Serial killer Steve Wright was caught largely through DNA samples
We seem to be busily building the world's first popular police state.
Opinion polls show high levels of support for identity cards, surveillance cameras, detention without trial - and now a national DNA database covering every individual, including those who have never had any dealings with the police.
Given the growing fear of crime, such attitudes are not surprising. Events in the past week have encouraged them further. Both Suffolk serial killer Steve Wright and Mark Dixie, murderer of Sally Anne Bowman, were caught largely through DNA samples. Police officers and victims' relatives want the change. The case seems open and shut.
Britain already has the world's largest DNA database. Anyone arrested in England and Wales is compelled to submit to a DNA swab and the record is kept whether he is convicted or not. In Scotland this rule is restricted to violent and sex offenders, and then for only three years unless an extension is applied for.
But the operation of the scheme south of the Border has led to the beginning of serious doubts. As so often with measures aimed at greater security, people are far less enthusiastic ...   more »

Jonathan Leake
THE world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies after stocks fell to their lowest levels for 50 years.
The crisis has pushed prices to an all-time high and could lead to further hikes in the price of bread, beer, biscuits and other basic foods.
It could also exacerbate serious food shortages in developing countries especially in Africa.
The crisis comes after two successive years of disastrous wheat harvests, which saw production fall from 624m to 600m tonnes, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Experts blame climate change as heatwaves caused a slump in harvests last year in eastern Europe, Canada, Morocco and Australia, all big wheat producers.
Booming populations and a switch to a meat-rich diet in the developing world also mean that about 110m tons of the world’s annual wheat crop is being diverted to feed livestock.
Short term pressures have compounded the problem. Speculative buying by investors gambling on further price rises has further pushed up prices.
Though shortages are often blamed on the use of land for biofuel crops, the main biofuel cereal crop is maize, not wheat. Farmers have brought millions of acres of fallow ...   more »

RFID is serving as the network for the RFID Ecosystem Project, a social networking experiment at the University of Washington in Seattle that is exploring the intersection of the value of tracking systems and the loss of privacy that they can cause.
Faculty, staff, and students are voluntarily being tracked within the university's Paul Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering, a research facility without classrooms that has been outfitted with approximately 30 RFID readers and 150 antennas. Volunteers carry Gen2 ID tags and can also apply tags to personal possessions. Ten people have been tracking themselves for a year, and project organizers are now recruiting 50 volunteers to expand the data collected and to test new applications.
The readers are networked to a database that participants can access from computers in the facility. Participants use the location data to see where colleagues are in the building, to locate misplaced personal items such as cell phones, PDAs, books, and backpacks, and to improve their personal time management by reviewing how and where they spent their time during the day. The project is completely voluntary and participants can block anyone from accessing their data.
"We are exploring the relationship of privacy ...   more »

Bush-Cheney strategy involves G.O.P. crossover voting to take out Hillary, marketing newcomer Obama, an "independent" ticket, and maybe even martial law...
Evidence of a covert campaign to undermine the presidential primaries is rife, so it's curious that the Democractic Party and even some within the G.O.P. have ignored the actual elephant in the room this year. That would be Karl Rove. After rigging two previous presidential elections, this master of deceit would have us believe that he's gone off to sit in a corner and write op-eds.
Not so. According to an article in Time Magazine, Republicans have organized to throw their weight behind Barack Obama, the democratic rival of frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Early in Obama's campaign, three former fundraisers for President Bush flushed his coffers with cash, something the deep pockets hadn't done for any candidate in their own party. With receipts topping $100 million in 2007, the first-term Illinois senator broke the record for contributions. It was a remarkable feat, considering that most Americans had not even heard of him before 2005.
The Time magazine article goes on to explain that rank and file Republicans in red states have switched parties for the Democratic primaries to vote for ...   more »

'This is one of the great developments of the 19th century towards democracy'
By Bob Unruh
A government bureaucrat in Germany says that nation demands all children attend government-approved schools because they all must be "integrated" into society the same way.
"This is one of the great developments of the 19th century towards emancipation and democracy," a recently dated letter to a homeschool advocate said.
WND has reported a number of times on Germany's aggressive enforcement of its Hitler-era ban on homeschooling, and even when parents decided they would flee to Iran to seek a less-oppressive educational environment for their child.
One German student, Melissa Busekros, at one point simply was taken into custody by members of a team of police officers and confined to a mental institution for her crime of being homeschooled. 
Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government "has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole."
Drautz said homeschool students' test results may be as good as for those ...   more »