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Father Jailed For 0.01g Of Cannabis

Friday, February 8th, 2008

Briton jailed for four years in Dubai after customs find cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar under his shoe

A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.

Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai’s main airport.

A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.

Dubai International Airport is a major hub for the Middle East and thousands of Britons pass through it every year to holiday in the glamorous beach and shopping haven.

But many of those tourists and business travellers are likely to be unaware of the strict zero-tolerance drugs policy in the UAE.

One man has even been jailed for possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport. Painkiller codeine is also banned.

If suspicious of a traveller, customs officials can use high-tech equipment to uncover even the slightest trace of drugs.

Mr Brown was detained and arrested in September last year and has been held in a cell with three other men in the city prison ever since.

This week the youth worker, who has two young children and a partner at home in Smethwick, West Midlands, was sentenced to four years in prison.

A 25-year-old Briton who was found with a similar speck in one pocket as he arrived on holiday has been awaiting sentence since November.

Meanwhile a Big Brother TV executive has so far been held without charge for five days after being arrested for possessing the health supplement melatonin.

The authorities claim to have discovered 0.01g of hashish in his luggage.

Last night Mr Brown’s brother Lee said his case “defied belief”.

“For that sort of amount common sense should prevail, from where it was found it was obviously something that had been crushed on the floor - it could have come from anywhere.”

Rastafarian Mr Brown had been returning from a short trip to Ethiopia, where one of his children lives and where he owns property.

He was travelling with his partner Imani, who was also stopped and detained for more than a week.

Normally he flew direct to and from the UK, but decided to stop off in Dubai.

“He was incensed when he called me,” said driving instructor Lee, 57. “It would be funny if the circumstances weren’t so unpleasant.

“Bugs are crawling out of his mattress when he’s sleeping. His family are frantic with worry and can’t call him.”

Last night campaign group Fair Trials International advised visitors to Dubai and Abu Dhabi to “take extreme caution”.

Chief Executive Catherine Wolthuizen said: “We have seen a steep increase in such cases over the last 18 months.

“Customs authorities are using highly sensitive new equipment to conduct extremely thorough searches on travellers and if they find any amount - no matter how minute - it will be enough to attract a mandatory four-year prison sentence.”

Mrs Wolthuizen added: “We even have reports of the imprisonment of a Swiss man for ‘possession’ of three poppy seeds on his clothing after he ate a bread roll at Heathrow.

Held: A campaign is underway to secure the release of Cat Le-Huy from a Dubai jail

“What many travellers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person.”

Only two months after Mr Brown was stopped economics graduate Robert Dalton was detained in almost identical circumstances.

Mr Dalton, from Gravesend, on Kent was with two friends when he was stopped and asked to empty his pockets.

Officials found 0.03g of cannabis in a small amount of fluff. He is currently on trial and if convicted, is likely receive a four-year prison sentence.

Last night his brother Peter, 26, told how it took 24 hours to find out why he had been stopped.

“As we understand, the amount of cannabis was barely visible to the human eye and was at the bottom of the pocket of an old pair of jeans.

“He’s not a drug user, but he goes clubbing and the speck was so small.”

Last week Cat Le-Huy, a London-based German national, was arrested on arrival at the airport.

Mr Le-Huy, 31, head of technology with Big Brother production company Endemol, was arrested on suspicion of possessing illegal drugs after customs officers found melatonin, a health supplement used for jet lag available over the counter both in Dubai and in the US.

Authorities also claim they discovered fragments in one of his bags which they believe to be hashish. Fair Trials International said the amount was 0.01g.

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DARPA 2009: Brains-on-a-Chip, Transparent Displays

Friday, February 8th, 2008

By Noah Shachtman

Brains-on-a-chip, robotic rescue choppers, see-through displays — those are just a few of the projects that the Pentagon’s mad science division has hatched up for next year.

Earlier this week, DARPA, the Defense Department’s way-out research arm, submitted its $3.29 billion budget for the 2009 fiscal year. In it are dozens of new programs — one more far-reaching than the next.

A particularly wild project is Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNAPSE. “The program will develop a brain inspired electronic ‘chip’ that mimics that function, size, and power consumption of a biological cortex,” DARPA promises us. “If successful, the program will provide the foundations for functional machines to supplement humans in many of the most demanding situations faced by warfighters today” — like getting usable information out of video feeds, and starting tasks. The agency is looking to spend $3 million next year, to get started on its faux brain effort. My guess is that it will take considerably more cash to get it done.

The “Nightingale” program aims to put together the building blocks for a “fully autonomous” flyer that could some day serve as both an unmanned ambulance-in-the-sky and as a robotic search-and-rescue chopper. Looking for, picking up and stabilizing the wounded are dangerous, complicated jobs. But, by squeezing “integrated life support capabilities into a small unmanned (or optionally piloted) air vehicle,” DARPA thinks Nightingale could keep some soldiers out of harm’s way. Not only would the drone search for the missing and wounded. This “low cost, high availability air ambulance” could be deployed near the warzone, to get casualties to combat hospitals in a hurry.

Of course, making this a reality won’t be easy. “Technical challenges include intelligent autonomous flight behavior, sensor integrated guidance and control to enable flight in complex terrain, fully autonomous selection…of suitable landing locations, dual mode (ground and flight) propulsion, collaboration/coordination with human combat medics and safe and rapid autonomous launch and return to advanced medical facilities.”

Just about everything, in other words.

And that isn’t the only new robot project DARPA has in mind for 2009. There’s a $4 million effort to start work on a “robotic naval vessel to operate for years with minimal human interaction.” $4.5 million to build a teeny-tiny, unmanned Osprey that can perch on a rooftop, and silently spy on foes. Another $4 million to arm small drones with an “inexpensive, low weight precision munition that is effective against soft targets,” including individual people. And $2 million for a walking “tetrapod” to carry soldiers’ gear. (That sounds like our favorite robot, the eerily lifelike, four-legged BigDog.)

DARPA is also looking to spend $5 million next year on laser-guided bullets — ammo steered by beams of coherent light, and able to turn on a dime. If the program works as planned, the agency promises, “it will make every shooter with any .50-caliber weapon” into “a precision sniper at greater than 2 kilometer range.”

Another $3 million will go towards spotting rocket-propelled grenades — before they’re launched, somehow. DARPA doesn’t elaborate how the trick would be pulled off, only that it would involve “cognitive swarm recognition technology.” In phase one of the program, DARPA boasts, the system will be capable of “detection rates greater than 95%.”

DARPA is also looking to spend $3 million next year on “transparent displays.” How would you make those? Simple… By “exploiting the optical plasmon phenomenology characteristics of nanoscale structures.” (Contact DANGER ROOM HQ immediately in you can translate.) These new gadgets will replace existing models “in a host of applications, such as canopy- windshield- window-integrated… and new, light-weight avionics displays.” Soldiers today have to use clunky monocles or PDAs — if they use anything at all — to get data on the run. DARPA figures this project might lead to “integrated helmet display visors, bringing the digital battle space to the individual warfighter.”

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