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ETAJIMA ? The only special squad of the Maritime Self-Defense Force has engaged in secret drills to prepare for Japan's possible inspections of North Korea-related ships under a U.N. Security Council resolution following Pyongyang's nuclear test last month, Kyodo News learned Thursday. The MSDF is carrying out the drills every day at its base in Etajima, a Seto Inland Sea island in Hiroshima Prefecture even though the Japanese government has yet to decide its position on the issue due to legal sensitivities. The government has left various questions unanswered, such as whether it can apply the law on Japan's...

Under an emergency ordinance, electricians may inspect their own work; officials worry about fraud.October 9, 2006—A member of the New Orleans City Council is pushing for rescission of the city's emergency ordinance allowing homeowners to waive inspections before restoration of electricity at their Katrina-flooded houses. The ordinance has been criticized by city officials and electrical experts as a failure in basic building safety. "I am not comfortable with the self-inspection program," says New Orleans District B City Councilwoman Stacy Head. "I am going to push for a revocation of that rule. If the city needs to hire more inspectors to...

How effective were UN sanctions against Saddam ? Liberals say, "Very effective !" This cynic says otherwise. Read and draw your own conclusions.

U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Memphis, the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat, attended the Celebration Tuesday, where he was introduced by announcer Chip Walters as "one of the reasons we're having a horse show tonight." Ford had originally been scheduled to present a class award on Friday night, and was on his way to the Celebration grounds just as a dispute between trainers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture shut down Friday night's show. "I think everybody was disappointed," Ford told the Times-Gazette just as Tuesday night's show was starting. He said he'd been aware of some...

General Yury Baluyevsky-Russia's #2 man in Defense-is unhappy over the American's missile defense system. What good is it to have 927 ICBMs if they can be destroyed in flight ? Details at: http://insidestraight.typepad.com/the_inside_straight/2006/08/us_and_russia_h.html

Document Document ISGQ-2003-00004530 dated September 15 2002 is a memo from a General in Saddam Feedayeens to the Supervisor of those Feedayeens who is not other than Uday Saddam Hussein. The memo talks about a hidden large container that contain a Chemical Material and that it was buried under the ground near Fallujah back when Hussein Kamal Hussein was in charge of the Iraqi Military Industrialization Commission. Hussein Kamal was the brother in law of Saddam who fled to Jordan in 1995 exposed to the world that Saddam still have WMD and then Saddam tricked him to come back by...

Indonesia to have major nuclear plant by 2015 Indonesia will have its first nuclear power plant on densely populated Java island by 2015, the country's energy minister has said. "We have the blueprint. We will start the construction in six or seven years," Purnomo Yusgiantoro told AFP. The power plant, to be built in East Java, will have the capacity of 1,000 megawatts in the first phase, with the cost estimated at $US8 billion ($10.35 billion), he said. The capacity will later be increased to 4,000 megawatts. "We are open to any investors who are interested in developing this project,"...

Vienna — The UN's atomic energy agency has found traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian site linked to the country's Defence Ministry, diplomats said Friday, adding to concerns that Tehran is hiding activities aimed at making nuclear arms. The diplomats, who insisted on anonymity in exchange for revealing the confidential information, said the findings were preliminary and still had to be confirmed through other lab tests. But they said the density of enrichment appeared to be close to or above the level used to make nuclear warheads. Still, they said, further analysis could show that the traces match...

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Security Council gave Iran 30 days to clear up suspicions that it is seeking nuclear weapons, and key members turned their focus on what to do if Iran refuses to suspend uranium enrichment and allow more intrusive inspections. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Berlin on Thursday for discussions between the five permanent council members — the United States, Russia, China Britain and France — plus Germany, on how much and what kind of pressure to exert on Iran if it refuses to comply. After three weeks of intense negotiations, the 15-member Security Council...

Iran's order that U.N. nuclear surveillance gear be removed from key sites by mid-February may prevent U.N. inspectors from discovering whether Tehran's atomic drive has wholly peaceful aims, diplomats said. The U.N. nuclear watchdog's board of governors voted on Saturday to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council over fears that it secretly wants to build atomic bombs. Iran, insisting it wants only nuclear power, retaliated by halting compliance with a U.N. system of short-notice nuclear inspections. Diplomats said this could make it difficult for Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to get clear answers for a...

Two of the Moss Landing Harbor residents who were the subjects of random boat searches during Labor Day Weekend say their experiences were closer to armed invasions than the friendly "safety inspections" characterized by U.S. Coast Guard officials. Both residents said search crews entered the harbor in inflatable boats with machine guns mounted on their bows. Then, carrying M-16 rifles, they approached residents and boarded and searched their boats in the name of safety and "homeland security." One resident, who asked not to be identified for fear or retribution, said his experience was "very intimidating, very frightening." "To me it...

Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 12/03/2005) Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million (£1.4 million) bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. weapons inspectors are planning for possible monitoring of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile programs despite being barred from the country by the United States, according to a report to the U.N. Security Council. The quarterly report released Wednesday by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, outlines a range of activities undertaken by the U.N. inspectors to seek new information about Iraq's weapons programs and to prepare for a possible future role. U.N. inspectors were pulled out of Iraq in March, just before the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. After the...

The son of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, lobbied for business contacts at gatherings of UN officials on behalf of a company in the same year as it won an oil-for-food programme deal, it has emerged. The second disclosure in a week about Kojo Annan's role with the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection Services, which secured the $4.8 million (£2.46 million) UN contract to monitor goods entering and leaving Iraq in 1998, has raised embarrassing questions for his father. The details were revealed in Cotecna company documents handed over under subpoena to US congressional scrutineers who are investigating the oil-for-food...

WASHINGTON — Documents seen by FOX News suggest a conflict of interest may exist between Kofi Annan's (search) son, the Swiss company he worked for and the United Nations. Congressional investigators are examining those records and thousands of pages of others as part of their probe into the controversial U.N. Oil-for-Food (search) program. FOX News was permitted to review some documents but not make copies. Kojo Annan (search), the son of the U.N. secretary general, claims he has never been involved directly or indirectly with any business related to the United Nations. And Cotecna Inspection S.A., the company Kojo worked...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: DANIEL MCKIVERGAN, Deputy DirectorSUBJECT: Duelfer, the UN, and the New York Times Yesterday, the Washington Post reported ("Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month") that the conclusions reached in Charles Duelfer's September 2004 report on Iraq's weapons programs will be the "final word" on the subject. The New York Times editorial board weighed in today. The Times notes that what the "Iraqi invasion has actually proved is that the weapons inspection worked, that international sanctions - deeply, deeply messy as they turned out to be - worked, and that in the case of Saddam...

Former President Jimmy Carter was a target of the clandestine lobby campaign launched by an Iraqi-American businessman who admitted he was paid millions of dollars to undermine U.S. policy toward Iraq, it was revealed yesterday. Virginia-based oilman Samir Vincent earlier this week became the first person to plead guilty in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal. He had several contacts with the former Democratic president in a bid to weaken and eventually repeal sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime, investigators said. Contacts with Vincent dated back to 1999, when Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, hosted a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders at their...

No one familiar with Iran’s record of broken promises on its hidden nuclear weapons program will be surprised by the allegations leveled against Tehran this week. On Wednesday, November 17, outgoing US secretary of state Colin Powell said to reporters during a South American tour: US has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles for the delivery of nuclear weapons. “I have seen information that they not only have the missiles but are working hard to put the two together.” The highly classified, unverified information Powell referred to was described in more detail by the Washington Post the next...

As Saddam Hussein pressed the United Nations oil-for-food relief program for more money that he used to buy banned weapons, an unwitting ally may have been the American driver. Almost until the eve of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, American oil companies were among the largest purchasers of Iraqi crude oil. The role that the companies, including ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, played in the oil-for-food program is now coming under greater scrutiny in the wake of a report by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency that disclosed how extensively Mr. Hussein was abusing profits from the...

A US-European rift surfaced today over how harshly to deal with Iran and its suspect nuclear program, with the Europeans ignoring American suggestions and circulating their own recommendations to other delegates at a key meeting of the UN atomic agency. Diplomats at a board of governors meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency had suggested earlier that the United States and the European Union were making progress in drafting common language for a resolution that would set a deadline for Iran to meet demands designed to dispel fears it was trying to make nuclear arms.But the latest draft, obtained...