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WASHINGTON (AP) - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appealed anew Wednesday for widespread inoculation against a surging swine flu threat, calling the vaccine "safe and secure." Sebelius unconditionally vouched for the safety of the vaccine, saying it "has been made exactly the same way seasonal vaccine has been made, year in and year out." Appearing on morning news shows to step up the Obama administration's campaign for vaccinations, Sebelius said that "the adverse effects are minimal. ... We know it's safe and secure. ... This is definitely is a safe vaccine for people to get."

WASHINGTON -- A panel of experts convened for a second day on Friday to probe the scientific process used by the FBI to identify used to identify the anthrax used in the deadly, 2001 mailings. The meeting featured presentations from three experts who worked on the case. Scientific methods were explained, and the 15-member panel was asked to use the study as a means to prepare for future attacks. A lawmaker also addressed the group, criticizing the FBI's handling of the country's first, widespread bioterrorism event. "If the technical and scientific procedures are as flawed as the non-technical procedures, they...

USAMRIID RMR records – Dr. Bruce Ivins’ flask 1029 two documents don’t match ****** I have now received new documents, from DXer, in addition to the previously redacted copy of the RMR-1029 records that I posted here (* Dr. Bruce Ivins RMR-1029 inventory records, from 1997 to 2003, pursuant to a FOIA request) on June 26. One of the new documents is an unredacted copy of the above, showing names and locations of where aliquots of RMR-1029 were shipped to. The other document is the ORIGINAL working document of 1997 when there was still 1000ml in the flask and no...

A powder sent to the American embassy in Rome during last week's G8 in Italy was the ashes of the sender's wife, it emerged today. Officials at the embassy went into overdrive when the envelope arrived last Wednesday, just hours before President Barack Obama arrived in the Italian capital for the summit. The post room of the building was sealed off and staff evacuated as police scientists in protective overalls arrived to take the powder away amid fears it could be an anthrax terror attack.

Did MI5 kill Dr David Kelly? Just another crazy conspiracy theory? But, amid claims he wrote tell-all book that vanished after his death, it's one that refuses to go away By Sue Reid Last updated at 11:40 AM on 16th July 2009 The day Dr David Kelly took a short walk to his death in the Oxfordshire countryside, an unopened letter lay on the desk of his book-lined study. Sent from the heart of the British Government, the pages were marked 'personal' and threatened the world-renowned microbiologist with the sack if he ever publicly opened his mouth again. The letter...

The public has 20 days to comment on the makeup of an independent committee being assembled to study the science the FBI used in its investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings. The 14 provisional members of the National Academy of Sciences study committee include medical doctors, chemists, microbiologists and a U.S. District Court judge. The academy will consider public comments on the proposed committee membership before finalizing the roster. The FBI requested the study last year, after critics questioned the validity of the science it used in matching the anthrax used in the 2001 mailings with that in a flask...

An inventory of deadly germs and toxins at an Army biodefense lab in Frederick found more than 9,200 vials of material that was unaccounted for in laboratory records, Fort Detrick officials said Wednesday. The 13 percent overage mainly reflects stocks left behind in freezers by researchers who retired or left Fort Detrick since the biological warfare defense program was established there in 1943, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. He said the found material included Korean War-era serum samples from patients with Korean hemorrhagic fever, a disease still of interest...

Laboratory Says Security Is Tighter, but Earlier Count Missed Dangerous Vials An inventory of potentially deadly pathogens at Fort Detrick's infectious disease laboratory found more than 9,000 vials that had not been accounted for, Army officials said yesterday, raising concerns that officials wouldn't know whether dangerous toxins were missing. After four months of searching about 335 freezers and refrigerators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, investigators found 9,220 samples that hadn't been included in a database of about 66,000 items listed as of February, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute's deputy commander. The vials...

Journalists and filmmakers Bob Coen and Eric Nadler will discuss their work on the untold story of the 2001 anthrax attacks, and the dark secrets of germ warfare research, and how it ties in with the untimely deaths of microbiologists around the world.

Rob Rossi loved baseball. Exiting the trolley near Petco Park, he admired all the new residential development around the stadium. Rob and his son Charlie took their seats and joined 42,000 happy San Diegans singing "Take me out to the ball game." Charlie cheered when the Padres scored their first run of the evening. Rob hardly noticed the small plane circling slowly overhead. On Saturday, Rob woke up with a splitting headache. His chest felt like it was on fire. Why is it so hard to breathe? And today is Charlie's Little League game! "Daddy," his son gasped from the...

Bush kept us safe. For that he has been unrelentingly demonized by the left. Those days - other than the ongoing demonization - are gone. Now we have the Obama administration - which rebranded "the war on terror" as an "overseas contingency operation"; which decided to start referring to "terror attacks" as "man-caused disasters"; which only just today screwed up and leaked nuclear secrets - in charge of keeping America safe. Even as Obama has sought to have hardcore terrorist Gitmo detainees released to US prisons - which would further radicalize our prison system - four Muslims (three of whom...

A long-awaited review of the scientific evidence relating to the investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks is finally getting off the ground. The study, to be conducted by the National Academies, will check the validity of the scientific techniques used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in solving the case. What the study will not do, as spelled out in the academies’ official description of the study, is issue a verdict on whether U.S. Army researcher Bruce Ivins was indeed guilty of the crime, as concluded by FBI officials. The FBI has been under pressure to disclose its full...

WEST PALM BEACH — Maureen Stevens may have to wait until 2011 for justice in the 2001 anthrax attack that killed her husband who worked as a photo editor for the Boca Raton-based publisher of the National Enquirer. In a hearing this morning, her attorneys and lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice agreed that January 2011 was a good target date for Stevens' lawsuit against the federal government to go to trial. Stevens is seeking $50 million, claiming the government failed to secure the deadly agent, allowing it to be used to kill her husband, Robert, in the wake...

Jihadist Website Promotes 'Abdallah Al-Nafisi's Anthrax Attack Concept 'Abdallah Al-Nafisi On April 10, 2009, a member of a jihadist forum, who called himself "Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi" posted a link to a lecture by Kuwaiti Islamist 'Abdallah Al-Nafisi on YouTube in which the latter describes how it would be possible to carry out an anthrax attack in the U.S.....

Faster and FuriouserGirls, guns, and fast cars in Fast & Furious. By Peter Suderman The best thing about Fast & Furious, the fourth sequel in the franchise about underground street-racing and the first to feature all the surviving stars of the original, may come before the movie even starts. I’m referring, of course, to the rip-roaring trailer for Michael Mann’s forthcoming gangster epic, Public Enemies, which stars Johnny Depp as notorious bank robber John Dillinger. In the middle of the trailer, he looks at a young lady and makes his pitch: “I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, and you. What else...

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a $12 million lawsuit brought by a former State Department mailroom worker who was hospitalized after handling an anthrax-laced letter. David Hose was exposed to anthrax spores in October 2001 while working as a contract supervisor in a State Department mail facility in Sterling, Va., and he spent more than two weeks in intensive care.

He also was accused of aiding terrorist-charities and repeatedly meeting with Osama bin Laden. All rubbish, insists his lawyer; as for his meetings with bin Laden, well, they were all merely "chance encounters." "U.S. Decides to Release Detainee at Guantánamo," by William Glaberson for the New York Times, March 31: The Justice Department announced Monday that the administration had decided to release a detainee at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, a Yemeni doctor who the Bush administration once claimed had taken part in an anthrax program of Al Qaeda. The government had backed away from the anthrax accusations but had...

Cleared for publication: Defense Ministry admits to experimenting on 716 IDF soldiers during secret research project without disclosing full details; defense official: Israel now possesses anthrax vaccine that can protect entire population Israel has admitted to developing a vaccine against anthrax, fearing it might be used as a bio-weapon by enemy nations against civilians, and tested it on IDF soldiers. The story was cleared for publication Wednesday evening by the High Court of Justice. The research project, codenamed "Omer 2," was kept secret for many years. "Once we face a substantial threat, we would be able to vaccinate all citizens,...

More than seven years after the first bio-terror attack on the United States, Congress is considering creating a commission to probe the government's response to the anthrax-laced letters that killed five people. Representative Rush Holt, a Democrat, has submitted a bill that would create a bipartisan commission to investigate the government's handling of the 2001 attacks, which also exposed 17 people to the powdery anthrax spores. "Myriad questions remain about the anthrax attacks and the government?s bungled response to the attacks," Holt said in a statement. Holt said in a statement that the commission would review an investigation conducted by...

Reporting from Boston -- A security camera recorded the man wearing dark sunglasses and a hooded sweat shirt as he walked by Boston's Symphony Hall on Feb. 9 and dropped a cardboard tube marked "Anthrax Beware" at the door. Emergency medical crews raced to the site, firefighters cordoned off the area, police halted traffic, and life came to an anxious halt until a hazmat team signaled the all-clear: The tube was empty. In the 7 1/2 years since America's worst bioterrorist attack -- when letters laced with anthrax spores killed five people, closed Congress and the Supreme Court, and crippled...

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...

Chemical composition of spores doesn't match suspect flask. The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the biodefence researcher implicated in the crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who committed suicide last July, was the person responsible for mailing letters laden with Bacillus anthracis to news media and congressional offices in 2001, killing five people and sickening 17. The FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask called...

A professor from Kuwait, the country liberated from Saddam Hussein's attack squads by the United States in the first Gulf War, has outlined on Arab television a potential terror attack that would involve smuggling anthrax from Mexico into the U.S. and killing 330,000 people in 60 minutes.

Investigators are trying to determine who sent a suspicious letter to a Boca Raton publishing company that was targeted in 2001 in a deadly anthrax attack. Friday the offices of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Inquirer, the Sun, Star magazine and other grocery store tabloids, were evacuated for about 45 minutes after a letter containing a white powder arrived at the company. Police were able to determine the powder was harmless. Sun photo editor Bob Stevens, 63, died in October 2001 was the first fatality from the anthrax attacks that killed four others and harmed 17 from Florida...

Just a typical Arab symposium in the Middle East... a Kuwaiti professor dreams of anthrax attacks (ever wonder what 4 pounds of anthrax on the White House lawn would do?), bombing nuke plants (they have a fondness for the Great Lakes), and, of course, the total destruction of Israel. The crowd just laughs when he prays for the success of these psychos. Very eerie video.

Army officials have suspended most research involving dangerous germs at the biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., which the F.B.I. has linked to the anthrax attacks of 2001, after discovering that some pathogens stored there were not listed in a laboratory database. The suspension, which began Friday and could last three months, is intended to allow a complete inventory of hazardous bacteria, viruses and toxins stored in refrigerators, freezers and cabinets in the facility, the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. The inventory was ordered by the institute’s commander, Col. John P. Skvorak, after officials found that the database...

WASHINGTON, The U.S. Homeland Security Department building was evacuated on Friday after receiving suspicious dead fish and white powder. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the department was briefly evacuated after an employee received a package containing a dead fish and white powder. The authorities has made a swift response to the reports on the suspicious package delivered to the department office in downtown Washington, D.C., said FBI spokeswoman Kate Schweit. She also said that the area around the office has been secured by local police and fire department, and the package has been taken to a lab for...

In February 1986, the scientist who FBI officials now say was behind the anthrax mailings that killed an Oxford woman and four others, applied for a U.S. copyright for a song about the death of New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, killed when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. Bruce Ivins' application for "Christa's Song (Reach for the Stars)" was denied. According to authorities, Ivins committed suicide as he was about to be indicted in connection with the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Yazid Sufaat helped Zacharias Moussaoui obtain the visa he used to enter the United States and funded him, housed two 9/11 hijackers while they were en route to the U.S., acquired tons of ammonium nitrate for the Singapore bombing plot, and, in 2001, attempted to obtain Anthrax for al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Now, he is walking around Malaysia a free man. Reuters, December 10, 2008: KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Reuters) — Malaysia has released five men held on suspicion of terrorism, including one who has been linked to the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, the country’s home minister said...

Peter Bergenen, CNN National Security Analyst, in an article posted on CNN dated December 5, 2008, entitled Commentary: WMD terrorism fears are overblown, poo-poos the conclusions of “The Congressionally authorized Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism” report issued the first week of December, that concluded: "It is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013." Mr. Bergen, according to his biography posted on his website is an experienced, well traveled journalists with no military, engineering, weapons,...

With sewage running in the streets of Zimbabwe, children playing in standing water, no way of boiling water, no chlorine, shortages of medicines and everything from forks and spoons to professionals and volunteers, we are watching Zimbabwe die a slow and horrible death.

Authorities probing the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks fixed on now-cleared scientist Steven J. Hatfill primarily because confidential informants said they had talked with him about his purported involvement in Rhodesian bioweapons initiatives, according to court documents released yesterday. The documents cover searches of Hatfill's residence, his car, a rental storage facility in Florida and property owned by his then-girlfriend. But they are perhaps most notable for the sparseness of their details and for the lack of a direct connection between the scientist and the notorious crime.

The Justice Department released nearly 100 documents Tuesday that it used to falsely link scientist Steven J. Hatfill to the 2001 anthrax attacks. Search warrants and documents detailing what was recovered show the FBI seized clothing, financial records, VHS tapes, books and other papers from Hatfill's home in Frederick, Md., his car, and a locker he rented in Ocala, Fla.The court documents also show the FBI searched the car and Washington apartment of an unnamed person, seizing notebooks, files, envelopes, hair brushes and bobby pins. The evidence presumably belongs to Hatfill's then-girlfriend Peck Chegne. Hatfill originally was named a person...

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Washington, D.C., office was shuttered in 2001 after anthrax spores were found, so he’s “very sensitive” to the investigation into the crime, he said. Now, Cummings said he supports a review of the investigation. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., proposed legislation in September to create a congressional commission to investigate the attacks and the federal government’s response. “Whatever we have to do to get to the bottom of this anthrax issue, we need to do it,” Cummings said. Holt’s bipartisan commission would mirror the 9/11 commission and make recommendations on how to prevent such attacks and...

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Washington, D.C., office was shuttered in 2001 after anthrax spores were found, so he’s “very sensitive” to the investigation into the crime, he said. Now, Cummings said he supports a review of the investigation. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., proposed legislation in September to create a congressional commission to investigate the attacks and the federal government’s response. “Whatever we have to do to get to the bottom of this anthrax issue, we need to do it,” Cummings said. Holt’s bipartisan commission would mirror the 9/11 commission and make recommendations on how to prevent such attacks and...

A federal judge today ordered the Justice Department to release documents that explain why investigators suspected Steven J. Hatfill in the 2001 anthrax mailings. Hatfill has since been exonerated.

Scientific impossibility: Did FBI get their man in Bruce Ivins? By Deborah Rudacille Examiner Correspondent 11/16/08 Bruce Ivins was a cold-blooded murderer, a deranged psycho-killer, who in the fall of 2001, cooked up a virulent batch of powdered anthrax, drove to Princeton, N.J., and mailed letters loaded with the lethal mix to five news organizations and two U.S. senators. At least, that’s what the FBI says. The letters infected 22 people, killing five, including two Maryland postal workers. The sixth victim of the madness was Ivins himself, a 62-year-old biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious...

XXXX BREAKING XXXX ANTHRAX SCARE AT MICHIGAN Michigan football practice was delayed nearly two hours late this morning after a player reported finding an unknown white powdery substance on the practice field. Head coach Rich Rodriguez (former head coach at West Virginia University) immediately suspended practice while police and federal agents were called to investigate. After a complete analysis, FBI forensic experts determined that the white substance, unknown to the players, was the goal line. Practice was resumed this afternoon after special agents decided the team was unlikely to encounter the substance again.

A drum-maker who contracted a rare form of anthrax while handling animal skins died in hospital yesterday. Fernando Gomez, 35, died after spending a week in the intensive care unit of Homerton University Hospital. Mr Gomez, a father of four from Hackney in East London, is thought to have inhaled anthrax spores while handling imported animal skins at his workshop. The Health Protection Agency today sealed off his flat to check for contamination and will examine his nearby workshop later this week. Seven other people, who may have come into contact with the animal skins, have been given antibiotics as...

It was an open-and-shut case, the FBI said. But three months after agents pinned the post-9/11 anthrax mailings on Army scientist Bruce Ivins - who committed suicide as the FBI closed in on him - his former colleagues have approached a lawyer to sue the feds for fingering the wrong man...

Slide show of items found at Al-Tuwaitha nuclear research facility in the fall of 2003. In the fall of 2003 the US State Department along with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency undertook a mission to do cleanup at the Iraqi nuclear lab Al-Tuwaitha. This lab was subject to UN inspections however the UN teams were not able to fully inspect the site during the Saddam regime. This lab was one of the places from which Saddam's men were video recorded by satellite moving WMD material to Syria. The slide show shows what Saddam's men left behind in their haste to...

The FBI has posted a $100,000 reward for help in finding who sent identical letters containing what turned out to be a harmless white powder to banking offices across the country. All 50 letters, which were sent between Oct. 17 and 18, were postmarked Amarillo, Texas. FBI today released the text of the letters on its Web site: "STEAL TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE'S MONEY AND NOT EXPECT REPERCUSSIONS. IT'S PAYBACK TIME. WHAT YOU JUST BREATHED IN WILL KILL YOU WITHIN 10 DAYS. THANK (Redacted) AND THE FDIC FOR YOUR DEMISE."

Sure, the economy is causing a crisis, but what about anthrax? How about smallpox? In a little noticed move, federal officials this month have declared a series of public health emergencies relating to potential weapons of biological terror. On Oct. 1, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt declared an anthrax public health emergency. On Oct. 10, he declared health emergencies for smallpox, radiation sickness from the detonation of a nuclear device and poisoning from botulinum toxins, the active ingredient of Botox. There’s no clear evidence that terrorists have managed to weaponize anthrax or stolen large caches of Botox from...

Panic swept America. By including a deadly bioagent in something we welcome into our homes and workplaces every day — the mundane U.S. mail — someone (or several someones) evoked the same sorts of fears provoked two decades earlier by the Tylenol poisonings in Chicago. Anthrax mailings eventually killed five people and sickened 17 others..So: Was Bruce Ivins the one and only anthrax killer? Or is he a convenient scapegoat for embarrassed investigators who, having wrongly suspected Hatfill, don't deserve the public's confidence that they got this right?

IMPORTANT planning for responding to a future anthrax attack has quietly been under way since the last attacks seven years ago. A key part of this effort has been figuring out how best to deliver prophylactic antibiotics quickly to the people living in the city that is attacked. This is at least as difficult and complicated as it might seem. First, an attack must be detected, either by one of the BioWatch air monitors that have been placed in many cities or by finding symptoms of anthrax poisoning in a victim. Either way, this can take at least 12 to...

Government mail carriers would deliver emergency supplies of antibiotics to people in U.S. cities in the case of an anthrax attack, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials said on Wednesday. The system has been tested in three large cities -- Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston -- and a pilot program is set to begin soon in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in Minnesota. HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said there was no evidence any attack was imminent but that it was important for authorities to have a quick distribution system ready. The U.S. Postal Service carriers who would bring the antibiotics...

The FBI is declining to release at least 15,000 pages of documents related to the now deceased prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks despite lingering suspicions that the bureau has accused the wrong man. In August, the FBI and Justice Department identified Bruce Ivins, a former microbiologist at the U.S. Army's biological weapons research center at Fort Detrick, Md., as the "only person involved" in the attacks that killed five people and terrorized the nation. But David M. Hardy, the section chief of the FBI's records management division, notified McClatchy that his office could not immediately release the records...

Nearly two months after the suicide of scientist Bruce Ivins — whom the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claims was solely responsible for mailing a series of letters laced with anthrax in 2001 — questions still remain over whether he was actually able to produce those anthrax spores.....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bruce Ivins, the Army scientist accused of carrying out the 2001 anthrax attacks, e-mailed himself last year saying he knew who the killer was, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday. "Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!!!! I finally know who mailed the anthrax letters in the fall of 2001. I've pieced it together!" Ivins wrote in the e-mail dated Sept. 7, 2007, according to an FBI affidavit. "I'm not looking forward to everybody getting dragged through the mud, but at least it will all be over," Ivins allegedly wrote. "Finally! I should have it TOTALLY nailed down within the month....

Bruce E. Ivins, the Army scientist the FBI says is the sole culprit behind the 2001 anthrax-by-mail attacks that killed five people, apparently was barred from all government labs in March after spilling anthrax on himself and going home to wash his clothes before telling his bosses....