From London’s Evening Standard:

The threat of a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons is “real and imminent”, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said today.

Mohammed al Baradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it was a “race against time” to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear materials.

His words echo repeated warnings by Tony Blair of the danger posed by an alliance between rogue states and terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.

Mr Baradei raised the spectre of terrorists being able to assemble a “dirty bomb”. He said there was a real risk of uranium or plutonium falling into the wrong hands.

“We are actually having a race against time which I don’t think we can afford,” he told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace conference in Washington. “The danger is so imminent… so the sooner that we start, the better for everybody involved.”

In response to al Baradei’s warning, a dour-faced UN Secretary General Kofi Annan promised “increased and severe use of UN stationary– the good stuff, with the watermark,” while US Senator Teddy Kennedy muttered something about Abu Ghraib, then phoned-in an order to have the entire Kennedy compound placed under a giant, atmosphere-mimicking dome, one that rains Dos Equis and snows Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream.

In France meanwhile, Jacques Chirac, upon hearing the news, lit a Felipe Gregorio cigar and sniffed, “there are many shades to what you call ‘imminent,’ you simple-minded peasants.” Only when he said it, it came out in French.

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h/t INDC Journal

update: Andrew Sullivan asks, “Sure. But how does this imminent nuclear attack feel about gay weddings?”