LONDON — The Ministry of Defence has introduced new guidelines to prevent military personnel talking about their experiences as members of the Armed Forces. Soldiers, sailors and air force members will be prevented from blogging, taking part in surveys, speaking in public or posting on bulletin boards, according to The Guardian. They will also be barred from playing multi-player computer games and sending text messages, photographs and audio or video material without permission if they relate to defence matters. The guidelines say ‘all such communication must help to maintain and, where possible, enhance the reputation of defence’, the paper reported. They come after the row earlier this year about two members of the Royal Navy selling their stories to the media after being held captive in Iran. Receiving money for interviews, conferences and books which draw on official defence experience has now been banned. The rules apparently also apply to Territorial Army members and cadets when they are on duty, as well as to civil servants working for the MoD. Simon McDowell, the MoD’s director general of media communications, told the Guardian: ‘We are trying to give straightforward, clear guidance that is up […]
TRENTON, N.J. — There’s some potentially troubling and telling news for all you motorists out there who may be taking the Turnpike for the worst crime in marriage: cheating on your significant other. E-ZPass and other electronic toll collection systems are emerging as a powerful means of proving infidelity. That’s because when your spouse doesn’t know where you’ve been, E-ZPass does. ‘E-ZPass is an E-ZPass to go directly to divorce court, because it’s an easy way to show you took the off-ramp to adultery,’ said Jacalyn Barnett, a New York divorce lawyer who has used E-ZPass records a few times. Lynne Gold-Bikin, a Pennsylvania divorce lawyer, said E-ZPass helped prove a client’s husband was being unfaithful: ‘He claimed he was in a business meeting in Pennsylvania. And I had records to show he went to New Jersey that night.’ Generally mounted inside a vehicle’s windshield behind the rearview mirror, E-ZPass devices communicate with antennas at toll plazas, automatically deducting money from the motorist’s prepaid account. Of the 12 states in the Northeast and Midwest that are part of the E-ZPass system, agencies in seven states provide electronic toll information in response to court orders in […]
WASHINGTON — An international scramble for the Arctic’s oil and gas resources accelerated yesterday when Canada responded to Russia’s recent sovereignty claims with a plan to build two military bases in the region. On a trip to the far north, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, said: ‘Canada’s new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: use it or lose it. Today’s announcements tell the world that Canada has a real, growing, long-term presence in the Arctic.’ An army training centre for 100 troops is to be built in Resolute Bay, and a deep-water port will be built on Baffin Island, to bolster Canada’s claim to ownership. The move comes a week after a Russian sub planted a flag on the Arctic seabed. Moscow claims rights to half the Arctic. The US, Norway and Denmark also have claims. A US state department official, speaking last week, signalled that Washington will not stand by in the face of what it sees as a Russian land-grab, though America’s position is complicated by its failure so far to sign the treaty of the seas. As Canada was making its move, Danish scientists were preparing to head […]
In the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 1, 2005, a U-2 surveillance aircraft known as the Dragon Lady lifted off the runway at Beale Air Force Base in California, the home of the U.S. Air Force 9th Reconnaissance Wing and one of the most important outposts in the U.S. intelligence world. Originally built in secret by Lockheed Corp. for the Central Intelligence Agency, the U-2 has provided some of the most sensitive intelligence available to the U.S. government, including thousands of photographs of Soviet and Chinese military bases, North Korean nuclear sites, and war zones from Afghanistan to Iraq. But the aircraft that took off that September morning wasn’t headed overseas to spy on America’s enemies. Instead, for the next six hours it flew directly over the U.S. Gulf Coast, capturing hundreds of high-resolution images as Hurricane Katrina, one of the largest storms of the past century, slammed into New Orleans and the surrounding region. The U-2 photos were matched against satellite imagery captured during and after the disaster by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Relatively unknown to the public, the NGA was first organized in 1996 from the imagery and mapping divisions of the CIA, the Department of Defense […]
Two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens. Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens – a 1.4-million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.5-million-year-old Homo erectus – said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years. If this interpretation is correct, the early evolution of the genus Homo is left even more shrouded in mystery than before. It means that both habilis and erectus must have originated from a common ancestor between 2 million and 3 million years ago, a time for which the fossil record is virtually blank. Although the findings do not change the relationship of Homo erectus as a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, scientists said, the surprisingly diminutive erectus skull implies that this species was not as humanlike as once thought. Other paleontologists and experts in human evolution said the discovery strongly suggested that the early transition from more apelike to more humanlike ancestors is still poorly understood. They also said this emphasized […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
