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[H]undreds of Ohio emergency responders were exposed to a potentially fatal toxin while training at a FEMA facility in Alabama. The federal agency released a statement Wednesday saying that they have received no reports of illness as a result of the ricin exposure. Ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans that kills cells by preventing them from creating protein. Exposure to the toxin can lead to death.

<p>An Israeli hospital worker is vaccinated last week.</p> <p>September 24, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - Federal officials sent states detailed guidelines yesterday for rapidly vaccinating their entire populations against smallpox should the deadly disease return through an act of terrorism.</p> <p>It's been decades since smallpox was seen in this country and the disease has been eradicated from Earth, so officials would assume that a single case of smallpox means the nation is under attack.</p>

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Spanish intelligence has intercepted messages passed between jihadists online discussing the weaponisation of the deadly Ebola virus for use against the West, while a blackmailer in Prague has threatened to unleash the virus unless the Czech Republic pay him one million bitcoin, a volume of online currency worth over £200 million. The national secretary of state for security in giving evidence to the Spanish Senate revealed online jihad propagandists had issued an edict to followers to kill Westerners by any means possible. Some of the methods suggested included “deadly chemical products from laboratories”, “poisonous injections” and “Ebola as a poisonous...

<p>DALLAS — A woman who was being monitored for possible exposure to the Ebola virus was reported ill at the Dallas Area Rapid Transit White Rock Station Saturday afternoon.</p> <p>DART spokesman Morgan Lyons said the person fell ill with a low-grade fever at the station in Northeast Dallas after deciding that her quarantine period was over.</p>

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Terrorist group Isis may be considering using Ebola as a suicide bio-weapon against the West, according to a military expert. The virus is transmitted by direct contact with an infected person who is showing the symptoms – and it wouldn't be difficult for fanatics to contract it then travel to countries they want to wreak havoc in, according to a military expert. Capt. Al Shimkus, Ret., a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, said that the strategy is entirely plausible. He told Forbes: 'The individual exposed to the Ebola Virus would be the carrier. In...

2nd person rushed to hospital showing signs of ebola. 2nd person had contact with Duncan.

The United States’ top infectious-disease doctor suggested Sunday that more people inside the country will be diagnosed with Ebola, but dismissed as “far-fetched” concerns about somebody bringing the deadly disease across the U.S.-Mexico border in a bio-terror attack. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, told “Fox News Sunday” that 50 people inside the country are now being monitored for the deadly virus and that the country’s first confirmed patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, is back in critical condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital's largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected patients and took items including blood-stained sheets and mattresses. The violence in the West Point slum occurred late Saturday and was led by residents angry that patients were brought from other parts of the capital to the holding center, Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant health minister, said Sunday. It was not immediately clear how many patients had been at the center. West Point residents went on a "looting spree," stealing items from the clinic that were likely infected,...

War On Terror: As the Ebola disease spreads in Africa and detainees from that continent are apprehended, the question must be asked: What if terrorists already willing to die try to bring the disease across our porous southern border? The Ebola outbreak that has killed at least 672 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone could land in the U.S., according to John O'Connor, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's true," he says, "that anyone with an illness is just one plane ride away from coming to the U.S." Indeed, a Liberian man infected...

CONAKRY, Guinea — Ebola, one of the world's most deadly viruses, has spread from a remote forested corner of southern Guinea to the country's seaside capital, raising fears that the disease, which causes severe bleeding and almost always death, could spread far beyond this tiny West African nation's borders.

The Galveston National Laboratory lost one of five vials containing a deadly Venezuelan virus, according to the University of Texas Medical Branch, which owns the $174 million facility designed with the strictest security measures to hold the deadliest viruses in the country. Like Ebola, the missing Guanarito virus causes hemorrhagic fever, an illness named for "bleeding under the skin, in internal organs or from body orifices like the mouth, eyes, or ears," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is clearly an incident that is very discomforting and embarrassing to the University of Texas Medical Center and...

Iranian scientists, working under orders from the radicals running the Islamic regime, have genetically altered microbial agents in a nightmarish scheme to bring the West to its knees. According to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit with knowledge of Iran’s microbial research and development, the scientists, with Russian and North Korean help, currently possess eight extremely dangerous microbial agents that, if unleashed, could kill millions of people. As reported exclusively on WND on Dec. 16, the source revealed the existence of a plant in Marzanabad, Iran, where 12 Russian and 28 Iranian scientists are working on microbial agents...

The best defense against a deadly attack with avian flu is the open scientific enterprise. Today the U.S. National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommended that the journals Nature and Science restrict publication about controversial new research relevant to the transmission of avian flu between humans. The fear: Would-be bioterrorists are combing the pages of the journals for tips on how to wreak havoc. The H5N1 avian flu virus has killed 60 percent of the 600 or so people known to have come down with it since it was first identified in 1997. For comparison, seasonal flu in the United...

Smallpox is an acute, highly contagious and often fatal disease caused by the variola virus. The virus is so dangerous and potentially deadly that one confirmed case of smallpox is considered to be a public health emergency. Oh .. and there is no proven treatment for the disease once a person falls ill. You just administer fluids and antibiotics to handle any secondary infections, and hope that the patent is one of the 70%. The other 30% will die. In case you don't already know, Smallpox has been eradicated worldwide. The eradication is so complete that we don't even vaccinate...

A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues. Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense. F.B.I. documents...

Starting in 2012, approximately 10 Indian scientists will receive training from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta through the facility's Epidemic Intelligence Service Program. The elite two year post-doctoral training program will give the scientists special attention in field work and will train them on how to investigate and contain serious public health threats, The Times of India reports.

Forensic evidence emerges of a hot-rodded superbug... Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of e.coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how e.coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply. This particular e.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics...

There has been much discussion by national security experts inside and outside of government as to how Congress and the President should ensure that the United States is safe from a terrorist attack.  But there has been relatively little discussion in comparison as to how we would respond if an attack did occur.  Are we ready for a biological attack on our military or citizenry?  Has the federal government planned for a medical response to an attack?  Are we spending money on the right therapies or vaccines?  Do we even know how to respond to a widespread biological or chemical...

U.S. officials are wrapping up a visit to Africa to investigate what security upgrades at facilities holding pathogens are needed to help prevent biological terror attacks. U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar is leading the three-country visit.