The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
United Nations - Hundreds of tonnes of high explosives are missing and probably looted from a former Iraqi military facility, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Monday. About 350 tonnes of material was missing from the former Al Qaqaa military installation ? once a key facility in Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear bomb. Included in the missing material are HMX and RDX, the New York Times reported on Monday. Those explosives can be used to demolish buildings, but can also be used to produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weaponry. RDX is considered the most powerful of the high explosives in military use. Both are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as Semtex and C-4. About five pounds of either plastic explosive would be enough to destroy a dozen airliners, experts say. Washington - With only nine days to go before the U.S. presidential election, political polls yesterday showed that neither President George Bush nor John Kerry has a clear lead. The poll found "likely" voters appear to favour Bush, with a count of 48 per cent compared with 46 per cent for Kerry. Beirut - A seven-year-old Lebanese boy was taken hostage in Iraq over the weekend, and his kidnappers are demanding $150,000 in ransom. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, hundreds of Lebanese people, many of them construction workers, have gone to Iraq looking for opportunities.
