Word: bremen
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...days later, at a railway station in Bremen, a 34-year-old German man was arrested trying to peddle a sample of plutonium to a journalist acting for the police. The seller had only a very tiny amount, .05 gram, but of such startling purity that experts said it probably came from a top-of-the-line Russian nuclear laboratory. Senior officials in Moscow reacted defensively, insisting that all their plutonium was accounted for and safely under guard. The accusation from Germany, blustered Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeni Mikenin, "is a provocation of the purest water...
...suggests that there are serious bidders out there. But there is no evidence indicating who they are. Three of the four samples of weapons materials that turned up in Germany were purchased by undercover agents in sting operations designed to trap the sellers or their couriers. Indeed, in the Bremen episode, the defendant's lawyer claims that his client too is a police operative. There have been rumors in Germany, but no proof, that the 6 grams found in May were acquired for a foreign government, possibly Iraq or North Korea. In fact, there is no evidence yet that anyone...
...them. Since 1991, German police have counted 440 cases of nuclear smuggling, and almost all have been stings. With so many agents posing as buyers, some skeptical officials wonder if they might be creating a demand. "There's no evidence of a real market for plutonium in Germany," says Bremen's chief prosecutor. He wonders whether "our interest in pursuing criminals is bringing danger into Germany...
German authorities disclosed the weekend arrest of a 34-year-old man for smuggling weapons-grade plutonium into Bremen, the fourth seizure in a widening scandal traced to ex-military contacts in the former Soviet Union. Last weekend police arrested other couriers who arrived on a flight from Moscow. They were carrying more than 10.6 oz. of plutonium-239, a substance so toxic that a few millionths of a gram can kill. Another seizure netted 4 kg, the largest amount ever discovered in private hands. Though German analyses reportedly show that all the plutonium came from the former Soviet Union...
Relatively few emigrants found the paradise promised by the ads and the letters home. The early arrivals were, by and large, poor, ill-schooled and young (two-thirds were between 15 and 39 years old). In Europe's principal ports of exodus -- Liverpool and Cork, Bremen and Rotterdam -- they were beset by thieves and hucksters, cheated by ship's captains (there was no set fee for tickets to America) and, until the age of steam, often even ignorant of where they would eventually land. If they survived the journey -- and as many as one-third died aboard ship or within...