US monitors suspected pneumonic plague death of a 28-year-old Siberian lab worker; Trump offers Russia help

The death. A 28-year-old worker at Irkutsk's anti-plague research institute, a Siberian lab that studies the disease, died last week. Russian officials list the cause as pneumonia of undetermined origin and say her samples showed no microbes tied to her lab work. No other institute staff have reported illness. The U.S. watch. The State Department and CDC are tracking it as a suspected case of pneumonic plague, the lung form of the infection. “I don't think it's cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and the cause to just keep an eye on it and we're doing that.” — Secretary of State Marco Rubio The offer. Trump said the U.S. would help Russia and that he has not spoken with Putin about it. He added: "That's a disease we used to be able to control, but somehow those microbes got stronger and smarter than like an army." (TS: Per CDC, standard antibiotics still treat plague and usually stop it spreading within hours.) Still open. Russia has not published a confirmed cause of death, and no second case has been reported.