28th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Lords defeat Blair over terror bill - The government was tonight defeated in the Lords over its controversial terror bill as peers voted to reject a clause creating a new offence of "glorifying" terrorism. The bill will now go back to the House of Commons in a battle of wills between the two houses which is referred to as "parliamentary pingpong". Charles Clarke, the home secretary, immediately hit back, saying: "I am disappointed that the Lords have chosen to ignore the clear and repeated signal from the Commons that glorification of terrorism is unacceptable.

• Iraq makes terror 'more likely' - People across the world overwhelmingly believe the war in Iraq has increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks worldwide, a poll for the BBC reveals. Some 60% of people in 35 countries surveyed believe this is the case, against just 12% who think terrorist attacks have become less likely. In most countries, more people think removing Saddam Hussein was a mistake than think it was the right decision.

• Bush Admits Bin Laden's Help Ensured Election Win: “I thought it was going to help,” said Bush - According to a soon to be released book written by Bill Sammon, Senior White House Correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Bush attributes his 2004 victory over John Kerry in part to a Osama bin Laden videotape released on the eve of the election. “I thought it was going to help,” Bush decided. “I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

• Vodafone shows phone with face recognition - Vodafone KK, the Japanese unit of UK-based Vodafone, today unveiled a handset from Sharp that includes a number of cutting-edge features such as a VGA (video graphics array) resolution screen and a face-recognition security system... The security system uses a small camera positioned under the main display and replaces the PIN-code or fingerprint authentication found in some other phones. It is based on technology from Oki and is capable of authenticating within one second whether the face of the person trying to use the phone matches that of the pre-registered owner.

• MALAYSIA: Biometric cards for vehicle owners - Biometric cards with the owners' thumbprint will replace paper-based vehicle registration cards by the end of the year. This is to stop the increasing number of car thefts and forgeries. Once implemented, owners will get the chip-based biometric cards when they renew their road tax. The biometric card, the size of a credit card, will carry details and the thumbprints of the owners aside from information on the vehicle.

• Parky to interview Tony Blair - Michael Parkinson has revealed he will be interviewing Tony Blair on the new series of his chat show. The Prime Minister will be quizzed by the nations favourite interviewer alongside actor Kevin Spacey and American pop diva Christina Aguilera. It is the first time Parkinson has interviewed the PM and he says he is really looking forward to it.

27th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• MI6 knew of 21/7 bomb suspect - THE intelligence services are preparing to make a robust defence of the decisions they took in the months before the July 7 suicide bombings and the July 21 failed terrorist attack. A leaked “top secret” document published in The Sunday Times yesterday indicated that there was intelligence on one of the July 21 suspected bombers. One of them was reported to have been subjected to a short-term intelligence operation. It has already been admitted that MI5 had two of the July 7 bombers under surveillance a year before the suicide attacks in London that killed 52 people last year. Neither of the two, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, was judged to be a serious threat at that stage, and MI5 felt that it was unjustified to commit extensive resources to a lengthy surveillance operation.

• 8pm TONIGHT ON UK CHANNEL 4: Dispatches: Stealing Freedom - Political commentator Peter Hitchens takes a look at how the recent avalanche of security legislation has affected the civil liberties of ordinary people in Britain. The result, Hitchens explains, is that we are sleepwalking into a Big Brother state. Travelling across Britain, Hitchens meets ordinary people who have suffered needlessly because of new legislation and increased police powers. The programme also contains interviews with the Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer, Lord Carlisle, an independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty.

• PM defends civil liberties stance - Prime Minister Tony Blair has defended his stance on civil liberties and accused his critics of "a refusal to understand the modern world". Critics of measures such as identity cards, anti-social behaviour legislation and the outlawing of the glorification of terror failed to take account of the rapidly-changing nature of modern crime, he suggested. Traditional court procedures and attitudes to civil liberties were designed for a very different world, said Mr Blair.

• New election laws to be unveiled - Britain said it would introduce new laws this week to combat postal vote fraud in a bid to allay fears that the UK electoral system is open to abuse and rigging. Elections Minister Harriet Harman will say on Monday the government would introduce 14 new measures to tackle fraud, with the main aim of making voting by post more secure.

• Clooney hits out at 'traitor' tag - Actor George Clooney has attacked the press in the United States for describing him as a "traitor." Clooney - known as a prominent critic of the Bush government - told the BBC that he had been "nailed" in the American media following his vocal opposition to ongoing conflict in Iraq. He has previously claimed that one magazine even published a front cover of him with the word "traitor" across it. The actor is currently in two Oscar-nominated films, Good Night, And Good Luck and Syriana, which both have a political message. "I've been nailed in the American press as a traitor to my country because I said we should ask questions before we went to war," he told the BBC.

26th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Mobile tracking devices on trial - Your mobile phone is a beacon - a radio transmitter in a box. Therefore it is possible to trace the signal and work out where it is. There are now several web companies which will track your friends' and family's phones for you, so you always know where they are. But just how safe is it to make location details available online? There are several reasons why you may want to track someone. You may be a company wanting to keep tabs on employees during work hours, or a parent wanting to check up on a child's whereabouts.

• MI5 rebels expose Tube bomb cover-up - MI5 is facing an internal revolt by officers alarmed about intelligence failures and the lack of resources to fight Islamic terrorism. To illustrate their concern, agents have leaked more topsecret documents to The Sunday Times because they want a public inquiry into the “missed intelligence” leading up to the July attacks in London. They believe ministers have withheld information from the public about what the security services knew about the suspects before the bombing of July 7 and the abortive attacks of July 21.

• DIANA DEATH TESTS WERE BOGUS: Shock claim at secret inquiry (not really!) - THE inquiry into the death of Princess Diana has been told blood tests from her driver were either faked or came from another dead man. The top-secret Stevens inquiry into her death has been told carbon monoxide (CO) levels apparently found in Henri Paul's blood must have come from a suicide victim killed by inhaling exhaust fumes. We can reveal scientists' claims that only a man killed by CO poisoning would have the 20.7 per cent levels found in Paul's blood.

• Ancient Sun Temple Uncovered in Cairo - Archaeologists discovered a pharaonic sun temple with large statues believed to be of King Ramses II under an outdoor marketplace in Cairo, Egypt's antiquities chief said Sunday. The partially uncovered site is the largest sun temple ever found in the capital's Aim Shams and Matariya districts, where the ancient city of Heliopolis — the center of pharaonic sun worship — was located, Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press.

• 7/7 - has the Blair something to hide? - TWO north west MP have demanded an inquiry into the 7/7 London underground terror attacks. Liberal Democrat Euro-MP Sajjad Karim said that the Government's reluctance to respond to widespread demand for a public enquiry into London's July bombings was likely to raise more serious questions about its approach to the 'War on Terror'. "This Government has been all too keen to underline the importance of 'leaving no stone unturned' in the so-called 'War on Terror' when justifying the intolerable suspension of civil liberties it has sanctioned in the name of national security," said Mr Karim.

• Cartoons could affect global stability ‘more than 9/11’ - ONE of Europe’s most high- profile Muslim scholars has warned that the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muham med could have a greater long-term impact on global stability than 9/11. Professor Tariq Ramadan, who sat on the Muslim task force chaired by Tony Blair after the July 7 London bombings last year, said the fear generated by the cartoons had uncovered “problems that need to be met”.

• Official: Smart cameras, armed guards to protect WTC site - Some day, at the new and rebuilt World Trade Center site, visitors might submit to an iris scan or an analysis of their thumb print to get into buildings, while smart cameras try to match their faces to a photo database of known terrorists. Well-paid, armed guards would be on patrol while sensors test the air for lethal gases.

• Backing for 'torture flight' motion - Calls to ensure no Scottish airports are used for so-called torture flights have won backing from Scotland's justice minister Cathy Jamieson who said she sympathised with the aims of a motion on the subject. And she declared at Labour's Scottish annual gathering: "I hope this conference will pass this motion. "We are all on the same side on this."

25th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• SO YOU THOUGHT IT WAS TONY AND GORDON IN CHARGE? WELL, THINK AGAIN, AND MEET THE MEN FROM SERCO WHO REALLY.. RUN BRITAIN - YOU will probably never have heard of Serco, but they almost certainly have heard of you. Serco will be watching if you speed through traffic lights, they will be keeping an eye on you as you fly off on holiday and help monitor your children's school attendance records. Oh, and they'll have emptied your bins, run your sports centre, tidied your park and made sure that Britain's nuclear deterrent is up and running. And in their spare time Serco organises the Queen's flights around the world and makes sure that Greenwich Mean Time is ticking over nicely. Never mind Big Brother ... this is Big Mother, a company that has so many fingers in so many pies it is almost impossible to pin them down. Run by two reclusive multi-millionaires Serco is, literally, everywhere.

• MI5 'failed to pass on Omagh bombing intelligence' - PRESSURE mounted on the British and Irish governments last night to hold an inquiry into the Omagh bomb atrocity after it emerged MI5 withheld vital anti-terrorism intelligence just months before the attack. Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson said he had concerns about the handling of intelligence before the August 1998 attack after it was revealed that MI5 kept police in Northern Ireland in the dark about the bomb plot. The Real IRA attack killed 29 people and unborn twins. Authoritative security sources revealed MI5 had a tip-off in April 1998 that a bomb attack was being planned in Omagh or Londonderry.

• MI6 payouts over secret LSD tests - Three UK ex-servicemen have been given compensation after they were given LSD without their consent in the 1950s. The men volunteered to be "guinea pigs" at the government research base Porton Down after being told scientists wanted to find a cure for the common cold. But they were given the hallucinogen in mind control tests, and some volunteers had terrifying hallucinations.

24th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Whitehall branded internet 'Villain of the Year' - The British Government has been named "Villain of the Year" by a group of the world's largest internet companies after pushing through laws across Europe that will force firms to store more information on their customers' web and telephone use. At an awards ceremony in London last night, the Internet Service Provider Association said the Government had used its presidency of the European Union in 2005 to push through EU-wide data retention laws that will force ISPs and telecoms companies "to retain more data for longer without proper impact assessment".

• Taser Used To Break Up School Fight - A Taser gun was used on two high school students Friday morning to break up a fight, authorities said. Two 16-year-old students at Middle Creek High School refused to break up a fight even after the principal stepped in, authorities said. The school resource officer, who is assigned to the school by the Cary Police Department, then used a Taser to stop the fight, authorities said. The officer "dry stunned" the boys, which means he didn't shoot the gun but pressed it directly against them, authorities said. Both boys are in jail.

• Forgot your passwords? Try using your heart: New biometric devices promise better ways to eyeball your identity - Have trouble recalling your passwords or PIN codes? Try using your heart. That's the suggestion from Tel Aviv-based Aladdin Knowledge Systems, which this week showed off a prototype security system that identifies users based on their heartbeats.

• U.S. technology has been used to block, censor Net for years - Internet users in Yemen can't get to beer.com because of technology from a couple of U.S. companies. Surely this is a human rights violation, keeping innocent civilians from a website devoted to beer and women. Why, the Yemeni Netizens — all 150,000 of them — are also blocked from getting to gayegypt.com. They're denied spikybras.com! Which, by the way, ya gotta check out — it's hilarious, and no more racy than an I Dream of Jeannie episode.

• Australians are happy to queue: Few customers are switching to the self-checkout aisle, reports Rachel Gibson - IT'S LATE afternoon on a weekday in a suburban variety store. Frazzled parents with laden trolleys jostle with bored schoolchildren as the line inches towards the checkout. Over in the self-checkout aisle, a store attendant, primed to assist customers to serve themselves, waits idle. When it comes to shopping, it seems, Australians prefer to queue. Self-checkout, widely used in Britain and America, has failed to make a big impact here. At Coles, which introduced the scan-pay-and-go technology in two Victorian stores in May 2004 and now has them at three locations (Chadstone, Caroline Springs, and BiLo in Fountain Gate), only 18 to 20 per cent of customers use it.

• Astronomers spot weird near-Earth explosion: Fundamentalism ruled out - A mysterious new kind of cosmic explosion has been spotted by scientists, according to NASA. The baffling blast was detected about 440m light years away in the constellation Aries, on 18 February. Investigators using NASA's space-based Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope say the signal is similar to a gamma-ray burst. However, the phenomenon is much closer and, at over half an hour, lasted 100 times longer than a typical gamma-ray burst.

• Livingstone suspended for "Nazi" jibe - Feisty London Mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended for a month on Friday for comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, a verdict the mayor said struck "at the heart of democracy". A three-person panel which hears complaints against local authorities ruled in a case brought by a Jewish group that Livingstone, 60, had brought his office into disrepute.

• Morrissey: I was quizzed by the FBI - SINGER Morrissey says he was quizzed by the FBI and Special Branch over his outspoken criticism of the US and British governments. The former Smiths frontman, who has previously branded American President George Bush a terrorist and denounced the war in Iraq, said the experience showed neither country was a democratic society.

• Chinese slap ban on TV cartoons - Cartoons that blend live-action actors with animation are to be banned from TV in China. Shows such as Teletubbies and the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? could be affected by the decision taken by the country's main TV and film regulator. The move is aimed at promoting Chinese animators and apparently curbing the use of foreign cartoons. China's State Administration of Radio Film and Television said people who flout the ban will be punished.

23rd FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Scots pupils to get ID number in bid to boost safety - EVERY state school pupil in Scotland is to be issued with an identity number to allow them to be traced if they go missing. The scheme is being introduced by the Scottish Executive for primary and secondary schools as part of child protection measures following the murder of a pupil. Five-year-old Danielle Reid was killed by her mother's partner three years ago. Her body was placed in a suitcase which was thrown into the Caledonian Canal at Inverness. Her mother had withdrawn her from school and lied to teachers, telling them the family had moved to Manchester.   (COMMENTARY: I guess that if her name was '173784032' rather than 'Danielle', it might not have happened!)

• ID cards have already cost taxpayers £32m - Ministers have admitted spending £32 million on preparing for the introduction of ID cards before Parliament has even been approved. The figures issued by Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, in a Commons written answer, also show that spending soared in the second half of last year from £25,000 a day to £63,000 a day.

• Eye scans: A high-tech hall pass? - The brushed aluminum box on the brick wall glows purple, a rim of light around an unblinking HAL-like eye. You peek in and stare for a second, and the steel doors click open. A soothing female voice says: "Identification is completed." Freehold Borough School District installed the iris-scanning devices in its three schools last month. It and a district down the road in New Egypt are the first U.S. school systems to study what happens when adults are asked to eye-scan to get in the door each day. Privacy and safety experts — as well as locals — are divided over the use of such technologies. But as more school districts make safety a priority after 9/11*, many say such biometric devices could become standard issue.  (*COMMENTARY: Problem > Reaction > Solution... just as it was intended, this is why the bugger needs exposing so badly! - Not that 9/11 had anything to do with stealing children from schools... just a chilling effect to make citizens feel insecure.  See our '9/11 archive' for more info.)

• CHENEY'S BAD SHOT & PRIORITIES vs IMPORTANCE - The Cheney shooting incident has burned up the Internet for weeks. The prima donas of "mainstream media," cable and talk radio have all weighed in on the issue with each side (elephants and jack asses) countering all sorts of charges and speculation. This spit swapping has accomplished nothing that I can see because Dick Cheney is a man who can't be touched and is accountable to no one. Considering his key role in orchestrating a chain of events on 9/11 has gone untouched by any level of law enforcement, I would venture to say he feels pretty confident that nothing will ever come of this shooting.   (COMMENTARY: Whilst feelings on this are mixed amongst research circles, we feel that this episode (i.e. The One Where Cheney Shot His Lawyer Mate) has an aura of importance surrounding it, in that it shows that certain government officials are essentially 'above the law'.  It shows that thanks to the fact that power has been centralised to the degree that it has, goons like Cheney can cover up a crime in plain view and the right people wont ask them the wrong questions.  Scroll down and see our 'Sin City' sketch from 10th February for more concept info.)

• Bush Says Ports Deal Not a Security Threat - President Bush sought Thursday to calm an uproar over a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates taking over significant operations at six major U.S. ports, saying "people don't need to worry about security." Under secret conditions of the agreement with the administration, the company promised to cooperate with U.S. investigations as a condition of the $6.8 billion deal, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

• PLAYED OFF LIKE CHESS-PIECES!: Shrine attack leaves Iraq gripped by civil war fear -  The bloody trail of revenge attacks in Iraq, evident throughout the country, makes one thing clear: Iraqi Shiites, reeling in the aftermath of an attack on their Golden Mosque shrine in Samarra, can take no more. Sunni mosques have been torched in apparent retaliation for the explosion that destroyed a large part of the mosque, the revered Shiite shrine of Imam Ali al-Mahdi and Hassan al-Askari. Bullet riddled corpses have been dumped at the roadside.

• NO IMPERIAL ENTANGLEMENTS!: Why the switch to metric could be olympic task - BRITAIN must convert all road signs to metric in time for the 2012 Olympics or risk being seen as a backward nation clinging to an awkward and outmoded measurement system, according to a report published today. More than 40 years after Britain began the conversion from imperial measurement, the UK Metric Association is urging the Government to set a deadline for changing half a million speed and distance signs. The association argues that the switch to metric road signs would yield safety benefits - such as reducing confusion among foreign visitors — and encourage British people to “think metric”.

• Village Voice Hit Piece Attacks 9/11 Skeptics - A new hit piece is doing the rounds that seeks to portray the 9/11 truth movement as an almost evangelical orthodoxy with ties to Neo-Nazi organizations. Jarrett Murphy's 'The Seekers' article in the Village Voice newspaper is a smarmy attempt to scoff at alternative explanations behind 9/11.

• Straw denies UK rendition flights - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has denied any knowledge of "extraordinary rendition" flights through Britain. The National Air Traffic Service has said there were 200 flights through British airspace by CIA planes associated with rendition in the past five years. Mr Straw insisted Britain had no knowledge of any such flights.

22nd FEBRUARY 2006: -

• New Taser Shotgun 'Will Truly Cause Incapacitation': Taser Hopes To Release Product In 2007 - The nation's largest stun-gun maker has a new way to deliver a jolt of electricity to the human body: a 12-gauge shotgun. Taser International is developing X-REP. That stands for Extended Range Electro-Muscular Projectile. It's a shotgun shell designed to combine the blunt-force trauma of a fast-moving baseball with the electrical current of a stun gun.

• Hospital to radio-tag surgery patients: RFID bracelets improve patient safety in Birmingham NHS trust - The UK’s first electronic patient tagging pilot is being expanded to cover all patients admitted for ear, nose and throat (ENT) or thoracic surgery. Once in place, all patients on five wards at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital (BHH) will be fitted with radio frequency identification (RFID) bracelets, which will be linked to a digital photograph and the electronic medical records for their visit.

• Token fine for Diana paparazzi - A Paris appeals court fined three photographers 1 euro each for invasion of privacy for taking pictures of Britain's Princess Diana and boyfriend Dodi Fayed the night of their fatal 1997 car crash, officials said Wednesday. The appeals court fined them the symbolic 1 euro ($1.19) sum in a ruling on Friday, which was not announced until Wednesday. Jacques Langevin, Christian Martinez and Fabrice Chassery were acquitted of the invasion of privacy charge in 2003 after judges said a crashed vehicle on a public highway is not a private area. But France's highest court disagreed in a ruling last April and sent the case to the Paris appeals court for review.

• Policemen face criminal charges over Brazilian's shooting - British police officers, involved in the killing of an innocent Brazilian in an anti-terrorist operation here in July last, are facing criminal charges over allegations that they tampered with evidence after the shooting incident. The officials, who oversaw the anti-terrorist operation, will be charged by Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) officials with attempting to pervert the course of justice by disguising the fact that they had mistaken 27-year-old Jean Charles De Menezes for a terrorism suspect, the 'independent' reported today.

• Neocon architect says: 'Pull it down' - NEOCONSERVATISM has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects. Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something I can no longer support". He says it should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies.

21st FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Electronic surveillance enters EU statute books - EU legislation allowing telecoms and internet data surveillance by security agencies will enter into force by August 2007. Europe’s justice ministers have given final approval to controversial rules forcing telephone operators and internet service providers to store data. Information such as call logs, numbers called, email or web addresses can then be accessed by law enforcers investigating terrorism or serious crime. Surveillance of the content of calls or emails is not covered by the EU directive and remains under the scope of national security laws.

• Shop regrets 'hoodie' humiliation - A supermarket has apologised to a 58-year-old teaching assistant who was asked by an over-zealous security guard to remove her hooded top. Kay Parncutt was challenged over the "hoodie" - clothing often linked with thugs - at a Tesco store in Swindon. She said: "I told him 'no, my hair's a mess'. He didn't think it was very funny, but I did. But I did oblige."Tesco said: "Although our security guard's intention was good, it seems as if he was a little over-zealous." Mrs Parncutt, a teaching assistant at Longleaze School in Wooton Bassett said: "I couldn't believe he was talking to me. I'm supposed to look like a nasty thug?" Hooded tops have been banned from some shopping centres and schools because they conceal the face and have been associated with crime and anti-social behaviour.    (COMMENTARY: This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with ushering in a police state via incrementalism and acclimatisation.  If this kind of confrontation ever happens to you in a store, refuse to remove your hood and let the real 'thugs' drag you out if need be.  If you suffer injury, take the buggers to court and your story to the press.  This kind of bully tactic needs standing up to.)

• Actors detained in security check - The stars of 'The Road to Guantanamo' were detained by London police after returning from the Berlin Film Festival where the film won an award. The six actors who portray British inmates at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp were stopped by police Thursday at London`s Luton airport under the British Terrorism Act, the BBC reported Tuesday. One of the actors, Rizwan Ahmed, said he was verbally abused by police, who took his cell phone and asked if he was going to make any more political films.

• U.K. e-passports start their travels: The United Kingdom's first e-passports, which feature personal information stored on a chip, have been issued - According to the U.K.'s Home Office, e-passports are now being issued by the Foreign Office in Washington, D.C. Offices in the U.K. itself are expected to start issuing them to applicants for new passports and renewals, starting in April. In the early stages of the changeover, some people will receive a new biometric passport while others will receive a passport with existing digital identification. The switch is expected to be complete at summer's end.

• BIS Calls For Global Currency: Nazi bankrollers want elimination of national sovereignty for world cashless control grid - The scandal-ridden and highly secretive Bank For International Settlements, considered to be the world's top central banking policy, has released a policy paper that calls for the end of national currencies in favor of a global model of currency formats. The BIS is a branch of the of the Bretton-Woods International Financial architecture and closely allied with the Bilderberg Group. It is controlled by an inner elite that represents all the world's major central banking institutions. John Maynard Keynes, perhaps the most influential economist of all time, wanted it closed down as it was used to launder money for the Nazis in World War II.

• I confessed to escape Guantanamo torture - A British student secretly released after more than two years in America's notorious Guantanamo Bay terror suspect prison told last night how he had been barred from returning to the UK. And, as Jamal "Tony" Kiyemba spoke of the systematic torture he suffered at the hands of his captors, The Mail on Sunday has learned that Home Secretary Charles Clarke personally intervened to keep him out of Britain on "national security grounds".

• Biometrics, ID cards, tagging, DNA kits being pushed on kids: By Steve Watson for Prisonplanet.com - "A Reader has alerted us to the following website and stalls all around the country that are actively pushing biometrics, ID cards and "do it yourself" DNA kits on children".

20th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Holocaust denier Irving is jailed - British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison. He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and interview he gave in Austria in 1989.

• Intura Adds Biometric Fingerprint Security to New Vision Release - Intura Solutions, LP, a leading supplier of point-of-sale and management software for restaurants operating delivery and quick service concepts, today announced the addition of biometric fingerprint security to Intura Vision. The new fingerprint authentication method was launched along with a new release of Intura Vision on February 19th and 20th at the North American Pizza & Ice Cream Show held in Columbus, Ohio.

• UK radiation jump blamed on Iraq shells - RADIATION detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report. Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain. Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources.

• Police criticised over child DNA - A "postcode lottery" exists over whether police keep innocent children's DNA on file, a Tory MP has claimed. Police can retain DNA samples from 10 to 18-year-olds whether they have committed a crime or not.  But there are big differences across England and Wales - Durham police had 830 samples per 100,000 children compared with 52 on Merseyside. MP Grant Shapps said ministers should admit they were building a national DNA database or erase the records.

• Google preps privacy defences - Google is preparing a robust defence of its refusal to give the US Department of Justice (DoJ) access to its search logs. The company has now published its response (PDF) to the DoJ's subpoena. The document suggests that the government request is not only unnecessary but would also damage Google's business.

• 'The Americans are breaking international law... it is a society heading towards Animal Farm': Archbishop Sentamu on Guantanamo - The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has launched a passionate attack on President George Bush, saying his administration's refusal to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp reflected "a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm". Dr Sentamu, the Church of England's second in command, urged the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) to take legal action against the US - through the US courts or the International Court of Justice at The Hague - should it fail to respond to a report, by five UN inspectors, advising that Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay should be shut immediately because prisoners there are being tortured.

19th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Smoke ban officers to follow offenders home - TEAMS of council enforcers are to be given the power to trail people who flaunt the ban on smoking in public places, including following them to their cars and homes. Critics fear the move raises the prospect of local authorities using the officers as revenue raisers to boost their coffers. Similar charges have been levelled against the armies of private traffic wardens, dubbed “the blue meanies”, who now patrol Scotland’s streets. However, supporters insist the hardline policy is essential to protect people from the effects of passive smoking.

• Retirement age 'should reach 85' - The age of retirement should be raised to 85 by 2050 because of trends in life expectancy, a US biologist has said. Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University says anti-ageing advances could raise life expectancy by a year each year over the next two decades. That will put a strain on economies around the world if current retirement ages are maintained, he warned.

TWO NEW ITEMS ADDED TODAY!

• China's stifling of Web detailed U.S. firms often cooperate, experts reveal to Congress - Keeping Chinese citizens from sensitive online information about such subjects as democracy, Taiwan and the Dalai Lama is a full-time job for the Beijing government. An army of Internet police removes objectionable postings on message boards. Automated filters block access to thousands of Web sites. Then there's the role of private businesses. Companies, including several U.S. technology giants, censor their Chinese Web sites and turn over e-mail records of dissidents, fearing that doing otherwise will jeopardize their business licenses and get their employees thrown in jail.

• Diebold machines get state approval: Electronic voting systems can be used for the 2006 elections but firm ordered to eradicate security flaws - After almost three years, Diebold Election Systems won approval Friday to sell its latest voting machines in California, despite findings by computer scientists that the software inside is probably illegal and has security holes found in earlier Diebold products. The scientists advised Secretary of State Bruce McPherson this week that those risks were ``manageable'' and could be ``mitigated'' by tightening security around Diebold's voting machines.

• Children 'wrongly given' Ritalin - THOUSANDS of Scottish children, some as young as six, are wrongly being labelled hyperactive and given controversial drugs to stop anxious parents thinking they are to blame for unruly behaviour, a leading academic has warned. Dr Gwynedd Lloyd says doctors are wrongly diagnosing ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) when many youngsters are just behaving badly as a normal part of growing up.

• Sorry, Tony. The ID cards vote was the easy part - The ID card scheme is too complex to be introduced by 2008 - MPs voted to approve the Government's controversial national identity card scheme last week, to the relief of Tony Blair, if not of civil liberty campaigners and rebel backbenchers. But now comes the hard bit. How will the scheme work? Or more to the point, can it work?    (COMMENTARY: Security-wise, it won't work, nor is it meant to.  All it does is keep us that much more under the thumb of the totalitarian globalists, until the time comes that we 'will' all accept an implantable microchip under the skin... by then the New World Order agenda will be near completion)

• 40% Muslims want Islamic law in Britain: poll - A survey revealed on Sunday that some 40 percent British Muslims want sharia law, the Islamic law, introduced into Muslim predominant areas in the country. The Islamic law is used in large parts of the Middle East, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, and is enforced by religious police. Special courts can hand down harsh punishments which can include stoning and amputation.

18th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• 'ATM' licences to revolutionise system - It's like something from a Star Wars movie - the live scanning unit tests your eyes, scans your fingerprints, signature, takes a "mug shot" and e-mails your details to a central data base to have your new driver's licence issued within a month. The live scanning units (new electronic processing machines dubbed Robocop by some traffic officers) are being rolled out at municipal offices across South Africa and are expected to revolutionise the way in which drivers' licences are renewed or issued.

• CANADA ID CARD: Day puts national ID card back on the agenda - The new federal minister of public safety, Stockwell Day, is suggesting that a national identification card is inevitable for Canadians. Day suggested in an interview with The Canadian Press that a government-issued national ID card, which Britain could begin to phase in by next year, is likely forthcoming for Canadians.

• HOW 'INCREMENTALISM' WORKS: New Fingerprint Biometric Safe Introduced - Artemis Solutions Group unveils a home or small business safe which uses fingerprint biometric technology to grant access to its contents. Intelligent Biometric Solutions and its parent company Artemis Solutions Group today announced the availability of a new home safe which uses fingerprint biometric technology as its opening mechanism.

• AND MORE INCREMENTALISM: Washington to be first state to use live scan fingerprint technology - Washington racing officials will be able to expedite the finger-printing process for license applicants when they introduce live scan fingerprint technology for Emerald Downs's meet, which begins April 21. Live scan technology transmits fingerprints directly to the FBI's national criminal database via the Internet, giving the commission same-day feedback on criminal records of license applicants. The new process replaces the ink pad method of fingerprinting and eliminates the need to mail fingerprint cards to the FBI database, which usually takes from four to six weeks to complete.

• EPA, Whitman blasted for lies about post 9/11 air quality - A federal judge blasted the Environ mental Protection Agency and its former head Christie Whitman on Feb. 4 for issuing public and repeated statements that Lower Manhattan air was safe to breathe in the days right after 9/11. Safety and health activists have long contended that post-9/11 health and environmental risks were not fully reported. Falling and burning buildings released 2,000 tons of asbestos, lead from 50,000 computers, 424,000 tons of concrete pulverized into dust, cancer-causing PCBs and other toxins.

• Google rips Bush administration's search request - Google called the Bush administration's request for data on Web searches as ``so uninformed as to be nonsensical'' in papers filed in San Jose federal court Friday, arguing that turning over the information would expose its trade secrets and violate the privacy of its users. The 21-page brief filed by the Mountain View search giant angrily dissected the government's claim that the search results would produce useful evidence regarding child pornography.

• Multimedia: Ralph Nader on the Bohemian Grove - Ralph Nader was interviewed on KSRO by Pat Thurston in July 2005, talking about the annual retreat of the Bohemian Grove Society about to take place along the Russian River. In the interview Ralph explains what these rich and powerful men do up in the woods each summer, and why we should care. The interview is available here in four files, mp3 format.

• Boy charged with felony for carrying sugar - A 12-year-old Aurora boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project this week has been charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug, Aurora police have confirmed. The sixth-grade student at Waldo Middle School was also suspended for two weeks from school after showing the bag of powdered sugar to his friends.

17th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Use of 'stop and search' terror law alienating Muslims, warns Yard - The head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch yesterday admitted that police use of controversial stop and search powers under the terror laws needs to be much more tightly focused. Peter Clarke told a London conference of security experts there had been difficulties with the use of powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act after warning that anti-terror measures which alienate the Muslim community were fundamentally misguided.

• Abu Ghraib leaked report reveals full extent of abuse - Nearly two years after the first pictures of naked and humiliated Iraqi detainees emerged from Abu Ghraib prison, the full extent of the abuse became known for the first time yesterday with a leaked report from the US army's internal investigation into the scandal. The catalogue of abuse, which was obtained by the online American magazine Salon, could not have arrived at a worse time for the Bush administration, coinciding with yesterday's United Nations report on abuse of detainees at Guantánamo, the release of a video showing British troops beating up Iraqi youths, and lingering anger in the Muslim world over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

• Authorities Again Looking Into Murder Of 'God's Banker' As Investigation Leads Right Into The Belly Of The Beast, The Vatican, As Well As Masonic Lodges: The Vatican Bank scandal of the 1980's may open up clues to the death of Pope John Paul I, as well as turning up the 'real culprits' behind the murder of Roberto Calvi, the prominent Italian financier and P2 Masonic Lodge member found hanging from the Blackfriars Bridge in London - The story behind the brutal murder of the man called 'God's Banker' has never been fully resolved or his death adequately explained to the American public, a naïve public kept from the truth about so many things, including corruption in the Vatican.

• Great firewall of China: Hand-wringing by high-tech executives is an insufficient response to collusion with Beijing - OFFICIALS from four of the biggest names in global information access danced on the head of a pin Wednesday as they sought to explain why their firms have played footsie with China on limiting and monitoring Internet access. They were defending the indefensible, as several members of a properly riled House international relations subcommittee let representatives of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco know. "Sickening collaboration," as Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., acurately described it.

• Driver's license or national ID card? - Motor vehicle agencies must link their databases together, and perhaps implant chips in driver's licenses, as necessary steps to ease the way for a national ID card, the head of a group of motor vehicle officials said Thursday. Technology that may be used for a national ID card could take the form of a chip loaded onto a driver's license, said Linda Lewis-Pickett, chief executive of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

16th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• Man Charged With Using Taser On Student - DENVER Prosecutors charged a former worker at a Denver middle school with second-degree assault on Wednesday. Shaun Ellis, 24, was accused of using a Taser on one of the students in an after-school program. Investigators said Ellis took a 13-year-old student out of class at Horace Mann Middle School for disciplinary reasons and then assaulted the child with a Taser. The report said the alleged attack happened on Jan. 11.

• Anti-terror chief demands reforms to system - Scotland Yard's top anti-terror official today called for radical changes to the way terrorism is investigated and prosecuted. The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Peter Clarke, called for a new national structure to police terrorism that goes beyond the current plans to merge a number of forces. Mr Clarke also called for changes to rules on what evidence jurors are allowed to hear in court, and for a tightening of the use of controversial anti-terror stop-and-search powers in order to avoid alienating ethnic minorities.

• Proposed law targets tech-China cooperation - Nearly every U.S. company with a Web site located in China will have to move it elsewhere or its executives would face prison terms of up to a year, according to proposed legislation expected to be introduced this week in the U.S. Congress. A draft version of the bill reviewed by CNET News.com represents the first serious attempt to rewrite the ground rules controlling how U.S. Internet companies may interact with foreign governments. If enacted, it would dramatically change the business practices of corporations with operations in China, Iran, Vietnam and other nations deemed to be overly "Internet-restricting."

• Zambia deports 'satanist' pastors - Two Brazilian pastors of an evangelical church accused of satanism were deported from Zambia at the weekend, an official said on Monday. Carlos Barcelos and Jamir Craveiro of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) were sent back to Brazil on Saturday night after the home affairs ministry said they posed a security threat. The UCKG was banned last year in Zambia for allegedly practising satanism but they were later allowed to operate after the government conceded before the high court that procedure was not followed when banning the sect.

• Call to allow body organ selling - Two US doctors have suggested the sale of organs such as kidneys should be legalised to meet the rising demand. They said bids to increase the donor pool were failing, and a black market in organ sales was booming. Writing in Kidney International the pair said, while it remained a taboo, legalisation should be considered.

• Iraq abuse images aggravate Arab hostility to West (...by design we would add!) - Arabs said on Thursday new images of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi prisoners had eroded their respect for the West and would fuel the fury raging over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. The photographs made headline news in the Middle East the day after an Australian television station broadcast previously unpublished film and photographs of violations at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail.

• BATMAN TO TRACK DOWN BIN LADEN - Superhero Batman will turn his attention to real-life bad guy OSAMA BIN LADEN in an upcoming comic book. The Caped Crusader will take on the might of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in new graphic novel HOLY TERROR, BATMAN! Batman writer FRANK MILLER tells the New York Post, "It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of propaganda. Batman kicks al-Qaeda's a**."

• Peers plan for Terror Bill fight - Conservative and Lib Dem peers are expected to fiercely oppose the creation of an offence of "glorifying" terrorism after it was backed by MPs. The government comfortably won a Commons vote on the issue on Wednesday overturning an earlier Lords vote. Tony Blair's reluctance to compromise has angered Tories and Lib Dems who say a deal was there for the taking.

• Congress accuses Google of collusion - The giants of the internet were hauled before Congress yesterday, accused of colluding with China's secret police and censors to wield a "cyber sledgehammer of repression". In a hearing of the House international relations subcommittee, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Google were repeatedly accused of collusion with an oppressive regime, and of selling out the principles of democracy and free speech for profit by bowing to China's demands to censor web content and monitor email.

• China defends internet control - China has defended its internet censorship policies, saying its rules follow international norms and claiming no one has been detained for writing online content, say reports on Wednesday. Liu Zhengrong, deputy chief of the internet affairs bureau of the state council information office, argued that China was being no different from western nations, whose criticisms smacked of "double standards". Zhengrong said: "Regulating the internet according to law is international practice.

• Britain has new weapon against loitering youths -- Sonic Teenager Deterrent - Shopkeepers in central England have been trying out a new device that emits an uncomfortable high-pitched noise designed to disperse young loiterers outside their stores without bothering adults. Police carrying out the pilot project in Staffordshire say some of those who have tested the "Sonic Teenager Deterrent," nicknamed the mosquito, have talked of buying one of their own. The device which costs 622 pounds (908 euros, 1,081 dollars) "doesn't cause any pain to the hearer," according to Inspector Amanda Davies, quoted by Britain's domestic Press Association news agency.

• The propaganda we pass off as news around the world - A British government-funded fake TV news service allows mild criticism of the US - all the better to support it - A succession of scandals in the US has revealed widespread government funding of PR agencies to produce "fake news". Actors take the place of journalists and the "news" is broadcast as if it were genuine. The same practice has been adopted in Iraq, where newspapers have been paid to insert copy. These stories have raised the usual eyebrows in the UK about the pitiful quality of US democracy. Things are better here, we imply. We have a prime minister who claimed in 2004 that "the values that drive our actions abroad are the same values of progress and justice that drive us at home". Yet in 2002 the government launched a littleknown television propaganda service that seems to mimic the US government's deceptive approach to fake news.

• The politics of fear (or how Tony Blair misled us over the war on terror) - On 28 February 2005, with the Prevention of Terrorism Bill being discussed in Parliament, Tony Blair made the following comment to listeners to Women's Hour: "What they [the security services] say is that you have got to give us powers in between mere surveillance of these people - there are several hundred of them in this country who we believe are engaged in plotting or trying to commit terrorist acts - you have got to give us power in between just surveying them and being sure enough to prosecute them beyond reasonable doubt. There are people out there who are determined to destroy our way of life and there is no point in us being naïve about it. "

• Terror threat: The great deception: As MPs vote today on another security bill, we reveal how the public was misinformed and manipulated over the war on terror - Today, The Independent publishes detailed analysis of how Tony Blair manipulated the serious threat of terrorism facing Britain to suit the Government's political agenda. It argues the Prime Minister has repeatedly misrepresented security intelligence to the British people, pandered to the right-wing media, and scuppered a golden opportunity to achieve a cross-party consensus on terrorism in the wake of the London bombings of 7 July. The revelations come in an extract from the Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet by the journalist Peter Oborne. The Use and Abuse of Terror is an examination of the actions of the Government, the police and security services in the heightened state of alert since 11 September 2001.

15th FEBRUARY 2006: -

• New 'Abu Ghraib abuse' images screened (on the heels of both the hate mongering Danish 'Prophet Mohammad' cartoons and the recently released video of UK troops abusing Iraqis... gee how does this work I wonder?) - Previously unpublished images showing US troops apparently abusing detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 were broadcast today by an Australian television station.  Still and video images were broadcast on Dateline, a current affairs programme on SBS television, which appeared to show dead bodies and Iraqi prisoners being tortured by US troops.

• MORE POLICE STATE MEASURES FOR THE UK: MPs back ban on glorifying terror - Tony Blair's controversial plan for a new law to stop people "glorifying" terrorism has been backed by MPs. The House of Lords voted last month to remove the measure from the Terrorism Bill, but the Commons has now voted by 315 to 277 to reinstate the plan. Mr Blair said the vote was a "signal of strength" which could outlaw placards glorifying the bombers who attacked London last July.

• The Terrance Yeakey Cover-Up - Terrance Yeakey was the first police officer to arrive at the Murrah Building following the Oklahoma City bombing. Terrance called his wife that morning and cried to her over the phone. He told her repeatedly "It's not true. It's not what they are saying. It didn't happen that way." Apparently, Officer Yeakey saw something he wasn't supposed to. He was harassed for a full year after the bombing and expressed his belief to loved ones that he would be murdered because of what he knew. One evening, Yeakey called his then ex-wife to inform her that he was being followed by what he thought were federal agents and he was going to try and lose them. His patrol car was found abandoned along a dirt road near El Reno, the front seat soaked with blood. &nbs