PRAIA — Finnish authorities dismissed talk Sunday that the Arctic Sea was bearing a cargo of nuclear material, as Russia and NATO joined forces in an international hunt for the missing vessel.
Jukka Laaksonen, head of the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, said firefighters conducted radiation tests on the ship — last reported off Cape Verde — at a port in Finland before it began a voyage full of intrigue.
But he dismissed as "stupid rumours" reports in British and Finnish newspapers that the ship could be carrying a "secret" nuclear …

The nation’s top military officer said Sunday that Iran has enough nuclear material to make a bomb, but Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tehran was not close to building a weapon.
Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that he believed Iran had enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
“We think they do, quite frankly,” Mullen said.
A recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran had built up its supplies of enriched uranium to slightly more …

Iranian and Russian engineers carried out a test-run of Iran’s first nuclear power plant Wednesday, a major step toward starting up a facility that the U.S. once hoped to prevent because of fears over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Washington worried Iran would turn spent fuel from the plant’s reactor into plutonium, which could then be used to build a nuclear warhead, and U.S. officials pressured Moscow for years to stop helping Iran build the electricity-generating facility.

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea wants to advance nuclear disarmament steps if its aid demands are met and it played down concerns over possible missile launches, a former senior U.S. diplomat just back from Pyongyang said on Saturday.
Pyongyang, which may be moving to test-fire its longest range Taepodong-2 missile in a bid to grab the attention of new U.S. President Barack Obama, said it had the right to make such a launch.
Stephen Bosworth, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and now dean at the Fletcher School of diplomacy at …

Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) reported on Tuesday.
The think tank made the prediction in its ‘Military Balance 2009,’ an annual assessment of global defense and military developments.
Announcing the new report on Tuesday, Mark Fitzpatrick said the threat may not necessarily as big as it sounds.
“Being able to enrich uranium is not the same as having nuclear weapons,” he said.

Washington: Counting many elements, including terrorism and nuclear weapons, in Pakistan as causes of international worries, a former top US official has described the South Asian country as an “international migraine”.
“…my own sense is Pakistan has everything that gives you an international migraine. It has nuclear weapons, it has terrorism, extremists, corruption, very poor and it’s in a location that’s really, really important to us. And now with this issue with India. So, I think that the current president and the current secretary of state, who’s on her way to …

Beirut: An investigation into a remote Syrian site bombed by Israel 14 months ago has provided no conclusive answers so far, but uncovered a fresh mystery: trace amounts of radioactive material found at the site.
A report published on Wednesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said satellite imagery from the location near Dair Alzour suggested that the construction site “appears to have been similar” to the layout of a nuclear reactor.

VIENNA (Reuters) – An inquiry by the U.N. nuclear watchdog into alleged atom bomb research by Iran has degenerated into a silent standoff a few months after Tehran asserted “the matter is over,” U.N. officials said on Wednesday.
“We had gridlock before but until September at least we were talking to each other. Now it’s worse. There is no communication whatsoever, no progress regarding possible military dimensions in their program,” a senior United Nations official said.

Reporting from Beirut — U.S. officials Wednesday condemned Iran for test-firing a long-range surface-to-surface missile, which they called a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a threat to other countries.
Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar earlier in the day announced the successful launch of a new class of two-stage, solid-fuel rockets called the Sejil. Iranians say the domestically manufactured weapon is more accurate than its liquid-fueled predecessors and has a range of 1,200 miles, which puts Israel and parts of Europe within striking distance.

MOSCOW – The fire safety system on a brand-new Russian nuclear submarine accidentally turned on as the sub was being tested in the Sea of Japan, spewing a gas that suffocated 20 people and sent 21 others to the hospital, officials said Sunday.
The Russian Navy said the submarine itself was not damaged in Saturday’s accident and returned to its base on Russia’s Pacific coast under its own power Sunday. The accident also did not pose any radiation danger, the navy said.
Yet it was Russia’s worst naval accident since torpedo …