today

British intelligence officials believe that al-Qaeda is determined to attack the U.K. with a nuclear weapon, it emerged Monday. The announcement, from an officially organized British Foreign Office counter-terrorism briefing for the media, was the latest in a series of bleak assessments by senior officials and ministers about the terrorist threat facing Britain.

Bin Laden has been boasting about having nukes as long as anyone can remember, a lot of brief details here. For example, reports of Bin Laden having obtained nuclear suitcases, first surfaced in 1998, in various international papers and magazines. In 1996 members of the Chechen Mafia purportedly sold twenty of these nuclear suitcases in Grozny to representatives of Osama bin Laden and the mujahadeen. For the weapons, bin Laden paid $30 million in cash and two tons of heroin that had been refined in his laboratories in Afghanistan. The street value of the heroin was in excess of $700 million. But, Al-Qaeda are said to be even too cheap to pay a ($24.95) shareware fee for their bombs. Not at all moral.

There is a very detailed and interesting summary of the global nuclear state of play here, though IMO it needs some updating.

IMO: If all the Al-Qaeda stuff is much more than feeble puff, why have we not yet seen worse than fuel air bombs. Al-Qaeda initially planned to fly hijacked jets into nuclear installations, it was also said. None of it has happened yet. I'd be more worried about Iran.