In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, who had worked at a nuclear facility in Israel, gave information about Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press. People had thought before that Israel had an advanced and secretive nuclear weapons program and collection, but now they knew for sure. Israel has never said that it does or does not have a nuclear weapons program, and Vanunu was kidnapped and smuggled to Israel, where he was convicted of treason and espionage.
Whether Vanunu was technically involved in espionage is debated: Vanunu and his supporters say that he should be called a whistle-blower (someone who was exposing something secret and illegal), while his opponents think that he is a traitor and that what he did helped enemies of Israel. After Vanunu left Israel, he did not give his information right away. He travelled for about a year before doing so.
In a 1999 report of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (called the Cox Report), it was revealed that U.S. security agencies thought there was nuclear espionage going on by the People's Republic of China (PRC) at American nuclear weapons design laboratories. The report said that China had "stolen classified information on all of the United States' most advanced thermonuclear warheads" since the 1970s, including the design of advanced warheads, the neutron bomb, and "weapons codes" which allow for computer simulations of nuclear testing (and allow China to advance their weapon development without doing its own tests). The United States apparently did not know of this until 1995.
The investigations described in the report eventually led to the arrest of Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at Los Alamos, who was at first accused of giving weapons information to China. The case against Lee eventually fell apart, however, and he was eventually charged only with mishandling of data. Other people and groups arrested or fined were scientist Peter Lee (not related to Wen Ho Lee), who was arrested for allegedly giving submarine radar secrets to China, and Loral Space & Communications and Hughes Electronics, who gave China missile secrets. No other arrests from the theft of the nuclear designs have been made.
In January 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist, admitted selling restricted nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. According to his testimony and reports from intelligence agencies, Khan sold designs for centrifuges used to enrich uranium and Chinese designs for a nuclear warhead, and sold centrifuges themselves to these three countries. Khan had previously been said to have taken gas centrifuge designs from a uranium enrichment company in the Netherlands (URENCO) which he used to help Pakistan's own nuclear weapons program get started. On February 5, 2004, the president of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, said that he had pardoned Khan. Pakistan's government says that they had no part in the espionage, but refuses to turn Khan over for questioning by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Bush airplane
A bush airplane is an aircraft serving far away areas of a country, usually the African, Alaskan, and Canadian tundra or the Australian Outback. They are used where the road system is not good, or where there are no roads. Many planes used as bush planes are made by Cessna, or other makers of small and medium-sized airplanes
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is a museum in Springfield, Illinois. It contains papers and exhibits about U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Much of the museum is made of dioramas, or re-creations of scenes from the life of Lincoln. These include scenes of Lincoln in Springfield, Lincoln in the White House, and Lincoln at Ford's Theater. They were designed by Bob Rogers, who used to work for The Walt Disney Company as a designer. Some historians did not like that the exhibits were designed by someone who had worked for Disney. They thought that Disney people do not tell American history the right way. Along with the dioramas are original artifacts of Lincoln, such as the first copy of the Gettysburg Address. The library's founding director was Richard Norton Smith, who wrote several books on American presidents. Its current director is Eileen R. Mackevich.
Run by the state of Illinois, the library opened on April 19, 2005. After three years, it had more than 1.5 million visitors.
Swoosie Kurtz
Swoosie Kurtz (b. September 6, 1944) is an American movie and television actress. She is from Omaha, Nebraska. She began her acting career in the late 1970s. She starred as Alex in the NBC drama "Sisters". Her career has been mainly on television, but Kurtz has had some Hollywood movies.
Fin Fang Foom
Fin Fang Foom is a supervillain that first appeared in 1961 in the #89 issue of Strange Tales. He was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He has the power to super strength, the ability to fly with his wings at supersonic speeds, and can also spew combustible acid mist from his mouth. Fin Fang Foom also made multiple appearances in the Iron Man comics.
Empty Nest
Empty Nest was an American sitcom that aired Saturdays on NBC beginning in the late 1980s and ending in the mid 1990s. Starring in the sitcom were Park Overall and Richard Mulligan. The show was distributed under Touchstone Pictures and Television.
Branchiopoda
Branchiopoda is a class of crustaceans. It is the sister group to the other crustaceans. They are mostly small, freshwater animals that feed on plankton and detritus. However, many of the Cladocera are marine.
Branchiopods have gills on most of the animals' appendages, including some of the mouthparts. The name means "gill-foot".
Barbara Mandrell
Barbara Mandrell (born 25 December 1948 in Houston, Texas) is an American country singer. During the 1970s and 1980s she had many top ten hits.
American Beauty (movie)
American Beauty is a 1999 American drama movie directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, an advertising executive who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, played by Mena Suvari. Annette Bening stars as Lester's materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane. Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, and Allison Janney also feature. Academics have described the movie as a satire of American middle-class notions of beauty and personal satisfaction; further analysis has focused on the film's explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, materialism, self-liberation, and redemption.
Ball began writing "American Beauty" as a play in the early 1990s, partly inspired by the media circus that accompanied the Amy Fisher trial in 1992. He shelved the play after deciding that the story would not work on stage. After several years as a television screenwriter, Ball revived the idea in 1997 when attempting to break into the movie industry. The rewritten script had a cynical outlook influenced by Ball's frustrating tenures writing for several sitcoms. Producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen took the script for "American Beauty" to the fledgling DreamWorks studio, which bought it for $250,000, outbidding several other production bodies. DreamWorks financed the $15 million production and served as its North American distributor. "American Beauty" marked acclaimed theater director Mendes' movie debut; courted after his successful productions of the musicals "Oliver!" and "Cabaret", Mendes was nevertheless only given the job after twenty others were considered and several A-list directors reportedly turned down the opportunity.