The Patriot Act was a major step forward, of course, and its provisions have helped dismantle terrorist cells and thwart additional attacks. But it is far from the kind of comprehensive reform of our legal system necessitated by a new universe of threats from radical Islamists willing to forfeit their own lives for a twisted sense of martyrdom. We’re in a whole new world now, fighting a war with an enemy that seeks not just our defeat but our annihilation. These new dangers – like all new challenges – require new tools.

Last week the Senate Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security Subcommittee that I chair held a hearing to review legislative efforts to provide law enforcement authorities with additional legal resources and remove unnecessary obstacles. Of particular focus was S. 2679, the Tools to Fight Terrorism Act (TFTA), which I recently introduced along with several other members of the subcommittee and the Senate leadership.

Over the past several years, congressional committees and executive agencies have conducted extensive reviews of our nation’s antiterrorism safety net, and anyone who reads the daily paper knows we’ve uncovered numerous flaws and gaps. To cite a particularly egregious example, we have found that in many cases anti-terror investigators still have less authority to obtain information than do investigators of other crimes, such as those involving mail fraud.

We have also found that many of the federal code’s criminal offenses are too narrow in scope to account for new contingencies, and that most penalties are far too light to be an effective deterrent. Unlawful possession of a nuclear weapon, for example, carries a maximum penalty of just 10 years in prison. So-called “dirty bombs,” capable of rendering large metropolitan areas uninhabitable for decades, are not even illegal to own.

Among other things, the TFTA would:

• Allow FBI agents to seek warrants for surveillance of suspected “lone-wolf” terrorists, such as alleged 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui.
• Improve information sharing among federal agencies and with state and local authorities, avoiding the types of barriers between criminal and intelligence investigators that impeded pre-September 11 searches in the United States for 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
• Punish hoaxes about terrorist crimes or the death of a U.S. soldier, imposing penalties commensurate with the costs, disruptions and trauma inflicted by such hoaxes.
• Impose stiff 30-year mandatory-minimum penalties for possession of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, atomic and radiological bombs, and variola virus (smallpox) – penalties stiff enough to deter middlemen who might help terrorists acquire these weapons.

Witnesses at the subcommittee hearing included Professor Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School, a respected constitutional scholar who testified that, in his view, all of the major provisions of the bill would likely withstand a Supreme Court challenge.

The third anniversary of the September 11 attacks serves as a timely reminder of the importance of providing law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to do their jobs effectively. Every provision in this bill has been vetted extensively, and many have been languishing for months if not years. There’s no excuse for Congress not to move quickly to make these improvements to our homeland security, and we must work to pass the bill before we adjourn for the year.

The post Giving Law Enforcement Some Overdue Tools In the Fight Against Terrorism appeared first on Truth News | News Without Manipulations.

Chilean senators are debating this initiative, which consists of a project known as “dignified death”, a project that has been in force since 2014 but had previously been denied. Yesterday, April 20, 141 disputed voted in favor of this bill.

On the other hand, not everyone agrees with this project, such is the case of the government of President Sebastián Piñera, so there is the possibility that the project will be debated in the Constitutional Court as confirmed by Juan José Ossa, secretary General of the Presidency.

As for the bill, it is divided or applied to two situations. The first is the case of euthanasia, i. e. when the doctor guarantees that there are no medical treatments for the patient who suffers from a disease and is given a drug that causes death, and second, assisted suicide based on providing the patient with a drug to take on their own.

As for the written project, it emphasizes that the patient has the right not to suffer from intolerable pain, to prevent life from being artificially prolonged, and to request medical assistance to die.

Many terminal patients are waiting to receive euthanasia since according to their doctors, they have no cure and over time they have developed new ailments and feel that they can no longer live like this. That is why they ask for death without pain and above all, dignified.

However, the bill also supports the doctor to refuse when the patient requests euthanasia or assisted suicide, and also that the euthanasia applicant must be the sick person himself and not a third party. If this project is approved, euthanasia can only be applied after two doctors have confirmed the patient’s terminal situation, he must be aware at the time of request and that the physical ailments can no longer be tolerated.

In this way, the project seeks to enforce the rights of patients suffering from a terminal illness, supporting them to refuse to receive treatments that extend their life artificially if that is their desire.

Chile is a country that has advanced a lot concerning its laws in recent years supporting citizens of the same sex to marry, abortion law, among others.

In which countries is euthanasia legal?

In the world there are seven countries where euthanasia is legal, which are:

Netherlands: It was approved in April 2002.

Belgium: It was approved in 2002 and it is also approved for children under 12 years of age in cases of a terminal illness.

Luxembourg: approved by Parliament in March 2009.

Colombia: was approved in 2014 by the Ministry of Health.

Canada: It was legalized along with assisted suicide in June 2016.

New Zealand: It was approved at the end of 2020.

Spain: it was approved in March of 2021.

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The country has accumulated 15,616,130 positives for covid-19 since the pandemic broke out, with 2,157,528 active cases, while the total number of deaths stands at 182,553.

India faces a significant increase in infections and mortality that some states seek to curb with closures and restrictions, such as Delhi, which has imposed a total closure until April 26, while restrictions have also been adopted in Maharashtra, one of the most affected states, until May 1.

The lack of oxygen for the care of affected patients is another of the great problems of the country, as several states try to meet the high demand, according to the ‘Hindustan Times‘, the principal newspaper of the country. Modi has guaranteed, in this regard, that “efforts are being made to increase the production” of this input and its supply “at various levels“. “Measures are being taken such as the installation of new oxygen plants to provide thousands of new cylinders,” he said.

On the other hand, the Government has eliminated import duties on Remdesivir, one of the drugs to treat coronavirus patients, and its raw materials. “Imports of Remdesivir, injections and specific supplies have been made duty-free. This should increase supply and reduce costs, thus providing relief to patients,” said the Indian Minister of Railways, Trade, and Industry. Piyush Goyal. India is the second country in the world most affected by the pandemic, only behind the United States.

A collapse in Indian hospitals

India, which began in 2021 with fewer than 10,000 daily cases, recorded more than 200,000 new infections on April 20. Although it has not been confirmed, it seems that the massive celebration of the Kumbh Mela festival attended by millions of Hindus would have produced this rebound. During this event, the population ‘passed over’ the agents in charge of compliance with sanitary measures.

This has led to a health facility in Delhi designed for the exclusive treatment of COVID-19 with 1,500 beds, allocating one mattress for every two patients. Due to the lack of necessary ambulances, the arrival of the infected at the hospital was not much better. Most of them went to emergency rooms similarly overwhelmed by buses and automated tricycles.

Hospital staff has been forced to allocate one bed for every two patients, although it seems that the measure is not being enough. In this way, those admitted who are not related to each other would be sharing a mattress. On the other hand, the bodies of the deceased (who arrived in serious condition) remain outside the room before being sent to the warehouse.

According to the medical staff, people are not following the sanitary measures since at the exit of the hospitals there is a multitude of people without respecting the distance, waiting to receive the body of their loved one.

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The gap in the vaccination process between the richest and poorest countries continues to widen, jeopardizing the goal of achieving global immunity. According to data from Our World in Data, on the African continent, only 1.15 people out of 100 have received at least one dose against the coronavirus.

Israel, a Leader in Vaccination

Israel began its vaccination process on December 20, 2020, and has become the country with the most vaccination in the world with 119.5 vaccines per 100 inhabitants, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 97.8 and Chile with 68.9 vaccinated every 100 inhabitants.

In Europe, the UK is in the lead. On April 18, 63.5 inhabitants out of 100 had received at least one dose. Far is Spain with 27. 5, Germany with 26.7 Italy 25.7 and France 25.1.

As for those vaccinated with a complete schedule, Israel once again leads the ranking, far away from the rest of the world. In this regard, it is worth highlighting Chile, which even belonging to a region in which vaccinated per 100 inhabitants is 14.2, is the second country in the world where more doses with a complete schedule have been administered: 28.4 for every 100 inhabitants.

Coronavirus Expansion

Since the first cases of pneumonia of unknown cause began to be registered in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, the coronavirus epidemic began to spread to Southeast Asian countries, and Thailand was the first country after China to register a positive for coronavirus. A week later, cases began to be counted in the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

The disease spreads very quickly and, after being paralyzed in China, it has spread to the rest of the world, mainly in Europe and America.

The three European countries that currently report the most coronavirus cases are France (5,357,229), Russia (4,657,509), and the United Kingdom (4,406,114). In the American continent, the countries that lead the ranking of those affected are the USA (31,737,347), Brazil (13,973,695), and Argentina (2,714,475). South Africa with 1,567,513 affected is the most affected country in Africa and in Asia-Oceania, India has already accumulated 15,320,972 of Covid-19 cases.

Analyzing the incidence of Covid-19 in Europe, the three countries that show the highest incidence per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days are Turkey with 936.1, Sweden with 849.9, and France with 697.0.

On the contrary, the countries with the lowest cumulative incidence are the United Kingdom with 42.7, Portugal with 64, and Russia with 83.9.

In the American continent, the countries with the highest incidence in 14 days per 100,000 inhabitants are Argentina and Chile with 641.7 and 565.2 points respectively.

The pandemic already reaches more than 142 million people. Besides, more than 3 million people have lost their lives in the world. The US leads the ranking of deaths with more than 567,000.

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Judge Peter Cahill read the jury’s verdict, which found Chauvin guilty of three counts against him for Floyd’s murder last year.

For two days, the 12 people who made up that jury had the world in suspense. Their names were kept secret. By order of the judge, they were only identified by a number. “Jury No. 9”, “Jury No. 19” or “Jury No. 52”. Seven jurors are women, five are men. Six are white, and another six are black or multiracial. Among them was a chemist, an immigrant who has lived in the United States for 14 years, a single mother, or a retired psychologist who already has grandchildren, who grew up near the place where George Floyd, 46, was murdered.

Locked up in a Minneapolis hotel, the 12 people decided to find Derek Chauvin, the cop who knelt on Floyd’s neck, guilty on May 25 during his arrest in Minneapolis. Floyd died of suffocation. The homicide, captured by a cell phone, toured the world. His last words – “I can’t breathe,” he repeated more than 20 times – became a cry of protest against racism. The trial of Chauvin, the main defendant of the four police officers who participated in Floyd’s arrest, was broadcast live on television – the first televised trial in Minnesota history – and followed minute by minute by the newspapers.

“Today we can breathe again,” Floyd’s brother Philones Floyd said at a news conference.

For millions of people, the verdict offered relief and justice and marked a historic break in the long history of police brutality suffered by African Americans in the United States, one of the most poignant symptoms of racism inherited from the days of slavery. Despite the overwhelming evidence against Chauvin, many feared that the former policeman would be acquitted, and the crime would go unpunished. The enormous tension and expectation had reached the Oval Room of the White House.

Floyd’s murder shocked a country where millions suffer from racism every day and unleashed a wave of fury, helplessness, and frustration that swept through dozens of cities and spread to the rest of the world. Floyd’s death changed the course of the presidential campaign that ended in the victory of Biden, who endorsed and joined the call to end systemic racism, over Donald Trump, who turned his back on him and downplayed racial inequalities. The last time the United States had experienced such social upheaval was in the 1960s.

The US Biden, communicated by phone with the family of George Floyd to express his support both before and after the verdict of the jury and promises to continue fighting in the country against racism clarifying that everyone must comply with the law no matter who they are.

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Americans already anticipate a variety of possible internal terror threats and we hope and assume that our government is on the job. But now another ominous warning comes from Professor Howard Bloom. He is a visiting scholar at the Graduate Psychology Department at New York University, an author of two books and is widely published in major print media. If he is right then there is an urgent need to understand this emerging threat and to respond in time.

After 9/11 President Bush asserted that Islam is a religion of peace and that we need to fight only that small minority of Muslims who are extremists. By now the term “war on terror” is gradually being replaced by terms like Islamism, Islamo-Fascism, Islamic extremism, etc. The actions of Muslims around the world, and even inside America, are raising disturbing questions about the mindset of large numbers of people within the greater Muslim community.

After the bombing of the train in Madrid, Spain, King Abdullah of Jordan made a brief but significant comment. He said that the real conflict was going on within the Muslim world and it was between the moderates and the extremists. He did not say who is winning. This is part of the big picture that the west does not fully understand and hence it is not providing a sufficiently effective response.

Professor Bloom, on his web site addresses Islamic intent and also the rapidly emerging Islamic military capability. This article will summarize both issues from his web site and also include remarks from his lengthy radio interview on the Art Bell show of August 21, 2004.

Professor Bloom reviews Islamic history from the time of Mohammed to the present. On his web site www.howardbloom.net, click on “Islam’s War Against the West” for a sweeping historic overview. Professor Bloom has also studied the lengthy messages issued by Osama bin Laden. The media quotes only a very small part of his statement without reporting that he periodically delivers his long and detailed philosophy of confrontation with the west. Bloom also has contacts from various parts of the Muslim community who provide him with additional insights.

Professor Bloom argues that the extremists are working diligently to radicalize the moderates just as King Abdullah had said. Osama bin Laden is emerging as a heroic leader among vast parts of the Islamic world. Bin Laden teaches that the present life is brief and transitory and of limited value. What is important is to prepare for the eternity of the after-life where true Muslims will find eternal paradise and unbelievers will find eternal hell. Islam is the only true religion and all other belief systems and religions are wrong, even evil. Muslims must all work and sacrifice to make Islam the one religion for all humanity. On this there is no discussion, only acceptance.

Bin Laden also teaches that the west and its institutions are all decadent. Freedom, democracy, women’s rights, man-made laws, popular culture, etc. are all acts by infidels that must be erased. The west exploits its women who appear in public, dressing and acting immodestly. The place for women is to be protected, in the home, having many children to out-populate the west with its low birth rates.

The decadent west is weak and cannot take pain, sacrifice and casualties. The true Muslim will glory in martyrdom for it assures eternal bliss.

We deterred the Soviet Union during the cold war with a policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Neither side wanted to die, and this doctrine of massive retaliation did deter both sides from launching a first strike. That concept of deterrence does not apply to the Muslim fundamentalists. According to Osama bin Laden he would even welcome the deaths of countless millions of Muslims in the process of toppling western civilization. These Muslims believe there are actually two billion Muslims in the world (rather than the 1.2 generally accepted) and even the loss of 500 million would still leave 1.5 billion, plus they have a high birth rate and can readily replace their losses.

The radicals also believe that this is their time in history to flex their growing power and to crush a decadent west and also to settle the score for all past grievances, both real and imagined. For them there is nothing to negotiate. The infidels will be given a choice. They can convert to Islam and accept Sharia law or they might be allowed to live as second class non-Muslims if they pay a heavy tax.

For those who refuse the first two choices the Muslims have a religious obligation to kill the infidels. And fellow Muslims who deviate too far from Sharia law must also be punished, possibly with death. And no Moslem, either a convert or by birth, is allowed to forsake Islam for another belief – the punishment is death, even if a father must kill a son or a daughter.

This is a brief summary of Islamic intent according to Professor Bloom, an intent that cannot be deterred by any amount of retaliation. Note that the basic drive of radical Islam does not stem from the Arab-Israeli conflict as some commentators would have us believe. And appeasement also does not work because nothing short of total conversion to Islam is acceptable, with the limited exception of inferior status and a heavy tax.

But intent is only as dangerous as the capability it can mobilize. We have already seen 9/11, plus ongoing suicide attacks throughout the Middle East and in other parts of the world. Now it is time to examine some far more extreme possibilities.

Islamic military capability

On web site www.howardbloom.com click on “Dodging the nuclear 9/11.” Following is a summary but it is advisable to visit the site and also view photos of the stealth submarine. France has developed an advanced diesel powered submarine. It was designed to run super quiet and escape detection by the current sensors placed by the U.S. along the bottoms of the oceans. It carries 16 cruise missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads. It can travel about 12,000 miles from home and remain submerged, and undetected, for up to 60 days.

France sold the first submarine to Pakistan about 4 years ago. But Pakistan does not require this weapon system for an adequate defense against India, its main rival. This stealth submarine is capable of striking coastal cities almost anywhere in the world. Pakistan also induced France to show the Pakistanis how to build a shipyard where they have already built their second submarine. In 18 months Pakistan will have their third stealth submarine.

Professor Bloom reminds us that the Muslims in Pakistan are highly radicalized – not all Muslims, but a very significant percentage. He also reminds us that historically a small number of radicals can seize control of a government away from the majority. It has happened before, in the 1930’s with both Germany and Japan, for example. He explains that Pakistani `moderation’, and that government, today depends very much on the survival of one leader, President Pervez Musharraf.

We recently learned that even under the `moderate’ Musharraf, Pakistan was proliferating nuclear weapons’ technology to other Muslim regimes. Bloom argues that bin Laden might wait until submarine number three is ready to then topple Musharraf, seize power, and acquire Pakistan’s 40+ nuclear warheads for mounting on the submarine’s cruise missiles.

At this point we will have intent plus capability. Osama bin Laden could then direct these submarines to incinerate some of our coastal cities such as Boston, New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. And in case we had any ideas about retaliation we could be advised that they have a lot more nukes ready to launch in case we do not immediately surrender.

The reader might well think that all this is pure nonsense. America is the world’s greatest superpower and while we cannot be 100% safe, it is still largely unthinkable to us (“a lack of imagination”) that those third world extremists could possibly mount a knockout blow of this magnitude.

Prof. Bloom has discussed all this with our intelligence people. Some take it seriously, some are highly skeptical and others say not to worry because our government is monitoring the situation. As Prof. Bloom says on his web site: “9/11 woke us up, a nuclear 9/11 could shut us down.”

Americans need to be asking tough questions of our government right now and demanding straight answers. What in the world is France doing selling these stealth submarines to Pakistan? Why does Pakistan need such a dangerous weapons system when it makes no sense regarding any threat from India? Why is the U.S. government allowing this potential threat to develop?

Now even Iran appears more confident and is becoming bolder as it moves rapidly towards long range nuclear capability. There are new threats by Iran to pre-empt and strike Israel and also American interests in the region and possibly beyond.

The stakes keep getting higher and higher. We cannot afford a nuclear 9/11 but realistically what are the chances that America will act in time? History is not encouraging. Never mind the bumbling and appeasement leading up to WWII and fifty million dead. After the bitter lessons of that horrendous conflict we still failed to completely block the proliferation of nuclear weapons to smaller rogue nations although we tried and we did slow down the process for a time. Twice we failed to stop Saddam Hussein from seeking nuclear weapons. First, in 1981 it was Israel, and not us, that neutralized the Osirak reactor. Second, after the first Gulf War we discovered Saddam Hussein was close to having a nuclear weapon.

We had fought only to evict him from Kuwait and not because we were adequately aware of his nuclear progress. We were very lucky! We bungled in dealing with the north Koreans who now have acquired both nukes and missiles. We failed to stop Pakistan from going nuclear and now we learn that Pakistan was also proliferating nuclear technology to other Arab states and to Iran. Today we observe a defiant Iran rushing to mass-produce nuclear weapons and we continue to dither with no clear firm plan for action as of this writing. And there are reports that Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia have shown some interest in also going nuclear.

And the longer we wait the weaker we look and the bolder become the rogue states in their quest for nuclear weapons. Whatever effort it would now take to stop Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, it will take far more effort next year. But where will America’s fortitude come from? We are politically divided at home with half the country hating President Bush and candidate John Kerry not offering to form a united national front on this issue.

Although western Europe is certainly nervous over Iran they have shown insufficient resolve to act decisively together with America. The U.N. has not shown the needed resolve. And Russia and China are acting to undermine American security in pursuit of their own imperial interests.

If the picture looks ominous it is not because all the good news is being withheld. Some will complain and attack the messenger. But are we better off pretending that this massive danger does not exist? This story is not a secret. There are a lot of people among our leadership who purport to be wise and courageous. Now is their time to come forward and lead this nation.

The post It’s France Again! appeared first on Truth News | News Without Manipulations.

UPI was a formidable competitor to the Associated Press until the 1980s, when it had 1,500 reporters and 200 bureaus around the globe. Since 1992, it has been owned by six Saudi Arabian families and now has 157 employees in Washington, London, Latin America and Asia–and few clients.

The wire service’s new owner is controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church and the founder of the Washington Times. “UPI is saved from bankruptcy and can look to the future optimistically,” said Arnaud de Borchgrave, former editor in chief of the Times, who became UPI’s president and chief executive in December 1998.

UPI, which still boasts its most famous staff writer, Helen Thomas, the grande dame of White House reporting, has faced three decades of steady decline in staff size and prestige. The United Press was founded in 1907 and became UPI in 1958 when it merged with William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service. It competed against its nonprofit counterpart, the AP, which it famously beat on Nov. 22, 1963, when it reported the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But within four years of its inception, UPI started bleeding money, and it hasn’t been able to stanch the flow, losing market share to television, AP and a shrinking base of newspapers.

In 1982, Tennessee entrepreneurs Douglas Ruhe and William Geissler took over the news service from the owners of the Scripps Howard newspaper chain. Under their ownership, UPI continued to lose money, eventually filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

“Clearly, UPI has been in a downward spiral for 30 years,” said John Morton, president of Morton Research Inc., a Silver Spring-based media consulting firm. UPI, like the Times, has been in the red for a long time, “but the Unification Church doesn’t do these things to make money,” he said.

De Borchgrave said UPI relies entirely on its Web-based presence, something the Times may try to utilize for its own Internet strategy. UPI’s current reach is difficult to determine because the service is resold through various vendors such as the Kyodo News Service in Japan, which in turn resells it to other organizations, he said.

Larry Moffitt, assistant to Dong Moon Joo, president of News World Communications, said “the Washington Times has a lot of assets that dovetail very well with a global network.” UPI, the Times and News World’s other publications will be able to carry content over a combined Internet presence, he said.

The Times, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper that competes with The Washington Post, is one of a host of business holdings owned by the Unification Church, dubbed the “Moonies” by critics, which is famous for marrying its followers in mass wedding ceremonies. In addition to the Times, church officials own Insight magazine, the Middle East Times, and Zambezi Times, as well as hotels, small publishing operations and a collection of spiritual and educational workshops.

In the Washington area, Moon’s organization own an estimated $300 million in commercial and political property, including a church on 16th Street in Northwest Washington.

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One obvious beneficiary of the proposal is the pharmaceutical industry, which is eager to sell the psychotropic drugs that undoubtedly will be prescribed to millions of American schoolchildren under the new screening program. Of course a tiny minority of children suffer from legitimate mental illnesses, but the widespread use of Ritalin and other drugs on youngsters who simply exhibit typical rambunctious, fidgety, and impatient behavior is nothing short of criminal. It may be easier to teach and parent drugged kids, but convenience is no justification for endangering them.

Children’s brains are still developing, and the truth is we have no idea what the long-term side effects of psychiatric drugs may be. Medical science has not even exhaustively identified every possible brain chemical, even as we alter those chemicals with drugs.

Dr. Karen Effrem, a physician who strongly opposes mandatory mental health screening, warns us that “America’s children should not be medicated by expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and dubious diagnoses.” She points out that psychiatric diagnoses are inherently subjective, as authors of the diagnostic manuals admit. She also is concerned that mental health screening could be used to label children whose attitudes, religious beliefs, and political views conflict with the secular orthodoxy that dominates our schools.

The greater issue, however, is not whether youth mental health screening is appropriate. The real issue is whether the state owns your kids. When the government orders “universal” mental health screening in schools, it really means “mandatory.” Parents, children, and their private doctors should decide whether a child has mental health problems, not government bureaucrats. That this even needs to be stated is a sign of just how obedient our society has become toward government.

What kind of free people would turn their children’s most intimate health matters over to government strangers? How in the world have we allowed government to become so powerful and arrogant that it assumes it can force children to accept psychiatric treatment whether parents object or not?

Parents must do everything possible to retain responsibility and control over their children’s well-being. There is no end to the bureaucratic appetite to rule every aspect of our lives, including how we raise our children. Forced mental health screening is just the latest of many state usurpations of parental authority: compulsory education laws, politically-correct school curricula, mandatory vaccines, and interference with discipline through phony “social services” agencies all represent assaults on families.

The political right has now joined the political left in seeking the de facto nationalization of children, and only informed resistance by parents can stop it. The federal government is slowly but surely destroying real families, but it is hardly a benevolent surrogate parent.

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This question has been tormenting scientists and politicians since the early days of nuclear energy. Proposals have ranged from storing radioactive material in polar ice sheets, burying it in the ocean floor, or even blasting it into space.

Although such ideas can sound amusing today, the amount of nuclear waste building up around the world is no laughing matter.

A pending treaty between Russia and the United States could provide a solution but faces resistance in both countries.

The agreement, which could go into effect this month, would enable the two nations to cooperate on civilian nuclear energy by removing Cold War restrictions in that sector.

It would allow the United States to transfer its spent nuclear fuel to Russia — an idea that has been under discussion for more than a decade. U.S. fuel that was used in power plants in third countries and remains under U.S. control could also be sent to Russia. Altogether, as much as 80 percent of all spent nuclear fuel scattered across the globe is U.S.-obligated.

Russian environmentalists have fiercely opposed the pact, which they say will turn their country into a nuclear wasteland.

“If this agreement comes into effect, it will lift the last hurdle to the transfer of spent nuclear fuel from countries such as Japan, Taiwan, or South Korea to Russia,” says Aleksei Yablokov, one of Russia’s top experts on nuclear safety who once served as an adviser on environmental issues to late President Boris Yeltsin. “Formally, this fuel would be reprocessed, but in practice it would simply be buried.”

Yablokov, along with dozens of prominent Russian nongovernmental groups, sent an open letter to U.S. legislators in July urging them to block the agreement and prevent Russia from becoming “an international radioactive waste dump.”

The Nuclear Waste Dilemma

Supporters say the 123 Agreement, so-called because it falls under Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, is a win-win deal potentially worth billions of dollars in trade. If it comes into force, the United States will gain access to Russia’s vast uranium fields while Russia will be able to offer its uranium-enrichment services to the lucrative U.S. market.

In terms of nuclear waste, Russian authorities estimate that spent-fuel-management services could generate $20 billion over a 10-year period. Russia’s willingness to take over foreign spent nuclear fuel, in turn, would be a boon to countries lacking permanent reprocessing and storage facilities.

These include the United States, where spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are stored at more than 120 temporary locations across the country.

U.S. President Barack Obama last month effectively scrapped a decades-old project to store the country’s millions of kilograms of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel inside isolated Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada. By writing the project out of his 2011 budget as too costly, Obama effectively left the United States without any long-term strategy for its growing nuclear-waste stockpile.

Concerns nonetheless remain in the United States about Russia’s ability to safely handle such vast amounts of nuclear material. Russian environmentalists have long warned that their country lacks the technology and infrastructure to operate a global disposal center.

“There certainly is a hope that, before the United States enters these long-term contracts, Russia would have the ability and the infrastructure to manage the waste in a responsible way,” says Steve Pifer, the director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative and an advocate of the 123 agreement. “But it’s hard to make the investment in infrastructure until you understand what possibility there is. You don’t just go ahead and build the infrastructure and then negotiate the contracts. It’s a process that is being worked out currently.”

Lingering Distrust

In Washington, a small group of Republican and Democrat members of Congress has rallied against the 123 Agreement with Russia. They fear Moscow could share the fruits of nuclear cooperation with traditional U.S. foes such as Venezuela, Syria, and particularly, Iran, where Russia helped build the Bushehr nuclear plant.

The agreement had been stalled on political grounds before U.S. President Barack Obama submitted it to Congress in May. His predecessor George W. Bush had initially signed the deal in May 2008 but withdrew it from Congress following Moscow’s brief war with Georgia three months later.

Since then, the U.S.-Russian “reset” has re-energized bilateral ties. Russia’s support for recent UN sanctions on Iran and its refusal to sell Tehran S-300 air-defense systems have also helped restore trust in Moscow. Many U.S. foreign policy experts predict the deal will pass without much difficulty.

It will automatically go into effect after 90 consecutive days in Congress unless lawmakers adopt a joint resolution of disapproval, which requires majority votes in both houses. If lawmakers sit for three more weeks this year the agreement could become law in December, otherwise it will have to be resubmitted next year to the newly elected Congress.

The idea to set up an international nuclear reprocessing and storage center in Russia is not new. The Russian Federal Nuclear Agency, Rosatom, has been promoting it for more than a decade. One of its arguments is that Russia, with its extensive uranium enrichment facilities left over from its Cold War nuclear program, is well placed to build and operate such a facility. Rosatom has also said it would use some of the revenues to upgrade its ageing nuclear facilities.

Despite a 2001 Russian law allowing the import of foreign spent nuclear fuel, Russia has so far been unable to access U.S.-controlled fuel due to the lack of a 123 Agreement.

Strong domestic opposition has also made Rosatom more cautious about publicly endorsing such plans in recent years.

“There is no word in the 123 Agreement about waste, spent nuclear fuel from the United States or American fuel sent to third countries,” Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov told RFE/RL. “Today, our stance is not to import any spent fuel of foreign origin to Russia as long as the economics of such deals are not fully calculated.”

100 Chornobyls

But Russian environmentalists say they are not duped.

Besides, the text of the 123 Agreement clearly cites “radioactive waste handling” as one of the areas in which Russia and the United States would be able to cooperate under the deal.

“What we are talking about here is chiefly irradiated, spent nuclear fuel, which is the world’s most dangerous radioactive high-level waste,” says Vladimir Chuprov, a nuclear expert with Greenpeace Russia. “Nuclear lobbyists have come up with all kinds of schemes to prove this will not constitute trade in nuclear waste. And according to the documents, to the law, it will not. But what is really taking place in Russia’s nuclear sites is the storage of foreign nuclear waste, in other words — trade in nuclear waste.”

Greenpeace says Russia is already home to some 10,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel inherited from the Soviet era. Some of it has been reprocessed, but the bulk remains buried at a facility close to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, one of the country’s six main burial sites.

Some experts estimate that in terms of radioactivity, the spent fuel currently stored in Russia is equivalent to at least 100 Chornobyls.

Then there’s depleted uranium, a byproduct of uranium enrichment also found in reprocessed nuclear reactor fuel. Russia has imported more than 100,000 tons of depleted uranium from Western Europe for reprocessing over the past 15 years.

If the 123 Agreement comes into force, Russians are likely to see nuclear facilities mushroom across their country, as Rosatom seeks to take pressure off its already overloaded existing sites.

According to environmentalists, the northern Murmansk region, the Siberian Krasnoyarsk region, the arctic Novaya Zemlya archipelago, and the Pacific Ocean’s Kuril Islands are among the Russian regions that could soon become new repositories for the world’s nuclear waste.

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