July 2011

Dragonfly drones and cyborg moths: Tiny flying robots set to be the future of spying and rescue missions

July 31, 2011

The next generation of military robots is set to be based on designs inspired by the insect world.The dragonfly drones and cyborg moths, with in-built micro-cameras, could revolutionise spying missions and rescue operations.The advantage of using drones is that they can be used in emergency situations too dangerous for people and in secret military surveillance [...]

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Outsourced: Clinical trials overseas

July 31, 2011

US pharmaceutical companies have moved their operations overseas over the course of the past decade. Instead of testing trial medicines on Americans, more and more of these tests are being carried out on poor people in faraway places. Russia, China, Brazil, Poland, Uganda, and Romania are all hot spots for what is called clinical research [...]

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In Belarus, Just Being Can Prompt an Arrest

July 31, 2011

Iron-fisted authorities in Belarus have responded to a burst of creative modes of protest by young protesters with a rather surreal innovation of their own: a law that prohibits people from standing together and doing nothing. A draft law published Friday prohibits the “joint mass presence of citizens in a public place that has been [...]

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China: Unrest in Kashgar, Xinjiang, leaves 15 dead

July 31, 2011

The violence began on Saturday when two men killed a truck driver, then drove his lorry into pedestrians and attacked them with knives, killing six. One of the attackers also died. On Sunday an explosion killed three people and police shot dead “four suspects”, the Xinhua agency said. Xinjiang has a Muslim Uighur minority and [...]

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IARPA’s “Finder” Is Like Facial Recognition For Backgrounds

July 30, 2011

When your friends show you a picture, what are the chances that you can guess where they were? If it’s around your town, you might be able to figure it out pretty well, or if there’s a major landmark in the background. But what about everywhere else? Could you figure out their location just from [...]

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Pakistani troops aid Bahrain’s crackdown

July 30, 2011

In the following two months, on the back of visits to Islamabad by senior Saudi and Bahraini officials, sources say at least 2,500 former servicemen were recruited by Bahrainis and brought to Manama, increasing the size of their national guard and riot police by as much as 50 per cent. “We know that continued airplanes [...]

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Japan widens ban on radioactive beef to Miyagi Prefecture

July 29, 2011

Japan widened a ban on beef shipments to a second tsunami-hit region on Thursday, citing elevated radiation levels in the meat of animals because of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis. Almost 3,000 cattle feared contaminated with cesium have been shipped nationwide and slaughtered after the animals were fed rice straw exposed to fallout from the [...]

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Australia farmer sues neighbours over GM crops

July 29, 2011

An Australian farmer on Thursday launched legal action against his neighbour after genetically modified canola blew onto his farm, prompting authorities to strip him of his organic licence. Believed to be Australia’s first lawsuit over GM crops, organic farmer Steve Marsh is suing his neighbour Michael Baxter. Marsh wants compensation for the loss of his [...]

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Army Corps Agrees to Pay Whistle-Blower $970K In Iraq Case

July 29, 2011

The dispute is rooted in the frenetic days leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and in a project that came to symbolize the high costs and poor oversight of Iraqi reconstruction efforts. In early 2003, the Army, in secret and without competitive bidding, put KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, in charge [...]

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Recovery, what recovery?

July 29, 2011

The so-called economic “recovery” since mid-2009 was chiefly hype, a veneer of good news to disguise and minimise the awful underlying economic realities. The few (large corporations and the rich) who bear much of the responsibility for the crisis made sure that the government they finance used massive amounts of public money to support a [...]

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Defense Russia’s Arctic force may include paratroopers

July 28, 2011

Units of the Russian Airborne Troops may be deployed in the Arctic as part of a permanent multi-branch contingent in the region, the Airborne Troops chief of staff said on Thursday. Lt. Gen. Nikolai Ignatov said the possibility of paratroopers joining the Arctic contingent was being studied on the orders of the Airborne Troops commander, [...]

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UK’s plan to ‘anonymise’ DNA

July 28, 2011

One of its key features of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, we were assured by Nick Clegg in January, would be an end to the “indefinite storage of innocent people’s DNA”. That seemed to be an unambiguous promise, and a welcome one. Unfortunately, as The Daily Telegraph reveals today, the Government has decided not to [...]

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Apple’s iOS facial recognition could lead to Kinect-like interaction

July 28, 2011

The unearthed APIs are described as “highly sophisticated,” and can determine where a user’s mouth, and left and right eyes are located, as well as process images taken by the iPhone for face detection. Aside from providing Apple an easy way to introduce Faces (which recognizes specific people in iPhoto) to both its own Photos [...]

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MARC FABER: The Debt Fight Is Meaningless, As Governments March Toward Hyperinflation

July 27, 2011

Marc Faber tells King World News: “Yes, I’m sure there will be an agreement, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem of excessive debt and of further, very substantial deficits.    They’ll iron out something with lots of compromises and with spending cuts that are backloaded, in other words they won’t happen immediately.  As we go [...]

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Now France is being dragged into global financial crisis as credit rating could be cut

July 27, 2011

France was dragged into the global financial crisis last night with warnings it could be stripped of its top-notch credit rating without ‘more efforts’ to tackle its debts. The International Monetary Fund told Nicolas Sarkozy’s government that further spending cuts were needed for the country to hit its budget targets in the face of weak [...]

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A sinister cyber-surveillance scheme exposed

July 27, 2011

When President Eisenhower left office in 1960, he provided the American people with a warning. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Sixty years later, the military-industrial [...]

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Rural US disappearing? Population share hits low

July 27, 2011

Rural America now accounts for just 16 percent of the nation’s population, the lowest ever. The latest 2010 census numbers hint at an emerging America where, by midcentury, city boundaries become indistinct and rural areas grow ever less relevant. Many communities could shrink to virtual ghost towns as they shutter businesses and close down schools, [...]

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In Secret, Senate Panel May Re-Up Vast Surveillance Dragnet

July 27, 2011

Most of Congress is busy debating whether to raise the debt ceiling. But starting Thursday, Danger Room is hearing, a group of Senators meeting behind closed doors may consider renewing a controversial law permitting widespread government surveillance of Americans’ communications. That law would be the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which gave the cover of [...]

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Document suggests government estimated 1,600 Fukushima workers exposed to radiation

July 27, 2011

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimated that approximately 1,600 workers partaking in efforts to rein in the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant will be exposed to over 50 millisieverts of radiation, according to a document that emerged July 26 after a citizens’ group lodged a request for access to [...]

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Iranian scientist’s death ‘probably the work of western security agencies’

July 27, 2011

Western security agencies [CIA/Mossad] were most probably behind the killing of an Iranian scientist, analysts have said. Darioush Rezaeinejad, 35, was shot dead by gunmen in eastern Tehran on Saturday, the third murder of a scientist in the city since 2009. The Iranian government’s past responses to such incidents have appeared confused, but from the [...]

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NSA Lawyer Questioned Over Cellphone Location Tracking of Americans

July 26, 2011

Is the government using cellular data to track Americans as they move around the U.S.? According to the general counsel of the National Security Agency, it may have that authority. Matthew Olsen, who is currently at the NSA and has been nominated to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, discussed the possibility at a confirmation hearing [...]

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African land grab threatens food security: study

July 26, 2011

The trend is accelerating as wealthier countries in the Middle East and Asia, particularly China, seek new land to plant crops, lacking enough fertile ground to meet their own food needs, Washington DC-based Worldwatch Institute said. Worldwatch said its researchers interviewed more than 350 farmers’ groups, NGOs, government agencies and scientists over 17 months. The [...]

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DHS Fears a Modified Stuxnet Could Attack U.S. Infrastructure

July 26, 2011

One year after the discovery of a sophisticated worm that was used to attack centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told Congress it fears the same attack could now be used against critical infrastructures in the U.S. DHS “is concerned that attackers could use the increasingly public information about the [...]

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US to continue spy flights after jets ‘pursued’ by China over Taiwan

July 26, 2011

Washington on Tuesday insisted it would continue spy flights over the Taiwan Strait after Chinese jets reportedly chased a US reconnaissance plane into Taiwanese airspace. Adm Mike Mullen, the top US military official, said: “We won’t be deterred from flying in international airspace. The Chinese would see us move out of there. We’re not going [...]

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Police forces come together to create new regional surveillance units

July 25, 2011

Britain’s police forces are forming regional surveillance units with the power to carry out covert and intrusive investigations. Detectives believe the groups will make it easier for the authorities to bug computers, break into properties and interfere with wireless internet networks as part of countersurveillance operations, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Until recently, [...]

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U.S. veteran says he can locate Agent Orange burial site

July 25, 2011

Steve House, a U.S. veteran who claims he was ordered to bury Agent Orange at a U.S. military base in South Korea over three decades ago, said Monday he could locate the exact burial site at Camp Carroll. House, along with another veteran Phil Steward, attended a National Assembly meeting to provide testimonies to South [...]

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Boeing’s Millennium Falcon Floats Using Nazi Technology

July 25, 2011

Boeing is working on a new flat plane that would be able to take off and land vertically using dozens of new pulse jets they call Pulse-Ejector-Thrust-Augmentors. Of course, these things were originally created by Nazis. While a primitive working pulse jet was patented by Russian engineer V.V. Karavodin, it was German engineers Georg Madelung [...]

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Astronomers find largest water reservoir ever, 12 billion years in the past

July 25, 2011

Using a pair of sub-millimeter wavelength telescopes, two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest reservoir of water ever found in the Universe. The water-containing cloud was found near quasar APM 08279+5255, some 12 billion light years from Earth; this means that the radiation seen today from this quasar was emitted when the universe was [...]

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US money ‘being funnelled to the Taliban’

July 25, 2011

Half the main freight companies ferrying food, fuel and building materials to American troops were involved in a “criminal enterprise or support for the enemy” it suggests. Details of the military-led investigation followed a separate report which found America had squandered £21 billion of taxpayers’ money on private sector contracts during a decade of war [...]

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