Over the last few days, news has emerged that a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was the source that recently leaked classified information to Wikileaks. But he didn't just leak 260,000 classified cables and a brutal video of an Apache helicopter mowing down civilians and journalists in Iraq -- no, he also leaked the code name and details of the government investigation into the Chinese attacks on Google and other Silicon Valley businesses.
Thousands of people could be slapped with fines for offences that would never have attracted police attention in the past under sweeping reforms to police powers.
Experts fear swearing in public, with a fine of $100, will be a major money spinner and could become the weapon of choice for frustrated officers on the beat.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh announced the new powers for the state's police to issue on-the-spot notices for public nuisance offences.
Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure's on to allow them in the skies over the United States.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.
Iran is sending aid ships to blockaded Gaza, state radio said on Monday -- a move likely to be considered provocative by Israel which accuses Tehran of arming the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers, Hamas. One ship left port on Sunday and another will depart by Friday, loaded with food, construction material and toys, the report said. The boats would be part of international efforts to break Israel's isolation of the Gaza Strip. "Until the end of the Gaza blockade, Iran will continue to ship aid," said an official at Iran's Society for the Defence of the Palestinian Nation. While Israel has long suspected Iran, which rejects the Jewish state's right to exist, of supplying weapons to Hamas, Tehran says it only provides moral support to the group.
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.
Scientists in the Netherlands unveiled the largest radiotelescope in the world on Saturday, saying it was capable of detecting faint signals from almost as far back as the Big Bang.
The LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) consists of 25,000 small antennas measuring between 50 centimetres and two metres across, instead of a traditional large dish, said Femke Boekhorst of the Netherlands Radioastronomy Institute.
It is based near the northeastern Dutch town of Assen, but the antennas are spread out across the rest of the Netherlands and also in Germany, Sweden, France and Britain.
A Japanese spacecraft, which may be the first to gather samples from an asteroid, returned to earth last night after a seven-year journey.
Hayabusa, Japanese for “falcon,” re-entered the atmosphere at 10:51 p.m. Tokyo time, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said on its website. A helicopter located the capsule in the Woomera area of Australia an hour later.
If drinking and smoking seem inextricably linked, perhaps it's because in the brain's pleasure centre they actually are.
Alcoholics often have a particularly hard time quitting cigarettes. Traute Flatscher-Bader at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues wondered why this should be. So they did a post-mortem analysis of gene expression in the brains of smokers, alcoholics and those who had done both during their lives.
Barely 40 years ago, driving after drinking alcohol was a common occurrence. Today, it is socially unacceptable to all but a tiny minority. But as the families of those who continue to die on Britain's roads will attest, the problem has hardly disappeared.
Appearing on the Alex Jones Show earlier in the week, pastor Lindsey Williams said that gases — Hydrogen Sulfide, Benzene, Methylene Chloride, and other toxic gases — pose a greater risk to human health than the presence of oil washing up on Gulf of Mexico beaches. Williams said the EPA is not reporting on the amount of gases escaping from the BP oil gusher. However, the second video below suggests the EPA has released data on the amount of Hydrogen Sulfide and Benzene in the air in Louisiana.
US General David Petraeus appeared to pass out briefly at a televised Senate hearing on Afghanistan.
The four-star general who leads Central Command quickly recovered and walked out under his own power.
Gen. Petraeus, 57, had finished telling Sen. John McCain that he believes the planned 2011 pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan remains on track, and McCain was responding when the room fell silent and aides began crowding around the four-star general.
