Anthrax scientist commits suicide
It was reported today in the Los Angeles Times that Bruce E. Ivins, a bioweapons scientist at Ft. Detrick MD has died of an apparent suicide. Ivins died on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 according to an obituary published in the Frederick News-Post. According to the LA Times, Ivins was under investigation in connection with the 2001 anthrax mail attacks and “criminal charges were looming.”
According to the Associated Press, “a U.S. official says federal prosecutors investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks had planned to seek indictment and the death penalty” against Ivins.
Click here for a related story in the Washington Post.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.