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"More than 30,000 tons of chemical munitions have been disposed of over nearly three decades. Years behind schedule and several times over budget, the United States’ declared chemical weapons stock is fully destroyed. The last batch of munitions containing sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent, were disarmed on Friday, July 7 at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant in Kentucky. The destruction was verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons."... ..."Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the military was supposed to have eliminated its stockpile in 2007, almost two decades ago. It was granted a five-year extension...

In the summer of 1495, King Hans of Denmark and Norway anchored his warship off the southern coast of Sweden. While Hans was on land, his vessel—known as Gribshunden or Griffen—mysteriously caught fire and sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.Hans was on his way to Kalmar, where he hoped to be elected king of Sweden and reunite the broader Nordic region under a single ruler. As such, Hans brought many opulent status symbols, including luxurious foods and spices, to help persuade the Swedish leadership to agree to his plan.Remarkably, many of those foods and spices have survived underwater...

Poor seed harvests and supply chain issues are causing a temporary shortage.If you've not checked your "What Are We Running Low On Now" bingo card lately, give it a look to see if you have the Dijon mustard square. According to reports from both Canada and France, the condiment could be in short supply for the next few months, as a result of environmental factors and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Canada is one of the world's biggest exporters of mustard seeds, and drought-like conditions in the western part of the country led to a poor harvest this season. According...

In the summer of 2014, as his followers were ravaging the cities of northern Iraq, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi convened a secret meeting with a weapons expert whose unusual skills the terrorist chief was anxious to acquire. His guest was a small man, barely above 5 feet tall, and he had only recently been freed from a years-long stint in U.S. and Iraqi prisons. But before that, Salih al-Sabawi had been an Iraqi official of some renown: a Russian-trained engineer who had once helped President Saddam Hussein build his extensive arsenal of chemical weapons. Baghdadi had summoned Sabawi,...

Apparently the world’s supply of a favorite hot dog condiment doesn’t cut the … err … mustard. And, as a result, we may be looking at an international mustard shortage sooner than we think. According to Business Insider, a year of poor mustard seed production is the cause of what may result in a lack of mustard on American grocery store shelves in the near future. Experts say you can thank climate change for the large drop in mustard seed production, with Canada (the world’s second largest producer) and France watching the most recent growing season’s yields fall 28 percent...

Our NJ.com foodies have been raving about the mustard pie from Papa’s Tomato Pies in Robbinsville for years. Naturally, I had to see what all the fuss was about for our latest series, N.J. Takeout Stakeout, which highlights great to-go dishes across the state. Mustard on pizza? I know, it sounds crazy but, trust me, it’s crazy delicious! The pros at Papa’s know what they’re doing. The spicy brown mustard is drizzled onto the dough first. Then comes the cheese and, finally, the lightly sweet tomato sauce is spooned onto the top of the pie before going into the oven....

Not even beer is safe from the turmoil of 2020. Craft brewery Oskar Blues has teamed up with French’s mustard for the cookout collaboration no one asked for. Beer mustard already exists, but this is not that. Instead Oskar Blues and French’s are making a mustard beer, a hazy golden wheat beer brewed with lime, lemon, tangerine, passionfruit and a not insignificant amount of yellow mustard. The beer clocks in at 5.2% alcohol. Oskar Blues, one of the county’s largest craft breweries, has a brewery and taproom in the Western North Carolina mountain town of Brevard. French’s makes probably the...

There are certain food pairings that people come up with that outsiders just don't understand, like peanut butter and pickle sandwiches or Cheetos and milk, to name a few. But one weird combo made the final cut into a popular crossword puzzle and it’s sparking some questions among people on the internet. It all started with a crossword puzzle that appeared in the Feb. 12 edition of USA Today. The clue said, "Cookie that some people eat with mustard," and "Oreo" was the only thing that fit. Don’t think about it for too long—you could get queasy. Well, Brett Murphy,...

It’s the latest hybrid nobody asked for. America’s leading mustard brand, French’s, has collaborated with trendy California-based ice cream company Coolhaus to create mustard-flavored ice cream. The suspect sweet will be served up starting the week of Aug. 3, which is not coincidentally National Mustard Day.

After the release of the Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer report, the headlines blazed "No WMD Found." ...This reflects the notion that Iraq was only a threat if it had military munitions filled with WMD. The claim "Iraq was not an imminent threat" was also expounded by pundits that seemingly crawled out of the woodwork as well as those opposed to President Bush. But have these individuals read carefully the report...? While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale...

The military assesses that the shell fired on a joint US-Iraqi base Tuesday was indeed a chemical weapon, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford. "We assess it to be a sulfur mustard blister agent," Dunford told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday. It is the first time the military has confirmed its assessment on the record since CNN reported the development Wednesday.

In August of 2012, Barack Obama established a red line against Syria as a warning to not use chemical weapons against rebel forces, including ISIS. When a chemical attack outside Damascus killed more than 1,400 people there was a lot of finger pointing and saber rattling. Obama did nothing. A year later Syrian President Bashar al Assad voluntary turned over his chemical weapons for destruction. And now, three and a half years after Assad's act, America's top intelligence official confirmed that ISIS has been manufacturing and deploying chemical agents in Iraq and Syria During testimony before the Senate Armed Services...

Islamic State forces have fired crude chemical weapons at US troops in Iraq, the Pentagon has confirmed, a startling disclosure that US officials promptly downplayed as resulting in no deaths or injuries. The attack came from a powdered mustard agent delivered in a mortar or rocket shell and fired on US forces on Tuesday at the Qayyarah West air base near Mosul. The air base, recaptured from Isis in July, is a pivotal staging ground for a highly anticipated attack on Mosul, Isis’s capital in Iraq approximately 40 miles (65km) to the north. Related: The harrowing story of the woman...

ISIS is suspected of firing a shell with mustard agent that landed at the Qayyara air base in Iraq Tuesday where US and Iraqi troops are operating, according to several US officials. The shell was categorized by officials as either a rocket or artillery shell. After it landed on the base, just south of Mosul, US troops tested it and received an initial reading for a chemical agent they believe is mustard. No US troops were hurt or have displayed symptoms of exposure to mustard agent. One official said the agent had "low purity" and was "poorly weaponized." A second...

WHEN THE IRAQI REGIME collapsed in April 2003, few observers saw reason to mourn the loss of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. While a great deal of information about the former Iraqi regime's assorted atrocities has been uncovered since the invasion, newly-released documents go even further in demonstrating its manifest depravity. One such document is CMPC-2003-012666, a letter from Qusay Hussein that directs as follows: Transfer all Kuwaiti POW's / a total of 448 captured Kuwaitis who are located at the Al-Nida Al-Agher Prison and the Intelligence / General Center and Kazema Prison in Al-Kazema, to make them human shields at all...

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Pentagon sources tell CBS News that reports are "credible" that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) likely used mustard gas against Kurdish fighters in Iraq. It is unclear if the gas was leftover from Saddam Hussein stockpiles or if they were brought over from Syria, which would be the two likeliest sources of the gas, said a senior Department of Defense official. The official said the reports are credible because of prior information, but did not elaborate. Mustard gas is considered an "antiquated" weapon that must be used in very large concentrations to be lethal, the official told...

Discover what really happened after one fine English gentleman passed another fine gentleman a jar of Grey Poupon while driving in their Rolls-Royce. Since I’m currently working my way through the first three seasons of Downton Abby (Highly Recommended Entertainment) I found Grey Poupon “The Lost Footage” to be particularly pleasing to watch. I must partake in some of this culinary delight shortly to make myself feel like a king in my own castle. Grey Poupon The Lost Footage

MCNEAL — Once it housed soldiers stationed at Fort Huachuca, then it was moved to McNeal and was filled with the sounds of happy feet dancing and the chattering of ladies at coffee cloches. Now abandoned, there are new inhabitants that really are no fun — killer bees. The irritable, six-legged flying pollinators have been in the building on Frontier Road for a number of years, tending huge honeycombs and creating problems for those who walk their dogs, ride horses or just take a morning stroll. If one puts out nectar for the hummingbirds and orioles in spring within the...

June 23, 2006: The revelation that Coalition forces have discovered about 500 shells containing chemical weapons (mostly sarin nerve gas and mustard gas) since 2003, most of which are pre-1991 Gulf War vintage, leads to the question as to why the U.S. waited so long to reveal this. The U.S. government has taken a beating for supposed failures to find weapons of mass destruction in the press, and from political opponents. There have been some discoveries that have made the news, most notably an incident in May, 2004, when terrorists used a 155-millimeter shell loaded with sarin in an IED....