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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia has extended for two more years the imprisonment of a terror suspect linked to al-Qaeda's attempts to produce chemical and biological weapons, saying he has more information about terrorist operations. Yazid Sufaat, a U.S.-trained biochemist and former Malaysian army captain, was arrested in late 2001 as he returned home from Afghanistan, where officials say he was working on a biological and chemical weapons program for al-Qaeda that was ended by the U.S.-led war. Since then, he has been held without trial under Malaysia's Internal Security Act on accusations of being a member of Jemaah...

In a shocking intelligence report received by the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) has revealed Pakistan's Inter-State Intelligence (ISI) intentions to spread the AIDS virus among personnel of the Indian Army and para-military forces. According to the news agency, a recent intelligence report from Delhi had apprised the SSB of the ISI's design, likely to be implemented with the help of some militant organisations, SSB Deputy Inspector General G S Sarna told reporters in Siliguri. While addressing an awareness camp on AIDS on Saturday at Madan Jote village bordering Nepal, 30 km from here, Sarna asked SSB personnel to frustrate the...

I am looking for assessments of possible terrorist threats to the US that have been made in the past year. I work in preparedness efforts and need something that will motivate others I will be presenting to. The focus needs to be on biological threats but can include chemical and nuclear -- especially if they are in reference to public health impacts. This is a real opportunity to help prepare for possible acts of terrorism.

(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) URGENT calls have been made for the law to be changed to stop ingredients for deadly biological weapons being bought over the Internet. A shocking investigation has exposed how elements of the deadly smallpox virus can be purchased online then delivered through the post in Britain. It is feared terrorists could use the same tactics to create a biological weapon. Concern over the potential risk to public health last night prompted calls for the law to be changed to close current loopholes. Smallpox is one of the biggest killers in history, having claimed...

WASHINGTON, May 17, 2006 – A full-scale bio-exercise in the Pentagon parking lot today tested how the Pentagon police, in partnership with local emergency services, would respond to a biological attack at the military headquarters. Red Cross volunteers, acting as potentially anthrax-exposed Pentagon employees, remove their "contaminated" clothing before being "decontaminated" during Gallant Fox 06 May 17 in a Pentagon parking lot. The exercise tested the response of Pentagon police and local and federal agencies to a biological attack at the Pentagon. Photo by Sgt. Sara Wood, USA  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The Pentagon Force Protection Agency,...

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller is on the lecture circuit, pulling down $15,000-$20,000 a speech plus first class airfare. When she left the paper, after spending 85 days in jail, she wrote that “In my future writing, I intend to call attention to the internal and external threats to our country’s freedoms¯Al Qaeda and other forms of religious extremism, conventional and W.M.D. terrorism, and growing government secrecy in the name of national security¯subjects that have long defined my work.” Those are noble sentiments. But it’s the Times, more than any other media organization, which has prevented the government...

Singapore, 27 March (AKI) - There is enough evidence to suggest that the al-Qaeda terrorist network is preparing to engage in biological warfare, according to the International Criminal Police Organisation or Interpol. At an Asian Bioterrorism Workshop in Singapore, Interpol said that bioterrorism cannot be ignored and that countries need to develop the laws to deal with such a crime. "It can't be that we as a world community have to wait for a September 11 type of attack in bioterrorism before we prepare," Interpol's secretary general, Ronald Noble was quoted as saying on Singapore's Channel NewsAsia website. "What needs...

Defense issued anthrax alert A female employee at Norway's Defense has undergone preventative treatment after opening an envelope that contained white powder. The incident took place at Jåttå in Stavanger, at a military base that houses both NATO's training center and the Norwegian Defense Joint Operative Headquarters. The envelope, sent from the USA, was addressed to American representatives. "The police have been called in and they took the powder, which is now sent for analysis," press spokesman Erling Kristiansen at DJOH told newspaper VG. The woman, a civilian employee, is being treated as a precaution as the Defense cannot rule...

Al-Qaida is recruiting suicide bombers who are infected with the AIDS virus, according to Britain's Sunday Mirror. The newspaper reported that terror chiefs are also targeting fanatics who suffer other lethal blood diseases such as hepatitis and dengue fever in order to increase their "kill rate" from an explosion. The chilling new threat is revealed in papers distributed to British military camps in Iraq and across Europe. Under the heading "HIV/Hepatitis" the document states: "There is evidence that terrorists might be deliberately recruiting volunteers with diseases that are spread by blood transference." Experts have found that bones and other blood-spattered...

Some scientists fear resources set aside for a new anti-bioterrorism center will be taken away from existing agencies doing similar work WASHINGTON -- Legislation moving rapidly through the Senate would create a secretive national research center to respond to bioterror threats and natural disease outbreaks. But some scientists cautioned Friday that the new agency could draw money away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and disrupt their work. The measure, said to be a priority of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., would shift the main responsibility for developing bioterrorism countermeasures out...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 - An outbreak of the avian flu virus in the United States could infect one-third of the population and kill as many as 1.9 million people, according to an analysis by the federal government released today. The report, by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, said that banning large gatherings and imposing quarantines would likely be necessary in order to contain the spread of the H5N1 avian influenza virus if it mutated into a form easily spread by human-to-human contact. There have been no reported cases of the virus being spread between humans. The...

One of the Centers for Disease Control's top five biological terrorism agents, the tularemia bacteria, has been detected in air monitors in San Jose but public health officials do not believe it is the result of any type of terrorist attack. The Francisella tularensis bacteria was found in an air-monitoring station in San Jose on Sunday morning. However, a subsequent test this morning at the same station found no evidence of the bacteria and no other stations in the area showed evidence of it, according to the Santa Clara County Public Health Department. "It is likely that the positive test...

TORONTO - A newly disclosed Canadian intelligence study says al-Qaeda might try to spread the deadly avian flu virus as part of its campaign to sow terror in Western nations. The report by the federal government's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre describes the avian flu as a "potential terrorist-induced" pandemic and specifically mentions Osama bin Laden. "It is significant to note that Osama bin Laden views chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons as legitimate," says the report, titled "Pandemics: Avian Flu." "In addition, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda representatives have repeatedly named Canada as a target," it says under the heading...

Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu-Fighting Strategy By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer 32 minutes ago President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.The president also said the United States must approve liability protection for the makers of lifesaving vaccines. He said the number of American vaccine manufacturers has plummeted because the industry has been hit with a flood of lawsuits. Bush said no one knows when or where a deadly strain...

OMSK, October 29 (Itar-Tass) - A quarantine was imposed in the village of Rozovka in the Omsk Region on Saturday in connection with the bird flu. The Novosibirsk inter-regional veterinary laboratory confirmed the diagnosis, a source at the regional veterinary and farm produce control department told Itar-Tass. More than 100 poultry birds died in Rozovka located not far from the Russian-Kazakh border. Deaths of wild and domestic birds from infection were reported in six districts of the Omsk Region last August and September. The tough preventive measures taken by local authorities at that time stopped the bird flu from...

Man Charged In Fake Flu Shot Case Shots Contain Purified Water POSTED: 4:56 pm CDT October 28, 2005 UPDATED: 5:15 pm CDT October 28, 2005 HOUSTON -- A man was charged Friday, accused of intentionally administering fake flu shots to hundreds of ExxonMobil employees, KPRC Local 2 reported. Iyad Abu El Hawa, 35, is accused of attempting to defraud Medicare by giving fake flu vaccines, according to U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg. Officials said El Hawa substituted a purified form of water for the vaccine. Investigators said the bogus flu shots were given at an ExxonMobil health fair on Oct. 19...

Bird flu 'will kill 50,000 people, but not this year' By David Derbyshire (Filed: 17/10/2005) A bird flu pandemic would kill about 50,000 people in Britain but will not necessarily strike this winter, the Government's chief medical officer said yesterday. Sir Liam Donaldson said that it was a question of "when, not if" the disease infecting birds in Asia and the fringes of eastern Europe mutated into a deadly form of human influenza. Sir Liam: deaths could be higher than 50,000 The number of deaths in Britain could reach 750,000 if the human strain were particularly serious, although a lower...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is scrambling to prepare the nation for a possible global rampage by a new flu germ that it fears could kill nearly 2 million Americans, sicken tens of millions more and shatter the economy. The key question is how much preparation can be done before a calamity strikes that, in a worst-case scenario, could make the health system collapse; overwhelm morgues; close schools, airports and harbors; end public gatherings; require strict quarantines; and cripple businesses and vital public services by mass absenteeism. "You're looking at a nation-busting event," warned Tara O'Toole, director of the Center...

AP SCIENCE WRITER NEW YORK -- Bird flu virus found in a Vietnamese girl was resistant to the main drug that's being stockpiled in case of a pandemic, a sign that it's important to keep a second drug on hand as well, a researcher said Friday. He said the finding was no reason to panic. The drug in question, Tamiflu, still attacks "the vast majority of the viruses out there," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The drug, produced by Swiss-based Roche Holding AG, is in short supply as nations around the world...

Health officials estimate the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 killed 50 million people worldwide -- more than died in World War I. Now President Bush is concerned that a strain of avian flu that has killed millions of birds in Asia could mutate and cross over to humans. "I am concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," Bush said during an Oct. 4 news conference. "I have thought through the scenarios of what an avian flu outbreak could mean." The Department of Defense is preparing in case the worst happens. DoD...

PARIS, Oct. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- A mysterious disease hit waterfowl in west Iran, leaving thousands of dead birds, the cause is still unknown, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said here on Thursday. "A high mortality has been observed among wild waterfowl in Poldasht (in West Azerbaijan province)" said the Paris-based organization on its website. It noted that there was no pathological agent identified nor particular lesion appeared at the autopsy and that weakness and death are only signs of this affection. The OIE said a total of 3,673 wild waterfowl had died since thephenomenon was found on Oct....

A cargo plane carrying small amounts of flu virus crashed on railway tracks near Winnipeg's city center Thursday, killing the pilot but missing buildings and vehicles, authorities said. The research samples of frozen influenza and herpes viruses were destroyed in the crash and ensuing fire along with other freight, Federal Express spokeswoman Karen Cooper said. She said the Cessna 208 was owned by Morningstar Air Express of Edmonton and was under contract to FedEx. Morningstar spokesman Don Boettcher didn't immediately identify the woman piloting the aircraft. "She'd been with us for about five years," he said, without providing further details....

Two teams of federal and university scientists announced today that they had resurrected the 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, and had found that unlike the viruses that caused more recent flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the 1918 virus was actually a bird flu that jumped directly to humans. The work, being published in the journals Nature and Science, involved getting the complete genetic sequence of the 1918 virus, using techniques of molecular biology to synthesize it, and then using it to infect mice and human lung cells in a specially equipped, secure...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Small amounts of a bacteria that causes "rabbit fever" were found on Washington's National Mall last weekend as thousands of protesters marched against the Iraq War, U.S. health authorities said on Saturday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said several government environmental air monitors in the Mall area detected low levels of Francisella tularensis bacteria that cause Tularemia, commonly known as rabbit fever, on September 24-25.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Avian flu will mutate and become transmissible by humans and the world has no time to lose to stop it becoming a pandemic, the head of the U.N. World Health Organization said on Thursday. Lee Jong-wook, a South Korean doctor, delivered his stark warning as the United States worked to rally states behind a new U.S. plan to fight the disease, which has already killed more than 60 people in Asia and spread to Russia and Europe. "Human influenza is coming, we know that, and no government, no leaders can afford to be caught off-guard," Lee...

Disease hunters in action, just outside Washington, DC, at the U.S. Defense Department's Global Emerging Infections System, known as GEIS. They are working to track, prevent and cure infectious diseases. In one laboratory doctors are working with Sand Flies, which carry Leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that usually infects the skin, but can also infect internal organs. Scientists also are working with mosquitoes that carry malaria. Chemists are working on new treatments and vaccines for a number of communicable diseases. Captain Joseph Malone Captain Joseph Malone is the director of GEIS. "We play a supportive role in both outbreaks within the...

KIEV, Ukraine - (KRT) - The United States and Ukraine signed a joint agreement here Monday designed to stem the threat of bioterrorism by placing modern safeguards on deadly pathogens and other material dating from a Soviet-era biological weapons program that now could be vulnerable to theft. "The agreement has a benefit for the citizens of both countries," said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has been working several years to achieve the U.S.-Ukraine accord. As Lugar and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., met with Ukrainian leaders and participated in a signing ceremony for the...

— Diseases like smallpox, the avian flu and hemorrhagic fever seem like distant threats to many Americans. But what if one of these diseases, either by terrorist or unwitting traveler, crossed the border into the Rio Grande Valley? Organizers of a new bioterrorism and emergency preparedness program want to make sure Valley health professionals are thoroughly prepared for such a possibility. The University of Texas Health Science Center’s School of Public Health in Houston, along with other universities, now is offering training sessions on bioterrorism and disaster preparedness throughout the region. UT’s School of Public Health in Brownsville and Texas...

WASHINGTON - The two-year-old Homeland Security Department is undergoing a massive overhaul to centralize its analyses of terrorism intelligence and place higher priority on bioterrorism. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was resetting top priorities in a bid to spur a sluggish bureaucracy beset by turf wars and growing pains. Creation of an intelligence director to centralize terrorism analyses and a chief medical officer to focus on bioterrorism are among top changes to be announced by Chertoff on Wednesday. These are two areas where experts believe the department has lagged. Chertoff ordered a review in March, shortly after he took office,...

The Chronicle for Higher Education is reporting that the National Academy of Sciences has published a paper on how terrorists could kill tens of thousands of people by dropping a few grams of botulinum toxin into a milk truck or storage silo. The Academy published the paper over protests by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The paper, authored by two Stanford University researchers, was scheduled to have been published in the academy's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a month ago but the academy had held the paper because of the concerns leveled by HHS. The...

With some 574 people hospitalized with hepatitis A in the Tver region and an initial influx of some 45 new patients each day, regional investigators are looking into a possibility that the outbreak - which began over a week ago and has been blamed on an infection in the water supply - may be linked to a biological attack. The outbreak began in the last days of May in the town of Rzhev, and with hundreds of people getting sick, local authorities were suspecting everything from the tap water to bottling factories. Early on, the initial culprit was Rzhevpivo, a...

Posting note: Gleaned from shaky translation of a Russian press report.Reliability ? Thursday, June 09, 2005 Russians Investigating Possible Bio-Attack Investigators are checking whether the mass outbreak of hepatitis A in the Tver region near Moscow could be linked to the bio-weapons sector. At the moment 363 people are in hospital, and some newspapers have linked the outbreak to the recent murder of Russia’s leading specialist in bio weapons. The outbreak began at the end of May in the Tver region and has now reached the neighboring region of Smolensk, agencies report. It was initially blamed on a local soft...

Original title: Hepatitis A epidemic in Russia's center likely caused by terrorist act 06/09/2005 10:56 The virus was most likely discharged in the water, which a local brewing enterprise used in the production Hepatitis A epidemic is gathering steam in the Tver region of Russia, spreading to other regions of Russia's center. Eleven residents have been hospitalized with hepatitis in the neighboring Smolensk region. 352 people in total, including 75 children, have been infected with hepatitis A as of 9 a.m. of June 9th. Investigators say that the infection sprang from the Rzhev-based brewing company Rzhevpivo (the Tver region), which...

BOSTON, June 1 - A federal initiative as ambitious as the Manhattan Project is needed to protect the nation from infectious diseases, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Wednesday in a lecture at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Frist, who studied medicine at Harvard, said the effort would defend against both bioterrorism and diseases that are spread naturally. He said that the United States and the rest of the world were unprepared for a potential pandemic despite signs that emerging viruses like the avian flu are capable of causing sharp losses of life. "Any number of known and...

Toronto — The military's intelligence arm has warned the federal government that avian influenza could be used as a weapon of bioterrorism, a heavily censored report suggests. It also reveals that military planners believe a naturally occurring flu pandemic may be imminent. The report, entitled Recent Human Outbreaks of Avian Influenza and Potential Biological Warfare Implications, was obtained under the Access to Information Act by The Canadian Press. It was prepared by the J2 Directorate of Strategic Intelligence, a secretive branch of National Defence charged with producing intelligence for the government. The report outlines in broad terms the methods that...

Ten Stanford University faculty members, including a Nobel Prize winner, have signed a letter with 700 other scientists nationally protesting a federal policy that prioritizes bio-terrorism research over public-health issues. The letter was sent to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Elias Zerhouni on Monday, Feb. 28. “The diversion of research funds from projects of high public-health importance to projects of high biodefense but low public-health importance represents a misdirection of NIH priorities and a crisis for NIH-supported microbial research,” the letter states. Stanford scientists who signed the letter include Arthur Kornberg, a Nobel Prize winner, and Charles Yanofsky, who...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 - More than 700 scientists sent a petition on Monday to the director of the National Institutes of Health protesting what they said was the shift of tens of millions of dollars in federal research money since 2001 away from pathogens that cause major public health problems to obscure germs the government fears might be used in a bioterrorist attack. The scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners and a biologist who is to receive the National Medal of Science from President Bush in March, say grants for research on the bacteria that cause anthrax and five other...

Newswise ? In a finding that represents an entirely new approach to treating viral diseases such as smallpox, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborating institutions have shown that infections can be stymied by interfering with signals used by viruses to reproduce in human cells. The results, reported in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, point to a possible strategy for broadly treating acute viral infections that affect millions of people worldwide. If the technique leads to a drug capable of treating people infected with the smallpox virus, it could eliminate the virus? potential as a bioterror...

Cancer drugs have unexpectedly led to an entirely new way to beat viral infections - and particularly smallpox - a new study suggests. Viruses are hard to stop and, with few exceptions, drugs aimed at killing viral infections have not worked nearly as well as the antibiotics that kill bacteria. Now, US scientists have found that an experimental drug aimed at stopping the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells actually prevents the smallpox virus from replicating inside human cells, and can save mice from dying of a closely related virus, Vaccinia. Viruses succeed by invading a cell and hijacking the "machinery"...

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., talked broadly about health care Monday when he visited Rocky Mount, reprising a familiar call for medical liability reform and sounding an alarm about prescription drug costs to the public. But standing in front of the Rotary Club microphones, he didn't talk about what might be his most important job in government ? his role as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health. While serving in Congress, Burr sponsored the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, a set of laws to provide money to train first responders and stockpile vaccines, along with a...

WASHINGTON and COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- IMVAMUNE(TM), a third-generation Modified Virus Ankara (MVA) vaccine under development by Bavarian Nordic of Denmark, is expected to be effective against smallpox three days after one vaccination compared to traditional replicating vaccines (i.e., DryVax(R)) that only show protection after 10-14 days. Presenting today on the status of the company's IMVAMUNE safe smallpox vaccine program at the BIO CEO & Investor Conference in New York City, Peter Wulff, President and CEO of Bavarian Nordic said: "Based on data from a number of our animal models and clinical trials, Bavarian Nordic expects IMVAMUNE(TM) to...

D.C. Planning for Bio-terrorism Lab Within City Updated: Monday, Feb. 7, 2005 - 3:02 PM by Mark Seagraves, WTOP Radio WASHINGTON -- The D.C. government is partnering with the Federal government to build a level-3 bio-terrorism lab within the city, WTOP Radio has learned. A level-3 lab can handle such deadly agents as ricin and anthrax. Level-3 is the second most secure type of facility. There are a handful of level-4 labs around the country, including Ft. Detrick in Frederick. One of the preferred sites for the lab is the former D.C. General Hospital site near the U.S Capitol, according...

DAVOS, Switzerland - The world needs an effort similar to that behind the creation of the atomic bomb to tackle the multi-faceted threat of biowarfare, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Thursday. "We need to do something that even dwarfs the Manhattan project," Frist told the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Manhattan project was the codename for the United States's World War II effort to devise an atomic weapon. "The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is biological. Why? Because unlike any other threat it has the power of panic and paralysis to be global."...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

AN influential World Health Organization committee is sending shock waves through the scientific community with a recommendation that researchers be permitted to conduct genetic-engineering experiments with the smallpox virus. The idea is to be able to better combat a disease considered a leading bioterrorism threat though it was eradicated publicly 25 years ago. The WHO previously had opposed such work for fear that a "superbug" might emerge. Because the disease is so deadly, the WHO at times has recommended destroying the world?s two known smallpox stockpiles, located in secure labs at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta...

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (AFP) - Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former French health minister Bernard Kouchner were among the dignitaries playing the role of president of their respective countries in an exercise conducted here Friday to explore how governments around the Atlantic would react to a biological terrorist attack in the region. Under the scenario, presidents and prime ministers of several countries were gathered for a summit in Washington Friday when they learned at 9:00 am that a total of 51 cases of smallpox had been reported in Germany, Turkey, Sweden and the Netherlands. An unknown group...

Researchers have made an unexpectedly sudden advance in synthesizing long molecules of DNA, bringing them closer to the goal of redesigning genes and programming cells to make pharmaceuticals. But the success also puts within reach the manufacture of small genomes, such as those of viruses and perhaps certain bacteria. Some biologists fear that the technique might be used to make the genome of the smallpox virus, one of the few pathogens that cannot easily be collected from the wild. The advance, described in the Jan. 6 issue of the journal Nature by Dr. George M. Church of the Harvard Medical...

BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi lawyer said Friday that one of Saddam Hussein's former top scientists, known as "Mrs. Anthrax," has cancer and is dying in U.S. custody where she has been held for more than a year. A U.S. military spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq refused to comment on the report that Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash has cancer. "I am not able to discuss the health condition of our detainees," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. "Certainly we have medical care available to take care of any detainee." Ammash, a top Baath party official and biotech researcher who got her...

Basic Questions on Bioterrorism Elude F.B.I., an Official Admits By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAVID JOHNSTON ASHINGTON, Nov. 6 — In a blunt exchange with members of the Senate, a senior counterterrorism official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged today that one month into its bioterrorism investigation, his agency still could not answer such basic questions as how many laboratories in the United States handle the anthrax bacteria. The official, James T. Caruso, deputy assistant director of the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division, told senators that the agency was "pressing hard" to answer that question and many others, including how ...

Bioterrorism has been in the minds of millions of Americans ever since the 'anthrax letters' were sent just after 9/11. Unlike conventional terrorism, where a bomb blast is a clear sign that something has happened, biowarfare methods such as spraying viruses into the air or polluting water sources are silent and often leave no visible trace. How do we know if something has happened, and, more importantly, what do we do about it? Israeli scientists are coming up with answers from several different angles.