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Memorial Weekend Terrorist Threats – What Happens If A Dirty Bomb Goes Off?
May 23, 2003 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - This week Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raised the terrorist threat level to Orange and told the House Select Committee on Homeland Security that the terrorist attack drills held in Seattle and Chicago two weeks ago showed there are definite problems in the nation's ability to respond. The exercises called TOPOFF2 because "top officials" participated - were the largest security drills the U. S. government has ever played out. Seattle emergency responders were challenged with a dirty bomb; in Chicago the scenario was a bioterrorist attack of pneumonic plague. The exercises lasted a week and involved dozens of federal, state and local emergency-response agencies.
More 2003 Crop Formations in Germany
Bigfoot Encounter in Northern California
Major Study Reports Only 10% of Large Ocean Fish Remain
May 16, 2003 Halifax, Nova Scotia - For years, marine biologists have warned that many ocean creatures are facing elimination in the largest extinction event since the dinosaurs were hit by a big asteroid. Now comes a major ten-year-long study reported in Nature this week that concludes only 10% of big ocean fish are left, compared to their populations 50 years ago. In the tropics, the guitar fish and grouper are nearly gone; off the coast of Newfoundland, the cod, haddock and halibut have never replenished; and in the open oceans the magnificent large predators - sharks, bluefin tuna, gilfish, swordfish, marlin - that have dominated for so long are down to their lowest numbers on record.
SARS Death Rates Higher Than Expected
SARS Patients Relapse and Mortality Rates Rise
"[The SARS gene sequence shows] a unique coronavirus only distantly related to previously sequenced coronaviruses (in animals and humans). ...This virus may never before have circulated in the U. S. population."
- The New England Journal of Medicine, April 10, 2003
May 2, 2003 Hong Kong, China - Today, health officials in China reported another 176 new cases of the severe acute respiratory syndrome known as SARS, plus 11 more deaths. That boosts the world total to more than 6,000 cases and 402 deaths. That means the global average death rate for SARS is now about 7%. But in Toronto, Canada, which reports 147 cases and 20 deaths, the mortality rate is nearly 14%.
As new SARS cases continue to surge in the countryside around Beijing where thousands fled trying to escape the deadly virus in the nation's capitol, health authorities are afraid the death rate will climb higher in China as well.
SARS Continues Spreading in China; W.H.O. Rescinds Toronto Travel Warning
April 29, 2003 Beijing, China - On this date, China announced nine new deaths from severe acute respiratory syndrome known as SARS and 202 new cases, bringing the country's death toll to 148 and case number to 3,303. Some medical authorities have expressed concern that given China's deliberate efforts to hide SARS patients and even deny their was a disease problem until only recently, the actual number of cases might be double or triple the current publicly reported number. The World Health Organization's advisory against nonessential travel to Beijing and China's Shanxi Province, Guangdong Province and Hong Kong remains in effect where SARS is still a serious epidemic. There, as the government tries to clean buses, public buildings, schools and hospitals, the economies have collapsed in the face of a disease that is keeping thousands of people home, either in quarantine or in fear of catching the dangerous illness.