U.S. better prepared to deal with anthrax

The United States is better prepared today to protect Americans against an anthrax attack like the ones that killed five people and terrorized the country in 2001, a senior U.S. Postal Service security official told The Associated Press Tuesday. That’s not the case in other countries, however, with the world’s police ill-equipped to handle an “urgent” bioterrorism threat even as al-Qaida pursues chemical and biological weapons development, said other officials at an Interpol conference here. In America, anthrax identification equipment is part of a new biohazard detection system now running in nearly 100 of the country’s 283 mail processing facilities _ with the remainder to be installed by November, said Zane M. Hill, the inspector in charge of the U.S. Postal Service’s dangerous mail and homeland security division. Full Story