| April 14, 2009 | - Bankrupt Lehman Brothers made plans to sell its 500,000-pound stockpile of yellowcake uranium, which has recently plummeted in value. “This is not like playing copper where it's a liquid and deep market,” explained hedge-fund manager John Wong. “A lot of the funds playing this market have blown up.”
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| August 29, 2007 | - A federal judge upheld New York City's prohibition on metal baseball bats.
| Source:
NY Times
|
| February 23, 2007 | -
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University confirmed that mothers suffering from heartburn are likely to give birth to hairy newborns, and scientists in Senegal watched chimpanzees fashion spears from sticks and use their weapons to stab sleeping bush babies.
| Source 1:
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| January 25, 2007 | - The U.S. military gave a public demonstration of a new non-lethal heat-ray gun known as the Active Denial System.
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 10, 2007 | - In Illinois, Derrick Shareef, a 22-year-old Muslim convert who was arrested last month after trading two stereo speakers to a federal agent for a pistol and four nonfunctioning grenades that he planned to set off at a local mall, pleaded not guilty to attempting to use weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
Saulkvalley.com
|
| November 23, 2006 | - Previously unreleased video footage from early 2003 showed Saddam Hussein and his generals preparing to fight the United States with slingshots and crossbows. “Let’s use all the methods we can,” says Hussein. “These methods can be made at home.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 16, 2006 | - The United States Coast Guard announced plans to mount 7.62 mm, M-240B machine guns on official boats in the Great Lakes. Rear Adm. John E. Crowley Jr. said, “I don’t know when or if something might happen on the Great Lakes, but I don’t want to learn the hard way.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 5, 2006 | - The White House warned of a “WMD-terrorism nexus” emanating from Iran.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 31, 2006 | -
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced Israel's use of cluster bombs.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| August 26, 2006 | - A college student from Connecticut was found with a stick of dynamite in his luggage at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
| Source:
KNX1070 Radio via Google News
|
| August 24, 2006 | - At Chicago's O'Hare airport, Mardin Amin, 29, of Skokie, Illinois, was arrested after telling security agents that the penis pump in his backpack was a bomb.
| Source:
Forbes
|
| August 23, 2006 | - Three Kurdish women testified against Saddam Hussein in his chemical-weapons genocide trial, describing a “sweet, mysterious smell” that blinded them, killed their relatives, and forced them to hide in caves.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 25, 2006 | - In Minnesota people in zombie costumes were arrested for carrying “simulated weapons of mass destruction.”
| Source:
local6.com
|
| July 10, 2006 | -
India tested its long-range nuclear-capable
ballistic missile, the Agni-III, in the Bay of Bengal. The test failed.
| Source 1:
San Francisco Chronicle
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Guardian
|
| July 5, 2006 | -
North Korea launched six rockets over the Sea of Japan, including a Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile, which apparently was aborted after just 40 seconds. One thing we have learned, said President George W. Bush, who strongly dislikes North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, “is that the rocket didn't stay up very long.” The president, who expressed annoyance when a reporter pointed out that Kim Jong Il had on all accounts increased his nuclear potency since Bush took office, claimed that his antimissile system, which has failed repeated tests, had a “reasonable chance” of intercepting the Taepodong.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 21, 2006 | - It was revealed that prior to the U.S. invasion, Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri had, for a fee, provided the United States with detailed assessments of Iraq's military capabilities. Sabri's assessments of Iraq's nuclear and biological weapons capabilities proved, in hindsight, to be far more reliable than the CIA estimates used to justify the invasion; the CIA had no comment on why the data was ignored.
| Source:
MSNBC via Commondreams
|
| February 12, 2006 | -
Iran, said security analysts, will be ready to retaliate with commando squads, global terrorist attacks, and long-range Shahab 3 missiles if its nuclear facilities are attacked.
| Source:
The Boston Globe
|
| February 3, 2006 | - Professor Philippe Sands of University College, London, said he had seen a secret memo that details a January 2003 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush. According to Sands' account of the memo, Blair offered Bush full British support for an invasion of Iraq regardless of whether U.N. inspectors found evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Bush also told Blair that he was thinking of having U-2 reconnaissance planes painted with U.N. colors and then flown over Iraq in order to provoke Saddam Hussein into firing upon the planes.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| January 31, 2006 | - Former Marine Platoon Sergeant Jim Massey said that the United States was funneling depleted uranium to Iraq through Ireland.
| Source:
UTV
|
| November 23, 2005 | - After three years in prison, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was indicted on charges that he conspired to murder individuals overseas and provide support for terrorists; no mention was made of prior accusations that Padilla intended to use a “dirty bomb” or claims that he conspired with Al Qaeda to blow up U.S. apartment buildings. “The indictment,” explained a former Justice Department official, “is doubtless a strategy by the Bush Administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 16, 2005 | - After repeated denials, the Pentagon finally admitted to using white phosphorus during the 2004 attack on Fallujah. “It is an incendiary weapon,” explained a spokesman.
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| November 15, 2005 | - Two Iraqi businessmen accused U.S. troops of caging them with lions in 2003. The men were also severely beaten after they were not able to tell Army interrogators where to find Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction. “I thought he was joking, so I laughed,” said one of the businessmen. “He just hit me.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 9, 2005 | - A former U.S. soldier named Jeff Englehart said that he witnessed “burned bodies, burned children, and burned women” after a white phosphorus attack on Fallujah in 2004. The U.S. Army denied that it had used white phosphorus in the attack.
| Source:
The New Zealand Herald
|
| April 28, 2005 | - George W. Bush gave his fourth prime-time news conference and took a firm stance against North Korea. “Perhaps Kim Jong Il has got the capacity to launch a weapon,” he said. “Wouldn't it be nice to be able to shoot it down?” North Korea then fired a missile into the Sea of Japan.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
VOA
|
| March 31, 2005 | -
Pakistan successfully test-fired the Hatf II, a short-range nuclear-capable
missile.
| Source:
Aljazeera.com
|
| March 16, 2005 | - The Department of Homeland Security was preparing for: the detonation of a ten-kiloton nuclear device; a biological attack with aerosolized anthrax; an outbreak of pneumonic plague; a flu pandemic starting in south China; the spraying of a chemical blister agent over a football stadium; an attack on an oil refinery; the explosion of a tank of chlorine; a 7.2-magnitude earthquake; a major hurricane in a metropolitan area; three Cesium-137 dirty bombs going off in three different cities, each contaminating thirty-six city blocks; the detonation of improvised bombs in sports stadiums and emergency rooms; liquid anthrax in ground beef; a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak; and a cyber attack on the nation's financial infrastructure.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 25, 2005 | -
Canada declared that the U.S. must get permission before launching missiles over Canadian airspace.
| Source:
Canada. com
|
| February 17, 2005 | - In England, a nuclear power plant was unable to account for nearly thirty kilograms of plutonium, enough to make seven nuclear bombs; the discrepancy was said to exist only on paper.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 15, 2005 | - Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that U.S. policies on Iran and North Korea are inconsistent, and that no evidence exists to implicate Iran in the development of nuclear weapons.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 21, 2005 | -
George W. Bush was sworn in again as president, and threatened to bring "the untamed fire of freedom" to the world. In his 20-minute speech the president used the words "free," "freedom," and "liberty" 49 times, but never said "war" or "Iraq."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 13, 2005 | - The Bush administration announced that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had been a total failure.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 6, 2004 | - ElBaradei said he believed that North Korea has converted thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods into enough weapons-grade plutonium for four to six bombs.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 30, 2004 | - The International Atomic Energy Agency voted to accept Iran's promises that it was halting its nuclear weapons program.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 24, 2004 | - The interim Iraqi government officially notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that 380 tons of extremely powerful HMX and RDX explosives that American forces simply failed to secure have disappeared from a former military facility called Al Qaqaa. The explosives can be used to destroy buildings, arm missile warheads, and detonate nuclear devices, and it was generally conceded that the Al Qaqaa cache, which was under seal by the IAEA prior to the U.S. invasion, is the most likely source of the explosives used in the extremely effective roadside and suicide bombs that have been the primary weapon of the Iraqi insurgency. The Department of Defense has known about the loss of the explosives for more than a year.
| Source:
The Nelson Report
|
| October 11, 2004 | - Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was concerned that entire buildings from Iraq's former nuclear facilities have been dismantled and removed and no one knows where they were taken.
| Source:
BBC
|
| October 7, 2004 | - The Iraq Survey Group issued its final report and concluded that Saddam Hussein dismantled his nuclear weapons program in 1991 and did not attempt to revive it. The inspectors said that there was no evidence that Iraq continued to possess chemical or biological weapons, and they concluded that Hussein refused to admit he had disarmed because he wanted to maintain a deterrent against Iran.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2004 | - Three hundred pounds of weapons-grade plutonium from the United States arrived in France.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 2, 2004 | - The Pope beatified Karl I, the last emperor of Austria, an alcoholic
adulterer who performed a miracle and used poison gas during World War I; the miracle allegedly occured in 1960, when a Polish nun prayed to Karl and was cured of sores and varicose veins.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| September 17, 2004 | - American weapons inspectors in Iraq once again concluded that Saddam Hussein would have liked to have developed unconventional weapons but did not in fact have such programs.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2004 | - The United States was planning to develop portable nuclear
power plants, and a
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| August 11, 2004 | -
Iran tested a new long-range ballistic missile.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 6, 2004 | - The United States announced that it will insist that the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would ban countries from making enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear bombs, be stripped of any mechanism for enforcement, such as inspections. This position, which would render the treaty useless, apparently was reached because the Bush Administration does not wish to submit to inspections.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 7, 2004 | - Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain admitted that weapons of mass destruction might never be found in Iraq but continued to maintain that "we know" Saddam had such weapons: "I do not believe there was not a threat in relation to weapons of mass destruction."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 16, 2004 | - The Senate agreed to expand the federal definition of hate crimes to include those committed because of "sexual orientation, gender or disability" but defeated a measure that would have eliminated funding for research into "bunker busting" mini-nukes.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 4, 2004 | - The Department of Energy announced that it will cut the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons "almost in half."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 28, 2004 | - A British journalist who was arrested in Israel for talking to Mordechai Vanunu, the scientist who exposed Israel's nuclear weapons program, was released from custody and complained that he had been stuck in a dungeon with excrement-covered walls; Vanunu was released last month after 18 years in prison and has been ordered not to talk with foreigners.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| May 26, 2004 | -
The New York Times published an extraordinary editors' note admitting that the newspaper had been manipulated by members of the Bush Administration and by Iraqi exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi into running false stories (especially on the subject of Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction) that advanced the administration's war agenda and had failed to follow up aggressively on many of those stories, and had failed, in those instances when it did follow up, to make prominent note of the fact that the stories were false. The retraction was published on page A10, where many readers would fail to notice it.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 21, 2004 | -
British intelligence agents in World War II at one point planned to train pigeons to carry bombs or biological weapons. "Pigeon research," said one memo, "will not stand still; if we do not experiment, other powers will."
| Source:
BBC
|
| April 29, 2004 | - The United Nations Security Council voted to ban "non-state actors" from possessing nuclear weapons.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 28, 2004 | - "Brother Guide" Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya arrived in Brussels, along with his white stretch Mercedes limo and four female bodyguards wearing tight uniforms, to meet with European officials. He called on the United States and China to rid themselves of nuclear and chemical weapons. "Hopefully," he said, "nothing will force us to go back to the days when we used our cars and explosive belts."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 22, 2004 | - Mordecai Vanunu, the scientist who exposed Israel's
nuclear-weapons program, was released from prison after 18 years, 11 of which were in solitary confinement. Israel has maintained an official policy of "nuclear ambiguity" even though Vanunu confirmed that the country possesses weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 4, 2004 | -
Colin Powell admitted that the Iraqi National Congress, the U.S.-funded Iraqi exile group, was the source of "the most dramatic" bits in his notorious United Nations presentation on Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| March 28, 2004 | - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking of Pakistan's
nuclear-weapons trafficking, said, "I do not believe that there's any evidence or any suggestion that President Musharraf was involved." Musharraf, for his part, denied that he had made a deal with the Americans to crack down on Al Qaeda in return for lenient treatment for selling nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya, Iran, and others; he also denied that his country's proliferation had done much harm. "If I hand over a missile or a bomb to any extremist, believe me, he can do nothing about it," Musharraf said. "He cannot explode it."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 28, 2004 | - People all over the world were astonished when President Bush, during a speech, showed a slide of himself looking under his desk and then joked: "Those weapons of mass destruction got to be here somewhere."
| Source:
Herald Sun
|
| March 19, 2004 | - The president of Poland acknowledged publicly that the United States "deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. "We were taken for a ride," he said.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| March 19, 2004 | - It was revealed that the United States has resumed a program designed to predict the effects of nuclear fallout.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 18, 2004 | - The U.S. Army and DuPont were hoping to dispose of 1,200 tons of VX nerve gas by mixing it with sodium hydroxide and hot water and then dumping it into the Delaware River.
| Source:
Philadelphia Inquirer
|
| March 11, 2004 | - The House of Representatives passed the so-called cheeseburger bill, which if made law would grant immunity from lawsuits to restaurants, especially fast-food chains, that serve unhealthy food.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 10, 2004 | -
Pakistan tested a new long-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 4, 2004 | - The inspector general of the USDA opened a criminal investigation into whether the Washington State mad cow was falsely listed as a downer; the man who killed the cow, the man who took the cow to slaughter, and the owner of the slaughterhouse have all said that the cow was able to walk. A spokeswoman for the agency said that she could not "fathom" the notion that a high-ranking USDA official could have ordered the falsification, though she did not deny the charge but simply repeated that she could not "fathom" it.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 28, 2004 | - Powerful Republicans were said to be urging President Bush to get rid of Dick Cheney, who continued to insist, contrary to all evidence, that stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein was allied with Al Qaeda. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" Cheney asked an interviewer. "It's a nice way to operate, actually."
| Source:
Asia Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - Richard Butler said that when he was chief U.N.
weapons inspector he had to meet contacts in Central Park because he knew that his telephone conversations were routinely intercepted.
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 27, 2004 | - The United States government was working to build safer land mines.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, was sentenced to death, eight years after his trial began.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 21, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that the conquest of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein would have used weapons of mass destruction if only he had had some.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| February 13, 2004 | - A new poll found that most Americans believe that President Bush lied or knowingly exaggerated evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The poll also showed Senator John Kerry beating the president by nine percentage points.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 11, 2004 | - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he did not recall British Prime Minister Tony Blair's prewar claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. "I don't remember the statement being made, to be perfectly honest." The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, didn't remember it either.
| Source:
Sydney Morning Herald
|
| February 10, 2004 | -
Bill O'Reilly of Fox News apologized on national television for his uncritical support of the Bush Administration's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "I was wrong," he said. "I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this."
| Source:
San Diego Union-Tribune
|
| February 8, 2004 | - President George W. Bush, apparently worried that John Kerry was beating him in recent opinion polls, appeared on a Sunday morning talk show. Bush defended his decision to conquer
Iraq, and although he admitted that his stated reason for invading was false, he also suggested that weapons of mass destruction might still be found. The president said that he had total confidence in the CIA but suggested that he had been misled by incorrect intelligence. "Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons," Bush said. "I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It's too late if they become imminent."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 6, 2004 | - The Bush Administration praised Pakistan after General Pervez Musharraf pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist who took the blame for selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea; Khan claimed that no one in the government or in the military was aware of his activities.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| February 2, 2004 | - It was reported that David Kay, the former American arms inspector, was shocked at the huge controversy created when he simply spoke the truth about the nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 26, 2004 | - President Pervez Musharraf admitted that some of Pakistan's top nuclear scientists had sold nuclear technology to other countries but denied that the government was involved; Musharraf was accused of scapegoating the scientists to appease the United States.
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
|
| January 24, 2004 | -
David Kay, the outgoing head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that Iraq got rid of its illegal weapons programs years before the United States invaded.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 8, 2004 | - The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace issued a report concluding that Iraq did not in fact possess any weapons of mass destruction. The report, which drew on intelligence material and documents discovered by weapons inspectors after the war, criticized the United States government for its deliberate exaggerations of Iraq's military capabilities.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| January 8, 2004 | - The Bush Administration withdrew a 400-member weapons-inspection team from Iraq because they are no longer needed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed in a Christmas message to the British military that the Iraq Survey Group had found "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories"; L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul, dismissed Blair's claim as a "red herring."
| Source:
Guardian
|
| December 20, 2003 | - Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya announced that he has given up trying to acquire unconventional weapons and that he'll be good from now on.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 19, 2003 | - There were reports that David Kay, the head of the American team looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is planning to resign.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| December 17, 2003 | - In that interview, the president said that he saw no difference between his earlier claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and the more recent emphasis on weapons programs. "So what's the difference? If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," Bush said. "I'm telling you — I made the right decision for America because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country."
| Source:
Guardian
|
| December 16, 2003 | - Senator Bill Nelson of Florida revealed that the Bush Administration told senators last year that Saddam Hussein definitely possessed biological and chemical weapons and that his unmanned drones could reach cities on the East Coast.
| Source:
Florida Today
|
| December 16, 2003 | - An American gun
manufacturer was promoting a new pistol that can shoot around corners.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| December 10, 2003 | -
Canada's Air Transport Security Authority banned fruitcakes in carry-on luggage.
| Source:
CBC
|
| December 9, 2003 | - Scientists were studying the bombardier beetle, which can fire liquid at its enemies from its rear end at up to 300 squirts per second, in the hope of building a better airplane engine.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| November 30, 2003 | - The Bush Administration approved a research project to develop low-yield bunker-busting nuclear weapons, or "mini-nukes."
| Source:
The Observer
|
| November 21, 2003 | - General Tommy Franks told a cigar magazine that the United States could become a military dictatorship if terrorists ever use weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
Newsmax
|
| November 21, 2003 | - Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans used a fillibuster to block a $30 billion energy bill that would have given immunity from lawsuits to petrochemical companies that have polluted water supplies with MTBE, a carcinogenic fuel additive.
| Source:
Forbes
|
| November 15, 2003 | - Newly declassified files from MI5, the British intelligence agency, revealed that in 1940 German
saboteurs had planned to attack Buckingham Palace with exploding cans of French peas.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 7, 2003 | - Giant pouched rats were being used to sniff out land mines in Mozambique.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| November 2, 2003 | - Historians were upset that the Smithsonian Institution's new exhibit of the Enola Gay bomber fails to mention that the B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 1, 2003 | - Shoko Asahara, the guru of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, claimed that he had lost control of his followers shortly before they released nerve gas in the Tokyo
subway eight years ago.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 29, 2003 | - American scientists deliberately engineered a new extra-deadly form of mousepox; much the same thing has been done with cowpox and rabbitpox.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| October 25, 2003 | - Much of Zimbabwe's wildlife is being wiped out by poachers, naturalists said, and Human Rights Watch accused Zimbabwe of using famine as a weapon against political dissidents.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 21, 2003 | - The United States was granted broad exemptions for the use of methyl bromide, a pesticide that damages the ozone layer; the chemical was supposed to be banned under the Montreal Protocol, which the U.S. signed. Strawberry and tomato farmers, as well as the owners of golf courses, will benefit.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 21, 2003 | - The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board concluded that the government's plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, is dangerously flawed; the design, the board said, would lead to the corrosion and perforation of the containers, and thus to leaks.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 10, 2003 | -
Pat Robertson said that the State Department should be blown up with a nuclear bomb.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 6, 2003 | -
David Kay, the head of the CIA team searching for traces of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, issued his status report; Kay admitted that no unconventional weapons had been found but did point to a single vial of botulinum toxin, which an Iraqi scientist had stored in his refrigerator since 1993, as evidence of evil intent. President Bush cited the vial and said that the report justified the invasion.
| Source:
Washington Post, International Herald Tribune
|
| October 6, 2003 | - and Robin Cook, the former foreign minister and leader of the Commons, who resigned to protest Britain's participation in the conquest of Iraq, claimed that Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted privately to him two weeks before the invasion that Saddam Hussein had no weapons that posed a "real and present danger."
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 28, 2003 | - At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department began investigating charges that the White House leaked the name of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press in retaliation for remarks by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, challenging President Bush's
claim that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa. An unnamed administration official told the Washington Post that two White House officials had revealed the agent's identity to at least six journalists. "Clearly," the official said, "it was meant purely and simply for revenge." The White House denied that Karl Rove was responsible for the leak, which was a violation of the Intelligence Protection Act and carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 25, 2003 | - Administration officials tried to play down a disappointing progress report by the American team searching Iraq for signs of weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 24, 2003 | - A 16-year-old boy in Spokane, Washington, was wounded by police officers after he barricaded himself in a classroom with a pistol;
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | - A British parliamentary report concluded that the Blair government did not intentionally lie in its controversial dossier on Iraq's military threat; the report did criticize the government, however, and said that its false claim that Iraq was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was "unhelpful," and that the dossier should have made clear that Iraq was not, in the opinion of the intelligence services, an imminent threat to Great Britain.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 10, 2003 | -
Leni Riefenstahl died, as did Edward Teller.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 31, 2003 | - A decommissioned Russian
nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 29, 2003 | - Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain testified before the Hutton inquiry and denied the BBC's claim that his aides had "sexed up" his dossier on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction; Blair said he would have resigned if the story had been true.
| Source:
Guardian, BBC, New York Times
|
| August 29, 2003 | -
North Korea announced plans to test a nuclear device.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 15, 2003 | - The United States Army delayed the destruction of more than 1,200 tons of VX, a deadly nerve agent, at the Newport Chemical Depot, 30 miles north of Terre Haute, Indiana, because the plant has failed to meet environmental standards.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 10, 2003 | -
L. Paul Bremer, the American overseer of Iraq, said he thought the bombing was carried out by "outside" forces because he wasn't sure the "ex-regime people" who have been shooting U.S. soldiers had the know-how to make a car bomb.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 10, 2003 | - The United States Army began incinerating millions of pounds of chemical weapons in a small town in Alabama; nearby residents, who have been assured that the process is completely safe, were issued protective hoods.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 9, 2003 | - Engineers from the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that the mobile laboratories found in Iraq were probably used to make hydrogen for weather balloons, just as Iraqi scientists have claimed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 8, 2003 | - Two workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory were accidentally exposed to plutonium.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| July 31, 2003 | - It was reported that the Pentagon has awarded a $500,000 grant to researchers to develop genetically engineered trees that will change color in the event of a biological- or chemical-weapons attack.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 26, 2003 | - The Army denied that depleted uranium was causing the mysterious outbreak of pneumonia among American soldiers in Iraq.
| Source:
Springfield News Leader
|
| July 25, 2003 | -
French
police evacuated an airport in Toulouse and blew up a bag of puff pastry.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 22, 2003 | - The former head of the U.S. army's Depleted Uranium Project announced that the damage from munitions used in both Gulf Wars will eclipse the Agent Orange fallout of the Vietnam War.
| Source:
Buffalo News
|
| July 19, 2003 | -
United Nations weapons inspectors said they had found traces of enriched uranium in samples taken in Iran.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 19, 2003 | - Federal authorities said that 1,100 pounds of ammonium nitrate, the explosive chemical used to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building, were stolen from quarries in Colorado and California.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
President Bush told a group of surprised reporters that Saddam Hussein had refused to permit weapons inspectors to return to Iraq: "And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
British prime minister Tony Blair addressed the United States Congress and predicted that history will "forgive" him even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq.
He received 19 standing ovations; after the first one he responded: "This is more than I deserve and more than I'm used to, frankly."
| Source:
Guardian
|
| July 17, 2003 | -
CIA director George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and again took responsibility for President Bush's false claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, but he admitted that he didn't know the claim, which he successfully removed from at least one of the president's previous speeches, would be included in the State of the Union address.
Tenet said that his staff should have told him about it.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 16, 2003 | - Newly declassified documents revealed that during the Cold War British
scientists planned to bury ten nuclear land mines in Germany.
The plan, code-named Blue Peacock, was abandoned in 1958, after it was judged to be "politically flawed."
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| July 15, 2003 | -
North Korea announced that it has made enough plutonium to construct several nuclear bombs.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 13, 2003 | -
President Bush, asked whether he regretted his false claim about the uranium, responded by saying there was "no doubt" in his mind that he was right to conquer Iraq.
"And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 9, 2003 | - The White House admitted that President Bush's claim in his last State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger was based on "unsubstantiated" intelligence;
| Source:
CNN
|
| July 3, 2003 | - President George W. Bush dismissed growing complaints that he exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq in the buildup to the invasion and invited Iraqis who remain loyal to Saddam Hussein to attack American troops: "There are some who feel like that if they attack us, that we may decide to leave prematurely," he said.
"My answer is: bring them on.
We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
| Source:
Orlando Sentinel
|
| July 1, 2003 | -
Hans Blix retired,
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 27, 2003 | -
He also said that he doesn't "know anybody in any government or any intelligence agency who suggested that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons"; it was immediately pointed out that Vice President Dick Cheney made precisely that claim in March.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 25, 2003 | - A State Department intelligence analyst told a congressional hearing that he had felt pressure to make his reports conform to the administration's position on Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 25, 2003 | -
Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, made the surprising claim that "before the war, there was no debate about whether Iraq had unconventional weapons."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 22, 2003 | - 30 kilograms of cesium 137 were recovered from an unemployed schoolteacher in Bangkok who was trying to sell the material to terrorists.
"Cesium 137 is serious stuff, highly radioactive," said one expert.
"You put it alongside four kilograms or more of dynamite and you've got a really dangerous terror weapon."
| Source:
Sydney Morning Herald
|
| June 19, 2003 | -
President Bush declared that the world will not tolerate nuclear weapons in Iran.
"Iran would be dangerous," he said, "if they have a nuclear weapon."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 18, 2003 | -
North Korea announced its intention to accelerate its program to build a nuclear deterrent and said that a U.S. naval blockade or embargo could lead to "all-out war"; a state-run newspaper said that "the Iraqi war proved that disarmament leads to war.
Therefore it is quite clear that the DPRK can never accept the U.S. demand that it scrap its nuclear weapons program first."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 17, 2003 | - mainstream commentators were also beginning to use the word "impeachment" in connection with the weapons of mass destruction scandal.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| June 17, 2003 | - One hundred seventy pounds of cesium 137 and strontium 90 were found in a taxi in Tbilisi, Georgia,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 11, 2003 | - The American soldiers looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were running out of places to look. "It doesn't appear there are any more targets at this time," said Lt. Col. Keith Harrington. "We're hanging around with no missions in the foreseeable future."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 11, 2003 | - Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, said that it doesn't matter whether WMD are found, "because the rationale for the war changed. Americans like a good picture. And one photograph of an Iraqi
child kissing a U.S. soldier is more powerful than two months of debate on the floor of Congress."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 10, 2003 | -
President Bush was still "absolutely convinced" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 8, 2003 | - A growing number of weapons experts, engineers, chemists, and other scientists said that the "germ trailers" trumpeted by the Americans are not at all what one would expect from a mobile weapons lab and that the units appear to be designed to produce hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, which is what Iraqi scientists have claimed.
It was reported that the British sold such a system to Iraq in 1987.
| Source:
Observer
|
| June 8, 2003 | - International weapons inspectors were wondering why American troops failed to stop Iraqi villagers who live near Tuwaitha nuclear complex from dumping uranium yellowcake and nuclear sludge on the ground and using the empty radioactive barrels to haul drinking and bathing water; one woman from a nearby village called Al Mansiya ("The Forgotten") wondered why so many journalists were coming to visit.
"We are like a string of beads that has been cut, and all the beads are on the floor," she told a reporter.
"We love the Americans, but we loved Saddam because he was our father.
He was the tent over us — he was the string in our beads."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 6, 2003 | - President Bush flew over Iraq shortly after he told U.S. troops in Qatar that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would eventually be found.
"We're on the look," he said.
"We'll reveal the truth."
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| June 6, 2003 | - Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, said that the quality of American intelligence on Iraq was very poor and suggested that the American and British governments had "jumped to conclusions" about weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| June 5, 2003 | - Douglas Feith, an undersecretary at the
Pentagon, denied what he called the "urban legends" that the Pentagon
lied about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction or that intelligence
analysts were pressured to come up with slanted reports. "I can't
rule out what other people may have perceived," he said. "Who knows what people perceive? I know of
nobody who pressured anybody."
| Source 1:
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Source 2:
Toronto Star
|
| June 5, 2003 | - Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, said he expected the weapons to turn up eventually and pointed out that it took the FBI five years to catch Eric Rudolph. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, blamed it all on Bill Clinton.
| Source:
Minneapolis Star Tribune
|
| June 2, 2003 | -
President Bush told Polish journalists that "we found the weapons of mass destruction."
| Source:
Charleston Post and Courier
|
| May 30, 2003 | -
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, admitted that the administration's focus on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction was simply politically convenient.
"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction," he said, "because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." Wolfowitz pointed with pride to the "huge prize" that resulted from the invasion, an alternative to Saudi Arabia as a base for American forces.
| Source:
Independent.co.uk
|
| May 30, 2003 | - Lt. Gen. James Conway, the top U.S. Marine in Iraq, said that American forces have looked very hard for weapons of mass destruction but that "they're simply not there."
| Source:
UPI
|
| May 29, 2003 | - A senior British official claimed that his government had "transformed" an intelligence report on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction to make it "sexier." "The classic example," he said, "was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within 45 minutes."
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 29, 2003 | - Prime Minister Tony Blair denied fabricating the report but Labour MPs were threatening to report him to the Speaker of the Commons for misleading parliament.
"No weapons means no threat," said one MP.
"Without WMD, the case for war falls apart." "I believe the prime minister lied to us and lied to us and lied to us," said another.
"The whole war was built upon falsehood and I think the long-term damage will be to democracy in Britain."
| Source:
Independent.co.uk
|
| May 28, 2003 | - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in response to complaints that weapons of mass destruction still have not been found in Iraq, speculated that Iraq might have destroyed its illegal weapons before the war began.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 28, 2003 | - The Pentagon discovered 200 vials of anthrax and other bacteria among 2,000 tons of hazardous waste on an Army base about 50 miles from Washington, D.C.
| Source:
Times of London
|
| May 22, 2003 | - Some Afghan civilians were found to have "astonishing" levels of uranium in their urine.
| Source:
BBC
|
| April 2, 2003 | - Officials continued to play down the possibility that any significant weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq; one senior White House source speculated that what might turn up were some "precursors," and said that Saddam Hussein "couldn't put them together as long as the inspections were going on."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 2, 2002 | -
The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that 22,000 devices worldwide are vulnerable to terrorist exploitation in the manufacture of a “dirty bomb”; the agency said that every country has the materials for such a bomb and that more than 100 countries had not taken adequate steps to protect radioactive materials.
| |
| December 25, 2001 | -
Pakistan denied involvement in the attack, but a captured member of the group admitted that the Pakistani Army donated the weapons and that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency provided logistical support.
| |
| December 18, 2001 | - American warplanes were dropping fewer bombs on Afghanistan.
| |
| December 11, 2001 | -
Moscow
police
arrested seven men trying to sell more than two pounds of weapons-grade enriched uranium.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | - Several children in Afghanistan were injured and killed when they picked up remnants of American cluster bombs, which did precisely what they were designed to do.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | -
Pentagon officials were still trying to decide on a new color for food-aid packages; the current yellow color matches the one used for cluster bombs.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | - Retreating Al Qaeda
terrorists in Afghanistan left behind nuclear designs written in Arabic, German, Urdu, and English; foul-smelling liquids; and a recipe for building a nuclear bomb that included detailed descriptions of how TNT can cause plutonium to begin its deadly chain reaction.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - After the CIA's “threat matrix” showed a “big and credible” threat, Attorney General John Ashcroft warned Americans that a new attack could be imminent.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - Northern Alliance soldiers, initially pleased by the spectacular explosions produced by American B-52s, soon began to complain that the big stratofortresses were not very accurate: “The American bombs were the biggest I have seen in my life,” one fighter said. “But they missed the Taliban.” United States forces were suffering from an “intelligence vacuum,” officials said.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - Reporters visited the village of Chowkar-Karez in Afghanistan where a man named Mehmood moved his family to keep them safe from the American bombs: “I brought my family here for safety,” he said, “and now there are 19 dead, including my wife, my two children, my brother, sister, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, my uncle.” United States forces apparently thought the refugees were Taliban soldiers.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, asked about the massacre, said: “I cannot deal with that particular village.” General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that United States forces would change the color of the yellow food packets being dropped from the air. “It is unfortunate that the cluster bombs — the unexploded ones — are the same color as the food packets,” he said, but he couldn't say when the change would take place “because there are many in the pipeline.” Human Rights Watch called on the Pentagon to stop using cluster bombs, each of which contains 202 soda-sized yellow bomblets, because “they have proven to be a serious and long-lasting threat to civilians, soldiers, peacekeepers, and even clearance experts.”
| |
| October 30, 2001 | -
President Bush warned that America was “still under attack.” Experts described the anthrax as “fluffy.” The terrorists “have the keys to the kingdom,” warned Al Zelicoff, a doctor who works on biological weapons. “They can do large-scale dissemination when they wish.” In a press release entitled “Pentagon Seeks Ideas on Combating Terrorism,” the United States Department of Defense announced that it “specifically seeks help in combating terrorism, defeating difficult targets, conducting protracted operations in remote areas, and developing countermeasures to weapons of mass destruction.”
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - Typhus, botulinum toxin, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and smallpox were tested elsewhere.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - The Federal Aviation Administration opened the skies above American cities to all aircraft but news helicopters, which the agency said posed a unique threat.
| |
| October 16, 2001 | - Homemade bombs made of Drano and foil were thrown at peace supporters at the University of Wisconsin.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | - America and Britain fired cruise missiles and dropped bombs on targets in Afghanistan.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | - The director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which was created by the 1997 treaty that bans such weapons, complained that he didn't have enough money in his budget to make even basic preparations to respond to chemical attacks by terrorists.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | - The White House retreated from its claim that a threat to Air Force One was received on September 11 after no record was found of such a call.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | -
Weapons-industry stocks did rather well, however.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | -
Bush Administration officials announced that they would lift sanctions against Pakistan, which were imposed after it tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | -
Bush Administration officials contradicted previous statements that they would let China build up its nuclear arsenal if Beijing would simply drop its objections to the missile-defense boondoggle. Russia was beginning to approach the subject with a certain irony. “If they have the money to build the most excessive response to the least probable threat situation, that's okay,” said Vladimir Lukin, deputy speaker of parliament.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | - It was revealed that the United States has been engaged in germ-warfare research that violates or comes close to violating the 1972 treaty outlawing biological weapons.
| |
| September 4, 2001 | - An Israeli
death squad using American-made weapons
assassinated Mustafa Zubari, also known as Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | - The Federal Reserve Board cut interest rates for the seventh time this year, noting that the main threat to the economy is “economic weakness.”
| |
| August 28, 2001 | - Potato Head, a gift from their sister city in Rhode Island; the $6,000 present was part of the tourist board's campaign to position the state as “the birthplace of fun.” The metal tail-fin of a high-speed missile dropped from an F-16 fighter jet into a residential neighborhood in Florida, landing within ten feet of two children playing there.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | - The United States decided not to sign a new anti-germ-warfare treaty, bringing to at least five the number of international agreements the U.S. has rejected in recent years, including the Kyoto Protocol, the Landmine Convention, the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | -
President George W. Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed to work toward a disarmament framework that would reduce nuclear weapons while allowing the U.S. its missile-defense scheme; a few days before their discussion, Putin remarked that Bush was “a fairly good-hearted person, nice to talk to, I would even say . . . even a little bit sentimental.”
| |
| July 31, 2001 | - Three Frenchmen, carrying five grams of uranium-235, were arrested for trafficking in nuclear material.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - The air force decided not to retrieve a 7,600 pound nuclear bomb that was dumped off the coast of Georgia in 1958 after a B-47 bomber collided with another plane during training; the air force claims that the bomb is safe.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - The EPA decided how much radioactive waste would be allowed to leak from the proposed dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - Documents revealed that for thirty years, beginning in the 1950s, the United States and Britain imported the cremated bones of Australian babies to test them for strontium 90, an indication that radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests had penetrated their bones.
| |
| May 29, 2001 | - An honors student in Fort Myers, Florida, was suspended and banned from her graduation after a school
security guard found a kitchen knife in her car; the young woman, who spent the weekend in jail on a felony weapons-possession charge, tried to explain that the knife was left there accidentally after she moved house over the weekend.
| |
| May 22, 2001 | - The Bush Administration reportedly was planning not to participate in a new agreement designed to enforce the 1972 treaty banning biological weapons.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | -
Moscow warned the United States about its new Cold War rhetoric; the Russians were upset over remarks by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said that “Russia is an active proliferator” of dangerous weapons
technology which “seems to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money.” The United States expelled 50 Russian diplomats, four of whom were thought to have been working with Robert Philip Hanssen, the FBI agent recently arrested for spying; Russia in turn said it would expel the 50 diplomats most precious to America.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | - Foot-and-mouth disease spread to the Netherlands and Ireland.
Britain was planning to destroy over 500,000 cows. American researchers suggested using napalm.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | - A new study found that safer and more effective land mines will be available after 2006.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | -
Russia said it would again sell arms to Iran, causing some Russians to wonder whether the weapons would end up in the hands of Islamic
terrorists within their own borders.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | - A man in Beverly, Massachusetts, was arrested for threatening to kill his girlfriend with a homemade bazooka that shoots potatoes.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | - Most of the “smart” bombs dropped on Iraq last week missed their targets, the Pentagon admitted.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | - An unknown quantity of a radioactive substance was dumped into the New York City sewer system.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | -
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell defended President George W. Bush's plans to deploy the national missile defense system despite its technical and political flaws: “I don't consider it as being an arrogant position,” he said. “Or one where we are trying to force anything on the rest of the world.” Russian
defense minister Igor Sergeyev warned that Russia still had “three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defense forces,” which were developed to defeat President Ronald Reagan's pie-in-the-sky Star Wars program.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | - A British hospital apologized to plastic-surgery patients for selling their surplus skin to the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency for chemical-weapons research.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | - A Jewish settler who beat a ten-year-old Palestinian boy to death (after kicking the little boy to the ground, Nahum Kurman placed his foot on the boy's neck and repeatedly struck his head with a pistol butt) was sentenced to six months of community service.
| |
| January 23, 2001 | - Swiss researchers found traces of uranium 236, which comes from nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, in samples of American-made depleted uranium found in Kosovo, raising concerns that the weapons debris might contain contaminants that are even more dangerous, such as plutonium and americium.
| |
| January 16, 2001 | - Officials at Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford, Connecticut, acknowledged that two uranium fuel rods had been missing for twenty years, a fact that was noticed only two months ago.
| |
| January 9, 2001 | -
North Dakota issued a concealed-weapons permit to a blind man.
| |
| January 9, 2001 | - Exposure to depleted uranium, which was used in NATO's bombings of Kosovo, Bosnia, and Serbia, was thought to be responsible.
| |
| January 9, 2001 | - A NATO spokesman denied that depleted uranium was a significant hazard, though the U.S.
| |
| January 9, 2001 | - Department of Transportation, which has used the metal to balance aircraft, warns personnel that the material is extremely hazardous if particles are ingested or inhaled, something particularly likely after a bombing, which produces large quantities of depleted-uranium dust.
| |
| January 9, 2001 | -
United States intelligence officials reported that Russia recently moved nuclear weapons into the Baltic town of Kaliningrad, formerly known as Konigsberg, the home of Immanuel Kant, the author of the Critique of Pure Reason and “Perpetual Peace.” President Vladimir Putin, asked about the reports, responded: “That's rubbish.”
| |
| January 2, 2001 | - A big snowstorm hit the American South: “It's really the equivalent of having a nuclear device go off,” mused the governor of Arkansas, “without the mushroom cloud or radioactivity.” Police officers were shooting ice off limbs near power lines with shotguns.
| |
| December 5, 2000 | - Several small “bomblets” filled with sarin nerve gas were found at an old bombing range near Denver; the Army will blow them up.
| |
| December 5, 2000 | - An ice storm closed the last nuclear reactor at Chernobyl.
| |
| November 28, 2000 | -
China promised to stop selling missile technology to companies trying to develop nuclear weapons and also to obey the rule of law.
| |
| November 28, 2000 | -
Israeli
defense forces responded to terrorist
attacks with bombs of their own, killing several adults and dismembering at least one child.
| |
| November 21, 2000 | -
President Putin called for radically lower numbers of Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons, which was said to be motivated largely by the fact that Russia cannot afford to maintain weapons that are designed never to be used.
| |
| November 7, 2000 | - A fifteen-year-old boy with a loaded 9mm pistol took a pregnant teacher and eighteen other children hostage in a Dallas school; police saved the day.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | - The United States Congress increased military aid to Israel by $60 million, bringing the total up to $1.9 billion; Israel put a rush on its order for a new German submarine; according to some reports, the submarine will be equipped with nuclear weapons.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | - Leonard Downey, Jr., the executive editor of the Washington Post, reminded readers that in his tireless quest for objectivity, he does not vote, nor does he allow himself “to decide, even privately, which candidate would make the better president or member of the city council, or what position I would take on any issue.” San Francisco relaxed stringent graduation requirements after it was learned that thirty percent of the senior class would not graduate.
| |
| October 24, 2000 | - The U.S. Department of Energy found that it had underestimated the amount of plutonium and other radioactive elements stored in flimsy containers that either are leaking or are in danger of leaking; the actual amount of such waste is ten times higher than previously thought.
| |
| October 10, 2000 | - Hippies threw smoke bombs at police in Amsterdam outside a conference attended by the president of the World Bank.
| |
| October 3, 2000 | - Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, the former head of Mexico's National Institute to Combat Drugs, was sentenced to 71 years in prison on drug and weapons charges.
| |
| September 26, 2000 | - A new book claimed that anthropologists working in Venezuela in the 1960s deliberately infected the Yanomami people with measles, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, in order to test theories about evolution and eugenics; the same anthropologists, who were working in association with the United States atomic energy commission, also injected Americans with radioactive plutonium without their knowledge or permission.
| |
| September 19, 2000 | - The Palestinian Central Council voted to postpone its declaration of an independent state; in Gaza, members of the Gaza Accountants Association fought with police after several accountants were arrested for firing their weapons in the air.
| |
| September 19, 2000 | -
New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani was treated for cancer; doctors implanted radioactive seeds in his prostate.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - The Congressional Research Service reported that the U.S. was still the world's largest arms dealer, having sold $11.8 billion in weapons in 1999.
| |
| August 15, 2000 | - A National Academy of Sciences report found that most U.S. nuclear bomb-making facilities, including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, will be contaminated “in perpetuity.” Defense Secretary William S. Cohen delayed making his recommendation to President Clinton concerning the wisdom of building a national missile defense program.
| |
| August 1, 2000 | - Atmospheric scientists discovered that some 4,000 tons of a new synthetic greenhouse gas have been released into the atmosphere; the gas, which takes 1,000 years to degrade, may be a by-product of weapons production.
| |
| July 25, 2000 | - Two Japanese
terrorists were sentenced to die for releasing nerve gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995.
| |
