Jill St. Claire's HomelandSecurityUS.NET

10/22/2008 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Enough processed uranium to make six nuclear weapons was secretly transported thousands of miles by truck, rail and ship on a monthlong trip from a research reactor in Budapest, Hungary, to a facility in Russia so it could be more closely protected against theft, U.S. officials revealed Wednesday.

The shipment, conducted under tight secrecy and security, included a three-week trip by cargo ship through the Mediterranean, up the English Channel and the North Sea to Russia's Arctic seaport of Murmansk, the only port Russia allows for handling nuclear material.

The 13 radiation-proof casks, each weighing 17,000 pounds, arrived by rail at the secure nuclear material facility at Mayak in Siberia on Wednesday, carrying 341 pounds of weapons-usable uranium, said Kenneth Baker, a National Nuclear Security Administration official who oversaw the complex project.

It is the largest recovery to date of highly enriched uranium provided either by the former Soviet Union or the United States under a program, begun in the 1950s, aimed at spreading the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The two countries have been working to return the spent fuel from reactors around the world because at many of the facilities, including the one in Budapest, security is lax, raising the possibility of the material being stolen by terrorists.

"It was a big shipment, the biggest one we've ever done," Baker said in an interview with The Associated Press hours after he received word that the shipment had arrived at its final destination in Russia. "It was basically enough to make six nuclear weapons."

Under the U.S.-Russian program, the NNSA, which is part of the Energy Department, has completed 15 recoveries of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium from research reactors in more than a dozen countries since 2005. The agency also was involved in three earlier shipments of Russian-origin highly enriched uranium that were removed from the Czech Republic, Latvia and Bulgaria and returned to Russia. But the project targeting the 341 pounds of highly radioactive used fuel from the Budapest research reactor was particularly complex and challenging, said Baker, the NNSA's assistant deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation.

It began at 3 a.m. in Budapest in late September and ended early Wednesday, Washington time, at the nuclear facility at Mayak in Russian Siberia. In between the shipment moved without notice aboard truck and rail to the port of Koper in Slovenia and then by special cargo ship through the ocean shipping lanes that encircle Europe, always staying in international waters at least 12 miles from shore, according to Baker.

The unusual roundabout route was needed because "we couldn't ship it through Ukraine" even though that would have been a more direct route to Russia, Baker said. So in the early hours in late September, the 13 casks were secretly loaded onto trucks at the Budapest facility and taken to the city's train station, where it was transported onto a special train -- one cask per car -- for an eight-hour trip to the port of Koper in Slovenia on the Adriatic Sea.

The shipments then moved through the Mediterranean, through the Strait of Gibraltar, up the Atlantic and into the English Channel, the North and Norwegian seas and then on to Murmansk by Saturday. From there the shipment was loaded on a train for the long trip to Siberia.

"It was the most complicated trip we've ever taken by far," said Baker, who oversaw the loading and early part of the shipment but did not accompany the shipment after it went to sea, instead returning to Washington. Early Wednesday, he received notice that the shipment had arrived at Mayak, where security is far tighter than in Budapest. In Budapest "they had a fence and a guard," said Baker, although some security improvements have been made with U.S. help over the past year. Still, Baker added, "you don't want to leave it there."

The Hungarian reactor now is being converted to use low-enriched uranium that can't be used in a weapon and won't be a potential terrorist target. So far, including the shipment from Budapest, 1,685 pounds of Russian-origin uranium has been retrieved from 11 countries. But there are still a significant number of reactors that have either U.S. or Russian highly enriched uranium, including some with security far less than what is desirable, according to nuclear nonproliferation activists

Source: CNN.com/Europe

The Arrest of 26 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

10/23/2008: Egyptian police have arrested 26 Muslim Brotherhood members on Wednesday protesting against the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the pretext of joining the group. Sources in the Community: The members of the detainees involved in the campaign against the siege of Gaza earlier this month. The sources said according to Reuters: The police arrested 14 Islamists dawn on Tuesday in the coastal city of Port Said, 12 in Fayoum, southwest of Cairo.The Egyptian police have dealt with the attempt earlier this month by the Islamists to break the blockade by sending trucks loaded with supplies to Gaza through the Egyptian border. No one of the trucks from crossing the Suez Canal, which separates the Sinai peninsula from the rest of the territory of Egypt.

The strained relationship between the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Movement is widely since the group was able to win 88 seats in parliament in recent elections. Although the ruling National Democratic Party has a big majority in parliament, but the group with a number of independent and opposition are clear to the regime. The security agencies arrested a large number of members of the group in recent times and referred them to military courts. (Source - Islammemo.cc)

Internet site: Supported by al Qaeda, "McCain!"

10/23/2008: Al Qaeda would welcome any means of assisting the success of Republican candidate John McCain in the elections and his assumption of office of the American presidency, even if it was an attack on the al-Qaeda on the United States. Al Qaeda said in a message on an Internet web site loyal to them - according to the island -: If the organization wanted to drain the United States militarily and economically, it was called "reckless", which vowed to continue the fight until the last American soldier is the best option for the continuation of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
.The letter said, "This is al-Qaeda supports McCain in the upcoming elections to continue the failed policies of his predecessor, George Bush." The McCain said earlier this month that "the United States should send more troops to Afghanistan and to avoid setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq."
According to the island, said the letter - which intelligence monitoring group based in Bethesda, Maryland - that if the al-Qaeda a major operation against U.S. interests, "this work will provide support for McCain because it will push Americans to vote for McCain in retaliation for al-Qaeda."
For his part, said Mark Sultr, an adviser to McCain, that he had heard of email and that it had no immediate comment.

Rule rejoices collapse the U.S. economy:

In the same letter, said it was monitoring the base stock market collapse in the United States and expressed its delight, and commended the financial crisis as a justification for Shell's strategy of the U.S. economy through the financial cost of foreign wars without end. The letter came in the form of comment on the Hisbah relevant document to al-Qaeda, although it was unclear clear whether the letter reflects the view of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who did not make a public statement since the spring (Source - Islammemo.cc)

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