Doctrines Of Demons Growing Rapidly

The new millennium marks for many teens and young adults a renewed interest in spirituality. What type of spirituality? Christian? No. Islamic? No. How about an Eastern spirituality like Taoism? Wrong again. Try Satanism. That’s right. The occult movement of Satanism ranks number one among teens and young adults as their preferred spirituality.... The entertainment industry cleverly hammers the notion of white magic in inattentive minds. Take for example, CBS popular TV program, “Ghost Whisperer.” The show tells the story of an attractive young woman that chats with the dead. She uses her occult powers to help the dead finish pending matters with family and friends in this life before helping them cross over to the other side. Viewers can’t help but think this a wonderful way to help others. But is it really? Another very popular CBS TV program called “Moonlight” throws a positive spin on the occult. In this program, a tall imposing vampire works as a private detective to make amends for past crimes he committed as a vampire. He no longer sucks blood from the necks of the innocent. He now keeps a stock of fresh blood in his fridge to quench his thirst. How consoling. On the literary front, we find an entire plethora of books, magazines and columns that speak highly of the occult.

Plastic Trash Fouling Pacific Ocean

At the start of the Academy Award-winning movie "American Beauty," a character videotapes a plastic grocery bag as it drifts into the air, an event he casts as a symbol of life's unpredictable currents, and declares the romantic moment as a "most beautiful thing." To the eyes of an oceanographer, the image is pure catastrophe. In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

Christians Losing Foster child

They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 30 vulnerable children. But Vincent and Pauline Matherick will this week have their latest foster son taken away because they have refused to sign new sexual equality regulations. To do so, they claim, would force them to promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith. The 11-year-old boy, who has been in their care for two years, will be placed in a council hostel this week and the Mathericks will no longer be given children to look after. The devastated couple, who have three grown up children of their own, became foster parents in 2001 and have since cared for 28 children at their home in Chard, Somerset. Earlier this year, Somerset County Council's social services department asked them to sign a contract to implement Labour's new Sexual Orientation Regulations, part of the Equality Act 2006, which make discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal. Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages. They could also be required to take teenagers to gay association meetings. When the Mathericks objected, they were told they would be taken off the register of foster parents. The Mathericks have decided to resign rather than face the humiliation of being expelled. Mr Matherick, a 65-year-old retired travel agent and a primary school governor, said: "I simply could not agree to do it because it is against my central beliefs. "We have never discriminated against anybody but I cannot preach the benefits of homosexuality when I believe it is against the word of God." Mrs Matherick, 61, said they had asked if they could continue looking after their foster son until he is found a permanent home, but officials refused and he will be placed in a council hostel on October 26. She said: "He was very upset to begin with. We are all very close, but he's a mature young man and he's dealing with it." The couple, who have six grandchildren and one greatgrandchild, are both ministers at the nonconformist South Chard Christian Church.

Rare Asteroid To Collide With Earth?

By analyzing sunlight reflected from its surface, scientists say the asteroid Apophis -- which has a slight chance of colliding with Earth -- is a good match for a rare type of stony meteorite known as type LL chondrite. Meteorites with this mineral composition represent just 7 percent of the known space rocks that plunge to Earth. The finding, presented last week at an annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, could be useful in planning future missions to explore Apophis or in protecting Earth from a future impact.

Rabbi Revealed Name Of Messiah

A few months before Kaduri died at the age of 108, he surprised his followers when he told them that he met the Messiah. Kaduri gave a message in his synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, teaching how to recognize the Messiah. He also mentioned that the Messiah would appear to Israel after Ariel Sharon’s death. (The former prime minister is still in a coma after suffering a massive stroke more than a year ago.) Other rabbis predict the same, including Rabbi Haim Cohen, kabbalist Nir Ben Artzi and the wife of Rabbi Haim Kneiveskzy. Kaduri’s grandson, Rabbi Yosef Kaduri, said his grandfather spoke many times during his last days about the coming of the Messiah and redemption through the Messiah. As one of Israel's most prominent rabbis, shortly before he died, he wrote the name of the Messiah on a small note which he requested would remain sealed until now. When the note was opened, it revealed that Yehoshua, or Yeshua (Jesus), is the Messiah, who will appear at any time.

Scientists Make Powerful Antimatter Ray

Researchers at North Carolina State University have produced the world's most powerful antimatter beam. ‘There is a reactor in Munich, Germany, that has been generating those types of radiation beams for some time now, and our analysis of the data shows that we have exceeded what they have reported,’ Dr. Ayman Hawari, director of the Nuclear Reactor Program at North Carolina State, told the university's Web site. The beam, consisting of an intense burst of positrons, was generated at the school's PULSTAR campus nuclear reactor, which first went online in 1972. A positron is the ‘mirror image’ of an electron — it has the same weight and properties of the most basic atomic particle, but is positively rather than negatively charged.

China: U.S. missile shield threatens All

The placement of U.S. missile defenses in Europe will not ease global security concerns but will undermine the global strategic balance, the Chinese foreign minister said recently. Washington insists that the deployment of a radar in the Czech Republic and a missile interceptor base in Poland will protect the U.S. and its NATO allies from potential missile attacks coming from Iran or North Korea, despite Russia's objections. Speaking at a news conference after a meeting between foreign ministers of China, Russia and India, Yang Jiechi expressed hope that a new concept of global security, characterized by mutual trust and equal rights, could be established in the future. The Harbin meeting is the third stand-alone meeting of the foreign ministers from the three countries. New Delhi hosted the previous two meetings, which some experts and media said could be aimed at setting up a military-political alliance to counter the influence of the United States in the region. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at the news conference in Harbin that Russia has no plans to form a military union with India and China. He said Moscow is developing dialogue with the two Asian countries through bilateral as well as trilateral formats, within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and other structures. "We are striving to jointly resolve key issues of security through multilateral dialogue, primarily by political and diplomatic means," Lavrov said. "There is no alternative to a multi-polar and equal-rights cooperation in the world if we want to respond effectively to the existing threats," he said.

Greenland's ice sheet melts

From the air, Greenland's ice sheet, the second largest on Earth, appears to be perfectly still. But below the surface, the ice sheet is in constant motion, as ice built up in the interior pushes toward the coast in the form of massive glaciers. During warmer months, ice from these glaciers melts into the ocean. It's an age-old process that scientists say has speeded up in recent decades because of global warming. The fear is that melting ice from Greenland and other Arctic areas could cause sea levels to rise enough to flood low-lying cities, such as Shanghai, China, and New York City, displacing millions of people in the process. A recent report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of scientists from around the world, estimates the sea level rise by 2100 could be as much as 1½ feet. "That sea level rise is only based on melt from ice sheets, and does not include a new fast flow of ice we have detected in Greenland that is generating additional icebergs," said Dr. Konrad Steffen, a climate scientist with the University of Colorado, Boulder. Steffen estimates sea levels could rise three feet over the next century, a stark prediction that could wreak havoc around the world if it comes to pass. Greenland holds enough ice to cause sea levels to rise 23 feet if the entire ice sheet melted, a development few scientists expect to happen anytime soon. But global sea levels have been rising at the rate of three millimeters per year since 1993. For each of the past 17 years, Steffen has spent one month at a remote research site called Swiss Camp, located 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland. He monitors the changing ice sheet through a network of global positioning systems and weather stations, which have recorded a dramatic rise in temperatures since the mid-1990s. "When we came here in 1990, the first two, three years were actually colder than normal. Then in 1994, 1995, it started to warm steadily and since then, we've had a temperature increase during the winter months of 4.5 degrees centigrade, 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, which is very large, the largest temperature increase on earth," he said.

SB 777 - Here Come the Language Police

We have only to look at recent legislation in California to see what happens when the popular notion of “tolerance” crosses into the realm of law. In California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill in October 2007 that disallows the use of the words, Mom, Dad, husband and wife in California schools. The new language laws in California are an example of tolerance becoming militantly intolerant. But now gays and transsexuals are protected from any offence imagined or real. This is accomplished at the expense of offending over 95 percent of the heterosexuals and their families who reflect the make up of California schools. Is this tolerant?

US "Will Not" Let Iran Go Nuclear

The United States and other nations will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday. "Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. He said Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow them to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that "the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time." If Iran continues on its current course, Cheney said the U.S. and other nations are "prepared to impose serious consequences." The vice president made no specific reference to military action. "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," he said. Cheney's words seemed to only escalate the U.S. rhetoric against Iran over the past several days, including President Bush's warning that a nuclear Iran could lead to "World War III."

Microchips In Students School Uniforms

Students at a secondary school in South Yorkshire are being tracked by microchips sewn in their uniforms as part of a trial.The radio frequency identification system monitors pupils' movements, and automatically logs their attendance on the teacher's computer. It can also alert teachers if a student is likely to misbehave. The trial involves 10 students in whose uniforms this chip was embedded about eight months ago. Being used at Hungerhill School in Doncaster presently, the chip connects with teachers' computers to show a photograph of the students, data about their academic performance, and whether they are in the correct classroom. It can also restrict access to areas of the school. However, the new approach of tracking students' movement has drawn criticism from human rights campaigners. "Tagging is what we do to criminals we let out of prison early. It is appalling," Timesonline quoted David Cleater from Leave Them Kids Alone, which campaigns against the finger-printing of pupils, as saying. On the other hand, the school's head teacher, Graham Wakeling, has denied that they were adapting a "Big Brother" mentality. "The system is not intrusive to the pupil in the slightest. The benefit is that it provides the immediate registration of the pupil as they enter the classroom. This supports staff as they are getting to know pupils. All the information it provides is already stored on the school information management system," he said. He claimed that the children in the trial were the volunteers who are participating in it as a science project. A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said it intended electronic registration to log attendance on a schools database, not "logging every detail of every pupil via covert means".

Quantum Warfare of the Future

Spookytechnology encompasses all functional devices, systems, and materials whose utility relies in whole or in part on higher order quantum properties of matter and energy that have no counterpart in the classical world. These purely quantum traits may include superposition, entanglement, decoherence (along with the quantum aspects of measurement and error correction) or new behavior that emerges in engineered quantum many-body systems.

Will Beast Technology Will Be Safe

You may not know what RFID stands for, but you're probably using the technology on a daily basis. RFID (that is, radio frequency identification) is in passports, in electronic toll-collection tags, in credit cards, metrocards, library books and car keys. Like conventional bar codes, RFID chips store and relay information, and allow for the identification of commercial products — and, now, of house pets and people too. Human "tagging" was approved by the Food and Drug Administration to facilitate retrieval of private medical records, but the procedure has had few takers. It's still purely voluntary and last week, California Gov. Schwarzenegger sought to keep it that way, signing a bill that makes it illegal for employers to force workers to have RFID devices implanted as a means for receiving paychecks or government benefits.

Military To Use Killer Robots

Among the many changes in U.S. policy after 9/11 was one that went unnoticed by everyone except a few geeks: The military quietly reversed its longstanding position on the role of robots in battlefields, and now embraces the idea of autonomous killing machines. There was no outcry from the academics who study robotics—indeed, with few exceptions they lined up to help, developing new technologies for intelligent navigation, locomotion, and coordination. At my own institute, an enormous space is being out-fitted to coordinate robotic flying, swimming, and marching units in preparation for some future Normandy.

Creating Life In The Laboratory

And rumours abound that closest to the finish line in constructing a lifeform in the laboratory is US genome-entrepreneur Craig Venter's research team. The plan is to re-synthesise these DNA sequences from simple chemicals, stitch them together and create an artificial organism. Some believe the team may be on the cusp of doing just that. Dr Venter's work on synthetic life is described by some as "top-down", meaning that he is taking an existing organism and changing it to create something new.

EU To Launch 'Wise Men Committee'

The European Union is getting ready to resume work on establishing a Committee of Wise Men that will discuss the future frontiers of the 27-nation bloc —a proposal initially put forth by French President Nicolas Sarkozy targeting Turkey's membership— as EU leaders have reached an agreement on the main principles in Lisbon recently, and will stamp the mandate of the Committee at a European Summit in December.

Tony Blair: Permanent EU President ?

Tony Blair has been placed in the frame to become the first permanent President of the EU after France launched a campaign to install him in the powerful new Brussels job. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, touted the former Prime Minister as his preferred candidate after Gordon Brown and fellow leaders agreed the EU Reform Treaty, which establishes the new post from January 2009.

Future with Genetically Enhanced Humans

The new Nobel laureate, like his former mentor Watson, has spoken enthusiastically of using the genetic science he's helped advance to engineer biologically enhanced children. The prospect of a renewed, high-tech eugenics is extraordinarily controversial, but it is not just a fantasy. It is coming ever closer to technical plausibility, and for a disturbing number of influential scientists and eccentric futurists, it is an agenda.... The conferees were quite explicit. Watson -- hardly known for his shyness or tact -- proclaimed to the audience of nearly a thousand, "If we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we do it?" (As for the "better human beings" he has in mind, he told a British film maker in 2003 that he considers ten percent of children "stupid," and would like to see them genetically modified. "If you really are stupid, I would call that a disease," Watson said. He went on to argue for using genetic techniques to prevent the births of "ugly girls." "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty," he explained. "I think it would be great.") Another conference attendee, Princeton mouse biologist turned futurist Lee Silver, has elaborated on this frankly eugenic vision. In Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World (William Morrow: 1997), Silver eagerly imagines a future in which the appearance, personality, cognitive abilities, and sensory capacities of children become products of genetic modification. Silver acknowledges that the costs of such procedures would limit their widespread adoption, and predicts that over time society would segregate into castes that he dubs the "GenRich" and the "Naturals."

Canadians Can't Escape Big Brother

Canadians are hurtling toward a "wholesale surveillance society" where no phone conversation, e-mail exchange or instant messaging dialogue will ever disappear, thanks to new technology combined with corporate and governmental interests, warn leading privacy experts at an international privacy conference. "The notion that we could have conversations that disappear is, in fact, disappearing," said Bruce Schneier, author and chief technology officer of U.S.-based security firm BT Counterpane. "Everything we do today creates a transaction where it didn't before."

Iran To Fire '11,000 Rockets In Minute'

Iran warned recently that it would fire off 11,000 rockets at enemy bases within the space of a minute if the United States launched military action against the Islamic republic. "In the first minute of an invasion by the enemy, 11,000 rockets and cannons would be fired at enemy bases," said a brigadier general in the elite Revolutionary Guards, Mahmoud Chaharbaghi. "This volume and speed of firing would continue," added Chaharbaghi, who is commander of artillery and missiles of the Guards' ground forces, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

WW III: Biblical War of Gog and Magog

US President George W. Bush said a nuclear Iran would mean World War III. Israeli newscasts featured Gog & Magog maps of the likely alignment of nations in that potential conflict. Channel 2 and Channel 10 TV showed the world map, sketching the basic alignment of the two opposing axes in a coming world war, in a manner evoking associations of the Gog and Magog prophecy for many viewers. The prophecy of Gog and Magog refers to a great world war centered on the Holy Land and Jerusalem and first appears in the book of Yechezkel (Ezekiel). On one side were Israel, the United States, Britain, France and Germany. On the other were Iran, Russia, China, Syria and North Korea. US President Bush said recently during a press conference that Iran attaining nuclear weapons raises the risk of "World War III." "If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it'd be a dangerous threat to world peace," Bush said. "So I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested [in preventing a nuclear Iran]…I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.” Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iran on October 16 and slammed the US’s refusal to rule out the use of force against Iran’s nuclear project. "Not only should we reject the use of force, but also the mention of force as a possibility," he said. Russia has blocked tougher UN sanctions in the UN Security Council, where it has veto power.

Russian Plan To Dupe America Is Working

Russia cannot threaten the United States. She is poor. She is weak. She is starving. She is in chaos. Think again, says Stanislav Lunev. Col. Lunev is the highest ranking military intelligence officer ever to have defected from Russia. He did so in 1992 after the Soviet Union dissolved and Boris Yeltsin had come to power. At the time of his defection Lunev was living in Washington with his wife, working a cover job as a journalist for TASS, the Russian news agency, while doing his real job: spying on America.

No Christmas at Seattle airport

After unceremoniously removing all of its Christmas trees in the middle of the night last year, the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport this season will dispense with any religious symbols and just celebrate "winter." A panel that formed after the Port of Seattle Commission removed the airport's 17 red-ribboned trees, decided the new decorations will feature a grove of birches in Dacron snow, hung with crystals and mirrors to reflect low-energy lights, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. The port drew international attention last year when its five elected commissioners reacted to a lawsuit threat by a rabbi who wanted to erect a menorah alongside the largest of Christmas trees. Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky said, contrary to widespread news reports, that he never intended to have the trees removed. The Jewish leader said he was horrified by the decision, which spurred anti-Semitism and angry accusations. The port returned the trees about a week later after Bogomilsky told officials his organization, the Northwest Friends of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic Orthodox group, was not going to sue. This year, however, the port is taking no chances. "What I was hoping for was something that was cheerful and evocative of the holiday spirit, and as much to do with nature and evergreen trees as they could," Commissioner Pat Davis told the Seattle paper "We wanted to move forward without something that would get us back into any sort of controversy, and I think it is very creative. I hope the public likes it – it will take a while to get used to." The $300,000 airport display – now being assembled in a warehouse – will include foam migrating birds above the birch trees, which will be dusted periodically with non-toxic snowfall to the sound of wind chimes. The port said it rejected the menorah last year because it didn't want other religious groups pressing to have their own symbols' included.

Pandemics from Outer Space Possible?

Europe's Intelligencia Discuss The Future of Humans in Space The benefits of creating such a cross-disciplinary forum is that it was able to give guiding insight into how humankind will face possible issues, issues that can be best addressed in the light of modern understanding of historical events, including the philosophical and theological consequences of contacting alien intelligences, the marketing of space exploration, and the legal frameworks that will be needed if space-faring nations are to cooperate peacefully. Among the fascinating questions will be the possible impact of vastly superior forms of extraterrestrial intelligence on the world's religions.

Latest UFO Evidence Is Overwhelming

They are here, the government knows it and the proof is overwhelming. That's the sentiment to be presented by UFO researcher Robert Hastings at Clark University's Sackler Center on Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 8 p.m. Hastings's interest in UFOs stretches back to 1967, when he was at an air traffic control tower at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. "Five UFOs were tracked on radar for several minutes and jets were launched to intercept them," Hastings says. "I later learned from Air Force sources that as the jets closed in, the UFOs performed a vertical ascent and left the area at enormous speed — far beyond the capability of any aircraft." True, it sounds like your typical UFO story and perhaps something from "The X-Files," but according to Hastings, evidence released by the government over the past few decades makes an overwhelming case that UFOs are not a matter of science fiction, but of documented fact. Offering declassified government documents, eyewitness accounts, photo evidence and testimony from former and retired military personnel, Hastings says many people, although familiar with UFO lore, are not aware of the breadth of information now available.

Self-Improving Chips with Speed Warping

A new, patent-pending technology developed over the last five years by UCR’s Frank Vahid, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, called "Warp processing" gives a computer chip the ability to improve its performance over time. The benefits of Warp processing are just being discovered by the computing industry. A range of companies including IBM, Intel and Motorola’s Freescale have already pursued licenses for the technology through UCR’s funding source, the Semiconductor Research Corporation. Here’s how Warp processing works: When a program first runs on a microprocessor chip (such as a Pentium), the chip monitors the program to detect its most frequently-executed parts. The microprocessor then automatically tries to move those parts to a special kind of chip called a field-programmable gate array, or FPGA. “An FPGA can execute some (but not all) programs much faster than a microprocessor – 10 times, 100 times, even 1,000 times faster,” explains Vahid. “If the microprocessor finds that the FPGA is faster for the program part, it automatically moves that part to the FPGA, causing the program execution to ‘warp.’” By performing optimizations at runtime, Warp processors also eliminate tool flow restrictions, as well as the extra designer effort associated with traditional compile-time optimizations.

Superbugs: Where Are the Wonder Drugs?

The latest threat to America's health is a drug-resistant strain of bacteria, Streptococcus pneumoniae, that causes ear infections in children as well as pneumonia and meningitis in adults. It was first spotted in Czechoslovakia 20 years ago and wended its way across Europe, growing steadily resistant to more and more antibiotics. The latest and scariest sighting: Nine children in Rochester, N.Y., came down with a strain that shrugs off all 18 antibiotics approved for kids. The Rochester doctors who found the bug beat it into submission with Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ ) Levaquin, a drug for adults, but only after it left one child with permanent hearing loss.

Pandemics from Outer Space Possible?

Europe's Intelligencia Discuss The Future of Humans in Space The benefits of creating such a cross-disciplinary forum is that it was able to give guiding insight into how humankind will face possible issues, issues that can be best addressed in the light of modern understanding of historical events, including the philosophical and theological consequences of contacting alien intelligences, the marketing of space exploration, and the legal frameworks that will be needed if space-faring nations are to cooperate peacefully. Among the fascinating questions will be the possible impact of vastly superior forms of extraterrestrial intelligence on the world's religions.

His Mission Is To Hasten Armageddon

Muslims do believe an apocalypse will occur at the end times, which will be a time of total world chaos. At that time, a savior will appear, known as the Mahdi (also called the Hidden Imam or the Twelfth Imam). The Mahdi will usher in an era of peace and justice, as well as cause Islam to be the only religion on Earth. The Mahdi will rule for seven years and judge the world after that, according to Shiite belief. Ahmadinejad has publicly declared that one of his missions is to hasten and prepare for the return of the Mahdi. In a speech in Tehran on Nov. 16, 2005, Ahmadinejad said the primary goal of his regime was to "pave a path for the glorious reappearance of the Imam Mahdi." How? By the "creation of chaos on Earth." The way to hasten Mahdi's return, Ahmadinejad believes, is to hasten Armageddon.

Is The U.S. Ready For China?

Though our leaders are loath to admit it, the United States is almost two decades into what is likely to prove a protracted geopolitical rivalry with the People's Republic of China. The PRC is fast acquiring military capabilities that will allow it to contest America's long-standing preponderance in the Western Pacific. In Asia and beyond, Beijing is working assiduously to enhance its own influence while at the same time seeking quietly to weaken that of the United States. Meanwhile, China continues to run huge trade surpluses with the United States, accumulating vast dollar holdings and advancing rapidly up the technological ladder into ever more sophisticated industries.

Prescribe 'the pill' at middle school?

Students who have parental permission to be treated at King Middle School's health center would be able to get birth control prescriptions under a proposal that the Portland School Committee will soon consider. The proposal would build on the King Student Health Center's practice of providing condoms as part of its reproductive health program since it opened in 2000, said Lisa Belanger, a nurse practitioner who oversees the city's student health centers. If the committee approves the King proposal, it would be the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available to some students in grades 6 to 8, said Nancy Birkhimer, director of teen health programs for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Most middle schoolers are ages 11-13. Although students must have written parental permission to be treated at Portland's school-based health centers, state law allows them to seek confidential health care and to decide whether to inform their parents about the services they receive, Belanger said. Proponents say a small number of King students are sexually active, but those who are need better access to birth control. Of 134 students who visited King's health center during the 2006-07 school year, five students, or 4 percent, reported having sexual intercourse, said Amanda Rowe, lead nurse in Portland's school health centers. "This is a service that is totally needed," Rowe said. "It's about very few kids, but they are kids who don't have the same opportunities and access as other students." The percentage of middle school students in Maine who reported having sexual intercourse dropped from 23 percent in 1997 to 13 percent in 2005, according to the Maine Youth Risk Behavior Survey. "Thirteen percent is still more than one in 10 students," Birkhimer said.

Staph Germs Toll Is Higher Than Thought

A dangerous germ that has been spreading around the country causes more life-threatening infections than public health authorities had thought and is killing more people in the United States each year than the AIDS virus, federal health officials reported recently. The microbe, a strain of a once innocuous staph bacterium that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics, is responsible for more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated. Although mounting evidence shows that the infection is becoming more common, the estimate published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association is the first national assessment of the toll from the insidious pathogen, officials said. "This is a significant public health problem. We should be very worried," said Scott K. Fridkin, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC.

Terror Of The Superbug Explosion

Official figures show that in the first three months of 2007 more than 15,500 patients caught stomach bug Clostridium difficile. According to the Health Protection Agency, that was a rise of almost a quarter on the previous three months. And there are fears that by the end of the year the number of patients infected could pass 60,000, a dramatic increase on the 44,000 cases in 2004. Just a day after it emerged that 90 patients had died from the bug in one hospital trust alone, the full extent of the danger became clear. A damning report by the Healthcare Commission revealed that shoddy care, dirty wards and a lack of nursing staff had speeded the death of more than 300 patients at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. Last night, air ambulance staff were refusing to land patients at Maidstone, one of the trust’s three hospitals, over safety fears. Kent Air Ambulance said it had written to the trust “to obtain guarantees and assurances that the infection problem is under control”. Even health officials admit the bug is “endemic” across the NHS and could prove tough to stamp out.

Preparedness Key, Even If Aliens Attack

Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Sunday said preparedness will be key for all crises, even an attack from outer space. During a town hall meeting in Exeter, a young questioner asked the former New York mayor about his plan to protect Earth. "If (there's) something living on another planet and it's bad and it comes over here, what would you do?" the boy asked. "Of all the things that can happen in this world, we'll be prepared for that, yes we will. We'll be prepared for anything that happens," said Giuliani.

Police Can Disable New Cars on Demand

General Motors plans to equip 1.7 million of its 2009 models with a system that allows OnStar operators to cut engine power in the car if the police request it. The system was demonstrated in Washington, D.C. today. GM's OnStar system already contains built-in GPS tracking that would allow police to find any OnStar-equipped vehicle. With the new technology, if the police request it, an OnStar operator will inform the occupants of the vehicle and then cut power. The engine will be slowed to idle speed, to allow the driver to move to the side of the road. Brakes and other electrical functions of the vehicle will still work.

'Metamaterial' May Be Cloaking Device

The new substance is a "metamaterial" that negatively refracts light. Metamaterials with this property raise the theoretical possibility that light could bend completely around an object, making it effectively invisible. Scientists are awed by the implications of metamaterials. "These materials would comprise a complete -- almost magical -- mastery over light," said David Schurig, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, who did not participate in the new research. "They would enable not just invisibility cloaking, but arbitrary control over the richest information channel humans employ. One thing I know for sure, it will happen sometime between now and the technological singularity." Previous studies have led to mathematical models for cloaking devices, but much of the work remains on theoretical physicists' drawing boards because of manufacturing constraints. Schurig designed the first conceptual invisibility cloak. The new material, developed by a Princeton-based research team, is the next step in putting those models to work in the part of the spectrum we can see. The material operates in the infrared spectrum, which is between the lower frequency rays that cook hot dogs in your microwave and the higher frequency rays that allow you to see your food. Higher frequencies -- the ones we can see -- mean smaller wavelengths, and that means researchers have to miniaturize their already microscopic designs, a process at the bleeding edge of current technology. "An optical cloak could eventually be built that would work through the full range of frequencies," said Willie Padilla, a Boston College physics professor.

A Plan For Eternal Life, New Technique

Sandberg and his fellow transhumanists plan to bypass death by using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), genetic engineering and nanotechnology to radically accelerate human evolution, eventually merging people with machines to make us immortal. This may not be possible yet, the transhumanists reason, but as long as they live long enough - a few decades perhaps - the technology will surely catch up.

Program To Fund Human Cloning

A pro-life law firm that was behind the lawsuit against California's stem cell research agency for allegedly violating various state laws says the program is now backing human cloning. The Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF) says the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is going further than just funding stem cells. California voters created CIRM after approving Proposition 71, which authorized $3 billion in state bond revenue for stem cell research programs. The law firm is speaking out because CIRM has announced it will begin selling the bonds to finance more research and the firm wants Californians to know where there money will go. CIRM created a furor when it initially supported only embryonic stem cell studies, which involve the destruction of human life. LLDF told LifeNews.com that California residents now have another reason to be upset at the state panel. “What most people may not be aware of is the fact that researchers in California have actually been given the 'green light' to clone living human embryos for the purpose of harvesting their embryonic stem cells,” the group's director Dana Cody said.

"Biotech Bugs" Stop Spread of Diseases

Scientists are researching ways that genetically modified (GM) insects could be used to stop the spread of diseases that affect livestock and crops, reduce pesticide use and create pharmaceutical proteins, said speakers at a "Biotech Bugs" conference held recently in Washington. However, speakers said, more regulations need to be developed, and must be clear and coordinated among government agencies to ensure that the development of improved insects includes adequate risk assessments. "U.S. regulatory policies will be an important building block in the development of international policies regarding GM insects," according to a report called "Bugs in the System?" from the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, which sponsored the meeting. Researchers are particularly looking into ways that genetically modified insects could be used to control pests, saving millions of dollars in pest control costs and crop losses, and dramatically reducing the amount of pesticides applied to fields, according to a Pew report. Scientists are hoping to improve insects by increasing their ability to feed on weeds and pest insects through longer life spans, better toleration of climatic differences and greater resistance to disease and pesticides, according to the report. The report summarizes other science-based insect modification efforts. For instance, scientists want to improve a genetic program currently being used in California to control pink bollworms, a threat to cotton fields. They want to engineer the pest able to carry a gene that would prevent pest's offspring from maturing.

Survey 'Entire Human Instruction Book'

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), just announced grants totaling more than $80 million over the next four years to expand the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, which in its pilot phase yielded provocative new insights into the organization and function of the human genome. "Based on ENCODE's early success, we are moving forward with a full-scale initiative to build a parts list of biologically functional elements in the human genome," said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "The ENCODE pilot, which looked at just 1 percent of the human genetic blueprint, produced findings that are reshaping many long-held views about our genome. ENCODE's effort to survey the entire genome will uncover even more exciting surprises, providing us with a more complete picture of the biological roots of human health and disease." While the sequencing of the human genome was a major scientific achievement, it was just the first step toward the ultimate goal of using genomic information to diagnose, treat and prevent disease. In recent years, researchers have made major strides in using DNA sequence data to help find genes, which are the parts of the genome that code for proteins.

Trees With Rabbit Genes Speed Cleaning

Genetically modified plants that can break down pollutants may be an effective way to clean soil contaminated by industrial chemicals and explosives used by the military, according to scientists. Tests on six-inch tall GM poplar cuttings which had a gene from a rabbit inserted into them showed that they could remove up to 91% of a chemical called trichloroethylene from the water used in their feed. This chemical, used as an industrial degreaser and one of the most common contaminants of ground water, was broken down by the plants into harmless byproducts more than 100 times faster than by unaltered plants.

The Island of Dr. Moreau For Real

Fact, it has been said, is stranger than fiction. And fiction can be pretty strange. Take, for instance, an 1896 novel by famous English thinker, H.G. Wells, "The Island of Dr. Moreau." As one can see from the date of its publication, the book was written on the threshold of a new century, and Wells, famous as a "futuristic" thinker, was trying to look ahead. The premise of the novel is that a scientist, on a secluded island, undertakes experiments to combine humans and animals. One might call this simply a wild and crazy idea, but a harmless one for a novel, an idea producing plenty of chills and thrills for readers and for moviegoers. After all, it would never happen in real life. Well, hold onto your hats. It is about to happen. Not here (at least, not yet), but in England. On Sept. 5, a government agency (called the Human Fertilization and Embryology Agency or HFEA) decided to let scientists, mad or otherwise, create human/animal hybrids. Let me repeat: Science fiction will become science fact very soon; and man and beast will be combined into one.

Orwells 1984 In 2007

In "1984," the novel that most baby boomers read in high school, George Orwell creates a theoretical modern-day government with absolute power - a state in which government, called the Party, monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the law. On Sept. 26, a federal judge in Eugene ruled that crucial parts of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow federal surveillance and searches of American citizens without demonstrating probable cause.... In "1984," the Party barrages citizens with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the mind. The giant telescreen in every room monitors behavior. People are continuously reminded of government's surveillance, especially by omnipresent signs reading, "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." Individuals are encouraged to spy on each other, even children on their parents, and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party - i.e., government. "1984" is happening in 2007.

A New Search For Alien Signals

The first radio telescope dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has formally started operations. The first phase of the Allen Telescope Array, which is being built near Hat Creek, California, US, has begun functioning with 42 radio antennas. When complete, the ATA will have 350 dishes, each about 6 metres wide. Until now, the SETI project has relied on time borrowed from instruments like the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and has had little control over the extent and nature of the observations. The Allen Telescope Array, however, named for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who donated seed money for the project, will allow SETI astronomers to survey the skies for signs of alien intelligence 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "This will be the first time that we can actually have a telescope [with] the characteristics we can determine," says Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research in Mountain View, California.

France to strengthen video surveillance

France will triple its number of video surveillance cameras by 2009 as part of the fight against terrorism and street crime, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said recently. Alliot-Marie told Le Monde newspaper video surveillance was relatively undeveloped in France. "The latest attacks in London were prevented thanks to their video surveillance system, (which is) 10 times more developed than ours," she told Le Monde. An official report put the number of authorized cameras in France at about 340,000, Le Monde said. Alliot-Marie said the Paris public transport network would expand its surveillance network to 6,500 cameras, while systems operating in provincial cities would be progressively linked to police control rooms. France stepped up security measures after the 2005 attacks in London's transport system that killed 52 people. French authorities have said gang violence is a growing problem in Paris, which has seen repeated clashes between rival gangs in recent months. Alliot-Marie last month announced the creation of a special police unit on youth violence and said information collected by video surveillance should be shared among different services. French police hope a mini spy-in-the-sky drone the size of a toy glider will help them track rioters and fight crime.

Sinclair Reveals Holy Grail Location

Why build a chapel so close to a church, he asked. There’s no reason, unless …. “Rosslyn Chapel was not built as a place of worship. It was built as a repository for secrets,” Sinclair said. Evidence that the chapel is actually a reconstruction of the Temple of Herod only fuels the mystery. “All the pillars are laid out to a precise plan according to ancient history,” according to Sinclair, and “the ritual references carved into the stone have been created as a clue for the individual who will one day unlock the mysteries of Rosslyn.” If there are indeed mysteries to be unlocked, unlocking them may lead to some of the most earth-shattering archaeological discoveries in history. Sinclair is hopeful that, in due time, those mysteries will be unlocked, he said. He makes no claims as to what the Holy Grail actually is, but he believes he knows where to find it. “The Holy Grail is down below in the vaults,” Sinclair assured. “Believe me, the Holy Grail is down below.”

'God' censored from Disney ad

The producer of an upcoming animated Hollywood feature starring the creator of the universe, "The Ten Commandments," claims Radio Disney censored the words "chosen by God" from a radio ad for the film. Promenade Pictures founder and CEO Frank Yablans – a former partner of Walt Disney himself – told WND he had no choice but to go ahead with Radio Disney's version of his ad after paying for the spot. "I could go to jail for what I would like to do to them," the studio pioneer said. "It's just outrageous that in the United States of America they won't allow the name of God." The line "Chosen by God" was replaced in the 30-second spot with the line "From Promenade Pictures." The non-profit Christian legal group Liberty Counsel announced today it has launched a petition drive to ask Radio Disney to "stop its ridiculous censorship of the word 'God.'

Ex-Military Officer Speaks Of UFOs

Former Air Force officer Robert Salas will never forget his first UFO experience while on active duty at a nuclear missile site. "While a UFO was hovering over my site and being observed by many airmen, all my missiles were disabled; in addition, there was another site where other UFOs were observed and its missiles were disabled," recalled the Ojai resident and retired captain, a featured speaker in August at the 38th annual International UFO Symposium in Colorado. "It is a true and important story because the public is not being informed about these events."

Mexico's Fox wants North American Union

Mexico's former President Vicente Fox is making no secret of his desire to promote a "North American Union" to compete economically with Europe and the Far East. In a promotional tour for his new book, "Revolution of Hope," Fox told NPR's "Talk of the Nation" audience: "That's part of my Americas dream, that we can build our future together. We are partners with United States and Canada through NAFTA. There are other blocs in Latin America, but at the very end a continental trade agreement and union on the long term would be a way to develop ourselves and to be able to have the standards and level of living that we all need." Fox shocked many in the U.S. earlier in the week when he told CNN's Larry King that he and President Bush had agreed to work toward a common currency not only for North America but for Latin America as well. It was possibly the first time a top official of Mexico, Canada or the U.S. openly confirmed a plan for a regional currency. Fox explained the current regional trade agreement that encompasses the Western Hemisphere is intended to evolve into other previously hidden aspects of integration. He admitted he and President Bush had agreed to pursue the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas – a free-trade zone extending throughout the Western Hemisphere, suggesting part of the plan was to institute eventually a regional currency.

Aliens forced Americans from the Moon

One of Russia's central television channels, RTR, has recently aired a documentary about US astronauts who allegedly came across extraterrestrial civilizations. The film showed Russian ufologist Vladimir Azhazha and astronomer Yevgeny Arsyukhin telling that expeditions to the Moon launched within 1969-1972 allegedly came across UFOs. The researchers state that flying objects of extraterrestrial origin were persistently spying on American Apollos. They said the expeditions to the Moon looked very much like a race and presented a film demonstrating a luminous object closely following an American spaceship. Records of communication between astronauts and the Mission Control Center were also included into the film but they were absolutely inaudible as they had been purposefully jammed by Americans. They expected that the expeditions would find something astonishing on the Moon and with the view of keeping their communication with the surface secret they encoded their messages to the MCC. When the records of communication were later deciphered it turned out that the US missions came across lunar bases, remains of space vehicles and deserted towns on the Moon. The film stated that lunar creatures would not tolerate the presence of Earth dwellers for long. When Americans brought a dummy car to furrow Moon craters, the creatures living on the satellite began to demonstrate their furious protest against the US presence on the Moon. Filmmakers said that green dwellers of the Moon told Americans to go home as they wanted to keep secret the sublunar bases that they used to observe the life on the Earth. It was alleged that NASA was afraid of conflicting with a highly developed civilization and immediately stopped the program. Does the film sound believable? In a couple of days, Americans demonstrated their documentary about the Apollo expeditions, In the Shadow of the Moon, with records of the flights to the Moon that were specially processed after the video archives of the Moon program had disappeared. Is it true that the archives were lost? It seems that the CIA wanted to wipe out tracks of a contact between US astronauts and extraterrestrials.

Airport To Test Body-Scan Machines

Passengers at the Phoenix airport will start getting searched today with the help of a technology that creates revealing images of people's bodies to find hidden weapons. Travelers at the city's Sky Harbor International Airport will receive body scans from a machine the Transportation Security Administration is testing to see if it can be used throughout the USA. The millimeter-wave machine uses similar technology to a controversial X-ray scanner, called backscatter, that the TSA delayed for several years because of privacy concerns.

Life Extension Technologies For The Rich

The development of successful life-extension technologies will be a reality within 30 years, but the application of such stunning advances will be tightly restricted by a ruling elite, and eventually may be used as a justification to completely wipe out humanity, according to some of the scientific community's leading pioneers. A recent article carried by the Methuselah Foundation, an organization that advocates the development of life extension and nanomachinery technology, concludes that life-extension technology and "(greatly) augmenting our biology with nanomachinery" will have arrived by the 2030's, but that "The new bio- and nanotechnologies of the 2040s will be massive overkill for the "simple" task of repairing the damage of aging." The report concludes that the greatest obstacle in the field is not the development but the application of such technology, suggesting that living for hundreds of years is inevitable only for the wealthy elite.

Over 900 Hospitals Now VeriChip Ready

VeriChip Corporation, a provider of RFID systems for healthcare and patient-related needs, announced today that more than 200 new healthcare facilities registered in the VeriMed(TM) Patient Identification System at the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) 38th Annual Scientific Assembly. This brings the total number of hospitals that are registered in the VeriMed system to over 900. Additionally, the Company now has more than 200 protocol-adopted hospitals in its network, thereby surpassing its full-year stated goal of 800 hospital registrations and 200 protocol adoptions. Scott R. Silverman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of VeriChip, said, "I am extremely proud of our team's noteworthy achievement, which emphasizes the importance of the VeriMed Patient Identification System in improving access to identification and medical records information in an emergency situation. By handily beating our stated goal for our network build-out for the full-year 2007 in October, our proof of concept is stronger than ever, especially with the robust enrollment in our VeriMed system by those at this year's ACEP conference. This record-breaking two-day enrollment shows strong support by the medical community that this is a safe and reliable medical device. Once the new healthcare facilities are protocol-adopted, we will have significantly expanded the infrastructure necessary to support our marketing activities designed to drive VeriChip's adoption. VeriChip's goal is to become the leading provider of RFID systems for people in the healthcare industry. The Company recently began marketing its VeriMed(TM) Patient Identification System for rapidly and accurately identifying people who arrive in an emergency room and are unable to communicate. This system uses the first human-implantable passive RFID microchip, the implantable VeriChip(TM).

Separate Dimensions In Space & Time

Now just as we’re getting to grips with time’s weirdness, one daring physicist has dropped another bombshell. “There isn’t just one dimension of time,” says Itzhak Bars of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “There are two. One whole dimension has until now gone entirely unnoticed by us.” Does this mean we can look forward to extra hours and seconds" Or will time’s second dimension play havoc with our notions of the past, present and future" Or is Bars, in fact, a few quarks short of a proton" One thing Bars’s extra time dimension does appear to reveal is the existence of deep and unexpected connections between disparate systems, such as atoms and the expanding universe. Such connections could point the way to a “theory of everything” that unites all the physical laws of the universe into one. Even better, Bars claims his theory has true predictive power and can be tested in upcoming particle physics experiments. Physicists are no strangers to extra dimensions. For decades, theorists attempting to unify the forces of nature have been adding extra dimensions of space to their equations. As early as the 1920s, mathematicians found that moving up to four dimensions of space, instead of the three we experience, helped in their quest to reconcile electromagnetism and gravity. Later, in the 1980s, came various superstring theories, which describe the universe in terms of tiny one-dimensional strings vibrating against a backdrop of nine space dimensions, six of which are curled up so tightly we cannot see them. A decade or so on, theorists recognised the assorted string theories as different facets of a single idea called M-theory that adds yet another dimension, taking the total to 11: 10 of space and one of time. Meddling with space, at least, is fair game. So how come so few have dared to tinker with time" There are two good reasons why adding extra time dimensions makes theorists queasy. For a start, when you insert time into your equations it tends to come with a negative rather than a positive sign. A second time dimension only makes this problem more severe and leads to events happening with a negative probability, a concept which is meaningless, says Bars. Worse, it gives the green light to the idea of time travel

Automated Object Recognition Technology

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency awarded Lockheed Martin a $4.9-million, 18-month program to use brain-inspired technologies to develop a system that will speed an image analyst's job by 100 times. Called Object Recognition via Brain-Inspired Technology (ORBIT), the system will use electro-optical (EO), light detection and ranging (LIDAR), and brain-inspired technologies to automatically recognize objects in urban environments from ground and aerial surveillance. ORBIT will fuse commercial airborne EO and LIDAR sensor data into a three-dimensional, photorealistic model of the landscape. Its brain-inspired object-recognition technology will automatically generate lists of recognizable imagery, like mailboxes and dumpsters.

Earth getting wetter and stickier

Greenhouse gases are making the earth's atmosphere wetter and stickier, which may lead to more powerful hurricanes, hotter temperatures and heavier rainfall in tropical regions, British researchers reported on October 10. The findings, published in the journal Nature, are some of the first to show how human-produced greenhouse gases have affected global humidity levels in recent decades and could offer clues on future climate change, the researchers said. "It is another piece of the puzzle that climate change is happening and we are influencing it," said Nathan Gillet, a climate researcher at the University of East Anglia. Human emissions of gases such as methane and carbon dioxide that trap heat in the atmosphere are widely blamed for changes in the climate. Scientists say average global temperatures will rise by 2 to 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, causing droughts, floods and violent storms. Warmer air can hold more water vapour. "It has been predicted for a long time that humidity would increase with greenhouse gas increases," said Gillet, who led the study. "But this is the first study that shows a significant human impact on surface humidity," he said in a telephone interview.

China's Air Defense Nearly Impenetrable

While the US has been tied up fighting the war in Iraq, China has made huge gains toward modernizing its military and improving its equipment, and its air defenses are now nearly impenetrable to all but the newest of US fighters, the senior US military official in Japan said. Lieutenant General Bruce Wright, commander of the roughly 50,000 US forces in Japan, Washington's biggest ally in Asia, said in an interview this week the Iraq War is reducing the availability of US troops and equipment to meet other contingencies and eating up funds that might be used to replace or upgrade planes that are being pushed to their operational limits. China, meanwhile, is filling the skies with newer, Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27 "Flankers" and Su-30s, along with the domestically built J-10, a state-of-the-art fighter that Beijing just rolled out in January.

EU To Be Much Stronger World Player

A group of European politicians and intellectuals have started a new think tank aimed at pushing EU capitals to creating a "more coherent and vigorous" foreign affairs policy in an attempt to make Europe a stronger player on the global stage. The new think tank - European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) - was launched on Tuesday (October 2) by fifty founding members such as former prime ministers, presidents, European commissioners, MEPs and ministers as well as intellectuals, business leaders, and cultural figures from the EU member states and candidate countries. They include Martti Ahtisaari, former Finnish president and current special UN envoy for Kosovo; Joschka Fischer, former German foreign affairs minister; Gijs de Vries, former EU counter-terrorism coordinator; Timothy Garton Ash, renowned professor of European studies; and Bronislaw Geremek, MEP and former foreign minister of Poland. They call on European governments "to adopt a more coherent and vigorous foreign policy in support of European values and interests backed by all of Europe's power: political, cultural, economic and – when all else fails – military." The centre will be based in seven EU capitals - Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Sofia and Warsaw - and headed by Mark Leonard - a writer and former director of Foreign Policy at the UK-based Centre for European Reform. "Europe needs to come of age. We need to stop complaining about what others are doing to the world, and start thinking for ourselves. We want a can-do foreign policy, where European power is put at the service of European values," he said in a statement after the launch.

Al-Qaedas weapons of mass destruction

Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network remains bent on getting nuclear and biological weapons to unleash apocalyptic destruction, a new White House report on national security warned October 9. The report, which called for redoubled anti-terror coordination at all levels of government, said Al-Qaeda remains "the most serious and dangerous manifestation" of extremist threats against the United States. "We also must never lose sight of Al-Qaeda's persistent desire for weapons of mass destruction, as the group continues to try to acquire and use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material," it said. The White House called anew on the Democratic-led Congress to expand the power of US intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists "while protecting the civil liberties of Americans." And following the administration's failure to push immigration reform through Congress, the report called for improved capacity to find and expel illegal aliens, "including criminals and potential terrorists." The appraisal followed a "National Intelligence Estimate" in July that warned that Al-Qaeda is back in business, sparking Democratic complaints that the war in Iraq has proven a dangerous distraction. The NIE, which prefigured much of Tuesday's report, said Al-Qaeda had regrouped in Pakistan "and would not hesitate" to use weapons of mass destruction on the United States.

Sanhedrin Launched In Tiberias

A unique ceremony - probably only the second of its kind in the past 1,600 years - is taking place in Tiberias today: The launching of a Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish-legal tribunal in the Land of Israel. The Sanhedrin, a religious assembly that convened in one of the Holy Temple chambers in Jerusalem, comprised 71 sages and existed during the Tannaitic period, from several decades before the Common Era until roughly 425 C.E. Details of today's ceremony are still sketchy, but the organizers' announced their intention to convene 71 rabbis who have received special rabbinic ordination as specified by Maimonides. An attempt to reconvene the Sanhedrin was made several centuries ago in Tzfat. The body in fact ordained such greats as Rabbi Yosef Karo, the author of the classic Jewish Law code Shulhan Arukh. However, the opposition of other leading rabbis soon forced the end of the endeavor. One of the leaders of today's attempt to revive the Sanhedrin is Rabbi Yeshai Ba'avad of Beit El. He said that the 71 rabbis "from across the spectrum received the special ordination, in accordance with Maimonides' rulings, over the past several months." Rabbi Ba'avad explained that the membership of the new body is not permanent: "What is much more crucial is the establishment of this body. Those who are members of it today will not necessarily be its members tomorrow. But the goal is to have one rabbinic body in Jerusalem that will convene monthly and issue rulings on central issues.

Navy Wants Unmanned Heavily Armed Fleet

The Navy has just released its "Master Plan" for robotic ships -- "unmanned surface vessels," in sailor-speak.The idea is to produce a whole bunch of these USVs, to help fight "the Global War on Terror, Irregular Warfare, and conventional campaigns." And to give guns to as many of these sea-bots as possible. The Navy wants to develop four main classes of USVs. Three of them would be armed. The three-meter long "X-Class" machines would be for "low-end" snooping and reconnaissance; like a robotic jet ski, with a camera attached. The "Harbor Class" would be based on the Navy's seven meter long rigid-hulled inflatable boats, or RIBs. These unmanned Zodiacs would be used for dropping mine countermeasures, and fending off boat-borne bad guys with a mix of "lethal and non-lethal armament." The "Snorkeler Class" is a stealthy, seven-meter submersible that would stay in the water for up to a day at a time, tow ing mine- and sub-finding-gear -- and maybe even carrying a torpedo or two. Lastly, there's the "Fleet Class," capable of staying in the water for 48 hours straight, and reaching speeds of up to 35 knots. The eleven-meter long USV would be used to do everything from carrying commandos to shore, jamming enemy communications, neutralizing mines, and delivering a "Harbor Class" drone. Naturally, it would carry its own guns and torpedoes, too, so it could conduct 'high end' surface warfare missions."

Military Use Of The Occult, Remote Viewing

At the moment, the most the US army will publicly admit to is its use of psychological operations. Soldiers in are trained to 'expect the unexpected' to the utmost extreme. Until 1995, the CIA sponsored research institutions with millions of dollars to experiment with psi phenomena for use of warfare. Remote viewing and psychic work took place at Stanford Research Institute at Menlo Park, California and in a rattly old building somewhere far from the civilized world at Fort Meade in Maryland. The CIA closed this down in 1995, after then President Bill Clinton ordered more openness in the army. The public was astonished to find out what had taken place without their knowing for two decades. The agents had been using their 'special powers' to trace missile silos, submarines, POWs, and MIAs. What was even more stunning was the razor sharp likeness of the files and a film that was released a year earlier, Stargate.

Mobility-scooter Killbot Unveiled

UK deathboffinry spinoff firm Qinetiq says it plans to deploy Transformers combatbots in the Wars On Stuff. In a release October 10, the company invites the world to admire MAARS™ (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System). MAARS is made by Qinetiq's recent American acquisition, Foster-Miller, who are perhaps most famous for their TALON line of military/police/first-responder robots. TALONs are small tracked ground-crawling droids which can be fitted with a variety of different field-handy deelies: articulated gripper claws, specialised bomb-disposal weapons, Taser electric cattleprod guns, etc. TALON SWAT can be configured with "a choice of weapons for a lethal or less-than-lethal response", while the SWORDS* TALON can have an M16 assault rifle, M240 or M249 machinegun, Barrett .50 sniper rifle - good for shooting people hiding behind truck engine blocks - or really get serious with a multi-shot grenade or rocket-launcher. Given this fearsome arsenal of robotic weaponry, one does wonder what on earth the new MAARS™ droid might bring to the party. Qinetiq says that it "uses the more powerful M240B Medium Machine Gun" - puzzling, as the existing bot could already do that - "and has significant improvements... compared to its SWORDS predecessor... The new Digital Control Unit significantly improves... safety margins..." Still, it's "Transformer-like". Perhaps it can disguise itself as, oh, a Segway or an electric wheelchair scooter or something - only revealing its true slaughter-machine nature at the last moment. That would make sense, kind of - the thing's chassis is broadly the same as that of a modern mobility scooter.

Insect Drones 'Spotted' On U.S. Streets

Sightings of robotic-looking insects -- combined with reports that the Pentagon is working on cyborg insects -- is prompting people to speculate that the government has perhaps already deployed this super-cool technology. As the Washington Post reports in an article that truly made my day: "I heard someone say, 'Look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects." Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too. "I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' " That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Air Force Readying Cyber Strikes

There's been a "radical change in U.S. policy when it comes to its cyber warfighting stance," according to Inside the Air Force. A few months back, Pentagon officials were saying that "the military had no plans to shift its cyber warfare focus from a defensive mindset to an offensive one." But now that the Air Force has declared themselves the service in charge of all things electronic, "high-ranking service officials say they are developing offensive strategies to attack enemies’ cyber assets."

GPS Tracking Rolling Out Fast

Aeris and GPSPursuit together announce that the companies provide innovative tracking and monitoring solutions for enterprises, packages, people, vehicles and other valuable assets. Aeris's network enables GPSPursuit's GPS Tracking Units to deliver tracking and monitoring services to commercial fleets, providing fleet managers with on-the-fly dispatching and the ability to monitor vehicles to increase efficiency and decrease operation costs. The GPS Tracking Units are also used as personal tracking devices for Alzheimer's patients, children and valuables.

Robo-Chopper for DARPA's Super-Spy Eye

Boeing has announced that its autonomous robotic stealth chopper, the A160T, will be the initial carrying platform for a new US airborne surveillance payload. The radical new spy system will not be so much an aerial camera as an all-seeing insect-style compound bugeye able to simultaneously look at many different things.

UK 2017: Under Surveillance

It is a chilling, dystopian account of what Britain will look like 10 years from now: a world in which Fortress Britain uses fleets of tiny spy-planes to watch its citizens, of Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice, of an underclass trapped in sink-estate ghettos under constant state surveillance, of worker drones forced to take on the lifestyle and values of the mega-corporation they work for, and of the super-rich hiding out in gated communities constantly monitored by cameras and private security guards.

Birth certificate PIN to track pupils

All pupils registering for examinations under the Ministry of Education must provide their Personal Identification Number (PIN) that is on the new electronic birth certificate. The examinations for which the PIN have become necessary include the National Tests, the National Certificate of Secondary Education (NCSC), the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), the Caribbean Examination Council and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE). Communications Specialist at the Ministry of Education, Mervyn Crichlow, told the Express recently that the PIN would be used to track pupils throughout their school life. "Your unique number on your new electronic birth certificate will also become your student identification number so we would have a database on all our students," Crichlow said. "It can also help us better facilitate the placement and transfer of students, gauge their attendance at school, their progress and achievements and provide better support. "It would also be useful to us in monitoring the movement of pupils from school to school so if a pupil has a particular challenge, we would know where they are," Crichlow.

GM Mosquito 'Could Fight Malaria'

A genetically modified (GM) strain of malaria-resistant mosquito has been created that is better able to survive than disease-carrying insects. It gives new impetus to one strategy for controlling the disease: introduce the GM insects into wild populations in the hope that they will take over.

High-tech tags seen as blessing

As if shopping for new clothes wasn’t stressful enough, soon there will be talking mirrors in the dressing rooms. Well, they might not talk, but they will be able to communicate. These mirrors (some are called MagicMirrors) receive signals from a tag affixed to the hanger or whatever you might have in your hand and help you find matching accessories or outfits. Technology has advanced to the point where tags on items in stores have a code embedded in them that transmits signals, via radio waves, to a reader that links with a database with all kinds of information. The technology, called radio frequency identification, or RFID, is an emerging product for which business strategists are saying the early birds stand to gain market share for implementing the technology. RFID has been in use by manufacturers and shippers of all kinds of goods from oil to food as a cost-efficient method of tracking the location of inventory and monitoring shelf life of things like food. One major retail company, Wal-Mart, mandates all its suppliers use the technology. The Department of Defense also mandates its use by all of its suppliers. But the tags are disabled before the merchandise leaves the store, Wal-Mart officials have been quoted as saying. The Bush administration has proposed putting an RFID chip in each soldier that would replace the traditional dog tags. In recent years, veterinarians and other animal caregivers have implanted chips to track animals. The health care and pharmaceutical companies use chips to track drugs and medical supplies, ensuring they are kept in environmentally sensitive locations when indicated, such as organ transplants or blood being kept cold. Mega-stores are putting RFID chips in shopping carts to help shoppers locate items they are looking for without going up and down each aisle. One Alzheimer’s facility in Florida is implanting RFID chips in 200 volunteers who are clients of the organization in case they wander, get lost, or confused or hurt and wind up in an emergency room. Doctors at the area hospitals would be able to read the chips and know whom to contact as well as the person’s medical history. A public beach in New Jersey that charges admission provides a wristband to each paying beachcomber. Security then will be able to use a reader from several feet away to locate a chip instead of confronting people to find out if they’ve paid.

Al Qaeda trying to boost efforts in U.S.

Al Qaeda remains the "most serious and dangerous" terrorism threat and is expected to boost attempts to place agents inside the United States, a new White House report said on October 9. The report, titled "National Strategy for Homeland Security," said al Qaeda has protected its top leadership, replenished operational lieutenants and "regenerated a safe haven" in Pakistan's tribal areas. White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend, asked whether al Qaeda infiltration efforts were under way, replied: "There's no question. They're not only under way, they're ongoing and have been." The White House report incorporated findings of a national intelligence estimate released earlier this year. "Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al Qaeda senior leadership, the group likely will intensify its efforts to place operatives here in the homeland," it said.

Biometric ‘Kiddyprinting’ Takes Off

Almost half of all local authorities in Scotland have schools using fingerprint or palm-print machines to record the identity of pupils. A Sunday Herald survey revealed the speed at which biometric systems have spread since a palmprint reader was piloted at a Paisley primary school just one year ago. Since then, 14 educational authorities have introduced biometric identification, with at least two others planning to put such systems in place. The technology is currently used to record information about library accounts and register pupils' school meal status in the hope that anonymity will help tackle the stigma of free school dinners. Despite fears that such systems are eroding civil liberties by creating unnecessary banks of identity data, experts believe "kiddyprinting" will continue to expand in the near future.

Weather Modification

Water is prized in western Kansas, where aquifers are suffering and farms are miles wide and generations deep; a scant half inch of rain can mean the difference between a successful season and a failed one. But when it comes in the form of fist-sized balls of ice known as hail, water's more than a menace. It can damage and even destroy crops. That's where the Western Kansas Weather Modification Program and other cloud-seeding operations across the western U.S. come in. The WKWMP is among about 10 programs that tinker with the weather — either by trying to cut the size of hail or boost rainfall and snowpack. They do it largely by shooting up storm clouds with silver iodide or dry ice mixtures.

7 years jail for UK gay hate preachers

People convicted of stirring up hatred against homosexuals face up to seven years in jail under a new law. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, told MPs that existing prohibitions against race and religious incitement would be extended to cover ''homo-phobic" behaviour. His statement prompted fears among Christian organisations that they could be prosecuted for preaching that homosexuality was wrong. There would also be concern that playground insults or jokes about gays could be caught by the new offence unless strict safeguards were included. Mr Straw said he would amend the Criminal Justice Bill to make it unlawful to use threatening words or behaviour on the grounds of sexual orientation. "It is a measure of how far we have come as a society in the last 10 years that we are now appalled by hatred and invective directed at people on the basis of their sexuality," he added. Mr Straw said the law could be extended further to cover hatred against disabled and transgendered people ''if a case for this can be made". It is likely that the new offence will be modelled on the religious hatred law, which came into force last week. This caused huge controversy and was eventually changed to protect free speech.

Largest Biological Experiment Ever

The most basic fact about cell phones and cell towers is that they emit microwave radiation; so do Wi-Fi (wireless Internet) antennas, wireless computers, cordless (portable) phones and their base units, and all other wireless devices. If it’s a communication device and it’s not attached to the wall by a wire, it’s emitting radiation. Most Wi-Fi systems and some cordless phones operate at the exact same frequency as a microwave oven, while other devices use a different frequency. Wi-Fi is always on and always radiating. The base units of most cordless phones are always radiating, even when no one is using the phone. A cell phone that is on but not in use is also radiating. And, needless to say, cell towers are always radiating. Why is this a problem, you might ask? Scientists usually divide the electromagnetic spectrum into “ionizing” and “non-ionizing.” Ionizing radiation, which includes x-rays and atomic radiation, causes cancer. Non-ionizing radiation, which includes microwave radiation, is supposed to be safe. This distinction always reminded me of the propaganda in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “Four legs good, two legs bad.” “Non-ionizing good, ionizing bad” is as little to be trusted.

Bumblebees Beginning To Disappear

Looking high and low, Robbin Thorp can no longer find a species of bumblebee that just five years ago was plentiful in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon. Thorp, an emeritus professor of entomology from the University of California at Davis, found one solitary worker last year along a remote mountain trail in the Siskiyou Mountains, but hasn't been able to locate any this year. He fears that the species — Franklin's bumblebee — has gone extinct before anyone could even propose it for the endangered species list. To make matters worse, two other bumblebee species — one on the East coast, one on the West — have gone from common to rare. Amid the uproar over global warming and mysterious disappearances of honeybee colonies, concern over the plight of the lowly bumblebee has been confined to scientists laboring in obscurity. But if bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, the consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the problems with honeybees, which are active at different times and on different crop species. Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating an estimated 15 percent of all the crops grown in the U.S., worth $3 billion, particularly those raised in greenhouses. Those include tomatoes, peppers and strawberries. Demand is growing as honeybees decline. In the wild, birds and bears depend on bumblebees for berries and fruits.

Human Antibodies In Chicken Eggs

Origen Therapeutics recently announced that the company has been awarded an Advanced Technology Program (ATP) grant totaling $2 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The three year grant will help fund development of a new method for discovering and producing human polyclonal antibodies to treat human disease by inserting complex genetic modifications into the chicken genome, enabling the chickens to deposit large amounts of the therapeutic antibodies into their eggs. Origen’s first objective will be to develop polyclonal antibodies to treat antibiotic-resistant infections like Staphylococcus aureus in intensive care units, a growing issue for many hospitals.

Amero coming within decade

BankIntroductions.com, a Canadian company that specializes in global banking strategies and currency consulting, is advising clients that the amero may be the currency of North America within the next 10 years. "The amero would compete against other regional currency blocks," BankIntroductions.com says. "At present, with the Canadian dollar approaching par, more talk for an amero currency unit will become popular in Canada." The company says that with the successful implementation of NAFTA, "the one dragging component for the amero will be Mexico, but in time this will change." "Implementation of the amero currency may actually give Mexico an economic boost, thus helping to alleviate Mexican immigration pressures into the United States for those Mexicans seeking financial gain," BankIntroductions.com advises. The Council on Foreign Relations also has supported regional and global currencies designed to replace nationally issued currencies. In an article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled "The End of National Currency," CFR economist Benn Steil asserted the dollar is a temporary currency. Steil concluded "countries should abandon monetary nationalism," moving to adopt regional currencies, on the road to a global "one world currency." Steve Previs, a vice president at Jeffries International Ltd. in London, said the amero "is the proposed new currency for the North American Community which is being developed right now between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico."

Artificial Life Form Being Created

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth. The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come much earlier, at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming. Mr. Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be ‘a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before’. A team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr. Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code. The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life, removing a fifth of its genetic make-up. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, which the team have christened Mycoplasma laboratorium, has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition. It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and in effect become a new life form. The team of scientists has already successfully transplanted the genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another, effectively changing the cell's species. Mr. Venter said he was ‘100% confident’ the same technique would work for the artificially created chromosome. The new life form will depend for its ability to replicate itself and metabolise on the molecular machinery of the cell into which it has been injected, and in that sense it will not be a wholly synthetic life form. However, its DNA will be artificial, and it is the DNA that controls the cell and is credited with being the building block of life.

Insiders See Doomsday Approaching

Efforts to impose more sanctions on Iran are gathering more adherents. France, and most European nations are willing to make it more difficult for Iran to smuggle in components for weapons, particularly nuclear bombs. This forces Iran to be more dependent on Russia and China for their weapons and industrial needs. That suits Russia and China just fine, as they compete with European firms all the time, and it's nice to have an edge in Iran. Meanwhile, Iran is increasing its violence against Iraq. In the north, Iranian artillery has nearly doubled the range of its artillery shelling against Kurdish separatists inside Iraq. Iranian shells are now falling up to 17 kilometers from the border. More Iranian patrols have been spotted inside Iraq, as well as Iranian recon aircraft. When the Iraqi government protests, Iran just denies any of it is happening. This seems to work. Further south, American troops are capturing more Iranian weapons, including portable (SA-7 like) Iranian surface-to-air missiles. Iran dismisses such evidence as American fakery. But within Iran, an increasing number of Iranian officers are discussing the likelihood that the Americans would try to use the same tactics. Iranians already believe American agents and Special Forces have been responsible for unrest in southeastern and southwestern Iran. No evidence has been obtained, but none is needed if you're Iranian and condemning the United States. Iranians fear that American smart bombs will just start going off, destroying high value targets (like where senior leaders happen to be at the moment). Government officials, used to passing around fantastic tales, are now terrorized by stories that Israel and the Americans have electronic warfare devices that blind radar, and enable smart bomb attacks to be made at will. If such attacks were carried out, the next escalation would be for Iran to attack oil shipments in the Persian Gulf. But this comes with some serious strings attached. If the smart bomb attacks just hurt the hated Iranian leadership, they can't declare an "American Invasion" and get the expected wave of popular nationalism support. As Winter approaches, the political climate is warming up.

UPC speaker tells about UFO's

Three Unidentified Flying Objects carrying three human-like bodies were recovered in New Mexico in 1950, according to a UFO researcher who spoke to New Mexico State University students in the Corbett Center Auditorium on October 3. Sponsored by the Union Program Council, Robert Hastings gave a presentation entitled, "UFOs: The Secret Story," in which Hastings used documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with former Air Force, CIA and FBI personnel as evidence the UFOs and bodies were recovered. Hastings said UFO sightings began to occur in Los Alamos after initial testing of the atomic bomb. Hastings also said he was personally involved in a UFO sighting in 1967 and believes they are extraterrestrial objects. "I was present at the Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana air traffic control tower when five unidentified aerial targets, as they are called, suddenly began to be tracked on multiple radar scopes," Hastings said. Corina Ramirez, a biology major, said "yes" when asked whether UFOs and aliens exist. "Robert Hastings presented reliable information about UFO sightings," Ramirez said. "Now I am more convinced about extraterrestrial existence than before."

Christianity "Disestablished" in Canada

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, the highly influential editor of First Things magazine, has written that the Christian faith in Canada has become completely "disestablished". After returning from his annual summer vacation in his native Ottawa Valley, Neuhaus wrote in First Things, "It is true to say that, in most aspects of public life [in Canada], Christianity has been not only disestablished but also banished."

Child Support Cash To Help National Debt

Linda Green couldn't believe what she found when she opened her mail this week. She received a letter from the Colorado Department of Human Services, telling her she would soon have money taken out of the child support payments she receives from her 13-year-old son's father. "I was a little astounded," she said. The letter stated that under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law early last year, federal spending on so-called entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other social programs, would be restrained, in order to pay down the national deficit.

Big Brother Comes To Manhattan

The New York City Police Department has been operating a camera that scans the license plates of cars passing just blocks from ground zero, a newspaper reported Monday. The camera is an example of the kind of technology the NYPD hopes to use to create a high-tech security ring around Lower Manhattan, the New York Daily News reported. City officials pointed out that the camera, also not far from City Hall, is currently in a test phase. Sources told the Daily News that the camera - a prototype for the city's proposed "Ring of Steel" surveillance system - has been used intermittently over the last six months. It scans the rear license plates of vehicles and transmits those images via wireless to a computer which compares the plates against a database.

A Real Invisibility Cloak is coming

The world's first true invisibility cloak – a device able to hide an object in the visible spectrum – has been created by physicists in the US. But don't expect it to compete with stage magic tricks. So far it only works in two dimensions and on a tiny scale. The new cloak, which is just 10 micrometres in diameter, guides rays of light around an object inside and releases them on the other side. The light waves appear to have moved in a straight line, so the cloak – and any object inside – appear invisible. The cloak was built by a team led by Igor Smolyaninov at the University of Maryland, and borrows some ideas from the first theoretical design for an invisibility cloak, published by Vladimir Shalaev from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, US, earlier this year. Their breakthrough comes just a year after US and British physicists created an invisibility cloak that worked in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. At that time, a visible light cloak was thought to be years away because of the much shorter wavelengths produced in the visible spectrum.

GPS Tracking For Chicago Police

Every Chicago police officer could have their movements electronically tracked by global positioning systems if a program being tested in the Chicago Lawn District wins approval. The program, which requires officers to wear department-issued GPS cell phones on their belts while on duty, is intended as an officer-safety measure, bosses say, but also could be used to discipline officers. Many officers are unhappy at what they see as an excessive intrusion upon their freedom to do their job. They say they already carry too much equipment, and they worry overzealous supervisors will use evidence from the phones to hound them.

Long-lost Asteroid, Dangerous to Earth?

For more than 40 years, an asteroid believed to be potentially dangerous to Earth has been essentially lost to view. But no more. The so-called 6344 P-L was first spotted in 1960, and given the designation Potentially Hazardous Asteroid – meaning that its orbit took it within .05 astronomical units (about 4,650,000 miles) of Earth's orbit. But astronomers lost track of it; left behind was only a number and a vague sense of threat. However, meteor researcher Peter Jenniskens of the SETI institute now argues, with confirmation from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory' Minor Planet Center, that this wayward wanderer is in fact the same thing as the recently discovered 2007 RR9, making a reappearance this year as part of a 4.7-year orbit. "The object was long recognized to be dangerous, but we didn't know where it was. Now it is no longer just out there," said Jenniskens. Moreover, the astronomer says, the "asteroid" doesn't really qualify as an asteroid at all. Instead, Jenniskens believes it's the dormant fragment of a comet nucleus, part of a larger body that broke up in the relatively recent past (in stellar terms), creating the Gamma Piscid meteor showers in mid-October and early November.

Scientists See Robots Serving Elders

If you grow old in Japan, expect to be served food by a robot, ride a voice-recognition wheelchair or even possibly hire a nurse in a robotic suit — all examples of cutting-edge technology to care for the country's rapidly graying population. With nearly 22 percent of Japan's population already aged 65 or older, businesses here have been rolling out everything from easy-entry cars to remote-controlled beds, fueling a care technology market worth some $1.08 billion in 2006, according to industry figures.

U.S. Missile Defense System Is Ready

After a successful test last week, the tracking radars and interceptor rockets of a new American missile defense system can be turned on at any time to respond to an emerging crisis in Asia, senior military officers said Tuesday. General Victor Renuart Jr., the senior commander for defense of United States territory, said that the antimissile system could guard against the risk of ballistic missile attack from North Korea even while development continues on a series of radars in California and the Pacific Ocean and on interceptor missiles in Alaska and California.

Religion Must Be Destroyed

Science must ultimately destroy organized religion, according to some of the leading atheist writers and intellectuals who spoke at a recent atheist conference in Northern Virginia. God is a myth, and children must not be schooled in any faith, they said, at an event sponsored by the Atheist Alliance International. Some of the luminaries who spoke at the conference, held at the Crown Royal Hotel in Crystal City, Va., over the weekend, included Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris and journalist Christopher Hitchens. The Atheist Alliance International describes itself as "the only democratic national atheist organization in the United States." While most attendees on Friday night were adamant that God was a myth, the convention, attended by hundreds of people, brought into focus a divide among atheists as to their identity as a movement and the nature of the enemy they faced.

New Fingerprint Tech Unveiled

University of Warwick researchers have unveiled a new fingerprint recognition technology, which allows them to "unwarp" distorted prints. The technology could prove especially important in mass-market biometric access systems, which have remained elusive because of small but significant rates of false positives and negatives. Fingerprint recognition came into wide use in forensic investigations in the early 20th century. Ever since, sci-fi writers and scientists have dreamed of using the unique skin contours on our fingertips to tell our machines we really are who we say we are. The problem is that the number of errors has just been too high.

U.S. Labs Mishandling Deadly Germs

American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs, some of which work with organisms and poisons that can cause illnesses with no cure. In some cases, labs have failed to report accidents as required by law.

Can Christians Be Demon Possessed

ChristiaNet.com, the world's largest Christian portal with twelve million monthly page loads, recently asked, "Can a Christian have a demon?" President of ChristiaNet, Bill Cooper, responds, "There are certainly many verses in the Bible that refer to demons." A majority of those surveyed did believe that demons could in fact influence their behavior. Out of 1,500 Christians surveyed, 48% believed that Christians could, in fact, have a demon within. Most of this group stated that the Devil was very real, and Christians could be demonized, "A demon can be a thorn in your flesh." Others felt that by sinning, they were allowing a demon to enter their soul," Even though we know Jesus, we sometimes open the doors for demons." One survey taker stated, "Saul was a Jew and filled with the Holy Spirit. Later he was tormented by a demon." This statement was made to support the fact that demons are talked about in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

The US is NOT a Christian Nation?

Jewish groups lined up with Arab and Muslim organizations recently to hammer Sen. John McCain for calling the U.S. a "Christian nation" that should have a Christian President. McCain's remarks were "disappointing and disturbing to say the least," said Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League. He called on the Arizona Republican to retract them. "Absolutely nothing in the Constitution establishes that the U.S. is a Christian nation," Foxman said, "nor is it accurate to say that this nation was founded on Christian principles."

Why doesn't the UN act on Iran?

Iran is the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism and openly calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, and yet the international community is silent, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the UN General Assembly on October 1. "Too many see the danger but walk idly by - hoping that someone else will take care of it," said Livni in the largely empty General Assembly hall. What is the value of an organization which is unable to take effective action in the face of a direct assault on the very principles it was founded to protect?" she asked.

Orbs Proof That Spirits Exist?

At first, it seemed no more than a curious coincidence. Professor Klaus Heinemann, a researcher for NASA, the U.S. space agency, was studying a collection of photographs his wife had taken at a gathering of spiritual healers when he noticed that many of them featured the same pale but clearly defined circle of light, like a miniature moon, hovering above some of the subjects. Like most rational people, he assumed that the pictures were faulty. 'I presumed the circles were due to dust particles, flash anomalies, water particles and so on,' says Prof Heinemann. 'But I was sufficiently intrigued that I returned to the room in which the pictures were taken, in the hope of finding an explanation - like a mirror in the background. None was forthcoming.' Nor could he find any faults with his wife's camera. And as a scientist with considerable experience in sophisticated microscope techniques - examining matter down to atomic levels of optical resolution - his methods were nothing if not rigorous. Still puzzled, Heinemann set out to discover what else might have caused the mysterious circles. He and his wife began taking hundreds of digital photographs at random events to see whether they could recreate the mysterious effect. The answer was that they could make these shimmering 'orbs' appear again, but only - absurd as it may sound - if they 'asked' the apparitions to make themselves visible to the camera. And they found this method worked particularly well when the couple photographed spiritual gatherings. We were quickly able to eliminate the common problems associated with photography – such as dust particles, water droplets, reflections and a host of other likely causes. Heinemann set up dozens of experiments using two cameras on static tripods under controlled conditions. His early experiments found that orbs can move very fast, up to 500mph or more. Heinemann also found that during his numerous dual camera experiments, when he used twin cameras to capture an object from two different angles, a single orb shape would often appear - but only in one of the two images taken simultaneously. It was as if the orbs somehow chose which camera to appear on, or whether to appear at all. Eventually, Heinemann was left with only one conclusion: that he was witnessing some form of paranormal intelligence. 'There is no doubt in my mind that the orbs may well be one of the most significant "outside of this reality" phenomena mankind has ever witnessed,' says Professor Heinemann.

Asteroid Could Hit Earth In 2029

An asteroid, discovered in 2004, could pose a threat to Earth in 2029, the director of the Institute of Astronomy said on October 1. Boris Shustov said at an international space forum in Moscow that the Apophis asteroid, which is due to cross earth's orbit in 2029 at a height of 27,000 km (17,000 miles), could under certain conditions hit Earth in 2029. The explosion could surpass the famous Tunguska explosion of June 30, 1908, which affected a 2,150 square kilometer (830 sq miles) area of Russia felling over 80 million trees in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in Siberia.

RFID will impact Business

The U.S. government has been trying to tighten port and border security without creating undue delays that hurt free trade and damage the economy. RFID is a growing part of monitoring the flow of cargo and people, including port employees and truck drivers. Regardless of how you may be using RFID in your supply chain, if you move products or people through U.S. ports or borders, you need to understand how the federal government's use of the technology will impact your business. Employees will also be affected by new government RFID mandates, because they will have to carry RFID ID cards—and these cards could require mandatory background checks, a process some truck drivers and port workers are wary of. All citizens of the United States, Canada and Mexico will need a passport or Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) card to enter or leave the United States. The WHTI card will have an RFID Gen 2 tag; to address privacy concerns, it will come in a protective sleeve, and the RFID chip will contain and transmit only a unique ID number that links to a database with information about the cardholder.

All Phones In Britain To Be Monitored

Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow. The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos. The move, enacted by the personal decree of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will give police and security services a right they have long demanded: to delve at will into the phone records of British citizens and businesses.

NYC mayor: Major Surveillance a Must

Residents of big cities like New York and London must accept that they are under constant watch by video cameras, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Bloomberg, holding talks with his London counterpart Ken Livingstone, said such measures as London's "ring of steel" — a network of closed-circuit cameras that monitors the city center_ were a necessary protection in a dangerous world. "In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren't watching you all the time, you are very naive," Bloomberg told reporters at London's City Hall. "We are under surveillance all the time" from cameras in shops and office buildings, "and in London they have multiple cameras on every bus and in every subway car," he added. "The people of London not only support it, but if Ken Livingstone didn't do it they would try to run him out of town on a rail. We live in a dangerous world, and people want to have security cameras."

Unlocking Secrets of the Solar System

NASA's unmanned Dawn spacecraft, successfully launched this week from Cape Canaveral, Fla., has begun its 3-billion-mile odyssey through space that will take it to Vesta and Ceres, a dwarf planet and an asteroid between Jupiter and Mars "Dawn will travel back in time by probing deep into the asteroid belt," principal investigator Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a release. "This is a moment the space science community has been waiting for since interplanetary spaceflight became possible." Scientists are hoping that it will help illuminate their understanding of the planets.

Roswell UFO Is True Says Milton Sprouse

Something happened in Roswell, New Mexico, 60 years ago this summer. In June or early July 1947, a farmer found strange debris while working on a ranch about 70 miles north of Roswell. He put some of it in a box and drove to the local sheriff. Neither man knew what to make of it, so the sheriff called Roswell Army Air Field, which sent two men to investigate. On July 9, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record, a newspaper, printed a story with the alarming headline: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region." Other than those facts, there appear to be few things people agree on regarding what has become known as "the Roswell incident." Six decades later, competing UFO enthusiasts promote their own theories, skeptics dismiss the spaceship claims as outrageous, and the military, which originally claimed all the fuss was over a weather balloon, now sticks to its story that it was an experimental spy craft. Escondido resident Milton Sprouse, 85, said he knows what happened in Roswell ---- not because he favors one theory over another, but because he was there. As for the outrageous stories of mysterious metal, alien corpses and a military coverup? It's all true, he said. Before arriving at Roswell Army Air Field in 1945 as a corporal and engine mechanic, Sprouse already had participated in an undisputable historic event. As a member of the 393rd Bomb Squadron assigned to the 509th Composite Group, Sprouse worked on the ground crew of Big Stink, one of the B-29 bombers stationed on the Pacific island of Tinian, where the two atomic bomb missions on Japan were launched to end World War II. After the war, the 509th Composite Group was reassigned to Roswell, where they were renamed the 509th Bomb Wing. Sprouse continued to lead the ground crew of Big Stink, which had been renamed Dave's Dream after the pilot.

Experimental Rapid Cryogenics Works !

It’s cryogenics with an immediate twist—you don't have to wait thousands of years to be saved. Using new techniques, people are being “frozen” immediately after “dying” in order to slow cell death—giving doctors vital time to fix what ails them before warming them back up to a new life. The experimental cooling treatment is bringing dead people back to life in situations conventionally considered past resuscitation. Doctors in Philadelphia are currently working on improving the revolutionary technique.

Lunar Outpost Plans Taking Shape

NASA's blueprints for an outpost on the moon are shaping up. The agency's Lunar Architecture Team has been hard at work, looking at concepts for habitation, rovers, and space suits. NASA will return astronauts to the moon by 2020, using the Ares and Orion spacecraft already under development. Astronauts will set up a lunar outpost - possibly near a south pole site called Shackleton Crater - where they'll conduct scientific research, as well as test technologies and techniques for possible exploration of Mars and other destinations.

Computers To 'Read The Minds' Of Users

Tufts University researchers are developing techniques that could allow computers to respond to users' thoughts of frustration -- too much work -- or boredom--too little work. Applying non-invasive and easily portable imaging technology in new ways, they hope to gain real-time insight into the brain's more subtle emotional cues and help provide a more efficient way to get work done. "New evaluation techniques that monitor user experiences while working with computers are increasingly necessary," said Robert Jacob, computer science professor and researcher. "One moment a user may be bored, and the next moment, the same user may be overwhelmed. Measuring mental workload, frustration and distraction is typically limited to qualitatively observing computer users or to administering surveys after completion of a task, potentially missing valuable insight into the users' changing experiences." Sergio Fantini, biomedical engineering professor, in conjunction with Jacob's human-computer interaction (HCI) group, is studying functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology that uses light to monitor brain blood flow as a proxy for workload stress a user may experience when performing an increasingly difficult task. A $445,000 grant from the National Science Foundation will allow the interdisciplinary team to incorporate real-time biomedical data with machine learning to produce a more in-tune computer user experience.

Is A 'Currency Cold War' Happening

What would it mean if China ever threw its economic weight around by dumping dollars in a major way? Suffice it to say it is referred to in some quarters as China's financial "nuclear option," because it would be the economic equivalent of detonating a thermonuclear weapon in the world's financial markets. But the American dollar's fate is hardly in the hands of the Chinese alone. Other foreign parties suspected of participating in a new "Currency Cold War" are Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Diane Francis, a financial reporter for the National Post in Canada, says it plainly and boldly: "There is a Currency Cold War being waged by Russia, Iran and various allies such as Venezuela." The grand strategy being engineered by Vladimir Putin, she writes, is to force the use of euros as the international monetary standard as a transition to the Russian ruble. "This is simply a monetary version of the old Cold War, minus the missiles," she writes. Experts don't see any short-term reprieve for the falling value of the dollar. Kathy Lien, chief currency strategist with DailyFX.com in the US, told Bloomberg she expects the American dollar to slide even further, forcing more lending rates cuts in the U.S. to stave off recession. "It seems like every single passing day we have a new record low in the dollar, and a new record high in the euro, and it's driven by the fact that U.S. data is continuing to deteriorate," she said. If other nations do not follow the U.S. in cutting rates, the slide in the value of the dollar would most likely continue. If the dollar trend continues spiraling downward, the risk is that nations like China – or Japan or Saudi Arabia – which have been buying U.S. Treasury bonds and thereby funding America's deficit, would stop that practice.

Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts

The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia. Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates. Now the six-month dark season has returned to the North Pole. In the deepening chill, new ice is already spreading over vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the summer’s changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water — six Californias — beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979. At a recent gathering of sea-ice experts at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Hajo Eicken, a geophysicist, summarized it this way: “Our stock in trade seems to be going away.” Scientists are also unnerved by the summer’s implications for the future, and their ability to predict it. Complicating the picture, the striking Arctic change was as much a result of ice moving as melting, many say. A new study, led by Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and appearing this week in Geophysical Research Letters, used satellites and buoys to show that winds since 2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland. The thin floes that formed on the resulting open water melted quicker or could be shuffled together by winds and similarly expelled, the authors said. The pace of change has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Schools Change Holiday Traditions

A southwest suburban school district has taken action, responding to the concerns of a Muslim parent. But now, as CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot reports, other parents are angry that traditional school holidays will be renamed or even eliminated. "That does not represent all the Muslims, all of the Arabs at that school," said Qais Nofel, the father of a student in Ridgeland School District 122. There was some heated discussion between parents outside Columbus Manor Elementary School in Oak Lawn on Friday. The thought of no more traditional holiday celebrations has many parents really upset. For now, children in Ridgeland School District 122 will celebrate fall festival instead of Halloween and winter festival instead of Christmas. Brenda Elvidge said, "It's not fair to our kids. This is America and that's an American tradition." The decision affects the children at four elementary schools in Oak Lawn and one junior high school in Bridgeview. The district has a 30 percent Arab-American population, many of whom practice Islam. The superintendent says the reason for the change in tradition comes after one parent wanted Ramadan decorations put up inside Columbus Manor Elementary.

Reopening Fallout Shelters in Alabama

In an age of al-Qaida, sleeper cells and the threat of nuclear terrorism, Huntsville, Alabama is dusting off its Cold War manual to create the nation's most ambitious fallout-shelter plan, featuring an abandoned mine big enough for 20,000 people to take cover underground. Others would hunker down in college dorms, churches, libraries and research halls that planners hope will bring the community's shelter capacity to 300,000, or space for every man, woman and child in Huntsville and the surrounding county. Emergency planners in Huntsville - an out-of-the-way city best known as the home of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center - say the idea makes sense because radioactive fallout could be scattered for hundreds of miles if terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb.

Teenagers Place Faith In Witchcraft

More and more teenagers are signing up as trainee witches. Witchcraft was once treated lightly in sitcoms such as Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and Bewitched, or demonised in horror films, but it is becoming increasingly mainstream. In the last census more than 9000 Australians alone listed their religion as Wicca, the witchcraft branch of paganism. The number of Wiccans has increased fivefold in the past 15 years and paganism as a whole is one of the fastest-growing religions in the country.

Hate Crime Legislation & Iraq Funding

Senate Democrats are trying to force President Bush to sign hate crimes legislation he has threatened to veto by attaching it to a massive bill funding the Defense Department and the Iraq war. Writing violent attacks on gays into federal hate crime laws is related to the war because both are strikes against terrorism, according to a Republican senator and other supporters of the measure. "We simply cannot tolerate violence against our own citizens simply because of their differences," said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who is sponsoring the legislation with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. "We cannot fight terror abroad and accept terror at home."

Cheney and the Secret Society Members

Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to a super-secret, conservative policy group in Utah on Sept 29, during his second trip to the state this year. Cheney addressed the fall meeting of the Council for National Policy, a group whose self-described mission is to promote "a free-enterprise system, a strong national defense and support for traditional Western values." The organization - made up of few hundred powerful conservative activists - holds confidential meetings and members are advised not to use the name of the group in communications, according to a New York Times profile of the group. "The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before [or] after a meeting,'' a list of rules obtained by The Times showed. The group did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Mammoth Hair Yields "Fantastic" DNA

Ten woolly mammoths that died up to 50,000 years ago have had their DNA sequenced using a technique that could revolutionise genetic testing of extinct creatures. DNA sequences from mammoth remains were so detailed that they are expected to cast light on why the animals became extinct. Using a new technique for extracting DNA, researchers were able to carry out the analysis with strands of hair instead of fragments of bone. The woolly mammoth hair had been so well preserved that it provided the most accurate DNA sequencing of the extinct animals yet achieved. One of the animals used in the study dated back 50,000 years and its hairs allowed scientists to obtain the oldest complete sequence of mitochondrial DNA.

UK Biometric Passport Control

Siemens is making border crossings in Europe more secure through biometric systems that store individual characteristics such as fingerprints and facial photos on a chip integrated into a passport. The chip will store personal data such as the passport holder’s name and date of birth, as well as a digital photo and fingerprint that will be read by special scanning devices at border crossings. The traveler’s actual fingerprint will be read by a fingerprint scanner, while his or her photograph will be taken by a digital camera and then compared with the picture stored on the chip. One of the criteria the camera system will use here will be the unique positioning of each person’s eyes.

Vocal Terrorism could be coming

In the future, it may be possible to mimic someone's voice exactly after recording just one sentence. Such technologies would pose a danger if it were not possible to verify who was speaking, researchers believe. Scientists were predicting the future at the British Association (BA) Festival of Science in York. Dr David Howard from the University of York said: "The reason things are changing is because no longer are we using an acoustic model proposed in the 1950s." It's not scaremongering; it's trying to say to people, 'we have to think about these things' New methods of creating computerised speech use models of a vocal tract to create a realistic sound, replacing the existing technique of copying sounds. "We are beginning to simulate virtual vocal tracts in the computer," said Dr Howard. "When we simulate this in the computer, which we are beginning to do, we begin to get sounds that musicians describe as organic or more natural. "If we get to the point where we are synthesising the actual shape of somebody('s vocal tract) based on analysis of their speech, then the speech we are producing should sound and look like the actual person."

Searching For The 'Universal Mind'

On Sept. 11, 2001, between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. (EST)—four hours before the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center occurred—several computers dedicated to a project aimed at measuring emotional fluctuations on a global level began to transmit frenzied patterns. Events such as large traffic jams or the simultaneous ignition of millions of radio and television sets seeking news channels were just some of the examples collected from computers measuring behavior that shifted from a relatively random pattern to suggesting a collective consciousness that seemed to anticipate the tragedy. This collective anticipation before an event of global proportion possibly points toward a direct relation between hard facts and a hypothetical global consciousness. In other words, if the interpretation of the data obtained by the computers in the "Global Consciousness Project" is correct, there exists the latent possibility that events impossible to perceive consciously in humans as individuals can surprisingly be perceived in mankind as a whole.

Senate Wants Robo-Copter, ASAP

The Fire Scout unmanned attack copter wasn't supposed to be heading into battle until 2012, at the earliest. The Senate Appropriations Committee is now asking the Army to begin fielding the thing ASAP -- maybe even next year, Defense News reports. It's a big change for the whirly-bot, which "only a few years ago seemed all but dead," The MQ-8B Fire Scout "began in 1999 as a U.S. Navy program to build an armed supply-reconnaissance UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that could land autonomously on an aircraft carrier," says Defense News. Then it was supposed to replace to an aging Marines Corps drone -- until it was shelved. In 2004, the Army started working with Northrop to make it part of the service's massive Future Combat Systems modernization plans, with a target deployment date of "between 2012 and 2014." Now, the Senate is asking the Army not to wait for the rest of Future Combat Systems to get the robo-chopper up the sky. The Army is mulling an earlier deployment. And Northrop's Rene Freeland says, "The Fire Scout is ready."

Implantable Microchips for Diabetes

VeriChip Corporation, a provider of RFID systems for healthcare and patient-related needs, and Digital Angel Corporation, owner of Patent No. 7,125,382 for an embedded bio-sensor system, announced on September 25, that they have entered into a memorandum of understanding with RECEPTORS LLC, an expert in the field of proteomics and the development of artificial receptors to develop a prototype renewable glucose sensor to use in conjunction with an implantable bio-sensing RFID microchip to measure glucose levels in the human body. VeriChip will manage the partnership project, with the assistance of Digital Angel, aimed at accelerating the development of an embedded glucose bio-sensing system for humans. RECEPTORS will be responsible for demonstrating a self-contained glucose-sensing system in Phase I of the project. VeriChip anticipates a functioning prototype within six to twelve months. Scott R. Silverman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of VeriChip, said, "The partnership with RECEPTORS will expand and accelerate our development efforts to create a prototype product and subsequently initiate clinical trials. We believe an implantable, glucose-sensing microchip could materially improve the lives of people with diabetes by negating their need to withdraw blood multiple times each day. With more than 230 million people around the world living with diabetes, this is a potentially significant market opportunity that could change diabetes treatment. "Over time, we anticipate that VeriChip's medical device division will grow through implantable RF and other technologies.

Al Qaida Training New Recruits

Al-Qaida continues to recruit Europeans for explosives training in Pakistan because Europeans can more easily enter the United States without a visa, the top U.S intelligence officer said on September 25. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said European al-Qaida recruits in the border region of Pakistan are being trained to use commercially available substances to make explosives, and they may be able to carry out an attack on U.S. territory. McConnell also said he worried that Osama bin Laden's recent video and audio releases may be a signal to terrorist cells to carry out operations, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. ‘That's unusual. He had been absent from airwaves over the last year. Our concern is that's a signal,’ McConnell said. ‘It just causes us to be concerned and vigilant.’ Europeans are being recruited specifically because they generally do not need visas to enter the United States, he said. ‘Purposely recruiting an operative from Europe gives them an extra edge into getting an operative, or two or three, into the country with the ability to carry out an attack that might be reminiscent of 9/11,’ he said.”

Robot dogs being made to aid soldier's

A timid-looking four-legged robot about the size of a Chihuahua might seem like an unlikely companion for soldiers of the future. Yet the robot, called LittleDog, could ultimately help researchers create more sophisticated robotic assistants for military personnel, including automated "pack-mules" capable of hauling heavy loads over tough terrain. This is because LittleDog is remarkably agile for a robot when faced with treacherous, uneven terrain. Researchers are also fine-tuning its movement to be even faster and more animal-like over rough terrain. LittleDog was created for the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by US robotics company Boston Dynamics. And now DARPA has selected six university research teams, including ones at MIT and Stanford, to compete to develop the best algorithms for controlling the robot puppy. The agency hopes this will help identify the best adaptive strategy for moving over irregular surfaces. The robot has three motored joints on each leg, and its movements are controlled precisely by an on-board computer. An internal gyroscope lets the robot sense its orientation, while an external motion-capture system monitors the precise position of each limb and joint as it moves.

Germs Taken to Space Come Back Deadlier

It sounds like the plot for a scary B-movie: Germs go into space on a rocket and come back stronger and deadlier than ever. Except, it really happened. The germ: Salmonella, best known as a culprit of food poisoning. The trip: Space Shuttle STS-115, September 2006. The reason: Scientists wanted to see how space travel affects germs, so they took some along — carefully wrapped — for the ride. The result: Mice fed the space germs were three times more likely to get sick and died quicker than others fed identical germs that had remained behind on Earth.