UnCrudentialed: Utah's Department of Environmental Quality held up the license renewal for Envirocare of Utah, Inc., after it was discovered that the company engineer who had approved construction plans for 100 nuclear waste dumps had faked his credentials.

RoboCod: Lloyd's List International reports that US engineers have built an eight-foot-long robot tuna "to infiltrate and survey enemy defenses." The fake fish, fabricated from "foam ribs and thousands of aluminum scales covered with waterproof neoprene," can wiggle through the water at a speed of 4 knots. The goal is to build a version that can "dive to almost any depth" and travel 20 at knots (real tuna can hit 40 knots). Lloyd's notes that the remote-controlled weapon should prove "far quicker and more maneuverable than existing submarines, which find difficulty in wagging their tails."

Barrymore or Bury More? In what has been called the largest "mass hack" in computer history, a group of teenagers known collectively as Milworm infiltrated 300 websites run by nuclear and defense organizations around the world and plastered each home page with a picture of a mushroom cloud. An accompanying 800-word statement declared: "This mass takeover goes out to all the people out there who want to see peace in this world." The Milworm hackers provided links to a host of alternative sites devoted to such non-nuclear entertainments as Wimbledon, The World Cup and Drew Barrymore.

Do Not Pass, Glow Directly to Jail: A New York inventor is looking for someone to manufacture a new board game for people "tired of the standard real-estate-buying" games. In this game, players build nuclear power plants and attempt to turn a profit while avoiding a meltdown. The game is called "Fall-Out!" and is intended to raise "consciousness of the environmental and social issues related to the nuclear power industry." [Invention Submission Corp., Dept. 97-NTL-3682, 217 Ninth St., Pittsburgh, PA 15222, (412) 288-1300, ext. 2527.]

Department of Really Bad Ideas: Renfrey Clarke of X-USSR, an anti-nuclear campaign, and Reuters alert the Mole that Russian engineers hope to build "the world's first nuclear-powered underwater oil tanker." If it were actually constructed, the vessel would be used "under the Arctic ice cap."

Taken to Tusk: Youngsters from Crossroads and New Roads schools gave members of the Los Angeles Zoo Commissioner's board an earful last October. The boards' smiles faded quickly as 11-year-old Carly Blitz recalled a visit to the elephant exhibit: "One of them was bobbing his head nonstop, like a crazy person. [They] either stand or take a couple of steps back and forth, and that's it!" Tenth-graders Daniel Schuler and Rosa Flores recommended placing the pachyderms in a Tennessee sanctuary where the elephants could "walk 20 miles a day." Instead of exhibiting live animals, the kids suggested, the zoo should install computerized "virtual reality" elephants.

Bomb Milwaukee: Ethyl methylphosphonothionate - EMPTA, the chemical the US cited to justify its destruction of the Shifa Pharmacuetical Industries lab in Khartoum - is also produced by the Aldrich Chemical Co. in Milwaukee, which sells the chemical to researchers for $45 a gram. The US claimed that EMPTA could be used only to manufacture the deadly nerve gas VX. Aldrich Chemical has sold EMPTA to Mobil Corp. and the International Chemical Industries of America.

Gingrich's Raiders: Where did the GOP extremists come up with the idea of attacking the White House by blocking passage of the federal budget? Word around Washington is that it stems from a 1995 training session House Speaker Newt Gingrich arranged for a select group of GOP operatives who were dispatched to the Army Training and Doctrine Command (ATDC) at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Newt's troops also received further "revolutionary" training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The secret training session was revealed in August 1998 when the Pentagon's inspector general reported that the Defense Department picked up the entire tab ($15,186) for teaching "combat concepts" to the GOP. (The Mole attempted to learn if "combat concepts" covered the use of sexual blackmail to topple political leaders but the ATRC's on-line publications list is only accessible to military officers and defense contractors.)

DOE or Die: Antinuclear activists were outraged to receive a Department of Energy (DOE) survey in October. The questionnaire (prepared by Booz, Allen, Hamilton and the University of New Mexico and sent to opponents of DOE's plan to store spent reactor waste at Yucca Mountain) included the following questions: How often has your organization provided training for protest (civil disobedience/training for police confrontation)? How often has your organization participated in litigation over spent nuclear fuel issues? How is the organization funded? Susan Gordon of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability marveled, "Can you imagine DOE asking similar questions of the nuclear industry's trade associations?" and Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service [NIRS, 1424 16th St., NW, No. 404, Washington, DC 20036, (206) 547-3175] suggested: "If DOE wants to do something productive, it will stop trying to pretend it's the FBI and will instead put its scientists to work developing some new radioactive-waste options."

Any Carry-on Items? The passengers onboard a British Airways 747 flight to Montreal last June didn't know that the plane carried 280 kilos of uranium fuel from the UK's Dounreay plant, but the Mole knows. The hot cargo was stored only 30 centimeters from the rest of the baggage.

Clothes Encounters: On page 2 of its outdoor clothing catalog, The Orvis Company, Inc. [Route 7A, Manchester, VT 05254] highlights its campaign to protect the Chesapeake Bay and the birds of the Atlantic flyway. On page 50, Orvis invites shoppers to "Hold a French pigeon shoot indoors or out." The ad shows a toddler aiming an "over-and-under suction dart gun" at a pole topped with spinning metal pigeons. "When you score a hit, the pigeon falls over," Orvis explains. "Recommended for ages 10 and up."

Mole Kiss: To Judge John Marshall [George Allen State Building, Dallas, TX 75202] for ordering a halt to the Dallas Gun Club's traditional pigeon shoots. As many as 15,000 pigeons were caged for each shoot and an estimated 4,000 were shot from the skies during each event. Judge Marshall denounced the pigeon shoots as a disgrace to sportsmen.

EnviroLink Plea: The nonprofit EnviroLink Network [ELN, 5808 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15217, (412) 420-6400, www.envirolink.org] has provided free Internet access to more than 400 environmental groups since 1991. More than 150,000 people from 150 countries use the system each day. ELN has come under attack from a number of anti-green groups including the Land Use Group, the Blue Ribbon Coalition and the Sahara Club (which promotes off-road vehicle use in the wild). Check out ELN's services and then send a check out to help keep ELN humming.

Mole Kiss: To the interdenominational Christian Environmental Council [CEC, PO Box 7536, Boulder, CO 80306] for its October 13 resolution calling for the "end of all commercial logging on US National Forests." "Our Scriptures clearly teach that forests are a place where God is present," stated CEC Chair Ann Alexander. "Paying timber companies nearly a billion dollars every year to needlessly decimate these irreplaceable forests… is to commit a sin of greed and waste."

Mole Kiss: To the departed soul of Cleveland Amory, 81, founder of the Fund for Animals and tireless advocate "for those who can't speak." Amory was buried alongside his cat Polar Bear (the subject of Amory's best-selling book, The Best Cat Ever).