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A panel of prominent scientists is casting new doubt on scientific evidence that was a key part of the FBI's case against Bruce E. Ivins, the deceased Army scientist accused of carrying out the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks. The National Research Council, in a report issued Tuesday, questioned the link between a flask of anthrax bacteria in Ivins's lab at Fort Detrick, Md., and the anthrax-infested letters that killed five people and sickened 17 others.

The Government Accountability Office has launched an investigation into the scientific methods used by the FBI to determine that Fort Detrick researcher Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, who represents the New Jersey district from which the letters were mailed, requested GAO's involvement as early as 2007, but renewed his efforts after the FBI announced it had closed its Amerithrax investigation last February. Holt and four other lawmakers originally proposed a list of 10 questions for GAO to help answer, including how the anthrax spores used in the attacks compared to...

It is absolutely impossible that Bruce Ivins, accused of mailing anthrax and killing five people in 2001, could have created and cleaned up anthrax spores in the timeline and manner the FBI alleges, Ivins' former co-worker said Thursday. The National Academy of Sciences brought in former USAMRIID microbacteriologist Henry Heine to explain spore preparation to the panel, which is tasked with investigating the science the FBI used to accuse Ivins, also a former microbacteriologist for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. And though Heine discussed only scientific methods and technologies before the panel, he said afterward he...

Andrew Sullivan rightly recommends this new Atlantic article by David Freed, which details how the FBI and a mindless, stenographic American media combined to destroy the life of Steven Hatfill. Hatfill is the former U.S. Government scientist who for years was publicly depicted as the anthrax attacker and subjected to Government investigations so invasive and relentless that they forced him into almost total seclusion, paralysis and mental instability, only to have the Government years later (in 2008) acknowledge that he had nothing to do with those attacks and to pay him $5.8 million to settle the lawsuit he brought. There...

Just weeks before government scientist Bruce Ivins' suicide, a grand jury was convening on the third floor of the federal courthouse, near the U.S. Capitol, looking into the 2001 anthrax murders. Things weren't looking good for Ivins, the only suspect in the case. It was July 2008. His attorney, Paul F. Kemp, according to court documents reviewed by AOL News, had just filed court papers to become a death-penalty-certified attorney in the case -- a little-known fact. And the chief U.S. District judge in Washington, Royce C. Lamberth, had approved the request. "I thought this was a precaution to take....

Just weeks before government scientist Bruce Ivins' suicide, a grand jury was convening on the third floor of the federal courthouse, near the U.S. Capitol, looking into the 2001 anthrax murders. Things weren't looking good for Ivins, the only suspect in the case. It was July 2008. His attorney, Paul F. Kemp, according to court documents reviewed by AOL News, had just filed court papers to become a death-penalty-certified attorney in the case -- a little-known fact. And the chief U.S. District judge in Washington, Royce C. Lamberth, had approved the request. "I thought this was a precaution to take....

TRENTON (AP) — A New Jersey congressman is calling for a congressional investigation into the government's handling of a major anthrax investigation, which was closed last week. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt believes the FBI botched the case from 2001, when anthrax-laced letters were sent from a mailbox in Princeton. He also says the Postal Service and other agencies may not have learned the proper lessons from the attacks, which killed five people and sickened 17. The FBI last month closed its investigation after concluding Army scientist Bruce Ivins was responsible for the attacks. Ivins killed himself in 2008.

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...

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...

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.

Prestigious Hastings Center bioethics think tank publishes comments by more than half of President Bush's bioethics council: You might have thought that President Obama's recent order earlier this month, lifting restrictions on federally funded stem cell research, would render obsolete the opinions of a Bush-appointed council tasked with advising the former chief executive on stem cells and other hot-button bioethics issues. Evidently not. Ten members of The President's Council on Bioethics, an 18-member bioethics advisory panel appointed by President Bush but still active until the end of September 2009, wrote in the Hastings Center's Bioethics Forum blog that Obama's description...

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...

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...

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...

Recent photos of an "uncontacted tribe" of Indians near the Brazil-Peru border have sparked media reports of a hoax, but the organization that released the images defends its claims and actions. The photographs, which showed men painted red and black and aiming arrows skyward, were released in late May by Survival International, a London-based organization that advocates for tribal people worldwide. The release stated that "members of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes have been spotted and photographed from the air,"

Cincinnati, OH (AHN) - The Ohio Supreme Court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled against staying the execution of an inmate because he is obese. The two courts upheld an earlier ruling of the U.S. The double murder convict argued that lethal injection might not be properly administered to him and might be painful and slow because his physical condition will make it difficult to find a vein where the lethal drug will be injected.

Pterodactyls may have gone extinct millions of years ago, but a newly designed spy plane could bring the flying reptiles to life, albeit replacing blood and guts with carbon fiber and batteries. "The next generation of airborne drones won't just be small and silent," the design team announced recently. "They'll alter their wing shapes using morphing techniques to squeeze through confined spaces, dive between buildings, zoom under overpasses, land on apartment balconies, or sail along the coastline."

A fearsome fish has started killing people after feeding on human corpses, scientists fear. They reckon that a huge type of catfish, called a goonch, may have developed a taste for flesh in an Indian river where bodies are dumped after funerals. Locals have believed for years that a mysterious monster lurks in the water. But they think it has moved on from scavenging to snatching unwary bathers who venture into the Great Kali, which flows along the India-Nepal border.

Waiters have allegedly beaten an Australian tourist to death for being "arrogant" while ordering a beer in an Indian restaurant. The Times of India and local reports said Mr Kelly's beating followed an altercation in which he displayed an "arrogant attitude". Some reports said security staff at the bar joined in the bashing.