A video of a firefighter describing seeing molten “steel” flowing at ground zero after 9/11 has emerged on Google video. He states that it was like a foundry or “lava in a volcano”. This is an extremely important piece of footage because it highlights the fact that something other than jet fuel fires, or in the case of building 7, office material fires, was responsible for the collapse of the buildings.

There are lots of accounts alleging that rescue workers encountered molten steel. Debunkers have often asked the question whether these witnesses know the difference between incandescent and molten, i.e. the fact that glowing steel was pulled out of the rubble doesn’t mean it was molten.

The firefighter in this video specifically says the steel was flowing. (more…)

It sounds like a robot straight out of the Terminator films: scientists have designed a crawling machine that can sense and recover from damage to its own body, an ability that should help the creature explore dangerous and unforgiving terrain.

• Video: Wounded robot battles on

Animals can compensate for injuries by changing their movements, for example they can limp to take the pressure off a painful leg.

Now Hod Lipson’s team at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has invented starfish like “resilient robots” that can mimic this feat. (more…)

The country’s nuclear forces must remain capable of guaranteeing the destruction of any potential aggressor, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, as he addressed a meeting of senior military officials, The Associated Press reports.

“Maintaining a strategic balance means that our strategic deterrent forces must be capable of destroying any potential aggressor, no matter what modern weapons systems it has,” Putin said at a meeting of senior military officials.

He said Russia needed to build “principally new strategic weapons systems” to maintain the balance of forces. (more…)

Banks in the UK have been ordered by financial regulators to assess how they would cope in the event of house prices crashing by 40 per cent.

The instruction to include a housing slump scenario in their stress-testing models comes after the Financial Services Authority found that some banks were failing to include gloomy enough assumptions in their modelling.

The FSA said yesterday that an “appropriate” benchmark was to assume property prices fell by 40 per cent and that 35 per cent of mortgages in default ended with homes being re-possessed. It stressed that this was not a forecast but a “severe but plausible scenario” and one that banks should examine when deciding how robust their balance sheets were. (more…)

Senior British Army officers were accused in court of officially sanctioning the hooding and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in contravention of the Geneva Conventions. At a court martial in Bulford Camp, Wiltshire, in which seven soldiers are charged with abuse of nine Iraqis, a witness said military lawyers ordered him to “condition” prisoners for tactical questioning. One of the detainees, Baha Musa, 26, later died. (more…)

The United States has some concerns about a rising China, including a military expansion that may be excessive, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

Beijing has spent heavily in recent years on adding submarines, missiles, fighter planes and other high-tech weapons to its arsenal and extending the reach of the 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest fighting force.

Its reported military budget rose more than 14 percent this year to $35.3 billion, but outside estimates of China’s true spending are up to three times that level. (more…)

Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

The flying robot, nicknamed the “bionic hornet”, would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said.

It is one of several weapons being developed by scientists to combat militants, it said. Others include super gloves that would give the user the strength of a “bionic man” and miniature sensors to detect suicide bombers. (more…)

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is preparing its largest spending request yet for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a proposal that could make the conflict the most expensive since World War II.

The Pentagon is considering $127 billion to $160 billion in requests from the armed services for the 2007 fiscal year, which began last month, several lawmakers and congressional staff members said. That’s on top of $70 billion already approved for 2007.

Since 2001, Congress has approved $502 billion for the war on terror, roughly two-thirds for Iraq. The latest request, due to reach the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress next spring, would make the war on terror more expensive than the Vietnam War. (more…)

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials agreed Thursday to begin sharing forensics data from crime scenes in both countries.

A memorandum of understanding signed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Canadian Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day marks the first in which the United States has agreed to immediate sharing of crime-scene information with a foreign government.

“And while terrorism is a primary concern for all of us, it is not our only job,” Gonzales said. “Criminals are constantly searching for new ways to prey upon our communities. To stop them, we must maintain the same vigilance we show against terrorists.” (more…)

DALLAS — The first of many surveillance cameras has been installed in downtown Dallas. Once the system is up and running, the Dallas Police Department will be able to monitor 30-percent of the business district.

Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle says, “It will create an environment where people know they can’t do anything unlawful in the central business district, because the fact that the cameras are going to take away their anonymity.”

Some agree with Dallas police and believe the cameras will deter crime and, but for others the surveillance system is raising concerns.

“I think we’re getting to a point where we value safety over freedom, and it makes me very uncomfortable,” said Dallas resident, Ellen Dowd. (more…)

Just for the record: readers of the Yorkshire Post were asked in a phone-in poll if Identity Cards should be made compulsory. Seventysix out of 100 said “No”, and 24 per cent said “Yes”.

Remember that, next time government ministers claim - as they always do - that the overwhelming majority of Britons support the introduction of a compulsory ID card system.

Source: London Mirror / Paul Routledge

The easing of a ban on the popular online encyclopedia in China was short-lived.

Barely a week after Wikipedia viewers were able to access the Web site — after a year-long ban — they reported Friday that it was blocked again in several parts of China.

Chinese Web surfers and free-speech advocates had earlier welcomed the apparent lifting of a ban on the English and Chinese versions of the site that provides free information written and edited by its users, although skeptics had voiced fears the end of the ban would be temporary.

“It was great news for us,” said Yuan Mingli, 33, a software engineer in Shanghai who has contributed articles on computer science and Chinese historical figures to the site. “China’s Internet users are not different from other countries’ users. Wikipedia is a very important source of information for us.” (more…)

After seeing the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, a city councilor in the tiny Idaho town of Greenleaf, founded by pacifist Quakers, came up with a novel idea.

Ordinance 208, passed by the City Council on Tuesday, asks Greenleaf’s 862 residents who do not object on religious or other grounds to keep a gun at home in case they are overrun by refugees from disasters like Katrina.

“This is not an ‘it’ll never happen here kind of thing,’” said Steven Jett, the ordinance’s sponsor. “We could get refugees.” (more…)

China has acknowledged for the first time the scale of “transplant tourism” — in which the organs of executed prisoners are sold to foreigners — and are to force doctors to pledge to stop the practice.

The announcement is the government’s most serious response yet to allegations that hospitals are conducting a lucrative and expanding trade in selling organs to foreigners arriving on tourist visas.

According to state media, Huang Jiefu, the vice-health minister, told a summit for transplant doctors in Guangzhou this week: “Most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners.” (more…)

SAN JOSE — You’ve heard about Abu Ghraib prison, Guantanamo Bay, and a host of other places where torture is alleged to have happened. But you’ve probably never heard that a company in downtown San Jose is said to have helped the Central Intelligence Agency get prisoners to the alleged torture sites.

The 16th floor of a gleaming tower on West Santa Clara Street is home to the Jeppesen corporation’s International Trip and Flight Planning office.

But Charlotte Casey of South Bay Mobilization says they should be called the travel agents of terror.

“I really felt ill, sick to my stomach, that this was happening in San Jose,” Casey said. (more…)