North Korea
SOUTH Korean military officials fear the North may be making preparations for a second nuclear test. They claim to have observed activities today at the original testing site.
Edinburgh Evening News 28th Oct 2006
Trident
MARGARET BECKETT, the foreign secretary, has reopened the controversy over Britain’s nuclear deterrent by calling for a public debate on whether the country still needs Trident missiles.
Sunday Times 29th Oct 2006
The Government was accused last night of covertly beginning work on a new nuclear warhead, despite ministers’ assurances that no decision on replacing the Trident nuclear deterrent had been made. The chief scientist at Aldermaston, the UK’s top-secret atomic weapons facility, has told potential recruits that “most of our research” is devoted to “the ability to provide a new warhead”.
Independent on Sunday 29th Oct 2006
THE secrets of Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent are feared stolen, the Sunday Express can reveal. It is claimed they disappeared from a high-security base in the US. CIA and FBI agents launched an inquiry after top-secret material was found under a mattress in a caravan near the base during a drugs raid.
Sunday Express 29th Oct 2006
Israel
AMID mounting fears that Iran is planning to obliterate their country, wealthy Israelis are shelling out on underground nuclear shelters in the gardens of their luxury homes.
Sunday Times 29th Oct 2006
Scotland
It’s Scotland’s Waste. Labour think they have scored a direct hit on the SNP’s nuclear policy, and they may be right. But Jack McConnell may also have deepened Labour’s own divisions over energy policy. Last week, SNP parliamentary leader Nicola Sturgeon insisted that an SNP government would not use the national deep waste repository in England to store Scotland’s nuclear waste, but keep the stuff above ground in Scotland. Jack McConnell says he was genuinely surprised to learn this.
Sunday Herald 29th Oct 2006
Letter: It would seem that when Jack McConnell stated that, as part of the Union Dividend, any nuclear waste that we have will “most likely” end up in the north-west of England, he was straying off the Labour Party script. The reaction from his Labour colleagues there suggest that this is hardly party policy and unlikely to be easily achieved. The likelihood of getting all the UK nuclear waste here in Scotland remains a distinct possibility.
Aberdeen Press and Journal 28th Oct 2006
Nuclear Waste
CONCERNED South Tynesiders are opposed to the borough ever becoming a dumping ground for nuclear waste.
Shields Gazette 28th Oct 2006
Energy Efficiency
As many as half of all new houses built in Scotland could breach energy-saving rules, blowing a gaping hole in government attempts to combat climate chaos. An investigation by the Sunday Herald has uncovered evidence that insulation and draught-proofing in new homes is often so poor that they fail to comply with building regulations. As a result they cause more of the pollution that is warming the globe.
Sunday Herald 29th Oct 2006
Privatisation
While the era of large-scale privatisations may be over, experts reckon that the current government could raise an additional £15bn if it sold all of the assets that are still on its books, such as British Energy, the Tote, the bookmaker, and Channel Four. The government’s own target, announced by Gordon Brown, the chancellor, earlier this year is to raise £30bn by 2010, but the bulk of this is expected to come from selling land and buildings, not business assets.
Sunday Telegraph 29th Oct 2006
