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One measure of the intensity of the last week's news cycle has been one of the stories that essentially got kicked out of leading news all together was that somebody sent a deadly poison ricin to the white house and to a u.s. senator and mississippi judge. not that a threat was made but the actual poison was mailed in letters and sent to those recipients. the letters tested positive for ricin both in field tests and in subsequent lab tests. the main reason i think that story got lost is because of what it was competing with in the news cycle. a pair of other terrorism and disaster stories that...

The u.s. postal service®, no business too small. one measure of the intensity of the last week's news cycle has been one of the stories that essentially got kicked out of leading news all together was that somebody sent a deadly poison ricin to the white house and to a u.s. senator and mississippi judge. not that a threat was made but the actual poison was mailed in letters and sent to those recipients. the letters tested positive for ricin both in field tests and in subsequent lab tests. the main reason i think that story got lost is because of what it was competing with in the news cycle....

Joe, you have some news on the arrest. what are you hearing, what is the latest? >> reporter: anderson, this is an individual from tupelo, mississippi, we're told, the home state of senator roger wicker. actually, his hometown, as well. he's one of the people who got one of the mailings. we know of two suspicious letters, a lot of confusion at the united states capitol today. a mail delivery to the capitol has been stopped, while authorities try to figure all of it out. of the suspicious letters that were field tested, and initially deemed positive, one was addressed to the white house. anothe...

Republican senator roger wicker. it was a letter that tested positive in preliminary tests for the poison that's called ricin. after testing positive in a field test on site, that letter has now been sent to a military lab in maryland. field tests for ricin are, apparently, somewhat notorious for false positives, which is why the more advanced lab testing is now needed. in addition to that letter to senator wicker yesterday, we now know a basically identical letter was also sent to the white house, to president obama. it also has tested positive for ricin and is awaiting confirming tests from ...

Have been something we may not have learned about but because of what happened in boston everybody is on higher alert? >> i remember vividly i got sworn in on october 8th by then there had been several anthrax attacks and several thereafter. one of the first problems we had was the fact the field tests were inferior and a lot of false positives. horrible hoaxes. i would like to think in intervening ten years the fields tests and it seems from what i heard that field tests that said envelopes contained ricin were confirmed and they'll confirm at a higher level of scientific inquiry. that modest...