From Miles Goslett at the Daily Mail: Doctors are preparing to challenge the Government’s decision not to hold an inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly… This month the doctors were given a 33-page legal opinion by Aidan O’Neill QC, a colleague of Cherie Blair at Matrix chambers in London, indicating that Mr Grieve’s…

From the NY Times Editor: A former top official in charge of ensuring that real secrets are kept secret has delivered a stunning repudiation of the Obama administration’s decision to use the Espionage Act against a whistle-blower attempting to expose government waste and abuse. J. William Leonard, who directed the Information Security Oversight Office during…

The following excerpts from today’s NY Times article point to serious failures of data collection, analysis, and commitment to safety at FDA.  The failures follow lax, politically-driven regulations, which allow products to be licensed without data if they are substantially like other licensed products.  There is no good guideline for how alike the products must…

From Reuters and the NY POst: Prosecutors will ask a judge to dismiss all charges in the [criminal] sexual assault case against former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn at a court hearing on Tuesday, the New York Post reported on Sunday, citing unnamed sources.   The Manhattan district attorney’s office will file a motion recommending the…

From McNeill and Adelstein at The Independent: It is one of the mysteries of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the 11 March earthquake inflict on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit? The stakes are high: if the earthquake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then…

Well-known arms control/disarmament/nonproliferation expert Jonathan Tucker died last week at 56.  Paul Walker, who follows a similar career trajectory, as arms control advocate and expert, wrote about Tucker’s life and accomplishments.  Regarding Tucker’s views on the anthrax letters case, Paul wrote the following: His intellectual and academic vigor, together with his journalistic instincts, were also…

Someone got inhalation anthrax along the old west cattle trail.  This is where cattle in decades past were herded, and sometimes died of anthrax.  When that happened, the spores entered the soil and even today emerge periodically, during extreme weather conditions, to reinfect cattle. Only problem is, they do not reinfect humans.  The spores only…