Croatian researchers have trained bees to detect land mines by associating the scent of the bees’ sugary food with the smell of explosives.
During the Balkan War two decades ago, 90,000 mines were buried across the country, according to a government estimate.
Some 2,500 people in Croatia have been killed by them since 1991.
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The protocol should contain all IAEA’s concerns about Parchin and all other objects which the agency suspects of being nuke-oriented, Seyed Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi has told the Russian media. “And if they don’t find anything, let’s close Iran’s nuclear file and remove it from the UN Security Council.”The ambassador recalled that Parchin, which the Agency suspects could have been the site of high-explosives tests related to nuclear weapons, had been fully inspected by the IAEA, but then, he said, the agency wanted to undertake further inspections.“We agreed with a condition that such a protocol would be signed,” the diplomat said. “We displayed flexibility. We offered – let’s sign a protocol and spell out in detail all accusations.” But international experts want to visit the suspected facility prior to signing the protocol – “this is a game,” the ambassador said. “We did not see sincerity in the way that IAEA and Yukiya Amano, director-general of the UN nuclear watchdog behaved,” Sajjadi said. Besides Parchin, the IAEA has suppositions over another Iran’s facility – Fordo uranium enrichment plant – and demands its closure. Speaking to journalists, Sajjadi noted that Iran was not obliged to close the facility and stop uranium enrichment.”Have you read the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? Does it say that we have no right to enrich uranium to 20 percent?” Sajjadi asked. He said the demand to shut down Fordo and stop uranium enrichment was “unfair and ridiculous” and Iran has become a victim of double standards of the IAEA and the US.”We doubt the sincerity of the West, because in the past they have done to us illogical proposals, including the closure of Fordo, and promised to allow us to buy gold and metals, as well as to authorize export of petroleum products. But it is unfair and ridiculous proposal ,” said Sajjadi.”The IAEA was designed to safeguard that no one is developing nuclear weapons. But Israel has a nuclear bomb, and no one cares,” said the Iranian ambassador.He assured that Iran does not pursue nuclear weapons as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made a decision not to build nuclear weapon. “Religious fatwa is above the law”, Sajjadi stressed. Moreover, nuclear weapons would not ensure security for Tehran, but “on the contrary would bring risk”, he said. “Now Iran can develop two or three bombs from the materials it possesses. But if you had a gun with two bullets, would you really go to war against an army?” said Sajjadi. The Islamic Republic insists it has no interest in nuclear weapons, and says it is enriching uranium for purely peaceful purposes, such as nuclear power. There have been attempts from both sides to find common ground in the issue, but negotiations have yielded no results. The latest Iran’s nuclear talks in Kazakhstan in April also brought no breakthrough with negotiators going back to their capitals declaring “positions remain far apart”. Since then no date or place has been set for new talks. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is expected to visit Moscow on July 1-2 as Russia hosts a forum of gas exporting countries. “The Iranian president has been invited, and so we are expecting his visit,” Sajjadi said at a meeting, stressing that Ahmadinejad still will be acting president. … Read More
Authorities attribute three casualties and more than 260 injuries to a pair of ethnic Chechens brothers accused of detonating explosives near the finish line of the Boston Marathon last month in the state of Massachusetts. But as investigators learn that the Tsarnaev family raised international red flags in the years before the April 15 tragedy, congressional leaders are looking to see what could have been done to thwart the attack.Investigators say 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar plotted the attack and intended to detonate more explosives in New York City if they could ever made it out of Massachusetts. During the Thursday morning hearing, Commissioner Davis was grilled over what the city of Boston — as well as state and national law enforcement — could have done to curb plots to terrorize the citizens of both cities.Davis said the Boston Marathon bombing created “the most complex crime scene we ever processed in the city.”In a statement published before the testimony began, the commissioner advocated for having more resources that might be able to give law enforcement the upper-hand in instances where future plots are being hatched. Ultimately it was footage of the Tsarnaev brothers caught on surveillance cameras that led authorities to identify them as suspects in the bombing, and many have made a push in the weeks since to increase the number of cameras across the city. Speaking to the committee on Thursday, Davis suggested he stands in line with this take but does have reservations about what it could lead to.“I strongly support the enhanced ability to monitor public places,” Davis said. “This monitoring . . . violates no constitutionally protected rights but gives police the ability to investigate and effectively prosecute. Images from cameras do not lie. They do not forget.”But in the wake of what unfolded in his city last month, civil liberty proponents have condemned the response in Boston and elsewhere. Davis’ city was placed on lock-down after the bombings during a manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers, and heavily armed police conducted warrantless searches of homes across the region. Coupled with calls for increased surveillance, critics have blasted Boston’s response and have warned of what could come next.“I do not endorse actions that move Boston and our nation into a police-state mentality, with surveillance cameras attached to every light pole in the city,” Davis added with his statement.Elsewhere in the hearing, Massachusetts Undersecretary for Homeland Security Kurt N. Schwartz said Boston’s transit and traffic cameras are already linked to “a quite complex, sophisticated system,” but that admission didn’t deter members of the House from inquiring about other means of foiling future plots.Joe Lieberman, a former Independent senator from Connecticut and co-architect of the US Department of Homeland Security, opined at the hearing that the DHS was designed after the September 11 terrorist attacks essentially to prevent events like Boston from ever unfolding.“Though it would not have been easy, it was possible to prevent the terrorist attacks in Boston,” Lieberman said.The former senator took several opportunities throughout the hearing to offer criticism aimed at the DHS. “To put it bluntly, our homeland defense system failed in Boston,” he said in a statement offered before he took the microphone.Of particular concern, he would later explain, was how information sharing between agencies didn’t occur to a degree that ended with Tamerlan Tsarnaev being detained, or even deported, after Russian intelligence notified the US Federal Bureau of Investigation about him years before the attack.“Why didn’t the [Department of Homeland Security] notify the FBI and the Boston JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] when its system ‘pinged’ that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had left America for Russia on his way to Dagestan?” Lieberman asked.But while Lieberman suggested that US agencies didn’t do their job properly, he had powerful words for Moscow too. “It could be that the most consequential failure to share information was the failure of the Russian intelligence to explain in more detail to us why they were interested in Tamerlan Tsarnaev,” he said.“I’m agitated by,” he said, “why nobody was particularly looking for the name Tamerlan Tsarnaev by the time he came back.”“Someone should have been on him,” he said.Commissioner Davis admitted during the hearing that the FBI failed to inform the Boston Police Department about the Tsarnaev family despite Russian intelligence issuing a warning to the US.When Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) asked, “Were you aware of Russian intelligence warning?” the police chief responded that he was “not in fact informed of that particular development.”“[W]e would have liked to know,” Davis said.“The whole point of the fusion centers and the Joint Terrorism Task Forces is to share information,” McCaul said. “The whole idea of information not shared defies why we even have a Homeland Security Department in the first place.” … Read More
Through help from a “courageous and compassionate individual,” it was possible to properly bury Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with officers on April 19, local police said in a statement. Authorities connected the unnamed individual to their “public appeal for help,” they said.“His body is no longer in the city of Worcester and is now entombed,” the statement said, without specifying where Tsarnaev had been buried.Many US cemeteries had refused to accept the bombing suspect’s remains over fears of bad publicity.While some reacted by bashing Tsarnaev – some went as far as holding a protest against burying “this terrorist on American soil” – others questioned the morality of the vitriolic outbursts. The public resistance to Tsarnaev’s burial was unprecedented in recent US history, with criminals such as Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza buried without protest.Tsarnaev’s body was released by the state medical examiner on May 1, with his death certificate listing the cause of death as “gunshot wounds of torso and extremities,” as well as “blunt trauma to the head and torso.” Tsarnaev was killed four days after he and his younger brother Dzhokhar allegedly detonated explosives near the Boston Marathon’s finish line. The attack killed three people and injured 264 others. … Read More
“One point, One demand: Atheists must be hanged”, chanted the demonstrators as they marched along at least six highways, blocking transport between Dhaka and other cities and towns.The demonstrators gathered in the capital’s Motijheel commercial district, amounting to between 150,000 to 200,000 people according to AFP. On their way, they set shops and vehicles on fire, according to police accounts.Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters after they reportedly set off homemade explosives and threw stones at security. Local authorities had to deploy more than 15,000 security forces to the area.The protesters are reportedly the activists from the Hefajat-e-Islam group, which blames some Internet users for blasphemy; accusing people of using their blogs to spread atheism and apparent lies about Islam.The members of the radical Islamist group demanded the death penalty for those who they think defame Islam. The 13-point list of demands also included a ban on the right of women to work outside the household and the prohibition for women to mix with men. The Islamists also demanded the release of those accused of war crimes during country’s liberation war in 1971, which established the sovereign nation of Bangladesh.The government of Bangladesh has declined the group’s demands to enact an anti-blasphemy law saying that the country lives by secular liberal laws. The leaders of Hefajat-e-Islam promised to launch a campaign to dethrone the government unless their demands are met.The radical Islamist group was formed in 2010 to protest the government’s secular policies in education and politics. Last month it organized a general strike as well as a gathering attended by hundreds of thousands of activists, during three people died and more than 50 were injured. … Read More
The protesters are reportedly the activists from the Hefajat-e-Islam group, which blames some Internet users for blasphemy; accusing people of using their blogs to spread atheism and apparent lies about Islam.”One point, One demand: Atheists must be hanged”, chanted the demonstrators as they marched along at least six highways, blocking transport between Dhaka and other cities and towns.The demonstrators gathered in the capital’s Motijheel commercial district, amounting to between 150,000 to 200,000 people according to AFP. On their way, they set shops and vehicles on fire, according to police accounts.Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters after they reportedly set off homemade explosives and threw stones at security. Local authorities had to deploy more than 15,000 security forces to the area.The members of the radical Islamist group demanded the death penalty for those who they think defame Islam. The 13-point list of demands also included a ban on the right of women to work outside the household and the prohibition for women to mix with men. The Islamists also demanded the release of those accused of war crimes during country’s liberation war in 1971, which established the sovereign nation of Bangladesh.The government of Bangladesh has declined the group’s demands to enact an anti-blasphemy law saying that the country lives by secular liberal laws. The leaders of Hefajat-e-Islam promised to launch a campaign to dethrone the government unless their demands are met.The radical Islamist group was formed in 2010 to protest the government’s secular policies in education and politics. Last month it organized a general strike as well as a gathering attended by hundreds of thousands of activists, during three people died and more than 50 were injured. … Read More
The accident details of which has just been released goes back to April 2012, when NASA realized that the Fermi Telescope was set to brush past the Soviet Cosmos 1805 satellite. This satellite is a 1.5-ton piece of junk circling the orbit.Had the two objects collided, the US$690 million US spacecraft would have been destroyed, as the clash would have released energy equivalent to two tons of explosives.“These are objects of several tons each, as wide as a small airplane, traveling 20 times faster than a bullet. The Fermi mission would be over,” the statement on NASA’s official website quotes engineer Eric Stoneking, who controls Fermi’s orientation in the sky.The Fermi mission first learned of the potential space collision threat on March 29, 2012. Primary calculations showed that the two space objects would miss each other by just more than 200 meters. But later it became clear that their orbits would cross through the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of one another. Since the Russian space junk was travelling at a speed of 43,000kph, the Fermi mission engineers decided not to run a risk and corrected the orbit of the US spacecraft. The scientists fired Fermi’s thrusters, which were specifically designed to move the satellite out of the way in such situations.The two spacecraft successfully missed each other by almost 10km when they passed one another on April 3, 2012.”The maneuver, which was performed by the spacecraft itself based on procedures we developed a long time ago, was very simple, just firing all thrusters for one second,” Stoneking said, adding that “there was a lot of suspense and tension leading up to it, but once it was over, we just sighed with relief that it all went well.”Due to that maneuver, Fermi is still looking for dark matter and black holes. Launched in 2008, the spacecraft is expected to remain in orbit until 2018. While the 26-year-old Cosmos 1805 satellite is just another dead spacecraft still floating around in space.Since the launch of the first satellite in 1957, space junk has been a growing threat to all spacecraft, as occasional collisions occur. NASA tracks 17,000 objects larger than 10cm across in orbit above the Earth daily. Only 10 per cent of those tracked objects are actually active satellites. … Read More
