Free Republic

The FBI on Tuesday will for the first time add the name of a domestic-terrorism suspect to its list of Most Wanted Terrorists, a post-Sept. 11 creation that until now has included only suspected Islamist terrorists, a law enforcement official told The Washington Times. Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 31-year-old animal rights activist, is wanted in connection with the 2003 bombings of two companies in the San Francisco Bay Area linked to an animal-testing laboratory. San Diego will take his place on a list that has included notorious international terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri and Adam Gadahn,...

European Union continues phasing out animal experiments.The European Union has outlawed the use of animals in seven toxicity tests for cosmetics ingredients.Alamy An amendment to the European Union's Cosmetics Directive today phases out the use of animals in testing for any acute toxic effects of beauty products and toiletries — effects such as eye and skin irritation that might be seen shortly after exposure. Nature News finds out what this entails.What is the Cosmetics Directive and how is it changing? The Cosmetics Directive was introduced in 1976 to enforce high safety standards for cosmetics across the EU member states. It...

London, England (AHN) - The Winchester Crown Court found on Monday four rights activists guilty of blackmailing animal testing firms which supplied Huntingdon Life Sciences. Huntingdon, based in Cambridge, conducts animal testing for U.K. pharmaceutical industry. The four are members of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. Five SHAC members were charged of blackmailing, but only Gerrah Selby, Daniel Wadham, Gavin Medd-Hall and Heather Nicholson were declared guilty. The fifth accused, Trevor Holmes, was cleared of the charges. They all denied conspiracy to blackmail which included threats such as claiming the managers of the animal testing companies were pedophiles, sending fake...

ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2008) — Terminally ill rodents with type 1 diabetes have been restored to full health with a single injection of a substance other than insulin by scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Since the discovery of insulin in 1922, type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent diabetes) in humans has been treated by injecting insulin to lower high blood sugar levels and prevent diabetic coma. New findings by UT Southwestern researchers, which appear online and in a future issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that insulin isn't the only agent that is effective. Leptin, a...

Investigators sifting the evidence of two firebombings targeting UC Santa Cruz biologists believe the potentially lethal devices are similar to ones used in the past by animal rights activists, authorities said today. The bombs were so powerful they were like "Molotov cocktails on steroids," said Santa Cruz police Capt. Steve Clark. One struck the home of assistant biology Professor David Feldheim on Saturday morning, forcing him to flee with his family. The other exploded just a few minutes earlier, gutting a car parked outside the campus home of a second researcher. Later, Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies went to the...

VIENNA, Austria — Austrian authorities say they are questioning 10 animal rights activists suspected of arson, sabotage and other crimes. Investigators say six of the suspects have been placed in pretrial detention for their alleged involvement in militant animal rights groups. Officials allege that the suspects are behind numerous arson fires and vandalism targeting food, clothing, pharmaceutical and agricultural companies. Prosecutors say the 10 were arrested earlier this week after a monthslong investigation into radical animal rights groups. Austrian media reported today that one of the suspects has begun a hunger strike while in custody. Investigators say the suspects used...

Obscure al-Qaida Chemist Worries Experts By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 7 minutes ago He's a mystery in a red beard, with a strange alias and a degree in chemical engineering. In the hands of this alleged al-Qaida operative, it's a specialty that summons visions of poison gas and mass terror. Al-Qaida is "wedded to the spectacular," notes U.S. counterterrorism analyst Donald Van Duyn, and elusive Egyptian chemist Midhat Mursi was said to be exploring such possibilities when last seen, brewing up deadly compounds and gassing dogs in Afghanistan. Van Duyn's FBI and other U.S. agencies are interested enough...

SOUTH Korean scientists have bred cats that glow in the dark by inserting a fluorescence protein gene into the DNA of clones, which makes them glow under ultraviolet light. The procedure could help scientists develop treatments for genetic diseases in humans. Scientists led by Kong Il-keun of Gyeongsang National University produced three cats with altered fluorescence genes, the Science and Technology Ministry said. "It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned," the ministry said in a statement.

In this undated photo released by Tokyo University's Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry Graduate School of Science, a genetically modified mouse approaches a cat in Tokyo. Using genetic engineering, scientists at Tokyo University say they have successfully switched off the rodents' instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats, showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not leaned through experience, as commonly believed. (AP Photo/Ko and Reiko Kobayakawa, Tokyo University Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry Graduate School of Science, HO) Cat and mouse may never be the same. Japanese scientists say they've used genetic engineering to create...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is calling for a boycott of M&Ms, Twix candy bars and other snack foods made by Mars Inc, claiming the company funds experiments that kill mice, rats, guinea pigs and rabbits. "In violation of its own written policy, the candy company is currently funding a study at the University of California, San Francisco, that uses rats. The rats are force fed by having plastic tubes shoved down their throats, and they are then cut open and killed," PETA said in a statement. "In response to this new information, PETA...

Animal-rights saboteurs have claimed responsibility for vandalizing the Portland home of a research scientist who uses monkeys to study the causes of premature birth in humans. In a communique obtained by The Oregonian today, the Animal Liberation Front acknowledged striking two autos owned by Dr. Miles Novy with spray-paint graffiti and paint stripper. "Novy's reproductive research on primates has resulted in this senseless torture of one of natures most magnificant creatures," ALF saboteurs wrote in a message sent to the Animal Liberation Press Office. "This blatant disregard for the earth, animals and it's resources shall not go unseen by the...

The National Institutes of Health has spent millions of dollars over the past decade funding the mass production of a creature that is part mouse and part human.  Every one of these most peculiar rodents requires live tissue extracted from the liver and thymus of a human child–and every child who donates tissue to create such mice is first killed by a medical doctor. They are victims of abortions that cannot take place until at least the eighth week of pregnancy, when the fetal liver is finally formed.  Although history may someday record the saga of this mouse as...

American scientists are using tissue from aborted babies in genetically engineered mice to study how certain diseases are spread, and the experiments are being paid for with U.S. tax dollars.  It's not clear how much fetal tissue is used or how it is supplied. Scientists involved in some of the research at the National Institutes of Health refused to speak with Cybercast News Service about their work. The experiments started 20 years ago, when scientists first began implanting or injecting a mouse without an immune system with human cells or tissue to study diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and certain cancers....

SAN FRANCISCO - A lawsuit by animal-rights advocates accusing UCSF of illegally spending state money on painful and unnecessary experiments on dogs and monkeys was dismissed Tuesday by a San Francisco judge, who said Congress has designated federal regulators, not the courts, to oversee the research. "You want to have the court become the regulator of this particular lab," Superior Court Judge Patrick Mahoney told a lawyer for six health professionals who filed the taxpayer suit against the university. "I don't think that's what Congress intended." The plaintiffs wanted Mahoney to halt what they called illegal experiments and appoint a...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (November 27, 2007) − A mouse resistant to cancer, even highly-aggressive types, has been created by researchers at the University of Kentucky. The breakthrough stems from a discovery by UK College of Medicine professor of radiation medicine Vivek Rangnekar and a team of researchers who found a tumor-suppressor gene called "Par-4" in the prostate. The researchers discovered that the Par-4 gene kills cancer cells, but not normal cells. There are very few molecules that specifically fight against cancer cells, giving it a potentially therapeutic application. Funded by several grants from the National Institutes of Health, Rangnekar's study is...

The founder of The Body Shop, which grew from one shop in southern England to an international chain, has died, the chairman of Body Shop International confirmed Monday. Dame Anita Roddick, 64, died after suffering a major brain hemorrhage, her family said in a statement to the UK Press Association. Her husband, Gordon, and daughters, Sam and Justine, were all with her at St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, England. The Body Shop chain became a massive success selling "green" cosmetics as customers were becoming environmentally aware.

The FBI and the Los Angeles Fire Department are investigating an anonymous claim that animal rights extremists placed an unexploded incendiary device found under the car of a prominent UCLA eye doctor last weekend. The incident was similar to one last year in which another UCLA researcher was the intended target. A gasoline-filled device was discovered Sunday by the car outside the Westside home of Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum, who is chief of pediatric ophthalmology at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute. The device did not ignite despite evidence of an attempt to light it, authorities said Thursday. An e-mail on Wednesday...

Al-Qaida terror plot foiled, say French police Jon Henley in Paris Monday January 12, 2004 The Guardian (UK) The French police are convinced that their country has escaped a planned chemical or biological attack by an Islamist cell linked to al-Qaida. An interior ministry official said evidence from Islamist militants arrested in the Lyon area last week made it "very plain" that an attack with the deadly botulism or ricin toxins was being actively prepared. The eight suspects arrested on Tuesday were mainly relatives of Menad Benchellali, the son of a radical imam in the Lyon suburb of Venisseux, who...

For decades, in thousands of laboratories across the country, biomedical researchers have relied on laboratory rats and mice to devise treatments for cancer, heart disease, inflammation and a host of other human afflictions. But what if, despite all the rigorous procedures to ensure valuable test results, many of those studies have been skewed by the most seemingly mundane of factors: what the animals are routinely fed? The concern is that researchers have unwittingly administered hormones present in some rodent chow. A small but growing number of scientists are warning that these hormones are a hidden element in millions of laboratory...

Experiments on non-human primates are the only option for some areas of medicine, according to a report published by the UK’s Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust on Friday. The report lists medical advances that they claim would have been impossible without experiments on monkeys. The publication of the report looks set to aggravate a bitter propaganda war between pro- and anti-vivisectionists trying to win public support on the issue of primate experiments. On Monday, a report is expected to be launched by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection calling for a complete ban on monkey experiments...