Stockpile

In the Cold War arms race, scientists rushed to build thousands of warheads to counter the Soviet Union. Today, those scientists are racing once again, but this time to rebuild an aging nuclear stockpile. Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are locked in an intense competition with rivals at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area to design the nation's first new nuclear bomb in two decades.

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to buy half a million dollars' worth of the antiviral drug Tamiflu to distribute to county rescue workers in the event of a human outbreak of bird flu, joining Los Angeles and a handful of other California counties stockpiling the drug. "I think it's encouraging that some of the counties are stepping up. To me, it's an investment in emergency preparedness," said Dr.

Global fears over bird flu have sent sales soaring for an antiviral drug once dismissed as a commercial dud, but the two companies responsible for the drug are locked in a bitter court battle over profits. Australian biotechnology firm Biota Inc. invented the drug Relenza in 1989, but the next year sold control of it to GlaxoSmithKline in exchange for about 6% of future sales. In 1999, the U.S.

Preparing for the possibility of a devastating flu pandemic, President Bush outlined a $7.1-billion plan Tuesday to provide enough vaccine for the nation and to create stockpiles of drugs to treat those who become infected. "There is no pandemic flu in our country, or in the world, at this time," Bush said in a speech at the National Institutes of Health. "But if we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare and ... many lives could be needlessly lost."

Re "A $3.9-billion first strike," Opinion, Oct. 7 The Bush administration seems intent on perfecting its bungling. Stockpiling Tamiflu, the only drug that has any effect on the avian flu, for "distribution" is a prescription for disaster. To be effective, the drug must be taken within 36 hours of contracting the flu. Getting to a doctor, being diagnosed, having the drug prescribed, then actually getting the drug would stretch way beyond that timeframe for almost everyone. The money would be better spent on developing a fast and accurate test and making the drug available over the counter.

Wholesale oil and gasoline prices took their sharpest post-hurricane drop as the stricken energy industry inched toward recovery Friday and foreign nations said they would supply 60 million barrels of petroleum products to aid the U.S. market. But the storm's effect continued to ripple through the U.S. economy. Motorists still faced record-high pump prices, some major airlines were pushed closer to bankruptcy, and farming, retail and other industries braced for a financial blow.

Some of the nation's senior nuclear weapons experts are warning that a move in the Senate to kill construction funding for a massive laser complex at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will erode confidence in the nation's nuclear weapons. The Senate is expected this week to approve an appropriations bill that would delete $146 million for further construction of the laser, known as the National Ignition Facility. The $3.

The United States' emergency fuel tank -- the Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- is months away from reaching its target amount of crude oil. The milestone is significant because it gives the country a larger energy-security blanket than ever to call upon in the event of a supply disruption. But the stockpiling of 700 million barrels of oil, which is scheduled for completion by the end of August, also could bring some immediate relief to the global energy market, analysts say.

A monthlong conference aimed at curtailing the spread of nuclear weapons ended in failure Friday after being scuttled by arguments among the United States, Iran and Egypt. Representatives of more than 150 nations convened at U.N. headquarters to seek ways to stop more countries from developing nuclear weapons, prevent terrorists from acquiring them, and get a renewed commitment from atomic powers -- especially the United States -- to significantly reduce their stockpiles.

The Irish Republican Army has preserved the option for violence by continuing to stockpile arms and recruit members, an international watchdog panel said Tuesday. Protestant loyalist militias also came in for criticism by the panel for the internecine killing of four members of various factions in the last 14 months.