An article in a regional newspaper today reported on an incident in which a terrorism unit, as well as the bomb squad, were called after ‘extremely dangerous’ chemicals were discovered in a residential home. The incident took place in November 2023, but police have only now revealed information about the incident post court appearances. 

In a 7am raid officers found 21 different chemicals, two of which were illegal to possess without a licence. Police executed a warrant at the home of Ashlea Henderson following intelligence that one of the occupants had obtained a list of hazardous chemicals which, if used together, could be used in the production of methamphetamine, a class A drug.

Henderson appeared at Crewe Magistrates Court on Tuesday, January 9, where he was handed a community order. The 29-year-old had earlier pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing prohibited substances, hydrochloric acid and sulphuric acid, without a licence. Due to the nature of the materials, officers from the North West Counter Terrorism Unit and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) were called to the scene

There has been no further information on exactly what Henderson was trying to make with the chemicals, but the production of meth is a safe bet. 

Liberty Defense Holdings Ltd., a leading technology provider of AI-based next generation detection solutions for concealed weapons and threats, is pleased to announce it has entered into a strategic non-exclusive distribution agreement with Lexington, North Carolina based Point Security Inc. to introduce HEXWAVE™ to US airports. Point Security has 30 years of experience in the sale, rental, and service of checkpoint security equipment.

As part of the distribution agreement Point Security will add the HEXWAVE walkthrough people screening system, which uses AI and machine learning to seamlessly detect weapons and other threats in real-time, to its diverse security equipment and services portfolio.

“We are excited to partner with Liberty Defense to bring HEXWAVE to the aviation worker market,” said Brian Holland, President, and CEO. “The HEXWAVE system was selected as the perfect complement to our existing security services, and we believe that incorporating cutting-edge walkthrough screening technology to detect the non-metallic and metallic threats out there will help existing and new customers stay ahead of tomorrow’s threats.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Point Security Inc., a recognized leader in the US security industry. We share a similar vision of deploying next generation capability with a focus on detection while providing a better experience for security,” said Bill Frain, CEO of Liberty Defense. “We are extremely pleased that Point Security chose HEXWAVE to enhance their aviation worker security offering with detection of the latest threats like non-metallic explosives and 3D printed ghost guns. Point Security has a significant existing aviation security portfolio, and we look forward to working with them to expand our reach to the market and the resulting revenue growth potential that this partnership brings.”

According to a report in Korea Joongang Daily, North Korea is expanding a chemical plant that plays a crucial role in its nuclear and missile program, according to satellite imagery examined by analysis group 38 North and the Korea Institute of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Control. 

According to the article, 'The images, taken via commercial satellites, show that the Unha chemical complex near Manpho, Chagang Province, is undergoing expansion and modernization and exhibits signs of increasing production of reagents, such as nitric and sulfuric acids, that are associated with the reprocessing, enrichment and conversion of nuclear materials. The Unha chemical complex “holds considerable strategic importance to North Korea,” according to 38 North, which noted that a declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report from 1980 linked Unha with the production of liquid rocket propellant and other chemical products needed to support North Korea’s demanding strategic industries.'

The full article can be read here

The report and analysis by 38 North can be read here 

A new study reports 309 lab acquired infections and 16 pathogen lab escapes between 2000 and 2021, writes Matt Field for The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in an article looking at a study published in The Lancet Microbe. Both Matt's piece and the Lancet article make for fascinating reading. 

Another 'great' in the world of CBRN science has departed. 

From The Guardian: 

Graham Pearson, who has died aged 88, was a research chemist and then a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, serving from 1984 until 1995 as director general of what is now the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down in Wiltshire.

Arising from a growing interest in arms control, which led him while still in post to work on verification methods to enforce the Biological Weapons Convention, in 1996 he joined Bradford University’s Department of Peace Studies as an honorary visiting research fellow in international security. His skills as an organiser, analyser and writer, helped by his boundless energy and genial personality, involved him in numerous meetings designed to strengthen the BWC, including in Geneva during Pugwash conferences on science and world affairs. He published widely in the field of chemical and biological weapons. Subsequently a visiting professor, he was made a DUniv of Bradford in 2018.

He was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, the only child of Reg Pearson, a textile manufacturer, and his wife, Alice (nee Maclachlan). Graham was born almost completely deaf, but he determinedly overcame this disability, partly through a mastery of lip-reading. He was educated at Woodhouse Grove school and the University of St Andrews, where he read chemistry, staying on for his doctorate.

It was there, while playing badminton, that he met his future wife, Susan Benn, a modern languages student. They married in 1960, departing immediately for the US, where Graham had been awarded a research fellowship at the University of Rochester. In their ’56 Chevrolet station wagon they embarked on an 11,000-mile camping trip before returning home in 1962.

Graham then joined the scientific civil service. Placed initially with the MoD’s Rocket Propulsion Establishment, he continued to specialise in this area of defence research and development. A highlight was his three-year posting, in the same capacity, to the British embassy in Washington (1969-72), for which Susan and their two small sons accompanied him.

Moving into administration, from 1980 to 1983 he was deputy director of the Research Development Establishment at Fort Halstead, near Sevenoaks in Kent. During his final post, at Porton Down, he was appointed CB in 1990.

Following a move from Wiltshire to Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds in 2001, Graham brought the same energy and dedication to his 20 years of voluntary work at the National Trust garden at Hidcote Manor. Not content with being a garden guide, he set about uncovering Hidcote’s history and the life of its founder, Lawrence Johnston, travelling extensively to work on archival sources. Two books resulted, including the profusely illustrated Hidcote: The Garden and Lawrence Johnston (2007).

Graham is survived by Susan, his sons, Gavin and Douglas, and five grandchildren.

PR Newswire reported that Draper had won a $26 million contract from the JPEO CBD for their autonomous systems for the CSIRP (CBRN Sensor Integration on Robotic Platforms) project. Draper will deliver mature prototypes for government testing in 2026 and "integrate communications with the Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) platform, enabling the unmanned systems to send images to a mobile device and overlay the locations of detected objects of interest on an aerial map for human team members."

The December issue of the magazine has a group of experts pondering what 2024 holds, interviews on AI/ML and CBRN, Norwegian cold weather capability and the UK's NARU team. 

You can access the latest issue and magazine archive here and look back over issues from 2007.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), announced a $117 million contract to simultaneously evaluate three novel therapeutics to treat hospitalized adult patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) for the first time. Under the contract, PPD Development, LP, (the PPD clinical research business of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.) will implement this BARDA-sponsored phase 2 platform clinical trial.

ARDS is a life-threatening lung condition with multiple causes, including severe pneumonia and sepsis due to bacterial and viral infections such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2, that leads to high rates of death among hospitalized patients. Currently, no approved or licensed therapeutics are available to treat ARDS.

“Efficient development of novel medical products requires innovative clinical trial approaches,” said BARDA Director Gary Disbrow, Ph.D. “BARDA is building on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to advance the development of ARDS treatment and establish a strong clinical trial platform that can be used to evaluate medical products in the future.”

Under this contract, the PPD clinical research business will implement a large phase 2 clinical trial over three years. The clinical trial – a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter phase 2 platform clinical trial – will evaluate the safety and efficacy of the three host-directed therapeutics at up to 60 U.S. sites, enrolling 600 hospitalized adult patients with ARDS. The drug candidates in the study will be announced in early 2024.

The study will collect extensive clinical outcomes and biomarkers — objective measures that capture what is happening in a cell or an organ at a given moment — to define subsets of patients with ARDS who may benefit from specific host-directed therapeutics. This data will inform the design of phase 3 studies and identify a patient subpopulation most likely to benefit from each of the three drug candidates. The study has the potential to lead to better study outcomes in future trials and potential U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of one or more of the therapeutics.

Based on the results of this phase 2 clinical trial, BARDA may support follow-on work for promising therapeutic candidates under the BARDA Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Area of Interest (AOI) 9.2 Immune Modulators or Therapeutics Promoting Lung Repair. Additional information about this clinical trial design can be found in the Draft Protocol Synopsis.

To learn more about BARDA’s portfolio of novel therapeutics in development to treat or prevent pandemic influenza and ARDS, visit the Influenza & Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) Therapeutics Program page.

BARDA has selected Advanced Technology International (ATI) as the new Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Preparedness Consortium (BioMaP-Consortium) management firm. The BioMaP-Consortium is a new 10-year program to improve domestic capabilities to manufacture and deliver vital medical countermeasures.

The consortium will bring together industry partners from across the biomanufacturing supply chain—including the manufacturers of required raw materials and consumables, drug substance manufacturers, and fill-finish services—to expand domestic manufacturing capacity for lifesaving biologics such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). ATI will facilitate and expedite the establishment and administration of the BioMaP-Consortium.

Protecting health and saving lives during public health emergencies requires the ability to manufacture vaccines and therapeutics rapidly at large scale. However, one of the most challenging aspects of a nationwide pandemic response is having the necessary biomanufacturing capability and capacity. To ensure that the U.S. has the ability to respond at scale as pandemics emerge, BARDA’s new BioMaP-Consortium will initially focus on building a resilient, flexible, and surge-capable manufacturing ecosystem that prioritizes increased domestic capacity for vaccines and other biologics across three key domains:  

• Industrial Base Expansion of Biomanufacturing Supply Chain
• Biomanufacturing Capacity Expansion and Reservation
• Advanced Biomanufacturing Technologies

Following establishment of the consortium from the base agreement, ATI will solicit proposals from consortium members for individual project requirements on behalf of the BARDA team. BARDA will evaluate Request for Project Proposal (RPP) responses and authorize ATI, as the consortium management firm, to issue project agreements with BioMaP-Consortium partners.

BARDA leveraged innovation and best practices in acquisitions, contracting, and pricing structures under BARDA’s Other Transaction Authority (OTA) in establishing the BioMaP-Consortium. By creating a mechanism for fast and flexible partnerships with commercial biopharmaceutical manufacturing entities with innovative technologies, the consortium will leverage experiences from the COVID-19 and mpox emergency responses and aid BARDA’s swift response to future public health emergencies. The consortium is part of a comprehensive ecosystem that includes the BARDA Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), the BARDA Easy Broad Agency Announcement (EZ-BAA), and BARDA’s Rapid Response Partnering Vehicle (RRPV) to support the nation’s current and future biomanufacturing requirements aligned with national and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) strategies.

The work under this project agreement contributes to the goals set in the BARDA 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, which highlights the importance of building a resilient, surge-capable, flexible manufacturing ecosystem that prioritizes increased domestic capacity.

Learn how to become a consortium member: https://www.biomap-consortium.org/how-to-join/

A recent report in The Washington Post highlighted the apparent increase in heavy production fentanyl labs in Canada. 

In October, Canadian police found 2.5 million doses of fentanyl and 528 gallons of chemicals in a shipping container and a storage unit. Six months earlier they raided another property that was packed with barrels of chemicals for fentanyl production.

In August, outside Toronto, police found what is believed to be the largest fentanyl lab in Canada so far, in a property 30 miles from the U.S. border crossing at Niagara Falls. 

According to the article"U.S. authorities say they have little indication that Canadian-made fentanyl is being smuggled south in significant quantities. But at a time when record numbers of people are dying from overdoses in the United States, the spread of clandestine fentanyl labs in Canada has the potential to undermine U.S. enforcement efforts and worsen the opioid epidemic in both nations."

The full article can be read here https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/fentanyl-super-labs-in-canada-pose-new-threat-for-us-opioid-epidemic/ar-AA1lYkRj

A report by the New York Times in December highlighted that in an area of desert where China detonated its first atom bomb nearly 60 years ago, there has been evidence of renewed drilling activities. The NY Times article suggests this is the strongest evidence yet that Beijing is weighing whether to test a new generation of nuclear arms that could increase the lethality of its rapidly expanding missile force.

The full article can be read here https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/20/science/china-nuclear-tests-lop-nur.html

According to a report in Turkish news site aa.com.tr, on December 23rd, Russia announced that it would withhold a part of its payments to the OPCW, claiming the money would be used to fund the "illegitimate" Investigation and Identification Group set up by the US and its satellites to promote "illegal activities in the interests of the collective West."

In a statement posted on the ministry’s official website, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, however, confirmed that Russia will wire its regular payment to the organization's budget, which she said is an obligation of each of its member states.

"However, Russia, together with some of our partners, will continue to withhold part of its contribution, which is allocated by the OPCW Technical Secretariat to finance the illegitimate Investigation and Identification Group created by the US and its satellites to promote illegal activities in the interests of the collective West," she stressed.