newstime digest

A descending chronological look at selected headlines from The Morrock News Service

11/22/01

OSAMA'S NUCLEAR DOCUMENTS -- A JOKE?

When a BBC correspondent filed video reports from what was supposedly a recently deserted al Qaida recruitment center in Kabul, Afghanistan, the newsman displayed documents that had been found in the compound, and he said they apparently described how to build a nuclear bomb. That report went quickly around the world. Now, though, the journal New Scientist (newscientist.com) reports that the documents shown in the video seem to be part of a famous satirical scientific paper, "Weekend Scientist: Let's Make a Thermonuclear Device," published as a gag by the Journal of Irreproducible Results in 1979. . . . Only a few parts of the document are visible in the video, but editors of the journal said the worrisome document matched their original. It appeared to have been edited, however, the journal said: "Some of the more obviously absurd parts of the original are missing from the document in Kabul, such as a paragraph starting 'in next month's column, we will learn how to clone your neighbor's wife in six easy steps.' " (Thanks, Bill Stonehill)

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