Senators Accuse Pentagon of Obstructing Inquiry on Sept. 11 Plot WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - Senators from both parties accused the Defense Department on Wednesday of obstructing an investigation into whether a highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger did indeed identify Mohamed Atta and other future hijackers as potential threats well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The complaints came after the Pentagon blocked several witnesses from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on Wednesd... (more)
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Students Prepare to Launch Home-made SatelliteA microsatellite built largely from donated parts in university workshops across Europe is just over one week from launch. It is the first in a trio of student-built spacecraft that will ultimately reach for the Moon.
It took only 18 months for more than 400 students – spread across 23 universities and 12 countries – to design and build the SSETI Express spacecraft. Set to launch from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Sept. 30, the project is part an education effo... (more)
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British Bombers: The Most Outrageous Iraq War Story Since Abu GhraibThe last remaining public justification for the U.S./U.K. occupation of Iraq is terrorism: The foreign forces cannot leave until Iraq is somewhat peaceful and the terrorists have been defeated.
That threadbare reasoning was ripped apart on Monday as the world -- other than the United States, where broadcast media avoided the story -- was shown two agents provocateurs employed by the British government. Their exact mission will never be proven. The evidence, however, is damning... (more)
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British "Undercover Soldiers" Caught driving Booby Trapped Car: "They refused to say what their mission was."The following Reuters report raises some disturbing questions.
Why were undercover British "soldiers" wearing traditional Arab headscarves firing at Iraqi police?
The incident took place just prior to a major religious event in Basra.
The report suggests that the police thought the British soldiers looked "suspicious". What was the nature of their mission?
Occupation forces are supposesd to be collaborating with Iraqi authorities. Wh... (more)
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EU moves to log all Internet, phone communicationThe European Commission has adopted proposals to log details of all telephone, Internet, and e-mail traffic, to combat terrorism and serious crime.
The push for EU-wide data storage came after the Madrid bomb attacks last year, and intensified after the London bomb attacks in July, when Britain took over the rotating EU presidency.
The Commission proposes storing data related to mobile and fixed telephone traffic for a year, to allow the police to trace the time, pl... (more)
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Mental Health Bill 'to cause thousands to be detained'NINE times as many people as first thought will be forced to undergo compulsory mental health treatment under planned reforms in England and Wales, a new study claims.
The draft Mental Health Bill proposes allowing patients to be made to take medication and detained if necessary. The King's Fund study said that in 15 years as many as 13,000 could be placed under such orders, rather than the Government's 1450 figure. But the Government said the "flawed" study produced incorrect est... (more)
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Hospitals Track More Patients With RFIDHospitals in Connecticut, Alabama and Pennsylvania are using Randianse Inc.'s RFID products to improve equipment management and patient and staff movement.
Randianse, of Lawrence, Mass., announced that it has installed its active RFID indoor positioning solution at Yale-New Haven Hospital to increase efficiency, enhance safety and reduce costs. It will cover nearly 1,000 pieces of medical equipment and managers, allowing convenient tracking with web-based searches. Later this year... (more)
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Iraq police militants 'must go'"Rogue elements" in Iraq's police force must be rooted out, the head of the multi-national force in Basra has said.
Colonel Bill Dunham's comments came after the British army said it had to rescue two soldiers arrested in Basra and handed to Shia militants by police.
UK Defence Secretary John Reid and Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari are in London discussing the tensions.
Meanwhile, Iraq's interior minister has disputed the UK military's account of how it... (more)
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Tesco stocks up on inside knowledge of shoppers' lives· Crucible database is exhaustive - and secret
· Government bodies are tapped for information
Tesco is quietly building a profile of you, along with every individual in the country - a map of personality, travel habits, shopping preferences and even how charitable and eco-friendly you are. A subsidiary of the supermarket chain has set up a database, called Crucible, that is collating detailed information on every household in the UK, whether they choose to sh... (more)
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China admits women were forced to have abortionsSeveral health workers have been arrested in Shandong Province in the east of China after the authorities admitted that local officials had been forcing women to have abortions or undergo sterilisations.
Sources in Linyi City and its surrounding counties claimed that up to 120,000 women had been coerced into submitting to the procedures and that some of them were in the ninth month of their pregnancies.
The arrests follow the detention on 6 September of a local acti... (more)
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O'Reilly lambasted "creepy, little, left-wing outfit" Media Matters for reporting his U.N. death wishDownload Clip Here
On the September 20 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly took aim at Media Matters for America after we highlighted his comments expressing regret that Hurricane Katrina had not hit the United Nations building in New York instead of New Orleans. O'Reilly's comments were brought to the attention of Fox News by former Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-CO), p... (more)
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FAA to Propose Security Cameras on PlanesWASHINGTON -- The latest post-Sept. 11 security change for commercial planes may be cameras in the cabin and wireless devices for flight attendants to alert the cockpit crew to an emergency.
The Federal Aviation Administration plans to propose those ideas Wednesday and then take public comment before deciding whether to mandate the changes, The Associated Press has learned.
The plan is to give pilots a better idea of what's happening in the cabin. The Sept. 11 hijac... (more)
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Tehran six months off nuclear arms ability: Israel IRAN may be only six months away from acquiring the capability to produce nuclear weapons, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has claimed.
The assessment, which he said was based on Israeli intelligence, differs from US intelligence assessments that Iran could not begin producing nuclear weapons for another decade.
"Our experts say they are very close to this (production) stage," Mr Shalom said. "They may need only another six months."
He did not... (more)
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