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2001 anthrax attacks

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103-678: The 2001 anthrax attacks , also known as Amerithrax (a portmanteau of " America " and " anthrax ", from its FBI case name), occurred in the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 terrorist attacks . Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy , killing five people and infecting 17 others. Capitol Police Officers and staffers working for Senator Russ Feingold were exposed as well. According to

206-442: A " stish " or a " starsh ", it would be a blend. Furthermore, when blends are formed by shortening established compounds or phrases, they can be considered clipped compounds , such as romcom for romantic comedy . Blends of two or more words may be classified from each of three viewpoints: morphotactic, morphonological, and morphosemantic. Blends may be classified morphotactically into two kinds: total and partial . In

309-464: A 94-year-old widow of a prominent judge from Oxford, Connecticut . Because it took so long to identify a culprit, the 2001 anthrax attacks have been compared to the Unabomber attacks which took place from 1978 to 1995. Authorities believe that the anthrax letters were mailed from Princeton, New Jersey . Investigators found anthrax spores in a city street mailbox located at 10 Nassau Street near

412-647: A check and some pornography, and was neither a threat nor a hoax. A copycat hoax letter containing harmless white powder was opened by reporter Judith Miller in The New York Times newsroom. Also unconnected to the anthrax attacks was a large envelope received at American Media, Inc. , in Boca Raton, Florida (which was among the victims of the attacks), in September 2001. It was addressed "Please forward to Jennifer Lopez c/o The Sun", containing

515-470: A close relative of B. anthracis ." According to spore expert Peter Setlow, "Since silicate accumulation in other organisms can impart structural rigidity, perhaps silicate plays such a role for spores as well." The FBI lab concluded that 1.4% of the powder in the Leahy letter was silicon. Stuart Jacobson, a small-particle chemistry expert stated that: This is a shockingly high proportion [of silicon]. It

618-489: A combination of factors led the FBI to conclude that Ivins had been the perpetrator. Some information is still sealed concerning the case and Ivins' mental health. The government settled lawsuits that were filed by the widow of the first anthrax victim Bob Stevens for $ 2.5 million with no admission of liability. The settlement was reached solely for the purpose of "avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigations", according to

721-678: A diabolical advance in biological weapons technology.” The article describes "a technique used to anchor silica nanoparticles to the surface of spores" using "polymerized glass.” An August 2006 article in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, written by Douglas Beecher of the FBI labs in Quantico, Virginia, states "Individuals familiar with the compositions of the powders in the letters have indicated that they were comprised simply of spores purified to different extents." The article also specifically criticizes "a widely circulated misconception" "that

824-535: A form suitable for carrying on horseback; (now esp.) one in the form of a stiff leather case hinged at the back to open into two equal parts". According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language ( AHD ), the etymology of the word is the French porte-manteau , from porter , "to carry", and manteau , "cloak" (from Old French mantel , from Latin mantellum ). According to

927-645: A group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the New-York Evening Post , a broadsheet . Hamilton's co-investors included other New York members of the Federalist Party , including Robert Troup and Oliver Wolcott who were dismayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson as U.S. president and the rise in popularity of the Democratic-Republican Party . At a meeting held at Archibald Gracie 's weekend villa, which

1030-427: A kind of bath), the attributive blends of English are mostly head-final and mostly endocentric . As an example of an exocentric attributive blend, Fruitopia may metaphorically take the buyer to a fruity utopia (and not a utopian fruit); however, it is not a utopia but a drink. Coordinate blends (also called associative or portmanteau blends) combine two words having equal status, and have two heads. Thus brunch

1133-466: A metal cigar tube with a cheap cigar inside, an empty can of chewing tobacco, a small detergent carton, pink powder, a Star of David pendant, and "a handwritten letter to Jennifer Lopez. The writer said how much he loved her and asked her to marry him." Another letter, which mimicked the original anthrax letter to Senator Daschle, was mailed to Daschle from London in November 2001, at a time when Hatfill

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1236-519: A real-estate magnate with no experience in the media industry. In 1988, the Post hired Jane Amsterdam , founding editor of Manhattan, inc. , as its first female editor, and within six months the paper had toned down the sensationalist headlines. Within a year, Amsterdam was forced out by Kalikow, who reportedly told her "credible doesn't sell...Your big scoops are great, but they don't sell more papers." In 1993, after Kalikow declared bankruptcy,

1339-496: A revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match." The Post characterized Trump attorney Sidney Powell as a "crazy person", and his former national security advisor Michael Flynn 's suggestion to declare martial law as "tantamount to treason." In January 2021, Keith Poole, a top editor at The Sun , another Murdoch-owned tabloid, was appointed as the editor in chief of the New York Post Group. Around

1442-462: A silicate, plus aluminum, is sort of the major ingredients of bentonite." Just over a week later, Homeland Security Advisor Tom Ridge in a White House press conference on November 7, 2001, stated, "The ingredient that we talked about before was silicon." Neither Ross at ABC nor anyone else publicly pursued any further claims about bentonite, despite Ross's original claim that "four well-placed and separate sources" had confirmed its detection. Some of

1545-510: A single teardrop running down his cheek, the Post was again purchased in 1993 by Murdoch's News Corporation. This came about after numerous political officials, including Democratic governor of New York Mario Cuomo , persuaded the Federal Communications Commission to grant Murdoch a permanent waiver from the cross-ownership rules that had forced him to sell the paper five years earlier. Without this FCC ruling,

1648-790: A statement in the agreement. The anthrax attacks began just a week after the September 11 attacks , which had caused the destruction of the original World Trade Center in New York City , damage to the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia , and the crash of an airliner in Shanksville, Pennsylvania . The anthrax attacks came in two waves. The first set of letters containing anthrax had a Trenton, New Jersey , postmark dated September 18, 2001. Five letters are believed to have been mailed at this time to ABC News , CBS News , NBC News and

1751-486: A total blend, each of the words creating the blend is reduced to a mere splinter. Some linguists limit blends to these (perhaps with additional conditions): for example, Ingo Plag considers "proper blends" to be total blends that semantically are coordinate, the remainder being "shortened compounds". Commonly for English blends, the beginning of one word is followed by the end of another: Much less commonly in English,

1854-423: A word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together. English examples include smog , coined by blending smoke and fog , as well as motel , from motor ( motorist ) and hotel . A blend is similar to a contraction . On the one hand, mainstream blends tend to be formed at a particular historical moment followed by a rapid rise in popularity. Contractions, on

1957-410: Is frankenword , an autological word exemplifying the phenomenon it describes, blending " Frankenstein " and "word". New York Post The New York Post ( NY Post ) is an American conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City . The Post also operates three online sites: NYPost.com; PageSix.com, a gossip site; and Decider.com, an entertainment site. The newspaper

2060-488: Is a Greenbrook Elementary School in adjacent South Brunswick Township, New Jersey . The Amerithrax investigation involved many leads which took time to evaluate and resolve. Among them were numerous letters which initially appeared to be related to the anthrax attacks but were never directly linked. For example, before the New York letters were found, hoax letters mailed from St. Petersburg, Florida , were thought to be

2163-477: Is a Japanese blend that has entered the English language. The Vietnamese language also encourages blend words formed from Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary . For example, the term Việt Cộng is derived from the first syllables of "Việt Nam" (Vietnam) and "Cộng sản" (communist). Many corporate brand names , trademarks, and initiatives, as well as names of corporations and organizations themselves, are blends. For example, Wiktionary , one of Misplaced Pages 's sister projects,

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2266-496: Is a blend of wiki and dictionary . The word portmanteau was introduced in this sense by Lewis Carroll in the book Through the Looking-Glass (1871), where Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of unusual words used in " Jabberwocky ". Slithy means "slimy and lithe" and mimsy means "miserable and flimsy". Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the practice of combining words in various ways, comparing it to

2369-577: Is a number one would expect from the deliberate weaponization of anthrax, but not from any conceivable accidental contamination. Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory conducted experiments in an attempt to determine if the amount of silicon in the growth medium was the controlling factor which caused silicon to accumulate inside a spore's natural coat. The Livermore scientists tried 56 different experiments, adding increasingly high amounts of silicon to

2472-440: Is both phonological and orthographic, but with no other shortening: The overlap may be both phonological and orthographic, and with some additional shortening to at least one of the ingredients: Such an overlap may be discontinuous: These are also termed imperfect blends. It can occur with three components: The phonological overlap need not also be orthographic: If the phonological but non-orthographic overlap encompasses

2575-429: Is considered to be a "quasiessential" element for most living organisms. However, silicate uptake in bacteria and its physiological functions have remained obscure." The study showed that spores from some species can contain as much as 6.3% dry weight of silicates. "For more than 20 years, significant levels of silicon had been reported in spores of at least some Bacillus species, including those of Bacillus cereus ,

2678-699: Is neither a breakfasty lunch nor a lunchtime breakfast but instead some hybrid of breakfast and lunch; Oxbridge is equally Oxford and Cambridge universities. This too parallels (conventional, non-blend) compounds: an actor–director is equally an actor and a director. Two kinds of coordinate blends are particularly conspicuous: those that combine (near‑) synonyms: and those that combine (near‑) opposites: Blending can also apply to roots rather than words, for instance in Israeli Hebrew : "There are two possible etymological analyses for Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár 'bank clerk, teller'. The first

2781-561: Is now Gracie Mansion , Hamilton recruited the first investors for the new paper. Hamilton chose William Coleman as his first editor. The most notable 19th-century Evening Post editor was the poet and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant . So well respected was the Evening Post under Bryant's editorship, it received praise from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill , in 1864. In addition to literary and drama reviews, William Leggett began to write political editorials for

2884-433: Is represented by various shorter substitutes – ‑otel ... – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends". Thus, at least one of the parts of a blend, strictly speaking, is not a complete morpheme , but instead a mere splinter or leftover word fragment. For instance, starfish is a compound, not a blend, of star and fish , as it includes both words in full. However, if it were called

2987-405: Is that it consists of (Hebrew>) Israeli כסף késef 'money' and the ( International /Hebrew>) Israeli agentive suffix ר- -ár . The second is that it is a quasi- portmanteau word which blends כסף késef 'money' and (Hebrew>) Israeli ספר √spr 'count'. Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár started as a brand name but soon entered the common language. Even if the second analysis is the correct one,

3090-472: The Ladies Home Journal , purchased the Evening Post and briefly turned it into a non-sensational tabloid nine years later, in 1933. In 1928, Wilella Waldorf became drama editor at the Evening Post . She was one of the first women to hold an editorial role at the newspaper, During her time at the Evening Post , she was the only female first-string critic on a New York newspaper. She

3193-733: The New York Post , all located in New York City, and to the National Enquirer at American Media, Inc. , (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida . The first known victim of the attacks, Robert Stevens , who worked at the Sun tabloid, also published by AMI, died on October 5, 2001, four days after entering a Florida hospital with an undiagnosed illness that caused him to vomit and be short of breath. The presumed letter containing

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3296-428: The Evening Post ended in 1879, when it was learned that he had defrauded Bryant the entire time. Henderson Jr. sold his interest in the newspaper in 1881. In 1881, Henry Villard took control of the Evening Post and The Nation , which became the Post ' s weekly edition. With this acquisition, the paper was managed by the triumvirate of Carl Schurz , Horace White , and Edwin L. Godkin . When Schurz left

3399-526: The FBI , the ensuing investigation became "one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement". A major focus in the early years of the investigation was bioweapons expert Steven Hatfill , who was eventually exonerated. Bruce Edwards Ivins , a scientist at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland , became a focus around April 4, 2005. On April 11, 2007, Ivins

3502-533: The OED Online , the etymology of the word is the "officer who carries the mantle of a person in a high position (1507 in Middle French), case or bag for carrying clothing (1547), clothes rack (1640)". In modern French, a porte-manteau is a clothes valet , a coat-tree or similar article of furniture for hanging up jackets, hats, umbrellas and the like. An occasional synonym for "portmanteau word"

3605-412: The Post announced plans to change its Monday through Saturday publication schedule and begin issuing a Sunday edition, which it last published briefly in 1989. On April 14, 1996, the Post delivered its new Sunday edition at the cost of 50 cents per paper by keeping its size to 120 pages. The amount, significantly less than Sunday editions from The New York Daily News and The New York Times ,

3708-687: The Post . Leggett's espoused a fierce opposition to central banking and support for the organization of labor unions. He was a member of the Equal Rights Party . In 1831, he became a co-owner and editor of the Post , eventually working as sole editor of the newspaper while Bryant traveled in Europe in 1834 and 1835. Two additional co-owners of the paper were John Bigelow and Issac Henderson. Born in Malden-on-Hudson, New York , Bigelow graduated in 1835 from Union College, where he

3811-536: The Princeton University campus. About 600 mailboxes were tested for anthrax which could have been used to mail the letters, and the Nassau Street box was the only one to test positive. The New York Post and NBC News letters contained the following note: 09–11–01 THIS IS NEXT TAKE PENACILIN [ sic ] NOW DEATH TO AMERICA DEATH TO ISRAEL ALLAH IS GREAT The second note

3914-484: The 1980s. In October 2020, the Post endorsed Trump for re-election, citing his "promises made, promises kept" policy. Weeks after Trump was defeated and sought to overturn the election results , the Post published a front-page editorial, asking Trump to "stop the insanity", stating that he was "cheering for an undemocratic coup", writing, "If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as

4017-571: The Ames strain was subsequently distributed to sixteen bio-research labs within the U.S., as well as three international locations (Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom). DNA sequencing of the anthrax collected from Robert Stevens (the first victim) was conducted at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) beginning in December 2001. Sequencing was finished within a month and the analysis

4120-491: The Bureau's argument despite the new evidence presented on August 18, 2008, in an unusual FBI briefing for reporters. He questioned the FBI's claim that the powder was less than military grade, in part because of the presence of high levels of silica. The FBI had been unable to reproduce the attack spores with the high levels of silica. The FBI attributed the presence of high silica levels to "natural variability". This conclusion of

4223-653: The Department of Justice and FBI's handling of the investigation. The FBI formally closed its investigation on February 19, 2010. In 2008, the FBI requested a review of the scientific methods used in their investigation from the National Academy of Sciences, which released their findings in the 2011 report Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI's Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters . The report cast doubt on

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4326-404: The FBI contradicted its statements at an earlier point in the investigation, when the FBI had stated, based on the silicon content, that the anthrax was "weaponized", a step that made the powder more airy and required special scientific know-how. "If there is that much silicon, it had to have been added," stated Jeffrey Adamovicz, who supervised Ivins' work at Fort Detrick. Adamovicz explained that

4429-521: The FBI, Kenneth Alibek and Matthew Meselson , were shown electron micrographs of the anthrax from the Daschle letter. In a November 5, 2002 letter to the editors of The Washington Post , they stated that they saw no evidence the anthrax spores had been coated with fumed silica. In Science magazine, one group of scientists said that the material could have been made by someone knowledgeable with standard laboratory equipment. Another group said it "was

4532-499: The Freezer provides details of conversations and events at USAMRIID during the period from October 16, 2001, to October 25, 2001. Key scientists described to Preston what they were thinking during that period. When the Daschle spores first arrived at USAMRIID, the key concern was that smallpox viruses might be mixed with the spores. "Jahrling met [John] Ezzell in a hallway and said, in a loud voice, 'Goddamn it, John, we need to know if

4635-456: The Senate anthrax had coatings and additives. Newsweek reported the anthrax sent to Senator Leahy had been coated with a chemical compound previously unknown to bioweapons experts. On October 28, 2002, The Washington Post reported "FBI's Theory on Anthrax is Doubted,” suggesting that the senate spores were coated with fumed silica . Two bioweapons experts that were utilized as consultants by

4738-691: The Senate letters. All of the material was derived from the same bacterial strain known as the Ames strain . The Ames strain is a common strain isolated from a cow in Texas in 1981. The name "Ames" refers to the town of Ames, Iowa , but was mistakenly attached to this isolate in 1981 because of a mix-up about the mailing label on a package. First researched at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), at Fort Detrick, Maryland ,

4841-577: The White House after he reported signs that silicon had been added to the anthrax recovered from the letter addressed to Daschle. Silicon would make the anthrax more capable of penetrating the lungs. Seven years later, Jahrling told the Los Angeles Times on September 17, 2008, "I believe I made an honest mistake,” adding that he had been "overly impressed" by what he thought he saw under the microscope. Richard Preston 's book The Demon in

4944-536: The anthrax by the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica", a charge that was repeated several times on October 28 and 29. On October 29, 2001, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel "disputed reports that the anthrax sent to the Senate contained bentonite, an additive that ha[d] been used in Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program.” Stanzel said, "Based on

5047-509: The anthrax letters or related to them. A letter received at the Microsoft offices in Reno, Nevada , after the discovery of the Daschle letters, gave a false positive in a test for anthrax. Later, because the letter had been sent from Malaysia, Marilyn W. Thompson of The Washington Post connected the letter to Steven Hatfill , whose girlfriend was from Malaysia. The letter merely contained

5150-413: The anthrax spores (65–75%) in the anthrax attack letters contained silicon inside their spore coats. Silicon was even reportedly found inside the natural spore coat of a spore that was still inside the "mother germ,” which was asserted to confirm that the element was not added after the spores were formed and purified, i.e., the spores were not "weaponized.” In 2010, a Japanese study reported, "silicon (Si)

5253-427: The anthrax was altered to produce a more deadly weapon,” and The Washington Post reported, "Additive Made Spores Deadlier.” Countless news stories discussed the "additives" for the next eight years, continuing into 2010. Later, the FBI claimed a "lone individual" could have created the anthrax spores for as little as $ 2,500, using readily available laboratory equipment. A number of press reports appeared suggesting

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5356-498: The anthrax which killed Stevens was never found. Only the New York Post and NBC News letters were actually identified; the existence of the other three letters is inferred because individuals at ABC, CBS and AMI became infected with anthrax. Scientists examining the anthrax from the New York Post letter said it was a clumped coarse brown granular material which looked similar to dog food. Two more anthrax letters, bearing

5459-531: The anthrax, USAMRIID scientist Tom Geisbert took a different, irradiated sample of the Daschle anthrax to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) to "find out if the powder contained any metals or elements.” AFIP's energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer reportedly indicated "that there were two extra elements in the spores: silicon and oxygen. Silicon dioxide is glass. The anthrax terrorist or terrorists had put powdered glass, or silica, into

5562-472: The anthrax. The silica was powdered so finely that under Geisbert's electron microscope it had looked like fried-egg gunk dripping off the spores." The "goop" Peter Jahrling had seen oozing from the spores was not seen when AFIP examined different spores killed with radiation. The controversy began the day after the White House meeting. The New York Times reported, "Contradicting Some U.S. Officials, 3 Scientists Call Anthrax Powder High-Grade – Two Experts say

5665-412: The basis of PCR assays used to test other samples to find any that contained the same mutations. The assays were validated over the many years of the investigation, and a repository of Ames samples was also built. From roughly 2003 to 2006, the repository and the screening of the 1,070 Ames samples in that repository were completed. On October 24, 2001, USAMRIID scientist Peter Jahrling was summoned to

5768-502: The beginning of one word may be followed by the beginning of another: Some linguists do not regard beginning+beginning concatenations as blends, instead calling them complex clippings, clipping compounds or clipped compounds . Unusually in English, the end of one word may be followed by the end of another: A splinter of one word may replace part of another, as in three coined by Lewis Carroll in " Jabberwocky ": They are sometimes termed intercalative blends; these words are among

5871-500: The case, including FBI Special Agent C. Frank Figliuzzi who was the on-scene commander of the evidence recovery efforts. The FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both gave permission for Iowa State University to destroy the Iowa anthrax archive and the archive was destroyed on October 10 and 11, 2001. Portmanteau In linguistics , a blend —also known as a blend word , lexical blend , or portmanteau —is

5974-598: The especially life-threatening inhalational variety. Five died of inhalational anthrax: Stevens; two employees of the Brentwood mail facility in Washington, D.C. (Thomas Morris Jr. and Joseph Curseen), and two whose source of exposure to the bacteria is still unknown: Kathy Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant resident of the New York City borough of the Bronx who worked in the city, and the last known victim, Ottilie Lundgren,

6077-437: The eyepieces. Something was boiling off the spores. "This is clearly bad stuff," he said. This was not your mother's anthrax. The spores had something in them, an additive, perhaps. Could this material have come from a national bioweapons program? From Iraq? Did al-Qaeda have anthrax capability that was this good? On October 25, 2001, the day after senior officials at the White House were informed that "additives" had been found in

6180-438: The failure of the competing World Journal Tribune ; however, the rising cost of operating an afternoon daily in a city with worsening daytime traffic congestion, combined with mounting competition from expanded local radio and TV news cut into the Post ' s profitability, though it made money from 1949 until Schiff's final year of ownership, when it lost $ 500,000. The paper has lost money ever since. In late October 1995,

6283-599: The final syllable ר- -ár apparently facilitated nativization since it was regarded as the Hebrew suffix ר- -år (probably of Persian pedigree), which usually refers to craftsmen and professionals, for instance as in Mendele Mocher Sforim 's coinage סמרטוטר smartutár 'rag-dealer'." Blending may occur with an error in lexical selection , the process by which a speaker uses his semantic knowledge to choose words. Lewis Carroll's explanation, which gave rise to

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6386-507: The foggiest idea how to do it." Authorities traveled to six continents, interviewed over 9,000 people, conducted 67 searches and issued over 6,000 subpoenas. "Hundreds of FBI personnel worked the case at the outset, struggling to discern whether the Sept. 11 al-Qaeda attacks and the anthrax murders were connected before eventually concluding that they were not." In September 2006, there were still 17 FBI agents and 10 postal inspectors assigned to

6489-538: The government mail service was immediately shut down. The unopened Leahy letter was discovered in an impounded mailbag on November 16. The Leahy letter had been misdirected to the State Department mail annex in Sterling, Virginia , because a ZIP code was misread; a postal worker there, David Hose, contracted inhalational anthrax. More potent than the first anthrax letters, the material in the Senate letters

6592-453: The government's conclusion that Ivins was the perpetrator, finding that the type of anthrax used in the letters was correctly identified as the Ames strain of the bacterium, but that there was insufficient scientific evidence for the FBI's assertion that it originated from Ivins' laboratory. The FBI responded by saying that the review panel asserted that it would not be possible to reach a definite conclusion based on science alone, and said that

6695-581: The highest ratings of a nationally syndicated entertainment newsmagazine in a decade when it debuted in 2017. With Page Six TV ' s success, the New York Post formed New York Post Entertainment, a scripted and unscripted television entertainment division, in July 2018 with Troy Searer as president. In 2017, the New York Post was reported to be the preferred newspaper of U.S. president Donald Trump , who maintains frequent contact with its owner Murdoch. The Post promoted Trump's celebrity since at least

6798-403: The ingredients is the head and the other is attributive. A porta-light is a portable light, not a 'light-emitting' or light portability; light is the head. A snobject is a snobbery-satisfying object and not an objective or other kind of snob; object is the head. As is also true for (conventional, non-blend) attributive compounds (among which bathroom , for example, is a kind of room, not

6901-400: The magnitude of hazards posed by simple spore preparations." Critics of the article complained that it did not provide supporting references. In late October 2001, ABC chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross linked the anthrax sample to Saddam Hussein because of its purportedly containing the unusual additive bentonite . On October 26, Ross said, "sources tell ABCNEWS the anthrax in

7004-662: The media letter and envelopes is roughly twice the size of the handwriting on the Senate letter and envelopes. The envelopes addressed to Senators Daschle and Leahy had a fictitious return address: 4th Grade Greendale School Franklin Park NJ 08852 Franklin Park, New Jersey , exists, but the ZIP code 08852 is for nearby Monmouth Junction, New Jersey . There is no Greendale School in Franklin Park or Monmouth Junction, though there

7107-522: The media. All of their results were far below the 1.4% level of the attack anthrax, some as low as .001%. The conclusion was that something other than the level of silicon controlled how much silicon was absorbed by the spores. Richard O. Spertzel , a microbiologist who led the United Nations' biological weapons inspections of Iraq, wrote that the anthrax used could not have come from the lab where Ivins worked. Spertzel said he remained skeptical of

7210-495: The morphemes or phonemes stay in the same position within the syllable. Some languages, like Japanese , encourage the shortening and merging of borrowed foreign words (as in gairaigo ), because they are long or difficult to pronounce in the target language. For example, karaoke , a combination of the Japanese word kara (meaning empty ) and the clipped form oke of the English loanword "orchestra" (J. ōkesutora , オーケストラ ),

7313-478: The news section to Paul Sann and stayed on as editorial page editor until 1980. Under Schiff's tenure the Post was seen to have liberal tilt, supporting trade unions and social welfare, and featured some of the most popular columnists of the time, such as Joseph Cookman , Drew Pearson , Eleanor Roosevelt , Max Lerner , Murray Kempton , Pete Hamill , and Eric Sevareid , theatre critic Richard Watts Jr. , and gossip columnist Earl Wilson . In November 1976, it

7416-474: The newspaper was owned by Dorothy Schiff , who developed the tabloid format that has been used since by the newspaper. In 1976, Rupert Murdoch 's News Corp bought the Post for US$ 30.5 million (equivalent to $ 163 million in 2023). As of 2023, the New York Post is the fourth-largest newspaper by print circulation among all U.S. newspapers. The Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton with about US$ 10,000 (equivalent to $ 183,120 in 2023) from

7519-628: The newspaper's circulation. The new owner was Thomas Lamont , a senior partner in the Wall Street firm of J.P. Morgan & Co. Unable to stem the paper's financial losses, he sold it to a consortium of 34 financial and reform political leaders, headed by Edwin Francis Gay , dean of the Harvard Business School , whose members included Franklin D. Roosevelt . In 1924, conservative Cyrus H. K. Curtis , publisher of

7622-495: The original "portmanteaus" for which this meaning of the word was created. In a partial blend, one entire word is concatenated with a splinter from another. Some linguists do not recognize these as blends. An entire word may be followed by a splinter: A splinter may be followed by an entire word: An entire word may replace part of another: These have also been called sandwich words, and classed among intercalative blends. (When two words are combined in their entirety,

7725-491: The other hand, are formed by the gradual drifting together of words over time due to them commonly appearing together in sequence, such as do not naturally becoming don't (phonologically, / d uː n ɒ t / becoming / d oʊ n t / ). A blend also differs from a compound , which fully preserves the stems of the original words. The British lecturer Valerie Adams's 1973 Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation explains that "In words such as motel ..., hotel

7828-592: The paper in 1883, Godkin became editor-in-chief. White became editor-in-chief in 1899, and remained in that role until his retirement in 1903. In 1897, both publications passed to the management of Villard's son, Oswald Garrison Villard , a founding member of both the NAACP and the American Anti-Imperialist League . Villard sold the newspaper in 1918 following widespread allegations of pro- German sympathies during World War I hurt

7931-486: The paper was temporarily managed by Steven Hoffenberg , a financier who later pleaded guilty to securities fraud , and for two weeks by Abe Hirschfeld , who made his fortune building parking garages. Following a staff revolt against the Hoffenberg-Hirschfeld partnership, which included publication of an issue whose front page featured the iconic masthead picture of founder Alexander Hamilton with

8034-481: The paper would have shut down. In December 2012, Murdoch announced that Jesse Angelo had been appointed publisher. Various branches of Murdoch's media groups, 21st Century Fox 's Endemol Shine North America , and News Corp 's New York Post created a Page Six TV nightly gossip show based on and named after the Post's gossip section. A test run in July would occur on Fox Television Stations . The show garnered

8137-427: The paper. Her husband George Backer was named editor and publisher. Her second editor and third husband Ted Thackrey became co-publisher and co-editor with Schiff in 1942. Together, they recast the newspaper into its modern-day tabloid format. In 1948, The Bronx Home News merged with it. In 1949, James Wechsler became editor of the paper, running both the news and the editorial pages. In 1961, he turned over

8240-476: The period from 2002 to 2004. This sequencing identified three relatively large changes in some of the isolates, each comprising a region of DNA that had been duplicated or triplicated. The size of these regions ranged from 823 to 2607 base pairs , and all occurred near the same genes. Details of these mutations were published in 2011 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . These changes became

8343-612: The powder is laced with smallpox.'" Thus, the initial search was for signs of smallpox viruses. On October 16, USAMRIID scientists began by examining spores that had been "in a milky white liquid" from "a field test done by the FBI's Hazardous Materials Response Unit.” Liquid chemicals were then used to deactivate the spores. When scientists turned up the power on the electron beam of the Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), "The spores began to ooze." According to Preston, "Whoa," Jahrling muttered, hunched over

8446-453: The result is considered a compound word rather than a blend. For example, bagpipe is a compound, not a blend, of bag and pipe. ) Morphologically, blends fall into two kinds: overlapping and non-overlapping . Overlapping blends are those for which the ingredients' consonants, vowels or even syllables overlap to some extent. The overlap can be of different kinds. These are also called haplologic blends. There may be an overlap that

8549-575: The same Trenton postmark, were dated October 9, three weeks after the first mailing. The letters were addressed to two U.S. Senators, Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. At the time, Daschle was the Senate majority leader and Leahy was head of the Senate Judiciary Committee; both were members of the Democratic Party. The Daschle letter was opened by an aide, Grant Leslie, on October 15, after which

8652-545: The same period to Steven Hatfill. Foster's beliefs were published in Vanity Fair and Reader's Digest . Hatfill sued and was later exonerated. The lawsuit was settled out of court. The letters sent to the media contained a coarse brown material, while the letters sent to the two U.S. Senators contained a fine powder. The brown granular anthrax mostly caused cutaneous anthrax infections (9 out of 12 cases), although Kathy Nguyen's case of inhalational anthrax occurred at

8755-525: The same time and in the same general area as two cutaneous cases and several other exposures. The AMI letter which caused inhalation cases in Florida appears to have been mailed at the same time as the other media letters. The fine powder anthrax sent to Daschle and Leahy mostly caused the more dangerous form of infection known as inhalational anthrax (8 out of 10 cases). Postal worker Patrick O'Donnell and accountant Linda Burch contracted cutaneous anthrax from

8858-554: The silicon in the anthrax attack could have been added via a large fermentor, which Battelle and some other facilities use but "we did not use a fermentor to grow anthrax at USAMRIID ... [and] We did not have the capability to add silicon compounds to anthrax spores." Ivins had neither the skills nor the means to attach silicon to anthrax spores. Spertzel explained that the Fort Detrick facility did not handle anthrax in powdered form. "I don't think there's anyone there who would have

8961-456: The spores were produced using additives and sophisticated engineering supposedly akin to military weapon production.” The harm done by this misconception is described this way: "This idea is usually the basis for implying that the powders were inordinately dangerous compared to spores alone. The persistent credence given to this impression fosters erroneous preconceptions, which may misguide research and preparedness efforts and generally detract from

9064-546: The tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite. The potent additive is known to have been used by only one country in producing biochemical weapons—Iraq. ... [I]t is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program ... The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick , Maryland, and elsewhere." On October 28, Ross said that "despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on

9167-406: The test results we have, no bentonite has been found.” The same day, Major General John Parker at a White House briefing stated, "We do know that we found silica in the samples. Now, we don't know what that motive would be, or why it would be there, or anything. But there is silica in the samples. And that led us to be absolutely sure that there was no aluminum in the sample, because the combination of

9270-484: The then-common type of luggage , which opens into two equal parts: You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word. In his introduction to his 1876 poem The Hunting of the Snark , Carroll again uses portmanteau when discussing lexical selection: Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take

9373-462: The two words "fuming" and "furious". Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first … if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious". In then-contemporary English, a portmanteau was a suitcase that opened into two equal sections. According to the OED Online , a portmanteau is a "case or bag for carrying clothing and other belongings when travelling; (originally) one of

9476-406: The use of 'portmanteau' for such combinations, was: Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words ... you will say "frumious." The errors are based on similarity of meanings, rather than phonological similarities, and

9579-542: The whole of the shorter ingredient, as in then the effect depends on orthography alone. (They are also called orthographic blends. ) An orthographic overlap need not also be phonological: For some linguists, an overlap is a condition for a blend. Non-overlapping blends (also called substitution blends) have no overlap, whether phonological or orthographic: Morphosemantically, blends fall into two kinds: attributive and coordinate . Attributive blends (also called syntactic or telescope blends) are those in which one of

9682-493: Was a highly refined dry powder consisting of about one gram of nearly pure spores . A series of conflicting news reports appeared, some claiming the powders had been "weaponized" with silica . Bioweapons experts who later viewed images of the anthrax used in the attacks saw no indication of "weaponization". Tests at Sandia National Laboratories in early 2002 confirmed that the attack powders were not weaponized. At least 22 people developed anthrax infections, 11 of whom contracted

9785-562: Was a member of the Sigma Phi Society and the Philomathean Society, and was admitted to the bar in 1838. From 1849 to 1861, he was one of the editors and co-owners of the Evening Post . In 1877, this led to the involvement of his son Isaac Henderson Jr., who became the paper's publisher, stockholder, and member of its board, just five years after graduating from college. Henderson Sr.'s 33-year tenure with

9888-440: Was addressed to Senators Daschle and Leahy and read: 09–11–01 YOU CAN NOT STOP US. WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX. YOU DIE NOW. ARE YOU AFRAID? DEATH TO AMERICA. DEATH TO ISRAEL. ALLAH IS GREAT. All of the letters were copies made by a copy machine, and the originals were never found. Each letter was trimmed to a slightly different size. The Senate letter uses punctuation, while the media letter does not. The handwriting on

9991-404: Was announced that Australian Rupert Murdoch had bought the Post from Schiff with the intention that Schiff would be retained as a consultant for five years. In 2005, it was reported that Murdoch bought the newspaper for US$ 30.5 million. The Post at this point was the only surviving afternoon daily in New York City and its circulation under Schiff had grown by two-thirds, particularly after

10094-469: Was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton , a Federalist and Founding Father who was appointed the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury by George Washington . The newspaper became a respected broadsheet in the 19th century, under the name New York Evening Post (originally New-York Evening Post ). Its most notable 19th-century editor was William Cullen Bryant . In the mid-20th century,

10197-473: Was in England, not far from London. Shortly before the discovery of the anthrax letters, someone sent a letter to authorities stating, " Dr. Assaad is a potential biological terrorist." No connection to the anthrax letters was ever found. During the first years of the FBI's investigation, Don Foster, a professor of English at Vassar College, attempted to connect the anthrax letters and various hoax letters from

10300-542: Was part of the Post ' s efforts "to find a niche in the nation's most competitive newspaper market". Because of the institution of federal regulations limiting media cross-ownership after Murdoch's purchase of WNEW-TV, which is now WNYW , and four other stations from Metromedia to launch the Fox Broadcasting Company , Murdoch was forced to sell the paper for $ 37.6 million in 1988 (equivalent to $ 96.9 million in 2023) to Peter S. Kalikow ,

10403-443: Was preceded by Clara Savage Littledale , the first woman reporter ever hired by the Post and the editor of the woman's page in 1914. In 1934, J. David Stern purchased the paper, changed its name to the New York Post , and restored its broadsheet size and liberal perspective. For four months of that same year, future U.S. Senator from Alaska Ernest Gruening was an editor of the paper. In 1939, Dorothy Schiff purchased

10506-503: Was published in the journal Science in early 2002. Radiocarbon dating conducted by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in June 2002 established that the anthrax was cultured no more than two years before the mailings. Early in 2002, it was noted that there were variants or mutations in the anthrax cultures grown from powder found in the letters. Scientists at TIGR sequenced the complete genomes from many of these isolates during

10609-479: Was put under periodic surveillance and an FBI document stated that he was "an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks". On July 29, 2008, Ivins died by suicide with an overdose of acetaminophen (paracetamol / Tylenol). Federal prosecutors declared Ivins the sole perpetrator on August 6, 2008, based on DNA evidence leading to an anthrax vial in his lab. Two days later, Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Rush D. Holt Jr. called for hearings into

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