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Domestic Counter-terrorism 

Nature Biotechnology 26, 603 - 605 (2008)
doi:10.1038/nbt0608-603

When animal rights turns ugly

Abstract

Despite tightened legislation against animal rights extremism, activists are increasing attacks on academics and researchers in big pharma. How much of a threat do they pose to researchers working in biotech? Brady Huggett investigates.

Introduction

Travis Huggett

The number of incidents in which investigators are facing stalking, harassment and visits to their homes from animal rights activists is on the increase. In March and April alone, Novartis employees (Basel) have been targeted in the UK, Italy and the US, and AstraZeneca's (London) Swedish offices were vandalized. Incidents also are on the rise against academic investigators—most notably in late February when a group of masked animal rights activists harassed a University of California breast cancer researcher at home. Historically, activists have largely targeted big pharma, especially companies that have links to Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a research contract organization that has been a rallying point for anti-vivisectionists worldwide. But should biotech companies be more proactively preparing for attacks on facilities and personnel?

Increasing intimidation

Targeting University of California researchers by animal rights activists isn't new. Indeed, the house of the unnamed breast cancer researcher had been targeted just weeks earlier—"every synonym for killer" being chalked on the front walkway, the researcher says. In the second incident, though, several activists, faces covered by bandanas, climbed the front porch of the researcher's house, shouting and pounding on the door and windows. The researcher's spouse confronted the group, was struck on the hand by something perhaps "as innocuous as an umbrella" and ended up chasing the activists down the lawn. Although not as serious as an arson attack or a homemade bomb, the visit to the researcher's home was unfortunately timed, as the family was hosting a birthday party. The children inside were terrified by what looked like "masked men trying to enter the house," the researcher says. The press had a field day, running sensational headlines including the phrases "group attacks man at front door," "family attacked at home" and "victim of home invasion."

The Los Angeles campus of the University of California (UCLA), in particular, has borne the brunt of attacks of late. UCLA researcher Edythe London, a professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine, was targeted at home this year, and, her house was flooded with a garden hose last summer. In 2007, an incendiary device was placed under a UCLA researcher's car and another at a home (though neither detonated). There also was a bomb threat and a suspicious package in the mail.

Given similar harassment of two Oregon Health and Science University researchers in Portland last year, many are concerned that academic investigators are being singled out because they are easy targets. This has prompted the introduction of the bill AB 2296 in California, which, among other things, aims to keep the names of animal researchers out of public documents. The California bill would supplement existing amendments made in November 2006 to the US Animal Enterprise Terrorism act, which elevated certain intimidation by extremists against property and personnel to a federal offense. Meanwhile, in 2005, the UK parliament introduced an amendment to the UK's Serious Organized Crime and Police Bill to give authorities greater powers to prosecute those involved in intimidation, primarily as a response to harassment of employees of HLS and other companies.

Origins of extremism

The animal rights movement took root in England as far back as the 1800s (Box 1). But the modern movement really took shape with the formation of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) in the UK in 1999. This group has one goal only—to shut down HLS. An important strategic focus of SHAC was to shift the focus from facilities to people. "Historically, [activists] have done damage to facilities and stolen animals and trashed labs," says Frankie Trull, president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research (FBR) in Washington, DC, founded in 1981. "Now we're seeing an increase in going after individuals, which really did start with the SHAC campaign. It's more personal now, which makes it so unsettling."

HLS knows this only too well. The company and its employees have endured midnight phone calls, threatening letters and e-mails, bullhorn-armed protesters on front lawns, and graffiti sprayed across cars and homes. Its president and managing director, Brian Cass, was beaten by suspected animal rights extremists outside his UK house in 2001 (both SHAC and the Animal Liberation Front [ALF] publicly distanced themselves from the attack). As a result of harassment, the company neared bankruptcy in 1999, as many as 40 HLS stock holders have dropped their shares and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI; Washington, DC) says more than 100 customers have been driven away from HLS.

Besides tenacity, part of what has made SHAC effective is that it targets any entity related to HLS. The contracts that Emeryville, California–based Chiron signed with HLS in the late 1990s were cited as the reason why Chiron (now owned by Novartis) was targeted. Employees received menacing e-mails and spiraling harassment, including one incident in which 30 stuffed toy dogs were piled up on a Chiron worker's lawn, each slathered in fake blood, with "puppy killer" scribbled close by and another in which a tombstone was left at an employee's house. Most of this activity occurred late at night, which meant local authorities had few solid leads to go on. On August 28, 2003, two pipe bombs exploded in staggered fashion at Chiron's campus, causing no casualties, but shattering the front glass doors and windows of the facility.

Push for law change

Animal rights watchdog groups, such as the Humane Society, have at times served the public well—in late January, a Humane Society video of graphic cow abuse at a slaughterhouse in Chino, southern California, led to the largest recall of beef in the history of the US—but extremist groups are a different breed. In 2002, the Southern Poverty Law Center released an intelligence report on environmental and animal-rights groups, which claimed the animal rights movement had "clearly taken a turn toward the more extreme," but also noted that, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US public had lost "tolerance for anything that smacks of terrorism."

As the public's patience with extreme activity faded, support for stricter laws against extremist activity increased. In early 2004, a British nonprofit group called Victims of Animal Rights Extremism formed to demand a law change, and Britain's biotech and pharma firms began to threaten relocation. The UK responded with the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act of 2005, which introduced two new offenses: interfering with "contractual and similar relationships with the intention of harming an animal research organisation" and the "intimidation of specified persons connected with an animal research organisation." This was directly aimed at the expansive, yet personal, nature of SHAC attacks.

The same sentiment was surfacing in the US, where it was the Animal Enterprise Terrorism act (AET) of 1992 that needed stiffening. The original act (18USC 43) was a "paper tiger" of a law, says FBI Supervisory Special Agent Phil Celestini, that was "too narrow in focus."

"Extremists knew what they could and couldn't do," he says. "It was good for protecting mink farms and chicken coops from animal releases, and that was about it." Anyone caught was usually prosecuted under state courts or for federal statutes such as arson, because under 18USC 43, most would get a "slap on the wrist." Activists often saw getting arrested as simply something to brag about. The AET act was overhauled in November 2006, prohibiting 'secondary targeting' of companies that deal with the initial target and elevating certain extremist activity to a federal offense.

The changes to the laws appear to have worked in the UK because Victims of Animal Rights Extremism now quotes statistics showing a "real downturn in the number and ferocity" of animal rights extremist events. In the US, Celestini agrees that things are "much better than they were five or six years ago" in terms of safeguards. Faced with longer sentences, some extremists now see getting arrested and convicted as a "terrible, terrible way to waste their life," he says. He points to the March 2006 conviction by a federal jury in the US of six SHAC members (a seventh was dropped from the case) for using the internet and the SHAC website to incite attacks on HLS employees or those who did business with the firm. Called the 'SHAC 7' by both the media and SHAC itself, the convicted were the first to be prosecuted under the old AET act, and sentences reached up to six years. "Had it been under the new law, the potential maximum sentences would have been many years longer," Celestini adds.

Those laws, however, are weightless for those operating illegally, says Camille Hankins, a legal press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office and founder and director of Win Animal Rights (WAR). She says that stricter laws or restraining orders "mean nothing" to 'underground' ALF members, as they "do not operate in the public milieu."

The harsher laws are simply part of how the "animal rights movement is being deftly managed by corporate industry groups and law enforcement," Hankins says. "In many ways, the labeling of ALF or SHAC activists as terrorists has had the effect of creating just the kind of atmosphere that the animal exploitation industries are most [concerned] about."

Hankins worries that when law enforcement marshals forces out of proportion to the threats, the situations become ripe for increased tension. "My concern is that when SWAT teams, geared up for a riot, roll in against unarmed vegan kids wearing bandanas and holding picket signs, eventually [an animal rights activist] is going to get hurt," she says. In defense of activists, she points out that in 30 years, "not a single person has ever been injured as a result of an ALF action." The FBI mostly agrees with this. Bill Carter, from the FBI's national press office, says that that up to now, no targeted individuals have been directly harmed in the US through the animal rights or eco-terrorism movements. But he points out that the rhetoric among the groups has "increasingly indicated a willingness" to target humans.

Still, Trull argues that the drop-off in activity seen after the passing of the new AET act has not been sustained. "For the past six or eight months, we've seen a definitive escalation again," she says, and suggests that biotech firms are especially vulnerable.

Biotech as a soft target

"As [biotech] enters horizons where no man has gone before, it's going to be intimidating to those who do not understand this," Trull says. "And that makes biotechnology very susceptible, because when people don't understand something," such as transgenic animals or knockout mice, "they attack." She is concerned that many in the biotech industry feel "this movement has absolutely nothing to do with them." That is wrong—although a majority of attacks are associated with HLS and those tied to it (Fig. 1), attacks can and do happen to biotechs.

Figure 1: Target breakdown of 182 animal rights illegal incidents (2006–April 2008).

aIncludes Roche, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and such outliers as UPS, Wachovia Bank and Staples. bIncludes animal farms, fur farms, restaurants, circuses, entities associated with greyhound racing. Source: Foundation for Biomedical Research

Full size image (14 KB)


When contacted by Nature Biotechnology, the president of a Massachusetts-based custom antibody firm, who requested anonymity, says he considers biotech "a softer target." His company was hit in 2006, when activists liberated a score of rabbits. Before the 2 a.m. visit, pulled off by a group "dressed like ninjas," he says, he considered the animal rights movement threatening in the abstract way that people consider they "might be in an auto accident one day, too."

It wasn't that his company was blithe: located in a remote area, employees were schooled to watch every approaching vehicle and question anyone they did not know. But after the incident, they realized more needed to be done (Box 2).

A first step was to strip all employee information from the company website. The company then went to its customers and asked them to delete its firm's United States Department of Agriculture license number from their websites to prevent extremists from backtracking to their firms and establishing new targets. He asked those customers what they held most important (the answer: the records of business transactions and the personal identifications of employees), and then he moved his firm's server into a locked cage, making it harder to steal. He also forged stronger links with the local police force.

In all, he spent about $100,000 upgrading his company's security. The company has not been bothered since, and part of the reason, he thinks, is the new law. "The people who are doing this are smart," he says. "They recognize the cost-benefit ratio, and very few are willing to go to jail for five years for this."

It's necessary to prepare, but it's also important to remember the odds and not panic, says Jacquie Calnan, president of Americans for Medical Progress (AMP; Alexandria, Virginia), a nonprofit organization supporting the humane use of animals in medicine. To put it in perspective, Calnan estimates there are probably "less than 50 'hard core' activists" operating in the US today, and says she is "confident that law enforcement knows who they are and how they operate."

A parting of the ways

FBR tracks extremist activity worldwide (Fig. 2) and some think the recent 'attacks' on academic researchers at UCLA and in Oregon portend more. Trull says that activists are accessing funded projects through the Freedom of Information Act, then "selecting those that they think are not worthy of funding and targeting those researchers."

Figure 2: Total animal rights illegal incidents, 1981–2007.

Source: Foundation for Biomedical Research

Full size image (29 KB)


"These people are bullies, there's no question about it" says Trull, who has been subjected to harassment and death threats herself. "Free speech is protected by the First Amendment, but they go a step further. They say, 'If you don't agree with me, then you are subject to attack.' And I think that is where we have a parting of the ways in understanding what protected First Amendment rights are."

There is also a parting of the ways on the worth of an animal's life. Hankins points out that groups like ALF "would never feel" that animal research was warranted because animals have rights the same as humans and those rights should "not be violated or used for human benefit." She suggests nonanimal alternatives for toxicity testing and points to a need for funding at places like the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing.

The work of the University of California researcher who was targeted for a porch visit focuses on "studying cancer cells in the context of the breast tissue, which includes fat, blood and immune cells," the researcher says, and adds that this entire tumor microenvironment supporting cancer growth cannot be created on a computer. That means mice must be used.

"I'm comfortable with my work," the researcher says. "I'm proud of it. I think what I do is important. I will not let [the porch visit] interfere with that."

 


 

May 5, 2008

ajc.com

FBI: Suspected pipe bomb damages courthouse in San Diego

SAN DIEGO — A suspected pipe bomb exploded at a federal courthouse in downtown San Diego early Sunday, damaging the front entrance and blowing out a window, authorities said. No injuries were reported.

Few people were around the building, which is a block from nightclubs in the Gaslamp Quarter, when the powerful blast also damaged the lobby area of the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Courthouse about 1:40 a.m., said FBI spokeswoman April Langwell.

The bomb was reported by two guards in the building, who were uninjured. About 40 agents combed the front courtyard after the area was swept for explosives. No arrests have been made.

Debris was found lodged in a window about eight stories up the AT&T building that faces the courthouse.

Authorities said that surveillance cameras outside the building may provide information, but that no cameras directly face the doorway.

Streets in the area have been closed during the investigation. The courthouse will remain closed Monday as repairs are made.

 


 

April 22, 2008

Student Is Accused of Plot Against School

By BRENDA GOODMAN, NYTimes.com

ATLANTA — A teenager who the authorities say planned to blow up his high school and made a tape explaining his motives appeared in a South Carolina court on Monday so a judge could appoint a lawyer to defend him.

The teenager, Ryan Schallenberger, 18, of Ruby, S.C., an honor student who was in contention to be valedictorian in his class at Chesterfield High School, was turned in by his parents after they found bomb-making supplies and a detailed plan for the attack.

Mr. Schallenberger was arrested Saturday afternoon on charges of communicating bomb threats, said Jay E. Hodge, solicitor for the Fourth Circuit in South Carolina, who is prosecuting the case.

Mr. Hodge said that he also intended to charge Mr. Schallenberger with possession of incendiary materials, a felony, and that other charges may be added as the investigation continues.

Mr. Schallenberger’s parents apparently became alarmed after they picked up a package of 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate, an explosive white powder commonly used as a fertilizer in commercial farming, that was delivered to their son at a local post office.

After a search, the parents found a journal that Mr. Schallenberger had kept for more than a year detailing his plans for a suicide attack on the high school, officials said. Then they called the police.

The notebook included maps of the school and listed supplies needed to make multiple bombs. Mr. Schallenberger also left an audiotape, meant to be played after his death, explaining why he wanted to bomb the school.

Investigators did not release the contents of the tape or the journal, but they described Mr. Schallenberger as “an angry young man” who seemed to “hate the world.” That seemed to be news to people in Chesterfield, a community of 1,500 people near the North Carolina border.

“Absolutely nothing else we’ve found in his record suggests he’d do this kind of thing,” Mr. Hodge said.

The authorities combed the high school building over the weekend but found nothing out of the ordinary. They installed metal detectors borrowed from a local courthouse. Despite the precautions, only one-fifth of the school’s 544 students showed up for class on Monday, school officials said.

“The frightening part is that all the pieces were there, the intelligence, the journal entries, the items necessary to make the bomb,” Mr. Hodge said. “That’s really upset a lot of people.”

 


 

NYTimes.com

April 14, 2008 

Threatening Graffiti Leads College to Cancel Classes

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ROCHESTER, Mich. (AP) — Threatening graffiti found in three men’s restrooms led Oakland University to cancel campus classes, sports and cultural activities for two days.

The school said it sent out a security alert Saturday after finding one threatening message, and officials said they found similar messages in men’s restrooms in two other buildings later that day.

The school did not reveal the contents of the threats. But the university’s chief of police, Sam Lucido, told The Detroit Free Press that they referred to possible campus attacks on “4/14.”

That is the same date contained in threatening graffiti found twice this month in a freshman dorm at St. Xavier University, a Catholic liberal arts college in the Chicago area. Xavier officials shut the college indefinitely on Friday and told students to leave its campuses in Chicago and suburban Orland Park, Ill.

Chief Lucido told The Free Press that the Oakland University threats did not single out anyone specific, and that the authorities believe the same person left all three threats.

The activities cancellation was in effect at the college for Sunday and Monday. Dormitories remained open, although a university spokeswoman, Michelle Moser, said students were encouraged to go home if possible.

Campus officials “are taking this threat seriously and are closing to ensure the safety of the entire campus community,” Chief Lucido said.

The public university has about 18,000 students in Rochester, about 20 miles north of Detroit.

A St. Xavier spokesman, Joe Moore, said Sunday that students would be informed by e-mail and text messages and the college Web site of any decision to reopen.

“We’re hoping to open as soon as possible,” Mr. Moore said.

Campuses around Illinois have been on alert since a Feb. 14 shooting in which a gunman burst into a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing 5 students and wounding 18 before turning the gun on himself.

 


 

NYTimes.com

March 29, 2008

 

National Briefing | Midwest

Illinois: Reviewing University’s Response to Shooting

By CATRIN EINHORN

Northern Illinois University, where a gunman killed five students and then himself, will assemble a task force to conduct an internal review into how it responded to the shooting, both immediately and in the weeks that followed. The task force, convened by the board of trustees, will also examine broader questions of mental illness on campus, investigating how universities can balance concerns about privacy with public safety. Cherilyn Murer, chairwoman of the board, said she hoped the review would contribute to a national discussion on campus shootings. Steven P. Kazmierczak, a graduate of the university, apparently went off medications before bursting into a lecture hall on Feb. 14 and shooting into the audience of students there.

 


 

California Regents Sue Animal Activists
UC System Aims to Protect Researchers

By Ashley Surdin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 11, 2008; A03

LOS ANGELES -- It was late into the night when 25 people in ski masks descended on professor Dario Ringach's family home. Pounding on the door, frightening his small children, they screamed into megaphones, "Animal killer! We know where you live! We will never give up!"

And they apparently meant it. That year, 2006, according to court documents, animal rights activists launched a summer-long campaign of harassment against Ringach, an assistant professor of psychology and neurobiology at the University of California at Los Angeles and other scientists who conduct research with laboratory animals.

They hurled firecrackers at his house in the middle of the night and planted Molotov-cocktail-like explosives at other faculty houses, threatening to burn them to the ground.

UCLA hired private security, but Ringach feared for his family. "Effectively immediately, I am no longer doing animal research," he finally wrote in an e-mail to his persecutors, pleading to be left alone. "Please don't bother my family anymore."

The University of California regents have responded by suing UCLA Primate Freedom, the Animal Liberation Brigade, the Animal Liberation Front and five people allegedly affiliated with them. It is a tactic that the regents successfully employed nine years ago.

The regents hope to win a permanent injunction similar to one granted against Last Chance for Animals in 1989. But some experts note that the regents now are battling more violent, Internet-savvy foes who thrive in online communities, post faculty "targets" on Web sites and upload how-to guides for their attacks.

"The reality is that, unlike in the past, where movements really relied on interpersonal communication and gatherings to ferment this radicalization, all this is happening online now," according to Oren Segal, co-director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism in New York. "The ability for people to learn about the movement and how to carry out attacks on behalf of it are easier than it's ever been because of the Internet."

Indeed, a temporary restraining order -- prohibiting harassment and posting of faculty members' personal information on the Internet -- was granted Feb. 21 by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. But three days later, six masked protesters reportedly disrupted a child's birthday party at the home of a University of California at Santa Cruz researcher and confronted her husband at the door, hitting him on the hand.

It is unclear whether the protesters are connected to those named in UC's lawsuit.

Harassment by violent animal rights activists has climbed at universities across the country, including Oregon Health and Science University, the University of Utah, and Ohio State University, where researchers have been victims of home visits or, in one case, found their windows slathered in glass-eating acid. Scientists, administrators and lawyers are closely watching the effectiveness of the California regents case.

Experts say the shift toward more personal attacks is a response to increasingly fortified laboratories, which universities began securing in the 1980s and 1990s as attacks heightened.

Now, groups have shunned "Fort Knox" in favor of ill-prepared homes, said Jerry Vlasik, the former vivisector turned spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. Vlasik has repeatedly advocated for using "whatever force against animal research scientists necessary."

"If killing them is the only way to stop them," he said in a telephone interview, "then I said killing them would certainly be justified."

Some scientists refuse to relinquish their work, but others are not taking chances. Like Ringach, some continue to work but not with animals. Most who leave the profession make their decisions quietly, not wanting to fuel the movement.

Still, ripples are spreading through the science community. Positions in animal research are increasingly difficult to fill, according to Frankie Trull, president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a national organization that supports the humane and responsible use of animals in medical and scientific research.

"I do hear scientists say that they have open positions and nobody to fill them because it's animal research," Trull said. "The bigger question, and we worry about this a lot, is what will happen to the future of biomedical research? Will brilliant young minds go to some other field because this field has become too contentious?"

 


 

Gunman kills 5, then self at Northern Illinois University


Associated Press
Published on: 02/14/08

DEKALB, Ill. — A former student dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, killing five students and injuring 16 others before committing suicide, authorities said.

The gunman fatally shot four women and a man in a "brief, rapid-fire assault" that sent terrified students running for cover, university President John Peters said. Four died at the scene, including the gunman, and the other two died at a hospital, he said.

Witnesses in the geology class said "someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun," Peters said.

Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row of the lecture hall around 3 p.m. when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.

"I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle," said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. "I said I could get up and run or I could die here."

She said a student in front of her was bleeding, "but he just kept running."

"I heard this girl scream, 'Run, he's reloading the gun.'"

Student Jerry Santoni was in a back row when he saw the gunman enter a service door to the stage.

"I saw him shoot one round at the teacher," he said. "After that, I proceeded to get down as fast as I could."

Santoni dived down, hitting his head the seat in front of him, leaving a knot about half the size of a pingpong ball on his forehead.

The teacher, a graduate student, was wounded but was expected to recover, the school president said. He did not give details of the injuries.

Peters said the gunman was a former graduate student in sociology at NIU, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus about 65 miles west of Chicago.

"It appears he may have been a student somewhere else," University Police Chief Donald Grady said, adding that police had no apparent motive.

Seventeen victims were brought to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, according to spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. One died, two were admitted and three were discharged; five are being evaluated and six others were transferred to other hospitals in critical condition. At least one male died at OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, an official said.

Michael Gentile was meeting with two of his students directly beneath the lecture hall when the shootings happened. He could hear the chaos a few feet above his head.

"The shotgun blast must have been so loud," said Gentile, a 27-year-old media studies instructor. "It sounded like something was dropping down the stairs... We had no idea what this was."

Then, shorter, sharper noises he recognized as handgun shots.

"There was a pretty quick succession ... just pow, pow, pow," said Gentile, who didn't leave his office for about 90 minutes. He used a surveillance camera just outside his office to confirm that the people knocking on his door were police.

George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, told the student newspaper the Northern Star that the shooter was "a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on."

He described the scene immediately following the incident as terrifying and chaotic.

"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg," Gaynor said outside just minutes after the shooting occurred. "It was like five minutes before class ended too."

Witnesses said the young man carried a shotgun and a pistol. Student Edward Robinson told WLS that the gunman appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall.

"It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot," Robinson said. "He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at."

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms sent 15 agents to the scene, according to spokesman Thomas Ahern. He said information about the weapons involved would be sent to the ATF's national database in Washington and given urgent priority. The FBI also was assisting.

All classes were canceled Thursday night and the campus was closed on Friday. Students were urged to call their parents "as soon as possible" and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.

The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack.

The shooting was the fourth at a U.S. school within a week.

On Feb. 8, a woman shot two fellow students to death before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tenn., a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, Calif., junior high school has been declared brain dead.

 


 

A Statement from the NIH Director, Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D.

February 8, 2008

On Tuesday, February 5, an incendiary device ignited at the front door of the home of Dr. Edythe London, an NIH–supported senior scientist and professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. This domestic terrorist act against a scientist who has dedicated 30 years of her life to medical research is intolerable.

This is the second time in four months that Dr. London has been targeted. The first time, an extremist group calling itself the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for flooding London’s home and causing $30,000 worth of damage. Although no one has claimed responsibility for this attack, it is similar to two previous strikes by animal rights activists (in 2006 and 2007) against an ophthalmologist and a research psychologist at UCLA. In these attacks, the extremists used Molotov cocktail–type devices, which were lit but did not ignite. These attacks are part of a campaign of unrelenting harassment that has also involved the researchers’ family members.

Dr. London has dedicated most of her life to studying how chronic drug abuse affects brain function and behavioral control. Her work is a prime example of NIH’s efforts to promote translational research, tightly integrating animal and human studies in order to more rapidly bring new discoveries to the public. Dr. London’s research is part of a broader public health effort to develop effective treatments for people suffering from addiction—a disease that devastates individuals, families, communities, and costs society more than half a trillion dollars annually in health and crime-related costs and losses in productivity.

It is important to note that there are laws, regulations, and policies to ensure the appropriate care and use of animals in federally-funded research activities. The knowledge we gain from animal models is used to develop life-saving treatments for many diseases affecting the public health, including addiction. This knowledge ultimately saves lives and improves the quality of life for individuals, their families, and all of society.

Attacks on researchers and scientific institutions threaten the health of the nation. Terrorism against researchers using animals is real and intolerable. The terrorist activity against Dr. London and her family was not just intimidation—it was life threatening. This was a threat not only to her, but to dedicated scientists working to improve serious health problems facing this country. This violence must stop.

Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., Director, NIH
Norka Ruiz Bravo, Ph.D., Deputy Director for Extramural Research, NIH
Nora D. Volkow, M.D., Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH

 


 

Pa. Teacher Accused of School Threats

The Atlanta Journal Constitution

DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — A teacher who was upset because she didn't get her preferred classroom assignment left more than a dozen scribbled threats at her elementary school and a suspicious device in a student's desk, authorities said.

Susan Romanyszyn, 45, was charged Thursday with 17 counts of making terroristic threats in connection with the incidents at Longstreth Elementary School in Warminster in October.

Authorities said the fourth-grade teacher scribbled messages on school walls and on paper that threatened bomb and gun violence. The messages were written in sloppy handwriting with numerous misspellings and some with crudely drawn cartoons, police said.

A prosecutor said the actions stemmed from Romanyszyn's assignment to teach fourth grade rather than fifth grade. "She was upset or disgruntled at not getting the classroom assignment she wanted," Bucks County District Attorney Michelle Henry said.

Police also allege Romanyszyn put a water bottle containing white power and screws into a student's desk and scattered nails around the lot where teachers parked, leading to school trips and activities being delayed or canceled.

In an interview with police, Romanyszyn denied having anything to do with the incidents and said she wasn't upset about not getting a fifth-grade teaching position, according to a court document. Her attorney rejected the allegations.

"In a case like this, you go on a person's character, and the character of this woman is out there for inspection," Sara Webster said. "Nobody says she's an angry person. She loved what she did, and she loved her students and she always got good evaluations."

Romanyszyn was arrested after authorities interviewed students, administrators and teachers and reviewed footage from school surveillance cameras, Warminster Police Chief Michael Murphy said.

Romanyszyn, who has been on administrative leave since Oct. 22, turned herself in to police and was released after posting $100,000 bail. She faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted.

Romanyszyn was previously a middle school teacher at Eugene Klinger Middle School, where in 2004 she was one of two elementary mathematics teachers selected as a state finalist for the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

 


 

Bomb Threat Closes World Bank Buildings

By Associated Press

11:06 PM CST, January 17, 2008

WASHINGTON

The World Bank said it would not open its buildings in Washington on Friday because of a bomb threat.

"World Bank Group Corporate Security is investigating a bomb threat received by telephone. The Bank is working with law enforcement officials to determine the validity of the threat," according to a short post on the World Bank Web site.

"As a precautionary measure, Bank Group management has decided to close all World Bank Group leased and owned buildings in Washington on Friday, Jan. 18.

A call to the Bank was transferred to a security office, where a man who answered the phone confirmed the announcement on the bank's Web site. He would not give his name.

The World Bank is located near the White House in downtown Washington. Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been frequent targets of street protests.

 

 


 

NYTimes.com

August 30, 2007

 

F.B.I. Checks Into Threats and Transfers of Money

By SARAH ABRUZZESE

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into a spate of bomb threats phoned in to businesses in a dozen states that resulted in employees’ wiring thousands of dollars overseas.

Since last Thursday, at least 15 threatening phone calls have been made to stores that have wire-transfer capabilities, Special Agent Rich Kolko of the F.B.I. said Wednesday. The calls follow a pattern, with the caller claiming to be “able to see what is going on in the store and asking money be wired,” Mr. Kolko said.

The first threat that the F.B.I. knows about came last Thursday in an early morning call to a Western Union inside a Safeway grocery store in Sandy, Ore. The caller demanded that money be wired to an account in Portugal, said Chief of Police Harold Skelton, adding that employees called the police instead.

While many of the calls have not resulted in money transfers, a law enforcement official said a total of about $13,000 had been wired to an overseas account from businesses in at least three states, Kansas, Missouri and Rhode Island.

The Associated Press quoted a police officer as saying that money was wired Tuesday from a Wal-Mart in Newport, R.I.; a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart on Wednesday would neither confirm nor deny that report.

On Friday, the Nodaway Valley Bank in Savannah, Mo., received a telephone call just before 9:30 a.m. Chief of Police David Vincent said the caller stated that “he had an accomplice and that they had placed a bomb inside the bank and that if they did not wire the money, he would set off the bomb.” The suspect also demanded a teller’s cellphone number. “Of course, then she was terrified that they would be able to track her down,” Chief Vincent said.

The employees then wired just under $3,000 while the man stayed on the phone, Chief Vincent said. When that transfer, which is just under the amount that requires additional reporting to the government, was successful, he demanded that another be sent. When the teller tried to comply, however, Western Union denied the transfer. The would-be bomber told the teller to call the company and demand that the transfer go through or he would detonate the explosive. Western Union still denied the transfer.

The director of media relations for Western Union, Sherry Johnson, said the company was aware of the scheme and had been for about a week. “This is a case of fraud,” Ms. Johnson said.

Officials at Western Union believe the same individual who is responsible for this string of threats was responsible for an earlier scam in which he contacted money-transfer providers pretending he worked for Western Union.

“He tried to induce them to send money to say he was testing the system,” Ms. Johnson said. “When he did not get the results he wanted, that is when we believe the additional bomb threat started to occur.”

In each of the cases at stores in the past week, officials have found no evidence of a bomb or explosives. On Wednesday, a phone threat to a grocery store in Millinocket, Me., required the evacuation of 36 people. Chief of Police Donald Bolduc said, “For this community, it was quite an incident for us.”

 


 

 

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