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The planned detonation of 700 tons of conventional explosives in the Nevada desert next month was postponed indefinitely Friday because of fears over the possible spread of radiation. The detonation site for the blast, known as "Divine Strake," is at the Nevada Test Site, which is 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The plan was to detonate 1.4 million pounds of fuel oil and fertilizer -- 280 times the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The prospect has drawn critics, who say the explosion could kick radiation-laced soil into the air, and conspiracists, who say the blast is a front for testing new nuclear weapons.

Note: Many thanks to all of you who emailed expressing concern about Divine Strake and were part of the movement to have this test stopped. Together, we make a difference!

The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN. The US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient. The command force in Iraq...and the overseeing US general, had claimed "not to have ... received any weapons from Bosnia." A Nato official.. told Amnesty: "There is no tracking mechanism to ensure they do not fall into the wrong hands." The Moldovan air firm which flew the cargo out of a US air base at Tuzla, north-east Bosnia, was flying without a licence. The firm, Aerocom, [was] named in a 2003 UN investigation of the diamonds-for-guns trade in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Some of the firms used in the Pentagon sponsored deals were also engaged in illegal arms shipments from Serbia and Bosnia to Liberia and to Saddam Hussein four years ago. The Pentagon commissioned the US security firms Taos and CACI - which is known for its involvement in the Abu Ghraib prison controversy in Iraq - to orchestrate the arms purchases and shipments.

Divine Strake is the code name for a massive non-nuclear test planned for June 2. An explosion of 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil - ANFO - will send a mushroom cloud perhaps 10,000 feet into the Nevada sky. I suppose reasonable people can disagree about whether to test, but Utahns, downwind from so many nuclear tests that were supposed to be safe, yet turned out to be deadly, can be forgiven if they're wary. What makes me go nuclear is the use of "Divine" in the name. I've really had it with the Bush administration positioning things like they were ordered up by God. There are at least nine other divine tests on the books, including Divine Warhawk and, to really prove the point, Divine Hates. We ignore poor people...we turn our backs on genocide, and we spend our vast wealth and waste our sharp minds on war. Then we name the effort after deity. As if this experiment is ordained by God. Could this be why people hate us? We see people across the globe possessed by such a religious vehemence that their humanity is ruined. Crazed with bloodlust, they must destroy human life, American life, to prove God is on their side. Americans find this indefensible. Then why is President Bush's team putting the language of the holy to our war efforts? I can only wonder what God might really think of America's "Divine" projects. Who would Jesus bomb? If we fail to grasp that lesson, if we keep confusing the unholy with the sacred, our jihad looks a lot like theirs.

A Pentagon test at a Nevada site this June will likely create the first mushroom cloud seen in the state since the United States ceased above-ground nuclear testing in 1963. Mushroom clouds are commonly associated with nuclear blasts, but this cloud will come from the detonation of a 700-ton explosive charge designed to test new bunker-busting technologies. Most Nevada residents, however, will never see the cloud because the test will take place in the desert -- far away from population centers. The closest city, Las Vegas, is about 90 miles away from test site. Regardless, the military will put out the word to Las Vegas residents that they shouldn't be alarmed in the unlikely chance that they see a mushroom cloud on the horizon. Mountains surround the flat Nevada site where the test will be conducted. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency hopes the test -- called Divine Strake -- will help with the effort to develop weapons that can destroy deep underground bunkers storing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The yet-to-be built Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator has raised opposition from some members of Congress who worry the technology will open the door to a new generation of nuclear weapons.

The CIA is conducting a cyber-war game this week geared to simulate a major Internet attack by enemy computer hackers, an intelligence official said Thursday. Dubbed "Silent Horizon," the three-day unclassified exercise is based on a scenario set five years in the future and involves participants from government and the private sector. Online crime has exploded in recent years, a result of organized crime groups based in Eastern Europe. But investigators so far have uncovered few links to Islamic extremists.

Note: Do you think it is the terrorists who want to shut down the Internet, or might there be political elites who don't want their hidden agendas exposed?

The Pentagon is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to test weapons in space, marking the biggest step toward creating a space battlefield since President Reagan's long-defunct "star wars" project. The Defense Department's budget proposal...includes money for a variety of tests on offensive and defensive weapons. Arms-control specialists fear the tests will push the military closer to basing weapons in space than during Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s -- without a public debate of the potential consequences. The descriptions included in the budget request mark only what is publicly known about the military's space warfare plans. Specialists believe the classified portion of the $439 billion budget, blacked out for national security reasons, almost certainly includes other space-related programs. Under President Bush, the White House has emphasized what's known as "space dominance" -- the notion that the United States must command space to defend the nation, but the budget request marks a transition from laboratory theory to reality. The Bush administration has sought to keep the military's options open despite international opposition to weapons in space.

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities. When Mr Bush announced the suspension of the secret prison programme in a speech before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, some analysts thought he was trying to gain political momentum before the November midterm congressional elections. Former CIA officials said Mr Bush's hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret prisons going.

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2004, said Monday he is planning another bid because his party isn't pushing hard enough to end the Iraq war. The liberal, anti-war Ohio congressman said he was inspired to run because he disagrees with the way some of his fellow Democrats are handling the war, including approval of a proposal to spend $160 billion more on the conflict. "Democrats were swept into power on Nov. 7 because of widespread voter discontent with the war in Iraq," said Kucinich, 60. "Instead of heeding those concerns and responding with a strong and immediate change in policies and direction, the Democratic congressional leadership seems inclined to continue funding the perpetuation of the war." The anti-war message was also the cornerstone of Kucinich's 2004 bid, which drew support from some Hollywood celebrities. His previous presidential proposals also have included a national peace department and a single-payer, universal health care system.

Note: Coverage of the occasional successes of Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 Democratic primary campaign were clearly suppressed. When Kucinich took second place in Hawaii with 26% of the vote, almost twice the 14% of John Edwards, most major media gave Edwards name, but didn't even mention Kucinich, saying only that a "third candidate" took second place. The media seem not to like anti-war candidates.

The U.S. Marine Corps has threatened to punish two members of the military legal team representing a terrorism suspect being held at Guantanamo Bay if they continue to speak publicly about reported prisoner abuse, a civilian lawyer from the defense team said Saturday. The action directed at Lt. Col. Colby Vokey and Sgt. Heather Cerveny follows their report last week that Guantanamo guards bragged about beating detainees. The order has heightened fears among the military defense lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners that their careers will suffer for exposing flaws and injustices in the system. Defense lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners say the personal stakes are high and point to the Navy's failure to promote Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift after he successfully challenged the legitimacy of the Pentagon's war-crimes commissions. Two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled the commissions unconstitutional and lacking in due process, Swift was passed over for advancement and will be forced by the Navy's up-or-out policy to retire by summer. At least three other military defense lawyers for the 10 charged terrorism suspects have also been passed over for promotion in what some consider a subtle reprimand of their vigorous defense of their clients.

Eighty-nine Democratic members of the U.S. Congress last week sent President George W. Bush a letter asking for explanation of a secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq war in mid-2002. The timing of the memo was well before the president brought the issue to Congress for approval. The Times of London newspaper published the memo -- actually minutes of a high-level meeting on Iraq held July 23, 2002 -- on May 1. British officials did not dispute the document's authenticity.

Michael Berg, whose son Nick was beheaded in Iraq in 2004, said on Thursday he felt no sense of relief at the killing of the al Qaeda leader in Iraq and blamed President Bush for his son's death. The United States said its aircraft killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the insurgent leader who masterminded the death of hundreds in suicide bombings and was blamed for the videotaped beheading of Nick Berg, a U.S. contractor, and other captives. "I don't think that Zarqawi is himself responsible for the killings of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq," Berg said in a combative television interview with the U.S. Fox News network. Berg said Bush was to blame for the torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. "Yeah, like George Bush didn't OK the torture and death and rape of people in the Abu Ghraib prison for which my son was killed in retaliation?" Zarqawi's organization took responsibility for the execution of Nick Berg in May 2004. The video was published with a caption saying: "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American." When an Islamist Web site showed the video of a man severing Berg's head, the CIA said Zarqawi was probably the one wielding the knife. The father said he was not convinced. "I have been lied to by my own government," he told Reuters on Thursday.

Note: There are many very strange circumstances surrounding the beheading of Nick Berg. For a report from Australia's leading newspaper on this, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/nickberg

The chief of Amnesty International USA alleged Sunday that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is part of a worldwide network of U.S. jails, some of them secret, where prisoners are mistreated and even killed. "The U.S. is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons, into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite, incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families," Schulz said. "And in some cases, at least, we know they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed." A high-ranking Republican senator said Sunday that hearings on abuse allegations at Guantanamo Bay might be appropriate, and a top Democratic senator suggested closing down the prison. "Look, it's very difficult to run a perfect prison," Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on CNN's "Late Edition." "But we have an open country. We have hearings on a whole lot of different subjects. We might well have hearings on this."

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.