Free Republic

ISLAMABAD : Pakistan has developed 2,000 km long range missile Shaheen-II which would be test fired within a month, President Pervez Musharraf said. He ruled out any roll back of nuclear and missile programme in the wake of proliferation of nuclear technology by the country's top scientists. In an apparent attempt to demonstrate that its nuclear and missile programme was very much intact, Musharraf told a meeting of editors and columnists on Thursday in Rawalpindi that the country's long range missile Shaheen-II would be test fired within a month to consolidate country's missile programme. "The missile is ready for tests",...

PASADENA, California, (AFP) - Nuclear power may give NASA (news - web sites)'s long-range missions the speed and range that combustion engines cannot, but research is sputtering for lack of funds. NASA's head of the Prometheus program said the agency has three billion dollars for the next five years. "Beyond that, we know we need more money," Al Newhouse told AFP. "We are at a very early stage of this program. It has been in existence for slighty under a year." Nuclear propulsion first became a NASA budget line item in 2003, with 125 million dollars. NASA requested 279 million...

After surviving torture, another high-level defector has escaped Iraq. In this exclusive report, he details Saddam's progress toward truly frightening capabilities: "dirty" bombs that spew radioactivity, mobile bio-weapons facilities, and a new long-range ballistic missileBy David Rose January 2000: a chilly afternoon in Baghdad. At the downtown headquarters of Iraq’s Military Industrial Commission, the body responsible for arms development and purchase, its then chairman, General Amer al-Saadi, gathered 13 government officials around the boardroom table: scientists, soldiers, spies. More than a year had passed since the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, expelled the inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM),...