VOA News – Russia’s parliament is considering a new law that would extend the powers of the country’s secret security agency, the FSB. If the bill is passed, it would restore practices once associated with the infamous KGB. Russia’s security services have steadily regained power and influence under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB officer. Human rights advocates are concerned that the new measures could further curtail the rights of government critics and the independent media. Read article
Telegraph – Pentagon research scientists have taken a first step towards “Transformers”-style shape-shifting cars and aircraft, with a robot that can fold itself like origami into different forms. At the moment the tiny robot – a sheet just half a millimetre thick, scarcely thicker than a piece of paper – only folds itself into a boat, like a child’s toy, or a “paper glider” plane shape. But it is anticipated that in future it will be used to create full-sized cars and aircraft that morph as they move, or robots that can “flow” like mercury into small openings, or multipurpose military uniforms that can adapt to different environments. Read article
Reuters – Iran has barred two U.N. nuclear inspectors from entering the Islamic Republic, increasing tension less than two weeks after Tehran was hit by new U.N. sanctions over its disputed atomic program. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rejected Iran’s reasons for the ban and said it fully supported the inspectors, which Tehran has accused of reporting wrongly that some nuclear equipment was missing. Read article
Guardian – The elusive founder of WikiLeaks, who is at the centre of a potential US national security sensation, has surfaced from almost a month in hiding to tell the Guardian he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert. Julian Assange, a renowned Australian hacker who founded the electronic whistleblowers’ platform WikiLeaks, vanished when a young US intelligence analyst in Baghdad was arrested. Read article
Associated Press – Part of the company once known as Blackwater Worldwide has been awarded a more than $120 million contract to protect new U.S. consulates in the Afghan cities of Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday. The United States Training Center, a business unit of the former Blackwater, now called Xe Services, was awarded the contract Friday, embassy spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. Read article
The Independent – A growing number of scientists are going where politicians fear to tread by calling for a wider public debate on the sensitive issue of the global human population, which is set to rise from the present 6.8 billion to perhaps 9 billion by 2050. Lord Rees, the president of the Royal Society, brought the subject up in his excellent Reith Lectures; Sir David Attenborough has become a champion of those who believe population has been relegated as an environmental issue; and more recently Professor Aubrey Manning, presenter of the BBC’s Earth Story, has stated that the sheer number of humans on the planet is the greatest menace the world faces. Read article
Daily Mail – Forgetting an unhappy love affair or a traumatic accident could soon be as easy as popping a pill. At the risk of being accused of developing a pill for everything, scientists have discovered a drug that helps numb the pain of bad memories by flooding the mind with feelings of security and safety. And the technique could one day be used to cure phobia sufferers of their fears, help soldiers recover from the horrors of battle or allow accident victims to put their trauma behind them. Read article
BBC – Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA. Read Article
Metro – If you’re starting to get nervous about the prospect of impending doomsday, good news! You can now book your place in a luxury nuclear bomb-proof bunker under the Mojave Desert. Read article
Newsy – As body scanners become more prevalent in airports, there’s a growing concern over potential radiation risks. Is there really anything to worry about?
Telegraph – The governor of the Iraqi capital has propose the 70 mile long wall after a spate of suicide bombings, meaning every person and vehicle entering Baghdad will have to go through one of eight city gates. As well as keeping out potential suicide bombers, the wall is designed to remove most of the 1,500 checkpoints as well as the cement blast barriers throughout the city. Read article
Times – Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the American private security organisation, has claimed that his employees have called in airstrikes in Afghanistan. He also mocked Afghan military recruits for needing lessons in how to use a toilet, and questioned the value and quality of other countries’ troops in the country. Read article
Times – The Obama Administration has authorised the targeted killing of an American citizen in what is believed to be an unprecedented move in the War against Terror. According to US media reports, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been linked to last November’s attack on Fort Hood, Texas, and the failed Christmas day airline bomb plot, has been approved for capture or killing. Read article
Daily Mail – The brass band from Yorkshire Main Colliery assembled outside the doctor’s surgery in Edlington, South Yorkshire, and began to play. From the window above fluttered a Union Jack; below, the doctor handed out drinks to the puffing bandsmen. It was July 5, 1948, the first day of a new era: the age of the National Health Service. But few of those people toasting the new arrival, born and bred in a country that valued stoicism, reticence and self-reliance, could have imagined how deeply their successors would sink into hypochondria and self-indulgence. Read Article
Daily Mail – Scientists have discovered a real-life ‘moral compass’ in the brain that controls how we judge other people’s behaviour. The region, which lies just behind the right ear, becomes more active when we think about other people’s misdemeanours or good works. In an extraordinary experiment, researchers were able to use powerful magnets to disrupt this area of the brain and make people temporarily less moral. Read Article
Telegraph – A space-age “force field” capable of protecting armoured vehicles and tanks by repelling incoming fire is being developed by British military scientists. The new type of armour will use pulses of electrical energy to repel rockets, shrapnel and other ammunition that might damage a vehicle. Researchers at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), which is the research and development arm of the Ministry of Defence, claim it is possible to incorporate material known as supercapacitors into armour of a vehicle to turn it into a kind of giant battery. Read article
Press TV – A US antiwar organization says it has been targeted by the government because it wants US troops to immediately return from Afghanistan and Iraq. The ANSWER Coalition, which stands for “Act Now to Stop War and End Racism,” has been a staunch critic of the Bush and Obama administrations for their role in the Iraqi and Afghan war. Read article
Telegraph – A far-Right candidate for Austria’s presidential election has brought the country’s dark past to the surface again, by denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional leader of the Freedom Party (FPOe), looks likely to be the only candidate to run against the incumbent, President Heinz Fischer, on April 25. But her comments supporting the scrapping of the tough prohibition law have renewed the debate about a heritage with which the country, which was under Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, has never fully come to terms. Austrian leaders and the press already fear for the country’s image abroad. Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years. Read article
Ed – is it democratic to suppress or ban political ideologies, no matter how repulsive they might be to the majority? Â Surely a healthy democracy will ensure good debate and the election of those fit to represent their constituents.
Reuters – Pakistani security agents denied on Monday that an American al Qaeda spokesman wanted in the United States for treason had been arrested, saying there had been confusion over the identity of a detained suspect. Some Pakistani officials had said on Sunday that Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam with a $1 million U.S. bounty on his head, had been arrested on the outskirts of the city of Karachi. But a senior government official and two security agents said on Monday the suspected al Qaeda operative picked up in Karachi was not Gadahn. Read article
Telegraph – The Ministry of Defence has been accused of ordering a “truth blackout” over the war in Afghanistan amid warnings it is attempting to “bury bad news” during the election campaign. British journalists and TV crews are to be banned from the Afghan front line once a date for the election has been set, while senior officers will be prohibited from making public speeches and talking to reporters. MoD websites will also be “cleansed” of any “non-factual” material including anything containing troops’ opinions of the war, according to a memo leaked to The Daily Telegraph. Read article
Guardian – An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens. We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 20 hectares ““ the size of 20 football pitches. Read article
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