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FORT WORTH -- A box containing depleted uranium that fell from a truck yesterday has been found. Police and emergency hazardous material workers searched an area of northwest Fort Worth overnight for the device that is used to X-ray construction welds. A driver with a company identified as Desert Industrial X-Ray was transporting the device through the area of Blue Mound Road and U.S. 287 just before 11 p.m. when the box apparently bounced out of the back of his pickup, police said. Lt. Kent Worley, a spokesman for the Fort Worth Fire Department, said this morning that a man...

Anti-depleted uranium activists have enlisted the assistance of all of Hawaii’s leftist alternative weeklies in a campaign against depleted uranium. The Hawaii Island Journal June 30 caries a front page cartoon skeleton in an aloha shirt and the headline “Radioactive us -- danger depleted uranium.” Articles on the alleged risks of depleted uranium appeared in quick succession in Honolulu Weekly, June 13, Maui Time, June 21, and Big Island Weekly, June 27 as well as the Journal. Big Island Weekly points out that the latest anti-DU hype is based on observations in South Kona by an activist armed with a...

In the wake of an Iraqi official last month blaming America's use of depleted uranium munitions in its 2003 "Shock and Awe" campaign for a surge in cancer there, the Defense Department is facing an October deadline for providing a comprehensive report to Congress on the health effects of such weapons. The report is required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, which President Bush signed into law last year. The request for the study is an outgrowth of claims by Iraq war veterans that exposure to depleted uranium and other toxic substances there has negatively affected...

U.S. Army troops operating at a former Iraqi air base recently made a startling discovery: Russian-made missiles marked with radioactive warning signs. Army bomb disposal troops confirmed using Geiger counters that the missiles are indeed radioactive. The discovery is not, however, considered the long-sought "smoking gun" of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The missiles appear to be part of a cache of weapons supplied to Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War. The Russian-made R-60, NATO code name AA-8 Aphid, air-to-air missiles are part of a huge stockpile of former Iraqi Air Force munitions uncovered in over a dozen concrete bunkers....

"You are not being truthful about the purpose of your visit to Italy. What is your interest in diabetes and depleted uranium?" the Italian consul in Bombay demanded to know. "I am just traveling to Italy to meet with Leuren Moret," the famous Indian doctor answered. Leuren Moret recounted the episode in an interview June 29, 2006. She said, "The doctor had never mentioned either diabetes or depleted uranium." The Italian government official was grilling one of the leading doctors in India. This "interview" at the Italian embassy took place June 27, 2006, in Bombay, India. The doctor had traveled...

Cpl. Kendall D. McKibben was prepared to sacrifice his life for the Army. He says he almost did repeatedly over a year of patrols dodging bullets in Baghdad and dealing with a grape-size brain tumor. So the 33-year-old says he can't understand why the military is refusing a routine subpoena that he believes could help him avoid a 13-year prison sentence. -snip- McKibben feels doubly wronged because he believes the tumor itself was caused by exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq. Depleted uranium is a heavy metal that is slightly radioactive and is used in some armor-piercing munitions. In Baghdad,...

Ex-military director speaks out Peace activist says U.S. using uranium in warfare Methodist Medical Center Sunday, January 8, 2006 BY KELLY MAHONEy OF THE JOURNAL STAR PEORIA - A former military director on Saturday accused the United States of war crimes for its use of depleted uranium in warfare. Peace activist Dr. Doug Rokke, a Gulf War veteran and former director of the U.S. Army's Depleted Uranium Project, presented his thoughts on the military's alleged use of depleted uranium to about 50 people in the basement auditorium of the Peoria Public Library's main Downtown branch. Rokke's presentation was sponsored by...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Sandia National Laboratories has completed a two-year study of the potential health effects associated with accidental exposure to depleted uranium (DU) during the 1991 Gulf War. ..... Marshall's study concluded that the reports of serious health risks from DU exposure are not supported by veteran medical statistics nor supported by his analysis. Only a few U.S. veterans in vehicles accidentally struck by DU munitions are predicted to have inhaled sufficient quantities of DU particulate to incur any significant health risk. For these individuals, DU-related risks include the possibility of temporary kidney damage and about a 1 percent...

".....The AP also issued an update on the Pentagon’s response to a study which concluded, "powerful antibiotics did nothing to relieve the chronic health problems reported by Gulf War veterans". Stephen L. Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center in Silver Spring, Md said, this confirms information that has already been out there,......We know that we can stop looking at this and we can focus research on other areas that might prove fruitful. Joseph F. Collins, a VA Maryland Healthcare System researcher as said, "it will be a long time, if ever, before the cause of Gulf...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - A Pentagon-sponsored study of weapons made from depleted uranium, a substance whose use has attracted environmental protests around the world, has concluded that it is neither toxic enough nor radioactive enough to be a health threat to soldiers in the doses they are likely to receive. In a five-year, $6 million study, researchers fired depleted uranium projectiles into Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks, in a steel chamber at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, and measured the levels of uranium in the air and how quickly the particles settled. The conclusion, said Dr. Michael E....

I had the opportunity to hear a talk by a US Army scientist (pathologist??) from an Army medical laboratory based in Bethesda, Maryland the other day, and the topic was quite eye-opening. I should add the disclaimer that I am not in the medical field, but rather in the terminal ballistics research area for the US military. Since the author indicated the result will soon be sent to the open literature journals, and since the audience was international, I feel free to reveal some of what he related. As background, there is this ongoing struggle in the military community to...

Bujanovac, Nov 10, 2003 - The clean-up of some 5,000 square meters of land in the village of Bratoselce near Bujanovac, contaminated by depleted uranium during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, was finished on Sunday. Serbian Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Andjelka Mihajlov and Serbia-Montenegrin Army Chief of Staff General Branko Krga visited the site upon the completion of the works, expressing satisfaction with the cooperation between the ministry, the army, and the Vinca institute of nuclear sciences during this task. During the clean-up, the team performing the task discovered around 100 kilograms of depleted uranium in...

Death By Slow Burn How America Nukes Its Own Troops What ‘Support Our Troops’ Really Means by Amy Worthington, Idaho* On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war activist holding a sign: ‘Nuke the evil scum, it worked in 1945!’ That’s exactly what George Bush has done. America’s mega-billion dollar war in Iraq has been indeed a Nuclear War. Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a ‘liberation’ gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Justice Department is considering whether to bring charges against two ABC News employees who smuggled depleted uranium into the United States as part of a report on port security, government sources said. The network said Thursday that its employees had done nothing illegal. Federal authorities recovered a shipment of about 15 pounds of harmless material within an hour of its arrival at the port of Los Angeles, California, the sources said. ABC said two producers packed the depleted uranium into a suitcase sent to Los Angeles aboard a container ship from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta....

Border Breach? Customs Fails to Detect Depleted Uranium — Again Sept. 10— For a second year, U.S. government screeners have failed to detect a shipment of depleted uranium in a container sent by ABCNEWS from overseas as part of a test of security at American ports. "I think this is a case in point which established the soft underbelly of national security and homeland defense in the United States," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has been urging the Bush administration to do more to enhance port security. The ABCNEWS test was criticized by officials at the Department of Homeland...

IN LAST WEEK'S EPISODE, much of respectable Washington was aghast that the Bush White House had "politicized" the possibility of war by questioning the patriotism of congressional Democrats who opposed the president's Iraq policy. Respectable Washington was mistaken about all this. First off, war is an intrinsically and legitimately political issue, partisan debate about which is nothing to be aghast over. And while it would indeed have been beyond the pale for the president and his men to smear Democratic dissent as per se disloyal, no such smear had actually been forthcoming. Neither, for that matter, had any serious Democratic...

Health Issue Is Raised After Cancer Deaths of Italians Who Served in Balkans A furor in Europe over possible health hazards from depleted uranium ammunition that U.S. warplanes fired in the Balkans has no foundation in medical research, according to numerous studies and radiation specialists. Long-term exposure to natural uranium, which is more radioactive than depleted uranium (DU), doesn't increase a person's risk for leukemia, lung cancer or other serious diseases, many studies have concluded. Chronic exposure to uranium can slightly alter kidney function, although not enough to affect health.... snip... "It is just not reasonable to assume that there...

"The United States has conducted two nuclear wars. The first is against Japan in 1945, the second in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991." So declares activist Helen Caldicott in a half-page ad placed by a Japanese anti-nuclear group in the March 24 New York Times. If you didn't hear about the Persian Gulf Hiroshima, it's because she's actually referring to depleted uranium (DU) munitions. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark says that these "are an unacceptable threat to life, a violation of international law and an assault on human dignity." Using them results in a "deterioration of genetic health" and...

A US-led War is being waged upon the Iraqi people for power lust and corporate greed. This was according to the audience and those on the podium at an anti-war rally held near the Washington Monument on Saturday Apr. 5. (GWU) Students Against the War in Iraq [SAWI] /Campus Anti-war Network [CAN] also backed simultaneous rallies in Chicago and Oakland

<p>WASHINGTON --Iraq has tried to manipulate world opinion in recent months in an effort to prevent the United States from using its most effective armor-penetrating shells, the kind that decimated the Iraqi tank fleet in the Persian Gulf War, U.S. military officials say.</p>

KOTOR JOURNAL On a Balkan War's Last Day, Trouble From the Sky By MARLISE SIMONS This Montenegrin scientist is engaged in a cleanup three years after American warplanes rained down munitions containing depleted uranium. KOTOR, Montenegro — In the early morning hours, the scientists come to work on a small tongue of land with one of the loveliest views along the Mediterranean. Behind them is the stunning bay of Kotor and its crown of steep mountains, ahead is the shimmer of the open sea, a few hours' sail from Italy. But the men hunch down, their eyes fixed on the...

Depleted Uranium May Cause Liver Damage: Study Tue Mar 12,11:03 AM ET By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - Soldiers exposed to high levels of depleted uranium may suffer kidney damage and it could pose a danger to civilians through contaminated soil or water, scientists warned Tuesday. But, in the latest contribution to a sometimes heated debate, a report by Britain's Royal Society said that only a small number of soldiers would have inhaled large enough amounts of depleted uranium (DU) to seriously damage their health and preventive measures could limit any danger to civilians. It said most veterans of the...