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SARGAT, Iraq, April 4 — Preliminary tests conducted by MSNBC.com indicate that the deadly toxins ricin and botulinum were present on two items found at a camp in a remote mountain region of northern Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training center by Islamic militants with ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. The field tests used by MSNBC.com are only a first step in the evidentiary process and are typically followed by more precise laboratory testing that MSNBC.com has not conducted. U.S. intelligence agents were conducting their own tests in the same area and had not yet released their results,...

“We have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction. …Does it matter that we were misled into war?” - New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, 4/29/03 “Nissar Hindawi, a leading figure in Iraq's biological warfare program in the 1980's, says the stories and explanations he and other scientists told the United Nations about the extent of Iraq's efforts to produce poisons and germ weapons ‘were all lies.’ …He said military officials had asked him to tell inspectors that he was the head of a single-cell protein facility. The plant, in fact, had made botulinum toxin and anthrax. He said...

Condoleezza Rice has revealed the moment she thought that she and President George W. Bush had suffered deadly botulism poisoning. In her new book, the former secretary of state reveals that in the weeks following 9/11, there were scares over smallpox and radioactive attacks on Washington – and a potential poisonous toxin attack on the White House. She was on a trip to a summit meeting in China with Bush when former-Vice President Dick Cheney delivered the blow via a secure video conference line. In an interview with ABC News, Ms Rice explained: ‘The vice president came on the screen...

After her stroke, Francine V. Corso, a software engineer who worked on NASA’s lunar lander, was housebound from 1992 to 2001. Her left arm was twisted up near her neck, making it difficult to pull on a blouse, and her fingers curled so rigidly that her nails buried themselves in her palm. When she finally learned to rise from her wheelchair, her contorted left leg had the so-called horse gait of many brain-injury victims — she stepped toe-downward, and then fought to keep her foot from rolling over. Now, with injections of botulinum toxin every three months, she says, “I’m...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expanding its July 18 warning to consumers. This expansion is for consumers and pet owners regarding canned food products and dog food produced by Castleberry Food Company of Augusta, Ga., due to the risk of botulinum toxin. Castleberry is expanding the recall to include all of the following canned products with all "best by" and code dates, and FDA is warning consumers not to purchase or eat any of the canned products listed in the table below. [See web page]

The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert. Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator...

As speculation grows that the US plans to take action against Saddam Hussein, Terry Taylor, a retired British colonel who became a UN weapons inspector, recalls searching for Iraq's biological weapons. "We were trying to discover all the sites which had equipment which could be used to support a biological weapons programme, everything from dairy factories upwards. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I was employed mostly on surprise inspections, ones that were rather challenging, ones that perhaps merited a UN commissioner being the chief inspector. This made the Iraqis pay a bit more attention even...