>> CASCADE?
Report: Al-Qaida has nukes
JPost.com Staff Feb. 8, 2004
Ukraine sold al-Qaida an unknown number of tactical nuclear weapons in 1998, al-Hayat reported, and the terror organization is storing them for possible use.
After the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine agreed to send 1,900 nuclear warheads back to Russia and sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but up to 100 portable suitcase-sized bombs were unaccounted for, Former Russian National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed said. Each bomb was equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT, he said.
Moscow has denied such weapons existed.
The deal between al Qaida and the Ukranian source was put into effect when Ukraine scientists visited Kandahar in Afghanistan at the height of the Taliban rule, according to Ynet.
In 1994, under US and Russian pressure, Ukraine removed 1900 nuclear warheads to Moscow and signed the anti-nuclear proliferation agreement. However, three years earlier, former USSR National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed already warned of the missing suitcase bombs.
According to Al Hayat, the weapons are not meant to be used except as a last resort, if the movement itself is in danger or attacked by weapons of mass destruction.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1076233683082




Al-Qaida Has Nukes?
CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- A pan-Arab newspaper said Sunday that al- Qaida bought tactical nuclear weapons from Ukraine in 1998 and is storing them in safe places for possible use.
There was no independent corroboration of the report, which appeared in Al-Hayat under an Islamabad dateline and cited sources close to al-Qaida, which the United States blames for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The newspaper said al-Qaida bought the weapons in suitcases in a deal arranged when Ukrainian scientists visited the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1998.
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Report: Al-Qaida has obtained tactical nuclear explosives
By Haaretz Service
Al-Qaida has obtained tactical nuclear explosive devices that can fit inside a suitcase, Israel Radio reported Sunday night citing the Al-Hayat newspaper.
According to the Arabic daily based in London, the devices are not intended for use, except in the event that the existence of the organization is threatened.
The report said that members of Osama bin Laden's group purchased the devices from Ukrainian scientists who sell them to anyone willing to pay the price.

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Pakistan Says Europeans Involved in Nuke Scandals
Feb 8, 9:58 AM (ET)
By Philip Blenkinsop
MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Pakistan's foreign minister said Sunday he knew the names of "lots of Europeans" involved in the illicit transfer of secrets to countries seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
"Why is there this unhealthy focus on Pakistan? What about others?" Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told delegates at a security conference in the German city of Munich.
"I know the names. I don't want to spill them... names given to us by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), by Iran. There are lots of Europeans involved, but there seems to be a focus on Pakistan," he said.
In a televised confession, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan said Wednesday he had acted independently in leaking secrets as head of the country's nuclear program from the 1970s.
The next day, the country's military president, Pervez Musharraf, pardoned the man revered as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, while rebuffing calls for an independent inquiry into the military's role.
Many analysts say Khan could not have acted without the knowledge of the military.
Kasuri said it was important to stress that the leaks had not been recent and were mainly during Pakistan's early days of nuclear development when few people were aware of the project.
"Yes our program was covert. Because it was covert there was a danger of this sort of thing," he said.
Khan had been removed when initial intelligence reports indicated smoke even if "fire had not been discovered." Moreover, while Pakistan had not joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it was committed to fulfilling the non-proliferation requirements, Kasuri said.
It was, he said, not in Pakistan's interests to share its nuclear secrets with others.
Many Pakistanis nevertheless believe Musharraf and top military officers were complicit in the illicit nuclear transfers to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
"It is not something that is in our interests... There has to be a motive, but there was none whatsoever," Kasuri said.
He also said the uranium enrichment technology which Khan appeared to have provided was only part of the know-how required to make nuclear weapons.
"Our nuclear experts tell me you need about 24 different technologies or processes to make nuclear weapons and then to deliver them. Only one of them is the uranium-enrichment process," Kasuri said.
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Pakistani to keep nuke riches
By Victoria Schofield
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- President Pervez Musharraf has pledged that the disgraced founder of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program can keep the vast wealth he accumulated selling atom bomb-making technology to rogue states around the world.
Gen. Musharraf, just days after provoking worldwide consternation by pardoning Abdul Qadeer Khan for supplying nuclear expertise to Libya, Iran and North Korea, said in an interview with the London Sunday Telegraph that the scientist's property or assets also would be spared.
"He can keep his money," Gen. Musharraf said, adding that there had been good reason not to investigate the origin of Mr. Khan's suspicious wealth before 1998, when Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear weapon.
"We wanted the bomb in the national interest, and so you have to ask yourself whether you act against the person who enabled you to get the bomb."
Mr. Khan is believed to have earned millions of dollars from his sale of nuclear know-how, beginning in the late 1980s. Much of the money was funneled through bank accounts in the Middle East.
His assets include four houses in Islamabad worth an estimated $2.8 million, a villa on the Caspian Sea, a luxury hotel in Mali and a valuable collection of vintage cars.
Gen. Musharraf said he understood the need for Pakistani scientists to develop a secret overseas network when building their first nuclear weapon.
"Obviously, we made our nuclear strength from the underworld," he said. "We did not buy openly. Every single atomic power has come through the underworld, even India."
Mr. Khan, 69, last week made a televised confession of his wrongdoing after government investigators confronted him.
Despite being granted a pardon, he is under house arrest and forbidden to give interviews.
"He should not talk for some time," Gen. Musharraf told the Sunday Telegraph.
The Bush administration termed Mr. Khan's legal plight "a matter for Pakistan to decide," but publicly praised Gen. Musharraf for shutting down Mr. Khan's nuclear sales network.
Within Pakistan, criticism has been directed at the government for its treatment of a man nationally revered as the "father of the bomb."
Mr. Khan's supporters filed a habeas corpus petition to be heard tomorrow by the Lahore High Court, asking it to end the "media trial" of a "national hero."
Opposition parties, meanwhile, took advantage of the growing groundswell of support for Mr. Khan to renew their attacks on Gen. Musharraf, who came to power in a military coup four years ago.
The Pakistan People's Party, led from exile by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, says it doubts the authenticity of Mr. Khan's admission, which it claims was made "under duress."
Mr. Khan initially was reported to have told government investigators that he did nothing without the knowledge of Pakistan's military chiefs, including Gen. Musharraf. In his televised confession, however, he said he had no authorization from the government.
Imran Khan, who leads the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) party, contends that Gen. Musharraf pressured Mr. Khan to safeguard his own reputation.
"It could not be possible that nuclear technology was transferred without the knowledge of top military officials," the party leader said.
Mr. Khan's evolution into national hero began soon after India shocked its neighbor with its first nuclear bomb test in 1974. He promised Pakistan's then-president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mrs. Bhutto's father, that he could match India's weapon and finally did so in 1998, when Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear weapon. He became an icon, and his image appeared on billboards and bumper stickers.
Mr. Khan sold nuclear technology almost as fast as Pakistan devised it, offering Saddam Hussein a design for a nuclear weapon in 1990, according to a document seized by U.N. weapons inspectors. The Iraqi leader suspected a trap and declined.
Mr. Khan then sold his designs to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
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Defector: N. Korea Has Uranium Program
TOKYO (AP) -- A top-ranking North Korean defector said the North launched a uranium-based nuclear weapons program in 1996 with the help of Pakistan, a Japanese newspaper reported Sunday.
Hwang Jang Yop, a former mentor to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, told the Tokyo Shimbun in an interview that a top military official told him eight years ago about an agreement with Pakistan to develop an enriched uranium weapons program.
Since 2002, the United States has contended that North Korea has been developing uranium-based nuclear weapons as a supplement to its long-standing plutonium-based nuclear capability.
While there is no dispute about the plutonium program, North Korea has persistently denied U.S. allegations about the uranium-based project.
"Jon Pyong Ho came to me, as the person responsible for international affairs, asking 'Can we buy some more plutonium from Russia or somewhere? I want to make a few more nuclear bombs,'" the newspaper quoted Hwang as saying.
"But then, before the fall of 1996, he said 'We've solved a big problem. We don't need plutonium this time. Due to an agreement with Pakistan, we will use uranium.'"
Jon is a member of North Korea's National Defense Committee and a secretary of the country's ruling Workers' Party. Hwang, who defected to South Korea in 1997, was a former chief of North Korea's Parliament.
According to Pakistani government and intelligence sources, equipment including centrifuges for enriching uranium were trafficked from Pakistan from 1989 until the late 1990s. Pakistani officials last week said Abdul Qadeer Khan, founder of the country's nuclear program, had confessed to sending sensitive nuclear technology to North Korea.
The United States and its allies Japan and South Korea are demanding that North Korea eliminate its nuclear weapons program. The countries, together with China and Russia, are to hold a second round of six-nation talks on the North's nuclear program from Feb. 25 in Beijing.
A Bush administration official said Friday, however, that China refuses to accept the U.S. contention that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons based on highly enriched uranium. The administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. diplomats have told Beijing its position is not helpful.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Bin Laden met nuke scientists
'Nuclear bazaar' story out of Pakistan gets more bizarre with new disclosure
Posted: February 8, 2004
12:12 p.m. Eastern
? 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON - As the Pakistani nuclear proliferation story widens, U.S. intelligence officials say top atomic scientists from that country met with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden
Two former senior Pakistani nuclear scientists who were based in the Afghan town of Kandahar met Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden several times before the fall of the Taliban. They were later detained and questioned on their return to Pakistan.
Last week, after it became clear that Pakistan was the center of what has become known internationally as the "nuclear bazaar," President Pervez Musharraf agreed to pardon nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan for selling the country's nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
Because Pakistan is perceived to be central to the U.S. war on terror, the reaction in Washington has been low-key.
"This is a matter between Dr. Khan, who is a Pakistani citizen, and his government," said Secretary of State Colin Powell to reporters outside the United Nations. "But it is a matter also that I'll be talking to President Musharraf about."
Bush administration officials have expressed satisfaction with Musharraf's guarantees that the country's nuclear proliferation will now come to an end.
A top defector from North Korea says that country's uranium-based nuclear weapons program was launched in 1996 under a deal with Pakistan. In addition, Pakistan stationed other nuclear scientists in Iran to help that country develop its nuclear weapons program.
Pakistan says the presidential pardon to the top nuclear scientist over his admission to have proliferated nuclear technology to three foreign countries is subject to set of a "comprehensive conditions" - but those conditions have not been revealed publicly.
The pardon even allows Khan to keep the vast wealth he accumulated by developing Pakistan's nuclear weapons and from selling the technology to other countries - including several rogue nations. Khan is believed to have earned millions of dollars from his sale of nuclear know-how, beginning in the late 1980s. Much of the money was funneled through bank accounts in the Middle East. His assets include four houses in Islamabad worth an estimated $2.8 million, a villa on the Caspian Sea, a luxury hotel in Mali and a valuable collection of vintage cars.
Khan, 69, last week made a televised confession of his wrongdoing after government investigators confronted him. Despite being granted a pardon, he is under house arrest and forbidden to give interviews.
In addition to selling nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea, Khan also offered Saddam Hussein a design for a nuclear weapon in 1990, according to a document seized by U.N. weapons inspectors. Later he made a deal with Libya.
----------------------------------------------------

>> NICE PICTURE...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36654

WHISTLEBLOWER MAGAZINE
RETURN OF THE NUCLEAR THREAT
WND probe documents unthinkable plans of terror groups, pariah nations
Posted: January 19, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
? 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Fear of a nuclear attack on American soil is back - and with good reason - as WND documents conclusively in its newest issue of Whistleblower magazine, titled "RETURN OF THE NUCLEAR THREAT."
The signs are everywhere:
Congressional hearings on "dirty bombs" and "suitcase nukes."
Reports of stolen "radioactive warheads" and Osama bin Laden purchasing Soviet-era nuclear weapons on the black market.
Recent deployments of "Nuclear Incident Response Teams" to scour Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities for nuclear terror weapons.
The Department of Homeland Security's distribution of radiation detectors to police in Chicago, Detroit, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle - as well as to Bureau of Customs and Border Protection agents nationwide - to screen for terrorist activity, whether a dirty bomb, suitcase nuke, or other source of radiation.
Vice President Dick Cheney's chilling assessment that nuclear terror is "the major threat" facing America: Calling a WMD attack on the U.S. "one of the most important problems we face today," Cheney added: "To contemplate the possibility of them unleashing that kind of capability - of that kind of weapon, if you will, in the midst of one of our cities - that's a scary proposition."
And that's just the terror threat. Across the oceans loom other gorgon's-heads of the nuclear monster - perhaps even more threatening.
Where once the nuclear club was very elite - comprising the U.S., U.S.S.R., China, France and just a few others - today, laments International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the number of nations now believed by the IAEA to be able to create nuclear weapons "is estimated at 35 or 40."
And among the furthest along, unfortunately, are the world's most notorious terror-sponsor and pariah states - Iran, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan among them. All of this far-flung reality comes crashing home with stunning precision in "RETURN OF THE NUCLEAR THREAT."
"There is an air of unreality in many people's minds when it comes to nuclear weapons," said WND and Whistleblower Editor Joseph Farah. "After all, a nuclear weapon hasn't been deployed in war since World War II, when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Add to that the failure so far of coalition forces to find any nuclear weapons in Iraq. Such factors, combined with the inherent difficulty in facing up to a subject so horrific, and you can understand people's tendency to bury their heads with respect to the looming nuclear threat of 2004."
This special Whistleblower edition is more than a wake-up call. It's a crash course in the current, growing - and very real - nuclear threat facing America.
"This issue of Whistleblower will provide a strong dose of reality by presenting the known facts about the nuclear genie, and about the furious quest for the ultimate weapon of mass destruction by the world's madmen," said Farah.
Contents include:
"The major threat," by Joseph Farah, who clearly lays out an overview of the threats Americans face in 2004.
"The terror ahead" - an authoritative, in-depth and spine-straightening look at the world's nuclear scene, aptly subtitled "A nuclear attack? Be very afraid" - by Gabriel Schoenfeld.
"35 or 40 countries can make nuclear arms," in which the U.N.'s chief nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei confides that the situation is way out of control.
"Nukes in the Mideast" by Joseph Farah, where the Middle East expert shows why, despite recent apparent concessions by Libya, Iran and others, the nuclear threat is greater than ever.
"The Libya ruse," an eye-opening page-turner in which Joseph Farah unmasks the developing campaign to pressure Israel to give up nuclear weapons.
"Nuclear weapons production in Iran," Kenneth R. Timmerman's mind-boggling look at how the Iranians have bamboozled international arms inspectors for the past 18 years while building up stunning nuclear capability.
"Nuclear terrorism - how real?" David Kupelian's in-depth primer on "suitcase nukes," "dirty bombs" and other terror tools, the real prospects of their use on U.S. soil, and what can and must be done to defend America.
Suitcase nuke
"Dozens of 'dirty-bomb' warheads missing," documenting the recent discovery that dozens of Cold-War-era radioactive Soviet warheads have been lost, stolen or purchased.
"Does al-Qaida have 20 suitcase nukes?" in which an FBI terror consultant confirms our worst fears, claiming Osama bin Laden purchased the weapons - each with an explosive potential equivalent to the Hiroshima A-bomb - from ex-KGB agents for $30 million.
"In a few short years," warns Farah, "today's terror-sponsoring nations may not need to send terrorists with backpack nukes to wreak devastation on the West because they will be capable of hitting New York or Los Angeles with warheads mounted on ICBMs.
"The Cold War is long over. It's a new world with new enemies for America - and they have, or are soon going to have, nuclear weapons. If we're going to defend America, we need to start by facing up to the return of the nuclear threat."

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>> SAME OLD STORY?

AP: Found $300M Could Be Saddam's Money
By DAFNA LINZER
Associated Press Writer
BERN, Switzerland (AP) -- The United States believes it has found at least $300 million Saddam Hussein hid in banks, yet doesn't have enough evidence to get countries such as Syria and Switzerland to hand over the money, U.S. and European officials told The Associated Press.
The funds at stake could go to the Iraq insurgency or the country's reconstruction - depending on who gets to them first. What troubles investigators more is that much of Saddam's cash may already be gone.
The weak U.S. intelligence and the slow-moving investigation, now in its 11th month, have given suspects more than enough time to empty accounts and possibly transfer some funds to Iraq's insurgency, which has cost hundreds of American lives, officials involved in the search said.
Treasury investigators have been quick to identify leads in the hunt but have been scrambling to come up with solid evidence that could hold up in a court or get the approval of a U.N. sanctions committee.
Much to the frustration of the Bush administration, countries that acted quickly on relatively weak evidence involving al-Qaida funds have been unwilling to do the same on Iraq, partly because of growing doubts about the quality of U.S. intelligence.
For months, Swiss officials have asked Washington to provide more information on an account belonging to a Panamanian-registered front company that U.S. officials believe is tied to the former Iraqi regime. The account contains the equivalent of $80 million and U.S. officials are still trying to gather enough information for the Swiss to act.
Were the account held in a U.S. bank, federal authorities wouldn't need any more evidence than they already have because the Patriot Act, passed after Sept. 11, 2001, gives them expanded powers of search and seizure.
"We know a lot of countries cannot use intelligence information the way we can use it now after Sept. 11," said Juan Zarate, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes. "It's not a complete hindrance but we have to provide the right information."
Swiss officials put a temporary hold on the Montana Management account but won't hand over the money to an Iraqi reconstruction fund, as the Bush administration wants, unless it gets more details - and none were forthcoming during a recent meeting between U.S. and Swiss treasury officials in Washington.
Zarate told AP his office would target new individuals "in the next few weeks," and submit the names to the U.N. sanctions committee, where approval is assured, giving European countries a legal basis to act.
"The reality is, we want to be sure about cases when we go to the U.N. since we're basically marking an individual or a company or an entity. We do have to present some sort of basis for it," Zarate said.
But he said, "when you work bilaterally, things don't necessarily have to be that formal or that definitive."
So far, Zarate's office has given the United Nations the names of five Iraqi entities - the Central Bank of Iraq, Iraq Reinsurance Company, Rafidain Bank, Rasheed Bank and Iraqi Airways Company - plus the list of the 55 Most-Wanted Iraqis that the military presented as a deck of cards in the early days of last year's war.
European and Middle Eastern officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they had peeked into accounts held by children of the 55 and found almost no money. Saddam's daughters, who are living comfortably in Jordan, remain under scrutiny, officials said.
The investigation relies solely on interrogations and information U.S. officials are getting in Iraq. Zarate wouldn't say whether Saddam was cooperating.
No other countries - not even coalition partners - have offered names to the U.N. list.
"The onus falls mostly on us to produce lists and to produce leads," Zarate said. The interagency investigation has been "overwhelmed" by documents and CD ROMs collected in Iraq, he said.
So far, the amount of money identified by U.S. investigators is nowhere near prewar estimates of $40 billion stashed away by Saddam.
"We don't know where it is," said Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, the head of France's domestic intelligence agency.
The largest sums uncovered so far are in Middle East banks. U.S. officials are hoping Syrian officials will be encouraged to hand over money once the Swiss do. But there are also concerns that pressuring the Syrians, without sufficient evidence, could hamper important cooperation on Iraq and the war on terrorism.
In October, U.S. investigators went to the Syrian capital, Damascus, and Amman, Jordan, looking for hidden Iraqi accounts. Syria has frozen about $250 million but won't give the money to the Iraq fund because it can't be sure it belonged to the regime.
The Swiss face similar issues.
In some cases, Swiss investigators have been unable to find evidence that would corroborate the information the United States has provided on accounts. In others, they are having trouble establishing whether a crime has been committed by bank clients. The largest accounts may already be emptied out, according to European, Middle Eastern and American officials.
One Swiss official noted that in 1992, Libya managed to pull 425 million Swiss Francs - or about $300 million then - from Switzerland after it was given two weeks to cooperate with the United Nations or face sanctions for its role in the bombing of a Pan Am flight.
For U.S. investigators tracing Saddam's money, early efforts focused on retrieving close to $1 billion stolen from the Iraqi Central Bank, including money taken by Saddam's sons. More than $100 million is still missing and some is thought to be in the hands of insurgents.
The interagency investigation, which includes Treasury, the FBI, the CIA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is still tracing the serial numbers on $750,000 cash found in Saddam's possession when he was captured nearly two months ago.
Hundreds of millions of Iraqi dollars that were in accounts before the 1991 Gulf War are being turned over to the reconstruction fund. The United States also has asked countries owed money by Iraq to forgive the debt. Most have agreed to forgive most, but not all, of the billions Iraq owes.
Associated Press Writers Jeannine Aversa in Washington and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.
On the Net:
U.N. sanctions list: http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/committees/IraqKuwait/1483guide.pdf
U.S. Treasury list: http://www.treas.gov/ofac
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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>> HMM...

Saudi Man May Have Mad Cow Disease
By RAWYA RAGEH
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Saudi medical authorities believe a man hospitalized last month and now in a coma is suffering from the kingdom's first case of the human form of mad cow disease.
Official medical records shown to The Associated Press on Friday by the patient's family said test findings a day after Abdul Karim Eskandar was admitted to the hospital "were suggestive of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."
Abdul Karim Eskandar, 64, was admitted to Jiddah's King Faisal Specialist Hospital Jan. 20, and lost his memory, eyesight and speech before falling into a coma.
It was not clear how the Quran teacher had contracted the disease, since he had never eaten beef, according to his son, Abdul Moneim Abdul Karim.
Abdul Karim said doctors told him a handful of other patients had also been diagnosed with the disease.
AP was not immediately able to contact any of the other patients or their families.
Abdul Karim said Eskandar started complaining of feebleness and blurred vision in November. Doctors initially suspected that he had suffered a stroke.
After the diagnosis - tests had been sent to Mayo Medical Laboratories in the United States for confirmation - doctors said Eskandar may have unwittingly consumed beef during a trip to England in 1999, at the height of the spread of variant CJD there.
One doctor told Abdul Karim that his father could have contracted the disease without eating contaminated beef, the son said.
Attempts to reach Eskandar's doctor were not successful and it was not immediately possible to reach health officials because of a two-week Muslim holiday.
"We will not give up on him because we are not convinced with the doctors' diagnosis here," Abdul Karim said. The family plans to take Eskandar to the University of Vienna Medical School, which has agreed to carry out further tests.
A letter from a professor of internal medicine at the Austrian school said Eskandar seems to be suffering from a "neurological disorder of unknown origin."
The causes of classic CJD, a fatal human dementia known for 80 years, are unknown. The disease, which is neither bacteria nor fungus, could be inherited, spread through infected surgical equipment, tissue transplants or hormones. Variant CJD is linked to the consumption of tainted beef.
rr-ti-ts
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Study Says Donors May Be Passing Mad Cow
By AUDREY WOODS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON (AP) - British scientists studying how the human form of mad cow disease is transmitted say some people could be passing the illness through blood donations.
Although it has not been proven that the brain-wasting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease can be transmitted through transfusion, the scientists did find a case in which a blood donor and the recipient died of it.
In that case, the donor gave blood more than three years before he developed symptoms, the scientists said in their report in Friday's Lancet medical journal.
The researchers, led by Professor Robert Will at the National CJD Surveillance Center in Edinburgh, wrote that "although the epidemic of vCJD presently seems to be in decline, a proportion of the U.K. population could be incubating vCJD and acting as blood donors."
The scientists based their study on records from United Kingdom blood services and the national CJD surveillance unit.
The report said 48 people had been identified as having received blood from 15 donors who later developed the variant disease.
By December 2003, all but 17 of the recipients had died but vCJD was the cause of death in only one case. The disease can only be confirmed during an autopsy by examining brain tissue.
"Our findings raise the possibility that this infection was transfusion transmitted," the report says, adding that infection also "could have been due to past dietary exposure" to BSE.
Scientists already believe people can get variant CJD from eating products from cows infected with a similar illness, bovine spongiform encephalopathy - BSE - or mad cow disease.
Statistical analysis indicated that the odds of the man not being infected by his blood transfusion were between one in 15,000 and one in 30,000.
In an accompanying independent commentary, Dr. Adriano Aguzzi and Dr. Markus Glatzel from the University Hospital of Zurich in Switzerland, said, "the chance that this case is not transfusion-related is very small."
"Shocking as it may be," they wrote, "the finding that vCJD can be transmitted via blood transfusion is not surprising. Stringent studies in sheep show that prion diseases" - such as CJD - "can be transmitted via blood, even if blood is collected in preclinical stages of prion disease."
Besides the transfusions, 20 units of plasma from people who later developed variant CJD were used to make blood products before 1998, when Britain stopped using British blood, the Lancet report said.
The scientists said that before 1998, "many thousands of individuals may have been exposed" to blood products "derived from pools containing a donation from an individual incubating vCJD."
So far, they said, no case of variant CJD has been identified as connected to exposure to such plasma products. The risks from plasma products are probably less than from transfusion, they added.
All blood products for use in operations in Britain are now based on plasma imported from the United States, where there have been no cases of human mad cow disease blamed on American beef. The human form of mad cow disease so far has claimed 143 victims in Britain and 10 elsewhere.

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>> KEYSTONE CORP?

Prosecutors Investigating Abbott Laboratories' Price Hike on AIDS Medicine
The Associated Press
Published: Feb 8, 2004
CHICAGO (AP) - Investigators in Illinois and New York are trying to determine if Abbott Laboratories broke the law when it increased the cost of a commonly used AIDS medicine by nearly 400 percent.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office is investigating whether the North Chicago-based drug maker engaged in deceptive or unfair pricing practices when it raised the cost of Norvir, a treatment for the HIV virus, the Chicago Tribune reported in Sunday's editions.
Abbott increased the wholesale price of Norvir in December to $8.57 a day, or $257.10 a month, from $1.75 a day, or $52.50 for a 30-day supply, according to company records.
"Norvir is not like a hay fever medication that people take to lessen symptoms to be more comfortable," Madigan told the newspaper. "It is a drug they take to survive. This investigation is aimed at determining the real reason for the price increase and whether it violates Illinois law."
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is trying to determine if the company violated antitrust law, Abbott confirmed. A spokesman for Spitzer's office would neither confirm nor deny an investigation.
Both investigations center on whether the increase was designed to make AIDS drug cocktails cost-prohibitive and steer patients to Abbott's newer drug, Kaletra, which is more expensive and has a longer patent life.
Abbott said Norvir was priced lower than its rivals for years and denies any wrongdoing.
"Many companies have known the value of Norvir to their drugs and priced their drugs at a premium despite this," said Abbott spokeswoman Melissa Brotz. "Competitors need to price their drugs based on their clinical value. Perhaps those concerned about the cost of therapy should look at the highest cost component of HIV regimens."
Prescriptions for some AIDS drugs cost several thousand dollars a year.
AP-ES-02-08-04 1914EST
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>> OUR RUSSIAN FRIENDS...

Challenger to Putin for Russian Presidency Is Missing
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
MOSCOW, Feb. 8 -- One of Vladimir V. Putin's challengers in next month's presidential election is missing, and the police and security services announced today that they had begun a search for him.
Ivan P. Rybkin, a former Parliament speaker and national security adviser under Boris N. Yeltsin, has not been seen or heard from since Thursday evening, raising fears among his family and campaign aides that something dire had happened to him.
"We are trying not to let such ideas come to mind," said Aleksandr V. Tukayev, a campaign official and the deputy chairman of Mr. Rybkin's party, Liberal Russia, "but it is hard not to think about it."
Mr. Rybkin's whereabouts have added a bizarre drama to a torpid presidential campaign that is universally expected to end with Mr. Putin's re-election on March 14.
Mr. Rybkin, 57, has been one of the most unabashed critics of Mr. Putin and his policies, but like Mr. Putin's five other challengers he has struggled to build political support and get his message heard, especially on state television. In polls, he has fared even worse than the others, receiving the support of fewer than 1 percent of voters.
Mr. Rybkin's Liberal Russia has been at the center of political intrigue and violence ever since it was created in 2002.
Its patron is Boris A. Berezovksy, a businessman and former Kremlin insider, who has become one of Mr. Putin's fiercest critics after moving to London in self-exile to escape fraud charges he says are politically motivated. Mr. Berezovsky first raised concerns about Mr. Rybkin's whereabouts in an interview on Friday.
Mr. Rybkin did not appear at a scheduled news conference on Friday, his aides said. Nor did he surface to make any statement on Saturday, as would be expected, when the country's election commission officially registered his candidacy in the election.
A spokesman for the Moscow police said that Mr. Rybkin's wife, Albina, submitted an official statement today about his disappearance. She told the police that her husband had not been seen since he arrived at their apartment sometime after 7 P.M. on Thursday and let his bodyguards go home. He was not there when his wife arrived after 11, she said.
Under Russian law, a person is not considered missing until three days have passed. Mr. Tukayev said that given Mr. Rybkin's prominence, the authorities should have begun a search immediately.
"In any civilized country, all the security services would be on their feet," he said.
In the last 18 months, two of the members of Mr. Rybkin's party in the Parliament, Sergei N. Yushenkov, and Vladimir I. Golovlyov, have been shot to death on the streets of Moscow in murky circumstances.
Shortly before he was killed, Mr. Yushenkov split with Mr. Berezovksy and another party leader, Mikhail N. Kodanev, has since been charged with the murder. Party officials say he has been falsely accused.
While the election commission refused to let the party participate in last December's parliamentary elections, Mr. Rybkin's supporters collected enough signatures to qualify him for a spot on the presidential ballot.
On Saturday, however, the chairman of the election commission, Aleskandr A. Veshnyakov, said the commission had provided prosecutors with what he said was evidence that some of his qualifying petitions were fraudulent. If that is proven, prosecutors could still disqualify him as a candidate.
Two other presidential challengers -- Sergei Y. Glazyev, a leader of the nationalist Motherland Party, and Irina M. Khakamada of the liberal party Union of Right Forces -- were also cleared today to run. But they too now face investigations into the veracity of some of the signatures they collected, election officials told the Interfax news agency.
Kseniya Y. Ponomaryova, Mr. Rybkin's campaign chairman, said in an interview tonight that another party official had spoken with him by telephone at 8:40 p.m. on Thursday. By 10 P.M., he was not answering his mobile telephone. Albina Rybkin said today that when she arrived home on Friday night, she found that her husband had taken off a shirt and left dishes in the kitchen, but there were no signs of a struggle or violence. His cars were still in the garage.
She discounted the possibility he was aboard the subway train struck by a bomb on Friday morning, killing at least 39, since he does not routinely use the subway. She also discounted the possibility that he had left on his own. "It is absolutely not like him," she said.
Mr. Rybkin, an agriculture specialist and former Communist Party member, has been a prominent political figure since the collapse of the Soviet Union, first as an opponent of Mr. Yeltsin and later as a security adviser to him. Mr. Rybkin participated in the peace talks that end the first war in Chechnya in 1996 and remains an advocate of efforts to end the second Chechen war, now in its fifth year.
As a candidate, he has criticized Mr. Putin, saying he was an authoritarian who is closely linked to the wealthy businessmen who wield disproportionate control of the country's economy, so long as they remain in the Kremlin's good graces. In an interview last month, Mr. Rybkin said he was concerned about the erosion of democratic freedoms in Russia and the continued economic hardship of ordinary Russians.
"Russia," he said then, "is turning a new and very shameful leaf."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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Rybkin Missing for 3 Days, Police Start Search
By Valeria Korchagina
Staff Writer
Two days after being registered to run as a candidate against President Vladimir Putin in the March 14 election, Ivan Rybkin was officially declared missing Sunday.
But Boris Berezovsky, the politician's financial backer and the former gray cardinal of the Kremlin, said late Sunday that Rybkin would reappear Monday, four days after going missing.
Rybkin disappeared a few days after running a full-page advertisement in Kommersant newspaper, in which he described Putin as Russia's "biggest oligarch."
"One can only guess about the circumstances of my husband's disappearance," Rybkin's wife, Albina, said Sunday, Interfax reported. "It is known precisely that at about 8 p.m. [Thursday] he returned home and dismissed the driver and the guard. When I returned home later he wasn't there and nothing is known about him since that time."
Rybkina filed a missing persons report with police Sunday, the earliest possible time by law, which considers people missing after no contact has been made for at least three days.
A presidential press service official declined to comment Sunday on whether the letter and Rybkin's disappearance were linked in any way.
"You should talk to the relevant law enforcement agencies about it," he said.
Berezovsky, when reached for comment late Sunday, said that Rybkin would reappear Monday. "I'm pretty certain he is alive and well," he said. He added that Rybkin's family had information, obtained from the Security Council and special services, that Rybkin was safe and well. He refused to elaborate.
Rybkin was officially registered as a presidential candidate Friday, but failed to show up at the Central Elections Commission to receive his official candidate's identity card.
Both the Moscow police criminal investigation department and the Federal Security Service are reported to be looking for Rybkin. But his wife said Sunday afternoon there had been no significant progress in the search.
A former head of the Security Council under President Boris Yeltsin, Rybkin has maintained close links with Berezovsky, who has lived in Britain since 2000 and has said he is funding Rybkin's campaign. Berezovsky has been trying to rally support for a challenge to Putin since shortly after his election in 2000. He won political asylum in Britain last year, after the Prosecutor General's Office sought his extradition to Russia on theft and corruption charges.
Rybkin is also an advocate of negotiations with Chechen separatists over the conflict in the republic.
The full-page advertisement in Kommersant, a Berezovsky-owned newspaper, took the form of an open letter from Rybkin, accusing Putin of grabbing control of a vast share of Russian business.
Among the companies Rybkin alleged were controlled by businessmen close to Putin were television companies NTV and Channel One, and oil major Surgutneftegaz.
"I assert: Now it is Putin who is the biggest oligarch in Russia," Rybkin said in the letter. "I am convinced Putin has no right to power in Russia. And we have no right to be silent about it."
The letter claimed that Sibneft majority shareholder Roman Abramovich, as well as businessmen Gennady Timchenko, Mikhail Kovalchuk and his brother Yury were close to Putin.
In an interview in Moskovskiye Novosti weekly on Friday, Rybkin claimed that revenues from various industries, including those collected by the Railways Ministry and the Nuclear Energy Ministry, were controlled by businessmen close to Putin.
But little is publicly known about the business interests of the men Rybkin said were Putin's associates.
Timchenko apparently controls two oil export firms, and has known Putin since he worked in St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak's office in the 1990s, Moskovskiye Novosti reported.
There is no information available on Mikhail Kovalchuk, while Yury Kovalchuk served as one of Putin's subordinates at St. Petersburg City Hall. Yury Kovalchuk controls 41 percent in Severstal shareholder Rossia Bank and is board chairman of the Center for Strategic Development Northwest, the paper said.
? Copyright 2002, The Moscow Times. All Rights Reserved.