ACOMA,
NEW MEXICO-On the Navajo Nation, almost everyone you talk to either
worked in uranium mines themselves or had fathers or husbands who did.
Almost everyone also has multiple stories of loved ones dying young
from cancer, kidney disease and other ailments attributed to uranium
poisoning.
The
effects aren't limited to uranium miners and millers; whole families
are usually affected as women washed their husbands' contaminated
clothes, kids played amidst mine waste and families even built homes
out of radioactive uranium tailings.
Iran has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it has been building a previously undeclared nuclear facility to enrich uranium, raising fears that Tehran is closer to acquiring an atomic bomb than has been predicted up until now.
The presence of a secret second site - built inside a mountain near the holy Shia city of Qum - has been known about by American and other Western intelligence agencies for some time, although nothing has been revealed until now.
ANTI-URANIUM protesters have rallied in Fremantle this morning throwing yellow sand as international delegates arrive for uranium talks.
More than 120 people converged on the doorstep of the Global Uranium Conference, throwing dyed yellow sand - representing yellow cake or uranium concentrate - and demanding BHP's proposed $17 million Yeelirrie mine be scrapped.
Ban Uranium Mining Permanently campaigner Kate Vallentine said the protesters want to make it clear that uranium is too dangerous, too dirty and too risky.
In a Dine Creation Story, the people were given a choice of two yellow powders. They chose the yellow dust of corn pollen, and were instructed to leave the other yellow powder-uranium-in the soil and never to dig it up. If it were taken from the ground, they were told, a great evil would come.
