High-Tech Cameras Are Watching You

The ferry arrived, the gangway went down and 7-year-old Emma Powell rushed toward the Statue of Liberty. She climbed onto the grass around the star-shaped foundation. She put on a green foam crown with seven protruding rays. Turning so that her body was oriented just like Lady Liberty's, Emma extended her right arm skyward with an imaginary torch. I snapped a picture. Then I took my niece's hand, and we went off to buy some pretzels. Other people were taking pictures, too, and not just the other tourists—Liberty Island, name notwithstanding, is one of the most heavily surveilled places in America. Dozens of cameras record hundreds of hours of video daily, a volume that strains the monitoring capability of guards. The National Park Service has enlisted extra help, and as Emma and I strolled around, we weren't just being watched by people. We were being watched by machines. Liberty Island's video cameras all feed into a computer system. The park doesn't disclose details, but fully equipped, the system is capable of running software that analyzes the imagery and automatically alerts human overseers to any suspicious events. The software can spot when somebody abandons a bag or backpack. It has the ability to discern between ferryboats, which are allowed to approach the island, and private vessels, which are not. And it can count bodies, detecting if somebody is trying to stay on the island after closing, or assessing when people are grouped too tightly together, which might indicate a fight or gang activity. "A camera with artificial intelligence can be there 24/7, doesn't need a bathroom break, doesn't need a lunch break and doesn't go on vacation," says Ian Ehrenberg, former vice president of Nice Systems, the program's developer. Most Americans would probably welcome such technology at what clearly is a marquee terrorist target. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in July 2007 found that 71 percent of Americans favor increased video surveillance. What people may not realize, however, is that advanced monitoring systems such as the one at the Statue of Liberty are proliferating around the country. High-profile national security efforts make the news—wiretapping phone conversations, Internet moni­toring—but state-of-the-art surveillance is increasingly being used in more every-day settings. By local police and businesses. In banks, schools and stores. There are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras now deployed in the United States shooting 4 billion hours of footage a week. Americans are being watched, all of us, almost everywhere.

U.S. Patrolled with Pain Beam Weapon

In the last three years, the development of a non-lethal weapon manufactured by Raytheon called the Active Denial System, also known as the Pain Ray Gun or Heat Ray Gun, has been under consideration for deployment in Iraq to aid the United States Military. According to the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program Web site, ADS provides, “…a new non-lethal capability helping to fill the gap between the ’shout’ and ’shoot’ alternatives faced by our troops. It provides numerous advantages over existing non-lethal weapons, such as extended range and extremely small risk of injury, and it has the potential to provide a tremendous new capability for U.S. forces in support of today’s complex missions.”

Big Brother Britain

Every town hall has been ordered to send out surveys demanding local residents' personal information and opinions. The forms will ask householders to give details of their children, mortgage, ethnic background, religion and sexual orientation. Civil rights campaigners called the survey 'intrusive and very sinister', pointing out that any information handed over will not be kept confidential. Ministers have even given instructions that local councils must try to disguise their involvement in the survey to avoid attracting criticism. And they have ruled that the questioning must be paid for out of council tax and carried out every two years. The New Place Survey - which is expected to be launched next autumn after trials in the spring - is likely to cost at least £15million by 2012. Communities Secretary Hazel Blears distributed the consultation paper on the 'intrusive' survey. According to a consultation paper distributed by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, the justification for the survey is that it will let the Government know if councils are hitting scores of new targets imposed on them in the last six months. But the questionnaire does not ask about householders' attitudes to libraries, rubbish collections or schools - all of which are the responsibility of councils. Instead, it solicits information on whether people think local parents are controlling their children's behaviour properly and whether different ethnic communities in the area are getting on with each other. Questions on ethnicity and sexuality are intended to be used in Government initiatives to promote greater numbers of local councillors from minority groups. But the demand that individuals and families supply a huge raft of personal details for the survey comes at a time of deepening concern about the State's thirst for ever-greater amounts of private information - and worries over how that information is stored and used.

The Voice of God Weapon

The Voice of God weapon -- a device that projects voices into your head to make you think God is speaking to you -- is the military's equivalent of an urban myth. Meaning, it's mentioned periodically at defense workshops (ironically, I first heard about it at the same defense conference where I first met Noah), and typically someone whispers about it actually being used. Now Steven Corman, writing at the COMOPS journal, describes his own encounter. At a government workshop some time ago I head someone describe a new tool that was described as the “voice of Allah.” This was said to be a device that would operate at a distance and would deliver a message that only a single person could hear. The story was that it was tested in a conflict situation in Iraq and pointed at one insurgent in a group, who whipped around looking in all directions, and began a heated conversation with his compatriots, who did not hear the message. At the time I greeted this story with some skepticism. Is there any basis to this technology? Well, Holosonic Research Labs and American Technology Corporation both have versions of directed sound, which can allow a single person to hear a message that others around don't hear. DARPA appears to be working on its own sonic projector. Intriguingly, Strategy Page reports that troops are using the Long Range Acoustic Device as a modified Voice of God weapon. It appears that some of the troops in Iraq are using "spoken" (as opposed to "screeching") LRAD to mess with enemy fighters. Islamic terrorists tend to be superstitious and, of course, very religious. LRAD can put the "word of God" into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna do?

Almost every move is being watched

If Hollywood and its movies are America thinking aloud, then a very interesting thought bubble has just appeared over the map of the United States. The bubble appears, naturally, in the form of a film, Look, which opened in US cinemas this month. It weaves a range of stories with entwining themes of sex, blackmail, crime and alienation, with a twist: every scene of the film is shot from the perspective of a surveillance camera, from the bubble lens above an ATM, to the elevated perspective of the security cameras that are ubiquitous and sometimes invisible, across the US. As entertainment, the jury will return a verdict by the end of the year. As a statement of the American and world zeitgeist, Look is impeccable in its timing. The US, like Australia and Britain, has taken fear as a guiding principle, and used it to introduce or justify wide-ranging security and surveillance programs as a means of preventing terrorist attacks such as those in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, in Bali in October 2002, and London in July 2005. In the US the focus has been on preventing another attack, and protecting the "homeland". It was the justification for the invasion of Iraq, and for the process known as "data-mining" where tens of millions of phone call records are scoured, and billions of calls and emails are monitored. On a localised level, there is what Yvonne Cager, a video surveillance marketing manager at Texas Instruments, called the "drive to have more eyes everywhere". An IBM report last year estimated there were 26 million surveillance cameras in the US, while the iSuppli research company forecasts that international sales of surveillance systems will more than double to 66 million units by 2011.

Nanotechnology Danger: Grey Goo

One of the more interesting concerns of nanotechnology is 'grey goo.' The term was invented by Eric Drexler to describe one of the dangerous issues that must be faced as nanotechnology capabilities evolve. Here’s how it works: 1. Pretend that nanotechnology truly exists to the point where we can fabricate machines of arbitrary complexity using individual atoms or molecules. 2. Pretend that these machines have sufficient complexity and computational means that they can make copies of themselves using whatever happens to be lying within their reach. 3. Pretend that their fabrication systems are such that they can make a copy of themselves about once an hour. 4. Pretend that one of these machines decides to do nothing except make copies of itself. It’s a bit worse than the Borg. The idea is that everything gets converted into grey goo: you, me, trees, chickens, and everything. By comparison, let’s think a bit about my favorite bacterium, e. coli. This bacterium lives in your stomach and mine, and is about 10 micrometers in width, and can make a copy of itself in about 20 minutes. If just one e. coli decided to replicate itself uncontrollably, it could perform the same feat as our hypothetical nanomachine in about a day and a half. Because of this concern, there are those in the nanotechnology community who have proposed legislation that would make it illegal to create a nanomachine with the ability to make a copy of itself. One wonders if we should advocate similar legislation for bacteria.

Poland opens first exorcism center

Poland plans to open its first exorcism center, for those who believe they are possessed by the devil, in the town of Poczernin 30 km (18 miles) from the city of Szczeczin, Polish media said recently. Andrzej Trojanowski, a Catholic priest working in the city says the center will be equipped with a chapel and will have a psychiatrist on hand. Trojanowski said there was a demand for the service as he deals with up to 20 people a week allegedly possessed by the devil. The center was the idea of the Catholic Church in Poland, which already has around 50 working exorcists, and the project is expected to provide spiritual help and guidance to the needy. According to priests their service is popular with visitors from Germany, which has no working exorcists. Many consider those who claim to be possessed are just mentally ill, whereas others contend that those diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses are really possessed by the devil.

Magic carpets a reality, says professor

Fictional flying carpets are ubiquitous and have appeared in literature since ancient times. Now they have caught the attention of a leading mathematician. Although he has only succeeded in showing that flying is practical for a bank note sized carpet, Prof Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his co-workers believe that one capable of ferrying a person is far from being a pantomime fantasy. His claims, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, come just in time for productions of Aladdin and arise from working out the aerodynamics of a flexible, rippling sheet moving through a fluid, such as air. The conclusion is that it should be possible to make one that will stay aloft. In earlier work, Prof Mahadevan showed how how sheets become wrinkled and cans crumple. Now, with colleagues in New York and Valbonne, France, he has turned his attention to a more uplifting feat that could grace the pages of the Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights). The key to levitating a carpet is to create uplift by making ripples that push against air close to a horizontal surface, such as a floor. The undulating movements create a high pressure in the gap between the carpet and the floor, "roughly balancing its weight." The magical part comes from the discovery that, as well as lifting it, the ripples can drive the carpet forward - a handy trick for a panto - because they make the carpet tilt slightly, moving towards the raised edge. Prof Mahadevan tells The Telegraph that this would make the carpet move around like some marine creatures: "Submarine rays and skates use more complex movements to skim over the ocean floor - but the idea is the same." To stay afloat in air, a sheet measuring about four inches long and 0.1 millimetres thick would need to vibrate at about ten times per second with an amplitude of about 0.25 millimetres, he estimates.

Israel prepares for Iranian missiles

In the shadow of a mounting Iranian nuclear threat, Israel's largest daily newspaper reported recently that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is having a new bomb shelter capable of withstanding a nuclear or chemical missile strike built at his official residence in Jerusalem. Several workers participating in the construction told Yediot Ahronot that the bunker is being equipped with special air filtration devices in case of a non-conventional attack by Israel's enemies. Olmert's office later issued a statement insisting that what is being built at the prime minister's residence is a regular bomb shelter of the type found in most Israeli homes. But the newspaper noted that the bunker underneath the building housing the prime minister's office and Cabinet meeting room was recently renovated to allow the government to continue functioning in the event of an non-conventional attack. Yediot also reported that several years ago the Israeli government began construction on a massive nuclear bunker in the hills outside Jerusalem. That facility is expected to be completed by 2011, and will be accessible via a tunnel that leads from the government center in downtown Jerusalem. In related news, the Israeli military this week successfully tested an upgraded version of the US-made Patriot anti-ballistic missile defense system. The Israeli improvements aimed to increase the range and accuracy of the Patriot missiles to better deal with long-range regional threats.

CIA & M16 Assisted Terrorists With Nukes

A senior customs investigator could face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act over suspicions that he exposed how US and British intelligence agencies interfered in his attempts to halt an international nuclear smuggling ring... The investigation is the subject of a book recently published in the US, America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise. Its authors, David Armstrong and Joseph Trento, contend that in 2000 Amin uncovered evidence in Dubai of the Khan network's involvement in establishing Libya's nuclear programme but was ordered to drop his inquiries and return home, at the request of the CIA and MI6. The Libyan programme and the Khan network were not exposed and halted until 2003. The book argues that in the intervening three years the network continued to sell nuclear technology and possibly weapons designs to Iran, North Korea and possibly other countries, under the noses of US and British intelligence.

Small Asteroids Pose Big New Threat

The infamous Tunguska explosion, which mysteriously leveled an area of Siberian forest nearly the size of Tokyo a century ago, might have been caused by an impacting asteroid far smaller than previously thought. The fact that a relatively small asteroid could still cause such a massive explosion suggests "we should be making more efforts at detecting the smaller ones than we have till now," said researcher Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. The explosion near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River on June 30, 1908, flattened some 500,000 acres (2,000 square kilometers) of Siberian forest. Scientists calculated the Tunguska explosion could have been roughly as strong as 10 to 20 megatons of TNT — 1,000 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Wild theories have been bandied about for a century regarding what caused the Tunguska explosion, including a UFO crash, antimatter, a black hole and famed inventor Nikola Tesla's "death ray." In the last decade, researchers have conjectured the event was triggered by an asteroid exploding in Earth's atmosphere that was roughly 100 feet wide (30 meters) and 560,000 metric tons in mass — more than 10 times that of the Titanic. The space rock is thought to have blown up above the surface, only fragments possibly striking the ground. Now new supercomputer simulations suggest "the asteroid that caused the extensive damage was much smaller than we had thought," Boslough said. Specifically, he and his colleagues say it would have been a factor of three or four smaller in mass and perhaps 65 feet (20 meters) in diameter. The simulations run on Sandia's Red Storm supercomputer — the third fastest in the world — detail how an asteroid that explodes as it runs into Earth's atmosphere will generate a supersonic jet of expanding superheated gas. This fireball would have caused blast waves that were stronger at the surface than previously thought.

Japan Lacks UFO Strategy

UFOs exist, confirms a Japanese government official, but the country's perpetually confused military strategy means that it's not clear what it would do if it encountered flying saucers. BBC News reports that despite a lack of evidence "Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura later told reporters he believed they [UFOs] were definitely real." That's not the important part of the story, in my mind. Rather, given Japan's muddled military strategy, would the country stand by as aliens fried people with their death beam? Suppose they were zapping American warships, for example? The story notes that "Japan has not yet planned what to do should aliens arrive here." Are you kidding? Japan still hasn't figured out what do about the Global War on Terror, so yes, alien defense is still muddled as the article notes: A member of the opposition asked the government what its policy was to deal with UFOs. In a statement it said that should a flying saucer be spotted in the country's airspace, a fighter would be scrambled to attempt visual confirmation.

New Ice Age A-Coming by 2012

Some researchers have forecast a new ice age for the earth by 2012, capable of making current meteorological phenomena a prediction of this climate crisis. Spanish Luis Carlos Campos is among them, and his book "Calor Glacial" (Icy Heat) gives obvious symptoms of near future glaciations. He reached this conclusion of imminent disaster after visiting points of the planet with signs of this problem. Campos denies global warming studies and relies on solar cycles ruling climate and temperatures rather than on carbon dioxide (CO2). He adds that earth gases operate as a blanket in the atmosphere, and the heat coming from the Sun rebounds to the sky, where it is retained. In his opinion, by 2030 we enter a minimum point that will reach its peak in 2080-2090, when the planet will supposedly freeze.

Pentagon's Robots: Arming the Future

Robots have stepped out of the science fiction pages and onto the battlefield. Thousands are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting military operations on land, at sea, and in the air. Some robots cost as little as several thousand dollars each. Controlled remotely by soldiers, sailors, and airmen, they perform tasks such as disarming roadside bombs, scouting danger­ous territory, and patrolling the sky. As technology advances, robots will become increas­ingly autonomous of human supervision, providing new cutting-edge national security applications that could give the U.S. military significant competitive ad­vantages. Robots on the battlefield will not bring an age of "bloodless" push-button warfare nor provide "silver-bullet" solutions to every combat challenge, but they can offer U.S. forces tactical advantages for outfighting both conventional (regular armed forces) and uncon­ventional (e.g., terrorists and insurgents) enemies. The U.S. government should continue prudent investments in robotic technologies, particularly for autonomous operations--an area of research not adequately supported by commercial research and development. Congress can help by establishing a framework that will facilitate national security re­search and development programs and by addressing concerns about the risk to humans with legislative guidelines for liability and safety issues in research, development, and procurement.

'Active glacier found' on Mars

A probable active glacier has been identified for the first time on Mars. The icy feature has been spotted in images from the European Space Agency's (Esa) Mars Express spacecraft. Ancient glaciers, many millions of years old, have been seen before on the Red Planet, but this one may only be several thousand years old. The young glacier appears in the Deuteronilus Mensae region between Mars' rugged southern highlands and the flat northern lowlands. "If it was an image of Earth, I would say 'glacier' right away," Dr Gerhard Neukum, chief scientist on the spacecraft's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) told BBC News. "We have not yet been able to see the spectral signature of water. But we will fly over it in the coming months and take measurements. On the glacial ridges we can see white tips, which can only be freshly exposed ice." This is found in very few places on the Red Planet because as soon as ice is exposed to the Martian environment, it sublimates (turns from a solid state directly into gas).

An NGO Solution for UFO Study

Maybe the way to nudge the U.S. back into the official business of investigating UFOs is to let someone other than the U.S. government handle it. This trial balloon comes from Ted Roe, executive director of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena. Founded in 2000 by a clique of scientists and aviation experts troubled by UFOs’ potential and demonstrable impact on flight safety, NARCAP has published some impressive analyses to that end, most recently of the Chicago O’Hare case in 2006, at www.narcap.org. Unlike the more rational aviation climates in places like France, England, Peru, Paraguay and Chile, where filing UFO reports isn’t a one-way ticket to the rubber room (probably because their governments make no secret of their ongoing studies), American pilots are less inclined to go on record with what they’ve seen. By necessity, NARCAP has established a track record of preserving pilot confidentiality, but unlike Uncle Sam, it publishes the results of its inquiries.

The New Skynet: Total War Control

Dozens of countries (lead by Dutch, American, German, Japanese and Chinese firms) are involved in 21st century warfighter programs, all done for the benefit of 'national security'. What the publics of each respective country may not know is that all of the learned information and gained technology is cannabilized and sold and resold in the marketplace under loose restrictions of global economy and private public partnerships. One of the top market exchanges for such technology is the HCI-International, a bi-annual conference originally set up by scholars at Purdue University and Tsinghua University in China. Information warfare technology and advanced human cognition have been in development for years, but only in recent times have nations begun to share obtained technology and advancements in the respective fields. The HCI-International conferences were begun in 1984 and have now reached the level of total information sharing, with little hidden under the table. All is debated and discussed, with the proceeding discoveries to again be shared at the next meeting, rinse and repeat. The idea of modernizing the combat soldier is nothing new. Science fiction stories in the 1940s and 1950s had soldiers wearing breathing masks, flying around with jetpacks, and using advanced armor to evade bullets. What was once science fiction is now science fact. A quick glance at DARPA's main programs site will show a catalogue of projects designed to streamline the combat soldier into the 21st century and beyond. The attempts by science and government administration to turn the infantry man into an invincible fighting machine has already begun. But what is the endgame of this? Well, another glance at DARPA's projects, including Pentagon papers, will show a growing disdain for even using humans in many forms of combat and other peripheral operations. Why send up a pilot to fly a jet aircraft at all when the aircraft itself can be updated to fly autonomously and use auto-positioning and advanced targeting systems to locate and destroy the enemy? After all, a robotic navigation system will not suffer from bad morale, poor training, and certainly not air sickness or G-force side effects. But automating the nations' militaries will take decades to accomplish, so in the meantime the human element must remain in effect; the only challenge is updating the human to provide support for the system until the automatic systems are capable of taking over day to day combat and policing operations.

2-D Invisibility Cloak Created

A research team at Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering comprised of Professor Christopher Davis, Research Scientist Igor Smolyaninov, and graduate student Yu-Ju Hung, has used plasmon technology to create the world's first invisibility cloak for visible light. The engineers have applied the same technology to build a revolutionary superlens microscope that allows scientists to see details of previously undetectable nanoscale objects. Generally speaking, when we see an object, we see the visible light that strikes the object and is reflected. The Clark School team's invisibility cloak refracts (or bends) the light that strikes it, so that the light moves around and past the cloak, reflecting nothing, leaving the cloak and its contents "invisible." The invisibility cloak device is a two-dimensional pattern of concentric rings created in a thin, transparent acrylic plastic layer on a gold film. The plastic and gold each have different refractive properties. The structured plastic on gold in different areas of the cloak creates "negative refraction" effects, which bend plasmons—electron waves generated when light strikes a metallic surface under precise circumstances—around the cloaked region. This manipulation causes the plasmon waves to appear to have moved in a straight line. In reality they have been guided around the cloak much as water in a stream flows around a rock, and released on the other side, concealing the cloak and the object inside from visible light.

Archbishop says nativity 'a legend'

The Archbishop of Canterbury said recently that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a 'legend'. Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings. He said the only reference to the wise men from the East was in Matthew's gospel and the details were very vague. Dr Williams said: "Matthew's gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that's all we're really told. It works quite well as legend." The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable. He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was "very unlikely". In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: "Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival." His comments came during an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live with Simon Mayo yesterday. Later on in the show, the Archbishop was challenged by fellow guest Ricky Gervais, the comedian, about the credibility of the Christmas story. Gervais told Dr Williams he was concerned about "brainwashing" of children who are sent to faith schools at an early age, comparing teaching that God exists to belief in Father Christmas. Dr Williams said faith schools expose children to the full range of human experience and values and he did not believe they indoctrinated people.

Lab building artificial human brain

In a laboratory in Switzerland, a group of neuroscientists is developing a mammalian brain - in silicon. The researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in collaboration with IBM, have just completed the first phase of an ambitious project to reproduce a fully functioning brain on a supercomputer. By strange coincidence, their lab happens to lie on the same shores of Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley dreamt up her creation, Dr Frankenstein. In June 2005, Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain project, announced his intention to build a human brain using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. "The critics were unbelievable," recalls Markram. "Everybody thought we were crazy. Even the most eminent computational neuroscientists and theoreticians said the project would fail."
Some of Markram's peers said there simply wasn't enough data available to simulate a human brain. "There is no neuroscientist on the planet that has the authority to say we don't understand enough," says Markram. "We all know a tiny slice. Nobody even knows how much we know." Markram was not dissuaded by the negative reaction to his announcement. Two years on, he has already developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column - the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains - of a two-week-old rat, and it behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. It's something quite beautiful when you watch it pulse on the giant 3D screens the researchers have constructed. The neocortical column is the most recently evolved part of our brain and is responsible for such things as reasoning and self-awareness. It was a quantum leap in evolution. The human brain contains a thousand times more neocortical columns than a rat's brain, but there is very little difference, biologically speaking, between a rat's brain and our own. Build one column, and you can effectively build the entire neocortex - if you have the computational power. Although a neocortical column is only 2 millimetres long and half a millimetre in diameter, it contains 10,000 neurons and 30m synapses. The machine that simulates this column is an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer is capable of speeds of 18.7 trillion calculations per second. It has 8,000 processors and is one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Markram believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex, which is the next phase of the Blue Brain project, due to begin next year. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain.

Al-Qaida targets Pakistan nukes

Osama bin Laden's quest for a nuclear weapons arsenal now focuses on al-Qaida efforts to destabilizing Pakistan, plunging the nation into civil war, seizing power in conjunction with other radical jihadists and grabbing control of the world's first Islamic bombs, according to a report in a West Point anti-terrorism journal. Writing in the Combating Terrorism Center's Sentinel, a new publication of the U.S. military academy, Bruce Riedel, a former senior U.S. official now with the Brookings Institution, says Pakistan represents the "real front line in the war against al-Qaida." The most frightening part of advances by Islamists confronting the government of Perves Musharraf is the determination of al-Qaida to obtain nuclear weapons. Al-Qaida has been pursuing nuclear weapons for more than a decade, according to former CIA Director George Tenet. "Today, [al-Qaida] has a secure operating base in the country, its leadership is issuing constant guidance to its global supporters, it is threatening NATO's position in Afghanistan through its Taliban allies, and it is now a growing force in Pakistan itself," writes Riedel. "The current political crisis in Pakistan is endangering the secular democratic forces in the country, polarizing the debate about the country's future and strengthening al-Qaida's Islamist partners." Riedel reports both bin Laden and his No. 2 commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could well be in any of Pakistan's remote areas, out of control of government forces. "From Baluchistan to Kashmir, much of western Pakistan is sympathetic to al-Qaida's message and remains an open field where they can operate," wrote Riedel. "Even in the urban areas, al-Qaida operatives have been able to attack key targets, including military posts, with increasingly deadly results." Al-Qaida, Riedel writes, "seeks to destroy the secular political leadership and civil society that offers an alternative to its extremist Salafist Islamic preaching. Al-Qaida's goal in Pakistan is to polarize the country into warring factions, break the back of civil and secular society and ultimately see its allies in the Pakistani Islamist movement seize power."

Future Sensors Will Create The Matrix

The Matrix trilogy was one long paean to data visualization. As we all know, it began with the premise that life was a sophisticated simulation, virtual reality taken to the civilizational level. Except for a few Matrix die-hards that I'm sure exist, people don't actually believe this is what the physical/geographical world actually is. But with new sensor technology, we could create the datasets that the movies hinted lay inside the world. Current efforts at revisualizing the world through specific environmental data collection -- traffic flowmaps, real-time temperature maps -- will expand into a much wider variety of fields over the next few years. The energy industry is driving much of the sensor innovation because they'd like to make their grid more efficient. The suite of technologies necessary to do this are collectively known as the "smart grid." When they are in place, companies will be able to see energy moving across (at least) the US, flowing out of plants and into homes. The technologies to enable this real-time transformation of the world into data are nearly at hand. Last week, I spoke with Drew Clark, co-founder and director of strategy for the IBM Venture Capital Group. He returned time and again to the concept of wireless sensors. IBM sells the backend software to manage all the data the sensors are collecting.

NAFTA superhighway grid

Canada has announced a plan to extend the NAFTA Superhighway network north in a way that would finish a continental grid designed to accommodate an anticipated tsunami of containers from China and the Far East. The Canadian Intelligent Super Corridor, or CISCOR, is a national transportation route designed to reach from the West Coast ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert to Montreal and Halifax. The CISCOR case study provides strong evidence that the continent's ports, highways and rail lines are being reconfigured into an inter-modal system emphasizing technological logistics and "inland smart ports" designed to meet the demands of world trade, largely driven by the relocation of North American manufacturing to China. Inter-modal is a transportation economics reference to containers that can be transported on several different modes of transportation, including container ships, trucks and trains, without having to be unloaded or repacked. According to the CISCOR website, the Saskatchewan-based CISCOR Inland Port Network of the cities of Regina, Saskatoon and Moose Jaw is designed to serve "as the central logistics and coordination hub, creating a Canadian east-west land bridge connecting three major North American north-south corridors: North America's SuperCorridor, or NASCO, the Canada-America-Mexico Corridor, or CANAMEX, and the River of Trade Corridor Coalition."

Brain computer systems are coming

All over the world, systems that directly connect silicon circuits to brains are under development, and some are nearly ready for commercial applications, according to a new report from the World Technology Evaluation Center and announced by a news release of the University of Southern California (USC). Some of the conclusions of this report about brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are quite surprising. For example, North America researchers focus almost exclusively on invasive BCIs while noninvasive BCI systems are mostly studied in European and Asian labs. BCI research is extensive and rapidly growing, as is growth in the interfaces between multiple key scientific areas, including biomedical engineering, neuroscience, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, materials science and nanotechnology, and neurology and neurosurgery. BCI research is rapidly approaching first-generation medical practice — clinical trials of invasive BCI technologies and significant home use of noninvasive, electroencephalography (EEG-based) BCIs. The panel predicts that BCIs soon will markedly influence the medical device industry, and additionally BCI research will rapidly accelerate in non-medical arenas of commerce as well, particularly in the gaming, automotive, and robotics industries. The focus of BCI research throughout the world was decidedly uneven, with invasive BCIs almost exclusively centered in North America, noninvasive BCI systems evolving primarily from European and Asian efforts. BCI research in Asia, and particularly China, is accelerating, with advanced algorithm development for EEG-based systems currently a hallmark of China’s BCI program. Future BCI research in China is clearly developing toward invasive BCI systems, so BCI researchers in the US will soon have a strong competitor.

Bible smaller than a pinhead

Israeli scientists said recently, they had created the world's smallest Hebrew Bible, fitting the book on to a gold-coated silicon chip smaller than a pinhead. Scientists at Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology, were able to pack the 308,428 words of what Christians refer to as the Old Testament on to a 0.5mm square of silicon by etching its surface with particle beams. "The Guinness Book of World Records has a Bible 50 times bigger," said Ohad Zohar, who directed the project. He said he now wanted to take pictures of the nano-Bible and blow it up to a seven-by-seven metre poster, which will make it "possible to read the entire bible with the naked eye". The tiny Bible was developed as part of an educational drive to increase interest in nanoscience among teenagers.

Why Surveillance Is a Two-Way Street

As this month's cover story notes, the recent boom in video monitoring—by both the state and businesses—means we're all being watched. It's like something out of George Orwell's 1984. Except that, unlike Orwell's protagonist Winston Smith, we can watch back—and plenty of people are doing just that. Which makes a difference. The widespread installation of recording devices is not all bad: ATM cameras helped prove that Duke students accused of rape couldn't have committed the crime. And we all sympathize with the goals of preventing terrorism and crime, though it is not proven that security cameras accomplish this. Nonetheless, the trend toward constant surveillance is troubling.

Stockpile Food For Flu Pandemic

Every Australian household should stockpile at least 10 weeks' worth of food rations to prepare for a deadly flu pandemic, a panel of leading nutritionists has warned. World health experts now agree a pandemic is inevitable and will spread rapidly, wiping out up to 7.4 million people globally and triggering rapid food shortages. Australia is expected to be among the first countries hit because of its proximity to Asia and high levels of international traffic. But Woolworths and Coles, the nation's two major supermarket chains, will run out of stock within two to four weeks without a supply chain – or even faster if shoppers panic.

Gog-Magog To Target US Shield

Russia's nuclear weapons chief threatened Dec. 17, to target a planned US missile defence shield in central Europe if Washington fails to take into account Moscow's worries, the Interfax news agency reported. General Nikolai Solovtsov, head of strategic missile forces, said that such a decision could be taken if the US shield is seen to "undermine the Russian nuclear deterrent capability." In that case, "I do not exclude... the missile defence shield sites in Poland and the Czech Republic being chosen as targets for some of our intercontinental ballistic missiles," Solovtsov said, according to Interfax.

General Says U.S. Looking For Fight

Russia's top military officer recently accused the United States of seeking direct confrontation with Moscow and warned again that U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses in Europe would destabilize the continent. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky spoke at a joint press conference along with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak, who repeated that Russia would not increase troop levels on its western border even after suspending participation in a key arms treaty. Among the issues that have most undermined Russian-U.S. relations in recent years is a U.S. plan to put elements of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic — former Warsaw Pact members that have joined NATO.

Iran gets nuclear fuel from Russia

Russia has delivered a consignment of nuclear fuel to Iran in spite of western worries about Tehran's nuclear ambitions, it has been revealed. The 82-tonne batch, the first in a planned series of shipments, was delivered to a nuclear power station being built in the south-western Iranian port of Bushehr. The United States, which believes Tehran wants to acquire a nuclear weapon, had urged Moscow not to send the fuel. However, Russia said it had received assurances from Iran that the shipped fuel would not be used for any other purpose. It said there was no evidence that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons, and that the Bushehr project could not be used in a weapons programme in any case. An American intelligence report last month declared that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. However, western nations such as the US and Britain have said they remain vigilant for signs that Iran is rebuilding its nuclear capabilities. The nuclear power station at Bushehr will receive more fuel shipments in the next two months, and the plant should be operational within six months. The Bushehr facility began construction in 1974 but was halted with the fall of the Shah in 1979. It is now being completed with Russian help. Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, has said it wants to build a network of nuclear power plants with a capacity of 20,000 megawatts by 2020 to enable it to export more of its oil and gas. Iran and Russia are in talks over the construction of a second reactor at Bushehr.

AT&T announces GPS and RFID system

There's no doubt that schools and teachers can face significant challenges trying to keep track of hundreds of students and assure their safety while simultaneously teaching them something. (I can personally attest that I was rarely learning something at the same time my teachers knew where I was.) Now AT&T is looking to apply technology to the problem, offering a comprehensive child-tracking solution for the K-12 education market combining RFID and GPS technologies to enable schools to keep track of school bus locations and speed while simultaneously monitoring events within the vehicles. "Our RFID and MRM services help K-12 institutions rapidly deploy end-to-end solutions without significant capital investment," said Ann Rotatori, vice president of Business Marketing for AT&T, in a statement. "For the first time, school districts can now turn to a network services provider for all of their RFID and MRM needs, and that enables them to save money, make the most of their assets and resources and enhance student safety." AT&T envisions the system being used to track in-school assets like computers, projectors, laptop computers, and lab equipment. But the company is also pitching the technology as a means to track students and people directly, enforcing attendance and tracking visitors on school grounds (including alerting administrators to people in unauthorized areas). The system is designed to tie in with existing 802.11 Wi-Fi wireless networking solutions and display tracking information via a Web-based portal.

Synthetic DNA Closes In On Pandoras Box

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce. In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction. The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive. "This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be," said Paul Rabinow, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley who studies science's effects on society. "Evolutionary processes are no longer seen as sacred or inviolable. People in labs are figuring them out so they can improve upon them for different purposes." That unprecedented degree of control over creation raises more than philosophical questions, however. What kinds of organisms will scientists, terrorists and other creative individuals make? How will these self-replicating entities be contained? And who might end up owning the patent rights to the basic tools for synthesizing life?

Russia Test-Fires Stunning New ICBM

Russia on Dec. 17, test-launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile, part of a system that can outperform any anti-missile system likely to be deployed, according to the officer in charge of missile forces. The missile was launched from the Tula nuclear-powered submarine in the Barents Sea in the Arctic, a statement from the Russian navy said. It hit a designated area in the Kura testing ground on the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's Pacific coast.

Iran is building another nuclear plant

Iran confirmed on Dec. 17 that it had received the first fuel shipment for its nuclear power plant at Bushehr, but also indicated for the first time that it was building a second nuclear power plant. The revelation came in comments by Iran's Atomic Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, made to state-run television and reported by the semi-official Fars news agency. He was dismissing speculation that the arrival of the fuel would allow Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program, in Natanz. "We are building a 360-megawatt indigenous power plant in Darkhovein," he said, referring to a southern city north of Bushehr. "The fuel for this plant needs to be produced by Natanz enrichment plant," he added, Fars said. Bushehr and Darkhovein were both projects planned before the 1979 Revolution. It was not clear how much construction had been done at Darkhovein. The location is also sometimes spelled Darkhovin, or referred to by other nearby place names, including Ahvaz, Esteghlal and Karun. Aghazadeh said Monday that Iran needed to increase the centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment plant from 3,000 to 50,000, saying that with the current 3,000, it could only produce fuel for a 100-megawatt plant.

Homo Superior Cometh

Genetic engineering is getting serious. Recently researchers have shown that otherwise "hardwired" or innate responses, such as fear, can be manipulated and even reversed, that extreme muscle growth is possible, and that sexual preference can be changed. Genetic manipulations like these go well beyond the promised cosmetic enhancements – such as changing skin and eye color – and may in fact allow us to become the drivers of our species' evolution. But are we capable of handling our newfound god status? If we could create a fearless, well-fed, disease-free world, would this lead to a golden age of peace, love, and understanding, or will it be business as usual? In his 1883 book entitled Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche set out his concept of the Übermensch, or superman, and how humanity should rise above its coarse, beastly nature. So far it has been shown that evolution can be sped up through "synthetic evolution" in the lab, as well as accelerating of its own accord due to the increasing size of the human population. These are amazing developments in themselves, but are still far from the challenge that Nietzsche devised of generating a higher transhuman species.

'Living Chip' For Patients

For a patient with a chronic health condition, it's impossible to know if something's wrong until a symptom crops up. But doctors are working on a technology that one day will continuously monitor a patient's health from the inside. Aisha O'Mally loves her walks, but a few years ago, her heart was failing. "I remember being just tired. Tired. I couldn't go up the stairs, I was coughing a lot. I couldn't sleep lying down," she recalled. Aisha's heart deteriorated to the point she needed a heart transplant. "There's so many things that are going on in your body that you're not aware of, and sometimes the doctors aren't aware of until blood work or until you're feeling completely sick." Detecting these changes before symptoms is the goal of researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center. They're developing an implantable sensor that reads internal chemistry. "Those things that we're looking at are hormones and proteins that get released into the blood stream and into the tissues when the heart's under stress, when the body wants to make a change," Dr. Spencer Rosero, a researcher, said. A so-called "living chip" containing a patient's cells will be placed in a device just under the skin. Then the chip's cells will interpret what's happening inside. "Then the device would serve as a sensor where they could relay information to either a small communication device they can wear on their belt, say, 'It's your medications. You should adjust them this way because for you, today is a different day,'" Rosero explained. Or the device would alert a doctor to a patient's changing needs. "The goal, whole goal, is to improve the quality of life and keep them out of the hospital. But it also opens up a whole new area where it's no longer kind of reactive medicine," he said. A medical advance that patients, like Aisha, could benefit from in the future. Though human tests are a decade away, the living chip will be first used to manage heart failure patients. Down the road, researchers anticipate the device could help diabetes patients control their disease or chemotherapy patients receive the optimal dose at the lowest toxicity.

Scientists Worried About Signaling ET

For decades it has been a staple of science fiction somewhere out in the galaxy, a highly developed alien race picks up a radio signal from Earth, and decides to eat us for lunch. In a world plagued by war, hunger and disease, a possible attack by little green men may not rank high among most nations’ concerns. Yet for a small group of scientists who are harnessing increasingly powerful technologies in a trans-galactic search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, the prospect of catastrophe has stirred an angry debate. Two senior scientists have resigned from an elite international study group in protest over a lack of public discussion about the possible consequences of attracting the attention of aliens by sending signals deep into space. “We’re talking about initiating communication with other civilisations, but we know nothing of their goals, capabilities or intent,” warned John Billingham, a former Nasa scientist who has quit an extraterrestrial study group set up by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). The scientists involved are all acutely aware of the dangers of ridicule in their discussions of ET and his more sinister cousins. Yet recent advances in radio telescope technologies, and a substantial flow of private funding into ET-related projects, has transformed the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” (SETI).

Activist banned for anti-homosexuality

Bill Whatcott was fined 17,500 Canadian dollars by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission in a complaint by four homosexuals who charged he "injured" their "feelings" and "self respect" in pamphlets denouncing the "gay lifestyle" as immoral and dangerous, Lifesite News reported. Saskatchewan's Court of Queens Bench, which hears criminal and civil cases, upheld a 2006 decision recently by the provincial Human Rights Commission. "This fine is for telling the truth [that] homosexual sodomites can change their behavior and be set free from their sin and depravity through the forgiveness of sins and shed blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Whatcott said. A licensed practical nurse, Whatcott regularly campaigns against the political movement that is rapidly advancing homosexual rights in the Canadian legal system, LifeSiteNews said. "Shame on the Saskatchewan Court of Queens Bench for pandering to homosexual activism and ignoring the truth," he said. The provincial Human Rights Commission noted Whatcott was "ordered to discontinue distributing any materials that promote hatred against people because of their sexual orientation." The tribunal held that "preventing the distribution of such materials was a reasonable limit on Whatcott's right to freedom of religion and expression as guaranteed by Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

Manchester To Microchip Sports Players

One of the biggest sports team in the world, Manchester United, are considering using microchip technology to track their players on the pitch. A chip would be implanted into the arm of all their star players including, the most expensive teenager ever in world football Wayne Rooney, and the worlds most expensive defender, Rio Ferdinand. Some players in South America are already being chipped by their clubs, although, this is usually to prevent kidnapping. Manchester United claim that the chips would only be used to monitor the players on the field. According to First team coach and former Manchester United player, Brian McClair, the players are not too impressed with the idea. McClair wrote in a column for the official United magazine: "We are continuing to embrace technology in our quest to win trophies. The fitness coach recently attended a demonstration of a system that can track the movement of the players by satellite. One or two of the first team players were not too pleased as they thought the gaffer could locate them at any time (not that anyone would be somewhere they shouldn't)." Are we beginning to see the emergence of a sinister marketing plan to convince us that getting injected with a chip is somehow exclusive or “cool”. Will we eventually see legions of young football fans wanting to get chipped so they can be more like their heroes? A few years ago the chips were only used on animals, now we are seeing them being marketed as an exclusive accessories for the powerful, rich and the famous. Now some staff of the Mexican government need to have the chip in order to work there, and a nightclub in Barcelona requires people to be injected with the chip before they can enter. Despite security unresolved issues, the rfid microchips are being pushed upon the public. If you want to read more about the security and safety issues then visit this site.

Homeschooling May Mean Jail Time

A homeschooling mom in Utah has been ordered by a judge to enroll her children in a public school district within 24 hours, and have them in class tomorrow, all because of a paperwork glitch that very well could be the fault of the district. The mother, Denise Mafi, told WND that she already has enrolled her children in the district, under the threat from Judge Scott Johansen, who serves in the juvenile division of the state's 7th Judicial District, that he would order her children taken away from her. As WND has reported previously, such threats are becoming more and more common in Germany, but that nation still lives by a Nazi-era law that makes homeschooling illegal. Mafi told WND that not only is homeschooling legal in Utah, she's been at it for nearly a decade. So what's the problem here? It seems that an affidavit she faxed to the local school district for the 2006-2007 school year, documenting her homeschooling plans, was lost by the district. So when she went to court with her juvenile son to have the charges dismissed (under a case held in abeyance procedure) stemming from a clash among children, she suddenly was presented with four counts against her for failing to comply with the state's compulsory education requirement. She thought she was meeting the court's demands earlier when she enrolled her two youngest children in classes, and put her two older children in an online curriculum connected to the public school. "Well everything fell apart in court today. I had to enroll my two oldest in public school. They start on Monday. If I didn't the judge said I would lose custody of my children. He threw out the plea and we go to trial on January 9th. I have NO CHANCE with this judge. He will find me guilty. He already has. So I will probably be spending some time in jail. Please pray for my children," she noted in an online forum connected to a "Five In A Row" homeschool curriculum she had used when her children were younger.

The Antichrist Society and hope

Satanic bands, movies, and a dark culture in America are now persuading the youth of today that the things about Salvation, God, and even Jesus Christ are lies. The wave of wizardry, black magic, and the occult have fascinated this entire generation, including many in the church who see it as harmless. Many in the church have ignored Gods warnings in the scripture about such things. They also do not believe that a curse could come upon them for doing so. Out of this comes rebellion, which is as the sin of witchcraft, in the bible. In the end all this rebellion breeds intense hatred. In America we have dark menacing spirits that are brought out by our culture and the “lawlessness” which is permeating our society. Thus, America is becoming a society that is increasing adept at ignoring Gods commandments and warnings. As a result, young people, harassed by these “spirits of lawlessness”, then do lawless deeds. For one lawlessness begets another, as we ignore Gods laws, we then break the laws of man and earth. Man then goes against nature, other men, and society itself, wreaking havoc on all. This is seen in the mass murders, rapes, and other violence done today in America. One recent example is Matthew Murray, who had wanted to take as many with him as possible (speaking of Christians) and he did just that, before he was stopped. He had hated Christians, and on a personals site, related what his intentions were. He killed five and wounded five over a 12 hour time span and 65 miles apart at two separate Christian organizations. This is just the beginning of what is coming. The wicked and all nations who forget God will be turned into hell. America is heading that way. For we have forgotten our solid moorings to the ship of our Lord and savior and have gone into dark waters of rebellion. The only solution for men is to turn from their ways in repentance, fast, pray, and seek the LORD with all their heart. The full iniquity is coming. This is the reign of the Son of Perdition. The delusion is coming, all on earth will face this time. There is no escape, but in the LORD Jesus Christ (Yeshua HaMassiach). It is coming, America cannot see it, the church has ignored it, and we are not saved. It is as a snare coming upon the whole earth, none shall escape, and all will be caught. There is only one way to escape, through a belief in Jesus Christ as the lord and saviour, and by accepting him as your personal saviour.

Holy Man's 'Magic Leg' Chopped Off

Yanadi Kondaiah, who claimed that those who touched his leg would be cured of illness or have wishes granted, was hospitalized in serious condition after the attack recently, said R. Ravindranath Reddy, a senior police officer. "We are looking for the miscreants as well as the leg," Reddy told The Associated Press by telephone from the Chittoor district, a remote area 340 miles south of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state. "This seems to be a case of superstition. The two people might have taken away the leg hoping to benefit from its magical powers," said Pendakanti Dastgiri, the police officer handling the case. Superstitions, belief in magic and the occult remain widespread in much of rural India. Kondaiah told police that two men offered him a drink as thanks for previously helping them with his magical touch. After he passed out drunk, the men chopped off the leg below the knee with a sickle and left him to die, said Dastgiri, adding that passing villagers found him and took him to a hospital.

Earth the hottest this decade

Eight of the warmest years on record around the world have taken place in the last decade, figures released recently show. This year's temperatures were the seventh warmest since records began in 1850 the statistics, released to coincide with the United Nations conference in Bali on climate change, reveal. In the UK, 2007 is expected to be the third hottest since UK-wide records began in 1914. The last six years have all been in the top six. The measurements provide further evidence that the world is warming up say researchers from the Met Office and the University of East Anglia (UEA), who jointly carried out the study. They were anxious to release the figures as Michel Jarraud, the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), spoke at the conference in Bali. Every year since and including 2001 has made it into the top ten warmest years. The hottest of all years was 1998 and the last time a year fell below the 1961-90 global temperature average was in 1985. This year was forecast to be one of the hottest but initial fears that it would break all temperature records eased when the La Niña event took effect after April. “The year began with a weak El Niño – the warmer relation of La Niña - and global temperatures well above the long-term average. However, since the end of April the La Niña event has taken some of the heat out of what could have been an even warmer year,” said Professor Phil Jones, Director of UEA’s Climatic Research Unit. Temperatures in 2007 were warmer in the northern hemispheres, where the year ranks second warmest, than the southern hemisphere, where it ranks ninth warmest, Professor Jones said. David Parker, a Met Office climate scientist, added: “This year has also seen sea-ice extent in the northern hemisphere below average in each month of 2007, with record minima sea-ice reported in July, August and September. In the southern hemisphere, sea-ice coverage has remained close to average.” Dr Vicky Pope, of the Met Office Hadley Centre, is one of the scientists at the two-week Bali summit which is expected to conclude tomorrow. She and said: “The last few days have provided an important platform for debate and confirms the need for swift action to combat further rises in global temperatures because of human behaviour.”

Glow In The Dark Cats Cloned

South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said recently. In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams. A team of scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes, the Ministry of Science and Technology said. "It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned," the ministry said in a statement. "The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," it added. The cats were born in January and February. One was stillborn while two others grew to become adult Turkish Angoras, weighing 3.0 kilogrammes (6.6 pounds) and 3.5 kilogrammes.

The Golden Compass and Occult Influence

The movie, "The Golden Compass," heralds a mysterious “compass,” but this is no ordinary navigational guide. Instead, it's a divination device -- an alethiometer -- energized by tiny, conscious "Dust" particles. Though usually invisible, these Dust particles can be sensed by the story's more psychically attuned characters. So when 12-year-old heroine Lyra seeks guidance through her treasured "truth measure," she invokes swirling masses of shimmering Dust that communicate the "true" answers needed for the battles ahead. Naturally, those answers affirm the occult worldview that author Philip Pullman promotes. And unlike most of the mystical thrills that children learn to crave these days, this complex tale incorporates an enticing form of pseudo-science that has already been introduced in public schools around the world. But why worry? Everyone knows it's just fantasy, don't they? It doesn't matter. While they may know the difference between fact and fantasy, they are likely to respond to the message with feelings rather than intellect. Most viewers simply let their minds flow with the story. Bypassing any discernment, the movie then plants unforgettable images and suggestion in their hearts and minds. The results are devastating to Christian faith. Captivating glimpses of divination, magic, wise witches, and cute talking shape-shifting demons for each person make the occult world familiar, normal, acceptable, good, desirable, and anybody that keeps you from embracing these supernaturals are the enemy and must be stopped by any means [I can see the cutesy stuffed pull-string demons with their warm sounding spells waiting beneath the Christmas tree for our children even now].

Sega To Make Mind-Controlled Toys

Sega and NeuroSky are uniting to make toys controlled by the power of thought. NeuroSky is usually seen on the conference circuit as as a headset, clamped onto the player's beady-sweated pate, from where it monitors the electrical impulses within. Though it's quite limited — your Tetsuo-like mental concentration is measured as but a single axis — it provides a strange feeling of having a kind of "extra limb." Details on the Sega's new toys are not offered, unfortunately, so the end results are left to our imaginations.

VeriChip Infant Protection Systems

VeriChip Corporation (Nasdaq:CHIP - News), a provider of RFID systems for healthcare and patient-related needs, announced recently that the Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Xmark, recently completed a sale of an infant protection system in the state of Ohio, where Xmark’s infant protection systems are now installed in more than half of all birthing facilities. This install base features systems sold under the Company’s HUGS® brand. “Our HUGS system, which is the industry standard, continues its sustained growth in maternity wards and birthing centers throughout the U.S.,” said Daniel A. Gunther, President and CEO of Xmark. “The expansion of our install base is critical to our ongoing success. From sales to new hospital customers, replacement systems and upgrades to existing systems, we are pleased to be the provider of choice for infant security systems for the majority of hospitals.” Xmark’s infant protection systems are designed to prevent infant abductions and inadvertent child mismatching. The main component of the systems is a wearable RFID tag that is assigned to child and mother following birth. Monitors positioned throughout the hospital detect the integrity of the tags and location of the child. If a newborn is removed from the ward, if the tag is lifted from the baby’s skin or if the ankle strap is compromised, the system immediately triggers an alarm, alerting hospital security to the situation. Xmark infant protection systems also protect against mismatching events by affixing matching RFID tags to mother and child. If the mother is given the wrong child, the RFID tag detects the mismatch and activates an audible alarm.

Challenges of Fighting Nuclear Terror

The United States Department of Energy maintains emergency response capabilities and assets to quickly respond to potential nuclear and radiological threats in the United States . These capabilities are primarily found at DOE's two key emergency response facilities – the Remote Sensing Laboratories at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada , and Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland . These capabilities took on increased significance after the attacks of September 11, 2001, because of heightened concern that terrorists may try to detonate a nuclear or radiological device in a major U.S. city. DOE is not the only federal agency responsible for addressing nuclear and radiological threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for preparing the country to prevent and respond to a potential nuclear or radiological attack.

Ominous Arctic Melt Worries Experts

An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years. Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press. "The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo. Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040. This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions." So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models? "The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."

Launch Commandos in Cruise Missiles

Northrop Grumman isn't just dreaming about a laser-firing, long-range bomber. It's dreaming of a laser-firing, long-range bomber that fires commandos into battle inside cruise missiles. As The DEW Line notes, the gargantuan defense contractor crowed about all the whiz-bang gear its laser-bomber concept used in "simulated missions" as part of a "virtual war-gaming exercise." There were giant bunker-busters. Anti-missile decoys. And the "drop[ping of] special operations forces into combat using a modified air-launched cruise missile carrying a pressurized, self-contained pod."

Light + Sound = New Weapon

Military funded researchers are preparing to test a nonlethal weapon that combines light and sound. Nicholas C. Nicholas, chief scientist of Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory, told an audience yesterday at a nonlethal weapons conference that in the first half of next year, the lab plans to test DSLAD, the Distributed Sound and Light Array Debilitator. It'll use essentially off the shelf technology to see if combining aversive noises with light produce some special debiliating effects. Anecdotal effects include dizziness and loss of balance, and of course, nausea. In other words, DSLAD could be another potential "puke ray."

Best Evidence Yet Of Past Mars Life

Nasa says its Mars rover Spirit has discovered "the best evidence yet" of a past habitable environment on the planet's surface. Spirit has been exploring a plateau called Home Plate, where it discovered silica-rich soil in May. Researchers are now trying to determine what produced the patch of nearly pure silica - the main ingredient of window glass. They believe the deposits came from an ancient hot-spring environment or an environment called a fumarole, in which acidic steam rises through cracks. On Earth, both of these types of settings teem with microbial life, said rover chief scientist Steve Squyres. "Whichever of those conditions produced it, this concentration of silica is probably the most significant discovery by Spirit for revealing a habitable niche that existed on Mars in the past," he said. "The evidence is pointing most strongly toward fumarolic conditions, like you might see in Hawaii and in Iceland.

Cyber Attacks On U.S. sites Linked

A cyber attack reported last week by one of the federal government's nuclear weapons laboratories may have originated in China, according to a confidential memorandum distributed to public and private security officials by the Department of Homeland Security. Security researchers said the memorandum, which was obtained by The New York Times from an executive at a private company, included a list of Web and Internet addresses that were linked to locations in China. However, they noted that such links did not prove that the Chinese government or Chinese citizens were involved in the attacks. In the past, intruders have compromised computers in China and then used them to disguise their true location.

NASA to Probe for UFO Data

The U.S. government denies anything of note happened in this small town in the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania at 4:47 p.m. on Dec. 9, 1965. A meteor may have passed by, but no alien ship or Russian space probe fell to Earth, as many here believe. Still, Bill Bulebush, 82, says he knows what he saw, heard and smelled, despite the doubts of the government and others in this community 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. "I looked up and saw it flying overhead and it was sizzling," said Bulebush, a retired truck driver. "I found it in the woods down there [in a valley] and I got to it 15 to 20 minutes after it landed. I saw it 10 to 15 feet away from behind a big tree -- because I was worried it might blow up -- and it smelled like sulfur or rotten eggs and was shaped like a huge acorn, about the size of a VW." Other people said that shortly afterward, dozens of Army soldiers and three members of the Air Force showed up; later that night a flatbed military truck took the object away.

Huge Ocean Found Inside Earths Interior

Scientists using 3-D scanning of the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean -the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet’s deep mantle. The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, was made by analyzing more than 600,000 seismograms—records of waves generated by earthquakes traveling through the Earth—collected from instruments located around the planet. The team discovered a region beneath Asia where seismic waves appeared to dampen, or “attenuate,” and also slow down slightly. “Water slows the speed of waves,” Wysession explained. “Lots of damping and a little slowing match the predictions for water very well.”

Human-like robots are coming

If you crave flawless skin, order it from Texas. For exquisite hands, try Britain. And for the most sensuous of noses, you would be hard-pressed to look beyond Melbourne. If this sounds like the shopping list of a globe-trotting plastic surgeon, discard any thoughts of Hollywood scalpels. These are among the advanced components being developed around the world as scientists edge towards the dream of building the ideal humanoid robot. The skin, developed by Hanson Robotics in Dallas, is made from a patented polymer called Frubber. The material mimics the elasticity of skin but is more pliable than foam rubber and, when coupled with robotic "muscles", produces very convincing expressions. The pneumatic hands are custom-made by a group of dreadlocked 21-year-olds, says Peter Hope, the Sydney distributor for the British Shadow Robot Company. A full hand, with 34 tactile sensors in each of its five fingers, sells for about $250,000. The nose, with the unappealing acronym RAT (reactive autonomous testbed), is the achievement of an associate professor at Monash University, Andrew Russell. His "smellbot" is not nearly as discriminating as a human nose, but Russell has programmed his electronic snouts to track specified smells. About 70 experts in robotics, largely from Australia and New Zealand, and from Asian universities, are meeting in Brisbane this week for the annual Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Spontaneous Human Combustion Source

Using novel voltage-sensitive nanoparticles, researchers have found electric fields inside cells as strong as those produced in lightning bolts. Previously, it has only been possible to measure electric fields across cell membranes, not within the main bulk of cells. It's not clear what causes these strong fields or what they might mean. But now that it's possible to measure them, researchers hope to learn about disease states such as cancer by studying these electric fields. University of Michigan researchers led by chemistry professor Raoul Kopelman encapsulated voltage-sensitive dyes in polymer spheres just 30 nanometers in diameter. When illuminated with blue light, the voltage-sensitive dyes emit a mixture of red and green light; the exact frequency of light emitted is influenced by the strength of local electric fields, allowing the researchers to measure those fields. Testing these nanoparticles in the internal fluid of brain-cancer cells, Kopelman found electric fields as strong as 15 million volts per meter, perhaps five times stronger than the field found in a lightning bolt.

High-Energy Laser Installed On Aircraft

Boeing has installed a high-energy chemical laser aboard a C-130H aircraft, achieving a key milestone for the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration program. Boeing completed the laser installation Dec. 4 at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The laser, including its major subsystem, a 12,000-pound integrated laser module, was moved into place aboard the aircraft and aligned with the previously-installed beam control system, which will direct the laser beam to its target.

Martial Law and Microwave Weapons

A recent spate of violence in Los Angeles County jails has Cmdr. Sid Heal looking for a better way to quell disturbances, and a Tucson-made weapon may be just the tool he needs. Heal, of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, is looking to new "directed-energy" technology from Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems as a possible addition to his department's arsenal against unruly inmates. The weapons, which deliver a beam of energy that feels akin to scalding hot water but leaves no injuries, have been developed for use by the Defense Department as a "force-protection" tool for use on battlefields overseas. Now, Raytheon says, civilian law enforcement — and "security organizations" — may benefit from the technology, which the company calls a "truly non-lethal system" for situations when lethal force "may not be appropriate or warranted."

Electromagnetic Fields Do Harm Us

You cannot see it, taste it or smell it, but it is one of the most pervasive environmental exposures in industrialized countries today. Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) or electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are the terms that broadly describe exposures created by the vast array of wired and wireless technologies that have altered the landscape of our lives in countless beneficial ways. However, these technologies were designed to maximize energy efficiency and convenience; not with biological effects on people in mind. Based on new studies, there is growing evidence among scientists and the public about possible health risks associated with these technologies. Human beings are bioelectrical systems. Our hearts and brains are regulated by internal bioelectrical signals. Environmental exposures to artificial EMFs can interact with fundamental biological processes in the human body. In some cases, this can cause discomfort and disease.

Military Mystery's Powers

For years, no military program has sparked more fevered speculation from conspiracy theorists than the mysterious High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP. And for years, the Pentagon has been pooh-poohing speculation that the enormous collection of transmitters, radars, and magnetometers in Alaska was some sort of superweapon. But, it turns out, the conspiracy theorists may not have been entirely off-base, after all. Since its inception, there's been a huge range of opinion on what HAARP actually does: everything from a giant mind control facility to a space nuke countermeasure to a weather controller to an ionosphere-boiling mad science experiment to the mother of all pork projects has been suggested. But now that the program is actually up an running, military managers say the electronics array has much more benign use. "HAARP's main job is to produce radio waves to probe the ionosphere," an Air Force Research Laboratory officer said in October. Which is true -- up to a point. A drive by Clifford Stone on the X-Files-esque uber-site Above Top Secret to use the Freedom of Information Act to turn up UFO-related documents has led to the release of a fascinating report, HAARP: Research and Applications. It's from the Air Force Research Laboratory and Office of Naval Research, and it lays out the uses the military see for HAARP. Turns out the Pentagon wants some military bang for their buck from the program.

Intelligent Robots Emerging

The Guliani family is at the cutting edge of what may be the next technological revolution - the emergence of software and hardware capable of performing tasks once reserved for that race of toolmakers called Homo sapiens. "Sometime in the next 30, 40, 50 years we will have human-level machine intelligence," predicts Marshall Brain, a computer science teacher turned author and technology forecaster. "We are the only intelligence ever to have evolved, there's no evidence to indicate anyone else can do what we do," says Brain, 46, who wonders how humans will respond when their tools start talking back. "What is about to happen is totally unprecedented: a second intelligent species is poised to appear," he says.

Parade Magazine: Are 'They' Out There?

Some sightings are not easily dismissed. Years ago, the late Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto, observed green fireballs in the sky. Unlike the ordinary greenish fireballs that occasionally brighten the night, these appeared as a group and seemed to speed up during their flight through the sky. But the more he thought about it, the more skeptical Tombaugh became about his sighting. “Even if they were visiting from a planet circling the nearest star, Alpha Centauri,” he once told me, “an almost infinite amount of fuel, as we understand it, would be required to accelerate them from their home to ours. There must be another explanation.” Jack “Triple” Nickel, a retired Air Force fighter pilot, also is a respected astronomer. Early in his career, in the fall of 1973, as he flew at night between clouds over Oklahoma and Texas, a bright light suddenly appeared in front of him. “It was either close by and dim or far away and bright,” he recalls. “It lasted about 20 minutes before vanishing.” Nickel can’t rule out the possibility that the light was the bright star Sirius shining through a break in the clouds, but the sighting was never explained.

OBE's Cause a 1/4 of fatal air crashes

Some pilots will suffer the illusion that they are sitting on the wing of their aircraft watching themselves in the cockpit, according to an extraordinary official report released in Australia. Every pilot will at some stage lose all sense of direction, height and speed, drawing attention to spatial disorientation (SD) – one of the most common factors in plane crashes, according to a report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Aviation medicine specialist Dr David Newman said 90 to 100 per cent of pilots experienced SD, which have been linked to between 15 and 26 per cent of fatal crashes worldwide. Dr Newman drew attention to the illusion suffered by some pilots who gained the impression of sitting on the wing looking at themselves flying the aircraft, but there were other dangerous misconceptions including a feeling that the plane was falling when it was merely slowing down. Another effect of SD was a false sensation of the aircraft rolling and another illusion suggesting the plane was flying straight ahead when it was actually turning. Drawing attention to the "sitting on the wing" illusion, Dr Newman added: "The knife-edge illusion gives the pilot a sensation that the aircraft is precariously positioned in space and extremely sensitive to control inputs." But he also referred to what he called the "giant hand illusion," which gives the pilot the sensation that the aircraft is "intolerable of control inputs and seemingly immovable in the air, as if held aloft by a giant handall." The illusions, he said, often occurred when pilots were not busy while flying the plane. "While seemingly bizarre, these illusions are generally associated with high altitude flight where the pilot has a relatively low level workload." "Under such 'fish bowl' conditions, the brain can wander and generate these strange illusions." Dr Newman's report said pilots should be aware they will experience SD sooner or later. "If a pilot flies long enough as a career or even a hobby there is almost no chance that he or she will escape experiencing at least one episode of SD."

The Science of Small

Brinker, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of New Mexico, is turning out some of the most intricate nanomaterials the field has seen. Many of these materials build themselves. One is a protective sheath that keeps cells alive for months outside a host body, nourished by a layer of fat. Another has perfectly arrayed pores 3 nanometers across, a mesh so fine it is used to filter individual amino acids in the DNA sequencing process. The Department of Energy has provided Brinker’s lab, run as a partnership between UNM and Sandia National Laboratories, with $2 million to develop nanostructures.

Mobile Biometric Tech. for DHS

International Biometric Group (IBG) has been awarded a research grant by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop next-generation mobile biometric screening technology. The 6-month, $100,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant supports development of interoperable, low-cost mobile biometric systems for use at terrorist incidents, natural disasters, or at locations remote from U.S. borders. SBIR Phase I focuses on mobile biometric screening device requirements and engineering design, while future Phases encompass prototype development. "IBG is pleased to continue to support Department of Homeland Security research and technology development initiatives," commented Raj Nanavati, IBG Partner. "The award solidifies IBG's position as an industry leader in multi-biometrics and system engineering." Government and commercial demand for standards-compliant mobile biometric devices is driven by applications such as border management, critical infrastructure protection, ID management, and tactical population screening. These devices use fingerprint, face, and/or iris recognition to enroll, verify, and identify individuals.

Building The Perfect Robotic Hand

Scientists around the world are using artificial intelligence software to bring them a step closer to building what they say will be the perfect robotic hand. The artificial intelligence techniques should help researchers at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. and Jiao Tong University in Shanghai in their joint effort to create software that will learn and copy human hand movements. And that should enable the robotic device to successfully mimic intricate, dexterous movements only capable today by the human hand.

US Experiments With Climatic Warfare

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use. Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’. During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Future Combat: Point, Click, Kill

In the Army's vision, the war of the future is increasingly combat by mouse clicks. It's as networked as the Internet, as mobile as a cellphone, as intuitive as a video game. The Army has a name for this vision: Future Combat Systems, or FCS. The project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. It has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say.

India issues stark terror warning

India's national security adviser, MK Narayanan, has warned Western and Gulf Arab states to prepare for a new wave of attacks on economic targets. Speaking at a security conference in Bahrain, Mr Narayanan said new al-Qaeda training schools had been established close to the Afghan-Pakistan border. He said Indian intelligence reports had also identified the recruits as being from 14 different countries. He said their targets also included high profile politicians. Economic infrastructure in the Gulf region, such as oil pipelines and storage depots, electricity pylons and ocean going tankers are also at risk, said Mr Narayanan. The training of recruits, he said, had become extremely rigorous and the Gulf Arab states were highly vulnerable to such threats. Referring to what he called "asymmetric war techniques" - the practice of attacking a more powerful enemy's weak spots - India's security adviser said the region faced a new paradigm of al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism through its extensive network of planning, funding, training and arms supply. The training schools, he said, were turning out a new international brigade of terrorists.

'Partially Prepared' For Bio-Trouble

An unprecedented study of California's ability to respond to bioterrorism or a major natural disease outbreak has concluded that local health departments are "partially prepared," but gaps remain because of staffing shortages and aging infrastructure. The assessment of the state's emergency preparedness was conducted over two years by the Health Officers Association of California under a $2 million contract from the state Department of Health Services. More than 700 public health, environmental, hospital, law enforcement and emergency officials were involved. No statewide study of the state's readiness to respond to natural disaster or bioterrorism had been previously undertaken.

Jerusalem to be divided

A top member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government announced on Dec. 10, Israel "must" give up sections of Jerusalem for a future Palestinian state, even conceding the Palestinians can rename Jerusalem "to whatever they want." "We must come today and say, friends, the Jewish neighborhoods, including Har Homa, will remain under Israeli sovereignty, and the Arab neighborhoods will be the Palestinian capital, which they will call Jerusalem or whatever they want," said Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon. Positions held by Ramon, a ranking member of Olmert's Kadima party, are largely considered to be reflective of Israeli government policy. Ramon's statements follow last month's U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit at which Olmert committed to aim at completing negotiations by next year to create a Palestinian state, with Israel expected to evacuate swaths of Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank. Ramon said due to the city's demographics, Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem "should not be under Israeli sovereignty, because they pose a threat to Jerusalem being the capital of a Jewish Israel." About 231,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem, mostly in eastern neighborhoods. The city has an estimated total population of 724,000. Ramon listed population statistics as the reason Olmert's government finds it necessary to split Jerusalem.

Imagine no religion,' says display

Connecticut atheists, taking advantage of a town's policy of allowing holiday-season displays in its public park, have erected a 10-foot tall sign in celebration of the winter solstice that includes a message blaming the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on religious believers. The 3-sided sign was erected in the Town of Vernon's Central Park on Dec. 1 by the Connecticut Valley Atheists. The two sides facing Main Street feature a pre-attack image of the Twin Towers with the sun shining between them and the message, "Imagine no religion," drawn from the John Lennon anthem, "Imagine." Use of the image is meant to say the Twin Towers would still be standing were it not for religion, CVA coordinator Dennis Himes told the Hartford Courant. The goal is to "simply emphasize an advantage of atheism, something good about atheism," Himes said. "Al-Qaida is not a terrorist organization that happens to be religious, it is a terrorist organization that is inspired by its religious beliefs." "In late December the sun is lower and days are shorter than any time of year. Throughout the rest of winter the sun gets higher and the days get longer. Because of this people have celebrated the winter solstice from time immemorial. People used to believe that gods moved the sun across the sky. Today we know that there are no gods, and that the sun moves by natural causes, and we celebrate not only the movement of the sun but our ability to understand that movement."

Intelligence Estimate and the 12th Imam

On August 8, 2006 Professor Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Islam studies in the West, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers." And "In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead -- hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement." I did a quick search of the National Intelligence Estimate document "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities" for the words "imam" or "12th" or "Mehdi". No hits. So I can judge with "high confidence" that NIE conclusions have not much to do with why Iran wants to do what it wants to do. As long as that has not changed, nothing has changed. In other words, it is irrelevant whether this is disinformation by Iran or not. The consequences of making a mistake in estimating the threat from Iran are so high, that the worst case scenario estimates should be the ones on which decisions should be made. The mistakes done in Iraq where Saddam's WMD were moved to Syria, apparently by the Russians, and the whole affair hushed up by both Democrats and Republicans since the truth would have embarrassed them both, must not be repeated. There is no room for petty partisan politics if the result is a nuclear war.

Germany Seeks To Ban Scientology

Germany's top security officials said recently they consider the goals of the U.S.-based Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the nation's constitution and will seek to ban the group. The interior ministers of the nation's 16 states as well as federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble "consider Scientology to be an organization that is not compatible with the constitution," Berlin Interior Minister Erhart Koerting, who presided over the officials' two-day conference, told reporters.

"In God We Trust" and Pledge on trial

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco began hearings recently in two cases over the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance and the motto "In God We Trust" on money. Michael Newdow, a professed atheist whose views have been endorsed by the Ninth Circuit Court before, filed both suits on the grounds that each use of the word 'God' is an unconstitutional establishment of a national religion. "This is not a case of people who believe in God vs. people who don't believe in God," Newdow said in court. "It's a case about treating people equally." In 2005, Newdow won a similar case in Sacramento which barred schoolchildren from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), a non-profit legal defense organization specializing in the defense of religious freedom and parental rights, is taking an active role in the battle over the right for Americans to say the word 'God.' PJI Chief Counsel Kevin Snider has joined lawyers for the Department of Justice to defend the national motto. "The national motto, 'In God We Trust,' is a perfectly permissible, commemorative acknowledgment of our nation's history and traditions," said Snider. "Without coercing anyone to adopt any religious viewpoint, it reminds us that our rights are a gift from God and are not at the discretion of the government." The judges appear to be split on the issue, and have given little indication of the court's ruling. No ruling is expected for the next several months.

Kenya battles swarms of locusts

Kenyan authorities are battling swarms of locusts, which are reported to have damaged crops. A BBC correspondent says it is the first time such large numbers have been seen in Kenya for 45 years. The ravenous creatures - which are capable of stripping vegetation in minutes - are laying eggs in remote areas in the north-east of the country. The Ministry of Agriculture says it is spraying affected areas from the ground and from aircraft. The BBC's Adam Mynott in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, says if the locusts are successful in laying eggs, then the threat lies in them hatching as hoppers in about two weeks. They would then turn into adult insects - which if uncontrolled are capable of devastating any vegetation they alight on. The insects can eat their own weight in food every day, which means a single swarm can consume as much food as several thousand people. Locust swarms have been spotted in many areas in the Horn of Africa, but it is the first time since the early 1960s that large concentrations have moved into Kenya, our reporter says. Africa experienced devastating swarms in 2004 when they swept across northern and western Africa, leaving 60% of Mauritania's population - 400,000 people - needing food aid.

A mission to find Bigfoot in California

Matt Moneymaker is standing on a mountaintop, screaming. The noise he makes is a low, inhuman moan rising to a shriek. It echoes over the hillside, then slowly dies, leaving Moneymaker standing in the inky darkness, listening. Above him, the black silhouettes of ponderosa pine loom against a star-flecked sky. It is about 2 a.m. in a place called Devil Peak – an apt name, as it turns out, considering what Moneymaker is searching for. In the distance, there is a sound. A faint knock. Moneymaker spins. His walkie-talkie crackles. He jams an eyeball against the scope of a $9,000 thermal-imaging camera. “Did you hear that?” he whispers. It is not the first time Moneymaker has stood on a mountain listening for things that go bump in the night. The 42-year-old San Juan Capistrano resident with a military crew cut and the pugnacious demeanor of the lawyer he once trained to be has made a major bet. If he’s wrong, Moneymaker will have to endure the ridicule that has dogged him from the backwoods of Oklahoma to the deep, green forests of the Pacific Northwest. If he’s right, he will make history as the discoverer of a new and fearsome species of animal – a giant North American primate with superhuman strength, carnivorous appetites and the ability, Moneymaker speculates, to "zap" pursuers with sickening bursts of telekinetic energy. Bigfoot Or "Sasquatch" – "Squatch" – as Moneymaker affectionately refers to the creature that he, as the director of the San Juan Capistrano-based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, has made it his mission to find. Like the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman and the mysteriously un-dead Elvis, the shaggy backwoods beast known as Bigfoot has long been a fixture of myth and tabloid. Moneymaker hopes to make Bigfoot a fixture of science. “What we’re doing we know is going to have a huge impact on society,” Moneymaker says. “We’ve gotten so close so many times. When we get some clear, close-range footage of these things – things people have been told don’t exist – people will be shocked by what they look like.” Along with a group of amateur BFRO “investigators,” Moneymaker wants to prove that the hundreds of reports of Bigfoot sightings his organization receives each year are not mere figments of overactive or insincere imaginations – but evidence of a yet-undiscovered North American ape. That a 7-foot-tall, bipedal, nocturnal hairy hominoid has remained undiscovered so long in the wild might seem ludicrous, except for the fact that a few respected names in science, such as the primatologist Jane Goodall, have signaled their belief in the possibility. If you want to learn more about Bigfoot and other creatures of Cryptozoology, visit the website: Unknown Creatures

The Giant Risks In Tiny Nanotechnology

Waving a packet of carbon nanotubes accusingly at the assembled American politicians during a hearing last month in Congress, Andrew Maynard was determined to make a point. The nanotechnology expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, had bought the tiny tubes on the internet. They had arrived in the post along with a safety sheet describing them as graphite and thus requiring no special precautions beyond those needed for a nuisance dust. Dr Maynard's theatrics were designed to draw attention to a growing concern about the safety of nanotechnology. The advice he had received was at best uncertain, and at worst breathtakingly negligent. For a start, describing carbon nanotubes as graphite was rather like describing a lump of coal as a diamond. Graphite is made of carbon, just like the nanotubes, although the tubes themselves are about 1m times smaller than the graphite that makes up the “lead” in a pencil. Carbon nanotubes may be perfectly safe, but then again, they may have asbestos-like properties. Nobody knows. Indeed, industry, regulators and governments know little about the general safety of all manner of materials that are made into fantastically small sizes. Research on animals suggests that nanoparticles can even evade some of the body's natural defence systems and accumulate in the brain, cells, blood and nerves. Studies show there is the potential for such materials to cause pulmonary inflammation; to move from the lungs to other organs; to have surprising biological toxicity; to move from within the skin to the lymphatic system; and possibly to move across cell membranes. Moreover, these effects vary when particles are engineered into different shapes. There is currently no way of knowing how each shape will behave, except by experiment.

Influence of diabolic practices

Referring to the unsolved murder of a boy by a satanic cult in 2006, Archbishop emeritus Domingo Salvador Castagna of Corrientes reminded city officials this week that it is important that “beyond religious beliefs and ideas” “the truth about what happened and who is responsible” is discovered. In his most recent radio address, the archbishop said the people of Corrientes are profoundly religious but that if the connection with authentic faith is lost, true religious expression could be “supplanted by esoteric and even diabolic practices.” Archbishop Castagna said he has reviewed “frightening information about a satanic cult” that operates in the region and is the main suspect in the terrible murder of the little boy known as Ramoncito. “This mystery must be unveiled through the application of justice,” he said, in order to “bring peace to the hearts of people anguished over this unsolved crime.” The archbishop encouraged those involved in the investigation and said they should receive the full support of society. He also denounced the spread of cultural practices that are anti-Christian, such as devotion to “St. Death,” and he said it is the duty of preachers and catechists to connect “popular faith to his original sources of sustenance.” The case of Ramoncito refers to the murder of Ramon Ignacio Gonzalez on October 8, 2006. The twelve year-old boy was raped, tortured and decapitated in the city of Mercedes. A fourteen year-old girl, who was forced to witness the killing, told investigators that the crime was part of a satanic ritual “in order to obtain purification by offering the young body to their gods.” Investigators said the cult is also involved in the trafficking of children and drugs.

Remotely Controlled Drugs

The only way for doctors to verify that cancer drugs are reaching a patient's tumor is to scan patients after weeks of treatments to see if the tumor has shrunk. In the hopes of shortening this process, improving outcomes for cancer patients, and reducing the side effects of chemotherapy, MIT engineers are developing remote-controlled, multipurpose nanoparticles. These compounds act as both precise drug-delivery vehicles and contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Now the researchers have given the nanoparticles the ability to release their payload on command when heated up by low-frequency electromagnetic waves applied from outside the body. The nanoparticles, made by Sangeeta Bhatia of MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology, are iron-oxide spheres bound to tumor-targeting peptides and strands of DNA. The DNA is in turn bound to drugs like cisplatin, a commonly used chemotherapy agent. The researchers heat up the iron-oxide cores using radio-frequency waves. When the nanoparticles heat up, the DNA "melts": the two strands that make up the double helix separate, freeing the drug from the nanoparticle. The particles are tunable: the temperature at which a strand of DNA melts depends on its length. Doctors could administer a cocktail of nanoparticles tuned to release their payload at different temperatures, then sequentially activate multiple doses by applying different radio frequencies.

Is a World Government on the Horizon?

President Bush is urging the Senate to ratify a treaty, supporters say, which will protect America’s access to strategic international waters and the natural resources they contain. But opponents warn the United Nation's "Law of the Sea Treaty" could be the next step to world government. The U.N. treaty governs the law of the seas - not just ocean access by military and commercial vessels - but control of natural resources from fishing rights and oil exploration to deep sea mining. The 25-year-old treaty rejected by President Reagan and signed by President Clinton is being pushed by Bush. He's urging the Senate to ratify the treaty that already has 154 nations on board. U.S. Navy Captain Pat Neher says The Law of the Sea Treaty is critical to national security and is needed to secure legal rights for U.S. armed forces to pass through key international straits. “We're not a party. We're on the outside with a very small number of countries like Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya,” he said. Why are these so important? All the worlds’ commerce goes through choke points. And if the U.S. is going to get Iraq to re-supply American troops, it needs to go through the Straight of Hormuz. The U.S. doesn't want Iran, for example, to follow Australia's lead and use environmental regulatory control to try to assert authority over vessels carrying sustenance to American troops in Iraq. But Senate Republicans and some conservative groups warn that the treaty surrenders American sovereignty to a U.N.-like organization, called The International Seaboard Authority, or ISA. “It is comprehensive approach to addressing seven tenths of the world's surface and essentially turning it over to a U.N. on steroids,” former Reagan defense official Frank Gaffney said. Gaffney says the ISA is run by bureaucrats from countries such as Cuba, China, and Venezuela, who have a record of hostility toward American interests. “They’re people who are appointed, unaccountable, who operate in non-transparent ways. We don't elect them. They have no responsibility to us, and yet under this treaty they will have considerable ability to interfere with our lives,” Gaffney said. Americans Could Pay a Price The Navy says the treaty would not interfere with U.S. military activities. But critics worry Americans would still pay a price. The treaty would require U.S. companies who want to mine the sea or drill for oil to first seek ISA permission. They must share technology, and pay fees, critics say, that would amount to a redistribution of wealth.
“The danger is once we get into this organization and submit to its dictates; once we start infusing tens of millions of dollars in terms of our annual tithing to pay for its operations, it's going to become a considerably more formidable,” Gaffney said.

Buy Your Own Bladder

A row of fog-colored jars runs neatly along the edge of a black-topped table. Inside each, a white sphere, roughly the size of your fist, floats. Black screws surround the lids, from which a series of clear, plastic tubing reaches out, unattached to anything on the other end. It's a scene I can look at only through a large, antiseptic glass pane. If I stand directly in front of a set of nearby double doors, a cool blast of air hits my feet - a sign that the biomanufacturing facility's intricate air circulation system is working. The breeze I feel is the air that once surrounded those jars, which is exhaling out of their sterile area and into mine. The ceiling above my head is lined with rectangular grids, humming monotonously as they, too, filter particles out of the air. I'm not wearing a gown, mask or goggles, so all I can do is catch glimpses through windows of this maze of rooms in the basement of a suburban office park that biotechnology company Tengion calls home. Through one window, I see incubators shaped like dormitory-sized refrigerators lining the walls, ready to house a postage stamp-sized piece of bladder tissue that technicians will nudge to proliferate. It's one incubator per patient; in all, I get a peek of about 20. Eventually, scientists will take one of the white spheres floating in the jars - the scaffolds - and add layers upon layers of human bladder cells, then ship the organ to a surgeon, who will implant it in the body of its donor. From biopsy to surgery, the process takes six to eight weeks. In case you missed it, that patient just bought a new bladder, made out of her own cells. This may sound like science fiction, but scientists have been performing the technique, on a smaller scale, for eight years. As you read this, at least seven people are going about their business with autologous bladders that were created as part of an early clinical trial. In a smaller Tengion pilot facility in North Carolina, human bladders are already growing, part of two ongoing Phase II trials to determine if the process can help the thousands of people who need new bladders every year.

Hollywood Is Out To Kill God

A star-studded, big-budget fantasy film released for Christmastime features religion as the villain. Hollywood is collaborating with a militant atheist British children's book author to indoctrinate children. "The Golden Compass," which opened recently, stars Nicole Kidman and cost Time Warner's New Line Cinema $180 million to produce, is based on the first installment of Phillip Pullman's children's book trilogy "His Dark Materials." Pullman is a fire-breathing British atheist who has told the Washington Post that "I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief" and remarked that "My books are about killing God." He has also noted that "I am of the Devil's party and I know it."

The Universal Mind-Hive

Two years ago, a quadriplegic man started playing video games using his brain as a controller. That may just sound like fun and games for the unfortunate, but really, it spells the beginning of a radical change in how we interact with computers - and business will never be the same. Someday, keyboards and computer mice will be remembered only as medieval-style torture devices for the wrists. All work - emails, spreadsheets, and Google searches - will be performed by mind control.... medical devices that compensate for damage to the brain, nerves, and spinal column - are a $3.4 billion business that grew 21 percent last year, according to NeuroInsights, a research and advisory company. There are currently some 300 companies working in the field. But Cyberkinetics is trying to do more than just repair neural damage: It's working on an implantable chip that Nagle and patients in two other cities are using to control electronic devices with their minds. Already, the Brown researchers say, this kind of technology can enable a hooked-up human to write at 15 words a minute - half as fast as the average person writes by hand. Remember, though, that silicon-based technology typically doubles in capacity every two years. So if improved hardware is all it takes to speed up the device, Cyberkinetics' chip could be able to process thoughts as fast as speech - 110 to 170 words per minute - by 2012. Imagine issuing commands to a computer as quickly as you could talk. But who would want to get a brain implant if they haven't been struck by a drastic case of paralysis? Leaving aside the fact that there is a lucrative market for providing such profoundly life-enhancing products for millions of paralyzed patients, it may soon not even be necessary to stick a chip inside your skull to take advantage of this technology.

You're Being Watched Right Now

Government and corporate officials responsible for compliance with privacy laws in Canada and Europe are using a whole new language in 2007. Much of the jargon has passed by the American public. So listen up. This is important. At their annual meeting this fall in Montreal, there was little of the traditional talk among the international privacy people about the nuts and bolts of data protection. Instead, there were urgent and distressed discussions about "uberveillance," "ambient technology," "ubiquitous computing," "ingest­ible bugs" and nanotechnology. The terms may be overlapping and may in fact be somewhat synonymous. They all refer to an environment in which electronic media are everywhere, gathering and processing information in a seamless way, beyond the control of each human being. The discussions began a few years ago with recognition of a coming "Internet of things," much as public awareness of the Internet began in the 1980s with talk of an "information super highway." In short, this new environment may render obsolete the three decades' old regime for protecting privacy, which merely gives certain rights of access to citizens. What good is checking the accuracy of your own information in a system if the essence of the system is to keep track of where you are? What good is notification about a new system if it's quite simply everywhere? One form of this new technology is human-area networking, which permits the human body to be the conduit for electronic transmissions--of information, instructions, behavior and a lot more. "We are entering a new era in privacy. Current con­cepts of consent will not be adequate for this," says Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law and Technology at the University of Ottawa, who seems to be the scholar in North America most aware of this trend. And how about an RFID identifying chip that may be swallowed by humans--an ingestible bug. Last February, Eastman-Kodak, no longer your father's camera company, filed for patent protection for this new device. The patent filing suggested potential uses, including monitoring "bodily events," tracking how a person's digestive track is absorbing medicine, or verifying how a specific medicine is interacting with other drugs in one's body. The RFID tag would disintegrate eventually, the company says.

Robot Driven by Moth's Brain

Researchers at the University of Arizona have created a 6-inch-tall wheeled robot driven by brain impulses of a moth. The creation offers insights into the mechanism of the brain and how it works. As the moth observes activity around it, the signals from its brain are translated and sent to a computer that directs the robot to turn toward wherever the moth is looking. The moth's vision has evolved over millions of years to accurately guide the insect as it dodges predators or seeks mates. Although the moth brain is the size of a grain of rice, the insect's ability to detect motion is "amazing -- beyond anything we could build," said Charles M. Higgins, UA associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The robot’s motion is guided by a tiny electrode implanted in the moth’s brain, specifically to a single neuron that is responsible for keeping the moth’s vision steady during flight. The neuron transmits electrical signals which are then amplified in the robot's base and through a mathematical formula, a computer translates the signals into action, making the robot move. The moth is immobilize inside a plastic tube mounted atop the 6-inch-tall wheeled robot. To get the moth to imitate flight, Higgins and his team placed the moth in its apparatus on a circular platform surrounded by a 14-inch-high revolving wall painted with vertical stripes. The moth's neuron reacts to the movement of the stripes and the process begins.

"Massive and Systematic" Abuse of Women

Millions of women across the world are beaten, killed, bought and sold by men, yet the gruesome violence and cruel treatment they face every day rarely makes headlines in the global media. The press has "either underreported, ignored or underplayed" five key issues with regard to violations of women's human rights, says the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) in declaring its support for an ongoing international campaign against gender violence. The "underreported" stories include rampant domestic violence in Russia, sex slavery in India, self-immolation in Central Asia, gender-based violence and HIV, and "compensation" marriages in several parts of the world.

Abortion Fueling Cancer Epidemic

Having an abortion raises a woman’s risk of breast cancer by at least 30 percent, and is fueling an “epidemic” of the often fatal disease, according to British researchers. According to a new study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, young women who had an abortion before having a child are at the greatest risk for developing breast cancer. The study’s lead author Patrick Carroll calls abortion the single “best predictor” of breast cancer trends. “An abortion in a young woman who has never had a child has a carcinogenic effect because it leaves breast cells in a state of interrupted hormonal development in which they are more susceptible,” says Carroll, director of research at PAPRI (Pension and Population Research Institute) in London. The study adds fuel to the already fiery debate between abortion-rights advocates who believe the option to terminate a pregnancy is a basic right, and abortion foes who believe the procedure is morally and ethically wrong. Abortion-rights proponents argue Carroll’s findings are weak and deny there is a connection between the rise in breast cancer and an increase in abortions.

Risk Remains With Iran

As Democrats continue to attack the administration over a new intelligence assessment that Iran suspended its quest for nuclear weapons four years ago, proliferation experts say that as long as Tehran continues to enrich uranium, the potential threat remains. That Iran is continuing -- and increasing -- its uranium enrichment activities is not a matter of dispute. A year ago, it had just over 300 centrifuges operating at the Natanz nuclear facility. Early last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that it now had 3,000 centrifuges, and the International Atomic Energy Agency) confirmed that in a Nov. 15 report, putting the number at 2,952. "Iran's progress towards nuclear weapon capability will continue as long as its enrichment work does," said Valerie Lincy, research associate at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, and editor of its Iranwatch program.

RFID to help Texas track evacuees

In the event of an emergency evacuation, evacuees will be registered on-site and issued a bar-coded RFID wristband. An evacuee's wristband will be scanned by the GDEM with a wireless device as the evacuee boards a state-contracted vehicle, and the information will be added to the bus boarding log. Evacuee intake information and location will then be sent wirelessly to The University of Texas Center for Space Research data center. The vehicles will be equipped with GPS systems to track the location along the evacuation route. Upon reaching the destination, the system will update evacuee profiles and provide real-time information. This will enable state employees to respond to inquiries from the public about the safety of evacuated family members and to reunite families that have been separated during a large-scale disaster. Rugged hand-held computers from Motorola will be used for the enrollment and tracking of evacuees throughout the process. In addition, Motorola bar-code scanners and RFID readers will be used in the registration and final destination check-in process for evacuees.

Super Flu — Are We Ready?

The surgical masks and blue latex gloves made the National Guardsmen standing sentry in the Campbell County Public Health building even more conspicuous than they might already have been. Guiding long lines into vaccination rooms, the soldiers were part of a clinic that inoculated nearly 3,000 people with a flu vaccine Oct. 19, part of a drill to prepare for what local and international health experts say is inevitable and about 10 years overdue: a pandemic flu outbreak.

Iris scans as common as fingerprinting

A growing number of sheriff's departments are using iris scans to identify sex offenders, runaways, abducted children and wandering Alzheimer's patients. More than 2,100 departments in 27 states are taking digital pictures of eyes and storing the information in databases that can be searched later to identify a missing person or someone who uses a fake name, says Sean Mullin, president of BI{+2} Technologies, which sells the devices. "It's evolving quickly," he says. Most of the sheriffs are doing voluntary iris scans of senior citizens and children. At least 10 metro areas are doing scans of criminals to identify them should another crime occur or to be sure the right inmate is released. "This is the wave of the future. This will become as common as fingerprinting," says Sheriff Greg Solano of Santa Fe County, N.M. Last month, his department began scanning the irises of convicted sex offenders. He says the level of detail and central database can make matches within seconds, compared with weeks for fingerprints and months for DNA. Iris recognition technology has been used by airports to expedite security checks of low-risk travelers and by the government to track possible terrorists. When a patent expired last year, other companies rushed in to expand its uses. "We're seeing tremendous growth," says Barry Morse, CEO of Retica Systems, because of concerns about terrorism, immigration and identity theft. Mullin says the laptop, camera and software cost $10,000. The cameras use harmless infrared light to record the iris' minute ridges and valleys. They can detect 235 unique details and differentiate between right and left eyes and those of identical twins, Mullin says. A fingerprint has about 70 details. Irises aren't affected by age, Lasik eye surgery or disease. The widening use of iris recognition concerns privacy advocates. Some advocates for children say it could give parents a false sense of security. "It's part of the growing surveillance society. We're going to be identified and tracked everywhere we go," says Barry Steinhardt, technology program director at the American Civil Liberties Union. Morse says his company will deliver test devices to the Defense Department next year that will allow it to scan a crowd and store iris data for many people at once. Mullin says the technology has not identified a missing person because the database is small, but it is gaining more than 2,000 scans every week.

The Bible - UFO Debate?

Recent high-profile discussions about UFOs and the call by former pilots and officials for full government disclosure concerning what is known -- if anything -- about these strange aerial sightings have people of all walks of life speculating about the nature and intention of extra-terrestrial entities. Among others, Bible scholars have long been intrigued by the weight of historical evidence suggesting unearthly contact by interdimensional beings. Theological discussion on this topic has grown recently due to the increase in sightings of unexplained phenomena. Some believe this may be a sign that the earth is teetering toward an epic event. Shortly before his death in 2005, ABC news anchor, Peter Jennings, narrated an extensive documentary on UFOs. The History Channel, A&E, The National Geographic channel, Discovery and others followed with documentaries on UFO sightings, abductions, visitations, even ghostly apparitions that were recorded in UFO flap areas. Then a well-publicized UFO event occurred in 2006 when a metallic, disc-shaped craft was witnessed hovering over Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. The sighting was important because the witnesses included American Airlines ground personnel, passengers, pilots, and the airport’s air traffic controllers.

3rd Temple High Priest Crown Ready

The Temple Institute in Jerusalem announces the completion of the Tzitz, the High Priest's headplate - now ready for use in the Holy Temple. The tzitz is made of pure gold, was fashioned over the course of a more than a year by the craftsmen of the Temple Institute, and is ready to be worn by the High Priest in the rebuilt Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The words "Holy for God" are engraved on the headplate, in accordance with Exodus 28:36. Rabbi Chaim Richman, International Director of the Temple Institute, explained to Arutz-7 that until it can actually be used, the tzitz will be on view in the Institute's permanent exhibition display, together with other vessels and priestly garments fashioned for use in the Holy Temple by the Institute. Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, Director of the Institute, explained some of the Halakhic [Jewish legal] aspects of the fashioning of the vessels for the Temple. "For one thing," he said, "they are made in impurity - for now we are impure, and will remain impure until we are able to have a Red Heifer whose ashes can be used in the Torah-prescribed purification ceremony. If no Red Heifer is available, then the High Priest must even serve in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur in a state of impurity." Asked whether the fact that the vessels are dedicated for the Temple does not render them hekdesh (consecrated) and therefore forbidden for any other use, Rabbi Ariel explained, "There are two stages. First of all, we make it very clear to the donors and to the craftsmen that the ultimate purpose of these vessels is not to be used for exhibitions or the like, but rather for the fulfillment of Torah commandments in the Holy Temple. They must know this in advance. However, to gain the actual status of hekdesh, we similarly make it clear that this does not happen until the vessel is actually brought in to the Temple Mount for use in the Temple. This means that someone can try on and measure the headplate, for example, without worrying that he is benefiting in any way from something that has been consecrated to the Temple."

Americans believe in God, Hell

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God and signicant numbers also think that UFOs, the devil and ghosts exist, a poll showed recently. The survey by Harris Online showed that 82 percent of adult Americans believe in God and a slightly smaller percentage -- 79 percent -- believe in miracles. More than 70 percent of the 2,455 adults surveyed between November 7 and 13 said they believe in heaven and angels, while more than six in 10 said they believed in hell and the devil. Almost equal numbers said they believe in Darwin's theory of evolution (42 percent) -- the belief that populations evolve over time through natural selection -- and creationism (39 percent) -- the theory that God created mankind. Seventy percent of Americans said they were very (21 percent) or somewhat (49 percent) religious, while around one-third of those polled also said they believe in UFOs, witches and astrology.

The coming implantable MicroChip

There's a growing movement to forcibly tag or chip your animals with radio frequency identification devices. Many privacy advocates believe this could lead to a scarier level: implanting you and me. Now, there is an effort to stem the tide. Greg Niewendorp raises cattle in northern Michigan. Time in the saddle is one of the best parts of the day for this fifth generation farmer. But these days, he's spending lots of time holed up in his home office. Why? Niewendorp and other small farmers are fighting the government's plans to identify and track every single farm animal in the country. It's called NAIS or National Animal Identification System. On October 8, Michigan AG officials arrived on Niewendorp's farm with a search warrant. But Niewendorp refused to allow them to put RFID tags on his cattle. Pressure forced Niewendorp to give in that day, but his story spread rapidly in farming circles -making him "the face" of a grass-roots opposition movement. "The tag goes in the ear. They give me a premises I.D. number. Now they've got a national number on my cattle, a national number on my land. I might still technically own the animal but they're controlling what I can and can't do with it," he said. The USDA wants to be able to track animals quickly in the event of a disease outbreak. It believes NAIS will do that and help encourage confidence in the safety of our food supply - in the eyes of both consumers and global markets. Like It or Not, NAIS is Fast Becoming Reality. More than one and a half million RFID tags are spread across some 400,000 farms today. The USDA is now accepting bids for an additional million and a half tags. The latest development is implantable devices for livestock. What about the 'Human' Implant Market? A concern is that animal implants may speed up the growth of the human implant market. That's because Digital Angel, a major manufacturer of animal chips, is owned by the same company that makes the human implant, Verichip. Since the FDA approved Verichip in 2004, it has set up shop in more than 900 hospitals. Verichip assures patients that in a medical emergency, a simple wave of a scanner could correctly identify them and their medical information. Opponents of the Verichip also worry that human implants will one day be mandatory. "There is actually a growing concern that an HMO or an employer could actually require a person to be micro-chipped to get insurance or to keep a job," Albrecht said.

Russia Moves Toward Dictatorship

Russia is creeping towards dictatorship. The imminent parliamentary elections will be another step towards the re-establishment of a one-party system in Russia. No one doubts that the Kremlin-backed United Russia will dominate the next Duma - its propaganda dominates the media. To make sure, however, the Electoral Commission has raised the threshold for winning seats from 5 to 7 per cent of the vote and barred many of the weak and divided opposition parties from participating in the poll, using complicated registration laws. Opposition meetings are regularly broken up by the police.

Annapolis May Be Catastrophe For Israel

A former Soviet dissident and Israeli deputy premier whose ideas President Bush has cited as an inspiration for his ambitious freedom agenda said the peace talks kicked off this week at Annapolis "has nothing to do with promoting democracy," and he warned that Israel will be lucky if it does not end in catastrophe for the Jewish state. In an interview recently, Natan Sharansky said he did not feel betrayed by Mr. Bush, whom he called a friend. But he said, "I am upset." "The greatness of President Bush is the way he would believe in the power of the idea of freedom," Mr. Sharansky said. "He believes in principles; he was willing to stand alone against all for these pressures, but it is not enough to stand for principles. He has to appoint the people who share these beliefs and who would implement them. He has not." Those words appear to be a direct criticism of Secretary of State Rice, who has made the creation of a Palestinian Arab state her top priority in the last year, visiting Jerusalem nine times to press for the launch of final status negotiations between the government of Israel and the nearly vanquished Palestinian Authority, now dominated by Fatah after the takeover of Gaza by Hamas in June. Mr. Sharansky in 2002 was instrumental in persuading Mr. Bush that his administration should focus on building a Palestinian Arab civil society and the institutions necessary for transparent, democratic rule as a precondition for creating a Palestinian state. The last vestiges of that vision today are a commitment to building Palestinian institutions and the ascendancy of Salam Fayyad, an American-educated reformer praised widely for his efforts to end the misappropriation of international aid by the Palestine Liberation Organization under the late Yasser Arafat. Another reason the Bush administration is pursuing peace talks now, however, is Iran. In 2006, following the cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel, European and Arab allies offered a kind of bargain: support for Iran's diplomatic and economic isolation in exchange for America's engagement in Arab-Israeli negotiations.

Create Artificial Life Forms To Survive

The future of life on Earth depends on creating synthetic life, according to the leading American scientist who is poised to create the world's first man-made species. Craig Venter, who made headlines around the world when he cracked the human genetic code, or genome, in 2000, wants to create designer bugs to manufacture hydrogen and biofuels, as well as to absorb carbon dioxide and other harmful greenhouse gases. Dr Venter will argue that the most urgent problems facing our planet could solved by the creation of new artificial life such as novel bio-fuel producing organisms to replace oil and coal - in the 32nd Richard Dimbleby Lecture, tonight on BBC1. "The future of life on this planet lies, not only in our ability to understand and use the molecules of life, but also, perhaps in creating new artificial life. That is, life forged not by Darwinian evolution, but created by human intelligence.'

Putin Suspends Arms Treaty

President Vladimir Putin signed a law recently suspending Russia's participation in a key post-Cold War arms treaty, a move which could allow it to deploy more forces close to western Europe. Putin's moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty follows months of increasingly aggressive rhetoric directed against the West ahead of a parliamentary election on Sunday and a presidential vote next March. "President Putin signed the federal law on suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty," the Kremlin said in a short statement. The bill was passed by parliament this month and needed the president's signature to become law.

U.S. Pursuing New Spy Satellite Program

The U.S. is pursuing a multibillion-dollar program to develop the next generation of spy satellites, the first major effort of its kind since the Pentagon canceled the ambitious and costly Future Imagery Architecture system two years ago, The Associated Press has learned. The new system, known as BASIC, would be launched by 2011 and is expected to cost $2 billion to $4 billion, according to U.S. officials familiar with the program.

Senate Bill 1959 to end Free Speech

The end of Free Speech in America has arrived at our doorstep. It's a new law called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and it is worded in a clever way that could allow the U.S. government to arrest and incarcerate any individual who speaks out against the Bush Administration, the war on Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security or any government agency (including the FDA). The law has already passed the House on a traitorous vote of 405 to 6, and it is now being considered in the Senate where a vote is imminent. This bill is the beginning of the end of Free Speech in America. If it passes, all the information sources you know and trust could be shut down and their authors imprisoned. NewsTarget could be taken offline and I could be arrested as a "terrorist." Jeff Rense at www.Rense.com could be labeled a "terrorist" and arrested. Byron Richards, Len Horowitz, Paul Craig Roberts, Greg Palast, Ron Paul and even Al Gore could all be arrested, silenced and incarcerated.

More Young Americans Are Contracting HIV

In the 26 years since scientists first spotted AIDS in America, millions of dollars have been poured into outreach efforts aimed at keeping young people clear of HIV, the virus that causes the disease. But on the eve of World AIDS Day, a disturbing statistical fact has emerged in this country: The number of newly infected teens and young adults is suddenly on the rise. And the question is, why? According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2001 to 2005 (the latest years available), the number of new cases of HIV infection diagnosed among 15-to-19-year-olds in the United States rose from 1,010 in 2001, held steady for the next three years, then jumped 20 percent in 2005, to 1,213 cases. For young people aged 20 to 24, cases of new infection have climbed steadily, from 3,184 in 2001 to 3,876 in 2005. Experts say a number of factors may be at play, including the fact that many HIV-infected patients are now being kept healthy with powerful drugs -- making AIDS seem like less of a threat to young people than it did in the past. "Certainly the 'scare factor' isn't there anymore," said Rowena Johnston, vice president of research at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in New York City. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the ravages of AIDS were apparent to most Americans -- either on their TV screens as high-profile celebrities succumbed to the disease, or as individuals lost friends or family members to HIV. "To see people looking gaunt, skinny and skeletal, and to know that they were going to be dead soon," Johnston said. "It had a sobering effect." The advent of antiretroviral drugs in the mid-1990s changed all that, however. "These days, for the most part, you can look at a person and not know that they even have AIDS," Johnston said. That's making HIV seem like less of a threat to young people, said Martha Chono-Helsley. She's executive director of REACH LA, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps disadvantaged youth understand and defend against threats like poverty, drug abuse and HIV. "They're in this age group that feels they are invincible -- that it's never going to happen to them," she said.

Fusion Centers and Martial Law

Minutes after the I-35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River, the Department of Homeland Security's National Operations Center called Mike Bosacker wanting to know what was going on, and whether terrorism might have been involved. Bosacker got the call because he and nine analysts work at the Minnesota Joint Analysis Center (MNJAC) in Minneapolis. Known generically as an information "fusion center," MNJAC is one of more than 40 such centers that grew out of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure that future threats wouldn't fall through the cracks that traditionally have separated law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But some fear that fusion centers such as MNJAC could end up sharing the wrong kind of information for the wrong reasons. According to a recent Congressional Research Service report, "The concern is to what extent, if at all, First Amendment protected activities may be jeopardized by fusion center activities." With the Republican National Convention coming to Minnesota next year, some legislators say they don't know enough about MNJAC and want to ensure that it won't be used to spy on protest groups without just cause. Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, R-Lakeville, said she has concerns about the information MNJAC may be storing. In 2003, a computer hacker found a law enforcement file on her in a massive state database that MNJAC might be expected to tap into.

Drones Joining Miami Police Force

The Miami-Dade police department will begin experimenting with high-tech drones as law enforcement tools beginning next year. Although the military has been using unmanned aircraft systems for years, this will be the first time they are used in law enforcement. "We are aware it is a great responsibility. The FAA is looking at us to see if we can professionally manage this program," said Lt. Cliff Nelson of the police department's aviation unit. The flying camera is called a Micro Air Vehicle made by Honeywell. The MAV is remote controlled, unarmed and unmanned and can soar over 10,000 feet. Miami-Dade police said only licensed pilots with the aviation unit will operate the devices because the airspace in the county is so busy. Only the Miami-Dade police department and the Houston police department were given permission by the FAA to experiment with the drones. "The capability of the unit is phenomenal," said Miami-Dade Detective Juan Villalba. The unmanned aircraft will be used during SWAT team and tactical operations, especially when officers need video of a heavily armed suspect. The Miami-Dade police department has not yet taken possession on its drone, but the Houston police department has and is already conducting tests.

"Better" Than The A-Bomb

During a routine House debate on naval appropriations recently, Representative Albert Thomas opened his mouth a millimeter too wide. Out popped a shocker. Said Thomas: "We have something far more deadly than the atomic bomb. We have it today—not tomorrow—and furthermore, it's in usable shape." Then Representative Harry Sheppard, chairman of the Naval Appropriations subcommittee, let out more. Said Sheppard: "This nation is in possession of scientific factors which place it in an enviable position. The scientific factors at hand would result in devastation equal to, if not greater than, the atomic bomb. Remember, there are different kinds of devastation." Skeptics suspected that the Navy, fighting doggedly against unification of the services and jealous of the Army's atomic bomb, might be tooting its horn too loudly. But there was still a fair chance that the Congressmen's scuttlebutt was based on well-hidden fact. Two novel and dreadful weapons have long been discussed, in whispers. Radiant Death. One of them, radioactive poisons, was mentioned briefly and guardedly in the Smyth Report. Wrote Professor Smyth: ". . . The fission products produced in one day's run of a 100,000 kw. chain-reacting pile might be sufficient to make a large area uninhabitable." The three plutonium piles at Richland, Wash. are enormously more powerful. If Professor Smyth's estimate was right, each pile has been producing, every day for more than a year, enough radioactive poisons to depopulate many "large areas." The other possibility, biological warfare, also had impressive scientific scripture behind it. Wrote General H. H. Arnold in the book One World or None: "It is worth while pointing out that biological warfare, consisting of the spreading of disease, could occupy a position similar to atomic warfare." Living Killers. For three years, U.S. biological warfare research has been carried on at the University of California under Navy auspices. Virtually nothing has been published about it except that the principal disease under study was "hundreds of years old and one of the greatest killers." But the day after Thomas' original break, other Congressmen, popeyed and anonymous, announced that the Navy had a weapon which could wipe out "all forms of life" in a large city. "It is a germ proposition and is sprayed from airplanes that can fly high enough to be reasonably safe from ground fire. It is quick and certain death."

A Working Brain Model

An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone. Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammal's brain, appears to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade. "What we're doing is reverse-engineering the brain," says Henry Markram, codirector of the Brain Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, who led the work, called the Blue Brain project, which began in 2005. (See "IBM: The Computer Brain.") By mimicking the behavior of the brain down to the individual neuron, the researchers aim to create a modeling tool that can be used by neuroscientists to run experiments, test hypotheses, and analyze the effects of drugs more efficiently than they could using real brain tissue.

Russia: Can Respond To U.S. Missiles

Russia's foreign minister said his country had highly professional experts capable of responding to potential threats posed by a European missile shield the United States is planning to deploy. Russia is fiercely opposed to U.S. plans to deploy new missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, suggesting that Washington use radars on Russian soil to counter possible attacks from "rogue" states. The two countries have held a series of talks on the issue. "We have top class experts, military planners, who can see how it will affect our security and who will have to take retaliatory measures," Sergei Lavrov said upon his return from a Middle East peace conference in the U.S.

Implanted Aborted Fetal Tissue in Mice

American scientists are using tissue from aborted babies in genetically engineered mice to study how certain diseases are spread, and the experiments are being paid for with U.S. tax dollars. It's not clear how much fetal tissue is used or how it is supplied. Scientists involved in some of the research at the National Institutes of Health refused to speak with Cybercast News Service about their work.... To be useful in research, the fetal cells must be alive, even if they come from a dead source, namely, an aborted baby. Using frozen cells that have been purchased from a supplier presents certain problems. "There is still a lot of disagreement about what kind of reconstitution one gets, depending on the kinds of techniques people use and how robust each of these systems is," Littman said. "There definitely is no general agreement, yet. It's still very much an emerging field."

IDF installing biometric ID systems

A year after installing biometric systems at checkpoints throughout the territories, the IDF plans to begin using the advanced identification technology at "agricultural crossings" used by Palestinians to pass through the West Bank security barrier to enter and work their fields. "The vision is to have carousel gates that open and close automatically after the Palestinian is checked by the biometric systems," a high-ranking Civil Administration officer told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. "If this happens, we might even be able to reach a stage that a soldier will only have to be there to ensure that the Palestinian is not carrying any explosives or weaponry." In 2006, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, responsible for the Civil Administration, began issuing biometric identity cards to Palestinian residents of the West Bank with permits to enter Israel. The cards, which contain a special microchip, are issued at Civil Administration offices outside West Bank towns once every two years. They enable Palestinians to pass through checkpoints within a matter of seconds, as opposed to minutes. This past month, the Civil Administration celebrated the one millionth time that the card was used to pass through one of the 11 checkpoints that have biometric systems. Some 150,000 Palestinians have been issued the card. The biometric systems at the checkpoints include a face- and hand-scanner.

Giants - Myth or Reality?

In the human experience, giants are literally the "elephants in the room". When our research first began on this paradigm, we had little knowledge of how extensive the evidence of their existence was. We now have a comprehensive database consisting of over 200 historical descriptions; over half from the United States and the U.K. history, alone. And, our unpublished files contain enough information to more than triple the current data we now have online. Were one to undertake a thorough study of giants and record all in detail, it would certainly be a life's work. The lack of the presence of giants in orthodox history, academia, and anthropological studies is appalling in light of the true historical records from every part of the globe. Even more mysterious is the seemingly unanimous decisions by the keepers of the world's museums and archeological treasures to keep the physical evidence of giants hidden from public view. Only a smattering of the evidence is available in obscure locations. Thousands of skeletons and hundreds of historical reports are ignored. The accepted knowledge among the world's peoples is that giants are the creatures of myth and folklore, relegated to children's fairy tales and B grade horror movies, an it is almost a crime not to include a giant in any fantasy film or video game. The reality is that giants were present throughout our history from ancient biblical accounts and historical Roman military campaigns to the relatively modern genocide of the natives of North America.

Proposal Would Outlaw Spanking

Kids out of line? Spanking might not be an option in Massachusetts if a proposal takes hold in the state legislature. The proposal, submitted by a nurse, would ban corporal punishment, including spanking, in all cases for children under 18 unless it is to save them from danger. Parents would face charges of abuse or neglect.

French Reveal Taser Flying Saucer

A French businessman tells AFP his company is working on putting TASER stun guns on a flying saucer that would zap protesters, evil-doers, and anybody else that authorities there don't like. Antoine di Zazzo, identified by AFP as "one of the biggest Taser representatives" outside the United States, said his company is "developing a mini-flying saucer like drone which could also fire Taser stun rounds on criminal suspects or rioting crowds. He expects it to be launched next year and to be sold internationally by Taser."

Fingerprints replacing credit cards

Are you afraid that using a credit card for shopping may make you a victim of an ID fraud? Well, now a new technology based on personalised fingerprints is here to address your worries. With the revolutionary new system, which is being introduced in Europe, it will be possible to buy a product by paying through fingerprints. The so called digiPROOF fingerprint payment system is already very popular in Germany. To pay for the product purchased, a customer will have to press his/her finger or thumb on to a scanner at the till, which acts as a register of customers prints and their bank details. The total will then be deducted from the customers account. Toby Wolff who shops at the Edeka supermarket in Rulzheim, South West Germany, twice or thrice a week describes the system as quick as a flash. “I always use digiPROOF. It’s good because it’s so fast, and you don’t have to bring your wallet with you,” the Mirror quoted the 22-year-old graphic designer as saying. In Germany, the technology is popular even amongst old people. “Older people like it better than young people. Sometimes when they get older, they get shortsighted and it can be embarrassing to fumble around for their coins at the till or peer at their credit cards,” said Werner Schneider, store manager at the luxurious department store, Wagener Gallery. “We introduced the system two years ago and we now have 6,000 customers using it out of a total of 15,000 regulars. It’s good for the customer as it’s faster and it’s good for us because people who sign up tend to be more loyal shoppers,” Schneider added. The system is also being used in school canteens, where parents pay into an account and can limit their child’s daily lunch allowance. The person behind digiPROOF is Ulrich Kipper, chief executive of technology company It-Werke. According to Kipper, the new system may provide a solution to the current panic about ID fraud. “Stealing from people’s credit cards would be yesterday’s news with this technology. It would mean the end to credit card fraud. Every time you use a card, you are putting your details out there. But with digiPROOF, you register details once into a secure database,” said Ulrich. Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, and several companies in Saudi Arabia have shown interest in using the digiPROOF fingerprint system. It just takes a few minutes for a customer to sing up to digiPROOF. All one has to do is to fill a form, and swipe an identification proof like a passport and a bank card, and scan once dabs. The registration process completed about five minutes thereafter.

Bionic Cyborg Tech Near

Recent government, private industry and academic prosthetic research has yielded, among other innovations, a thought-controlled mechanical arm, an artificially intelligent knee, and a hand with articulated fingers that can pinch and grasp objects. As researchers and engineers test the limits of science to build better prostheses, they imagine a bionic future in which prosthetic devices look and function like the original limb. “Over 10 years the technology will only improve in terms of the size, weight and cost of the devices,” said Ian Fothergill, a prosthetic fitter and clinical manager for Ossur Americas, which designed Selmer’s PROPRIO foot. Fothergill’s aluminum prosthesis, for example, features sensors that quickly measure real-time motion and gather information about gait and surface angles. Bluetooth technology enables wireless transfer of the data to a software-empowered microprocessor which then directs the components to mimic and anticipate Selmer’s natural movements. “The next big leap will be in terms of the control system,” Fathergill says. “People will be able to integrate their thoughts into how the device moves.”

Palestinian leader: Give me Jerusalem

The Palestinians expect a state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Annapolis summit on Nov 28. During the U.S.-backed international conference, President Bush read a joint Israeli-Palestinian declaration in which both countries agreed to create a Palestinian state on the ground before Bush leaves office in January 2009. The declaration did not recognize Israel as a Jewish state in spite of intense negotiations the past few weeks for the Palestinians to agree to such a clause. The joint Israeli-Palestinian statement committed Israel and the PA to hold final status talks on "all issues" – meaning the status of Jerusalem and the future of millions of Arabs registered as refugees living in U.N.-maintained camps. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are to meet biweekly, with implementation of commitments monitored by the U.S., according to the declaration. After Bush's address, Abbas called for a Palestinian state to be established with its capital in Jerusalem. He alluded to Palestinian control over the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site. "We need east Jerusalem to be our capital and to access our holy shrines," said Abbas.

Gene Technology: Longer Living

Until recently, health and medicine was a hit or miss affair. We would discover interventions such as drugs that had benefits but also many side effects. We did not have the means to design interventions, but that is changing. The breakthrough in stem-cell biology reported this week offers just one example of the progress. With the completion of the human genome project in 2003 and the advent of techniques such as RNA interference, which can turn off the genes that promote disease and ageing, medicine has transformed itself into an information technology. It is now subject to what I call the "law of accelerating returns" - a doubling of capability (for the same cost) each year. For example, the amount of genetic data collected has doubled every year since 1990, and the cost has come down from $10 per base pair to a fraction of a penny. As a result, technologies to literally reprogramme the "software" (ie the genes) that underlie human biology will be a thousand times more powerful than they are today in a decade, and a million times more powerful in two decades. According to my models, we will be adding more than a year every year to our remaining life expectancy only 15 years from now.

Billionaire says: Time for amero is now

Stephen Jarislowsky, a billionaire money manager and investor the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail bills as the Canadian Warren Buffet, has told a parliamentary committee Canada and the United States both should abandon their national dollar currencies and move to a regional North American currency as soon as possible. "I think we have to really seriously start thinking of the model of a continental currency just like Europe," Jarislowsky told the Canadian House of Commons' finance committee. In an exclusive telephone interview, Jarislowsky repeated his call for a European Union-style currency to be created between Canada and the United States. "The idea would be a European Union-type set-up," Jarislowsky said, "with a North American Central Bank that would issue the new currency and sit over the Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States." "An alternative would be to create a peg on the U.S. dollar which would allow the Bank of Canada to adjust the Canadian dollar in a 5 percent plus or minus range, based on the fluctuation in value of the U.S. dollar," he explained. Still, Jarislowsky was less confident the U.S. dollar peg would work. "The Bank of Canada only pinpoints inflation," he said. "My idea would be to have the Bank of Canada manage the Canadian dollar with a view both to inflation and the U.S. dollar. The Bank of Canada has never been very receptive to this idea." Jarislowsky insisted Canada was going to be forced to do something because the increased value of the Canadian dollar vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar was likely to depress business activity in Canada and cause a recession.

EU Ignores Public, Expands Powers

European leaders met in Lisbon, Portugal, on a balmy October day to thrash out differences over the eu Reform Treaty. Outside, 200,000 citizens demonstrated. They were protesting against the idea of eu citizens being denied any say in the process of the Union’s agreeing to a revision of the much-touted European Constitution in its new guise as the eu Reform Treaty. Yet again, the eu is showing a determination to impose its will and to ride roughshod over public opinion.

Firefighters As Government Spies

Firefighters in major U.S. cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as trusted American icons and infringing on people's privacy. Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel need no warrants to enter hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, which puts them in position to spot behavior that could indicate terror activity or planning. There are fears, however, that they could lose the faith of a skeptical public by becoming the eyes of the government, looking for suspicious items like building blueprints or bomb-making manuals or materials. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Americans have surrendered some privacy rights in an effort to prevent future strikes. The government monitors telephone calls and e-mails; people who fly have their belongings searched before boarding and are limited in what they can carry; and some people have trouble traveling because their names are similar to those on terrorist watch lists. The American Civil Liberties Union says using firefighters to gather intelligence is another step in that direction. Mike German, a former FBI agent who now is national security policy counsel to the ACLU, said the concept is dangerously close to the Bush administration's 2002 proposal to have workers with access to private homes, such as postal carriers and telephone repairmen, report suspicious behavior to the FBI.

Homeschooling is Child Endangerment

A new court ruling categorizing homeschooling as "child welfare endangerment" contains "chilling" parallels to earlier decisions that in their time allowed German authorities to confiscate children from their parents if they were part of "fanatical Bible" groups, according to a homeschooling advocacy group. Those earlier decisions, according to information being publicized by Netwerk Bildungsfreiheit, an organization that advocates for homeschoolers in Germany, were from the Nazi era. The newest court ruling not only found the basis for child endangerment in homeschooling, but also determined a local government was remiss in allowing a mother to take her two children to another country where homeschooling is legal. The decision from the Federal High Court in Karlsruhe, Germany's highest court, was reported by the German edition of Agence France-Presse as well as Netwerk Bildungsfreiheit. Now the organization is noting the similarities with earlier court rulings, when Adolf Hitler was in power. A ruling from the State Court in Hamburg dated 1936 pointed to "endangerment of the mental wellbeing of children, who would have been denied participation in the national community…," a premise that corresponds to the recent Federal Supreme Court decision, the group said. "Only the words have been chosen somewhat differently by the Supreme Court in order to conceal the fascist spirit of the decision," the analysis said. "It is quite chilling that the reasons stated by the authorities and courts in child custody terminations in Hitler's regime … correspond in their spirit exactly to the decision recently rendered by the Federal Supreme Court," the analysis said.