***ABC reporting tonight that more tests are needed…***

Yeah, it’s weird.

Reuters:

An FBI-led task force is trying find out how the deadly poison ricin wound up in a student dormitory at the University of Texas, a campus police spokeswoman said on Saturday.

A chunky white powder, less than the amount that would fill a plastic sandwich bag, was found on Thursday night and preliminary tests on Friday showed it to be ricin, a poison made from castor beans, spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon said. “This is not associated with any threats against the campus” in Austin, Texas, Weldon said. A spokesman for the FBI San Antonio Joint Terrorism Task Force was not immediately available to comment.

Ricin is extracted from castor beans and even small amounts of it can kill if inhaled or injected, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention web site. Toxicologists say it can easily be made in an ordinary kitchen. In 2005, an al Qaeda-trained Algerian man, Kamel Bourgass, was convicted in a plot to spread ricin throughout streets in Great Britain.

The powder was packed in a roll of quarters, opened by a student doing her laundry.

***

Chronology of events in the US and elsewhere involving ricin.

Feb 2004: Letter With Ricin Vial Sent To White House…and to office of Sen. Bill Frist.

DHS ricin backgrounder here.

CRS ricin backgrounder here.

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Bloggers following the developing story:

Texas blogger Jason Smith has lots of local news coverage and photo coverage of the crime scene:

Tom Elia at The New Editor

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit

***

Bryan Preston has been following another strange ricin case in Richmond, Va.

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