Aftermath News

A NYPD officer in an bomb suit examines a Nissan Pathfinder sport utility vehicle parked in New York’s Times Square Photo: REUTERS

A Pakistani Army major, who was until recently a serving officer, has been arrested in connection with the failed Times Square bomb plot.

Pakistan’s intelligence services have a long history of working with Jihadi organisations.

Telegraph | May 27, 2010

Rob Crilly, in Islamabad

Pakistani and US sources say there is evidence that mobile phone calls were exchanged between Major Adnan Ejaz and the suspected would-be bomber, Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested on May 3 as he attempted to fly out of New York.

A Pakistani law enforcement sources said that the major had mobile phone contact with Shahzad on the day of the attempted bombing, including one conversation at the same time the bomber was allegedly parking his car loaded with propane tanks and explosives.

He had also met the naturalised American in Islamabad, he claimed.

Shahzad, the son of a retired Pakistani Air Force officer, has told interrogators he received training from the Pakistan Taliban in its rugged mountain stronghold of Waziristan.

Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have a long history of working with Jihadi organisations as an instrument of foreign policy.

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However, the major’s detention marks the first time someone in the country’s military establishment has been directly linked to the Times Square plot.

In all, 11 people have been detained in Pakistan, including the co-owner of a prominent catering firm used by the US embassy in Islamabad.

They have not been arrested or charged, but they are suspected of having links to Times Square car bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, 30, officials have said.

A Pakistani security official, speaking on condition of anonymity said the exact connections were not yet clear.

“A number of people have been detained and we believe they knew Shahzad,” he said. ” What we don’t know is what role, if any, they had in the plot.

“There’s a lot of work still to do.” Of the 11 people in custody, three were detained in Karachi and the others were taken into custody in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani military is based.

However, a spokesman for Pakistan’s military said Major Ejaz was no longer a serving officer and had been in detention at the time of the alleged calls.

“He was dismissed from the service last year and was retired,” said Maj Gen Athar Abbas.

“Last month he was picked up because of apparent connections to proscribed, banned Punjabi militant organisations. So far we have not found any connection with Shahzad’s case.”

That account differs from the story told by relatives to local newspapers, deepening the mystery and raising fears of an official cover-up. They said he resigned from the Army last year because of money worries and had joined a construction firm.

They said he was arrested on May 14. Five days later his younger brother, a computer engineer was detained.

A British scientist has laid claim to being the first man to be infected by a computer virus, after he used a contaminated chip implanted in his hand to attack a lab security system.

Telegraph | May 26, 2010

By Nick Collins

Dr Mark Gasson programmed the microchip, similar to those used to “tag” pets, to remotely open his lab’s security doors and unlock his mobile phone before having it inserted under his skin.

But he also infected the implant with a virus, to prove it could be transferred as the chip and the security system wirelessly exchanged electronic data.

The virus could then have been passed on to other devices interacting with the control system, such as colleagues’ swipe cards, in the same way viruses are able to spread across computer networks.

BBC News: First human infected with computer virus

The results raise the possibility that in the future, increasingly advanced medical devices such as pacemakers and inner ear implants could become vulnerable to cyber attacks from other human implants.

Dr Gasson said: “Our research shows that implantable technology has developed to the point where implants are capable of communicating, storing and manipulating data.

“This means that, like mainstream computers, they can be infected by viruses and the technology will need to keep pace with this so that implants, including medical devices, can be safely used in the future.”

He stressed it is not currently thought possible to exploit medical devices such as pacemakers because they have not been analysed for flaws, but said they could theoretically be vulnerable.

He said: “We do not know of any medical device that can be exploited in this way yet but we are very much on the cusp of it being possible.

“It is possible that you could create a virus that completely corrupts the device to the point where it does not work any more.”

Implanted technology has become increasingly common in the United States, where medical alert bracelets can be scanned to bring up a patient’s medical history.

Dr Gasson said the technology is likely to become more widely used in the future, even for non-medical purposes such as increasing someone’s memory.

He said: “Our next evolutionary step may well mean that we all become part machine as we look to enhance ourselves, either because it becomes as much of a social norm as say mobile phones, or because we’ll be disadvantaged if we do not.”

In a separate project by Reading University scientists in 2008, experts created a robot that used cells from the brain of a rat to make decisions, in order to help design treatments for diseases such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

The robot, known as an “animat”, interpreted electrical signals from the cells to navigate itself around a laboratory without bumping into obstacles.

Minority Report: New technology is testing the limits of acceptable practices and privacy offline

“Individuals don’t want to be tracked.”

AFP | May 27, 2010

By Rob Lever

WASHINGTON — In the quest for better targeted advertising, marketers are using high-tech tools that can pinpoint a person’s location, demographics and habits, raising the hackles of privacy activists.

Online or in the shopping mall, these efforts are becoming more prevalent.

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Google, Yahoo and its advertising partners can track a user’s browsing habits in an effort to deliver more relevant marketing messages.

Offline, new digital signs with hidden cameras can use facial recognition software to tailor messages similar to the scenario in the science fiction film “Minority Report.”

Minority Report Mall Scene

Some analysts say the new technology is positive, enabling firms to get the most for their advertising dollars.

“We’re marketers. We present consumers with information that they can use to make informed buying decisions related to our brands,” says Rob Graham, vice president at the consulting firm Laredo Group.

But a 2009 study by the University of California and the University of Pennsylvania showed that Americans are opposed to targeted advertising on the Web.

“Contrary to what many marketers claim, most adult Americans (66 percent) do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests,” the study concluded.

“Moreover, when Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data about people in order to tailor ads, even higher percentages… say they would not want such advertising.”

Chris Hoofnagle, director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology’s information privacy programs, said many Web users are aware their habits are tracked by firms such as Google or Amazon, but are unsettled by third-party advertisers and marketers tracking across websites without any permission.

“Individuals don’t want to be tracked,” he said.

“It might not cause you harm, it might just be creepy.”

The practices underscore concerns over online privacy at a time when social network giant Facebook is embroiled in its own controversy over sharing data with third-party websites.

New technology is also testing the limits of acceptable practices and privacy offline. In some shopping malls, a new generation of digital signs not only can change messages frequently but can measure customer traffic and determine who is walking by through facial recognition software.

To some, it raises the specter of the scene in “Minority Report” where Tom Cruise’s character walks through a futuristic mall.

“John Anderton. You could use a Guinness right about now,” a digital sign announces in the film.

“We’re not quite there yet but we are at a point where we can adjust the ads according to who is in front of that screen,” said Keith Kelsen, chairman and chief executive of Media Tile, a digital signage firm.

Kelsen said the signage industry has a set of guidelines to protect privacy, and dismissed most of the fears as overblown.

“There is really no reason for concern because we’re not tracking individuals, we’re tracking information that is collected on whether they are male or female, or quantities of people, how long do they look at the screen,” he said.

But some privacy activists say the industry has not done enough to protect against abuses.

“The vast majority of people walking in stores, near elevators and in other public and private spaces have no idea that the innocent-looking flat screen TVs playing videos may be capturing their images and then dissecting and analyzing them for marketing purposes,” said a January report by the World Privacy Forum.

Pam Dixon, executive director of the privacy group, said the digital signage industry “has all sorts of issues touching privacy, including children’s privacy.”

In a prominent blunder for the industry, lubricant maker Castrol set up digital billboards in London last year equipped with cameras that read the license plates of each passing motorist, accessed a database to find the automobile’s model and year, and flashed the driver a message about what type of oil their vehicle should use.

The campaign was ended after a few days amid criticism.

Some makers of the technology, including firms like South Korea’s Samsung and Japan’s NEC, may be able to determine a viewer’s race or nationality and can personalize Google and Yahoo! ads.

Companies are also using GPS technology in mobile phones to tailor ads to a user’s location, such a specials for lattes as someone walks by a coffee shop.

Although this is still relatively new, the Center for Digital Democracy frets about a lack of guidelines.

“The emerging system for mobile advertising is clearly an extension of the current interactive targeting apparatus that has raised so many concerns over privacy and consumer protection,” the group said in a petition to US regulators.

The suicide bombers set off near-simultaneous explosions on three London Underground trains and a bus on July 7, 2005

AFP | May 21, 2010

LONDON — Inquests into the deaths of 56 people in London’s July 2005 suicide bombings will probe alleged failings by police and MI5 intelligence before the attacks, the coroner conducting the hearings said Friday.

Judge Heather Hallett also ruled that inquests into four suicide bombers will be held separately from those of the 52 victims, a relief to families who had protested plans to hold the inquests together.

The suicide bombers set off near-simultaneous explosions on three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus on the morning of July 7, 2005, in what has become known as 7/7, nearly four years after the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Hallett, giving details of arrangements for the inquests due to start in October, said they would probe what police and MI5 officers knew ahead of the shock attacks.

“The scope of the inquest into the 52 deaths will include the alleged intelligence failings and the immediate aftermath of the bombings,” she said.

“To my mind it is not too remote to investigate what was known in the year or two before the alleged bombings. Plots of this kind are not developed overnight,” she added.

Janine Mitchell, whose husband Paul survived the King’s Cross explosion, welcomed the decision to probe MI5′s role.

“We have been very concerned that there were serious failings and it seems that this is the case… We are relieved that someone independent of Government is going to examine what happened.

“We put all our faith in the coroner to do that, so if anything did go wrong it can be fixed.”

Hallett also announced that the inquests will not be held with a jury, and that the hundreds of people injured in the attacks will not be designated “interested person” status — granting the right to cross-examine witnesses.

Survivors of the bombings voiced disappointment. “Once again we have been shunted aside by officialdom and those questions may or may not be answered,” said Jacqui Putnam, who survived the Edgware Road blast.

The 7/7 attacks struck during the rush hour on a Thursday morning, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair was meeting with Group of Eight (G8) counterparts for a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

Three bombs exploded shortly after 8:50 am: Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, blew himself up at Edgware Road station, 22-year-old Shehzad Tanweer at Aldgate, and Jermaine Lindsay, 19 between King’s Cross and Russell Square.

Hasib Hussain, 18, detonated his device on board a number 30 bus at Tavistock Square at 9.47 am. As well as the dead, some 700 people were injured in the blasts.

It later emerged that intelligence services had followed the bombers’ ringleader, Khan, in early 2004 during an investigation into extremists planning a fertiliser bomb plot.

As well as interrupting the G8 meeting in Scotland, the bombings also shattered a sense of euphoria in London from a decision the previous day to stage the 2012 Olympic Games in the British capital.

Two weeks after July 7 there was an apparent attempt at a copycat simultaneous attack, but the devices involved failed to go off. In the rush to find the plotters police mistakenly shot and killed an innocent Brazilian man.

UKPA | May 21, 2010

Survivors of the July 7 bombings said they have been “shunted aside” after being excluded from inquests into the deaths of the 52 people who were killed.

Some of those affected by the 2005 atrocities said they were disappointed not to be granted a special status by the coroner which would allow them to question witnesses.

But they pledged to throw their full weight behind Lady Justice Hallett as she tries to get answers for what happened and whether more could have been done to prevent the attacks.

Their solicitor Clifford Tibber said he would not rule out appealing against the coroner’s decision at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Jacqui Putnam, who survived the Edgware Road blast, said many questions still needed answering. Speaking at a press conference she said: “Our role now will be one of answering questions, which we will do, but our questions are not going to be answered.

“Once again we have been shunted aside by officialdom and those questions may or may not be answered.

“They need to be answered because they involve the safety of everyone on public transport.

“It is very important that we remember that the inquests are for families and loved ones of those who died. But this is our only voice, we have been led to believe this would be our opportunity for us to have a voice and now we don’t.”

Lady Justice Hallett said the inquests into the deaths of the 52 people killed by suicide bombers would be heard later this year without a jury.

She said the inquiry would scrutinise alleged failings by police and the security services as well as the immediate aftermath of the blasts and she said inquests into the deaths of the four suicide bombers would be held separately, if at all, while questions over public funding for legal representation remained unanswered.

dailyrecord.co.uk | May 21, 2010

SURVIVORS of the July 7 bombings said they’ve been “shunted aside” after being excluded from inquests into the deaths of the 52 people who were killed.

Some of those affected by the 2005 atrocities said they were disappointed not to be granted a special status by the coroner which would allow them to question witnesses.

But they pledged to throw their full weight behind Lady Justice Hallett as she tries to get answers for what happened and whether more could have been done to prevent the attacks.

Their solicitor Clifford Tibber said he would not rule out appealing against the coroner’s decision at the Royal Courts of Justice earlier today.

Jacqui Putnam, who survived the Edgware Road blast, said many questions still needed answering.

Speaking at a press conference she said: “Our role now will be one of answering questions, which we will do, but our questions are not going to be answered.

“Once again we have been shunted aside by officialdom and those questions may or may not be answered.

“They need to be answered because they involve the safety of everyone on public transport.

“It is very important that we remember that the inquests are for families and loved ones of those who died.

“But this is our only voice, we have been led to believe this would be our opportunity for us to have a voice and now we don’t.”

Lady Justice Hallett said the inquests into the deaths of the 52 people killed by suicide bombers would be heard later this year without a jury.

She said the inquiry would scrutinise alleged failings by police and the security services as well as the immediate aftermath of the blasts.

She said inquests into the deaths of the four suicide bombers would be held separately, if at all, while questions over public funding for legal representation remained unanswered.

Tim Coulson, who survived the attacks, said the “door is still open” to appeal against the decision, but they would still have some input as witnesses.

He said: “It hurts to be reminded but there are occasions when it is essential to be reminded of security issues in our country.

“Not to upset people, not to make everybody screw everything down so tightly you cannot move, but to bring about a general awareness.

“If one more person is put in the position some of us are in that is one too many, especially if one more person dies. That is unacceptable.”

Janine Mitchell, whose husband Paul survived the King’s Cross explosion, said the inquests would be a chance to finally examine the work of MI5.

She said: “We have been campaigning for a very long time now for an inquiry, we are just ordinary people caught up in an atrocity.

“We have been very concerned that there were serious failings and it seems that this is the case.

“We do not know what went on and we are relieved that someone independent of Government is going to examine what happened.

“We put all our faith in the coroner to do that, so if anything did go wrong it can be fixed.”

Mrs Mitchell added that she accepted there would be some sensitive intelligence information, but said that did not mean people should not be held to account.

Ernest Adams, whose son James was killed at King’s Cross, said he was “delighted” inquests into the bombers’ deaths would not be held at the same time.

He said: “The important thing to find out first of all is if it could have been prevented.

“We do not want to go around looking for blame, we just want to know if it could have been prevented and lessons learned for the future in the operation of the security service.”

AP | May 21, 2010

By MICHELE SALCEDO

WASHINGTON — Taking another unconventional stand, Kentucky’s Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill Friday as anti-business and sounding “really un-American.”

Paul’s defense of the oil company came during an interview as he tried to explain his controversial take on civil rights law, an issue that has overtaken his campaign since his victory in Tuesday’s GOP primary.

“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’” Paul said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.”

The Obama administration has used the “boot heel” phrase to describe its commitment to holding BP accountable for the spill and its cleanup.

Other Republicans have criticized the administration’s handling of the oil spill, but few have been so vocal in defending BP, the company responsible for the deep well and offshore rig that exploded last month, killing 11 workers.

Paul appeared two days after a landslide primary victory over the Republican establishment’s candidate, Trey Grayson. He has been scrambling to explain remarks suggesting businesses be allowed to deny service to minorities without fear of federal interference, even though he says he personally abhors discrimination. On Friday he said he wouldn’t seek to repeal the Civil Rights Act or Fair Housing Act, which prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, among other areas.

On the oil spill, Paul, a libertarian and tea party favorite, said he had heard nothing from BP indicating it wouldn’t pay for the spill that threatens devastating environmental damage along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

“And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be somebody’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen,” Paul said.

The senate candidate referred to a Kentucky coal mine accident that killed two men, saying he had met with the families and he admired the coal miners’ courage.

“We had a mining accident that was very tragic. … Then we come in and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen,” he said.

An eye doctor and political novice, Paul defeated a rival recruited by Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. He immediately invited Obama, whose approval ratings in Kentucky are fairly low, to campaign for the state’s Democrats.

Paul, 47, credited tea party activists with powering him to victory on Tuesday. The first opinion poll since then showed him with a wide lead over his Democratic rival, Jack Conway.

Paul blamed the 24-hour news cycle for the controversy over his civil rights law comments, a point his father, Rep. Ron Paul, -Tex., endorsed.

In a sometimes testy exchange with reporters in the Capitol on Thursday, the elder Paul said liberals were treating his son unfairly and reporters were hoping to stop his political momentum with “gotcha” questions based on out-of-context remarks.

“Making something out of nothing is just not fair,” he said.

The specially-trained officers patrol terminals monitoring passengers for suspicious body language and facial expressions.  Photo: GETTY

A team of more than 3,000 “behaviour detection” officers hired to spot terrorists at US airports have failed to catch a single person despite costing the taxpayer $200 million (£140 million) last year.

Telegraph | May 21, 2010

By Nick Allen in Los Angeles

Since 2006, the officers have been stationed at more than 160 airports across the US in order to provide a hidden measure of security.

But 16 people accused of being part of terrorist plots have passed through US airports undetected a total of 23 times since 2004 – a number of them since the scheme was started – according to an investigation by the Government Accountability Office.

Earlier this year, officials at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which runs the behaviour detection programme, asked US Congress to expand the scheme, which is known as Spot – Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques.

John Mica, a Republican congressman from Florida who was involved in setting up the TSA in response to the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, said it had become too bureaucratic.

He said the report into behaviour detection would further call into question the agency’s ability to perform its security mission.

The TSA said the programme is a “vital layer of security based in science”, which has led to more than 1,700 arrests for other crimes like drug smuggling.

However, a 2008 report by a team at the National Academy of Sciences said “behavioural surveillance” had “enormous potential for violating privacy” and there was no evidence it worked.

The report said a person behaving oddly could just as easily be planning an extramarital affair as a terrorist attack.

Stephen Fienberg, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, described the programme as a “sham”. By 2008, around 160,000 people had been selected to be interviewed or given further pat downs based on the behaviour detection technique but less than one per cent of those were arrested.

Charles Slepian, and aviation security analyst, said the failure of the programme to catch a terrorist was a “disgrace.” He told CBS News: “If it worked, you would catch them.”

DNA testing: Uncleared dog mess would be collected and sent to a laboratory for testing. Photo: ALAMY

The residents of a smart apartment building are considering testing DNA of their dogs to discover which owners are not clearing up after their pets.

Telegraph | May 20, 2010

By Tom Leonard in New York

Leaders of the residents’ association at Scarlett Place, a development in Baltimore’s expensive Inner Harbour district, have proposed that the dozens of dog-owning residents submit their animals to a compulsory cheek swab.

Dog owners would then have to pay $50 (£35) per dog to cover the cost of the test, as well as $10 (£7) each month for building staff to collect uncleared dog mess and send it to a laboratory for testing. Any negligent dog owner could be fined $500 (£350).

“We pay all this money and we’re walking around stepping in dog poop,” said Steve Frans, a member of the building’s board and dog owner.

He told the Baltimore Sun: “Some people think it’s funny. But you know, this seems to be a reasonable, objective way to say, ‘This is your poop, you’re responsible.”

Dog mess has even been discovered in the building’s lifts and hallways. Mr Frans, who is blind, said some neighbours suspect his guide dog is responsible for some of it.

At a meeting on Wednesday, many residents scorned the idea but the company that would test the DNA insists its “PooPrints” service has been successful.

Jim Simpson, president of BioPet Vet Lab, a Tennessee company, said that uncollected dog waste had declined in the handful of communities that had signed up for its service since it was launched last year.

Richard Hopp, a dog-owning lawyer who lives in Scarlett Place, said: “It’s absolutely ridiculous. I feel like I’m living in a ‘Seinfeld’ episode.”

Tom Cruise preaching the Word.

Secret dossiers of information on the “enemies” of Scientology were found when Italian police raided the movement’s offices in Turin.

Telegraph | May 20, 2010

By Nick Squires in Rome

During a nine-hour search of the offices, Carabinieri officers are said to have discovered a cache of files hidden in a basement behind a locked door.

The files allegedly contained personal information relating to judges, magistrates, journalists and police who had reportedly been deemed hostile to the US-based Church of Scientology, Italian media reported.

Police seized computers as well as handwritten files, which are also said to contain details of former members of the religious movement.

The raid was ordered by magistrates who suspect that the local chapter of the worldwide movement may have violated laws governing the holding of sensitive data, including information about the health, political opinions and sexual orientation of a range of people, La Stampa newspaper reported.

Scientology, which counts among its most high-profile adherents the Hollywood actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, was founded in 1953 by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

The controversial religion is often criticised as a cult. It was denounced in the Australian parliament in November, when a senator described it as abusive, violent and manipulative, and only narrowly escaped being banned in France after being prosecuted for fraud.

In the United States, two former members launched a landmark law suit against the movement last month, alleging that for years they were treated little better than slaves and forced to work 20-hour days.

Claire Headley alleged that she was coerced into having an abortion, while her husband Marc said he was subjected to strange mind-control exercises.

The Church has denied all the allegations and has questioned the plaintiff’s motivation in bringing the law suit.

The Dalai Lama is giving a series of lectures at the Radio City Music Hall in central Manhattan until Sunday  Photo: GETTY

The Dalai Lama has criticised capitalism calling himself a Marxist, on a four day trip to New York

Telegraph | May 20, 2010

The Tibetan spiritual leader said Marxism has “moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits.”

However, he credited China’s embrace of market economics for breaking communism’s grip over the world’s most populous country and forcing the ruling Communist Party to “represent all sorts of classes.”

Capitalism “brought a lot of positive to China. Millions of people’s living standards improved,” he said.

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The Dalai Lama, 74, giving a series of lectures at the Radio City Music Hall in central Manhattan until Sunday, struck a strikingly optimistic note in general, saying that he believed the world is becoming a kinder, more unified place.

Anti-war movements, huge international aid efforts after Haiti’s earthquake this year, and the election of Barack Obama as the first black president in a once deeply racist United States are “clear signs of human beings being more mature,” he said.

The Dalai Lama said he felt a “sense of the oneness of human beings,” jokingly adding: “If those thoughts are wrong, please let me know!”

Although China, which forced him to escape for his life in 1959, is loosening up, he had harsh words for a communist leadership that he said still seeks to rule by fear.

As Chinese become richer, “they want more freedoms, they want an independent judiciary, they want to have a free sort of press,” he said.

The Chinese government, he said, seeks harmony, “but harmony must come out of the heart, not out of fear. So far, methods to bring harmony mostly rely on use of force.”

Interestingly, Xi cites efforts from Mao, Deng Xiaoping, up to the current leader Hu Jintao to improve the Party’s writing and speech styles.

Yiyi Lu: How to Make Chinese Officials Sound less Boring?

blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime | May 19, 2010

Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, discusses the tedium of official speeches in China. Ms. Lu is a research fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute and an associate fellow at the U.K.-based Chatham House . She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).

Anyone who has heard official speeches in China would know what it means to be “bored to distraction.” Anyone who has heard visiting Chinese officials in foreign countries would probably know the meaning of the phrase even better, as Chinese speeches often sound longer and make even less sense when translated into foreign languages.

Every now and then, a Party document or an article in the People’s Daily would urge a change to the bad “literary style” that characterizes official speeches and writings. Most recently, Politburo member and President of the Central Communist Party School Xi Jinping launched a fresh attack on unhealthy literary styles at the School’s spring 2010 opening ceremony.

Xi says many official documents and speeches are “long, empty and false.” Quoting Mao, he says literary style reflects the Party’s work style. The Party’s past experience shows that unhealthy literary styles can cause great harm, including lowering the Party’s prestige, alienating the public, and causing the Party’s policies to lose appeal.

Xi also lists several reasons for unhealthy literary styles:

• Some officials lack knowledge, experience and skill, so they are unable to say anything useful and new.
• Some officials are lazy. They do not engage in first-hand investigations and independent thinking, so they are only able to copy existing documents.
• Some officials think they can only show they have kept in step with the Party Centre by copying official documents and newspapers.
• Some officials think long speeches show they attach importance to the work. The longer the speech they deliver to a particular department, the more it shows they value that department’s work.
• Some officials are irresponsible. They would read the speeches written for them by others. No matter how long the speeches are, they just read them all.
• Some officials think empty words, clichés and flatteries are the safest, as they can’t make mistakes with them.

Interestingly, Xi cites efforts from Mao, Deng Xiaoping, up to the current leader Hu Jintao to improve the Party’s writing and speech styles. Such efforts date back to the Party’s Yan’an era in the 1940s. Apparently, in 60 years, the Party has not managed to solve the problem of “unhealthy literary styles.” Will Xi Jinping’s latest speech make a difference? Don’t bet on it. (Xi’s own speech urging brevity runs to almost 5,000 characters).

It seems that simply talking about the importance of good styles and urging officials to discard bad ones has not been effective. After all, there is no real pressure to adopt better styles. No official has ever lost his job because his speeches are too long and devoid of substance. On the other hand, as Xi’s analysis suggests, there are plenty of reasons for officials to perpetuate the bad styles, ranging from incompetence, laziness and the desire to play it safe.

If the Party really wants to change its deeply-entrenched bureaucratic writing and speech styles, there is one easy way: make officials face the media on a regularly basis.

When officials must explain their policies and decisions in media interviews lasting only several minutes, when they must offer quick responses to emergencies without relying on pre-prepared scripts, when they must answer the media’s questions about the performance of themselves and their departments, they will quickly learn to speak and write the way normal people do.

If, on the other hand, officials can continue to hide behind “mountains of documents and seas of meetings” and never have to speak directly to the public, then “unhealthy literary styles” may well have another 60 years of life.

Giant posters of Hitler dressed in bright pink, with a love heart in place of a swastika, have provoked a furious debate in Italy.

Telegraph | May 20, 2010

By Nick Squires in Rome

The 18ft high posters of the Nazi leader advertise a line of clothing for young people and adorn street corners and bus stops in Palermo, Sicily’s biggest city.

The ads show the Fuhrer in a lurid pink uniform, with his swastika armband replaced with one bearing a bright red heart, above the slogan “Change Style – Don’t Follow Your Leader”.

Many local people say the advertising campaign is offensive and have called for the posters to be taken down.

A city councillor with the centre-Left Democratic Party, Rosario Filoramo, has protested to the mayor of Palermo.

“The use of an image of a person responsible for the worst chapters of the last century is offensive to our country’s constitutional principles and to the sensitivities of citizens,” he said.

A council official, Fabrizio Ferrandelli, said: “Having Hitler’s face on a poster… cannot be passed off as an innocent advertising message. Seeing these posters in front of schools is an embarrassment.” But the advertising agency which came up with the idea said critics of the campaign were over-reacting.

The Hitler poster was a tongue-in-cheek way of encouraging young people not to follow the crowd in their fashion choices.

“We have ridiculed Hitler in a way that invites young people to create their own style and not to be influenced by their peers,” said the agency’s Daniele Manno.

Impressionable locals will now have to brace themselves for a fresh affront – the company plans to bring out a new poster campaign in the next few weeks featuring Mao Tse Tung.

This undated handout image provided by the J. Craig Venter Institute shows negatively stained transmission electron micrographs of aggregated M. mycoides. Scientists announced a bold step Thursday in the enduring quest to create artificial life. They’ve produced a living cell powered by manmade DNA. (AP Photo/J. Craig Venter Institute)

Feat draws attention of Obama, who orders bioethical issues panel to study milestone.

ASSOCIATED PRESS | May 20, 2010

By LAURAN NEERGAARD

WASHINGTON | Scientists announced a bold step Thursday in the enduring quest to create artificial life. They’ve produced a living cell powered by man-made DNA.

While such work can evoke images of Frankenstein-like scientific tinkering, it also is exciting hopes that it could eventually lead to new fuels, better ways to clean polluted water, faster vaccine production and more.

Is it really an artificial life form?

Related

• Scientists create cell based on man-made genetic instructions
• Ethics concern over synthetic cell

The inventors call it the world’s first synthetic cell, although this initial step is more a re-creation of existing life – changing one simple type of bacterium into another – than a built-from-scratch kind.

But Maryland genome-mapping pioneer J. Craig Venter said his team’s project paves the way for the ultimate, much harder goal: designing organisms that work differently from the way nature intended for a wide range of uses. Already he’s working with ExxonMobil in hopes of turning algae into fuel.

“This is the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer,” Venter told reporters.

And the report, being published today in the journal Science, is triggering excitement in this growing field of syntheticbiology.

“It’s been a long time coming, and it was worth the wait,” said Dr. George Church, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor. “It’s a milestone that has potential practical applications.”

After the announcement, President Barack Obama directed the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues he established last fall to make its first order of business a study of the milestone.

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Scientists have created an artificial genome and inserted it into a bacteria cell, creating the first synthetic life. The goal of the project is to design microbes for energy or health applications.

CSM | May 20, 2010

By Pete Spotts

Scientists have taken a significant step toward creating artificial life by transplanting computer-designed genetic material into a bacteria cell, forming a new strain of the bacteria.

The work, while a significant scientific breakthrough, touches on profound questions regarding the origins and nature of life, some analysts say.

One of the ultimate goals of the project, the scientists say, is to develop the ability to design microbes from scratch to perform functions ranging from converting carbon-dioxide into oil and cleaning up pollution to serving as tiny machines for speeding the manufacture of vaccines.

The effort, reported in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, does not represent a complete from-scratch organism.

Instead, the team used computer data on an existing bacterial genome as a template. Then they digitally modified the genome, adding their own formulations – including genetic material that encoded the researchers’ names and three literary quotes in a kind of artist’s signature that verified the genetic material the bacterial cell took up was the synthetic form.

So the effort remains a proof of principle, says J. Craig Venter, who heads the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and led the research effort. Much work remains before researchers attain the ability to design and make fully custom microbes.

Still, the first colony of synthetic cells represents a biological and philosophical watershed.

“This is the first self-replicating species on the planet whose parent is a computer,” Dr. Venter said during a press briefing Thursday announcing the results. “The cell started with a digital code in a computer.”

The team used that information to build a bacterial chromosome essentially from four bottles of chemicals. They used yeast as a factory for assembling smaller segments of the chromosome into ever-larger segments. Then they transferred the entire new chromosome into a recipient cell, whose internal chemistry activated this assembly of genes.

Beyond the technical accomplishment – and the inevitable concerns about the safety and ethics of this fledgling technology – lies what may be a more profound implication of the work, according to Pennsylvania State University bioethicist Arthur Caplan.

Since Aristotle, he explains, scientists, philosophers, and theologians have argued over whether life involves more than chemical components – some have called it a “soul,” others élan vital, a vital force that distinguishes the living from the nonliving.

Venter’s team has shown that with the right mix of inanimate chemicals to build DNA sequences, and the right soup within the cell receiving the DNA, the result is a living organism, Dr. Caplan says.

The concept isn’t alien to biologists, particularly those probing the origins of life on Earth. Yet Venter’s work could be seen as the “final word in favor of mechanistic reductionism” of organic life, he says. “That’s the enormous significance of this work.”

Indeed, the work highlights a broad trend in the physical and biological sciences – one that over the past several decades has evolved to give humanity the ability to manipulate inanimate, and now animate, matter at its most fundamental levels and in forms of uniquely human design.

Even as the science of synthetic biology has evolved, so has the discussion of implications of this field, notes Gregory Kaebnick, an research scholar at the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank in Garrison, N.Y.

Yet at this stage, he says, the nascent technology may raise hackles unnecessarily.

“I’m very sympathetic about concerns over how biotechnology may change the human relationship with nature,” he says. “Synthetic biology can look like the culmination of the threat biotechnology can pose” to this relationship.

“But to my lights it doesn’t pose a serious threat,” he adds. Up to now, synthetic biology has focused on microbes, not complex organisms like plants or cows. “And the things we are doing to them are restricted to industrial uses,” he adds.

Moreover, the aim is to simplify the genomes so that organisms spend most of their energy on producing the products — fuels, pharmaceuticals, pollution-clean-up agents, for instance. Removing all but the most essential genes makes the organisms less adaptable to stress, and so less able to survive outside of a carefully controlled environment, Dr. Kaebnick says.

Still, taking advantage of any benefits from crossing the threshold from swapping “natural” genes among living organisms to designing synthetic genomes will require that scientists pay close attention to public concerns, according to David Ropeik, a risk-management consultant and former instructor on risk at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Because many of the developments leading to Thursday’s announcement have remained fairly low on the public’s radar screen, he says he anticipates that Venter’s latest results could trigger the kind of public outcry that led researchers in the 1970s to place a temporary moratorium on gene-splicing research, then in its infancy. Leaders in the field met to work out a set of “how we need to be careful” protocols for conducting the work, Mr. Ropeik recalls.

That act alone, he says, signaled that researchers recognized and respected public concerns about the work they were undertaking.

The same is needed today, he says.

“What’s really important for all the progress this work promises is that people’s concerns be taken seriously and get factored in to how scientists behave and proceed,” he says.

Venter notes that his group has been briefing politicians and regulators along the way, and the work has been reviewed by ethicists, including Dr. Caplan.

But the efforts may now have to be played out on a larger stage, and the work may need some self-imposed limits.

A report on synthetic biology produced by the University of Nottngham’s Institute for Science and Society in Britain noted that “it must be recognised that … some ethically problematic scientific projects and potentially controversial technologies may have to be abandoned in order to maintain trust.”

A man’s body is scanned at Manchester airport. (Daily Mail)

Scanner walk-through part of training
Man’s genitals seen by colleagues
Man snaps after being teased relentlessly

news.com.au | May 7, 2010

AN airport security screener has been suspended for assaulting a colleague who joked about him having small genitalia after he walked through a scanner.

According to the police report, Mr Negrin said he had been subjected to jokes about having a small penis “on a daily basis” ever since he walked through a “whole-body” image scanner as part of a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workplace training session.

It was unclear when that training session took place.

After work on Wednesday, Mr Negrin confronted colleague Hugo Osorno, 34, in an airport car park.

He then allegedly pulled out a police baton and started hitting Mr Osorno before telling him to get down on his knees and apologise.

Mr Negrin told officers that he “could not take the jokes any more and lost his mind”.

He was arrested on an aggravated battery charge when he showed up for work yesterday and was taken into custody in Miami-Dade.

TSA spokesman Jonathan Allen said today that Mr Negrin has been suspended and an internal inquiry was being launched.

Boeing’s fighter-sized Phantom Ray unmanned airborne system.

Boeing said Monday that its first unmanned jet fighter-sized aircraft, Phantom Ray, is on track to have its first flight in December.

Seattle Times | May 10, 2010

By Dominic Gates

Boeing said Monday that its first unmanned jet fighter-sized aircraft, called Phantom Ray for its likeness to an undersea manta ray, is on track to have its first flight this year.

“We are on a fast track,” said Darryl Davis, president of Boeing’s Phantom Works research unit that developed the aircraft. “Phantom Ray is on schedule to fly in December.”

The pilotless unmanned aircraft is designed to execute a full range of potential military missions, including surveillance and reconnaissance; long-range, pre-emptive strikes against enemy air defenses; bombing of ground targets; and autonomous aerial refueling.

A fly-by-mouse-click design, the aircraft is “piloted” by an operator watching a computer screen in a fortified trailer that can be deployed near a war zone. It has a 50-foot wingspan and measures 36 feet from nose tip to tail, with the speed and altitude of a manned fighter plane, but greater range.

Flying at Mach 0.8 at an altitude of 40,000 feet, Phantom Ray will have a range of up to 1,500 miles, compared with about 600 miles for a Boeing-built F-18 manned fighter jet.

Phantom Ray has its origins in the X-45 prototype, developed by Boeing to compete for the U.S. military’s Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program, a $1.2 billion research effort funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.

Smaller X-45 concept models successfully flew 64 flights from 2002 through 2005.

In 2007, the Navy chose Northrop Grumman’s X-47 unmanned vehicle over Boeing’s X-45 concept. Since then, Boeing has continued development of the unmanned jet with internal funding.

Warning: The note was left on the pensioner’s recycling bin, warning her she could face prosecution

Daily Mail | May 19, 2010

By Steve Doughty

A grandmother aged 95 was threatened with prosecution after putting a plastic butter tub in the wrong recycling bag.

Relatives of the woman say she was left horrified by the ‘scary’ legal notice, which they claim could have triggered a heart attack.

Her granddaughter, Karen Walters, 42, said: ‘It is scary and ridiculous – she is a really law-abiding citizen. If she had seen the warning, she would have had a heart attack.

‘But luckily her son spotted it before she saw it. The fact is that a 95-year-old was threatened with prosecution. She was horrified when she was told about it.’

The threat came from a town hall which provides its residents with no fewer than seven recycling bins and a complex set of ‘rubbish rules’ they must follow.

Households in West Cross, Swansea, where the woman lives, are supplied with a black bin for non-recycling waste, collected fortnightly; a green bag for glass and tin and another for paper and card; a pink bag for plastic; and dark green sacks for garden waste.

They are also given a kitchen slop bucket, and a container for slops to be kept outside, which is collected weekly.

Mrs Walters said that her grandmother had washed 15 tins and put them in a green bag for collection – but had mistakenly added an empty butter tub, which should have gone in the pink bag.

After spotting the container, binmen left a legal notice advising why they had not collected the bag and warning that mixing up recycling can lead to prosecution.

The 95-year-old, who has asked to remain anonymous, said: ‘It is ridiculous. It has put us all off recycling.’

Over the past five years, local authorities have introduced increasingly draconian powers to fine households which fail to obey recycling rules.

Many councils have appointed so-called ‘bin police’, who can hand out £100 on-the-spot fines to anyone who puts out their bins too early or tries to throw away more than their designated amount of rubbish.

Residents who fail to comply with the instructions face prosecution.

In one case, Gareth Corkhill, a bus driver from Whitehaven, in Cumbria, was fined by magistrates because his wheelie bin was so full the lid would not shut properly.

And last week it was revealed Hull Council had asked families to report their neighbours if they commit ‘environmental crimes’, such as putting out rubbish too early.

The Environment Department declined to comment on the 95-year-old’s case, saying Swansea’s rules are supervised by the Welsh Assembly.

But Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman has told friends she believes ‘common sense’ rules should apply in such cases.

A spokesman for Swansea Council said: ‘It was never our intention to prosecute the lady and we would like to apologise for any confusion and distress this may have caused her or her family.

‘We hope this doesn’t discourage her or any other residents from recycling. Councils have challenging recycling targets to meet and we want the public to work with us to reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill.’

Daily Mail | May 19, 2010

By Gerri Peev

Nick Clegg will today outline his approach for a ‘wholesale, big bang’ reform of politics.

Innocent people will no longer have their DNA held on a database indefinitely, ID cards will be scrapped and CCTV would be regulated under plans to rein in the Big Brother society.

Libel laws will be shaken up and limits on peaceful protests will be lifted – meaning that the illegal encampment of anti-war demonstrators on Parliament’s doorstep could become a permanent fixture.

People will be able to decide which unnecessary laws should be torn up. Other proposals will include fixed term parliaments, a referendum on voting reform and a partly or wholly elected House of Lords.

In his first keynote speech as a Cabinet minister, the Lib Dem leader will say:  ‘Incremental change will not do. It is time for a wholesale, big bang approach to political reform.’

‘This government is going to transform our politics so the state has far less control over you, and you have far more control over the state,’ he will say.

He will describe it as the most significant programme of ‘empowerment’ since 1832, when the Great Reform Act extended voting rights beyond the landed gentry.

It would herald  a ‘fundamental resettlement of the relationship between state and citizen that puts you in charge’.

Mr Clegg will describe it as ‘outrageous’ that law-abiding people were treated as though they had something to hide.

‘It has to stop. So there will be no ID card scheme.  No national identity register, no second generation biometric passports.’

Email and internet records would also not be held – a proposal floated by Brussels.

Children’s rights to privacy will also be extended.

‘We will end practices that risk making Britain a place where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question.

‘There will be no ContactPoint children’s database.

‘Schools will not take children’s fingerprints without even asking their parent’s consent.’

The Tory-Lib government would be one that ‘is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state’.

“As we tear through the statute book, we’ll do something no government ever has: We will ask you which laws you think should go.’

The thousands of criminal offences created by Labour had not made Britain’s streets safer, he said.

‘Obsessive lawmaking simply makes criminals out of ordinary people,’ he will say.

‘This Government is going to be unlike any other,” he will say, according to advance extracts of his speech. This Government is going to transform our politics so the state has far less control over you, and you have far more control over the state.This Government is going to break up concentrations of power and hand power back to people, because that is how we build a society that is fair,’ he will say.

The coalition government yesterday also agreed to roll out the Big Society agenda that had been trumpeted by David Cameron during the election.

It involves encouraging volunteers to run community services and give power to residents over planning rules.

Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg – who had attacked the Tory leader’s Big Society plans during the election campaign – met community figures from across the country at a meeting around the Cabinet table.

Although the policy had been blamed for scaring off supporters, the Prime Minister yesterday signalled he wanted to entrench more community involvement.

‘It’s something I would like to be one of the great legacies of this government, to build the big society,” he said.

Mr Clegg also played down his previous criticism of the Big Society. ‘What I’m discovering is we’ve been using different words for a long time – it actually means the same thing.

‘Liberalism, big society. Empowerment, responsibility. It means the same thing.’

His comments struck a distinctly different note to those he was making during the election campaign.

In one pre-election interview, on May 2, Mr Clegg said: ‘What is this big society? It is a big society with a price tag attached.

‘It’s a bit like inviting someone to a party in a pub and finding that it’s your card behind the bar paying for everyone’s drinks.’

• Airport scanners may increase risk of cancer
• Radiation “dangerously underestimated”
• Skin around face, neck most at risk

news.com.au | May 19, 2010

By Kate Schneider

US scientists are warning that radiation from controversial full-body airport scanners has been dangerously underestimated and could lead to an increased risk of skin cancer – particularly in children.

University of California biochemist David Agard said that unlike other scanners, the radiation from these devices is delivered at low energy beam levels, with most of the dose concentrated in the skin and underlying tissue.

“While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high,” Dr Agard said.

“Ionizing radiation such as the X-rays used in these scanners have the potential to induce chromosome damage, and that can lead to cancer.”

Of further concern is that a failure in the device – like a power or software glitch – could cause an intense radiation dose to a single spot on the skin.

The warnings come ahead of the planned rollout of the scanners in Australia next year as part of the Federal Government’s crackdown on airport security.

David Brenner, the head of Columbia University’s Centre for Radiological Research, says the concentration on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the body – means the radiation dose is actually 20 times higher than the official estimate.

Dr Brenner says the most likely risk from the airport scanners is a type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma, which mainly occurs on the head and neck and is usually curable.

The researcher was consulted to write guidelines for the security scanners in 2002 but said he would not have signed the report had he known the devices were going to be used so widely.

“There really is no other technology around where we’re planning to X-ray such an enormous number of individuals,” he said. “While individual risks will be extremely small, the population risk has the potential to be significant.”

The research also shows children are more vulnerable to radiation damage, because they have more cells dividing at any one time than when fully grown and a radiation-induced mutation can lead to cancer in adulthood.

Officials from the US Transportation Security Administration and the Food and Drug Administration have tried to allay concerns by saying that it would take thousands of trips through the scanners to equal the dose from one X-ray scan in a hospital.

The recent concerns raised by Dr Brenner at the US Congressional Biomedical Caucus have not been officially addressed.

Dr Agard and fellow doctors John Sedat, a molecular biologist and the group’s leader; Marc Shuman, a cancer specialist; and Robert Stroud, a biochemist and biophysicist, addressed their concerns to Dr John Holdren, science adviser to US President Barack Obama.

The scientists are calling for more research to be undertaken before the use of the scanners becomes commonplace.

Dr Brenner believes millimetre-wave scanners that use radio waves instead of X-rays would be better to use because they have no known radiation risks.

Full-body scanners no stranger to controversy

The full-body scanners have already caused controversy, with privacy concerns including whether scanned images may breach child pornography laws in various countries.

They have also been criticised as ineffective, with warnings they would be unlikely to detect many of the explosive devices used by terrorism groups.

In other trouble earlier this month, a US airport security screener was suspended for assaulting a colleague who joked about him having small genitalia after he walked through a scanner.

And in March a UK airport security worker said she would sue her bosses after a colleague leered at her “naked” image in a scanner.

Small penis taunt: Airport security officer beaten

Scanner ogling: Woman to sue

‘Naked scanners’: Child porn fears