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"Last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov inspected the Northern Nuclear Testing Site on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. " Ivanov visited the town of Belushya, where experts responsible for testing nuclear weapons live. News agencies covering his trip noted some major changes there.

MOSCOW: Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov on Wednesday criticised the Russian military’s level of combat readiness, saying that both he and President Vladimir Putin wanted to see improvements. ``Neither the president nor I am fully satisfied with the current state of combat-readiness in the Armed Forces,’’ the Interfax Military News Agency quoted Ivanov as saying. Ivanov singled out the navy in particular. ``We are going to do everything so that the departure of ships to the sea isn’t a special occasion, but becomes a regular occurrence,’’ Ivanov said. Russia’s navy has struggled to find funds to maintain its warships and...

Biowarfare : Another “Sverdlosk Incident” in Russia ? I’ve been looking at two recent (and ongoing) outbreaks of Tularemia in Russia: (Source: ProMed : Archives # 20050824.2503; # 20050822.2467; # 20050718.2066 ) 1. 96 people –66 from Dzerzhinsk region; 30 from Nizhniy Novogorod. 2. 56 people – all from the Ryazan area , which borders on Nizhniy Novogorod and Vladimir. What makes it notable is that Tularemia is a fairly rare disease: the Ryazan area had only 4 known cases in 2004. (No historic stats were furnished on the Nizhniy Novgoros area or Dzerzhinsk , but the number of cases...

Two Russian planes that violated Swedish airspace earlier this month were equipped with nuclear weapons, it has emerged. The flyover near the island of Gotland on March 2 was a deliberate act designed to intimidate Sweden, according to Swedish news channel TV4 Nyheterna. A total of four planes had taken off from the Russian air base of Kaliningrad.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Experts said on Saturday they were worried by a leaked report that describes an outbreak of smallpox in the Soviet Union -- one they say may point to the testing of a smallpox biological weapon.Seven people became ill in the 1971 outbreak and three died of what appeared to be the more fatal, and more rare, hemorrhagic form of the infection, said Dr. Alan Zelicoff of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, one of the authors of the report."Someone has successfully disseminated smallpox as an aerosol," Zelicoff said in an interview."It has been talked about and it...

The movie "Thirteen Days" is the latest dramatization of President Kennedy's showdown with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Retired Air Force Maj. Gottlieb "John" Wilmsmeyer, 71, hasn't seen the film. But the Missouri farmer figures he can match that Cold War tale with a nail-biter of his own. It occurred about the same time. It might even have influenced the missile crisis. But for nearly 40 years, Wilmsmeyer had to keep quiet about "Operation Speedlight Delta." He was crew commander on a KC-135 tanker at Forbes Air Force Base, Topeka, Kan., in the summer of...

Ali al-Timimi will be serving life for sedition. Specifically he was recruiting for al-Qaeda from the US. Scary enough, but read the whole article. It appears al-Qaeda had infiltrated US biodefense and has supporters/agents with access to the Ames strain of anthrax and the know how to make dried concentrated forms of the spores.Via Bloggernews.net:A colleague of famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID head Charles Bailey, a prolific Ames strain researcher, has been convicted of sedition and sentenced to life in prison. He worked in a program co-sponsored by the American Type Culture Collection and had access to...

The U.S. war against Iraq may have entered it final countdown phase with the arrival of General Tommy Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command to Doha on Tuesday, western diplomats told Gulf News. "American military officials have told me recently that Franks' arrival in Doha means that we would be only 10 days away from war," said a Bahrain-based diplomat. The diplomat, who was speaking off the record, said he expected the second UN resolution, proposed on Monday by the U.S. and Britain, will be passed "narrowly" in the Security Council by March 7. "The resolution will not...