Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But the data-sifting effort didn't disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system. The central role the NSA ...

NEWS Shopper has discovered Kent police has lost track of known sex offenders. The force was responding to a Freedom of Information request submitted by News Shopper. It confirmed the whereabouts of nine registered sex offenders "became unknown" in 2007. Police declined to say who the missing people are, where they used to live and what offences they had committed. They say officers may find the contact details they have been given ...

High-polluting vehicles will be hit harder, but incentives for green cars will be introduced and fuel duty rises shelved, announced Chancellor Alistair Darling in his 2008 budget. Fuel duty Lobbying from consumer and freight organisations, as well as record increases in oil prices, have convinced Chancellor Alistair Darling to delay planned fuel duty rises by six months. A rise of 2p per litre had been planned, but pressure from lobby groups and consumer ...

A Hungarian newspaper Wednesday ran a picture of a Boeing 737 allegedly used for CIA rendition flights in central and Eastern Europe. The daily Nepszabadsag ran a photo of a white plane bearing the registration number N34315. That aircraft was allegedly used to ferry terror suspects from the Middle East and South Asia to the United States, the Hungarian news service, MTI reported. The photo is from Budapest's Ferihegy airport and ...

Applications for CCTV operators go through the roof A UK company is marketing the first CCTV camera that can see objects under a person's clothing. The ThruVision T5000 can spot items underneath clothing at a range of up to 25 metres. All materials emit different terahertz waves, allowing the cameras to differentiate between sugar and cocaine, for example. Clive Beattie, chief executive at ThruVision, said: "Acts of terrorism have shaken ...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman expanded his effort yesterday to investigate private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, calling for a wide-ranging federal inquiry into the company's employment practices. In letters to the Internal Revenue Service, the Small Business Administration, and the Labor Department, Waxman, Democrat of California, questioned Blackwater's classification of its workers as independent contractors instead of employees. That designation, which the government has questioned in the past, allowed the ...

 Cuba: The US military has agreed to let detainees make regular phone calls to their families from the Guantanamo Bay prison, where many have been confined in extreme isolation for as long as six years. The new policy by the Defense Department, which previously said security concerns prevented such calls, is part of a strategy to ease conditions for frustrated prisoners at the US Navy base in southeast Cuba. Critics ...

A clip from "American Drug War: The Last White http://www.AmericanDrugWar.com [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR8s-mIj9BM[/youtube]

Washington seeks power to ban air travellers - even if they are only flying OVER the U.S. The US government is demanding the right to ban British air passengers from flying over America en route to other countries – even when the flights will not land in the United States. Under anti-terrorism measures due to come into force within two years, the US authorities insist they need to do background checks on ...

An antibiotic-resistant strain of the common staph bacteria is now responsible for more deaths in the United States than AIDS, according to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "This is a significant public health problem" said CDC medical epidemiologist Scott K. Fridkin. "We should be very worried." Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a variant of ...

Admiral William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, resigned on Tuesday, explaining that his reputation as an obstacle of President Bush’s military designs had become too much of a distraction. Fallon was often reported to be a thorn in the side of the president and his other military advisors, a role both the admiral and administration officials strongly deny. U.S. commander in Mideast steps down Navy Adm. William ...

It's three years since the Fox Hunting ban came into force in England. What's changed - not much, with fox hunts still going on... THREE YEARS ON - SCHNEWS REVIEWS THE UK 'BAN' ON HUNTING “It’s pretty much business as usual hunt sabbing in the fields of rural England, three years after the hunting ban came into force - if you can call it a ...

The world's number one terrorist organization, the CIA has committed heinous acts of terrorism abroad, murdering critics of US foreign and domestic policies and has done it on behalf of an increasing tiny, privileged American elite. This elite is a tiny one percent which owns more than the combined wealth the remaining 95% [See: the L-Curve]. On behalf of this tiny, privileged base, the CIA has placed itself ...

When the outside world thinks about Australia, it generally turns to venerable clichés of innocence – cricket, leaping marsupials, endless sunshine, no worries. Australian governments actively encourage this. Witness the recent “G’Day USA” campaign, in which Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman sought to persuade Americans that, unlike the empire’s problematic outposts, a gormless greeting awaited them Down Under. After all, George W Bush had ordained the previous ...

Salvia divinorum is being targeted by U.S. lawmakers concerned that the inexpensive and easy-to-obtain plant could become the next marijuana, media reported Wednesday. Eight states have already placed restrictions on salvia, and 16 others, including Florida, are considering a ban or have previously. Salvia divinorum is not one of the several varieties of common ornamental garden plants known as salvia. Called nicknames like Sally-D, Magic Mint and Diviner's Sage, salvia is a hallucinogen ...