China’s Defense Ministry has confirmed long rumored development of a new hypersonic aircraft that could attack thousands of miles from its launch point.
The hypersonic glide vehicle would be launched using an intercontinental ballistic missile and could travel at speeds of Mach 10. The device would be very difficult to detect by warning systems because unlike the missiles the glider would not enter space.
Military affairs analysts told the Washington Free Beacon the weapon is part of weapons called an “assassin’s mace.” Those weapons are designed to be used by a weaker military force to gain an advantage against a superior foe.
A Pentagon spokesman said that they were aware of the Chinese test.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and two subcommittee chairman called the test concerning and that it showed a fast technological leap by the Chinese military.
A new study says that excessive television watching can actually cause physical harm to a child’s brain.
According to the researchers, the more time a child views TV the more significant the changes to the child’s brain.
MRI brain scans of children who spent the most hours in front of the TV in the study showed greater amounts of grey matter in the regions around the front of the frontal lobe. The build up was connected to lower verbal intelligence and that children with the highest IQs showed significantly less grey matter in that area of their brains.
The study showed both boys and girls brains were impacted equally by excessive television viewing.
The researchers said that part of the issue comes from television not requiring any advancement in brain function to view. In comparison, playing a musical instrument requires increased technical precision and allows for greater, higher levels of achievement.
The scientists could not say conclusively if missing activities such as reading, playing sports or interacting with other children were also to blame.
The National Security Agency is being evasive when questioned by a U.S. Senator about their spying on members of Congress.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders sent a letter to the agency on Friday asking if the NSA currently is spying or has ever spied on members of Congress or any other elected American officials. The NSA’s preliminary response to the Senator on Saturday said that Congress has “the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons.”
The letter from the NSA never provides a direct answer to the Senator’s question regarding spying on government officials.
This is the second time the subject of NSA spying on Congress has been sidestepped by administration officials. Attorney General Eric Holder at a congressional hearing last summer said the NSA had no intent to spy on Congress but did not say it had not been done.
The military has a plan that could include drones carrying chemical weapons within the next 25 years.
The Department of Defense has released its Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap that shows a plan to have drones hunt in “swarms” that will have its own artificial intelligence that could have them deviate from a programmed mission on their own.
The drones would “deviate from mission commands” if they spot “a better target” according to a report in London’s Daily Mail.
The report also says that designs are being created to make chemicals within weapons reach a more powerful and faster explosion.
The Federal Aviation Administration says that within 20 years, there will likely be as many as 30,000 drones flying in U.S. airspace.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel has released another story based on documents from fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden claiming the National Security Agency has a unit dedicated to hacking “tough” systems.
Systems like the Microsoft automatic software reporting system installed on every Windows based computer in the world.
The division is called Tailored Access Operations or TAO. The team is described as “an elite team of hackers” that specialize in stealing data from targets that the NSA defines as the toughest to crack.
The TAO’s mission was “Getting the Ungettable.”
The group reportedly had “James Bond-like” equipment to complete missions such as computer monitor cables that would record anything typed on a screen, USB sticks with micro radio transmitters and fake base stations that would intercept mobile phone signals.
Microsoft said they do not supply information to intelligence sources and did not comment on the leaked document’s claim the NSA hacked the company’s reporting system.
A new study is suggesting that men and women with severe stress in their lives run a much greater risk of stroke than the average person.
The study from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine showed a direct connection between stroke and the level of stress in someone’s life. The study followed men and women for 16 years to track stress along with blood pressure and other health issues.
“Assessment and treatment of anxiety has the potential to not only improve overall quality of life, but may also reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as stroke, later in life,” Dr. Maya Labiase told Reuters.
Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
The study also showed that people with high stress in their lives tended to choose activities which increase stress on the body like smoking and alcohol abuse.
A federal judge cited the September 11th terrorist attacks in his ruling that bulk collection of American’s telephone information was legal.
U.S. District Judge William Pauley of New York said the National Security Agency’s program is the government’s counter-punch to al-Qaeda’s use of technology to plot attacks against Americans. He cited al-Qaeda’s decentralized network and that it plots many of its attacks remotely.
“This blunt tool only works because it collects everything,” Pauley said. “The collection is broad, but the scope of counterterrorism investigations is unprecedented.”
The ruling counters a ruling earlier this month from a different federal judge who had granted a preliminary injunction against the program. The Washington, D.C. based judge said the program likely violates the fourth amendment to the Constitution.
The judge said the NSA had intercepted seven calls from 9/11 hijackers but thought they were overseas because they could not collect information they can collect now.
A White House task force has called for the brakes to be applied to the National Security Agency.
The presidential advisory panel recommended close to four dozen changes for the NSA and their actions to collect electronically based data for investigations. While the group did not call for an outright ban on the use of phone and internet data, there was a clear signal that the NSA had gone too far.
One of the biggest recommendations is that the NSA be no longer allowed to store information related to American’s telephone records.
“The message to the NSA is now coming from every branch of government and from every corner of our nation: You have gone too far,” read a statement from Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. “The bulk collection of Americans’ data by the U.S. government must end. This momentous report from the President’s closest advisers is a vindication of the efforts of a bipartisan group of legislators that has been working for years to protect Americans’ privacy by reining in these intelligence authorities.”
The panel also recommended that a court sign off on any search of an individual’s phone or internet data.
President Obama is under no obligation to implement the changes suggested by the committee but has said he will discuss the report with members of his national security team.
Amid public outrage over reports that the NSA has been collection massive amount of information about average Americans as part of their bulk collection spying efforts, the head of the National Security Agency is asking Congress to not change their ability to spy on a global scale.
General Keith Alexander pleaded with the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying that the risk to America from global threats is growing every single day. He said that the bulk collection efforts of the NSA provide vital information that intelligence services can use to stop terrorist activity both at home and abroad.
Gen. Alexander told the Senators that bulk collection was the only way to “connect the dots” between foreign terror threats and any potential terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
The program was revealed as part of the massive document release from fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Gen. Alexander admitted to Senators the NSA would be open to finding a better solution with the help of technology companies.
It had been a long established scientific fact that when a flu virus obtained an immunity to particular anti-viral flu medications, they would become less effective in transmission between humans.
Now scientists have found the deadly H7N9 bird flu in China does not lose any of its infectivity when it becomes resistant to commonly used drugs like Tamiflu.
The researchers were quick to add that the drug-resistant H7N9 was not more infectious than in the past. They reiterated that the virus is one of the less transmittable viruses between humans.
H7N9 emerged earlier this year in China and has killed 45 of the 139 people confirmed to have been infected with the virus. Scientists had initially believed H7N9 could not transmit between humans but found cases in August of human-to-human transmission.
A separate study in the United States this week said that it was not impossible for H7N9 to mutate into a form that could be easily passed among humans.