"World leaders may pledge tighter controls over nuclear materials to keep them out of the hands of terrorists, according to the draft of a communique to be released at the end of their two-day meeting in Seoul."

"Fresh water supplies are unlikely to keep up with global demand by 2040, increasing political instability, hobbling economic growth and endangering world food markets, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment released on Thursday."

"The memory and attention problems plaguing thousands of veterans from the first Gulf War might be caused by low-level exposure to insecticides and nerve gas, said researchers at Georgia Health Sciences University."

"WASHINGTON, DC -- For decades, affluent families have flocked to Spring Valley, a quiet neighborhood hugging the northwestern boundary of the nation’s capital. True to its name, magnolias are blooming and daffodils carpet the yards. But during World War I, soldiers called it Death Valley. It was here that the Army cooked up chemical weapons, launched poison-packed mortar shells and sent gas clouds billowing over the fields."

"Ben Kessler, a student at the University of North Texas and an environmental activist, was more than a little surprised that an FBI agent questioned his philosophy professor and acquaintances about his whereabouts and his sign-waving activities aimed at influencing local gas drilling rules."

"President Barack Obama on Sunday told a pro-Israel lobbying group that 'loose talk of war' was only serving to benefit Iran because it was driving up the price of oil."

Coltan ore is valuable as a source of niobium and tantalum, metals key to many kinds of electronics. Coltan mining has helped finance war in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now new illegal coltan mining activity has sprung up in the remote Amazon jungles on the border between Venezuela and Columbia. It is controlled largely by armed militias and drug smugglers.

"Bird flu experts meeting in Geneva ruled that controversial research on a mutant form of the virus potentially capable of being spread among humans should be made public."

"In an almost unheard-of move, scientists who study the deadly H5N1 bird flu announced a 60-day voluntary moratorium on studying the virus to allow time 'to clearly explain the benefits of this important research and the measures taken to minimize its possible risks.'"

"STOCKTON, Utah — Gary McCloskey may have destroyed more chemical weapons than any man alive, but he barely reacted when the final weapons from the world’s largest stockpile of warfare agents came out of an incinerator.

"Federal officials have asked a biosecurity scientist panel to broadly review bird flu transmission research for public health concerns."

Despite Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, some global oil prices fell. It turns out Iran's influence on the international oil market may be weak, and its threats more an effort to head off international sanctions that will harm its own weakened petroleum economy. Shipping lanes are just one of many major strategic factors affecting the global oil market. Iran has, however, offered spurious ammunition to U.S. politicians crowing for US acts of war against it. Right now, the news media are taking Iran's threats more seriously than the oil market is.

"MONTREAL -- Weapons-grade uranium is quietly being transported within Canada, and into the United States, in shipments the country's nuclear watchdog wants to keep cloaked in secrecy."

"Two teams of researchers who have engineered deadly and pathogenic flu viruses have reluctantly agreed to withhold vital details of their work for national-security reasons -- the first time any scientific team has been asked to do so."

"Honeywell and fertilizer maker J.R. Simplot have agreed to build the first commercial facility for Sulf-N 26, a granular fertilizer that is comparable to ammonium nitrate but would be ineffective as a bomb material. Ammonium nitrate combined with fuel oil was used in the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995."