Okay, you can come out from under the bed now. The United Nations says the nerve gas stored - unmarked and unidentified - in one of its offices for about 10 years posed "no immediate risk or danger." Neither were "toxic vapors" found in the air. Is this not completely reassuring?

No one seems to know why the stuff - believed to be phosgene, which killed a lot of folks back in World War I and, due to Saddam Hussein, more recently in Kurdish villages - was at UN headquarters instead of locked away in a lab. Apparently it had been brought back from Iraq by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, whose name is significantly bigger than its brain.

In the same offices were glass tubes containing "nuclear magnetic resonance materials." No threat there, for sure.

That the organization managed after days and days to ID the chemicals - only a file number was on the containers, and there are billions of UN file numbers - and to notify the U.S. government of possible hazards in the city's midst is likewise comforting. You agree, we're sure.