A CBS News employee has tested positive for anthrax infection, meaning that all 3 major television networks have been targeted by terrorists. The FBI has posted a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the people involved in mailing the deadly bacteria.
The latest person to become infected is a woman who works in Dan Rather?s office. She tested positive for skin, or cutaneous, anthrax and is receiving antibiotics. ?She feels fine,? says CBS News President Andy Heyward.
No suspicious letter has been found at CBS, so it?s not clear how the woman contracted anthrax. She noticed what appeared to be a bug bite on her chin and went for testing less than a week ago. She was originally given penicillin, but switched to Cipro when the anthrax diagnosis was confirmed.
Recent test results show the anthrax found in the letter sent to NBC News is the same strain of anthrax received in the mailroom of the American Media company in Florida. It was originally thought that the Florida spores were of a different, larger type. This means that the anthrax attacks on the 3 major news networks, as well as AMI, were probably organized by the same group of terrorists.
The health minister of Nairobi, Kenya, Sam Ongeri, says that an envelope sent from Atlanta, Georgia to a private Kenyan citizen in Nairobi tested positive for anthrax spores. Authorities are investigating two other envelopes containing white powder, including one sent to the United Nations Environmental Program office in Nairobi. It had Pakistani stamps on it and was received in Nairobi on October 9 and opened October 11. The person who received it took it to the health ministry where it tested positive. A third letter with whitish powder was sent from Nairobi to a businessman in Nyeri, who also brought to the health ministry.
Three men convicted of having a role in the suicide truck bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on August 7, 1998 are scheduled be sentenced today (Thursday) in Manhattan, along with a fourth man who was a longtime aide to Osama bin Laden.
In a scenario reminiscent of September 11, the three embassy attacks took place at almost the exact same time and killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured another 4,500. people.
For CNN’s CBS story, click here.To read more about the case in Kenya, click here.
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