Nuclear bomb blueprints and manuals on how to manufacture weapons-grade uranium for warheads are feared to be circulating on the international black market, according to investigators tracking the world’s most infamous nuclear smuggling racket. Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under US pressure, secretly destroyed tens of thousands of documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation. The information was seized from the home and computers of Urs Tinner, a 43-year-old Swiss engineer who has been in custody for almost four years as a key suspect in the nuclear smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who in 2004 admitted leaking nuclear secrets and is under house arrest in Islamabad. The Khan network trafficked nuclear materials, equipment and knowhow to at least three countries: Iran, Libya, and North Korea. President Pascal Couchepin stunned his Swiss compatriots last week by announcing that the Tinner files, believed to number around 30,000 documents, had been shredded. The extraordinary move, prompting demands for a parliamentary inquiry, was warranted to prevent the documents ‘getting into the hands of a terrorist organisation or an unauthorised state’, according to Couchepin. […]
BAGHDAD – ‘I have no future here to stay.’ Written in broken English but with perfect clarity, the message is a stark and plaintive assessment from one of the last Jews of Babylon. The community of Jews in Baghdad is now all but vanished in a land where their heritage recedes back to Abraham of Ur, to Jonah’s prophesying to Nineveh, and to Nebuchadnezzar’s sending Jews into exile here more than 2,500 years ago. Just over half a century ago, Iraq’s Jews numbered more than 130,000. But now, in the city that was once the community’s heart, they cannot muster even a minyan, the 10 Jewish men required to perform some of the most important rituals of their faith. They are scared even to publicize their exact number, which was recently estimated at seven by the Jewish Agency for Israel, and at eight by one Christian cleric. That is not enough to read the Torah in public, if there were anywhere in public they would dare to read it, and too few to recite a proper Kaddish for the dead. Among those who remain is a former car salesman who describes himself as the ‘rabbi, slaughterer […]
British pensioners who cannot afford to heat their homes. European hauliers and fishermen whose livelihoods are under threat. Palestinians forced to fill up their cars with olive oil. Americans asked to go down to a four-day week. All around the world, in a multitude of ways, the soaring price of oil is hurting rich and poor alike. For the lucky ones, it is simply a matter of changing their lifestyle. But those most vulnerable to the price of oil have been driven on to the streets in angry protests, which raise a fundamental question: what can we do to survive in a world where a barrel of oil costs $127 (£64)? Great Britain The rise in the oil price could not come at a worse time for Gordon Brown. After a week that has seen hauliers blocking roads and air passengers facing higher surcharges, yesterday it was the impact on fuel bills that came to the fore. The Prime Minister’s attempt to ease the pain felt by pensioners and low-income families from rising fuel bills was dismissed as a ‘sticking plaster to hold back a catastrophe’. It consists mainly of advice on coping with the cost of […]
Agriculture Secretary Edward T. Schafer is preparing to walk into a buzzsaw of criticism over American biofuels policy when he meets with world leaders to discuss the global food crisis next week. Mr. Schafer took the offensive at a press conference on Thursday that discussed the food summit, planned for Rome. He said an analysis by the Agriculture Department had determined that biofuel production was responsible for only 2 to 3 percent of the increase in global food prices, while biofuels had reduced consumption of crude oil by a million barrels a day. ‘We think that policy-wise in the United States of America - and certainly in the rest of the world - as we see the price of oil and petroleum escalate dramatically beyond anyone’s imagination, that one of the ways to deal with that is to produce biofuels which are renewables, better for the environment and help lower that cost,’ he said. Mr. Schafer’s remarks came as ethanol and biofuels are coming under increasing criticism from foreign leaders and members of Congress, as grocery prices climb in the developed world and malnutrition and hunger threaten to spread in the poorest nations. Just hours before […]
The sound diners hear while they are eating food can change the way they think it tastes, scientists have discovered. Researchers have also found that changing the colour of a food can influence the flavour experienced by consumers. The sound of sizzling bacon can prompt diners to taste it – Sounds and colour influence the taste of food The sound of sizzling bacon can prompt diners to taste it Food manufacturers are now hoping to exploit the findings in a bid to make their foods more appealing. Previously it was thought that the sense of taste and smell were the only human senses that played a role in experiencing flavour. Professor Charles Spence, a sensory psychologist at Oxford University, believes it is possible to change the flavour of food simply by exciting people’s sense of hearing and vision. He has found that by tinkering with the sound a food makes while it is being eaten can make it seem crunchier or softer in the mouth. Playing sounds of the seaside while diners are eating can make them detect seafood flavours while the sound of clucking chickens or sizzling bacon brings out the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
