Sophont

World - smh.com.au : March 5, 2006 A 15-YEAR-OLD girl with a peanut allergy did not die from kissing her boyfriend after he ate peanut butter but from another cause, a coroner has ruled. But coroner Michel Miron would not reveal what caused Christina Desforges's death, saying he simply wanted to speak out before her case was cited by the food allergies association. 'The [association] intended to use the Desforges case to launch an education campaign,' Mr Miron said. 'I had to tell them the cause of death was different than first believed.' At the time of Desforges's death last November, officials said doctors had been unable to treat her allergic reaction to the kiss. Thinking she was having an asthma attack, Desforges had desperately searched for medicine. Friends called an ambulance as her breathing grew laboured but she collapsed. She died four days later in a Quebec hospital."

World - smh.com.au : " By Mark Coultan Herald Correspondent in New York March 4, 2006 MOVING countries and starting a business involves taking a lot of risks. But when Lincoln Mayne left his native Perth for London, then New York, he could hardly have imagined that the greatest threat to his successful design business would be anthrax. The 34-year-old has built up a business as an artist and fashion designer in five years in New York. He arrived with a backpack, hitched a ride into Manhattan and started sewing and printing. From humble beginnings on the Lower East Side, he now supplies clothes to stores in Japan and Hong Kong. He has had five animations on cable television in the US, and has exhibited his work in New York. But it all was brought to a halt by the deadly spores, apparently brought into the country in animal hides imported by a drum-maker three levels above him in a Brooklyn warehouse. When Vado Diomande, 44, came down with the symptoms of anthrax, he caused a panic...