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A jury has convicted a 76-year-old Roman Catholic priest from St. Louis of damaging and trespassing on a nuclear missile silo facility in northeastern Colorado last August. After the verdict Tuesday, Carl Kabat was immediately sentenced to 137 days in jail, which he has already served since his arrest Aug. 6. He is now free. Since 1980, Kabat has been protesting nuclear weapons on the anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Authorities say that last summer he went to a Weld County missile silo site, hung banners for his cause, cut a hole in the fence, waited inside and prayed until he was arrested by authorities from Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo. Kabat acknowledged entering the property and cutting the fence.

A jury has convicted a 76-year-old Roman Catholic priest from St. Louis of damaging and trespassing on a nuclear missile silo facility in northeastern Colorado last August. After the verdict Tuesday, Carl Kabat was immediately sentenced to 137 days in jail, which he has already served since his arrest Aug. 6. He is now free. Since 1980, Kabat has been protesting nuclear weapons on the anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Authorities say that last summer he went to a Weld County missile silo site, hung banners for his cause, cut a hole in the fence, waited inside and prayed until he was arrested by authorities from Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo. Kabat acknowledged entering the property and cutting the fence.

Many Pee Dee residents recall the details of the incident that occurred on March 11, 1958, in Mars Bluff. Now, with the production of a documentary examining the aftermath of the day a 3-ton unarmed nuclear bomb was accidentally dropped on a family's farm a few miles outside of Florence, the story is coming full circle. Part of the ETV series Carolina Stories, "The Incident at Mars Bluff" tells the story of the Gregg family from that fateful day when their house and all their belongings were destroyed, through their struggles to receive fair compensation from the U.S. Air Force. On Sunday, approximately 30 people attended a free screening of the program at the Florence County library and Matt Burrows, the director and producer of the documentary, was on hand to field questions about the project.

Many Pee Dee residents recall the details of the incident that occurred on March 11, 1958, in Mars Bluff. Now, with the production of a documentary examining the aftermath of the day a 3-ton unarmed nuclear bomb was accidentally dropped on a family's farm a few miles outside of Florence, the story is coming full circle. Part of the ETV series Carolina Stories, "The Incident at Mars Bluff" tells the story of the Gregg family from that fateful day when their house and all their belongings were destroyed, through their struggles to receive fair compensation from the U.S. Air Force. On Sunday, approximately 30 people attended a free screening of the program at the Florence County library and Matt Burrows, the director and producer of the documentary, was on hand to field questions about the project.

Russia would cross "a red line for the United States of America" if it were to base nuclear capable bombers in Cuba, a top US air force officer warned on Tuesday. "If they did I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America," said General Norton Schwartz, nominated to be the air force's chief of staff.

When We Almost Nuked Savannah Things go missing. It's to be expected. Even at the Pentagon. Last October, the Pentagon's inspector general reported that the military's accountants had misplaced a destroyer, several tanks and armored personnel carriers, hundreds of machine guns, rounds of ammo, grenade launchers and some surface-to-air missiles. In all, nearly $8 billion in weapons were AWOL. Those anomalies are bad enough. But what's truly chilling is the fact that the Pentagon has lost track of the mother of all weapons, a hydrogen bomb. The thermonuclear weapon, designed to incinerate Moscow, has been sitting somewhere off the coast of Savannah, Georgia for the past 40 years. The Air Force has gone to greater lengths to conceal the mishap than to locate the bomb and secure it. On the night of February 5, 1958 a B-47 Stratojet bomber carrying a hydrogen bomb on a night training flight off the Georgia coast collided with an F-86 Saberjet fighter at 36,000 feet. The collision destroyed the fighter and severely damaged a wing of the bomber, leaving one of its engines partially dislodged. The bomber's pilot, Maj. Howard Richardson, was instructed to jettison the H-bomb before attempting a landing. Richardson dropped the bomb into the shallow waters of Wassaw Slough, near the mouth of the Savannah River, a few miles from the city of Tybee Island, where he believed the bomb would be swiftly recovered. The Pentagon recorded the incident in a top secret memo to the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. The memo has been partially declassified: "A B-47 aircraft with a [word redacted] nuclear weapon aboard was damaged in a collision with an F-86 aircraft near Sylvania, Georgia, on February 5, 1958. The B-47 aircraft attempted three times unsuccessfully to land with the weapon. The weapon was then jettisoned visually over water off the mouth of the Savannah River. No detonation was observed."

One of the tragic legacies of the nuclear age is the open-air testing that occurred in the 1950s with U.S. servicemen as the guinea pigs. Many contracted cancer from their exposure to radiation and have been trying to extract compensation from the federal government ever since. A recent decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims brings that testing closer to home because the claimant says he worked at Beale Air Force Base in the mid-1950s. But Lyle Larsen wasn't present during the nuclear testing. He claims he received a cancer-causing dose of radiation after the blast. Larsen filed his claim in 1998, alleging he contracted acute myelocytic leukemia - a rare bone marrow cancer - from radiation at the nuclear test site.

"A nuclear explosion was set off 37 years ago, near Krestishche village in Krasnograd district, Kharkiv Region. It was the first in Ukraine and probably the only one in the European part of the Soviet Union. Scientists had determined that a large gas condensate field in the area which was discovered in 1970 could hold up to 300 billion cubic meters of fuel. In 1971, 17 wells were already operating in the Krasnograd district. But an accident occurred when drilling a new well at the field in July 1971. Gas came to the surface before the well reached its planned depth and the force of the spewing gas condensate reached 400 atmospheres, throwing two workers into the air. Engineers took days deciding what to do to stop the well. The nearest village was just 500 meters away. Residents were told to not light any fires and to stay out of their homes and not turn on any lights. Unable to stop the gas, the engineers decided to light it. By the next day, the burning flare was tens of meters high. Several attempts were made during the next year to put out the fire. Filling the well with tons of concrete slabs did not work - they flew apart like toys. Such flares are normally put out by capping the well. But for this case, specialists from Moscow offered an original solution - an underground nuclear explosion."

"How do wars begin? With a "master illusion", according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA's pioneers in "black propaganda", known today as "news management". In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an "incident" that became the "conclusive proof of North Vietnam's aggression". This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. "The CIA," he said, "loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons-the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam." An invasion that took three million lives was under way."

Officials with the Lawrence Livermore Lab are looking into a potential hidden danger: hundreds of workers have been possibly exposed to a toxic metal dust. "It was hard," said Joyce Brooks, talking about the loss of her husband to beryllium poisoning. "I have anger," she said. Carl Brooks came straight from the Air Force to work at Livermore Labs in the 1950's. For the next 30 years, he machined parts out of the lightweight metal beryllium. "The dust was very toxic," she said. "And they did not have much protection except a paper mask." Eventually it destroyed his lungs. Carl Brooks died in 2000.

A Pentagon advisory group plans to release a report Thursday criticizing the Defense Department for lack of focus on its nuclear mission and recommending more oversight, a senior defense official said, after a series of embarrassing incidents that called into question the Air Force's ability to keep track of its nuclear weapons and related materials. The task force will recommend that the Pentagon create a new assistant secretary position to oversee its nuclear management.

This week, President-elect Obama is expected to appoint a Secretary for the Department of Energy (DOE). This person will need some serious muscle: in addition to the enormous task of shifting the bureaucracy's entrenched focus away from nuclear weapons production toward the renewable energy priorities of the Obama Administration, they will also need to hold accountable the contractors who conduct 90 percent of the agency's work. Additionally, with a seat on the Nuclear Weapons Council, the Secretary will have to stand up against the well-organized offensive for the Bush Administration's failed Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. As Walter Pincus reported in the Washington Post last week, U.S. Strategic Commander Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton is calling for a rush to develop and produce RRW because of alleged surety problems--a topic of serious controversy within the nuclear scientific community. Also, in the January/February edition of Foreign Affairs, Sec. of Defense Robert Gates again heralded RRW, without addressing the fact that RRW's test pedigree will be much less extensive than that of the existing stockpile.

A pair of Russian Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers carried out a routine patrol flight on Thursday over the Arctic Ocean off Alaska, an Air Force spokesman said. Lt. Col. Vladimir Drik told RIA Novosti that the bombers had been "accompanied for one hour by two [U.S.] F-15 fighters over the Arctic Ocean near the shores of Alaska."

Senior members of the state Washington delegation, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, Republican Sen. David Vitter and Shreveport Republican 4th District congressman Jim McCrery, have jointly asked the Secretary of the Air Force to enlarge Barksdale's nuclear role. The three have written Secretary Michael Donley asking that the base, now home to the nation's largest concentration of strategic bombers, be named the headquarters of a new command that will marshal the service's nuclear-armed bombers and missiles, the result of changes service leaders announced following their CORONA Fall meeting in Colorado at the start of the month.

The two Russian Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers that landed in Venezuela last week have successfully carried out a patrol mission along the South American coast, a Russian Air Force spokesman said on Tuesday. "The aircraft took off from the Libertador airbase in Venezuela on Monday and flew along the South American coast toward Brazil," Lt. Col. Vladimir Drik said.

Agency gives OK to some Area 51 workers seeking compensation In 1998, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy were keeping mum about the secret work that went on at Area 51, a widely known Air Force installation near the northeast corner of the Nevada Test Site. That year, the U.S. Supreme Court turned away an appeal by former Area 51 workers who claimed that they were made sick and that co-workers had died from exposure to toxic fumes from stealth coatings burned in open trenches near the Groom Lake base, 90 miles north of Las Vegas. The site was used to test high-tech aircraft.

THE rest of the world has mostly forgotten, but a brush with nuclear Armageddon more than 40 years ago is still seared in the minds of many residents of a small Spanish fishing town. On the morning of January 17, 1966, a US Air Force B-52 bomber returning from a routine mission collided with a tanker aircraft that was to refuel it.

A U.S. Air Force study found lax plant security and inadequate personnel experience at most overseas storage facilities for U.S. nuclear weapons.

Russian bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons could be deployed to Cuba in response to U.S. plans to install a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, a Russian newspaper reported Monday, citing an unnamed senior Russian air force official.

Vandenberg Air Force Base is usually a place known for its rockets, missiles and space program, but there is also another little known unit dedicated to diffusing bombs and disposing of explosive devices. The 30th Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Flight, part of the 30th Civil Engineering Squadron, not only trains on the base, but also keeps very busy disposing of the regularly found unexploded ordnance (UXO) which remains on base property from its days as an Army tank corps training camp.

Missing nuclear materials from overseas pose a bigger threat to countries like the United States than a stolen bomb from Russia or a so-called "dirty bomb," according to a former U.S. Air Force secretary. "Fissile materials from Russia and Pakistan are the problem," said Thomas Reed, a nuclear physicist who worked for President Ronald Reagan, as well as a weapons designer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

A group of scientists, military officials and government bureaucrats signed an informal pact with the devil. The contract became public in August 1945, when U.S. bombers nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, no other nation has used a nuclear weapon, but thousands of radiation-emitting tests have occurred and nuclear energy plants mushroomed, with promises of cheap, safe and clean power. Over the decades, however, "the nuclear industry" has faced repeated cost over-runs, and serious "accidents." Thousands died at the Chernobyl power plant (Ukraine) and a near catastrophe occurred at the Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania) facility. Air Force planes dropped H bombs in the ocean off the Spanish coast and innumerable leaks, fires and "mishaps" occurred routinely at military and civilian nuclear installations.