Obama issues warning on N-terrorism
Slow pace of reducing nuke stockpiles shadows summit
WASHINGTON, April 2, (Agencies): Extremist “madmen” from the Islamic State group would not hesitate to launch a catastrophic nuclear attack, US President Barack Obama warned at a global summit in Washington on Friday.
Hoping to galvanize global action to prevent jihadists from getting hold of nuclear weapons or material for a “dirty bomb”, Obama painted an apocalyptic picture of the impact of a nuclear terror attack.
Obama, who leaves office next January, was hosting a fourth and likely final leaders’ summit aimed at reducing the risk of a nuclear holocaust.
The first summit was held in Washington six years ago at Obama’s behest, when the young president, fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize sketched out a vision of a world without nuclear weapons.
Today he stands as a president on his way out, trying to complete as much of his agenda as possible while Republican front runner Donald Trump garners attention with unorthodox calls for South Korea and Japan to be nuclear armed.
Such utterances, Obama said, “tell us the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world generally”.
But Obama nodded at his own failures too, saying poor relations with Russia — the world’s other major hoarder of nukes — had hobbled his hopes to reduce conventional nuclear stockpiles.
In a characteristic power play, Russian President Vladimir Putin had pointedly boycotted the summit.
“My preference would be to bring down further our nuclear arsenal”, said
“For example, lightweight sensors, woven into the nylon of parachutes, will be able to catch small tears that otherwise would expand in midair, risking paratroopers’ lives.”
Carter, a physicist, frequently stresses the need for the Pentagon to invest in new Obama, adding that he had approached Putin in the hopes of negotiating another arms reduction treaty.
“Because of the vision that he’s been pursuing of emphasizing military might over development inside of Russia and diversifying the economy, we have not seen the kind of progress that I would have hoped for with Russia”.
Instead, Obama used the summit to push for technical measures to safeguard fissile materials and limit the civilian use of the most dangerous uranium and plutonium.
He also shifted the focus on to North Korea’s provocative nuclear tests, the recently agreed nuclear deal on Iran and above all the threat from the Islamic State group.
That threat has loomed large over the two-day summit, amid revelations that the Islamic State group carried out video surveillance on a top Belgian nuclear scientist.
Acronym
“ISIL has already used chemical weapons, including mustard gas, in Syria and Iraq,” Obama said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
“There is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material, they most certainly would use it to continue to kill as many innocent people as possible.”
Obama said about 2,000 tons of nuclear materials are stored around the world at civilian and military facilities, but some of them are not properly secured.
“Just the smallest amount of plutonium — about the size of an apple — would kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people,” he said.
“It would be a humanitarian, politi-
technologies and likes to cite GPS, jet engines and the Internet as examples of military innovations that have also transformed civilian life. (AFP)
AU pair wage case OK’d:
A class- cal, economic and environmental catastrophe with global ramifications for decades,” he added. “It would change our world.” So far, no terrorists have obtained a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb, Obama said, crediting global efforts to secure nuclear material. But he said it wasn’t for lack of the terrorists trying: Al-Qaeda has sought nuclear materials, IS has deployed chemical weapons, and extremists linked to the Brussels and Paris attacks were found to have spied on a top Belgian nuclear official.
The two-day summit held other, more positive signs of the world coming together to confront the broader nuclear threat.
The UN Security Council members who brokered a sweeping nuclear deal with Iran last year held up that agreement as a model for preventing nuclear proliferation, as they gathered on the summit’s sidelines to review the deal’s implementation.
Obama also spent part of the summit huddling with the leaders of South Korea and Japan about deterring nucleartinged provocations from North Korea, in a powerful show of diplomatic unity with two US treaty allies. Similarly, Obama’s sit-down with Chinese President Xi Jinping offered the two strategic rivals a chance to illustrate mutual concern about the North, a traditional Chinese ally.
Undeterred, North Korea only hours later fired a short-range missile into the sea and tried to jam GPS navigation signals in South Korea — precisely the kind of act that South Korean President Park Geun-hye had warned would trigger even tougher sanctions and more isolation. action lawsuit should go ahead against companies that provide foreign au pairs to families across the United States, a federal judge said in a case where five au pairs from Latin America and Africa say they were unlawfully denied the minimum wage, overtime and other compensation.
Aiming to show concrete action, leaders came to the nuclear summit with commitments in hand.
Latin America and the Caribbean are now free of highly enriched uranium, the White House said, praising Argentina by name for converting its remaining stockpile into a less dangerous form. Fissile materials like highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium are necessary ingredients to make nuclear bombs.
On the global front, a strengthened nuclear security agreement was finally poised to take force, extending safeguards for nuclear materials being used, stored and transported while requiring criminal penalties for nuclear smuggling. Those tweaks were approved in 2005 but have sat dormant awaiting ratification from a critical mass of nations, reached only in the past few days.
Still, frustration over the slow pace of reducing nuclear stockpiles shadowed the summit. The absence of key players, especially Russia, further underscored the lack of unanimity confronting global efforts to deter nuclear attacks.
After six years of prodding by Obama and others before him, the global stockpile of fissile material remains in the thousands of metric tons. What’s more, security officials warn that the ingredients for a “dirty bomb”, such as cesium and cobalt, are alarmingly insecure in many parts of the globe.
Ahead of the summit, fewer than half of the countries participating had agreed to secure their sources of radioactive substances, which are widely present in hospital, industrial and academic settings.
The defendants are all 15 of the companies authorized by the US State Department to arrange for young foreigners to stay with Americans and look after their children.
In an opinion issued Thursday, US District Judge Christine Arguello agreed with an earlier magistrate’s ruling that the companies, which had sought to have the au pairs’ claims dismissed, had a case to answer.
Tom Areton, whose nonprofit Cultural Homestay International is among the defendants, said au pairs should not be seen as professionals protected by labor law. Many of the au pair websites, though, stress the visitors’ child care experience and refer to them as nannies.(AP)
Knife not murder weapon:
A knife found buried at O.J. Simpson’s former estate has been ruled out as the murder weapon in the 1994 killing of the football star’s ex-wife and her friend, police said Friday.
The knife with a five-inch (12.7 centimeter) blade was found more than a dozen years ago by a construction worker at the estate where Simpson lived.
The man gave the knife to a retired Los Angeles police officer who was working as a security guard at a nearby film shoot.
“We have ruled out that the knife is connected to the murder,” officer Rosario Herrera, of the Los Angeles Police Department, told AFP. “The investigation remains open.” (AFP)