India, the world’s biggest democracy, built a massive database containing information and biometrics of its citizens in the form of Aadhaar back in 2009. Now, it’s planning to build a new database that will continually track the lives of 1.2 billion people living in the country — and further enable surveillance without legal frameworks to prevent its misuse.
Israel's Cabinet has authorized the Shin Bet internal security agency to use mobile-phone tracking technology to monitor the movements of coronovirus patients, despite an outcry from privacy advocates.
Denmark's parliament on Thursday night unanimously passed an emergency coronavirus law which gives health authorities powers to force testing, treatment and quarantine with the backing of the police. The far-reaching new law will remain in force until March 2021, when it will expire under a sunset clause. Jens Elo Rytter, law professor at Copenhagen University, said the measures were unlike anything passed in the last 75 years "It is certainly the most extreme since the Second World War," Initially, the government wanted to the law to give the police the right to enter private homes without a court order if there is a suspicion of coronavirus infection. But this was dropped after opposition from parties in the parliament.
The Bank for International Settlements has said a member of staff working at its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, has tested positive for Covid-19. This afternoon the organisation reported that the individual had received medical treatment and was currently recovering at home. A further nine staff members who had been working in close proximity to the infected employees had been told to to work from home temporarily.
Italian Chief of Army Staff Salvatore Farina has tested positive for the coronavirus and will remain quarantined in his home, with a replacement taking on his official duties. Farina announced he is self-isolating after not feeling well and then testing positive for the disease. He will be replaced in his role as chief of staff by General Federico Bonato, reported foreign media on Sunday.
"Winners" and "losers" of wars are frequently confused. The perceived loser might have actually won the war, just not on the battlefield but during what Prussian military theoretician Karl von Clausewitz called “The postwar”. In actually, in war there are only losers.
The director general of MI5 has called on tech companies to create methods which would allow the security services to access the secret, encrypted messages of people suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in the UK. Speaking to ITV, Sir Andrew Parker says while the real world is regulated and policed, he finds it "mystifying" the same does not apply to cyberspace, calling it "a wild west, unregulated [and] inaccessible to authorities."
Because of the corona virus pandemic, the large-scale maneuver "Defender Europe 2020" is apparently on the verge: After the "de facto suspension" of US military forces, the Bundeswehr canceled its participation in a joint military exercise on Friday. Instead of 20,000 US soldiers, only those 5,500 Americans who are already in Europe are now to take part. That was communicated by the US headquarters in Wiesbaden. The exercise was "frozen", no more troops and materials were moved to Europe.
"Let’s be clear: The coronavirus pandemic is not the “cause” of this unfolding economic and social crisis. It is the “pretext” for the implementation of a carefully designed “operation” (supported by media disinformation) which destabilizes national economies, impoverishes large sectors of the World population and literally undermines the lives of millions of people. What we are dealing with is “An Act of War”."
According to the paper die Welt, Trump is trying to poach German scientists working on an experimental vaccine against a global health threat. Such a vaccine would be “only for the United States,” a source close to the German government told Die Welt, though Berlin would reportedly is looking to make offers of its own to biotech firm CureVac, based in the German state of Thuringia.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has ordered temporary closure of a research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland due to safety concerns. The lab handles some of the most dangerous pathogens and toxins in the world. The decision comes after an inspection in June found that the research lab failed to run sufficient systems that should decontaminate wastewater from the facility. The CDC suspended all research, including projects of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).
As coronavirus panic grips the world, concern over government overreach is growing given the involvement of US intelligence agencies in classified meetings for planning the U.S.’ coronavirus response.
The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser takes a leading role in a variety of Trump challenges, this time responding to the escalating coronavirus outbreak. “In his role as a senior adviser to the president, Jared Kushner is, of course involved in the coronavirus response, but he is not in charge of coronavirus research," a White House official said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday slammed the International Criminal Court as an “unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body,” after the organization said its may soon open cases against American troops for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. The Hague-based ICC announced that it would allow prosecutors to open an investigation targeting not only current and former U.S. military, CIA and diplomatic personnel, but also the Taliban, and Afghan government forces for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the nearly two-decade long conflict.
Microsoft announced on Friday that Bill Gates is leaving the board. CNBC reports: "I have made the decision to step down from both of the public boards on which I serve -- Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway -- to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tackling climate change," Gates said on LinkedIn. "The leadership at the Berkshire companies and Microsoft has never been stronger, so the time is right to take this step."
The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday said it wishes to re-evaluate its decision to award the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar cloud contract with Microsoft, signaling a potential victory for Amazon in its protest of the award. The department "wishes to reconsider its award decision in response to the other technical challenges presented by AWS," it said in a court filing, referring to Amazon Web Services. The agency said it does not anticipate needing to discuss the matter with either AWS or Microsoft. The contract -- called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI -- involves providing cloud storage of sensitive military data and technology, such as artificial intelligence, to the Department of Defense, and could result in revenue of up to $10 billion over 10 years. Amazon Web Services lost the contract to Microsoft's Azure cloud business in October, a decision that surprised many industry experts given Amazon's leadership in the industry. Amazon filed a suit with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims contesting the decision, arguing that it was politically motivated by President Donald Trump's dislike of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, which Bezos owns.
Different Times, Different People - The tricks of psychopaths are timeless.
"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself." - Joseph Goebbels
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." - Hermann Goring
The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear. - Heinrich Himmler
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian took to Twitter on Friday to double down on an unproven claim that the US military brought the new coronavirus
to the central city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began.
Zhao urged his more than 287,000 followers in two tweets on Friday morning to widely share an allegation from a Canada-based conspiracy website that the coronavirus originated in the US rather than the Wuhan seafood market that is thought to be its source.
“This is so astonishing that it changed many things I used to believe in,” he wrote on his official account.
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to the United Nations promoting a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 is a biological weapon created in a laboratory. In the letter, he claimed COVID-19 is “a new weapon for establishing and/or maintaining [the] political and economic upper hand in the global arena.” He went on to say the flulike illness, which has infected tens of thousands, was “produced in laboratories” by the “warfare stock houses of biologic war belonging to world hegemonic powers.”
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman who promoted online theories about the origins of Covid-19 is the latest high-profile figure to make unverified claims. Beijing angered by US politicians who have characterised it as a ‘Chinese virus’ and Senator Tom Cotton’s suggestion it came from a lab in Wuhan
Diplomat David Stilwell delivers a ‘stern representation’ of the US government’s position to Cui Tiankai. Meeting in Washington follows Chinese foreign ministry spokesman’s insinuation that the US military brought the coronavirus to China
This is the first in a series of in-depth stories and interviews with senior defense officials about the future of the American way of war and a concept now known as All-Domain Operations. It’s a vision of a computer-coordinated fight across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, with forces from satellites to foot soldiers to submarines sharing battle data at machine-to-machine speed.
Sir Basil Zaharoff, GCB, GBE, born Vasileios Zacharias (Greek: Βασίλειος Zαχαρίας Ζαχάρωφ), was a Greek arms dealer and industrialist. One of the richest men in the world during his lifetime, Zaharoff was described as a "merchant of death" and "mystery man of Europe". His success was forged through his cunning, often aggressive and sharp, business tactics. These included the sale of arms to opposing sides in conflicts, sometimes delivering fake or faulty machinery and skilfully using the press to attack business rivals. Zaharoff maintained close contacts with many powerful political leaders
The Taiping Rebellion was a massive rebellion or civil war that was waged in China from 1850 to 1864 between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The most widely cited sources estimate the total number of deaths during the 15 years of the rebellion to be approximately 20–30 million civilians and soldiers. Most of the deaths were attributed to plague and famine.
Grey relational analysis (GRA), also called Deng's Grey Incidence Analysis model, was developed by a Chinese Professor Julong Deng of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. It is one of the most widely used models of Grey system theory. GRA uses a specific concept of information. It defines situations with no information as black, and those with perfect information as white. However, neither of these idealized situations ever occurs in real world problems. In fact, situations between these extremes, which contain Dispersed knowledge (partial information), are described as being grey, hazy or fuzzy. A variant of GRA model, Taguchi-based GRA model, is very popular in engineering.
Grey System theory was initiated in 1982 [7]. As far as information is concerned, the systems which lack information, such as structure message, operation mechanism and behaviour document, are referred to as Grey Systems. For example, the human body, agriculture, economy, etc., are Grey Systems. Usually, on the grounds of existing grey relations, grey elements, grey numbers (denoted by 8 ) one can identify which Grey System is, where "grey" means poor, incomplete, uncertain, etc. The goal of Grey System and its applications is to bridge the gap existing between social science and natural science. Thus, one can say that the Grey System theory is inter- disciplinary, cutting across a variety of specialized fields, and it is evident that Grey System theory stands the test of time since 1982. As the case stands, the development of the Grey System-as well as theoretical topic-is coupled with clear applications of the theory in assorted fields.
Stanford University neuroscientist Brian Knutson and colleagues are investigating an approach he calls "neuroforecasting"—in which they use brain data from individuals who are in the process of making decisions to forecast how larger groups of unrelated people will respond to the same choices.
His lab's latest neuroforecasting work in collaboration with researchers at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, published Mar. 9 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on how people spend time watching videos online. By scanning people's brains as they selected and watched videos, the researchers discovered that both neural and behavioral responses to a video could forecast how long other people will watch that same video on the internet. When forecasting video popularity on the internet, however, brain responses were the only measure that mattered.
Experts say the coronavirus has given the Chinese government a pretext for accelerating the mass surveillance: “Intrusive surveillance is already the ‘new normal’. The question for China is what, if any, is a level of surveillance that the population refuses to tolerate,” said Stuart Hargreaves, an associate professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong’s law school.
Mounting supply chain problems are fuelling arguments for greater independence from Beijing's manufacturing might. Outbreak has already caused Chinese exports to plummet, falling by 17.2 per cent in January-February compared with a year ago.
Human studies of Moderna Inc.’s experimental coronavirus vaccine are set to begin this month, positioning it to be first among a host of shots that companies are developing to fight the contagion. The Moderna product is moving very rapidly and will enter human trials “within a couple of weeks,” said Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a group overseeing development of shots against deadly infections. The estimated start of a trial of Moderna’s vaccine is March 19, according to a U.S. government website.
Moderna, Inc. is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company that is focused on drug discovery and drug development based on messenger RNA (mRNA). The company creates synthetic mRNA that can be injected into patients to help them create their own therapies. In October 2013, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Moderna a grant worth up to $24.6 million to research and develop its mRNA drug technology to fight infectious diseases and biological weapons.
Antibodies are proteins that the immune system creates to remove viruses and other foreign objects from the body. Vaccines work by stimulating the body’s own immune system to produce antibodies against an invading virus. Currently, there is no vaccine that can be used against the virus that causes Covid-19, although drug companies like Johnson & Johnson and Cambridge-based Moderna are working on developing them
When DARPA launched its Pandemic Preparedness Platform (P3) program two years ago, the pandemic was theoretical. It seemed like a prudent idea to develop a quick response to emerging infectious diseases. Researchers working under the program sought ways to confer instant (but short-term) protection from a dangerous virus or bacteria. Today, as the novel coronavirus causes a skyrocketing number of COVID-19 cases around the world, the researchers are racing to apply their experimental techniques to a true pandemic playing out in real time.
Institutional investors purchased a net $16.2 million shares of MRNA during the quarter ended June 2019. This may signal that the smart money is gaining interest in this company as the 37.48% of shares outstanding that institutional investors hold is actually below the Biotechnology industry average.
Stéphane Bancel has served as Moderna's Chief Executive Officer since October 2011 and as a member of Moderna’s board of directors since March 2011. Before joining the Company, Mr. Bancel served for five years as Chief Executive Officer of the French diagnostics company bioMérieux SA.
Amazon is working on a cure for the common cold in a years-long, top secret effort called "Project Gesundheit," according to three people familiar with the effort... The team is hoping to develop a vaccine, but is exploring a variety of approaches to the problem. Internally, the effort is sometimes referred to as the "vaccine project....".
Amazon isn't the only organization throwing resources into a cure for the cold. Researchers at Stanford and the University of California are working on a new approach that involves temporarily disabling a single protein inside our cells. Researchers at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub also chipped into the effort. The researchers behind that group said, in a statement, that they were close to a cure.
Bill Gates has been working on global health for 20 years, and today he told the nation’s premier scientific gathering that advances in A.I and gene editing could accelerate those improvements exponentially in the years ahead. “We have an opportunity with the advance of tools like artificial intelligence and gene-based editing technologies to build this new generation of health solutions so that they are available to everyone on the planet."
Millions more are being spent to find new ways fighting sickle-cell disease and HIV in humans. Gates said techniques now in development could leapfrog beyond the current state of the art for immunological treatments, which require the costly extraction of cells for genetic engineering, followed by the re-infusion of those modified cells in hopes that they’ll take hold.
Program Manager of the RadioBio Program: RadioBio aims to establish whether functional signaling via electromagnetic waves between biological cells exists and, if it does, to determine what mechanisms are involved and what information is being transferred.