From: mart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Fw: The Empire Shuts Down - Capitol Closed for Anthrax [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: NY Transfer News Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 2:17 PM Subject: The Empire Shuts Down - Capitol Closed for Anthrax Via NY Transfer News * www.blythe.org * All the News That Doesn't Fit The Empire Shuts Down: ANTHRAX CLOSES THE CAPITOL; DASCHLE, LIEBERMAN OFFICES AFFECTED. ANTHRAX FOUND IN VENTILATION SYSTEM, TUNNELS, MAILROOM NYC OFFICE OF GOVERNOR PATAKI TESTS ANTHRAX POSITIVE GREENSPAN PESSIMISM, CLOSING OF CONGRESS TILL MONDAY GIVE WALL STREET "REASON FOR CAUTION" BBC - Wednesday, 17 October, 2001, 16:10 GMT 17:10 UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1605000/1605039.stm Capitol shuts as anthrax spreads President Bush wants $1.5bn to fight bioterrorism The US Capitol will close down for tests after 29 Senate employees tested positive for anthrax exposure - increasing fears of new, full-blown cases of the potentially deadly disease. The people were workers in the office of Senate Majority leader Tom - Daschle who received a letter containing anthrax through the post. House Speaker Dennis Hastert said the house would shut down at the end of the work day on Wednesday, to enable health officials to carry out tests in the Capitol complex, where more than 20,000 people work. The anthrax was "in the ventilation system" and "going through the tunnels", Mr Hastert said, adding that it was also found in the mail room. It is not yet known whether any of the latest group exposed to anthrax will develop the disease, and they are all being treated with antibiotics. Some staff in the office of another senator, Joseph Lieberman, were also reported to have tested positive for anthrax. US officials said on Wednesday that the form of anthrax found in Senator Daschle's letter appeared to be one of its most "potent" forms and most likely the work of experts. Mr Daschle said FBI investigators had concluded that the anthrax strain was "a very potent form of anthrax that clearly was produced by someone who knew what he or she was doing". US Government sources added that preliminary testing had indicated the contaminated powder to be refined enough to disperse easily through the air, increasing its potential as a deadly weapon. The FBI has said that the handwriting was the same on the letter sent to Mr Daschle and another sent to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw. They both contained the messages "Death to America" and "God is great". Bush seeks $1.5bn US Health and Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said President George W Bush would ask Congress for an additional $1.5bn to fight bioterrorism. "The president today is requesting an additional 1.5 billion to combat terrorism to strengthen our ability to prevent and respond to a bioterrorism attack," Mr Thompson told a US Senate panel. The sum, a six-fold increase of spending in fiscal 2001, includes $643m to increase the national pharmaceutical stockpile and $509m to speed up the development and purchase of a smallpox vaccine. Meanwhile, the newly-appointed US Homeland Security chief, Tom Ridge, has said fighting bioterrorism will be the main priority of the Bush administration in the coming weeks. Interviewed by Mr Brokaw on America's NBC television network, Mr Ridge said there was not yet "credible evidence" to link the anthrax attacks to Saudi-born militant Osama Bin Laden, "but... we ought to operate under the presumption that it is". Potential sources Investigators say there are hints but no hard evidence as to where the anthrax could have come from. However Michael Powers of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute said that the sophistication of the strain found suggested "high-level" involvement. "Usually to produce that quality of anthrax requires a fairly high level of technological sophistication, which to my mind indicates some sort of state sponsorship," he said. White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said that the anthrax could not have come from America itself as US supplies of the bacteria were destroyed as part of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. However at least 10 other countries may have access to such biological agents, including Iraq and Iran. Terrorists could also have obtained access to the bacteria via the many global laboratories that stock it for research purposes. AP via Yahoo: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011017/ts/anthrax_cases_nyc.html Wednesday October 17 12:25 PM ET Anthrax Found in Pataki's Office By ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) - Anthrax has been discovered in Gov. George Pataki's Manhattan office, the governor said Wednesday. The anthrax was found in a room used by his State Police security detail, he said. Tests taken Monday night came back positive Wednesday morning, Pataki said. The governor's complex of offices on the 38th and 39th floors of a building at 633 Third Ave., between 40th and 41st streets, has been closed for further testing and decontamination. Pataki said the offices would reopen Monday. No employees in the office have tested positive for anthrax but all of them, including Pataki, will begin taking the antibiotic Cipro as a precaution. ``I feel fine,'' Pataki said Wednesday morning. ``I feel great.'' Pataki spokesman Michael McKeon called the room where the anthrax was discovered a ``secure'' one that the public does not have access to. The governor's aides will use other offices until cleared to return to their suite, Pataki said. ``I think everybody is committed to doing everything we can to make sure the state is run as well as it always has and to respond to this crisis,'' Pataki said. It was the latest in a series of anthrax discoveries in New York City. About 100 ABC employees were tested for exposure after a 7-month-old boy visiting the newsroom contracted the relatively mild skin form of the disease. Environmental tests were completed at ABC headquarters in New York to try to pinpoint the source, but it could be days before results are known. The child was hospitalized but has since been released. He is taking antibiotics and is expected to recover. Three days earlier, authorities announced that a female employee of NBC News was infected with the skin form by a letter carrying anthrax. Letters containing anthrax also were reported in Florida, where a man died of the inhaled form of the disease, and in Washington, D.C., and Nevada. Network spokesman Todd Polkes said the infant and the baby's mother, an ABC producer, spent time in newsroom offices while they attended a birthday party last month for an employee. Those areas were sealed off Tuesday. The two did not visit the studio where ABC's ``World News Tonight'' is broadcast, so the network can continue operating there, Polkes said. The ABC building ``is the focus of the investigation but it's not clear whether that's where the exposure took place,'' said Sandra Mullin, spokeswoman for the city's health department. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (news - web sites) said officials were testing a number of media mailrooms around the city after the tests began Monday. Initial tests of some mailrooms were negative, he said. Among the news organizations tested were The Associated Press, CNN, CBS, Fox, The New York Times, Daily News and New York Post. Associated Press Writer Joel Stashenko contributed to this report from Albany, N.Y. * AP via Yahoo http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011017/ts/attacks_anthrax.html Wednesday October 17 1:07 PM ET Daschle Staffers Exposed to Anthrax By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) - Congressional leaders ordered an unprecedented shutdown of the House on Wednesday after more than two dozen people in Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office tested positive for exposure to a highly concentrated form of anthrax. ``We will not let this stop the work of the Senate,'' Daschle said at a news conference outside the Capitol. He said 31 people have had ``positive nasal swabs,'' including two Capitol police officers. Daschle made his announcement a short while after Speaker Dennis Hastert said that anthrax had been found in the Senate's mailroom. ``To ensure safety we thought it best to do a complete sweep, an environmental sweep,'' he said, adding that House members and staff would be sent home at day's end, until at least Tuesday. Hastert also told reporters that anthrax had gotten ``into the ventilation system.'' But a short while later, Scott Lillibridge, a bioterrorism expert at the Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites), said the only known evidence of anthrax was found in Daschle's office across the street from the Capitol and in the Senate's mailroom in a second office building. ``There is absolutely no evidence of infection at this point,'' Daschle said. ``All of those who had had this positive nasal swab have been on antibiotics for some time and the good news is that everyone is OK.'' Daschle, flanked by Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott, sought to ease concerns that had been raised by word of the positive test results and by Hastert's announcement that House members and staff would be sent home at day's end to allow for environmental testing. ``There will be a vote this afternoon,'' Daschle said. ``We will be in session and have a vote or votes tomorrow.'' Senate leaders were accompanied by numerous federal officials, several of whom stepped before the microphone to announce developments in the most reassuring manner possible. ``This particular strain of anthrax is sensitive to all antibiotics,'' said Maj. Gen. John Parker, speaking on behalf of the Ft. Detrick military lab technicians in Maryland who performed the tests on the samples. He described it as ``common variety'' anthrax. As word of the positive test results spread, officials opened a second anthrax testing center in the physician's office on the first floor of the Capitol. A line extended up to the second floor. Tests also were available in an office building across the street. There, more than 1,000 people were tested on Tuesday and given a three-day supply of antibiotics as a precaution. A positive finding does not mean the person has the disease or will get the disease. About 8,000 spores must be inhaled for a person to develop inhalation anthrax. Thompson, in his testimony, said, ``There's no question this is a very serious attempt at anthrax poisoning.'' Scott Lillibridge, the HHS point person on bioterrorism, said, ``There's been some attempt to collect it, perhaps refine it and perhaps make it more concentrated. That seems certain.'' Five weeks after the worst terrorist strikes in history killed more than 5,000 in New York and Washington, the discovery only added to the nation's anxiety. Three government sources, all speaking on condition of anonymity, said preliminary testing indicated the anthrax found in Daschle's office had been refined enough so that it could be easily dispersed through the air. One said the anthrax was in a purified form that could be used as a weapon. At a news conference in the basement of the Capitol, Hastert said the decision to shut down was triggered by the news of the test results from the people exposed to a white powdery substance that fell from a letter opened in Daschle's office. It was also prompted by the ``discovery that this stuff has gotten into the ventilation system, is going through the tunnels, it was in the system of those buildings, and also, found in the mail room in the Senate were packages that moved through.'' ``So to make sure that we protect people's safety, we thought it was also prudent to do a complete environmental sweep and make sure that we can resume business on Tuesday.'' he added. Elsewhere in the country, four people are known to have contracted anthrax and nine others have tested positive for the bacteria. The FBI (news - web sites) is investigating strong similarities in handwriting and style, including identical anti-American language, between the letter sent to Daschle in Washington and a letter with anthrax sent to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw in New York. In an effort to jog the public's memory and gain new leads, the Justice Department (news - web sites) released photocopies of the envelopes to Daschle and Brokaw, showing identical block letters and addresses written slanting to the right. The photocopies of the Daschle and Brokaw envelopes showed both letters were postmarked from Trenton, N.J., and both appeared to have the same type postage. The two letters contained similar anti-American and anti-Israeli language and a pro-Muslim statement, and both made references about recipients needing medicine, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. * http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=BUSINESS&PACKAGEID=BIZ markets&STORYID=APIS7F6 OCTOBER 17, 13:36 EDT Stocks Dip on Greenspan Testimony By AMY BALDWIN AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) - A disappointing assessment of the economy by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan drove stocks down Wednesday, quashing an early rally. An announcement that Congress will shut down Thursday through Monday to allow a sweep for anthrax gave investors another reason to be cautious. In midday trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was off 48.65 at 9,335.58, relinquishing an early advance of 104 points. The broader market followed a similar path. The Nasdaq composite index fell 33.99 to 1,688.08, giving up an earlier 31-point gain. The Standard & Poor's 500 index, which had advanced 9 points, was off 8.31 at 1,089.23. Greenspan told Congress the nation's productivity growth could dip in the wake of last month's terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, congressional leaders announced that more than 20 people had been infected with anthrax at the Capitol. The news, which heightened uncertainty about the economy and national safety, erased some of the gains that followed better-than-expected profits by IBM and J.P. Morgan Chase and a strong housing report. IBM rose $3.15 to $105, and J.P. Morgan Chase rose $1.29 to $35.23. Both companies beat analysts' third-quarter earnings expectations by a penny a share. The market, hearing Greenspan's testimony, was conflicted about the state of the economy. Earlier on, investors had more reason to hope that business was getting better given stronger-than-expected housing construction in September. The Commerce Department reported that builders broke ground on 1.57 million housing units, a 1.7 percent increase that came despite fears about consumers' willingness to make big purchases following the attacks. That followed a sharp 6.7 percent drop in August and beat analysts' forecasts calling for a 2 percent decline. Investors had been anxiously awaiting third quarter results, particularly concerned about how business has fared since last month's attacks. The positive earnings reports made them believe that business wasn't as bad as they thought and that an economic recovery might be under way. But Greenspan's caution and the fears of anthrax and other possible assaults curbed investors' enthusiasm and their buying. Among Wall Street's losers were companies that posted disappointing earnings. Data storage company EMC slid $1.75, or 13 percent, to $11.70 after recording a loss of 12 cents a share, 7 cents wider than analysts had anticipatate. Consumer products maker Kimberly-Clark fell 73 cents to $54.85 on profits that were a penny a share shy of expectations. Declining issues were ahead of advancers 3 to 2 on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume came to a heavy 956 million shares. The Russell 2000 index, which measures the performance of smaller company stocks, fell 5.52 to 429.01. Overseas markets were higher Wednesday. Japan's Nikkei stock average ended the day with a gain of 1.1 percent. 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