Free Republic

PORTLAND — A former Washington state Transportation Department engineer yesterday has found himself, his imam and his mosque swept into an unfolding investigation by Portland's joint terrorism force led by the FBI. Farid Adlouni, a civil engineer and U.S. citizen who once worked out of the Vancouver office, was profiled in The Oregonian newspaper yesterday as a man with business ties to a top Osama bin Laden aide and who has attracted FBI scrutiny. Adlouni, 38, yesterday said he had "done nothing wrong." The imam, Mohammad Abdirahman Kariye, also a U.S. citizen, was recently charged with two felony counts of...

The case of the mystery maple syrup mist, a harmless scent that many Upper West Side and Morningside Heights residents have been smelling for the past several years, has been solved. NY1's Grace Rauh filed the following report. The smell of maple syrup on a waffle? Not a problem. But when New Yorkers began noticing that same smell wafting through parts of the city, no one knew quite how to explain it, until Thursday that is. "We have solved the mystery of the strange maple syrup-like odor that has been wafting through parts of our city during the past few...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An office worker for the US city of Detroit is suing for her colleagues to be banned from wearing perfume which gives her such severe headaches, nausea and coughing fits that she must leave work. Court documents showed Thursday that Susan McBride suffered so acutely from allergy to the chemicals in scents, lotions and sprays that she had to go home sick when a heavily perfumed co-worker shared her office at the city's historic districts department. Her sensitivity is such that she avoids the detergent sections in shops and cannot sit near perfumed people in a movie...

Record levels of synthetic fragrances from everyday cleaning, deodorising and beauty products have been found in the breast milk of American women. Kurunthachalam Kannan from New York state's Department of Health and his colleagues found that levels of synthetic musks in breast milk from 39 women were five times those found in European women nearly a decade ago.