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An epidemic is sweeping along the borders of Pakistan and Iran, among Afghan refugees, and officials fear that it may be caused by former Soviet biological weapons.

In Quetta, Pakistan, at least 75 people have been diagnosed with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever in the largest outbreak of the disease ever recorded. Eight have already died. All the infected people are refugees who recently arrived from Afghanistan or people who live close to the border. An isolation ward surrounded by barbed wire has been established at the Fatima Jinnah hospital in Quetta.
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The New York Times reports that Federal health officials confirmed the presence of anthrax in a letter sent to a pediatrician in Chile from Florida. But it was not the strain that killed five Americans. U.S. disease control officials say the anthrax is similar to strains that have been found in Turkey.
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The world?s stock of fish may be much lower than we thought, because of unreliable figures released by China about the number of fish being caught. Local Chinese officials, who wanted to impress their bosses, inflated the size of catches by Chinese fishermen. Staff promotions at the Chinese fisheries department used to be made on the basis of catch figures but the department ended this practice two years ago. Analysts using these figures assumed that fish stocks were healthier than they really were and seriously underestimated the effects of overfishing, despite the fact that it has long been known that there is a shortage of fish in some of the seas around China.
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The journal ?Nature? reports that DNA from genetically modified corn has been found in wild corn growing on remote mountains in Mexico, indicating that GM crops are threatening the diversity of native plants.

The wild corn was growing around 62 miles from the nearest industrially farmed crops. Mexico has not allowed GM corn to be planted since 1998 but allows the import of GM crops for consumption.

Ignacio Chapela and David Quist of the University of California in Berkeley compared wild corn from the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca mountains in Mexico with GM varieties from the Monsanto company and with samples of other corn known to be uncontaminated. They found that some of the wild samples were contaminated with telltale sections of DNA from GM crops.
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