Decided to take the day off, here’s the last post of 2006.

Earlier today, during an interview on CNN, the Republican chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee — which just released a report rebuking the FBI on its investigation of the 1999 Oklahoma City bombing — was asked if he was helping to “fuel conspiracy theories.”

American Morning’s Miles O’Brien told outgoing Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, (R-CA) that he had “raised a lot of questions that are just kind of ‘out there’ in the conspiracy theorist world.” O’Brien mentioned different theories relating to Middle East terrorists, Iraqi officials, neo-Nazi bankrobbers, and the alleged John Doe #2. (more…)

Thousands more police are to be given special training and equipment to deal with a potential chemical, biological or nuclear terror attack.

A Government spokeman insisted the move was not in response to any specific threat, but “part of an ongoing process”.

The Home Office is to buy 12,000 personal protection suits for the event of a dirty bomb attack.

Around 7,000 police officers across the UK are currently trained to deal with an attack, representing about five per cent of the total number of officers.

The new, high-tech suits will be used over the next few years to replace the 7,000 currently in use, and to make available an extra 5,000 to existing police officers.

A Home Office spokesman said the move would mean an increase in the number of officers trained to deal with an attack, but would not say exactly how many. (more…)

Seven police officers have been charged with murder and attempted murder for a shooting on a New Orleans bridge six days after Hurricane Katrina that killed two people and wounded four others.

The incident on the Danziger Bridge in the eastern part of the city on September 4, 2005, has come to represent the lawlessness that descended on the city in the aftermath of the storm.

At the time New Orleans sweltered under a blistering heat, corpses littered the streets and looters ransacked shops and businesses.

New Orleans police have described the incident as a shootout with snipers, but victims and their relatives claim it was a police ambush.

“We cannot allow our police officers to shoot and kill our citizens without justification like rabid dogs,” Eddie Jordan, New Orleans District Attorney, said in a statement. (more…)

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqis awoke Saturday to television images of a noose being slipped over
Saddam Hussein’s neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope.

In Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare was not far off the daily average — 92 from bombings and death squads.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, his hometown.

Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death Nov. 5. (more…)

Children as young as four are being filmed in school toilets across Barking and Dagenham.

The Recorder has discovered a number of CCTV cameras have been installed in primary and secondary schools.

Officials at Barking and Dagenham Council claim there is no secrecy around the cameras, but have refused to disclose which schools are involved in the controversial scheme.

Council bosses have in the past vigorously defended pupils’ identities and have even refused to name youngsters pictured in Recorder articles - yet questions are sure to be raised about the privacy and rights of pupils being caught on camera.

Despite contacting every school in the borough, the Recorder received no responses. We have therefore been forced to submit an application for the details under the Freedom of Information Act - the response to which will be due on Tuesday, January 23.

The revelations may panic parents worried about the tapes falling into the wrong hands. (more…)

An ice island the size of a small city is adrift in the Arctic after breaking free from one of Canada’s largest ice shelves, scientists said today.
The ice island is 37 metres (120ft) thick and measures 9 miles by 3 miles, according to the CanWest News Service. It broke clear from Ellesmere island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole, 16 months ago, triggering tremors so powerful they were picked up by earthquake monitors 155 miles away.

Scientists have only just released details about the island after piecing together the break-up from seismic monitors and satellite images.

Within days of breaking free from its fjord on Ellesmere, the floating ice island had drifted a few miles offshore. It travelled west for 31 miles until it froze into the sea ice in early winter.

The island was part of the Ayles ice shelf, one of six major ice shelves in Canada’s Arctic. Scientists believe the shelf’s break-up - the largest of its kind in the Canadian Artic in 30 years - is the result of global warming. (more…)

Detectives investigating the murder of Alexander Litvin-enko are trying to trace a Russian businessman who flew to Britain at the same time as a consignment of deadly polonium-210 was allegedly smuggled into London.

The man was spotted on a flight from Hamburg sitting beside Dimtri Kovtun, another Russian whom German police are investigating for trafficking the radioactive material used to poison the former KGB spy.

Officers have studied CCTV footage from airports at Hamburg and London and are understood to believe that the two men were travelling together. However, the mystery figure disappeared after leaving Heathrow with Mr Kovtun. The name he used on the flight and the passport presented to immigration officials does not show up on any hotel register in the capital. It is believed that he met up again with Mr Kovtun in London on November 1, the day Litvinenko fell ill.

Mr Kovtun was one of the last people to see Litvinenko before he collapsed. Scotland Yard will not say if it regards Mr Kovtun as a victim, a witness or a suspect. (more…)

Money talks - and in the very near future it will be talking through your mobile phone.

Fumbling for coins in your pocket will be a thing of the past as the latest technology lets you load up your phone with credit and pay by simply pointing it at the till.

It’s further proof that new technology is killing off hard cash.

In the coming year, even the smallest purchases will be paid for electronically after credit card giants Visa and Barclaycard struck a deal to create the next generation of “wave and pay” cards for purchases of less than £10.

Users will simply wave the card across a scanner to pay for small items for which they would normally use coins, such as their Daily Mirror or a pint of beer.

But the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona has taken the technology one step further by having tiny data chips implanted surgically under customers’ skin. (more…)

GALVESTON — Technology developed to keep track of prisoners by scanning their irises became available Thursday to identify missing children or elderly people afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease in Galveston County.

The Galveston County Sheriff’s Department is the first sheriff’s department in Texas and the 47th nationwide to join the Children’s Identification Database, or CHILD Project.

The addition of Galveston County is part of an effort to image the irises of 5 million children into a nationwide database over the next few years, said Robert Melley, vice president and CEO of Biometric Intelligence & Identification.

“We have 1,800 sheriff’s departments representing 46 states who have committed to participating,” Melley said. (more…)

DUBLIN, Ireland — President John F. Kennedy was the subject of three separate death threats during his visit to Ireland in 1963, according to newly declassified police documents released Friday.

The documents released by the Irish Justice Department said police received two anonymous telephoned warnings in the weeks before the arrival of the United States’ first Irish Catholic president. A third threat went to the newsroom of the Irish Independent newspaper.

Kennedy’s June 26-29 visit went ahead trouble free as he was greeted by adoring crowds in Dublin, Cork, Galway and at his family homestead in County Wexford, in southeast Ireland.

He was assassinated in Dallas five months later. (more…)

The Bush administration is considering an increase in troop levels in Iraq of 17,000 to 20,000, which would be accomplished in part by delaying the departure of two Marine regiments now deployed in Anbar Province, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

The option was among those discussed in Crawford, Tex., on Thursday as President Bush met there with his national security team, and it has emerged as a likely course as he considers a strategy shift in Iraq, the officials said.

Most of the additional troops would probably be employed in and around Baghdad, the officials said.

With the continuing high levels of violence there, senior officials increasingly say additional American forces will be needed as soon as possible to clear neighborhoods and to conduct other combat operations to regain control of the capital, rather than primarily to train Iraqi forces. (more…)

China said Friday it will strengthen its military to thwart any attempt by Taiwan to push for independence, but vowed that it was committed to the peaceful development of the world’s largest army.

A report issued by the State Council, China’s Cabinet, also said the country’s defense policy will focus on protecting its borders and sea space, cracking down on terrorism and modernizing its weapons.

“China will not engage in any arms race or pose a military threat to any other country,” the 91-page white paper said. “China is determined to remain a staunch force for global peace, security and stability.”

The communist nation’s 2.3 million-strong military is the world’s largest but has been criticized for its lack of transparency about its buildup.

Its reported 2006 budget is $35 billion, but analysts believe the true figure, which doesn’t include weapons purchases and other key items, is several times higher. By comparison, President Bush has signed a bill authorizing $532 billion in defense spending for the 2007 fiscal year that began Oct. 1. (more…)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will declare today that meat from cloned animals is safe to eat.

A safety assessment released on Thursday is expected to approve the entry of products from genetically identical cattle and other livestock into the human food chain.

The FDA indicated which way the wind was blowing back in 2005. Now an article published by its scientists in the journal Theriogenology dated January 1 forms the scientific basis of the approval. Larisa Rudenko and John C Matheson wrote: “[The FDA] concludes that meat and milk from clones and their progeny is as safe to eat as corresponding products derived from animals produced using contemporary agricultural practices”.

The pair said no special labelling of cloned meat would be needed, which has outraged some consumer groups. AP reports Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Centre for Food Safety, said: “Consumers are going to be having a product that has potential safety issues and has a whole load of ethical issues tied to it, without any labelling.” (more…)

Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar on Friday dismissed U.N. sanctions imposed on Iran as “psychological warfare” and suggested they would not affect Iran’s missile production capability.

The U.N. Security Council banned Iran from importing or exporting sensitive nuclear materials and technology as well as ballistic missile delivery systems in a move aimed at stopping it from nuclear enrichment activities that can be used in nuclear weapons.

“We see these sanctions as a psychological warfare that will have no effect on the output of Iran’s defense industries,” Najjar said in an interview with state television.

“We produce several items of defense industries in various fields. They are all indigenous and need no (assistance from) abroad,” he added. (more…)