The head of Britain's ID cards project and national identity database has defended the government's revised ID card plans in the face of allegations of a u-turn after the project was scaled back. By Nick Heath James Hall, director of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), told silicon.com the revised scheme is likely to cut £1bn off its £5.4bn price tag, that power station workers are likely to join ...

Trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs are lurking in Louisville's drinking water, including one used to treat people with bipolar disorder and alcohol withdrawal, and another prescribed to combat seizures. Swimming with them in the city's water supply is a favorite pick-me-up: caffeine. The findings are part of a nationwide investigation into pharmaceutical drugs in drinking water ...

Features this week News featuring the latest on the Princess Diana inquest, including excerpts of interviews with Mohammad Al Fayed and Princess Diana. Columbia Solidarity - Report on the protests staged by Bristol’s Columbia Solidarity Campaign against state sponsored violence in Columbia. Making the link between British corporations and Columbian death squads in dramatic style outside the main entrance of Bristol university.  DJ Samurai from DC Breaks talks about ...

'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Johnny Rotten famously sneered to the audience at the San Francisco Winterland in 1978, just before the Sex Pistols split up. Well, 30 years on, we have all been cheated: ripped off, swindled, stitched up like kippers. What happened last week in the vote on the Lisbon Treaty was a confidence trick of epic proportions. By Matthew d'Ancona First, and however ...

Campaigners condemn laws that have put 1.5 million juvenilies on a database Jamie Doward Nearly 1.5 million 10 to 18-year-olds will have been entered on the national DNA database by this time next year, sparking claims that Britain's youths are being criminalised and disproportionately 'targeted'. Campaign group Action on Rights for Children (Arch) says 'no other country in Europe criminalises children at such a young age; no other country ...

Iain Macwhirter ISN'T IT reassuring that the finest minds of their generation are serving in Gordon's government. Take home secretary Jacqui Smith and her brilliant solution to the problem of compulsory identity cards: making them voluntary! This oxymoronic U-turn sets a new benchmark in government dithering. The whole point about identity cards - or so Tony Blair told us - was that they were meant to be held by everyone. That ...

Government and the Speaker of the House of Commons collude to try to abuse the 17th Century Bill of Rights to suppress the FOIA disclosure of OGC Gateway Reviews of the ID Cards Programme Spy Blog  The Bill of Rights 1689 a historical piece of the English Constitution, which was intended to preserve the rights and freedoms of ...