -- to support that theory."I hate that suicide keeps getting brought up as the possibility rather than one of many," Wiley's sister-in-law, Susan Wiley, said in her ...

The Shelby County Tennessee Medical Examiner's Office has confirmed that the body pulled from the Mississippi River on December 20 was Harvard professor Don C. Wiley. A spokesperson said dental records were used to make the identification but that the cause of death had not been determined. Information regarding services for Professor Wiley is not yet available.

H A R T F O R D, Conn., Dec. 21 - A Torrington man who told federal authorities he overheard two Middle Eastern men discuss plans to mail anthrax letters was arraigned today on charges he made false statements. Robert Janco, 35, pleaded innocent to a two-count federal indictment. Janco reportedly told FBI agents he was in a local bar when he heard the men discuss mailing letters with the help of a New York resident named "Kathy." Janco allegedly made the report to police five days after Vietnamese immigrant Kathy Nguyen mysteriously died of inhalation anthrax in New ...

Anthrax Inventor: Can't Trace Spores Associated Press Last Updated: Dec. 18, 2001 at 5:59:23 p.m. WASHINGTON - The scientist who helped the United States refine anthrax and turn it into a weapon says the bacteria spores used in the recent attacks could have been processed in a variety of ways, making it impossible to trace their source. ``You can process the stuff in so many different ways, I don't think that it will be the smoking gun,'' William C. Patrick III said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. Patrick, who holds patents for techniques used to make weapons-grade ...

Militants posed as tourists to take snaps of Parliament Sumir Kaul (PTI) New Delhi, December 23 It may sound like a replay of a bollywood film or a subtle spy plot of James Bond but the investigations into the December 13 attack have so far revealed that conspirators had posed as tourists and taken pictures of the Parliament House with a digital camera while carrying out the recce of the area. Though Special Commissioner of Delhi Police, who is now looking after intelligence unit, R S Gupta had said the terrorists had used the television snaps to generate a visual ...

Former employee suing Battelle This story was published Feb. 1, 1998 By John Stang Herald staff writer Battelle-Northwest is being sued by a former employee who claims he was fired in retaliation for reporting fraud and mismanagement. Battelle denies the charge. James Blackford - a former senior research scientist who worked at Battelle from 1992 to 1997 - filed the lawsuit in Benton County Superior Court. He is claiming an unspecified amount of damages from Battelle, which operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the Department of Energy. His lawsuit alleges he identified and reported to Battelle's management and to ...