ANKARA (ICBW) - A canister intercepted near the Turkish border with Iraq, and originally believed to contain more than 33 pounds of weapons-grade uranium, has been discovered to be a souvenir paperweight.

Turkish customs officials were at first alarmed when they shook the roughly egg-shaped container and observed the tell-tale "blizzard" effect displayed only by highly radioactive nuclear bomb raw materials and inexpensive "tchotchkes".

Inspectors' suspicions were further aroused by what they termed the "transparently false" shipping label on the object, believed to have originated in one of the former Soviet republics, despite the "Niagara Falls, Canada" inscription along the bottom.

When asked to explain the smiling Mountie figurine at the center of the clear plastic ovoid, officials shrugged and replied, "surely we're not the first people to wonder about the composition of that white stuff that seems able to snow over and over again inside these things."