Nature’s noisemakers
One summer several years ago, Gaye Williams was walking in a wooded spot near Fort Meade as millions of cicadas whirred and droned in the trees overhead. Then the weirdest...
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Miracle molecule
STATE OF THE ART Agriculture People have been genetically modifying plants and livestock for centuries through selective breeding, but the deciphering of DNA's structure opened the door to much more...
Race to the double helix took many twists, turns
About noon on Feb. 28, 1953, two men burst into their favorite pub, a scruffy spot called The Eagle near their Cambridge University laboratory. As people sipped their beers and...
Investigation focuses on left wing, heat sensors
Grieving NASA scientists began painstaking detective work yesterday to pinpoint the cause of the catastrophe that tore apart the space shuttle Columbia as the aging spacecraft plummeted into the atmosphere...
Tipsters sit back, observe arrests after calling police
Larry Blank eased off Interstate 70 west of Frederick and into the rest stop where he works as a custodian. It was just before midnight Wednesday. The parking lot was...
One sniper amid thousands of tips
One was a Rockville man who disappeared two days before the sniper attacks began. He had recently purchased a .223-caliber rifle, and he drove a white van with a ladder...
Solving sniper cases takes patience, luck
One evening in July 1994, 50-year-old Steven Chaifetz and his wife were eating in a popular Long Island diner when a bullet pierced his body, killing him instantly. Three days...
Officials widen hunt for anthrax
Investigators offered new details about the anthrax used in the deadly mail attacks yesterday, as the bacteria sickened a State Department mail worker and federal officials widened the hunt for...
'No guarantees' that mail is safe, postmaster says
Trying to reassure postal workers and an anxious public, the postmaster general moved to shore up the U.S. postal system against biological attack -- even suggesting that people should wash...
More anthrax cases found
Two suspicious letters - one delivered in New York and another in Nevada - have been found to contain anthrax, while five more employees of a Florida tabloid publisher have...