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| 2001-10-25 |
| BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today A reporter has been hospitalized with a suspected case of inhalation anthrax. The unnamed patient "is a journalist who works on Capitol Hill and was one of many who rushed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office in the Hart Senate Office Building last Monday when news broke that a letter containing an anthrax-contaminated powder was opened by the senator's staff. Now doctors fear she may have been infected as a result." Roll Call reports that "military and Congressional officials are considering the use of a powerful disinfecting gas--chlorine dioxide--in a novel attempt to rid Hill offices of dangerous anthrax spores that may be lurking on hard-to-clean surfaces." A second NBC News employee in New York, meanwhile, has been diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax. And USA Today reports Carole Simpson, who anchors ABC's "World News Tonight" on Sundays, "has been suspended for two weeks after speaking inaccurately at a luncheon about ABC's recent anthrax scare." Simpson falsely claimed that ABC's Cokie Roberts had received a mysterious letter postmarked Trenton, N.J. And this just in: A State Department mailman based in Sterling, Va., has tested positive for anthrax exposure. Good news from Mississippi: That crop-duster scare was a false alarm. "The white powder released by a crop-dusting plane over a Coast Guard post on the Mississippi River was fertilizer," the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports. "The Monday flyover at Natchez is being called 'accidental' by authorities." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |