Tennessee: Train derailment creates toxic cloud

A train derailed near Knoxville and ruptured a tanker carrying sulfuric acid Sunday, creating a billowing fume cloud that was visible for miles. At least 3,000 people were evacuated from nearby homes.

No one was seriously injured when 24 cars of a 141-car train left the track late morning in the Farragut community, spilling out 10,000 gallons of the toxic chemical, said Alan Lawson, deputy director of the Knoxville-Knox County Emergency Management Agency. The cause remained under investigation.

The highly corrosive acid, used in manufacturing, was transported as a liquid, but vaporized into a gas upon release.

Residents living in 20 subdivisions within about a mile of the derailment were evacuated; others living up to three miles away were told to stay in their homes and turn off their air conditioning.

Michigan: Family of five killed in house explosion

An explosion flattened a farmhouse Sunday and killed a family of five just a day after they moved in, police said.

The bodies of three adults and two children, ages 1 and 4, were found in the wreckage, police said.

State Police Lt. Tim Young said the family had been hired to manage the farm in Bangor Township by an Indiana company and had just moved in Saturday.

The cause of the explosion, reported about 2:30 a.m., had not been determined, Young said. Officials said they believe it was accidental.

Debris was spread over a quarter mile, and police said the explosion rattled windows up to three miles away in the area about 30 miles west of Kalamazoo.

Florida: FBI finds anthrax in copy machines

FBI investigators believe photocopy machines were the reason anthrax spores were spread throughout an office building where a tainted letter was mailed in last year’s attacks, according to a published report.

Federal investigators returned last month to the American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton, armed with new techniques for detecting large quantities of anthrax.

They found anthrax spores in all the copy machines in the three-story, 68,000 square foot building, an anonymous source familiar with the investigation told The Palm Beach Post for its Sunday editions.

Investigators believe the microscopic spores spread from the first-floor mail room where the letter was opened and onto reams of copy paper stored there, the source said; the spores then spread into the air by fans inside the machines loaded with the copy paper.

Photo editor Robert Stevens died from anthrax in October. Ernesto Blanco, who worked in the AMI mail room, was hospitalized with anthrax but survived.

New York City: Subway stations closed in terror attacks reopen

Three subway stations closed after debris from the collapsed World Trade Center towers filled their tunnels last Sept. 11 reopened Sunday, a month ahead of schedule.

The South Ferry No. 1 and No. 9 subway station, the Rector Street station on the No. 1 and No. 9 lines and the Cortlandt Street stop on the N and R lines opened for the first time since last year.

The Cortlandt Street station on the No. 1 and No. 9 lines, which lies directly below the World Trade Center site, will remain closed until lower Manhattan redevelopment plans are finalized, said Larry Reuter, president of New York City Transit.

Nearly a quarter-mile of track and tunnel was filled with debris after the towers collapsed. The rebuilding project cost about $100 million.

New York City: Judge writes threats to get security detail

A criminal profiler who analyzed threatening letters sent to a Manhattan judge has concluded that the judge wrote them herself, the Daily News has learned.

Since Acting Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond reported the first of the bizarre threats three years ago, she has been guarded virtually around-the-clock by NYPD detectives or Supreme Court officers, according to law enforcement sources.

They escorted Diamond from her upper East Side home to the courthouse in lower Manhattan and from there to her weekend home in Westport, Conn., the sources said.

They guarded her at hairdressing appointments, lunch dates, and social functions until last week, when her armed security detail was lifted the same day the Daily News contacted the NYPD and the state Office of Court Administration about the case.

“She needed to justify her security detail, so she was writing the letters to herself,” one law enforcement source told The News. “It’s a crazy case.”