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Accusations and recriminations between Britain and Russia are set to escalate with the news that scientists at the Porton Down military research facility have been unable to establish exactly where the novichok nerve agent used to carry out the Skripal attack was manufactured. The admission comes the day before Moscow convenes an emergency meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague in which it is expected to demand access to samples from the Salisbury poisoning for analysis by Russian scientists. Russia’s embassy in London responded that Porton Down’s assessment “proves that all political declarations...

Donald Trump Jr.'s wife was taken to a hospital in New York today after opening a package at her home that contained an unknown white powder, police said.

A North Korean soldier who defected to the South has been found to have anthrax antibodies in his bloodstream, local news reports. The unidentified soldier, believed to be the man who defected in November this year, would have been either exposed to or vaccinated against anthrax before he defected to South Korea. This comes after a report that North Korea is conducting biological weapons experiments to test the possibility of loading anthrax-laden warheads on its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

North Korea is beginning tests on mounting anthrax onto intercontinental ballistic missiles that would strike the U.S., a report said on Wednesday just two days after the White House’s U.S. National Security Strategy stated Kim Jong Un is pursuing chemical and biological weapons. The Hermit Kingdom is beginning experiments to test out if anthrax can endure immense heat and pressure it will have to endure when loaded into an ICBM and launched toward the earth’s atmosphere, Japan’s Asahi newspaper reported, citing an unidentified person connected to South Korea’s intelligence services. “North Korea has started experiments such as heat and pressure...

FORT DETRICK, Maryland (CNN) -- FBI agents searched the apartment of a former researcher at the U.S. Army's biological warfare defense laboratory at Fort Detrick for the second time in two months Thursday. The researcher, Steven Hatfill, 48, had previously been questioned in the investigation of last fall's anthrax attacks and had his apartment searched in June. No arrests are imminent, sources said. FBI Director Robert Mueller said only that investigators had made progress (snip)

An audience member at the Metropolitan Opera threw a white powdery substance into the orchestra pit on Saturday during an intermission of the afternoon performance of Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell,” officials said, prompting the company to cancel the rest of the show and that night’s performance of “L’Italiana in Algeri” while the police investigated.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court refused to weigh in Friday on whether US presidents have the authority to indefinitely detain a terrorist suspect in the United States without charges. But it sent the issue back for a new hearing before the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, which ruled in July that former president George W. Bush had that power in the case of Ali al-Marri, an alleged Al-Qaeda sleeper agent. The high court's action effectively delayed resolution of an issue that, while different, could have implications for the estimated 245 "enemy combatants" still being held by the...

When Greg Burel tells people he's in charge of some secret government warehouses, he often gets asked if they're like the one at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark of the Covenant gets packed away in a crate and hidden forever. "Well, no, not really," says Burel, director of a program called the Strategic National Stockpile at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thousands of lives might someday depend on this stockpile, which holds all kinds of medical supplies that the officials would need in the wake of a terrorist attack with a chemical,...

Army investigators on Friday blamed a one-star general who now works at Aberdeen Proving Ground and 11 other people for management failures they say contributed to the accidental shipment of live anthrax to labs around the globe over several years. Army investigators who reviewed Dugway Proving Ground in Utah wrote that Brig. Gen. William E. King IV perpetuated a "complacent atmosphere" when he commanded the lab at the installation. Workers at Dugway mistakenly shipped live anthrax to 194 other labs in the United States and overseas, including to Aberdeen Proving Ground and other sites in Maryland.

President Obama’s reactions to ISIS attacks have become predictable and thin. His words seem to lack an appreciation of the grave conflict underway. Obama’s language betrays his adherence to progressive dogma: that the horrific assaults against the West are a nuisance to be managed, minimized, and explained through a value-free deconstruction of history where America sometimes stokes grievances across the Middle East. Although the role and responsibilities of a young government lawyer named Ted Cruz are very different from a sitting president, the accounts of how Cruz responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001 provide some insight into who...

Chemical attack foiled in UK 22/11/2003 15:50 - (SA) London - A terror attack in Britain was foiled after a company financed by "the Islamic community" tried to buy a large quantity of toxic chemicals, arousing the supplier's suspicions, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Saturday. British laboratory Amersham Biosciences received an order in Autumn 2002 for 500kg of saponin from a company giving a London post office box address, the newspaper said. It said the "terrorist group" planning to launch the lethal attacks was London-based. "Their plot came to light when the supplier became suspicious about the quantities of...

INTELLIGENCE agents from Prague to Swansea are uncovering a trail of clues that point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions. Iraqi ministers have spent the week protesting Baghdad’s innocence to the United Nations, but will not say why some of its diplomats who met Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers, disappeared from their European posts after that date. Nor will Baghdad explain why Saddam’s agents were spotted at various times this year with Atta in Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. Many in the Pentagon are sure Saddam ...

The Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that live anthrax was shipped from a lab in Utah to other states.

<p>The cartel violence that has gripped Mexico in recent weeks is alarming to many in the country who are accustomed to shootouts in more remote outposts like Guerrero or the states that border the United States. But the Western state where federal forces have been waging an all-out war against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is home to the country's second-largest city, Guadalajara, and home to key industrial and economic sectors.</p>

When Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist, took a fatal overdose of Tylenol in 2008, the government declared that he had been responsible for the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, which killed five people and set off a nationwide panic, and closed the case. Now, a former senior F.B.I. agent who ran the anthrax investigation for four years says that the bureau gathered “a staggering amount of exculpatory evidence” regarding Dr. Ivins that remains secret. The former agent, Richard L. Lambert, who spent 24 years at the F.B.I., says he believes it is possible that Dr. Ivins was the anthrax...

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this afternoon that he is shutting the city’s streets, schools and parks tonight until further notice as the city braces for a blizzard of historic proportions. (SNIP) Alternate side parking will be suspended through Wednesday, perhaps longer, and there will be no garbage pickups at least through mid-week. The mayor asked that citizens not attempt to clear their cars in the next several days, and not shovel snow into the streets or bury fire hydrants. He also advised that New Yorkers remain indoors throughout the duration of the storm. Non-authorized persons caught driving in non-emergency...

We have known about the H1N1 (Swine Flu), risk for many months now. We knew that last spring's outbreak would turn into a more virulent strain by this fall. That is all basic science. Concerned for our citizens, the government recognized the need to produce substantial volumes of vaccine. We have spent more than $2.2B for H1N1 Swine flu. To date, only a minor amount of this vaccine has been delivered, but concern seems muted. Despite new vaccine manufacturing technologies, we persist in using outdated methods and to spend huge sums of money in a wasteful manner. Why? ..... ....So,...

The Middle Seat The Trouble With Keeping Commercial Flights Clean With the Ebola Crisis in the Background, Standards for Disinfecting Planes Vary Based on Time, Class Just how clean are airplanes? Do they really get scrubbed down after each flight? WSJ's Scott McCartney joins Tanya Rivero on Lunch Break with the answers. By Scott McCartney Updated Sept. 17, 2014 The Ebola crisis and heightened concerns about the risk of spreading disease during air travel have focused concern on what airlines do to keep planes clean. It's a murky area without clear regulatory standards. The Federal Aviation Administration says it doesn't...

... Across a series of blogs and far-right message boards, someone going by the moniker of “the Real Luigi Warren” (a.k.a. “Luigi ‘Anthrax’ Warren”) had operated a lurid rumor mill about Hatfill for more than a decade—promoting, in particular, hearsay about the years he lived and worked in southern Africa during the throes of apartheid. In 2010, after the aggressor surfaced in the comments section of theatlantic.com, Hatfill’s lawyers made their move. They sent a six-page letter to the man they assumed to be the real Luigi Warren, a stem-cell researcher at Harvard Medical School named, not incidentally, Luigi Warren....

Palm Beach Fire Rescue is investigating reports of white powder found at Palm Beach International Airport. Crews were called to the scene just after 10 a.m. Check back for updates on this breaking news story