Paranoia stalks Bush rally

[Nambe]

Guardian Newspapers Limited

Never mind the police searches, traffic jams, low-flying helicopters and closed bridges. This week New York's biggest challenge seems to be hysteria.

Delegates to the Republican convention, which begins in Madison Square Garden on Monday, will face opponents releasing swarms of mice, posing as volunteers to send old ladies in the wrong direction and hiring sex workers with Aids to seduce them, according to a columnist on the New Hampshire Sunday News, Bernadette Malone.

Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch's New York Post is warning that "people trained in kidnapping techniques, bombmaking and improvised munitions" will orchestrate operations.

It adds: "A number of extremists with ties to the 1970s radical Weather Underground are preparing to wreak havoc." ..