Free Republic

Japan and the United States will launch working-level talks in February aimed at promoting cooperation in the field of nuclear forensics, a sophisticated process to analyze the composition of nuclear materials, Kyodo News reported on Nan. 30 quoting sources of both governments as having said . Representatives of Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, an organization under the Department of Energy, will attend the talks. It would be the first intergovernmental consultation on nuclear forensics between Japan and the United States. Nuclear forensics focuses on analyzing the nature, use and...

Note: The folllowing text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release May 29, 2009 Statement by the President on Beginning of Negotiations on Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty There is no greater security challenge in the world today than turning the tide on nuclear-proliferation, and pursuing the goal of a nuclear-free world. I welcome today’s important agreement at the Conference on Disarmament to begin negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, which will end production of fissile materials for use in atomic bombs. As I announced in Prague, a verified...

A Chinese financier was indicted Tuesday on charges of laundering millions of dollars through New York banks to send Iran materials to make nuclear weapons. Le Fang Wei, 37, used a half-dozen unwitting New York banks along with an assortment of aliases and phony businesses to pull off his sinister plot, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said. "There's not much doubt that the use is for weapons," he said of the sales. "There is no greater threat to the world today than Iran's efforts to procure nuclear weapons and long range ballistics missiles." Wei was charged with conspiracy and falsifying...

From NBC's Ken Strickland Republican Sen. Dick Lugar (IN) today said an Obama campaign ad which features him is "accurate." The ad makes the point the Obama previously "reached out" to Lugar to "help lock down loose nuclear weapons." Lugar is widely considered one of the most knowledgeable in the area of nuclear weapons proliferation and the coauthored of the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Act on cooperative threat reduction. "He did" reach out, Lugar said. He explained that in 2005, Obama asked if he could join Lugar on a trip to Russia and other countries to visit sites under the Nunn-Lugar program....

.AWOLIssues that should come up before Tuesday.by Deroy Murdock In the final inning of a seemingly endless presidential playoff, at least three issues surprisingly remain outside the ballpark. It is extraordinary that John Kerry huddled during wartime with enemy officials opposite whom U.S. diplomats negotiated for peace. Kerry did so in May 1970, while an inactive Navy reserve officer, even as Hanoi killed American soldiers and tortured U.S. POWs. "I have been to Paris," Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971. "I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the...