spacewar, fcs, fake experts, fingerprints & kevlar

US & russian citizens want weapons-free outer space
from afp: Most Americans and Russians want their governments to ensure a weapons-free outer space and would back a treaty underpinning the move, a poll showed Thursday. Seventy-eight percent of Americans and 67 percent of Russians said their leaderships should refrain from deploying any weapons in space as long as no other country does so, according to the poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org.

future combat system plagued by problems
from ee times: Congressional auditors are reportedly questioning the exploding scale of software development required to field the U.S. Army's Future Combat System. In a report in Thursday's (Jan. 24) edition, the Washington Post quoted officials with the congressional Government Accountability Office (GAO) as saying the Army underestimated the size of the software effort... The next largest DoD software development project is the Joint Strike Fighter, at about 23 million lines of code. According to the Post story, investigators said the software portion of the Future Combat System was "started prematurely" and that the Army and prime contractor Boeing Co. "didn't really understand the requirements."

US hires 'fake' soviet weapons experts
from presstv: A plan drawn by Washington to divert Soviet Union weapons technology away from other countries has proven to be no more than a US scam. The US Department of Energy had set up a program after the fall of the USSR to keep newly impoverished Soviet scientists from immigrating to wealthy countries hostile to the United States.

homeland security collecting fingerprints at logan airport
from dhs.gov: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today that it has begun collecting additional fingerprints from international visitors arriving at Boston Logan International Airport (Logan)... "Biometrics have revolutionized our ability to prevent dangerous people from entering the United States since 2004. Our upgrade to 10 fingerprint collection builds on our success, enabling us to focus more attention on stopping potential security risks," US VISIT Director Robert Mocny said.

the pentagon's new lethal weapon
from presstv: The US Department of Defense's wide-ranging 'warfighter enhancement program' is preparing grounds for the most lethal weapon ever. Pentagon's 'the Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007' puts forward the idea of using different drugs to insulate combat soldiers from the stressful psychological element of killing. The move not only desensitizes them to the horrendous aspect of war, but also maximizes soldiers' lethality by bypassing their moral autonomy.