Disasters Become More Catastrophic

A research suggested that the number of natural disasters stemming from geological reasons such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis increased from an annual average of one incident in the 1950s to two in the 2000s. The number of natural calamities arising from weather-related reasons including floods, storms and draughts jumped from an annual average of two to seven over the same period. A recent report released by international aid agency Oxfam suggested a similar trend. The agency said that natural disasters have quadrupled in the past two decades. The number of occurrences in the early 1980s stood at 120 a year, while it skyrocketed to about 500 these days. There is no denying that the victims of natural disasters have been on the rise. According to the Oxfam report, the number of casualties including those killed by natural calamities amounted to about 174 million from 1985 to 1994, but it soared to 254 million between 1995 and 2004. Unfortunately, Asia has been the hardest-hit area. France’s Le Figaro Magazine reported in its latest edition that about 800 cases of natural disasters have occurred in the Asian region since 2001. In particular, the most populous countries, such as Indonesia, China and India, suffered the biggest damage. All three countries are sitting on fault lines. A number of mountains and rivers in Asian countries are prone to landslides and floods. Moreover, the coastal areas are directly exposed to tropical storms. The United States has suffered 222 cases of natural disasters since 2001, following Asia. The country has been frequently battered by capricious and unpredictable natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes. Although the number of Hurricane Katrina victims is pale in comparison to that of Asian cyclones, it was shocking that Hurricane Katrina claimed the lives of more than 1,300 people given that the number of hurricane victims has rarely exceeded 100. Earthquakes have remained the trickiest part to deal with. No specific countermeasures have been developed. The numbers of people killed by an earthquake occurred in Tangshan, China, in 1976 and of those killed by the 2004 tsunami triggered by an earthquake in Ache, Indonesia, were estimated 255,000 and 250,000, respectively. Some experts say that the tsunami victims are as many as 285,000.

How Soon Before The First Manimals?

At this point, it is legal to culture admixed embryos up to 14 days, but illegal to transfer them to a human or animal womb. But many scientists around the globe want permission to keep embryos alive longer, perhaps even to full term through implantation. Cornell scientists Nikica Zaninovic, who helped create the worlds first genetically modified human embryo says that in order to be sure that a new gene had been inserted and the embryo had been genetically modified, scientists would ideally want to keep growing the embryo and carry out further tests. But ethicists worry that by approving human-animal embryos, lawmakers are opening the door to a future of “enhanced” or “mutant” humans that have animal traits. It is even thought possible to so drastically alter human genomes that a type of superhuman species could emerge. In theory, the bio-fusion options are limitless. Any gene that exists in another species could be brought over to a human cell. Imagine some of the incredible traits of the animal kingdom that some humans don’t possess such as night vision, amazing agility, or the ability to breath underwater. The precedence for these types of radical changes is already in place. Experimental mice, for example, were successfully given the human ability to see in color. If animals can be engineered to have human traits, then humans can certainly be mutated to have “desirable” animal traits. The fear with germline engineering is that since it is inheritable, offspring and all succeeding generations would carry the modified traits. This is one reason why this type of engineering is currently banned- it could lead to irreversible alteration of the entire human species!

Exorcists Summoned For Demons in Germany

Hundreds of Germans, tortured by inner voices, are on the search for priests who can free them from what they believe to be the grip of the Devil, according to an extraordinary radio documentary that has stirred an awkward debate about exorcism in the Catholic Church. “Over the past year alone I have received requests from around 350 people who think they are possessed by an evil spirit,” says Father Joerg Mueller, who heads a group of priests, doctors and therapists to deal with the problem. “Therapy hasn't worked for them; they want exorcism — a prayer that can free them.” Father Mueller, who is based in a Bavarian monastery, was talking to a team from WDR, the state radio network, which was allowed to record extracts from eight exorcisms. A Polish exorcist, named only as Father Wiktor, suggested that this was only a fraction of the actual number seeking help. “I would say that every day at least one person is undergoing a full-scale exorcism,”

Britain And Its Blended Children

Britain crossed the “ultimate boundary” yesterday when the British parliament voted to legalize abominations. Scientists can now legally create “true hybrids,” fertilizing animal eggs with human sperm. The nation who scored its noblest victory sixty-three years ago against the Nazis, voted in its own defeat yesterday against a greater enemy: Satan. And the devil danced. The British Parliament voted to allow such mixes since there is a shortage of human eggs for research. A shortage that exists, no doubt, because most women find abhorrent the idea of inseminating one of their own eggs with animal sperm. So British Parliament chose a different route: to allow the reverse and legalize using human sperm to fertilize animal eggs. The base assumption must be that there is no shortage of human sperm, that harvesting sperm doesn’t require invasive surgery like harvesting eggs does, or perhaps the implicit value of the male half of reproduction is worth less protection than that of human female eggs. Who knows? In any case, Parliament said that these hybrids are for research only and cannot be transferred into the womb of an animal or a woman. Foolish shortsightedness given: What of artificial wombs? Perhaps not possible now, but given the rate and depravity of science at this point, someone will surely create an artificial womb in the near future.

Gov. Compiling Martial Law Detainee List

The spring of 2007, a retired senior official in the U.S. Justice Department sat before Congress and told a story so odd and ominous, it could have sprung from the pages of a pulp political thriller. It was about a principled bureaucrat struggling to protect his country from a highly classified program with sinister implications. Rife with high drama, it included a car chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., and a tense meeting at the White House, where the president's henchmen made the bureaucrat so nervous that he demanded a neutral witness be present. The bureaucrat was James Comey, John Ashcroft's second-in-command at the Department of Justice during Bush's first term. Comey had been a loyal political foot soldier of the Republican Party for many years. Yet in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he described how he had grown increasingly uneasy reviewing the Bush administration's various domestic surveillance and spying programs. Much of his testimony centered on an operation so clandestine he wasn't allowed to name it or even describe what it did. He did say, however, that he and Ashcroft had discussed the program in March 2004, trying to decide whether it was legal under federal statutes. What was the mysterious program that had so alarmed Comey? Few Americans—professional journalists included—know anything about so-called Continuity of Government (COG) programs, so it's no surprise that the president's passing reference received almost no attention. COG resides in a nebulous legal realm, encompassing national emergency plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra-constitutional forces—and effectively suspend the republic. In short, it's a road map for martial law. According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. If previous FEMA and FBI lists are any indication, the Main Core database includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.

Grasshopper Robot Sets High-Jump Record

Taking its inspiration from the grasshopper, a tiny two-legged robot that stores elastic energy in springs has leaped 27 times its own height, smashing the record of 17 times set by a previous robot. Its creators hope that swarms of such hopping robots could spread out to explore disaster areas, or even the surfaces of other planets. The robot is only 5 centimetres tall, and weighs just 7 grams. A motor designed to power the vibration unit of a pager drives a system of gears that gradually wind two metal springs (see image, right). When they are fully wound and then released, they straighten two metal legs that propel the robot upwards. The jumping robot was developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Vatican Easing Humanity Toward ET

Vatican chief astronomer Father Jose Gabriel Funes in a long interview with the L'Osservatore Romano newspaper this week made news by saying there is a certain possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and that such notion "doesn't contradict our faith." "How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere? Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation," he said. The statements by Funes are the latest in a string of recent comments by Vatican astronomers confirming a belief that discovery may be made in the near future of alien life, including intelligent life, and that this discovery would not unhinge the doctrine of Christ. In 2005, another Vatican astronomer, Guy Consolmagno tackled this subject in a 50-page booklet, Intelligent Life in the Universe, in which he concluded that chances are better than not that mankind is facing a future discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence. Approximately 7 years ago Monsignor Corrado Balducci made similar news when he said ETs were actually already interacting with earth and that some of the Vatican's leaders were aware of it. Before his death in 1999, maverick Catholic theologian Father Malachi Martin hinted at such more than once... If ET life is something Vatican officials have privately considered for some time, why speak of it so openly now, in what some perceive as a careful doctrinal unveiling over the last 24 months? Is this a deliberate effort by church officials to "warm-up" the laity to ET Disclosure? Are official church publications on the subject an attempt to soften the blow before disclosure arrives, in order to help the faithful retain their orthodoxy in light of unprecedented forthcoming knowledge?

Laser Gunship Preps for '08 Flight Test

Step by step, Boeing and the Defense Department are getting closer to flying a gunship that fires lasers, instead of bullets. After years and years of development, Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser, a modified C-130H turbprop plane, last week fired its chemically-powered ray gun "in ground tests for the first time," the company says in a statement. The plane is supposed to be a prototype for a flying laser blaster that can "destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage, supporting missions on the battlefield and in urban operations." If "it performs to spec," Lew Page at the Register notes, the ATL could "take out targets such as individual vehicles or cellphone towers, silently and from as far as 18-20 kilometers. People in the vicinity of an ATL strike might not realize what had happened until well after the event, if at all. This could be especially handy for Boeing's initial customer - the US military's secretive Special Operations Command." Last year, in lab tests at Kirtland Air Force Base, the ATL's laser was fired 50 times. By the end of 2008, the plane is scheduled to "fire the chemical laser in-flight at mission-representative ground targets... through a rotating turret that extends through the aircraft's belly," according to the company. "Later this year, we will fire the laser in-flight at ground targets, demonstrating the military utility of this transformational directed energy weapon," Scott Fancher, vice president of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, says. It'll certainly be a major day in ray gun history, if it happens. But the ATL relies on vats of toxic chemicals, to produce its laser blasts -- which seriously limits its utility. So the military is hoping to get the integration, aiming, and beam-control kinks worked out with this chemical-powered ATL -- and then switch over to electric lasers in the coming decade, to make for a more manageable airborne ray gun.

Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice

Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada's far north. The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 10 miles (16km) on Ward Hunt, the area's largest shelf. The fate of the vast ice blocks is seen as a key indicator of climate change. One of the expedition's scientists, Derek Mueller of Trent University, Ontario, told me: "I was astonished to see these new cracks. "It means the ice shelf is disintegrating, the pieces are pinned together like a jigsaw but could float away," Dr Mueller explained. According to another scientist on the expedition, Dr Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, the new cracks fit into a pattern of change in the Arctic. "We're seeing very dramatic changes; from the retreat of the glaciers, to the melting of the sea ice. "We had 23% less (sea ice) last year than we've ever had, and what's happening to the ice shelves is part of that picture." When ice shelves break apart, they drift offshore into the ocean as "ice islands", transforming the very geography of the coastline.

FBI Soliciting Moles For Protest Groups

Paul Carroll was riding his bike when his cell phone vibrated. Once he arrived home from the Hennepin County Courthouse, where he’d been served a gross misdemeanor for spray-painting the interior of a campus elevator, the lanky, wavy-haired University of Minnesota sophomore flipped open his phone and checked his messages. He was greeted by a voice he recognized immediately. It belonged to U of M Police Sgt. Erik Swanson, the officer to whom Carroll had turned himself in just three weeks earlier. When Carroll called back, Swanson asked him to meet at a coffee shop later that day, going on to assure a wary Carroll that he wasn’t in trouble. Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking. “She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.” What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Freemasons Enjoying Membership Boom

As secret societies go, it is one of the oldest and most famous. Its enrollment roster includes Louis Armstrong and Gerald Ford, and it has been depicted in movies such as “The Da Vinci Code” and “National Treasure.” Once more than 4 million strong (back in the 1950s), it has been in something of a popularity free-fall ever since. Viewed with suspicion as a bastion of antiquated values and forced camaraderie, the Masons have seen membership rolls plummet more than 60% to just 1.5 million in 2006. Only now the trend seems to be reversing itself, and nowhere more noticeably than in Southern California. The reasons seem clear. In another Masonic Hall, this one on La Cienega, a Sri Lankan-born banker, a sunglasses-wearing Russian immigrant and a continent-hopping Frenchman break bread, poke at their salads and chat about their health. "For a time it looked as if Masonry was going into a sharp decline, if not the death throes," said UCLA history professor Margaret C. Jacob, who has written extensively about the fraternal order. "But it looks like it may be making a comeback." That's because the Freemasons, whose tenets forbid soliciting or recruiting members, have enthusiastically embraced the Internet as a way to leverage curiosity about an organization with its roots in Europe's medieval stonemasons guilds. Freemasonry today sees itself as a thinking man's salon, a learned society with a philanthropic bent. "We had a record number of new members last year," said Allan Casalou, grand secretary of the Grand Lodge of California. "We added 2,000 men, which is the most since 1998 and our seventh straight year of membership increases." And, to paraphrase that Oldsmobile campaign, these definitely aren't your father's Freemasons. They are bar owners, male models and olive-oil brokers. They are men like Zulu, an L.A. tattoo artist with a swirling Maori-inspired design inked across his face and a panoply of metal piercing his ears, nose and face. They are men like Jonathan Kanarek, who runs a men's vintage clothing store on Hollywood Boulevard and whose retro chic wardrobe of polka-dot ascots, glen-plaid jackets and smartly pressed pocket squares earned him a spot on Esquire magazine's 2007 list of best-dressed real men in America. And they are men like Daemon Hillin, whose surfer-dude looks and blinding white smile can be found on Japanese TV, where he plays sidekick and comic foil to the Japanese version of the Hilton sisters. The Internet hasn't only made it easier to learn about the Freemasons, Casalou says, it's changed the type of men coming forward. "There is so much information on the Internet that by the time someone comes to a lodge to seek membership, they already know a lot about Masonry," he said. "Which is a big departure from previous generations. And it means they are more likely to be active participants." Zulu became curious about Freemasonry after tattooing Masonic symbology on several clients. He joined five years ago at age 39 and now serves as webmaster and senior warden of North Hollywood Lodge No. 542. He has also gone on to become both a Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner (Masonic membership is a prerequisite for both), and next year he will become the leader of his lodge. "I'll be the first black worshipful master in the lodge's history," he said, using the proper term of respect. "Yeah, I think it's going to become hip and chic to be a Mason," Zulu said. "And that could be a dangerous thing."

China's high-tech police state is ready

With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export. The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as "Golden Shield." The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology — thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric — to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald's Happy Meals, Tsingtao beer and UPS delivery (to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state, without the threat of democracy breaking out. As China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range — a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.) Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you. The cameras that Zhang manufactures are only part of the massive experiment in population control that is under way here. "The big picture," Zhang tells me in his office at the factory, "is integration." That means linking cameras with other forms of surveillance: the Internet, phones, facial-recognition software and GPS monitoring. Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.

America's Nuclear Hell

The latest audio message from al-Qaeda, reportedly from Osama bin Laden himself, is only the most recent confirmation that the jihadist threat to the West remains real and deadly serious. But the fact that it could take the form of nuclear terrorism should be most worrying to citizens and policy makers alike. Where a nuclear attack once may have been beyond the capacities of stateless terrorists, that is no longer the case. One need only consider Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), mastermind of 9/11 and chief operating officer of al-Qaeda, who revealed under intensive interrogation -- including the much-maligned tactic of waterboarding -- that a nuclear attack against the United States was a top priority for al-Qaeda. According to the New York Daily News and its sources, the captive KSM told his interrogators that Osama bin Laden was planning a “nuclear hell storm” in America . Normally such a lurid claim would be disbelieved by our “inside-the-box” intelligence officers, but KSM’s recovered laptop had corroborating details.

Using Your Brain As A Playground

Call them transhumanists, or extropians, or convergenists. Call their mission GNR, or NBIC, or “RL meets SL.” A new generation of social scientists, with religious zeal, are changing reality as we know it... Part of Bainbridge’s job, as director of the NSF’s Human-Centered Computing Cluster, is to direct young researchers into areas of “future research,” including “immersive and multi-sensory technologies, and direct brain-computer interfaces.” For the WoW meeting, Bainbridge described how human consciousnesses might be uploaded to virtual worlds (at least in Battlestar Galactica, they call it “downloading”). He also described how virtual humans might be made governable: "(Virtual world) participants are much less likely to be guided by religious belief, and more likely to prefer the suspension of disbelief associated with science fiction and fantasy. So, we can expect that virtual worlds will prototype many social innovations that might then diffuse to offline governance, while often preaching sedition." Bainbridge spent some of his younger days in a Scientology splinter group, and is considered by some academics to be a religious expert. But Bainbridge is also a religious hero, to the transhumanists, who hope to accelerate the convergence of real and virtual reality, as well as genetics, nanotechnology and robotics (Ray Kurzweil’s GNR). In addition to recruiting its partnerships with the NSF, NASA and other governmental agencies, the extropians court Hollywood stars such as William Shatner, and academics at Yale and Oxford. Some transhumanists call themselves extropians, others, convergenists. Some also use a different convergence acronym, NBIC, which represents nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. Like Scientologists, transhumanists appear to brook little dissent, and seem eager to silence their critics. When Bainbridge meets with Second Lifers in a few weeks, for example, he will be hosted by a group of transhumanists “too busy building the future we want to spare time on unconstructive criticism.“ That unconstructive criticism, say the transhumanists, is any that comes from those who do not “share our goals and values.”

Building First Single Cell From Scratch

Not that they're trying to construct an entirely artificial life-form. Most modern cellular research looks at existing cells - which might sound obvious enough, until you realize just how amazingly complex a single cell is. Current techniques examining microcellular structures or identifying gene functions are like trying to understand a space shuttle by hacking pieces off it and seeing what happens. Professor Keating and her team are coming at the problem from the opposite extreme - instead of isolating parts of the vast ticking clockwork and trying to reverse-engineer them, they're building their own cell from scratch.

Imminent Discovery of Life On Mars?

Do you think there is life on Mars? Do you think Phoenix will find evidence of it? Now there's a blog that's trying to collect a snapshot of the opinions of scientists, amateurs, and everyday people. "Imminent Discovery" thinks Phoenix may find simple life. Finding this evidence will definitely become headlines… If it happens. Is it possible it might have originated from earth? Perhaps from space, like the famous Antarctica meteorite which was believed to contain evidence of life transported here from Mars? According to Richard Trentman, a Minor Planet Coordinator at Powell Observatory, "The idea of life in some form on other planets, I believe is highly probable. I have studied about the extreme places on this planet where life has been found and many are far more extreme than may be found on Mars and other planets or moons in our solar system. I believe that anyone that thinks life cannot be "out there" has their eyes closed and blinders on."

Earthquakes in Diverse Places

More than 50,000 people are estimated to have died in the May 12 earthquake in China, many of whom still lie beneath rubble scattered across an area the size of Belgium. Elsewhere, the city of Reno, Nevada looks nervously to the northwest, where thousands of minor earthquakes have rattled the area since February 28. Scientists are puzzled by this cluster because they don’t fit any known pattern of And here in the Midwestern U.S., we were startled by a M5.2 earthquake centered in southeast Illinois on April 18, the second strongest earthquake recorded in the state since the arrival of white settlers in the early 19th century. What’s with all of the unusual seismic activity? And how does this relate to biblical prophecies of catastrophic global earthquakes in the end times? The number of earthquakes has increased in both numbers and intensity within the last 30 years. From 1960 to 1979 there were over 64 earthquakes measuring over 6.0 on the richer scale. From 1980 to present there have been over 200. This is one of the Biblical signs of the end of the age, just before the Rapture of the believers in Jesus Christ as their saviour, and the beginning of the great 7 year Tribulation upon the Earth.

Tasmanian Tiger DNA 'Lives' Again

Seventy years after the ferocious Tasmanian tiger went extinct, its marsupial DNA has been resurrected inside mice. This is the first time that genetic material from an extinct animal has functioned inside a living host... The team then copied the DNA snippet, coupled it with a gene that produces a blue pigment, and injected it into very early mouse embryos. When the fetuses were 14 days old, the team studied them, and found that the thylacine genetic material was functioning – as indicated by the blue stain... But it should also be possible to use this technique with other, much older extinct specimens, including some for which their DNA is much better preserved – such as the mammoth, various dinosaurs and Neanderthals.

Animal-Human Embryos For Research

The Catholic Church is fiercely opposed to the creation of animal-human embryos -- in March, the Catholic leader in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, called the concept "hideous." "It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which more comprehensively attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular bill," he said in an Easter Sunday sermon. "One might say that in our country, we are about to have a public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion." Edward Leigh, the Conservative lawmaker who tabled the amendment proposing a ban, argued in the House of Commons that hybrid embryos were "ethically wrong and almost certainly medically useless." But the chief executive of the Medical Research Council, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, said the vote would help keep Britain at the forefront of research in the field. "It (the bill) brings the right balance of opportunities to make headway to find cures for some of the most pernicious diseases (...) whilst ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place through the law and the regulator," he said. Hybrid embryos are created by inserting the nuclei of a human cell into an animal egg and can ensure a more plentiful supply of stem cells. The wide-ranging bill also backs the idea of "saviour sibling" children, who are created as a close genetic match for a chronically ill brother or sister, meaning their genetic material can help treat them. In addition, it could give lesbians easier access to IVF treatment by removing requirements for clinics to consider a child's need for a father.

Britain Releases Files On UFOs

No one, they knew, would believe their claim an unidentified flying object landed at the airport they were overseeing in the east of England, touched down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed. Yet that's what they reported happened at 4 p.m. on April 19, 1984. The incident is one of hundreds of reported sightings contained in more than 1,000 pages of formerly secret UFO documents being released by Britain's National Archives. It is one of the few that was never explained. The air traffic controllers' "Report of Unusual Aerial Phenomenon" was filed from an unspecified small airport near the eastern coast of England. The men, each with more than eight years on the job, described how they were helping guide a small plane to a landing on runway 22 when they were distracted by a brightly lit object approaching a different runway without clearance. "Everyone became aware that the object was unidentified," their report said. "SATCO (code name for a controller with 14 years experience) reports that the object came in 'at speed,' made a touch and go on runway 27, then departed at 'terrific speed' in a 'near vertical' climb." The incident is one of the more credible in the newly public files because it was reported by air traffic controllers, said David Clarke, a UFO expert who worked with the National Archives on the document release. "They were absolutely astonished," he said. "It was a bright, circular object, flashing different colors, and after it touched down it disappeared at fantastic speed. The report comes from very qualified people, and it's one of the few that remained unexplained." Clarke said the released documents, dealing with the late 1970s and early 1980s, are the first batch in a series that will be made public in the next few years. The National Archives is releasing the files because of numerous freedom of information requests seeking information about the government's UFO reports. Officials said that names of many individuals had been blacked out to protect their privacy and that the entire files had been reviewed to make sure their release did not compromise national security.

What If We Find Mars Ruins Of ET

NASA's recently released ultra high resolution pictures of the "face on Mars" reveal details as small as a few inches across including what some believe to be girders, windows and walls from ancient structures. Richard Hoagland and his Enterprise Team believe this is the smoking gun. "The debate is over," he says. "I no longer need to prove that these are ruins, my critics need to prove that they are not." A few years ago the movie "Mission to Mars" sent NASA Commander Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) with a crew of four astronauts to the red planet. While exploring strange geological formations on the Martian landscape, the truth about the Face on Mars and the origin of mankind was discovered. At the time, director Brian De Palma admitted, "Mission to Mars is set in 2020 because that’s the date the experts predict we should have a manned landing on Mars." The film insinuated that, when we do set foot on Mars, the discovery of past alien presence could be made near the Sphinx-like "face" and pyramidal shapes photographed by the Viking Mars probe. A staple doctrine among many ufologists is that such a discovery would lead to the conclusion that the origin of myth as well as the creation of man was the direct result of intelligent extraterrestrial activity, or benevolent creator astronauts. In the introduction to his bestselling book, CHARIOTS OF THE GODS?, Erich von Daniken, who, it might be argued, is one of the fathers of modern ufology, said: I claim that our forefathers received visits from the universe in the remote past, even though I do not yet know who these extra-terrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came. I nevertheless proclaim that these "strangers" annihilated part of mankind existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens." As was illustrated in the Hollywood films Contact and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Erich von Daniken's hypothesis took America by storm in the 1960's with the proposition that mankind was possibly the offspring of an ancient, even ongoing, extraterrestrial experiment. Ufologists like Daniken assert that the Sphinx, the Pyramids and myths of ancient cultures are potential evidence of an encounter with these other-worldly beings. They claim ancient men would have considered space travelers as gods and would have recorded their arrival, their experiments, and their departure, in hieroglyphs, megaliths, and stone tablets as a "supernatural" encounter between gods and men.

1/4 Of Wheat At Risk From New Fungus

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned in March that Iran had detected a new highly pathogenic strain of wheat stem rust called Ug99. The fungal disease could spread to other wheat producing states in the Near East and western Asia that provide one-quarter of the world’s wheat. The FAO warned stated east of Iran — Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan to be on high alert. Scientists and international organizations focused on controlling wheat stem rust have said 90 percent of world wheat lines are susceptible to Ug99. The situation is particularly critical in light of the existing worldwide wheat shortage. The fungus causes dark orange pustules on stems and leaves of infected plants. The pustules can completely girdle stems, damaging their conducting tissue and preventing grain fill. Yield losses may reach 70 percent, while some fields are totally destroyed. If stem rust arrives early in the growing cycle, losses are higher. Spores released by the fungal pustules are spread by the wind and may travel great distances in storms. Word of the new wheat disease comes amid global shortages of rice and wheat resulting from typhoon-related flooding in Java, Bangladesh, and India and from agricultural pests and diseases in Vietnam. Last year Australia suffered its second consecutive year of severe drought and a near complete crop failure, heavy rains reduced production in Europe, Argentina suffered heavy frost, and Canada and the U.S. both produced low yields. Food riots have broken out in Egypt, Haiti and several African states, including Mauritania, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Senegal in recent months.

Meeting: Secret Law In US Constitution

On April 30, the Senate's subcommittee on the Constitution held a vitally important hearing on "Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government," chaired by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis. At issue, ignored by the presidential contenders, is a profound change in the very core of our laws. Said witness Steven Aftergood, secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists: Growing use of secret law "is implicated in fundamental political controversies over domestic surveillance, torture and many other issues directly affecting the lives and interests of Americans. ... Secret law excludes the public from the deliberative process, promotes arbitrary and deviant government behavior, and shields official malefactors from accountability." At this very Senate hearing, John R. Elwood, the Office of Legal Counsel's deputy assistant attorney general, provided a startling example of the Bush administration's justification for the imperious essence of secret law. As reported in the May 1 New York Times, Elwood "disclosed a previously unpublicized method to cloak government activities."

Vatican: ETs May Be God's Friends

The search for extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God, the Pope's chief astronomer said, adding that some aliens may even be innocent of the original sin. Original sin, which by Christian tradition occurred in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of a particular tree, refers to the fallen state from which humans can be saved only by God's grace. Asked about the difficult theological question, Funes said: "If other intelligent beings exist, it's not certain that they need redemption." They could "have remained in full friendship with their creator" without committing the original sin, he said. If not, extraterrestrials would benefit equally from the "incarnation", in which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, assumed earthlings' flesh, body and soul in order to redeem them, which Funes called "a unique event that cannot be repeated".

Army Logs Weapon Usage With RFID

A gun’s lifespan is greatly affected by how often it is fired. It is impractical, however, to expect soldiers to document their weapon use in the field, especially in the heat of battle. A new RFID-enabled system being tested by the Army automates the process. The system, designed by the Army’s Benét Laboratories research center, begins with a piezoelectric sensor that tracks when a weapon is fired by sensing its recoil. A tiny processor records the sensor’s data. An attached RFID tag enables the system to communicate the information easily via reader scans. The system package is capable of extrapolating complex statistics based on the intensity of fire, such as strain and heat, which help gauge the wear and tear on the weapon.

Domestic Spying Outpaces Terrorism

The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously. The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it. The emphasis on spy programs also is starting to give pause to some members of Congress who fear the government is investing too much in anti-terrorism programs at the expense of traditional crime-fighting. Other lawmakers are raising questions about how well the FBI is performing its counter-terrorism mission. The Senate Intelligence Committee last week concluded that the bureau was far behind in making internal changes to keep the nation safe from terrorist threats. Lawmakers urged that the FBI set specific benchmarks to measure its progress and make more regular reports to Congress. These concerns come as the Bush administration has been seeking to expand its ability to gather intelligence without prior court approval. It has asked Congress for amendments to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it clear that eavesdropping on foreign telecommunications signals routed through the U.S. does not require a warrant.

Living Amidst the End Time Landscape

Today the news is reporting fires in Florida, the result of the last system which went through several southern states including Ok and Texas. It was there that 20 plus people died from tornadoes. The system caused tremendous damage. This was just another storm this year with such impact. Over the weekend some 60 tornadoes were counted. We also saw a small spiral tornado, but it touched down and left quickly, no damage. Wyoming see's very little of this kind of weather. We have seen many devastating weather patterns in the last 10 years. From Katrina to the many tornado, rain, floods, and other drought related patterns, the nation is itself weathering the storm. As we move to summer of 2008, the weather is still one of the main headlines. There has also been extensive earthquake reports along the western coast of America. From Mexico, San Diego up to Alaska, with Seattle seeing a myriad of such occurrences. No doubt, we are living in the last days.

Piece of Missing Cosmic Matter Found

Astronomers have found a piece of the universe's puzzle that's been missing for awhile: a type of extremely hot, dense matter that is all but invisible to us. Engaging in something like cosmic accounting, astronomers have tried to balance the scant amount of matter that has been directly observed with the vast amount that remains unobserved directly. The latter constitutes about 90 percent of the universe's matter. Galaxies, the stars within them, the planet we live on and the chairs we sit on are made up of normal matter — the protons, electrons and neutrons that are collectively called baryons. Baryonic matter can be seen and directly observed, but it makes up only about 4 percent of the universe.

Real-Life Mayan Crystal Skull Worship

There is a legend that the ancient Maya possessed 13 crystal skulls which, when united, hold the power of saving the Earth — a tale so strange and fantastic that it inspired the latest Indiana Jones movie. Experts dismiss the hundreds of existing crystal skulls as fakes that were probably made by colorful antiquities traders in the 19th century. But Mayan priests worship the skulls, even today, and real-life skull hunters still search for them. The true story of the skulls stretches over continents and hundreds of years, and may be even more extraordinary than the tale portrayed in this fourth installment of the Harrison Ford franchise.... It's possible that the near-human sized fakes may have been inspired by two real crystal skulls now on display at Mexico City's respected National Anthropology Museum... where the museum classifies them as either late pre-Hispanic or early colonial. The skulls' legend has spawned a new breed of followers. New-agers have associated the skulls with the belief that the Mayan "Long Count" calendar runs out on Dec. 21, 2012, when it reaches the end of a 5,126-year cycle... Shapiro has traveled the world seeking out skulls, and believes they link us to knowledge of past worlds like the Mayas, the lost civilization of Atlantis, or even extraterrestrials.

Nepal King Sacrifices To Power Goddess

Nepal's King Gyanendra, facing imminent ouster from the throne, made perhaps his last royal public appearance at a shrine outside Kathmandu recently and offered annual prayers to Kali, the Hindu goddess of power. The 60-year-old king was accompanied by Queen Komal to the temple of Dakshinkali perched by the side of a stream in a jungle-clad ravine 25 km (15 miles) south of Kathmandu. Gyanendra, facing the abolition of the 239-year-old monarchy after the Maoists emerged as the biggest party in assembly elections in April, offered prayers to the "family deity." Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, called the constituent assembly to begin its session on May 28, a parliament statement said, signaling an early end to the monarchy. Under an agreement between the Maoists and the government, the first meeting of the assembly is supposed to declare an end to the monarchy and turn Nepal into a republic. Earlier at the shrine, the king sat crossed-legged in front of the deity and offered prayers as five animals - a buffalo, a goat, a lamb, a duck and a rooster - were sacrificed to goddess Kali, a common practice among Hindus, to please the deity. "This is a ritual for peace and prosperity for the self and the family," priest Sekhar Prasad Pandit said after performing the 45-minute ritual. "This is done in the hope to get one's desires fulfilled."

Big Brother Database:Phones & E-mails

A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials. The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts. The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails are sent every day. Jonathan Bamford, the assistant Information Commissioner, said: “This would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the State to hold every UK citizen’s phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky - the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen.” David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “Given [ministers’] appalling record at maintaining the integrity of databases holding people’s sensitive data, this could well be more of a threat to our security, than a support.” The proposal has emerged as part of plans to implement an EU directive developed after the July 7 bombings to bring uniformity of record-keeping. Since last October telecoms companies have been required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months. That requirement is to be extended to internet, e-mail and voice-over-internet use and included in a Communications Data Bill. Police and the security services can access the records with a warrant issued by the courts. Rather than individual companies holding the information, Home Office officials are suggesting the records be handed over to the Government and stored on a huge database. One of the arguments being put forward in favour of the plan is that it would make it simpler and swifter for law enforcement agencies to retrieve the information instead of having to approach hundreds of service providers. Opponents say that the scope for abuse will be greater if the records are held on one database. A Home Office spokesman said the Bill was needed to reflect changes in communication that would “increasingly undermine our current capabilities to obtain communications data and use it to protect the public”.

Christian Sentenced for Carrying Bible

An Algerian Christian detained five days for carrying a Bible and personal Bible study books was handed a 300-euro (US$460) fine and a one-year suspended prison sentence last week, an Algerian church leader said. Recently a court in Djilfa, 150 miles south of Algiers, charged the 33-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity with “printing, storing and distributing” illegal religious material. A written copy of the verdict has yet to be issued. The Protestant, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told fellow Christians in his home city of Tiaret that police pressured him to return to Islam while in custody. The conviction is the latest in a wave of detentions and court cases against Algeria’s Protestants and Catholics. Since January police and provincial officials have ordered the closure of up to half of the country’s 50 estimated Protestant congregations. On the morning of April 25, the Tiaret resident and eight-year convert to Christianity was stopped at a police roadblock in the vicinity of Djilfa while riding in a shared taxi. Officials took the convert into custody upon finding a Bible and several religious study books in his luggage. A Christian from Tiaret told Compass that Djilfa police appeared to have previous knowledge of the Protestant’s Christian connections. Officers refused to let the convert call friends to let them know of his detention, naming a church member in Tiaret whom they claimed he would contact. “We will call your family for you,” the officials said, according to the Christian source from Tiaret. The Christian source in Tiaret said that Djilfa police verbally attacked the convert because of his faith during his five-day detention at city’s police station.

3rd-Graders To Help With Gender Change

A Pennsylvania elementary school has angered parents by giving them one-day's notice of planned counseling sessions with 100 third-grade students to explain that one of their male classmates would soon begin wearing girls' clothing and taking a female name and to ask that they accept him as a girl and not make unkind remarks. The exercise in "social transition" was initiated by the boy's parents who approached the administration at Chatham Park Elementary School in Haverford Township asking that the school help in having their child's female identity find acceptance among his peers. After consulting experts on transgender children, the Haverford School District sent letters to parents advising them the school guidance counselor would meet with their children, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. While some parents contacted the principal asking that their children be excused, others took their anger out online. "Why is the school introducing this subject to 8- and 9-year-olds?" wrote an angry parent who started a discussion on the Haverford Township's blog site. "Why were we not notified sooner. We received the letter today, the discussion at school is tomorrow."
In the letter to parents, Chatham Park principal Daniel Marsella assured parents the counseling would use "developmentally appropriate language" to explain "how we need to help this student make a social transition in school." "This is something that was going to come out," said Mary Beth Lauer, district director of community relations. "Isn't it better to be proactive, and let people know what is happening and how we're dealing with it?" According to Valerie Huff, whose daughter is a friend of the boy, he had started wearing girls' clothes and an upcoming school event would have made his gender identity public.

Spain To Run The Pennsylvania Turnpike

Stretching through the rural countryside with limited access and no speed limit in 1940, the Pennsylvania Turnpike was built to resemble Germany's autobahn. Now thanks to a $12.8 billion dollar offer, it may soon become Spain's. According to a report in the Philadelphia Daily News, Gov. Ed Rendell has announced that Abertis Infraestructuras of Barcelona has offered the top dollar bid to the state of Pennsylvania for the rights to manage the toll road under a 75-year lease. The highway could become just the latest in a string of U.S. infrastructure landmarks to be operated by foreign companies. In 2004, management of the Chicago Skyway, a stretch of elevated road connecting I-90 and I-94, was granted to Cintra, another Spanish operation that outbid Abertis at $1.83 billion. Abertis lost out to Cintra again when the Indiana Toll Road was taken over in 2006 for $3.8 billion. This time, Abertis beat out Cintra and other firms, hoping to add the Pennsylvania Turnpike to its list of operations including toll roads in Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Chile, Colombia and Argentina. Abertis also operates airports, including the airports in Orlando, Fla.; Burbank, Calif.; and one concourse of the Atlanta airport. The leases are being made possible through an increasingly common practice of establishing "public-private partnerships" (PPP's), contracts between public agencies and private entities that enable private sector participation in public transportation. "The USA is up for sale," an attendee of a conference in Colorado to discuss PPPs said. "Whatever the public now owns – roads, ports, waste management water systems, rail lines, public parking facilities, airports, even lotteries and sports stadiums – are up for grabs and the only requirement is that the foreigners have the cash." According to the newspaper report, the toll road plan with Abertis allows the newcomer to raise tolls 25 percent year and 2.5 percent or the rate of inflation every year after that.

SmartMetric's New Biometric Card

SmartMetric, Inc. (OTCBB: SMME) said today that its new Biometric Card will make signing a credit card or inputting a PIN number for your ATM card a thing of the past. With Identity Theft becoming the largest crime in the United States, a new and safer way of using credit and debit cards has become a quest for Banks around the World. After more then 8 years of R&D, SmartMetric has announced today that it now can replace signatures and PIN numbers with a person's fingerprint thereby providing a 100% guarantee that the person making the transaction is who they say they are. Inside your credit card is the smallest fingerprint scanner and reader in the world. Powered by an internal battery as thin as tissue paper the SmartMetric Biometric Fingerprint Card will only work when the card scans and reads the card owner's fingerprint. You become the key. Only the person authorized to use the card can turn it on. The company President, Mr. Colin Hendrick, said this represents a revolution in credit card security that has the potential to make his company, SmartMetric, Inc., a world leader in the credit card and banking card industry. Not only will the Fingerprint Card potentially save Banks around the world hundreds of millions of dollars but consumers will be protected against Identity Theft from this advance in electronic miniaturization. Using nano technology SmartMetric has achieved what many had thought impossible: a self-contained fingerprint scanner that fits inside a credit card. The card uses a standard SmartCard surface-mounted chip as its interface thereby making the SmartMetric Fingerprint Card useable by 90% of the world's ATM machines and credit card reading machines in retailers around the world.

Hacking the Mind

As Neurobotics claims: ‘Your brain is amazing’, but the power and control over brains and nervous systems achieved by targeting brain frequencies with radiowaves must have been secretly amazing government scientists for many years. The problem that now arises, at the point of readiness when so much has been achieved, is how to put the technology into action in such a way, as it will be acceptable in the public domain. This requires getting it through wider government and legal bodies, and for that, it must be seen to spring from the unbiased scientific investigations into the workings of the brain, in the best tradition of the leading universities. It is given over to Dr Rees and his colleague, Professor Haynes, endowed with the disclosure for weightier Guardian readers, to carry the torch for the government. Those involved may also have noted the need to show the neuroscientist in a more responsible light, following US neuroengineer for government sponsored Lockheed Martin, John Norseen’s, ingenuous comment, in 2000, about his belief about the consequences of his work in fMRI: ‘If this research pans out’, said Norseen, ‘you can begin to manipulate what someone is thinking even before they know it.’ And added: “The ethics don’t concern me, but they should concern someone else.” While the neuroscientists report their discovery (without even so much as the specific frequency of the light employed by this scanner/torch), issuing ethical warnings while incongruously continuing with their mind-blowing work, the government which sponsors them, remains absolutely mute.

Behavioral Science For Pre-Crime

The wave of suicide bombings that swept over Israel in 2003 pushed the founders of WeCu Technologies into searching for a way to identify terrorists before they take action. Quietly, even stealthily, this unknown company has been working for five years now on one of the more interesting technological innovations to be created in these parts. WeCU ("We see you," in case you are unaccustomed to SMS-speak) promises an automated system to detect people with mayhem on their minds. The system integrates methods and doctrines from the behavioral sciences with biometric sensors. According to the company's founders, in under a minute it can screen an individual, without his or her knowledge or cooperation and without interfering with routine activities, and disclose intentions to carry out criminal or terror activity. It can identify subjects who are not carrying any suspicious objects, do not demonstrate any suspicious behavior, do not fit into a predefined social or other profile and do not arouse any suspicion. Unlike systems currently in use, such as polygraphs or biometric systems based on identifying an individual under emotional pressure, WeCU does not attempt to determine whether the subject is lying, concealing information, under stress or feeling guilty. Instead, it seeks to identify concealed intentions by uncovering an associative connection between the subjects and defined threats. It may sound like science fiction, but the people behind the system are known to be more involved in science fact. The company founders include Prof. Shlomo Breznitz, a professor of psychology whose research specialization is stress situations (and who is also a former Knesset member from Kadima); Dr. Boaz Ganor, founder and executive director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya; WeCU CEO Ehud Givon; and Zipora (Zipi) Alster, an expert in the behavioral sciences. Until recently, the company underwrote its activities on its own, but recently a private investor stepped in with an injection of $3 million.

China Preparing For Nuclear War

Defense analysts for the British intelligence service MI6 believe China is preparing for the "eventuality of a nuclear war." The conclusion follows evidence that Beijing has built secretly a major naval base deep inside caverns which even sophisticated satellites cannot penetrate, says a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. In an unusual development, the analysts have provided details to the specialist defense periodical, Jane's Intelligence Review, which published satellite images of the base location which is hidden beneath millions of tons of rock on the South China Sea island of Hainan. The MI6 analysts have confirmed the submarine base hewn out of the rock will contain up to 20 of the latest C94 Jin-Class submarines, each capable of firing anti-satellite missiles and nuclear tipped rockets. Knocking out the satellites would leave Taiwan, Japan and other countries around the Pacific Rim effectively without a key warning system. An attack also would disrupt vital communications between U.S. battle squadrons in the region and Washington. Satellite images studied by GCHQ, Britain's spy in the sky intelligence gathering organization based at Cheltenham that works closely with the U.S. National Security Agency, have confirmed the entrance to the base is through no fewer than 11 separate tunnel openings. A Royal Navy nuclear submarine, one of those in the Typhoon Fleet, now has joined another from the U.S. Pacific Fleet to build up a clear image of what is happening inside the secret base which, as well as China's nuclear subs, could house "a host of aircraft carriers." Naval intelligence officers in London and Washington have confirmed the discovery of the base will present "a significant challenge to U.S. naval dominance and protection to countries ringing the South China Sea." The base is sited at Sanya on the southern tip of Hainan island. The island came to the attention of Western intelligence in April 2001, when a U.S. EP-3 spy plane trying to test the island's electronic defenses was forced to land there by Chinese fighters, one of which crashed in the sea killing the pilot. A Ministry of Defense analyst, who cannot be named for security reasons, believes "this could be the prelude to China preparing for a nuclear response."

A Look Into Skull and Bones

Every spring since 1832, fifteen new members are "tapped" or invited to join Yale's fraternity Skull & Bones. When they graduate they are given $15,000 and a position under the tutelage of another Bonesmen in government, industry or education. Their companies, careers, positions of influence and appointments reveal a wholly different view of world events once they are seen through the lens of their secret society. Events from the Supreme Court ruling, giving corporations the rights of personhood, to the domination of intelligence operations is a bit different when it becomes an act by the group. Secrets protect their keepers. That's not conspiracy theory it is common sense. We all have information we'd rather not make public and we all know the benefit of a friend who has got your back, no questions asked. It is human nature to network with friends and build circles of trust but to what extent this fraternal, band of brothers have operated as a covert, political element, does involve a measure of theory. Examining, the now public list of members and asking how the group functioned with respect to their relative places in history gives us a good idea of how valuable the secret alliances may have been. They officially incorporated in the State of Connecticut, as the Russell Trust Association, in 1856. Corporate records on file in Connecticut show this was amended in November of 1983 to be RTA, Incorporated. The change, concurrent with Sutton's publication suggests it may be a reaction to the book, but it does not reveal anything more than the fact that the group's charter allows for absolute secrecy. From the days when Pinkertons busted unions for the Harriman Railroads to the classified versions of the 9/11 report. All the operatives around the globe have been reporting to the Bonesman. They run the banks and the insurance companies, they track your titles and medications travel and education history. There are no secrets from the Bonesmen. They are the founders and rulers of America's covert operations, which run as a cooperative Wall Street-Washington corporate plan. Bonesman Stimpson created the OSS while fellow Bonesmen at Brown Brothers Harriman and Standard oil sent their members to divide the spoils of war or preside over the media coverup of funding Hitler's operations or taking Nazis like Ghelin into their midst to run MK-Ultra mind control experiments at the CIA. Today's CIA is and legacy families of the Bonesmen are on the panel for every Congressional investigation and Bonesman businesses get the lion's share of taxpayer funds. They alone meet the unwritten standard to know everything and rule what is hidden from public view. In cases like Kennedy's assassination, the Warren Commission findings have been sealed for almost 50 years. What is the big secret? Ask the Bonesman what the Warren Commission could possibly have found that needs to be kept from the public nearly five decades later? The victors who have hijacked our Democracy and given us promises of protection wrapped in Star Spangled spin, have it working perfectly for them. Revenues up, secrets up, control up, unquestioned, unlimited power, priceless.

Pastors Urged To Abandon Gospel

Conservative legal advocates are recruiting pastors nationwide to defy an IRS ban on preaching about politicians, in a challenge they hope will abolish the restriction. The Alliance Defense Fund, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., will ask the clergy to deliver a sermon about specific candidates Sept. 28. If the action triggers an IRS investigation, the legal group will sue to overturn the federal rules, which were enacted in 1954 [RNN Note: Dominionism is a Satanic conspiracy of the highest cosmic origin. It longs for a marriage of politics and religion -- the system that will empower Antichrist -- by leading Christians away from the Church's true power source, the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Satan is not afraid of politics nor politicians, he embraces both warmly. Can you free a demoniac from darkness by citing pieces of legislation? If Christians truly want to save their communities or world, they will give themselves to prayer and to boldly proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as Bible Christians did, not political kingmaking. This is what terrifies the powers of darkness -- the preaching of the Gospel is the "Power (Dunamain, dynamite) of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16)". And this is the activity defined in the New Testament, the life of Christ and the teaching of Apostle Paul as the mission of the Church. Only a generation of deceived and/or sold-out religious leaders who prefer earthly power and darkness over light would deny this and waste time and Church resources pointing believers to politics as an effective effort of the Church. Thank God there is a movement in Christianity today away from morality-by-political-mandate and back toward the New Testament's heart and soul changing Great Commission. This is what originally "turned the world upside down", and if this current movement continues to grow, it will change the world, not a voting lever for crying out loud].

Face of God Weapon Returns

Researchers are looking at a concept for creating large holograms that could be projected onto a battlefield, according to the New Hampshire. This idea, which has been proposed in the past, typically theorizes that an image of God could be projected. The most recent mention of this idea is in The New Hampshire, a student newspaper, which explores nonlethal weapons in a fascinating three-part series.The first article, which mentions the hologram weapon, is based on an interview with the head of the Non-Lethal Technology Innovations Center at the University of New Hampshire (also well worth the read in the article is the concept for a "smart dazzler"). This center, like another nonlethal lab at the University of Pennsylvania, has been supported by the Defense Department. "In the concept stage, [Glenn] Shwaery said, are more outlandish weapons such as enormous holograms to incite fear in soldiers on a battlefield." It's unclear if the proposed hologram is something the lab is working on, or just something they've heard exists. But projecting the image of something frightening -- like a deity -- is not a new idea and follows in the footsteps of the Voice of God weapon, a device that some have suggested could be used to transmit messages into people's head, as if God were speaking to them. Nor is the God hologram really a new idea, though it's interesting to see it's still bandied about; military analyst Bill Akin wrote about this concept back in 1999, which described it as holographic image of Allah. "According to a military physicist given the task of looking into the hologram idea, the feasibility had been established of projecting large, three-dimensional objects that appeared to float in the air," Arkin wrote. "But doing so over the skies of Iraq? To project such a hologram over Baghdad on the order of several hundred feet, they calculated, would take a mirror more than a mile square in space, as well as huge projectors and power sources.

COG Already Superseded The Constitution

In the summer 2007, Congressman Peter DeFazio, on the Homeland Security Committee (and so with proper security access to be briefed on COG issues), inquired about continuity of government plans, and was refused access. Indeed, DeFazio told Congress that the entire Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress has been denied access to the plans by the White House (video; or here is the transcript). The Homeland Security Committee has full clearance to view all information about COG plans. DeFazio concluded: "Maybe the people who think there’s a conspiracy out there are right”. Professor Scott's point that COG planning may have already superseded the Constitution can be summarized by making an analogy. Let's assume that the police are not supposed to seize and sell a suspect's house unless a court has held a full trial and found that person guilty of a certain offense. And let's say that the police seize and sell somebody's house, but that the suspect's relatives cannot find any record that there has been a trial, let alone a finding of guilt by the court. Let's say they go to the City Council (which is the local counterpart of the U.S. Congress -- that is, part of the legislative branch), and the City Council asks the police if the suspect was found guilty by the court. If the police refuse to even answer the City Council's question, that shows that the rule of law has broken down. In other words, whether or not there was a trial and a guilty verdict, the failure of the police to answer the question shows that the police (part of the executive branch) are acting outside of the law by failing to respect the separation of powers between the police and the City Council. As Steven Aftergood, of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, notes: "Of the 54 National Security Presidential Directives issued by the [George W.] Bush Administration to date, the titles of only about half have been publicly identified. There is descriptive material or actual text in the public domain for only about a third. In other words, there are dozens of undisclosed Presidential directives that define U.S. national security policy and task government agencies, but whose substance is unknown either to the public or, as a rule, to Congress."

Britain's Blasphemy Laws Lifted

A campaign to repeal the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel, which made it illegal to insult Christianity, was proposed in January by the Liberal Democrat Evan Harris. It was supported by public figures including the author Philip Pullman and the academic Richard Dawkins. They claimed the little-used laws served no useful purpose, while allowing religious groups to try to censor artists. Evangelists had tried to prosecute the director-general of the BBC over the controversial musical Jerry Springer – The Opera. MPs voted to support the abolition of blasphemy in an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. This has now received Royal Assent, condemning the laws to history. Maria Eagle, the junior justice minister, said in the debate: "These offences have now largely fallen into disuse and therefore run the risk of bringing the law into disrepute. "Given that these laws protect only the tenets of the Christian Churches, they would appear to be plainly discriminatory." But Edward Leigh, a Conservative MP, claimed their abolition would encourage more people to make fun of Christianity. "Getting rid of the blasphemy law sends a message that that is OK, but it is insulting to many Christians," he said.

Expect To Find New Worlds By The Dozens

The heyday of planetary discovery is only just beginning. This fall, astronomers will start a massive search for new planets by observing about 11,000 nearby stars over 6 years. This number dwarfs the roughly 3,000 stars that astronomers have searched to date for the presence of planets. Scientists estimate that the NASA-funded project, called MARVELS (Multi-object Apache Point Observatory Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey), will find at least 150 new planets—perhaps many more. "We're looking in particular for giant planets like Jupiter," says Jian Ge, principal investigator for MARVELS and an astronomer at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Ge likens big planets to "beacons of a lighthouse" signaling the presence of entire solar systems. "Once we find a big planet around a star, we know that smaller planets could be there, too." MARVELS will do much more than just catalogue a few hundred more planets. By surveying the Jupiter-like planets around such a large number of stars, MARVELS aims to give astronomers the data they need to test competing theories for how planetary systems form and evolve. To look at so many stars, MARVELS will use a telescope that can separately image 60 stars at a time, and this number will eventually be increased to 120 stars. The telescope, which will be housed at the Apache Point Observatory in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, has a 2.5 meter primary mirror and a wide field of view that covers 7 square degrees of the sky—an area that would appear 35 times larger than the Moon.

Altar Of Ark Of The Covenant Found

Archaeologists believe they have found the Queen of Sheba's palace at Axum, Ethiopia and an altar which held the most precious treasure of ancient Judaism, the Ark of the Covenant, the University of Hamburg said. Scientists from the German city made the startling find during their spring excavation of the site over the past three months. The Ethiopian queen was the bride of King Solomon of Israel in the 10th century before the Christian era. The royal match is among the memorable events in the Bible. Ethiopian tradition claims the Ark, which allegedly contained Moses' stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written, was smuggled to Ethiopia by their son Menelek and is still in that country. The University said scientists led by Helmut Ziegert had found remains of a 10th-century-BC palace at Axum-Dungur under the palace of a later Christian king. There was evidence the early palace had been torn down and realigned to the path of the star Sirius. The team hypothesized that Menelek had changed religion and become a worshipper of Sirius while keeping the Ark, described in the Bible as an acacia-wood chest covered with gold. Remains of sacrifices of bullocks were evident around the altar.

Closer Towards 3D Invisibility Cloak

A California nanotechnology research lab says it has created the first 3D material able to bend light in the opposite direction to natural materials. But some other specialists in the field remain sceptical about the claim. Physicists have in recent years made it possible to bend, or refract, light in the opposite direction to any natural materials. These metamaterials make it possible to create invisibility cloaks that hide an object by steering light around it. The refractive index of a material is a measure of how it bends light and for natural materials it is always positive. Metamaterials, though, can have negative refractive indexes. This is achieved with tiny periodic structures that interact with the electric and magnetic fields that comprise light. The repeating structures need to be smaller than the light waves themselves, something that has limited them to long-wavelength light, or microwaves.

Navy Wants To Militarize Bioluminescence

Down in the ocean's depths, nearly every creature turns into a living glowstick, by converting chemical energy into light. So many things -- even the energy of passing ships and subs -- can cause single-celled organisms to light up. The Navy would like to turn that bioluminescence into a military tool. The service is looking to"develop a navigation aid for underwater vehicles that will sense [any] bioluminescence triggered" and report whether an adversary might be able to see the light -- and detect the vehicle, as a result. According to a Navy request for research proposals, "covert, underwater navigation in coastal and estuarine waters is often compromised by bioluminescence from marine phyto- and zooplankton, triggered by turbulence generated by the underwater vehicle. If the vehicle it close enough to the surface and if the bioluminescence is bright enough, the stimulated light can be observed above water."

NASA Plans To Land On Asteroid

Nasa scientists are planning one of the space agency’s most daring missions yet: to land on a 40 metre-wide asteroid travelling at 28,000 mph. The 1.1 million tonne asteroid, named 2000SG344, was once given a significant chance of slamming into Earth. Now that it is no longer considered a risk, Nasa engineers are considering a plan that mirrors the plot of the Hollywood film Deep Impact, in which the White House sends a spaceship to land on an asteroid. In a study to be published next month, scientists at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston and the Ames Research Centre in California say they envisage the next-generation shuttle Orion delivering a two-man crew in a pod to land on the asteroid as it hurtles through space.

Air Force: Total Control Over Computers

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected." The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online. The Air Force recently put together a "Cyberspace Command," with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion "national cybersecurity initiative." That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks. "You used to need an army to wage a war," a recent Air Force commercial notes. "Now, all you need is an Internet connection." Recently, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for "Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement." "Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access," a request for proposals notes, "to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms... any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware." This isn't just some computer science study, mind you; "research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities." Unlike an Air Force colonel's proposal, to knock down enemy websites with military botnets, the Research Lab is encouraging a sneaky, "low and slow" approach. The preferred attack consists of lying quiet, and then "stealthily exfiltrat[ing] information" from adversaries' networks. But, in the end, the Air Force wants to see all kinds of "techniques and technologies" to "Deceive, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, [or] Destroy" hostile systems. And "in addition to these main concepts," the Research Lab would like to see studies into "Proactive Botnet Defense Technology Development," the "reinvent[ion of] the network protocol stack" and new antennas, based on carbon nanotubes. The military has been extremely reluctant to talk much about offensive operations online. Instead, the focus has normally been on protecting against electronic attacks. But in the last year or so, the tone has changed -- and become more bellicose. “Cyber, as a warfighting domain . . . like air, favors the offense,” said Lani Kass, a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff who previously headed up the service's Cyberspace Task Force. "If you’re defending in cyber, you’re already too late." "We want to go in and knock them out in the first round," added Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, which focuses on network issues. "An adversary needs to know that the U.S. possesses powerful hard and soft-kill (cyberwarfare) means for attacking adversary information and command and support systems at all levels," a recent Defense Department report notes. "Every potential adversary, from nation states to rogue individuals... should be compelled to consider... an attack on U.S. systems resulting in highly undesireable consequences to their own security."

China To Modernise Nuclear Weapons

One of the world's leading arms control experts has said that the Chinese have realised that their nuclear weaponry has fallen behind those of other major powers and might not survive a first strike. Bates Gill, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), said that as a result it was developing more flexible delivery systems, including from submarines, as well as the capacity to use multiple warheads. "Among the major nuclear powers China stands out in its effort to modernise, expand and improve its nuclear weapons capability," he said at a conference in Beijing. China's first nuclear test took place amid huge patriotic pride in 1964. Its arsenal, estimated at between 100 and 200 warheads, is the smallest of the big powers – the United States, Russia, Britain and France. The US is currently updating its missiles and warheads. China now has a stated policy of never using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear country and never as a "first strike". But Dr Gill said its static nuclear delivery system had left it vulnerable to a first strike. A sea-based capability would "make it less likely that an adversary could wipe out the possibility of a response," he said.

Al-Qaeda Using Internet to Recruit

Using a video montage showing mass executions, bomb-making, and a promise to "slit the throats of Americans and Jews," two U.S. lawmakers unveiled a report that says homegrown violent Islamic extremism poses an increasing threat to the safety of the American people.The bipartisan report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs was unveiled by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) at a press conference on Capitol Hill. Lieberman and Collins told reporters that al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups are using the Internet to recruit and train extremists in the United States. Lieberman defined "homegrown" terrorists as American citizens or long-term residents. "The sophisticated use of the Internet by international terrorist organizations and their followers is increasingly a cause of this homegrown terrorism," he said. The Internet, the report says, gives disaffected people who have access to a computer a way "to identify and connect with networks throughout the world ... and gain expertise that previously was available only in overseas training camps." "What makes it so troubling is we don't know how many people are being radicalized," Collins said, "because it's very difficult to track."

First Space Mission To Hunt Asteroids

Canada will launch a suitcase-sized satellite in 2009 to spot potentially dangerous asteroids near Earth's orbit. It will be the first space mission devoted to hunting asteroids and may help find ones that are difficult to spot from the ground. Asteroids and comets occasionally hit Earth, with devastating consequences – a 10-kilometre-wide asteroid is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs. To date, more than 5000 such objects have been found with orbits that take them close to Earth's. Scientists are using ground-based telescopes to track down more of the near-Earth objects (NEOs) to determine if any could potentially hit the planet in the foreseeable future. But some of these objects are difficult to see from the ground. Now, the Canadian Space Agency plans to launch the world's first space-based telescope dedicated to hunting NEOs. The suitcase-sized Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) weighs just 60 kilograms and will cost a mere $10 million to build and launch. It will rely on a telescope with a 15-centimetre mirror, smaller than many backyard telescopes used by amateur astronomers. Chief scientists for the mission are Alan Hildebrand of the University of Calgary and Brad Wallace of Defence Research and Development Canada. Despite its modest dimensions, the spacecraft's unique vantage point in space may allow it to spot objects that are difficult to see from the ground. Most of the NEOs found so far have elongated orbits that extend far away from the Sun. But some never venture much beyond Earth's orbit. These stay close to the Sun in the sky, meaning they must be observed when the Sun is not far below the horizon – before sunrise and after sunset. At those times, the glow of the sky can make the objects hard to see.

GPS Tracks Students To Stop Dropouts

In the next two minutes, four teenagers will drop out of school. The national average is one every 26 seconds. Dallas truancy courts handle 20,000 cases every year. Many of those are referred to the juvenile justice system, which often sends the teenagers to jail. Using satellite technology, a pilot program may be able to turn the tide on Dallas drop outs by stopping truancy in its tracks. It’s called AIM, which stands for Attendance Improvement Management. The program attempts to steer kids back on track by watching them everywhere they go. Last year, Ricardo Pacheco was a Crips gang leader at Bryan Adams High School. He rarely went to class and was failing out of school. Today, he’s a soccer star on the same campus. He is also ready to graduate June 1. “I’m coming to school every day, on time,” he said. Pacheco’s secret tool has been GPS technology, which tracks his every move. “Yeah, it helped me a lot,” he said. Pacheco and several other students at Bryan Adams High wore ankle monitors last year. They were tracked by global positioning satellites, and that data was relayed to a monitor in the school. This year, nine students in the tracking program carry hand held units that are about the size and shape of a cell phone. When they get to school each morning, they check in by hitting a small button three times. They do the same thing once during lunch and again when they get home each afternoon. The signals show up as yellow dots on a website monitored by an attendant at the school. They are updated every ten minutes. If a student isn’t at the right place, the attendant calls parents or police. “What we’re trying to do is say, 'We’re going to keep in touch with you,'” said retired psychologist Paul Pottinger. He came up with the idea and contracted with a GPS technology company to design the system. Several local donors funded it. Pottinger’s now proposing to track 450 students on two DISD campuses for about $365,000. “What we wanted to do was provide support for the hopelessness that many of these kids have by the time they’re truant," said Cynthia Goodsell, the principal at Bryan Adams. She said attendance among the GPS-assisted students is almost 100 percent.

Universe Smaller Than a Marble Created

These defects in space-time, are represented by tiny whirlpools in the helium, which are created by the rapid expansion, and equally rapid slowing of the expansion; something that it’s believed our own universe did at the big bang and in the moments thereafter... The theory being presented by the physicists in Lancaster University is that inflation is the product of violent competition: a series of collisions between universes known as “3-branes;” a term related to string theory which I’m frankly not smart enough to explain to you. Suffice to say that our universe is one, because it exists in 3-5 dimensions. What the string theorists claim is that in a collision of two 3-branes, or two different modes of pure helium like that containing the mini-galaxy, the universe will rapidly expand and stop instantly, mimicking the halting advance of the universe’s growth. Remarkably, when super cooled helium in different phases is mixed, it does exactly that: symmetries in the solution disappear, and aberrations form; the first step in several that lead to the forming of galaxies out of nothing. The secrets of the universe it seems, aren’t safe for long.

Terror Attack: Overwhelm Services

A terrorist attack similar to the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid would be even more catastrophic in Los Angeles or Washington, D.C., because the injured would overwhelm strained emergency services, experts told a congressional hearing recently. "It is irrational to believe that an emergency system that is already overwhelmed by the day-to-day volume of acutely ill patients would be able to expand its capacity on short notice," said Dr. Roger J. Lewis, a professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform examined conditions at 34 hospitals in seven cities on an arbitrarily chosen date and time -- March 25 at 4:30 p.m. -- to gauge how they could have handled such an influx of patients. The survey focused on hospitals with level 1 trauma centers, which handle the most serious injuries. None of the hospitals surveyed in New York City, Chicago, Houston, Denver and Minneapolis had enough ER beds, intensive-care beds and regular beds to treat the number of patients that arrived at Madrid hospitals. But Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., had the most acute shortages.

Target Tumors with Tiny ‘Nanoworms’

Scientists at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and MIT have developed nanometer-sized “nanoworms” that can cruise through the bloodstream without significant interference from the body’s immune defense system and—like tiny anti-cancer missiles—home in on tumors. Their discovery, detailed in this week’s issue of the journal Advanced Materials, is reminiscent of the 1966 science fiction movie, the Fantastic Voyage, in which a submarine is shrunken to microscopic dimensions, then injected into the bloodstream to remove a blood clot from a diplomat’s brain. Using nanoworms, doctors should eventually be able to target and reveal the location of developing tumors that are too small to detect by conventional methods. Carrying payloads targeted to specific features on tumors, these microscopic vehicles could also one day provide the means to more effectively deliver toxic anti-cancer drugs to these tumors in high concentrations without negatively impacting other parts of the body. “Most nanoparticles are recognized by the body's protective mechanisms, which capture and remove them from the bloodstream within a few minutes,” said Michael Sailor, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego who headed the research team. “The reason these worms work so well is due to a combination of their shape and to a polymer coating on their surfaces that allows the nanoworms to evade these natural elimination processes. As a result, our nanoworms can circulate in the body of a mouse for many hours.” “When attached to drugs, these nanoworms could offer physicians the ability to increase the efficacy of drugs by allowing them to deliver them directly to the tumors,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, a physician, bioengineer and a professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT who was part of the team. “They could decrease the side effects of toxic anti-cancer drugs by limiting their exposure of normal tissues and provide a better diagnosis of tumors and abnormal lymph nodes.”

Feds: Collect Millions of DNA Profiles

The feds will soon be collecting about one million DNA samples a year under a new program that lets federal agents collect cheek swabs from citizens merely arrested for any federal crime or from any non-citizen detained by federal agents -- including visitors to the country who have visas. The intent is build a massive database of DNA samples (.pdf) that police can use to catch rapists and murderers, but even the innocent should fear being in the database, due to the vagaries of how cold case DNA searches can easily pinpoint an innocent person. Thanks to an amendment in the Violence Against Women Act of 2005 that was sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), the feds now have the authority to immediately take DNA from any arrestee or 'detained' non-citizen and immediately upload it to the FBI's CODIS database. That database is currently fed by federal law enforcement agencies and all 50 states, a few of which collect and upload DNA samples from people arrested, but not convicted of a crime.

Mind Control by Cell Phone

Hospitals and airplanes ban the use of cell phones, because their electromagnetic transmissions can interfere with sensitive electrical devices. Could the brain also fall into that category? Of course, all our thoughts, sensations and actions arise from bioelectricity generated by neurons and transmitted through complex neural circuits inside our skull. Electrical signals between neurons generate electric fields that radiate out of brain tissue as electrical waves that can be picked up by electrodes touching a person's scalp. Measurements of such brainwaves in EEGs provide powerful insight into brain function and a valuable diagnostic tool for doctors. Indeed, so fundamental are brainwaves to the internal workings of the mind, they have become the ultimate, legal definition drawing the line between life and death. Brainwaves change with a healthy person's conscious and unconscious mental activity and state of arousal. But scientists can do more with brainwaves than just listen in on the brain at work-they can selectively control brain function by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This technique uses powerful pulses of electromagnetic radiation beamed into a person's brain to jam or excite particular brain circuits. Although a cell phone is much less powerful than TMS, the question still remains: Could the electrical signals coming from a phone affect certain brainwaves operating in resonance with cell phone transmission frequencies? After all, the caller's cerebral cortex is just centimeters away from radiation broadcast from the phone's antenna.

MONOPOLY Game Cashless Society Edition

Wheel and deal your way to a fortune even faster using debit cards instead of cash! All it takes is a card swipe for money to change hands. Now you can collect rent, buy properties and pay fines - with the touch of a button! It’s a new way to play the family classic that’s been brought up-to-date with modernized tokens (including a Segway personal transporter, an Altoids tin, space shuttle, flat-screen TV, baseball cap and a dog in handbag!), higher property values and locations based on your favorite landmarks Gameboard comes with title deed cards, chance and community chest cards, 6 debit cards, 2 dice, 6 tokens, 32 houses, 12 hotels and instructions.

Gorbachev: US Imperialist Conspiracy

With Dmitry Medvedev due to be inaugurated today as Russian president, the Soviet Union's last leader said that the White House's claims of peaceful intentions towards its former superpower rival could no longer be trusted. Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, Mr Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia. From Nato's expansion plans in the former Soviet Union to Washington's proposals for a bigger defence budget and a missile shield in central Europe, the US was deliberately quashing hopes for permanent peace with Russia, Mr Gorbachev said.

Einstein Said: Jews Not Chosen People

Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London, an auctioneer said. The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954. As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other people". "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. "No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper. The German-language letter is being sold by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house's managing director Rupert Powell. In it, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become Israel's second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people. "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said. "And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people." And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Global Paranormal Warning System

The Arlington Institute, a non-profit think tank specialising in predictive modelling of future events, hopes to utilise paranormal powers to provide an early warning of impending disasters or other critical events, such as acts of terrorism. British psychic Chris Robinson, who claims to see the future in dreams, is working with the Institute on the project. The Arlington Institute (TAI), which was founded nearly 20 years ago by futurist John L. Petersen, has identified why previous attempts to harness psychic powers through premonition bureaux were unsuccessful. They were not equipped with a system of processing reports of dreams and predictions automatically, which meant “the ability to effectively analyse the input was severely limited”. Present technology, it adds, overcomes these shortcomings. It can also give feedback to those submitting narratives, maintaining their interest in the process. So, for the first time, it has evolved a scheme – called the WHETHEReport – which it describes as an unprecedented early-warning system. The Internet will play a key role. A web portal will be used to collect anonymous “narratives of significant intuitions of all forms, including dreams, visions [and] overwhelming feelings”. An announcement of this “revolutionary new global strategic early warning capability” explains: “TAI has constructed a plan for a new, unconventional anticipatory analysis tool which offers humanity an unprecedented potential to anticipate surprise events. WHETHEReport will function as a global sensing and analysis network – using aggregate human intuition as its intelligence source.” This plan, it adds, is based on the following assumption: “The ability to image fragments of the future (particularly in dreams) seems to appear both generally in broad populations of people and specifically and more accurately in special individuals.” Those individuals, it points out, have been used by law enforcement and intelligence communities. It adds: “The most notable perhaps is Christopher Robinson of the UK, who for 15 years worked very successfully for Scotland Yard and other British intelligence and security services anticipating IRA bombings, drug movements, etc.” Chris Robinson has confirmed to www.ParanormalReview.com that he is currently in the US and assisting the TAI, but is not at liberty to discuss who he is working with or what they are doing. TAI quotes Prof Gary Schwartz’s research with Chris Robinson at the University of Arizona’s Human Energy Systems Laboratory, which is reported in Schwartz’s book The G.O.D. Experiments, among its references to earlier positive research into precognition and dreams. The institute will attempt to isolate three basic characteristics of impending events: type, location and timing. It will then indicate the status of various events on a world map and hopefully draw conclusions from the clustering and intensity of dreams around given themes and locations. It won’t be all doom and gloom, however, because TAI promises the web portal will be bright and appealing, relating to popular events like sports and awards that lend themselves to “prediction”. It expects the two-year development and operation of WHETHEReport will cost about US$3.5 million (£1.8 million) and is actively looking for partners to make it “a near-term reality”. TAI’s justification for such expense is that “catastrophic surprise events occur on a regular basis and are likely to increase in number, costing tens of thousands of lives a year and untold billions of dollars”. Currently finishing a two-year project to develop a (non-psychic) National Surprise Anticipation Centre for the government of Singapore, TAI clearly has the expertise and technical staff to develop the paranormal WHETHEReport project. It remains to be seen who will come forward with financial backing. TAI appears to be very open to psychic and spiritual abilities. Physicist Dr Harold Puthof, who worked on the CIA’s remote viewing ESP programme at the Stanford Research Institute for many years, was the first speaker at TAI’s new location in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, on 1 February this year. On 4 May, John Petersen will host a seminar with Lee Carroll, who channels the “angelic entity Kryon” and has been predicting future events for the past 17 years “accurately and regularly”, according to TAI’s president and founder

Tiny Plasma-Powered Flying Saucer

Tinkerers have tried all kinds of ways to get real-life flying saucers to take off. Most involve harnessing playing with air flow, through ducted fans or the "Coanda Effect" -- the fact that air follows a curved surface, increasing the lift of a rounded craft. University of Florida aerospace engineer Subrata Roy has just patented a different approach: magnetohydrodynamics. "Pass a current or magnetic field through a conducting fluid and it will generate a force," New Scientist explains. And maybe -- just maybe -- that force could be big enough to power a tiny saucer. With a span of less than 15 centimetres, [Roy's] aircraft qualifies as a micro air vehicle (MAV), but it has an unconventional design to say the least. It is a saucer shape covered with electrodes that ionise air to create a plasma. This plasma is then accelerated by an electric field to push air around and generate lift. Roy says the machine can be filled with helium to reduce its weight, and is efficient enough to be powered by onboard batteries. Its ability to hover and generate lift electronically means that it is particularly robust against gusts of wind that send other MAVs off course, says Roy. All he needs to do now is build one and get it flying. Like other MAVs, the primary application would probably be surveillance, but a plasma flying saucer would make a great toy too.

Telescope Forest Searches For ET

In a meadow of one of Northern California's pristine national forests, 2,000-pound radio telescopes are popping up like mushrooms. Made of aluminum and resembling things out of the movie "Contact," they point to the heavens and wait in silent attention. Scientists hope they will one day detect radio waves sent from a faraway planet. Thousands of years after mankind first asked one of the most pressing philosophical questions - Are we alone in the universe? - Silicon Valley scientists are poised to bring us closer to an understanding. The hunt for little green men has moved from Hollywood back lots to the Bay Area's backyard. "In many cultures throughout history, we've always wondered: Is there anybody else? Are we the only ones who can look up at the universe and wonder? I live in the first generation of humans that can try to answer this," said Jill Tarter, director of the Center for the the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at the SETI Institute in Mountain View. Some small-scale searches have been performed before. Tarter, the inspiration for Jodie Foster's "Contact" character, has devoted her entire career to the SETI pursuit. But what is so special about the latest project is that these are the first radio telescopes built specifically for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. "It's a Silicon Valley story more than anything," explained Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. "Electronics got cheaper, and that encouraged us to build our own telescope." Actually, 42 of them - with 308 more on the way. The silver behemoths are sprouting up among the lava beds just north of Lassen National Park, in a largely uninhabited area about 300 miles northeast of San Jose. Come summer, researchers will start their survey of as many as 1million stars over the next two decades as they look for signs that a civilization more advanced than ours has been attempting to send us a radio signal. "No one's really bothered before now to do a complete search," said Rick Forster, resident astronomer at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, where the telescopes are housed.

Imam Is Directing World Events

Ahmadinejad has always been a devotee of the Mahdi, the twelfth imam of Shiite Islam, who Shiites believe disappeared more than a thousand years ago and who will return one day to usher in a new era of peace and harmony. But in a speech to theology students broadcast by state television recently, Ahmadinejad went further than ever before in emphasising his belief that the Mahdi is playing a critical role in Iran's day-to-day politics. "The Imam Mahdi is in charge of the world and we see his hand directing all the affairs of the country," he said in the speech, which appears to date from last month but has only now been broadcast. "We must solve Iran's internal problems as quickly as possible. Time is lacking. A movement has started for us to occupy ourselves with our global responsibilities, which are arriving with great speed." Since becoming president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated that his government is paving the way for the return of the Mahdi and chided his foes for not believing that his return is imminent.

Wi-Fi Warns Doctors Of Heart Attacks

The Bluetooth wireless technology that allows people to use a hands-free earpiece while making a mobile telephone call could soon alert the emergency services when someone has a heart attack, Ofcom predicts. The communications regulator said that sensors could be implanted into people at risk of heart attack or diabetic collapse that would allow doctors to monitor them remotely. If the “in-body network” recorded that the person had suddenly collapsed, it would send an alert, via a nearby base station at their home, to a surgery or hospital. However, Ofcom also gave warning in its report, Tomorrow’s Wireless World, that the impact of such technology on personal privacy would require more debate. The technology, which is being tested now in Portsmouth, could also be used if a patient failed to take his or her medicines. A pill dispenser would send an automatic reminder and, if the pills were not taken within a certain time, an alarm would sound and a message would be sent to the patient’s family or carers. However, health experts say that they are sceptical about the level of take-up of “in-body” sensors while research into the possible radiation impact of wi-fi networks is going on. The Ofcom report also said that advances in GPS positioning and short-range wireless technologies could “revolutionise the way we conduct our journeys and safety levels on the roads”. Intelligent transport systems being developed by car manufacturers allowed cars to communicate with each other and send alerts about sudden braking. If a collision happened the car’s system could automatically call the emergency services. The technology could also apply the brakes automatically if it was determined that two cars were getting too close to each other. Paramedics attending the scene of an accident would carry a small computer that would pick up wireless messages from a bracelet incorporated in the driver’s watch. These would enable them to gain access to information about his or her medical history. The European Commission is discussing whether to allow the “e-Call” automatic emergency call-out, which could be on the market by 2011. A recent trial suggested that the technology could cut ten minutes off the time for the emergency services to reach the scene of an accident and a 15 per cent reduction in fatalities. Ofcom said that drivers could be helped by further advances in sat-nav technology. Signals would alert drivers to congestion ahead and then calculate whether their proposed journey would be quicker by train. Wireless communication technology could also enable food items to carry microchips containing information on their contents. This would allow, for example, nut allergy sufferers to be alerted if they inadvertently picked up an item containing nuts.

Deaths of Honeybees Rising Fast

Last year's survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America found losses of about 32 percent. As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the group. This is the second year the association has measured colony deaths across the country. This means there aren't enough numbers to show a trend, but clearly bees are dying at unsustainable levels and the situation is not improving, said vanEngelsdorp, also a bee expert with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. "For two years in a row, we've sustained a substantial loss," he said. "That's an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm." The survey included 327 operators who account for 19 percent of the country's approximately 2.44 million commercially managed bee hives. The data is being prepared for submission to a journal. About 29 percent of the deaths were due to Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that causes adult bees to abandon their hives. Beekeepers who saw CCD in their hives were much more likely to have major losses than those who didn't. "What's frightening about CCD is that it's not predictable or understood," vanEngelsdorp said. Recently, Pennsylvania's Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced that the state would pour an additional $20,400 into research at Pennsylvania State University looking for the causes of CCD. This raises emergency funds dedicated to investigating the disease to $86,000. The issue also has attracted federal grants and funding from companies that depend on honey bees, including ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs. Because the berries, fruits and nuts that give about 28 of Haagen-Daazs' varieties flavor depend on honey bees for pollination, the company is donating up to $250,000 to CCD and sustainable pollination research at Penn State and the University of California, Davis.

The Next Level of AI

Like a good gambler, Daphne Koller, a researcher at Stanford whose work has led to advances in artificial intelligence, sees the world as a web of probabilities. There is, however, nothing uncertain about her impact. A mathematical theoretician, she has made contributions in areas like robotics and biology. Her biggest accomplishment — and at age 39, she is expected to make more — is creating a set of computational tools for artificial intelligence that can be used by scientists and engineers to do things like predict traffic jams, improve machine vision and understand the way cancer spreads. Ms. Koller’s work, building on an 18th-century theorem about probability, has already had an important commercial impact, and her colleagues say that will grow in the coming decade. Her techniques have been used to improve computer vision systems and in understanding natural language, and in the future they are expected to lead to an improved generation of Web search. “She’s on the bleeding edge of the leading edge,” said Gary Bradski, a machine vision researcher at Willow Garage, a robotics start-up firm in Menlo Park, Calif. Ms. Koller is part of a revival of interest in artificial intelligence. After three decades of disappointments, artificial intelligence researchers are making progress. Recent developments made possible spam filters, Microsoft’s new ClearFlow traffic maps and the driverless robotic cars that Stanford teams have built for competitions sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Coming Soon: The Real Bionic Man

A camera so tiny it can be implanted to combat blindness. A severed finger that grows back again. Your mind downloaded into a computer... The first two 'science fiction' medical miracles have already happened; the third is almost certainly on the way. Welcome to the incredible new world of 'science fact'. One of the most most visually striking medical advances came to the fore last week when South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius appealed the decision to ban him from competing in this summer's Olympic Games in China. The 21-year-old, who jokingly describes himself as "the fastest thing on no legs", is known in athletics as Blade Runner, after the prosthetic blades attached below his knees which enable him to out-run able-bodied rivals while burning 25pc less energy. The development that helped Oscar become a world champion is mechanical; other scientists are working in a different way to help people like him. At the MIT Leg Lab in Massachusetts, another double amputee, Dr Hugh Herr, has spent a more than a decade developing prosthetic limbs that combine lightweight robotics with animal-derived muscle tissue. His aim is to dispense with the motor parts which make some current prosthetics heavy and cumbersome, by developing cyborg limbs that burn glucose for energy just like human muscle. Coined in 1960, the term cyborg refers to an organism that combines artificial and natural systems. As the work of Herr and like-minded scientists advances, the advent of the real life Bionic Man and Bionic Woman gets ever closer.

Global Elite Gather In D.C.

The Trilateral Commission—one of the three most powerful globalist groups in the world—held closed-door meetings right here in Washington, D.C. from April 25 to 28. True to form, those members of the media who knew about the meeting—or were themselves participants in the proceedings—refused to discuss what went on inside or report on the attendees. Luckily, AFP’s own editor, Jim Tucker, was on the scene to bust this clandestine confabulation wide open. Luminaries at the Trilateral Commission meeting in Washington expressed confidence that they own all three major presidential candidates, who, despite political posturing, will support sovereignty-surrendering measures such as NAFTA and the “North American Union.” “John has always supported free trade, even while campaigning before union leaders,” said one. “Hil and Barack are pretending to be unhappy about some things, but that’s merely political posturing. They’re solidly in support.” He was referring to Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Mrs. Clinton, they noted, held strategy sessions as first lady on how to get Congress to approve NAFTA “without changes.” As president, they agreed, she would do no more than “dot an i or cross a t.” Candidate Obama has not denied news reports in Canada that his top economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, assured Canadian diplomats that the senator would keep NAFTA intact and his anti-trade talk is just “campaign rhetoric.”

IBM - Lockheed Martin: FBI's ID Program

Lockheed Martin today announced that IBM will join its industry team to develop and maintain the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) -- the new multi-modal, state-of-the-art biometrics system to be used by state, local and federal authorities. As the prime contractor on the FBI's NGI program, Lockheed Martin will provide program management and oversight as well as biometric and large systems development and integration expertise. Joining the NGI team as a subcontractor, IBM will provide some information technology services, as well as specific software and hardware to be used in the NGI system. "Our entire industry team, with the new addition of IBM, is very pleased to start working on the NGI program," said Judy Marks, President, Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions. "This represents a win for the FBI, the justice community, and most importantly, the public who will benefit from the security of an advanced biometric identification system." The NGI system will expand fingerprint processing capacity and will now also include palm prints, iris and facial recognition capabilities. Additionally, the system requires a significant degree of technical flexibility in order to accommodate other biometric modalities that may mature and become important to law enforcement efforts in the future.

Bush Signs DNA Database Into Law

With virtually no fanfare, President Bush signed into law a plan ordering the government to take no more than six months to set up a "national contingency plan" to screen newborns' DNA in case of a "public health emergency." According to congressional records, S.1858, sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was approved in the Senate Dec. 13, in the House April 8 and signed by Bush April 24. "Soon, under this bill, the DNA of all citizens will be housed in government genomic biobanks and considered governmental property for government research," said Twila Brase, president of the Citizens' Council on Health Care. "The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research... Genetic testing could be used for purposes found immoral in the Hippocratic medical tradition. For example, a utilitarian use of testing, in this example also immoral, would be to test for conditions which would make an individual less useful to society for the purpose of killing that person, as has been done in some totalitarian systems, such as Nazi Germany..."

Next Generation Of Cognitive Robots

Building robots with anything akin to human intelligence remains a far off vision, but European researchers are making progress on piecing together a new generation of machines that are more aware of their environment and better able to interact with humans. Making robots more responsive would allow them to be used in a greater variety of sophisticated tasks in the manufacturing and service sectors. Such robots could be used as home helpers and caregivers, for example. As research into artificial cognitive systems (ACS) has progressed in recent years it has grown into a highly fragmented field. Some researchers and teams have concentrated on machine vision, others on spatial cognition, and on human-robot interaction, among many other disciplines. All have made progress, but, as the EU-funded project CoSy (Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants) has shown, by working together the researchers can make even more advances in the field. “We have brought together one of the broadest and most varied teams of researchers in this field,” says Geert-Jan Kruijff, the CoSy project manager at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence. “This has resulted in an ACS architecture that integrates multiple cognitive functions to create robots that are more self-aware, understand their environment and can better interact with humans.” The CoSy ACS is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. It incorporates a range of technologies from a design for cognitive architecture, spatial cognition, human-robot interaction and situated dialogue processing, to developmental models of visual processing. “We have learnt how to put the pieces of ACS together, rather than just studying them separately,” adds Jeremy Wyatt, one of the project managers at the UK’s University of Birmingham. The researchers have made the ACS architecture toolkit they developed available under an open source license. They want to encourage further research. The toolkit has already sparked several spin-off initiatives.

New Disaster Preparedness Strategy

In an unprecedented initiative, US and Canadian experts have developed a comprehensive framework to optimize and manage critical care resources during times of mass critical care disasters. The new proposal suggests legally protecting clinicians who follow accepted protocols for the allocation of scarce resources when providing care during mass critical care events. The framework represents a major step forward to uniformly deliver sufficient critical care during catastrophes and maximize the number of victims who have access to potential life-saving interventions. “If a mass casualty critical care event occurred tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health-care system circumstances may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions due to deficiencies in supply, staffing, or space.” As a result, the Task Force for Mass Critical Care developed an emergency mass critical care (EMCC) framework for hospitals and public health authorities aimed to maximize effective critical care surge capacity," said Asha Devereaux, MD, FCCP, Task Force for Mass Critical Care.

Real-Life Iron Man Robotic Suit

The prospect of slipping into a robotic exoskeleton that could enhance strength, keep the body active while recovering from an injury or even serve as a prosthetic limb has great appeal. Unlike the svelt body armor donned by Iron Man, however, most exoskeletons to date have looked more like clunky spare parts cobbled together. Japan's CYBERDYNE, Inc. is hoping to change that with a sleek, white exoskeleton now in the works that it says can augment the body's own strength or do the work of ailing (or missing) limbs. The company is confident enough in its new technology to have started construction on a new lab expected to mass-produce up to 500 robotic power suits (think Star Wars storm trooper without the helmet) annually, beginning in October, according to Japan's Kyodo News Web site. CYBERDYNE is not the only company developing exoskeleton technology. The U.S. Army is in the very early stages of testing an aluminum exoskeleton created by Sarcos, a Salt Lake City robotics and medical device manufacturer (and a division of defense contractor Raytheon), to improve soldiers' strength and endurance. The exoskeleton is made of a combination of sensors, actuators and controllers, and can help the wearer lift 200 pounds several hundred times without tiring, the company said recently in a press release. The company also claims the suit is agile enough to play soccer and climb stairs and ramps.

Google to Read Your Genome

Gene-sequencing technology is taking off, but George Church at Harvard University is taking it to the next level: he wants to sequence the genomes of 100,000 people. Right now, about 12 human genomes have been sequenced and Church's ambitious plan is likely to cost cost around $1 billion to complete. Recently Google — who in February announced its Google Health software for storing electronic medical records — agreed to foot a major part of the bill. Google gives us free email, chat, search, a shopping client, and so on and all they've ever asked is that we let them look at all over our most private information. Seems like a fair trade, but does that extend to our DNA? Church has good reasons for wanting piles of genomic data. As a Bloomberg article on the project says: By matching genetic data from each person with his or her health history, Church would build a database that would link DNA variations and disease for scientists and drugmakers, the first step in deciding on treatments that can block the mutations or adjust how they work within the body. Church also said he'll explore other human traits under genetic control. Participants will give facial and body measurements, tell researchers what time they get up in the morning, and detail other behaviors, he said. Church has already partially sequenced genomes from 10 people, and the jump to 100,000 is under review by a Harvard ethics panel. The project ``only stops when we stop learning things,'' Church said. We should note: there's no evidence of wrongdoing here, and Google has never explicitly said "we want to organize genetic information." True, they are major investors in the personal genomics company 23andMe, but we have every reason to believe that Big brother "don't be evil" Google will play it straight, keeping any information they have access to safe and anonymous. But still you've got to wonder, does Google want direct access to DNA information? And if so, why?

Christianity without Christ Worldwide

There is a Bible on a pedestal in Gretta Vosper's West Hill United Church in Toronto. She would prefer it did not have a special place, she said, because it is just a book among other books. In a similar way, the cross that is high above the altar has no special meaning, but there are a few older congregants for whom the Bible and the cross are still nice symbols so there they remain. Though an ordained minister, she does not like the title of reverend. It is one of those symbols that hold the church back from breaking into the future -- to a time "when the label Christian won't even exist" and the Church will be freed of the burdens of the past. To balance out those symbols of the past inside West Hill, there is a giant, non-religious rainbow tapestry just behind the altar and multi-coloured streamers hang from the ceiling. "The central story of Christianity will fade away," she explained. "The story about Jesus as the symbol of everything that Christianity is will fade away." Even Rev. Giuliano agrees that the name Christian -- which carries the baggage of colonialism and other ills -- should probably be phased out. Instead, he would replace "Christian" with "Follower of the Way" or "Follower of Jesus." But it is an absolute certainty that Ms. Vosper would not go for "Follower of Jesus." Ms. Vosper does not believe in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and the sacrament of baptism. Nor does she believe in the creeds, the presence of Christ in communion or that Jesus was the Son of God. In With or Without God, her book that was formally launched this week, she writes that Jesus was a "Middle Eastern peasant with a few charismatic gifts and a great posthumous marketing team." The Bible is used in her services, but it gets rewritten to be more contemporary and speak to more people. Even the Lord's Prayer -- also known as the Our Father -- does not make the cut because it creates an image of a God who intervenes in human existence. And then there is the "Father" part that is not inclusive language and carries with it the notion of an overbearing tyrant who condemns people to hell.

Medvedev Gets 'Nuclear Suitcase'

Russia's newly sworn-in President Dmitry Medvedev was handed over the so-called "nuclear suitcase" containing codes and buttons to authorise a strike against an enemy by the country's strategic nuclear forces. 42-year-old Medvedev, who was sworn in to succeed Vladimir Putin hours earlier, took command of the arsenal as the new Supreme Commander of the Russian Armed Forces by two ADCs of the rank of colonels at a brief ceremony in Kremlin. Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and military officers were present on the occasion, according to the Kremlin press service.

DNA of trees worldwide for database

The New York Botanical Garden may be best known for its orchid shows and colorful blossoms, but its researchers are about to lead a global effort to capture DNA from thousands of tree species from around the world. The Bronx garden is hosting a meeting this week where participants from various countries will lay the groundwork for how the two-year undertaking to catalog some of the Earth's vast biodiversity will proceed. The project is known as TreeBOL, or tree barcode of life. As in a similar project under way focusing on the world's fish species, participants would gather genetic material from trees around the world. A section of the DNA would be used as a barcode, similar to way a product at the grocery store is scanned to bring up its price. But with plants and animals, the scanners look at the specific order of the four basic building blocks of DNA to identify the species. The resulting database will help identify many of the world's existing plant species, where they are located and whether they are endangered. The results are crucial for conservation and protecting the environment as population and development increases, said Damon Little, assistant curator of bioinformatics at the Botanical Garden and coordinator of the project. "If you don't know what you're potentially destroying, how can you know if it's important or not?" he said. "We know so little about the natural world, when it comes down to it, even though we've been working on it for hundreds of years." The undertaking is massive. Trees make up 25 percent of all plants, and Little estimates there could be as many as 100,000 species. The participants hail from countries such as South Africa, India, and, of course, the United States.

Troops to use electronic insects

It may have seemed like just another improbable scene from a Hollywood sci-fi flick – Tom Cruise battling against an army of robotic spiders intent on hunting him down. But the storyline from Minority Report may not be quite as far fetched as it sounds. British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives. Prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year, scuttling into potential danger areas such as booby-trapped buildings or enemy hideouts to relay images back to troops safely positioned nearby. Soldiers will carry the robots into combat and use a small tracked vehicle to transport them closer to their targets. Then they would swarm into the building and relay images back to the soldiers' hand-held or wrist-mounted computers, warning them of any threats inside. BAE Systems has just signed a £19million contract to develop the robots for the US Army. Researchers hope they will eventually create machines that can fly like a butterfly and plans for a creature that can crawl like a spider are said to be well developed, and researchers eventually hope to be able to create creatures that can slither like a snake or fly like a dragonfly. While some of the creatures will be fitted with small cameras, others will be equipped with sensors that will be able to detect the presence of chemical, biological or radioactive weapons. A computer-generated video from BAE Systems shows the tiny invaders being released by a soldier, before scouting out a suspect building, which is finally blown up by ground forces. BAE Systems scientists from the UK and America plan an army of the electronic bugs, and have ambitions to equip every front-line soldier with them. Programme manager Steve Scalera was inspired by the way creatures use their senses to detect danger.

Stronger Emerging Surveillance State

A new measure, if it becomes law, will result in more government surveillance of innocent Americans without warrants, according to Congressman Ron Paul in his weekly column "Texas Straight Talk". Last month, the House amended the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to expand the government's ability to monitor our private communications. Some opponents claim that the only controversial part of this legislation is its grant of immunity to telecommunications companies. But a deeper look into the bill reveals much more about which to be wary. In the House version, Title II, Section 801, immunity from prosecution of civil legal action is extended to people and companies including any provider of an electronic communication service, any provider of a remote computing service, "any other communication service provider who has access to wire or electronic communications", any "parent, subsidiary, affiliate, successor, or assignee" of such company", any "officer, employee, or agent" of such company, and any "landlord, custodian, or other person who may be authorized or required to furnish assistance".

God Turned "Pre-Humans" Into People

"The formation of human beings necessitated a particular contribution by God, though it remains that their emergence was brought about by natural causes" of evolution, it said. The article, published in the May 5-6 edition of L'Osservatore Romano, was written by Italian evolutionary biologist Fiorenzo Facchini. The article said that, "when the biological conditions necessary for supporting a being capable of reflective thought were attained, the will of God, the creator, freely desired it, and man came to be." The article posed the question: Does this mean that humans evolved from chimpanzees? "No, it might be better to say that at some point God willed a spark of intelligence to light up in the mind of a nonhuman hominid and thus came into existence the human as a being, as a subject capable of thought and the ability to decide freely," it said. So rather than picturing it as humans descending from the apes, it said, humans ascended or rose up from the animal kingdom to a higher level, thanks to the hand of God.

ID Test Faster, Cheaper than DNA

Federal researchers say they've developed a human identification test that's faster and possibly cheaper than DNA testing," according to the AP. "It would be a handy new weapon in the arsenal for detectives, forensic experts and the military, though no one expects it to replace DNA analysis — and its promoters say it is not intended to." The new method analyzes antibodies. Each person has a unique antibody bar code that can be gleaned from blood, saliva or other bodily fluids. Antibodies are proteins used by the body to fend off viruses or perform routine physiological housekeeping. "DNA is a physical code that describes you ... and in many ways so are your antibodies," said Dr. Vicki Thompson (right), a chemical engineer at the Idaho National Laboratory who's been working with other researchers to perfect the test for the past 10 years. [Back in 2002, she developed a method for using the antibodies to crack down on drug-test cheaters. The scientists say an antibody profile can yield results faster and more cheaply and be performed in the field with minimal training. National lab administrators have licensed the technology exclusively to Identity Sciences LLC in Alpharetta, Ga. The Georgia startup plans to begin rolling out test kits and training to law enforcement, the military and forensic and medical labs around the globe by fall of 2009. Ken Haas, vice president of marketing, says the test is not intended to supplant DNA testing, the recognized gold standard in human identification. But Haas says the value of antibody profiling is as a screening tool to help make sense of a crime scene, sort out the blood trails or spatter from multiple victims or more quickly identify body parts on a battlefield or at the scene of a disaster like the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. However, a major drawback for now is the lack of a national antibody database. That's one of the reasons antibody testing is not likely to be used at the outset of an investigation to link suspects to crimes or establish probable cause to justify issuing an arrest warrant.

Al-Qaida Gaining Strength

Attacks in Pakistan more than doubled from 375 to 887 between 2006 and 2007, and the number of fatalities jumped by almost 300 percent from 335 to 1,335, the State Department said in its annual terrorism report. In Afghanistan, the number of attacks rose 16 percent, to 1,127 incidents last year, killing 1,966 people, 55 percent more than the 1,257 who died in 2006, it said. More than 22,000 people were killed by terrorists around the world in 2007, 8 percent more than in 2006. The report once again identifies Iran as the world's "most active" state sponsor of terrorism for supporting Palestinian extremists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it says elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps continued to give militants weapons, training and funding. "In this way, Iranian government forces have been responsible for attacks on coalition forces," State Department counter terrorism coordinator Dell Dailey told reporters. Iranian forces are also giving weapons and financial aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan, he said.

Signs point to a 2015 Return of Jesus

And can studying NASA's website provide evidence for such a scenario? A minister who promotes the Old Testament roots of Christianity suggests a rare string of lunar and solar eclipses said to fall on God's annual holy days seven years from now could herald what's come to be known as the "Second Coming" of Jesus. "God wants us to look at the biblical calendar," says Mark Biltz, pastor of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash. "The reason we need to be watching is [because] He will signal His appearance. But we have to know what to be watching as well. So we need to be watching the biblical holidays." In a video interview on the Prophecy in the News website, Biltz said he's been studying prophecies that focus on the sun and moon, even going back to the book of Genesis where it states the lights in the sky would be "be for signs, and for seasons." "It means a signal, kind of like 'one if by land, two if by sea.' It's like God wants to signal us," he said. "The Hebrew word implies ... not only is it a signal, but it's a signal for coming or His appearing." Biltz adds the word "seasons" implies appointed times for God's feasts and festivals. In the Old Testament, the prophet Joel states, "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come." (Joel 2:31) In the New Testament, Jesus is quoted as saying, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light ... And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." (Matthew 24:29-30). Thus, Biltz began focusing on the precise times of both solar and lunar eclipses, sometimes called "blood moons" since the moon often takes on a bloody color. He logged onto NASA's eclipse website which provides precision tracking of the celestial events. He noted a rare phenomenon of four consecutive total lunar eclipses, known as a tetrad. He says during this century, tetrads occur at least six times, but what's interesting is that the only string of four consecutive blood moons that coincide with God's holy days of Passover in the spring and the autumn's Feast of Tabernacles (also called Succoth) occurs between 2014 and 2015 on today's Gregorian calendar. "The fact that it doesn't happen again in this century I think is very significant," Biltz explains. "So then I looked at last century, and, believe it or not, the last time that four blood red moons occurred together was in 1967 and 1968 tied to Jerusalem recaptured by Israel." He then started to notice a pattern of the tetrads. "What's significant to me is that even before 1967, the next time that you had four blood red moons again was right after Israel became a nation in '48, it happened again in 1949 and 1950 ... on Passover and Succoth. You didn't have any astronomical tetrads in the 1800s, the 1700s, the 1600s. In the 1500s, there were six, but none of those fell on Passover and Succoth." When checking the schedule for solar eclipses, Biltz found two – one on the first day of the Hebrew year and the next on the high holy day of Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the seventh Hebrew month. Both of these take place in the 2014-2015 year. The sun's corona becomes visible during a solar eclipse. Biltz says, "You have the religious year beginning with the total solar eclipse, two weeks later a total lunar eclipse on Passover, and then the civil year beginning with the solar eclipse followed two weeks later by another total blood red moon on the Feast of Succoth all in 2015." "In my 50-something years of studying prophecy, to me the greatest indication of the time of Christ's return is based around the general things of prophecies coming together in the same time frame." He mentioned not only Israel's birth as a political state in 1948, but the increase in tensions with Muslims, the rise of Russia, China and the European Union, which he says is even "calling itself the revived Roman Empire." "I see the whole sweep and panorama spinning together in a precise scenario," he said.

Ghosts Haunt Survivors Of Burma Cyclone

The stench of death hung over the Irrawaddy delta town of Labutta, where the blackened bodies of people and animals, rotting in the tropical heat, were washed aground as Burma’s cyclone floodwaters receded. Struggling to breathe through the overpowering smells, residents wrapped layers of cloth around their faces and rubbed in balm to mask the odour. Death pervades this town so completely that many said they cannot sleep because ghosts of the cyclone victims torment them. One said: “We can’t sleep at night, because we can hear people shouting at night, these are the ghosts of the villagers." Grossly bloated bodies lay strung out along the roads running atop embankments between paddies in a region that was the country’s rice bowl, but is now the centre of one of the world’s worst natural disasters. One man said: “I cannot describe how I felt when I saw so many dead bodies.”

Army Contract For Mini-Spy Drones

Danger Room at Wired Blogs sums it up nicely: "Usually, our dystopian nightmares of robot domination involve big, substantive machines - man-sized, or better. But many academics and military futurists believe the real power of 'bots will be realized in swarms of tiny mechanical critters." (Think the spiders of Minority Report, instead of the Schwarzeneggers of Terminator.) The massive defense contractor BAE Systems has announced that it will lead a team of academics and military researchers to try to create just those kind of machines." (The picture at right is from a BAE release - not a Tom Cruise flick.)... BAE Systems will lead a team of scientists that will develop miniature robots to improve military situational awareness. The company signed a $38 million agreement with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to lead an alliance of researchers and scientists from the Army, academia and industry. The Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Collaborative Technology Alliance will research and develop advanced robotic equipment for use in urban environments and complex terrain, such as mountains and caves. The alliance will create an autonomous, multifunctional collection of miniature intelligence-gathering robots that can operate in places too inaccessible or dangerous for humans. “Robotic platforms extend the warfighter's senses and reach, providing operational capabilities that would otherwise be costly, impossible, or deadly to achieve,” said Dr. Joseph Mait, MAST cooperative agreement manager for the Army Research Laboratory. “The MAST alliance is a highly collaborative effort, with each partner from government, academia, and industry playing a significant role.” MAST will advance fundamental science and technology for future robotic systems in several key areas, including small-scale aeromechanics and ambulation; propulsion; sensing, processing and communications; navigation and control; microdevices and integration; platform packaging; and systems architectures.

Iran will have the Bomb in 2008

Mofaz was in the US heading an Israeli delegation, which was holding meetings with US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, within the framework of the Israel-US Strategic Dialogue. Iran will likely have nuclear bomb technology in 2008, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz said on April30, citing an updated Israeli intelligence assessment. In the past, the general consensus in the intelligence community has been that Iran had hit some technical difficulties with enrichment and that its attainment of nuclear capability was much further off. In fact, a recent Israeli Military Intelligence assessment showed that the "point of no return" with regards to Iran going nuclear was 2010. However, Mofaz, a former defense minister and IDF chief of General Staff, said in a speech at Yale University, Connecticut, that Iran could have the know-how to build nuclear arms within months. Referring to the Holocaust, Mofaz said that everyone has learned that history sometimes repeats itself but that now the world had an opportunity to ensure that it doesn't. He said "this time," the Jewish people would not let it happen, expressing hope that the world, too, would not let it happen. He called the Iranian regime the central threat to humanity in the 21st century.

Make Fuel From Artificial DNA

J. Craig Venter, one of the pioneers in genetic research, is now one of several scientists leading the way to create synthetic fuel from artificial DNA. In synthetic biology, which is a relatively new field, scientists build DNA “from scratch.” The field, as approached by Venter and his colleagues, “involves stripping microbes down to their basic genetic constituents so they can be reassembled and manipulated to create new life forms.” The technology excites researchers because they may be able to use it to create new fuel sources. Scientists could take natural elements like plant biomass, carbon dioxide or even sugar cane, and turn them into renewable energy. The idea makes sense, says MSN Money, because “fossil fuels are nothing more than stored sunshine in the form of decayed biomatter that’s been cooked and compressed into an easily accessed energy source.” Industrial sociologist Jim Williams, of the Williams Inference Center in Massachusetts, says it’s not a matter of “whether synthetic biology will remake society but who will be in control when it does.”

Chinese build secret submarine base

Satellite imagery, shows that a substantial harbour has been built which could house a score of nuclear ballistic missile submarines and a host of aircraft carriers. In what will be a significant challenge to US Navy dominance and to countries ringing the South China Sea, one photograph shows China’s latest 094 nuclear submarine at the base just a few hundred miles from its neighbours. Other images show numerous warships moored to long jettys and a network of underground tunnels at the Sanya base on the southern tip of Hainan island. Of even greater concern to the Pentagon are massive tunnel entrances, estimated to be 60ft high, built into hillsides around the base. Sources fear they could lead to caverns capable of hiding up to 20 nuclear submarines from spy satellites. The US Department of Defence has estimated that China will have five 094 nuclear submarines operational by 2010 with each capable of carrying 12 JL-2 nuclear missiles. Analysts for the respected military magazine suggest that the base could be used for "expeditionary as well as defensive operations" and would allow the submarines to "break out to launch locations closer to the US". It would now be "difficult to ignore" that China was building a major naval base where it could house its nuclear forces and increase it "strategic capability considerably further afield". The development so close to the sea lanes vital to Asian economies "can only cause concern far beyond these straits". While it has been known that China might be developing an underground base at Sanya, the pictures provide the first proof of the base’s existence and the rapid progress made. Two 950 metre piers and three smaller ones would be enough to accommodate two carrier strike groups or amphibious assault ships. Christian Le Miere, editor for Jane's Intelligence Review, said the complex underlined Beijing’s plan “to assert tighter control over this region". "This is a challenge to any hegemonic power, particularly the US which still remains dominant in the region."

Electronics 'missing link' found

Details of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists. The new components, described by scientists at Hewlett-Packard, are known as "memristors". The devices were proposed 40 years ago but have only recently been fabricated, the team wrote in the journal Nature. They have already been used to build novel transistors - tiny switches that are the building blocks of all chips. "Now we have this type of device we have a broader palette with which to paint our circuits," Professor Stan Williams, one of the team said. Memristors were first proposed in 1971 by Professor Leon Chua, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the "fourth" basic building block of circuits, after capacitors, resistors and inductors. "I never thought I'd live long enough to see this happen," Professor Chua told the Associated Press. "I'm thrilled because it's almost like vindication. Something I did is not just in my imagination, it's fundamental." The memristors are so called because they have the ability to "remember" the amount of charge that has flowed through them after the power has been switched off. This could allow researchers to build new kinds of computer memory that would would not require powering up. Today, most PCs use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which loses data when the power is turned off. But a computer built with memristors could allow PCs that start up instantly, laptops that retain sessions after the battery dies, or mobile phones that can last for weeks without needing a charge. "If you turn on your computer it will come up instantly where it was when you turned it off," Professor Williams told Reuters. "That is a very interesting potential application, and one that is very realistic." Intriguingly, these devices can also be made much smaller than a conventional transistor. "And as they get smaller they get better," he said.

Police: Black Uniforms to Instill Fear

The city's new police commissioner, William Fitchet, says members of the department's Street Crime Unit will again don black, military-style uniforms as part of his strategy to deal with youth violence. Fitchet's predecessor, Edward Flynn, had ditched the black attire as part of an effort to soften the image of the unit. Flynn left Springfield in January to become the police chief in Milwaukee. Sgt. John Delaney told a city council hearing Wednesday that the stark uniforms send a message to criminals that officers are serious about making arrests. Delaney said a sense of "fear" has been missing for the past few years.

Bill to Ban Human-Animal Hybrid Clones

Pro-life groups are backing a new Congressional bill that would ban the creation of hybrid clones with both human and animal parts. Rep. Chris Smith introduced the bill last week in the House of Representatives at a time when British lawmakers are considering allowing the practice. The measure is the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act (H.R. 5910) and Senator Sam Brownback introduced the Senate companion bill last fall. Several pro-life groups have already pledged to support the bill because the creation of the clones will involve the destruction of human life. They also oppose manipulating human and animal DNA to create hybrids. Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on pro-life activities, welcomed the legislation as “an opportunity to rein in an egregious and disturbing misuse of technology to undermine human dignity.”

The Sum Of All Fears For Our Cities

One of the most terrifying possibilities the world faces is that al-Qa'eda, or some other Islamist group, gets hold of a nuclear bomb. Islamist terrorists are certainly trying to obtain one: Osama bin Laden has issued a document entitled "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam", which insists it is "the duty" of Muslims to acquire a nuclear bomb in order to use "as much force as possible to terrorise the enemies of God".The Foreign Office's senior counter-terrorist official has "no doubt at all" that Islamist terrorists are actively seeking a nuclear device. "There are people" he adds dryly, "for whom exploding a nuclear bomb in a city would be a triumph for the cause." A 10 kiloton nuclear bomb would be a relatively small one by today's standards, but a 10 kiloton explosion in a city would mean that, from the centre of the blast for a distance of one third of a mile, every structure above ground level would be obliterated and every person would be killed instantly. For the next third of a mile, the city would look like the weird moonscape which Berlin had become by the end of World War Two, after almost a year of Allied bombing raids. And for a third of mile beyond that circle of hell, buildings and people would burn, both with flames and the effects of radiation. To consider that outcome is to realise that it must be prevented. But how? Deterrence - the threat that if you detonate a nuclear bomb in our country, we will retaliate in kind on yours - has so far prevented nuclear war between nations. The only time nuclear bombs have been used, it was against a country without the capacity to retaliate. Deterrence, however, depends on your enemy having cities and a population that can be threatened with obliteration.

Future computers will talk and feel

A computer that can interact with humans and react to their non-verbal gestures is being developed by a European team. Known as SEMAINE, the project will build a sensitive artificial listener (SAL) system, which will perceive user’s facial expression, gaze, and voice and then engage with the user. When engaging with a human, the SAL will be able to adapt its own performance and pursue different actions, depending on the non-verbal behaviour of the use. SEMAINE is led by DFKI, the German centre for research on artificial intelligence and partnered by Imperial College London, Universities of Paris, Twente in Holland and Technical University of Munich. Roddy Cowie, of Queen’s University Belfast, said: “A basic feature of human communication is that it is coloured by emotion. When we talk to another person, the words are carried on an undercurrent of signs that show them what attracts us, what bores us and so on.” “The fact that computers do not currently do this is one of the main reasons why communicating with them is so unlike interacting with a human. It is also one of the reasons we can find them so frustrating,” he added. “SEMAINE and projects like it will change the way people interact with technology. They mean that you will be talking to your computer in 20 years time. When you do, pause for a minute, and remember that the human sciences at Queen’s helped to lay the groundwork,” he added.

Who Cares About Your DNA?

When the elite want something, they are not above cheating their way to it. We see this example easily with mainstream media’s blackout of Ron Paul and Mike Gravel as presidential candidates, despite the candidates’ novel ideas. Candidates not elite-anointed are dismissed as crackpots and ignored by the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream propaganda outlets because they do not further the elite’s plans, which include tracking and surveillance that closely emulate plans laid out by Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. One sneaky way that the elite obtain their goals is to use a voice vote, which is what recently happened with H.R. 3825, a giant step toward the Brave New World that Huxley described. H.R. 3825 and S. 1858, soon to be rubber-stamped by King Jorge unless there is a massive protest along with a miracle, gives the federal government authority over every newborn’s DNA, without parental consent. Not only the average Oprah and Dr. Phil watcher, but many alert citizens are also unaware of this horrid legislation, which will make any newborn’s DNA government property.

Myanmar Cyclone Deaths Could Top 10,000

The death toll from a devastating cyclone in Myanmar could reach more than 10,000 in the low-lying area where the storm wreaked the most havoc, the country's foreign minister warned Monday. Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian country, also known as Burma, early Saturday with winds of up to 120 mph. It knocked out electricity to the country's largest city, Yangon, and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Some sought refuge at Buddhist monasteries while others lined up Monday to buy candles, which had doubled in price, and water since the lack of electricity-driven pumps had left most households dry. Myanmar is not known to have an adequate disaster warning system and many rural buildings are constructed of thatch, bamboo and other materials easily destroyed by fierce storms. "The government misled people. They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared," said Thin Thin, a grocery store owner. The radio station broadcasting from the country's capital, Naypyitaw, said 3,939 people had been killed. Another 2,879 people were unaccounted for in a single town, Bogalay, in the country's low-lying Irrawaddy River delta area. But Foreign Minister Nyan Win told Yangon-based diplomats that the death toll could rise to more than 10,000 in the Irrawaddy delta, according to Asian diplomats at the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity because it was held behind closed doors. Myanmar's ruling junta, which has spurned the international community for decades, appealed for aid on Monday. But the U.S. State Department said Myanmar's government had not granted permission for a Disaster Assistance Response Team into the country. Laura Blank, spokeswoman for World Vision, said two assessment teams have been sent to the hardest hit areas to determine the most urgent needs.

3-4 Nanotech Items Introduced Weekly

New nanotechnology consumer products are coming on the U.S. market at the rate of 3-4 per week, according to the latest update to the nanotechnology consumer product inventory maintained by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN). On April24, in testimony before the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, PEN Director David Rejeski cited Ace Silver Plus -- one of the nine nano toothpastes in the inventory -- as an example of the upsurge in nanotechnology consumer products in stores. April 24ths hearing marks the start of U.S. Senate debate on the future direction of the annual 1.5 billion U.S. dollars federal investment in nanotechnology research and development, said PEN. While polls show most Americans know little or nothing about nanotechnology, in 2006 nanotechnology was incorporated into more than 50 billion U.S. dollars in manufactured goods. Worldwide, the investment in nanotech research and development registered 12.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2006.

Bill Opens Door To Genetic Medicine

Proponents say the new law, more than a dozen years in the making, would help usher in an age of genetic medicine, in which DNA tests might help predict if a person is at risk of a disease, allowing action to be taken to prevent it. Some of the tests already exist, like one for breast cancer risk, and new ones are being introduced almost every month. But backers of the legislation say many people are afraid of taking such tests because they fear the results would be used to deny them employment or health insurance. “This bill removes a significant obstacle to the advancement of personalized medicine,” said Edward Abrahams, the executive director of the Personalized Medicine Coalition. His group is an organization of drug and diagnostic companies, academic institutions and patient groups that advocate using genetic information to choose the most appropriate treatment for each patient.

Quick Way to Create Human Antibodies

Researchers have devised a rapid and efficient method for generating protein sentinels of the immune system, called monoclonal antibodies, which mark and neutralize foreign invaders. The development could potentially accelerate the traditionally challenging task of generating human antibodies, which can be used both to develop faster disease diagnostics -- for instance, to test for a new flu strain shortly after it emerges -- as well as safer and more effective medications, including vaccines. "I think it's an important, incremental advance in our ability to provide antigen-specific monoclonal antibodies quickly and efficiently," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He was not involved with the study, but the institute did fund some of the research.

Weather Modification May Backfire

Planetary engineering projects to cool the planet could backfire quite spectacularly: a new model shows that a "sulphate sunshade" would punch huge holes through the ozone layer above the Arctic. To make matters worse, it would also delay the full recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by up to 70 years. Pumping tiny sulphate particles into the atmosphere to create a sunshield that would keep the planet cool was first suggested as a solution to global warming by Edward Teller, a physicist was best known for his involvement in the development of the hydrogen bomb. Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, US, used computer models to see how a sulphate sunshade would affect the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful UV rays. She says it could have "a drastic impact".

Doomsday Police To Patrol NY Subways

NYPD cops armed with rifles, submachine guns, body armor and bomb-sniffing dogs will start patrolling the city's subways on April 25 - a first for mass transit in the United States. Teams of six officers and a dog will patrol subway platforms and trains in 12-hour shifts. The TORCH teams are being paid for by $151 million from the feds announced in February. Similarly equipped NYPD units, known as Hercules teams, have patrolled Wall Street and other aboveground icons as part of the NYPD response to the World Trade Center attacks. "The TORCH teams are Hercules teams with a MetroCard," a police source said.

IAF Chief: Iran Nuclear Threat Real

The commander of the Israeli air force takes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel extremely seriously. Israelis must be ready for anything and ultimately trust only themselves, he believes, and for good reason: his family survived the Holocaust. "I think it is a very serious threat to the state of Israel, but more than this, to the whole world," Shkedy says of the Iranian leader’s public animosity toward Israel. "They are talking about what they think about the state of Israel. They are talking about destroying and wiping us from the earth," he tells Simon. It reminds him of the Holocaust. "We should remember. We cannot forget. We should trust only ourselves." The general likens ignoring Ahmadinejad today to the atmosphere that enabled the Holocaust yesterday. "In those days, people didn't believe that Hitler was serious about what he said. I suggest not to repeat this way of thinking, and to prepare ourselves for what they are planning," says Shkedy. "We should be prepared for everything."

Birds can see Earth's magnetic field

It has been debated for nearly four decades but no one has yet been able to prove it is chemically possible. Now good evidence suggests that birds can actually "see" the lines of the Earth's magnetic field. Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois, proposed forty years ago that some animals – including migratory birds – must have molecules in their eyes or brains which respond to magnetism. The problem has been that no one has been able to find a chemical sensitive enough to be influenced by Earth's weak geomagnetic field. Now Peter Hore and colleagues at the University of Oxford have found one. Cryptochromes are a class of light-sensitive proteins found in plants and animals, and are thought to play a role in the circadian clock, in regulating plant growth, and timing coral sex. A few years ago, Henrik Mouritsen of the University of Oldenburg in Germany showed that they were present in the retinal neurons of migratory garden warblers, and that these cells were active at dusk, when the warblers were performing magnetic orientation. Cryptochromes have not yet been made in the lab and obtaining them is difficult, but Hore's team has now shown that a related molecule – a carotenoid-porphyrin-fullerene triad – with similar chemical properties to cryptochromes is sensitive to weak magnetism. Like cryptochromes, the CPF molecule, made by Devens Gust of Arizona State University, US, is stimulated by light of specific wavelengths to produce two free radicals. Hore found that he could control the concentrations of each free radical in a solution of CPF by applying a magnetic field. Hore says most chemists would have predicted that the extremely weak magnetic field could not possibly have an effect on molecules because the electromagnetism would be completely swamped by the molecules' inherent energy. "They are just tiny, tiny perturbations," he says. But how could this influence the direction taken by a migrating bird? Birds appear to orientate at dusk, and cryptochromes form their pair of free radicals when "activated" by the blue light typical of dusk. Hore suggests that dusk might activate the birds' magnetic sense, producing the radical pair. The concentrations of each free radical would be controlled by the Earth's magnetic field, which is known to vary with latitude. As a result, he speculates, the radicals would bind in varying degrees with other signalling molecules, depending on how far north or south the animal is.

Nuclear Attack On US A Certainty

In "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe," I present the evidence for the proposition that on the current trajectory, a successful terrorist nuclear attack devastating one of the great cities of the world is inevitable. I offer my own considered judgment that if all the governments stay on autopilot, doing no more and no less than they are doing today, a nuclear 9/11 is more likely than not within a decade... Former Defense Secretary William J. Perry has expressed that my work actually underestimates the risk. Warren Buffet, the world's most successful investor and legendary odds-maker in pricing insurance policies for unlikely but catastrophic events, concluded that nuclear terrorism is "inevitable." As he has stated: "I don't see any way that it won't happen." Are there real and serious adversaries of the United States intent on conducting a terrorist nuclear attack on the homeland? Yes.

Is UFO a flying witch ?

Sensational sightings of a flying 'Human' above the skies of Mexico could be genuine, says a paranormal expert. The mysterious woman-like figure was caught on camera as it hovered above mountains in Nuevo Leon city. UFO watchers said the figure appeared to be wearing a cape leading to claims that it was a witch or wizard when it was first seen in 2006. Now Mexico’s leading Ufologist Anna Luisa Cid says the sightings were true after carrying out her own investigations. She said: I think that the possibility is there. An imaginary object is not recorded on film, nor it produces over 40 witnesses. Nuevo Lei UFO club managed to film the spooky flying character. And policeman Leonardo Samaniego also claimed a floating person had dropped out of the sky and landed on his bonnet. Ms Cid told the Ghosttheory.com website: On conclusion, from my professional point of view, both cases are real. Officer Samaniego’s experience to the UFO club’s video. I do not believe the entity to be a witch, but I do know that it is something that we cannot explain.

Space Spiderwebs To Propel Probes

A new type of solar sail has been woven by a team of scientists in Finland. The spiderweb-like sail is designed to catch the wind of ionised gas that blows from the Sun, carrying spacecraft to the outer reaches of the solar system, or letting them tack back and forth through the asteroid belt on exploration or mining missions. The new sail differs from the more conventional type of solar sail, which is designed use the gentle pressure of sunlight to move a spacecraft. Instead of catching sunlight, Pekka Janhunen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki is aiming to sail using the solar wind, a tenuous plasma of electrons and positive ions blowing out through the solar system at speeds of hundreds of kilometres per second.

War Backfiring: Terrorists Expanding

The US "war on terror" has backfired, strengthening extremists in Afghanistan and Somalia and turning them into legitimate political actors in the eyes of their local populations, a thinktank said today. The Senlis Council, which has strongly criticised US policy in Afghanistan in the past, is particularly scathing of the Bush administration's "abject policy failures" in Somalia. It said air strikes, support for Ethiopian troops that attacked Somalia last year and the ill-timed designation of a radical Islamist group, al-Shabab, as a terrorist group had been successfully exploited by the insurgency to boost recruitment. "The lack of strategic acumen present in the 'war on terror' in Somalia and Afghanistan is in fact enabling the spread of the insurgencies present throughout both countries," said Norine MacDonald QC, the council president. "The US is the common denominator in both countries – instead of containing the extremist elements in Somalia and Afghanistan, US policies have facilitated the expansion of territory that al-Shabab and the Taliban have psychological control over."

Deadly virus kills 21 kids in China

A deadly virus has spread rapidly in eastern China, killing at least 21 children and infecting nearly 3,000, Xinhua news agency said on May 2. Enterovirus 71 began spreading in Fuyang in the eastern province of Anhui in early March but authorities only reported it publicly on Sunday, saying there had been 789 cases. By May 1, the number had risen to 2,946, Xinhua said. Enteroviruses are spread mostly through contact with infected blisters or faeces and can cause high fever, paralysis and swelling of the brain or its lining. There are no vaccines or antiviral agents available to treat or prevent the virus. "There was one more fatality on Thursday afternoon, so the latest death toll is 21," Xinhua said, citing Anhui's health chief. The delay in reporting the virus to the public has triggered heated discussion and criticism in the Chinese media, which said local government officials should be sacked. But the Health Ministry has come to the defense of the Fuyang government, saying the belated reporting was because medical teams were trying to work out what the illness was. Officials have said that almost all of those infected were children under the age of six and most were under two. A total of 879 children were still in hospital for treatment, with nine in critical condition, while 849 had fully recovered, Xinhua said. "The majority of the new patients have shown only light symptoms and the rapid increase of infections is partly due to better reporting and public awareness," the Beijing News on Friday quoted an Anhui government spokeswoman as saying. Health officials said people could take simple hygiene steps to prevent the spread of the virus. Treatment for the viral infection focuses on managing its complications, which can include meningitis and heart failure, according to the World Health Organization.

High-Tech Defense Perimeter for NY City

At the southernmost end of Brooklyn, just off Dead Horse Bay, there's a weather-beaten helipad where the New York Police Department keeps a gray unmarked twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter. Detective Brendan Galligan ushers me aboard. "We don't really let people see this," he says. We climb in behind the pilot and find ourselves facing a console with three screens: One shows a map of the city; another, an interface for checking license plates and addresses; and the third, the view from a gyro-stabilized L-3 Wescam camera attached to the chopper's nose. The camera can see clear across the city, in both the visible and the infrared slices of the spectrum; then it can broadcast the images to police headquarters using an onboard microwave transmitter.

Brazil Oil May End Middle East Hold

Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude, Strategic Forecasting Inc. Saudi Arabia's influence as the biggest oil exporter would wane if the fields are as big as advertised, and China and India would become dominant buyers of Persian Gulf oil, said Peter Zeihan, vice president of analysis at Strategic Forecasting in Austin, Texas. Zeihan's firm, which consults for companies and governments around the world, was described in a 2001 Barron's article as ``the shadow CIA.'' Brazil may be pumping ``several million'' barrels of crude daily by 2020, vaulting the nation into the ranks of the world's seven biggest producers, Zeihan said in a telephone interview. The U.S. Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf and adjacent waters would be reduced, leaving the region exposed to more conflict, he said. ``We could see that world becoming a very violent one,'' said Zeihan, former chief of Middle East and East Asia analysis for Strategic Forecasting. ``If the United States isn't getting any crude from the Gulf, what benefit does it have in policing the Gulf anymore? All of the geopolitical flux that wracks that region regularly suddenly isn't our problem.'' Brazil's state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA in November said the offshore Tupi field may hold 8 billion barrels of recoverable crude. Among discoveries in the past 30 years, only the 15-billion-barrel Kashagan field in Kazakhstan is larger. Haroldo Lima, director of the country's oil agency, last week said another subsea field, Carioca, may have 33 billion barrels of oil. That would be the third biggest field in history, behind only the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia and Burgan in Kuwait. Analysts Mark Flannery of Credit Suisse Group and Gustavo Gattass of UBS AG challenge the estimate for Carioca. Lima, the Brazilian oil agency director, later attributed the figure to a magazine. Flannery told clients during an April 16 conference call that 600 million barrels is a ``reasonable'' estimate and suggested Lima may have been referring to the entire geologic formation to which Carioca belongs. Carioca is one of seven fields identified so far in the BM- S-9 exploration area, part of a formation called Sugar Loaf. If additional drilling by Petrobras, as Petroleo Brasileiro is known, confirms the Tupi and Carioca estimates, the fields together would contain enough oil to supply every refinery on the U.S. Gulf Coast for 15 years. Petrobras said it needs at least three months to determine how much crude Carioca may hold. Petrobras, Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Norsk Hydro ASA plan to start pumping oil from eight Brazilian fields in the next 2 1/2 years that will produce a combined 1.02 million barrels a day, enough to supply two-thirds of the crude used by U.S. East Coast refineries. More discoveries will follow in Brazil's offshore basins, most of which have yet to be opened to exploration, Zeihan said. Repsol YPF SA, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Devon Energy Corp. are among the producers scouring Brazil's waters for reserves. ``The finds they've got so far are just the tip of the iceberg,'' Zeihan said. ``Brazil is going to change the balance of the global oil markets, and Petrobras will become a geopolitical supermajor.''

Trying More Weather Modification

Sill, Bruintjes and other scientists speaking April 22, at an international conference on weather modification in Westminster said there are possibilities for managing and modifying weather — from making rain to reducing the severity of hurricanes. What is needed, they said, is renewed federal backing of the research. "In terms of the stakes, I think we owe it to the taxpayers to give it our best shot," said Joseph Golden, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Scientists are monitoring more than 150 weather-modification projects in 40 countries, including at least 60 in the Western United States. The projects include wringing additional snow out of clouds for California hydropower and easing droughts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Homeland Response Task Force Coming

The Pentagon will have its first specially trained task force designed to rapidly respond to a catastrophic attack against the United States ready by this fall, a top military commander said last week. Gen. Victor “Gene” Renuart, chief of the U.S. Northern Command, said the brigade-sized unit will consist of military personnel who are trained to help local authorities respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear incident. The unit will have between 4,000 and 4,500 people and come from various bases and specialties across the country. When disaster strikes, those dedicated to the task force will come together to form the unit.

Darpa Wants Telepathic Soldiers

Right now, soldiers on the go have to shout to each other, or flash hand signals, to communicate. Pentagon researchers have an idea for a different way to connect: tapping one another on the shoulder, from up to 300 feet away. Anybody who's grabbed a buzzing cell phone knows a little something about haptics -- the science of communicating through the sense of touch. The brains at DARPA figure those vibrations might be a good way for troops to share info, across noisy urban battlefields. The idea behind this "Tactical Telehaptic Communication" program is to place "electrotactile or vibrotactile arrays... near or on the soldier’s skin" -- and then buzz the G.I. in the appropriate place, to convey a message. A quick pulse on the belly could mean stop; a zap on the shoulder could mean go. The signals would be sent from a haptic glove, up to 100 yards away.

DNA Turns Relatives Into Genetic Finks

He was a church-going father of two, and for more than 30 years Dennis Rader eluded police in the Wichita area, killing 10 people and signing taunting letters with a self-styled monogram: BTK, for Bind Torture Kill. In the end, it was a DNA sample that tied BTK to his crimes. Not his own DNA. But his daughter's. Investigators obtained a court order without the daughter's knowledge for a Pap smear specimen she had given five years earlier at a university medical clinic in Kansas. A DNA profile of the specimen almost perfectly matched the DNA evidence taken from several BTK crime scenes, leading detectives to conclude she was the child of the killer. That allowed police to secure an arrest warrant in February 2005 and end BTK's murderous career.

More Scientists Believing in ET

The reasons not to believe in extra-terrestrial life are steadily dwindling. That is the view of US astronomer Professor Eric Wilcots, who is one of the speakers at SciFest Africa 2008, the annual event which began in Grahamstown on April 16. Wilcots chairs the astronomy department at the University of Wisconsin, a key member of the international team behind the Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) in Sutherland, in the Northern Cape Karoo. If life existed at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench, he said, it was no more improbable that it existed in outer space. “Progress in this sector has been extremely fast. In the mid- 1980s we knew of just one solar system. Now we know of 200. We now know as well that the basic raw materials for life, like amino acids, sugars and methane, are out there in the form of gases between the stars.” Potentially habitable zones where water appears to exist as a liquid have also been identified. “On Europa there is a 3km-thick ice sheet, underneath which we suspect there is water. If there is water, there is quite possibly life in it.

Armageddon May be Coming To The Gulf

There are speculations galore that between now and June, before things slide into the thick of American election, Israel is likely to attack Iran, with the latter reacting with a quick ripostethus starting a mutually bruising war in the gulf. We couldn't care less if either Democrats or Republicans benefit from the possible catastrophe, but it does worry us in this region as to what might happen to Afghanistan and Pakistanboth Iran's neighbours but closely aligned to the United states. India, another US ally whom the US administration has been able to have on her side in its stand-off with Iran, will also matter in the ensuing conflict. How the next armageddon in a region close to ours will be eventually played out in the present milieu is of profound interests to observers. To make matters complex, a number of ethnic economic factors are also involved. Thus, the scenario appears alarmist and, hopefully, it is just that. The June deadline for a possible Israeli assault on Iran has come from diplomats who watch the Middle East closely, some of them having been interacting with Israeli officials, others with Iran and its neighbours in the region. Their lunch matches the circumstantial evidence, not excluding, of course, the increased chatter within the media community about Dick Cheney's visit to the Gulf. Cheney's swing tour included Oman and Israel, and is thought to be of significance. In Israel, he is believed to have given the proverbial green light to Prime Minister Olmert to take the course that best suited him vis-a-vis Iran and its proxies in Syria and Lebanon. Oman, on the other hand offers the best view of the perennially vulnerable Hormuz straits, from where much of the world gets its oil supply. The month of June provides the last clear-weather military opportunity to Israel to pick targets in Iran before rains arrive there in July. Soon after, there will be the excitement of US elections. There are several other indications of the looming disaster. Apart from frequent alerts about Israel distributing gas masks to its citizens, there was the wire agency story during the week from Jerusalem. It quoted Israel's National Infrastructure Minister Ben Eliezer as warning that Israel would respond to any Iranian attack by destroying that country. Ben Eliezer's ominous remark was carried on Israel's public radio. Referring to an ongoing five-day home front defence exercise he claimed that it was not meant to threaten Israel's neighbours, but the “scenarios considered in the exercise could be reality tomorrow.” Dick Cheney, while visiting Israel last month, was told by Defence Minister Ehud Barak that “no option would be ruled out in Israel's attempt to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,”

Jesus: Son of Roman Rapist and Mary

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, "Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee. An Amsterdam publishing house said on April 13, it will publish the Dutch filmmaker's biography of Jesus, "Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait," in September. It will be translated into English in 2009, Marianna Sterk of the publishing house J.M. Meulenhoff said. Verhoeven hopes it will be a springboard for him to raise interest in making a film along the same lines, she said. The 69-year-old director, who also directed "Showgirls" — starring Elizabeth Berkley in one of the most panned films of the '90s — and sci-fi action hits like "Total Recall" and "RoboCop," as well as the sci-fi bust "Starship Troopers," claims he and co-biographer Rob van Scheers have written the most realistic portrayal of Jesus ever published. In addition to suggesting that the Virgin Mary may have been a rape victim, the book will also say that Christ was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot, one of the 12 original apostles of Jesus, as the New Testament states. Kirk Bingaman, director of the pastoral counseling program at Fordham University's Graduate School of Religion, said the idea that Mary was raped and that the rapist was Jesus' father is not new.

EMFs Do Pose a Threat to Your Health

Electricity has become an integral part of our lives, with electromagnetic fields (EMFs) all around us. Electricity certainly makes our lives easier in many ways. Is it possible that electricity is also making our lives shorter? Most experts agree that some limited exposure to EMFs is not a threat. We can feel reasonably safe using a toaster, for example. The problem comes when we are chronically exposed to large does of EMFs such as encountered when living near power lines or sleeping in the room where the power enters the house. Unfortunately, this type of chronic exposure to EMFs applies to millions of Americans. The effect of EMFs on biological tissue remains controversial. Virtually all scientists agree that more research is necessary to determine safe or dangerous levels. What they do know is that iron, which is necessary for healthy blood and is stored in the brain, is highly affected by EMFs. The permeability of the cell membranes of nerves, blood vessels, skin and other organs is also affected, as well as the intricate DNA of the chromosomes. Every bodily biochemical process involves precisely choreographed movement of EMF sensitive atoms, molecules, and ions. Dr. David Carpenter, Dean of the School of Public Health, SUNY, has reported that up to 30 percent of all childhood cancers may be due to exposure to residential power lines. Epidemiological studies in Sweden by Maria Feychting showed that persons exposed to high magnetic fields at home and at work had 3.7 times the risk of developing leukemia compared to those not exposed. Two research reports have identified elevated risks of breast cancer among women working jobs with presumed higher than average exposure to EMFs. If you want to follow the Environmental Protection Agency's advice to prudently avoid EMFs, you may want to invest in a Gauss meter to measure your home, work or school environments, both inside and outside.

Science fiction inspires DARPA weapon

The late Arthur C Clarke is famous for having popularised the geostationary communications satellite in 1945. Now the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working to turn one of his more dangerous ideas into reality. Clarke's 1955 novel Earthlight climaxes in battle between a lunar fortress and three attacking spacecraft. At the height of the battle the defending commander unleashes "The Stiletto", which resembles "a solid bar of light" and pierces one spacecraft "as an entomologist pierces a butterfly with a pin." Clarke's Stiletto is actually: "a jet of molten metal, hurled through space at several hundred kilometres per second by the most powerful electro-magnets ever built." Now DARPA are working on a weapon called MAHEM - Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition - that uses the same principle as Clarke's fictional device. Using magnetic fields it will propel either a narrow jet of molten metal or a chunk of molten metal that morphs into an aerodynamic slug during flight. Unlike Clarke's Stiletto, they will come from a device that generates a powerful electromagnetic field from an explosion, not giant capacitors. The concept resembles existing weapons which use an explosive charge to squirt out a jet of high-velocity molten metal on impact. Known as High-Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT), this type of round has been widely used since the WWII bazooka. Like HEAT devices, MAHEM is currently envisaged as something delivered by a warhead rather than a cannon: "MAHEM could be packaged into a missile, projectile or other platform and delivered close to target for final engagement and kill," says DARPA.