Comcast

In April of 2005 Comcast and Time Warner announce plans to buy Adelphia Cable. The book explains that ricin is a poison. On April 8, 2005, a partnership led by Comcast and Sony Pictures finalized a deal to acquire MGM and its affiliate studio, United Artists, and create an additional outlet to carry MGM/UA's material for cable and Internet distribution. One of these is a sticker reading "With all-natural ricin!". On January 11, 2005, Comcast announced that it would drop TechTV from the station's name and again be known as G4. The Penn and Teller book How To Play With Your Food (ISBN 0679743111) includes a "gimmicks envelope" of small objects related to the tricks inside the book. The deal was finalized on May 10, 2004 - and the two networks became G4techTV on May 28, 2004. Ricin was mentioned in the "call me the prankster" comic at toothpaste for dinner.

Comcast announced on March 25, 2004 that their new gaming-oriented television network G4 (operated by subsidiary G4 Media, Inc.) would acquire Vulcan Venture's technology-oriented television network TechTV. Ricin was used as the poison of choice of the murderer in the 1962 comedy film Kill or Cure. Comcast has since opted to expand OLN's sports coverage with the Tour de France and the NHL in the short term, while it is still planning on eventually having a national sports network to rival that of ESPN and Rupert Murdoch's planned national version of FSN. Ricin was the poison used in the Agatha Christie Tommy and Tuppence whodunnit The House of Lurking Death in a 1929 collection of short stories called Partners in Crime. It was later discovered that the deal was mostly for Comcast to acquire one of Disney's most profitable operations, ESPN, in an attempt to expand its sports reach. Several Senate office buildings were closed as a precaution. After rejection by Disney and uncertain response from investors, the bid was abandoned in April. There were no signs that anyone who was near the contaminated area developed any medical problems.

On February 11, 2004, Comcast surprised the media industry by announcing an unsolicited $66 billion bid for The Walt Disney Company, a deal that would have made Comcast the largest media conglomerate in the world. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office. In 2002 Comcast acquired all assets of AT&T Broadband, thus making Comcast the largest cable television company in the United States. This information was not made public until February 3, 2004, when preliminary tests showed the presence of ricin in an office mailroom of U.S. In 2001, Comcast announced they would acquire the assets of the largest cable television operator at the time, AT&T Broadband (AT&T's cable TV service). Investigators said it was low potency and was not considered a health risk. Following other acquisitions, Microsoft invested $1 billion in Comcast in 1997. The letter contained a fine powdery substance that later tested positive for ricin.

Comcast owned the majority of the electronic retailer QVC from 1995 until 2004 when its share was sold to Liberty Media. The letter containing it was intercepted at a mail handling facility off the grounds of the White House, and it never reached its intended destination. Comcast became the third largest cable operator in 1994 following their purchase of Maclean-Hunter's American division. in November of 2003. They bought the American Cellular Network Corporation the same year before combining with Metrophone in 1990. Ricin was detected in the mail at the White House in Washington, D.C. Two years later, they bought a 50% share in Storer Communications, Inc. All others accused in connection with the Wood Green flat were acquitted on all counts.

Comcast bought 25% of Group W Cable in 1986, doubling their size. He was also jailed for life following a conviction for murdering the Special Branch policeman who went to arrest him. The 975 ft skyscraper will be the tallest building in Philadelphia when it is completed in late 2007. In April 2005 31-year-old Kamel Bourgass was jailed for 17 years after being convicted of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance "by the use of poisons and explosives to cause disruption, fear or injury". On January 3, 2005, Comcast announced that it would build the Comcast Center. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented those arrested as the "UK Poison Cell" of a global terrorist network in making the case for military intervention in Iraq to the UN Security Council [7]. In 2002, Comcast paid the University of Maryland an undisclosed amount for naming rights to the new basketball arena built on the College Park campus, named Comcast Center. On February 5, 2003, U.S.

The company employs over 70,000 people. A number of men who were apparently living at the mosque were arrested. After the sale of their cellular division to SBC Communications of San Antonio and the acquisition of Greater Philadelphia Cablevision in 1999, Comcast and MediaOne announced a $60 billion merger which did not occur until three years later. On January 20, 2003 Finsbury Park mosque was raided by police, apparently as part of the investigation into the alleged discovery of ricin in Wood Green. The UK division was sold to NTL in 1998. A Special Branch policeman, DC Stephen Oake, was fatally stabbed during the arrests, and three other officers were also injured, one seriously. areas, though the channel is also available in New York and Pittsburgh. Three more suspects were arrested in Manchester in England in connection with the investigation of the alleged ricin found in London, following a raid carried out pursuant to an investigation into immigration issues.

The channel shows news, sports, and entertainment and places emphasis in Philadelphia, New England, and the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. They were not convicted of any poisons related crime. Comcast also has a variety network known as cn8, or the Comcast Network, available exclusively to Comcast and Cablevision subscribers. Six more suspects were arrested in Bournemouth in England in connection with the investigation into the alleged ricin incident in London. In 2006, Comcast will start a new sports channel in cooperation with Major League Baseball's New York Mets in the greater New York City region. The analytic confusion was caused by the similarity of many plant proteins to one of the ricin components, which suggests that higher quality (better specificity and sensitivity) analytic tests for ricin are needed. Moving into the area of programming content, Comcast became majority owner of Comcast-Spectacor, Comcast SportsNet (in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington/Baltimore metro and Sacramento, California), E! Entertainment Television, Style Network, G4, The Golf Channel and OLN (formerly known as Outdoor Life Network) over a period of years. Further analysis identified the material as ground wheat germ.

The company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1969, under the name Comcast Corporation from American Cable Systems. A little later several arrests were made in France and a bottle of something that tested positive for ricin was found. Brodsky in Tupelo, Mississippi. It appears that an individual conducting amateur research on poisons was found in this raid. Roberts, Daniel Aaron, and Julian A. Some acetone, 22 castor beans, and poor recipes for ricin and other poisons copied from the Internet were found. Comcast was founded in 1963 by Ralph J. However at the trial of Kamel Bourgass in 2005 it became apparent that within a few days of the raid the leader of the Biological Weapon Identification Group at the Porton Down Defence Science and Technology Laboratory had concluded that ricin was not present at Wood Green [5] [6].

. Media reports stated that a group was suspected of intending to use the poison in an attack on the London Underground. They develop broadband cable networks and are involved in electronic retailing and television programming content. It was widely reported in the media that traces of ricin were detected by British police in a flat in Wood Green, North London after a raid on a suspected ring of terrorists on 5 January 2003. Comcast Corporation, NASDAQ: CMCSA based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is both the largest cable company and the largest broadband (2nd overall) Internet Service Provider in the United States. An aerosol powder may be prepared by spray drying or air grinding the purified ricin using cold air. The final ricin precipitate is dried and then purified by floatation in carbon tetrachloride.

The precipitated ricin may be reextracted once to further purify it. After precipitation, the crude ricin cake is washed with a 16.7% solution of sodium sulfate to remove extranious nitrogenous substances. The leachate is filtered to remove insoluble matter and the crude ricin then precipitated by the addition of a 12% solution of sodium sulfate with a pH of 7.0-8.0. Ricin is initially extracted from defatted castor beans by aquous extraction at pH 3.8 to yield a leachate containing solubilized ricin.

Modern extraction plants might use membrane filtration to make highly purified ricin isolates. The extraction of ricin from castor beans is very similar to the prepartion of soy protein isolates. The patent was removed from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database sometime in 2004, but is still available online through international patent databases. Dieke, and Charlotte Karel.

Corwin, Sally H. Alderks, Alsoph H. Craig, O.H. Secretary of the Army, are Harry L.

The inventors named in US Patent 3,060,165 (granted October 23, 1962) "Preparation of Toxic Ricin", assigned to the U.S. The process for creating ricin is well-known, in part because a patent was granted for it in 1952. Ricin is actually several orders of magnitude less toxic than botulinum or tetanus toxins, but those are more difficult to obtain. The major reason it is dangerous is that there is no specific antidote, and that it is very easy to obtain (the castor bean plant is a common ornamental, and can be grown at home without any special care).

Presumably it could be sealed inside some sort of dust particle that would dissolve in water, but this would be difficult. Since it acts as an enzyme, catalyzing destruction of ribosomes, even a single oxidation is likely to render the ricin molecule harmless. Pure ricin could be dispersed through the air, however it would tend to be oxidized and rendered harmless by ozone, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants in a matter of hours. (Jan van Aken, an expert on biological weapons explained in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that he judges it rather reassuring that Al Qaeda experimented with ricin as it suggests their inability to produce botulin or anthrax.).

Ricin denatures (ie, the protein changes structure and becomes less dangerous) much more readily than anthrax spores, which may remain lethal for decades. Ricin is easy to produce, but is not as practical nor likely to cause as high casualities as other agents. Hence, a military willing to use biological weapons and having advanced resources would rather use either of the latter instead. To put ricin used as weapon into perspective, it is worth noting that as a biological weapon or chemical weapon, ricin may be considered as not very powerful, if only in comparison with other poisons such as botulinum or anthrax.

In August of 2002, US officials asserted that the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam tested ricin, along with other chemical and biological agents, in northern Iraq. Despite this, more than 1 million metric tonnes of castor beans are processed each year, and approximately 5% of the total is rendered into a waste containing high concentrations of ricin toxin [4]. Under both the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, ricin is listed as a schedule 1 controlled substance. Despite ricin's extreme toxicity and utility as an agent of chemical/biological warfare, it is extremely difficult to limit the production of the toxin.

Thomas, Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life, 368-378). Earlier, Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also suffered (but survived) ricin-like symptoms after a 1971 encounter with KGB agents (D.M. He died in hospital a few days later; the pellet was discovered by chance during an autopsy and the poison linked back to the KGB. In 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by Bulgarian secret police who surreptitiously 'shot' him on a London street with a modified umbrella using compressed gas to fire a tiny pellet contaminated with ricin into his leg.

The best-known documented use of ricin as an agent of biological warfare was by the Soviet Union's KGB during the Cold War. Ricin was given the military symbol W. This conclusion was based on comparison of the final weapons rather than ricin's toxicity (LD50 <30 mg.min.m^–3). Though there were plans for mass production and several field trials with different bomblet concepts, the end conclusion was that it was no more economical than using phosgene.

During the Second World War the United States and Canada undertook studying ricin in cluster bombs. The War ended before it was weaponized. The dust cloud concept could not be adequately developed, and researchers believed the coated bullet/shrapnel concept was unethical. At that time it was being considered for use either as a toxic dust or coated bullets and shrapnel.

The United States investigated ricin for its military potential during the First World War. Use of ricin as an adjuvant has potential implications for developing mucosal vaccines. A promising approach is also to use the non-toxic B subunit as a vehicle for delivering antigens into cells thus greatly increasing their immunogenicity. Genetic modification of ricin is believed to be possible to lessen its toxicity to humans, but not to the cancer cells.

Ricin could be linked to a monoclonal antibody to target malignant cells recognized by the antibody. Ricin may have therapeutic use in the treatment of cancer. In the United states, a person caught manufacturing or possessing ricin may be sentenced up to 30 years in prison. As little as one castor bean, about 0.5 grams, may be fatal in a child.

Since 0.2 mg of purified Ricin constitutes a fatal dose, this is a considerable amount of ricin. The seed-pulp left over from pressing for castor oil contains on average about 5% by weight of ricin. Ricin is easily purified from castor-oil manufacturing waste. Since people do not get sick from eating large amounts of such products, ricin A is of extremely low toxicity if and only if the B chain is not present..

Many plants such as barley have the A chain but not the B chain. Ricin consists of two distinct protein chains (almost 30kDa each) that are linked to each other by disulfide bond:. Typically 2.5–20 raw seeds can kill an adult human; 4 a rabbit, 5 a sheep, 6 an ox, 6 a horse, 7 a pig, 11 a dog, but 80 for cocks and ducks.[3]. [2].

Although one seed contains enough ricin to kill an adult human, they may pass harmlessly through the digestive system if swallowed whole. Modern feed-making techniques break down the ricin in castor beans by heating at 140 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes, although some studies suggest that residual toxic effects may linger. Although the castor bean plant has long been noted for its toxicity, ricin was first isolated and named in 1888 by Hermann Stillmark. (See abrin).

Ingested in larger doses, ricin causes severe diarrhea and victims can die of shock. In small doses, such as the typical dose contained in a measure of castor oil, ricin causes digestive tract cramps. Long term organ damage is likely in survivors. There is no known antidote; only symptomatic and supportive treatment is available.

Ricin is poisonous if inhaled, injected, or ingested, acting as a toxin by the inhibition of protein synthesis. . It is considered to be twice as deadly as cobra venom. Ricin can be extracted from castor beans and is known to have an average lethal dose in humans of 0.2 milligrams (1/5,000th of a gram), though some sources give higher figures [1].

Its name comes from the seed's resemblance to the tick. The protein ricin (pronounced rye-sin) is a poison manufactured from the castor bean (Ricinus communis). Ricin B is important in assisting ricin A's entry into a cell by binding with a cell surface component. Ricin A is toxic to the cell by interfering with Ribosomes, responsible for protein synthesis.