Visit NewWorldNextWeek.com to get previous episodes in various formats to download, burn and share. We also have weekly episodes from FoodWorldOrder.com. And as always, stay up-to-date by subscribing to the feeds from Corbett Report here and Media Monarchy here. We also have weekly episodes from FoodWorldOrder.com Thank you.
satellite proposals gain traction after north korea's launch from wsj: U.S. intelligence agencies are capitalizing on North Korea's weekend rocket launch to advance proposals to deploy two new spy satellite systems estimated to cost a total of about $10 billion, according to government and industry officials. Arguing that the U.S. faces a future gap in advanced, high-resolution imaging capabilities, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week asked the White House to approve plans to build a pair of large, cutting-edge spy satellites along with two smaller, less-expensive models commercially available today, these officials said. The aim is to get the simpler satellites into orbit first to maintain U.S. space surveillance efforts, and then develop and launch the more-capable follow-on constellation.
discovery nears space station as debris nears, too
from ap: Seven astronauts raced to the international space station aboard space shuttle Discovery on Monday, while NASA debated whether the orbiting outpost will need to move aside to dodge part of an old Soviet satellite. Space station astronauts had a close call last week with a small piece of orbiting junk, and NASA said Monday that debris from a satellite that broke apart in 1981 could come within about half a mile of the station early Tuesday. NASA will decide later Monday whether to fire the space station's engines to nudge the complex out of the path of the debris.
debris near space station was bigger than reported from reuters: The piece of orbital space junk that forced three astronauts to briefly evacuate the International Space Station on Thursday was bigger than originally reported, NASA officials said on Friday. The object, identified as a piece of rocket engine that flew in 1993, was about 5 inches in diameter, not .35 inches. Had it struck one of the pressurized modules aboard the $100 billion space station, the crew would have had only 10 minutes of air, said NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries.
US military confirms it shot down iranian drone from danger room: Last month, a U.S. fighter aircraft tracked and shot down an Iranian drone. Details - first reported by Danger Room - have been elusive, but the U.S. military has now confirmed the incident. Multinational Forces Iraq spokesman Col. Scott Maw tells Danger Room that coalition fighters intercepted an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle over Iraqi airspace on Feb. 25. The UAV, an Ababil-3 (pictured here), was "tracked as it crossed the border." Coalition aircraft were sent up to visually ID the drone. Finally, they did, and then shot it down "over 25 miles from the Iraq-Iran border." All told, the UAV was tracked "for an hour and 10 minutes before it was shot down." Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, head of military operations at the Iraqi Defense Ministry, also confirmed the incident, telling Reuters: "An unmanned Iranian plane crossed the border and it was discovered by multi-national forces' radar. They intercepted it and brought it down ... an American plane brought it down." According to Jassim, the incursion was most likely a "mistake." Initially, coalition press officials would neither confirm nor deny the incident. But the presence of Iranian drones over Iraq — and the confirmation of the shoot-down — raise new questions about Tehran's unmanned aircraft capabilities and its intentions.
blackwater's prince cuts & runs from danger room: The rebranding of Blackwater continues. First, the mercenary firm expands beyond its core, guns-for-hire business. Then, the company changes its name - to the inscrutable, barely-pronounceable "Xe." The latest: Outspoken and controversial firm founder Erik Prince announces he's stepping down as CEO. "I'm a little worn out by the whole thing, the politics of it all," Prince tells the Wall Street Journal. "Me not being part of the equation reduces the 'X' on the thing." I guess that means the company is now called "e?"
report: diebold system has 'delete' button for erasing audit logs from threat level: After three months of investigation, California's secretary of state has released a report examining why a voting system made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold) lost about 200 ballots in Humboldt County during November's presidential election. But the most startling information in the state's 13-page report [156kb PDF] is not why the system lost votes, which Wired.com previously covered in detail, but that some versions of Diebold's vote tabulation system, known as the Global Election Management System (Gems), include a button that allows someone to delete audit logs from the system. Auditing logs are required under the federal voting-system guidelines, which are used to test and qualify voting systems for use in elections. The logs record changes and other events that occur on voting systems to ensure the integrity of elections and help determine what occurred in a system when something goes wrong. "Deleting a log is something that you would only do in de-commissioning a system you're no longer using or perhaps in a testing scenario," said Princeton University computer scientist Ed Felten, who has studied voting systems extensively. "But in normal operation, the log should always be kept."
finland's parliament passes 'lex nokia' bill from yle: Parliament has passed the controversial reforms to the data protection law, the so-called "Lex Nokia" bill. The vote was 96 for, 56 against. The hotly debated reforms caused arguments within the government coalition, but also caused a crack in the Green League. Notably, three Green MPs who had previously voted against the bill abstained from the vote: Johanna Karimäki, Ville Niinistö and Kirsi Ojansuu. They were just three of the 47 parliamentarians who decided not to cast a vote. The bill, dubbed "Lex Nokia" because of the mobile phone giant's perceived advocacy for the law, angered unions and privacy rights advocates.
army pitches 'future' killers as job-savers from danger room: In late January, the Air Force's defense contractor buddies started pushing their pet project, the Raptor stealth fighter jet, as a jobs program. "Without it, more than 95,000 jobs are at risk," proclaimed one online ad. (The New America Foundation figures the real number is more like 35,000. You get the idea, though.) But at least the Air Force had the good sense to step back and let its industrial partners make the case for their weapons-as-stimulus. The Army wasn't so slick, alas. The Army is trying hard to keep Future Combat Systems - its massive effort to make the force lighter, more-lethal, and better-networked - away from the budget axe. During the presidential campaign, both the Obama and McCain camps talked about slowing down or killing the project. Despite some successes, FCS has become a poster child in Washington for Pentagon bloat and overreach.
russian general says US may have planned satellite collision from ria novosti: A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said. According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a U.S. telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia. However, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the U.S. satellite involved in the collision was used by the U.S. military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007... Shershnev claims the U.S. military decided to continue with the project to "develop technology that would allow monitoring and inspections of orbital spacecraft by fully-automated satellites equipped with robotic devices." The February collision could be an indication that the U.S. has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating 'hostile satellites,' including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.
a billion over budget, nasa gets a bilion more from stimulus from ap: NASA can land a spacecraft on a peanut-shaped asteroid 150 million miles away, but it doesn't come close to hitting the budget target for building its spacecraft, according to congressional auditors. NASA's top officials know it and even joke about it. This week auditors found that on nine projects alone NASA is nearly $1.1 billion over cost estimates that were set in the last couple of years. Congress' financial watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, reviewed NASA's newest big-money projects and found most were either over budget, late or both. That doesn't include two of NASA's largest spending projects whose costs have wildly fluctuated and still aren't firm - replacements for the space shuttle fleet and Hubble Space Telescope. Historically, overruns have caused NASA to run low on money, forcing it to shelve or delay other projects. Often, the agency just asks taxpayers for more money. In fact, NASA got $1 billion from the new stimulus package. It's to be spent on climate-watching satellites and exploration among other things. "Getting an extra infusion of money doesn't necessarily mean you have a capability to spend it well," said Cristina Chaplain, GAO's acquisitions chief who wrote the study [2.8mb PDF].
task force urges broader role for nuclear labs from washington post: The nation's nuclear weapons laboratories would be spun out of the Energy Department and become the center of an independent Agency for National Security Applications under a proposal to be released today by a bipartisan task force formed by the Stimson Center, a research organization devoted to security issues. Changing the status and making wider use of Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories for other research would help reestablish and assure "the nation's global science and technology leadership in the 21st century," said the task force report. At present, the labs are directed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semiautonomous part of the Energy Department. "This action would enable the laboratories to remain trusted third party advisors as well as providers of capabilities, but it would initiate a full transformation from a Cold War, industrial age mindset and culture," according to the task force, which was chaired by Francis Fragos Townsend, who was an assistant to President George W. Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism, and retired Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, who was deputy national security adviser to President Bill Clinton. The proposal comes at a time when the future of the nation's multibillion-dollar nuclear weapons complex is under review.
video: robo-beast & human troops march together from danger room: We've seen BigDog, the military's alarmingly-lifelike robotic quadruped, climb over hills, stomp through snow, and survive swift kicks to the chops. Now, for the first time, we're seeing it on patrol, with human soldiers. Mass High Tech uncovers this video of the BigDog going through exercises at Ft. Benning, Georgia. It comes on the heels of the robo-beast's longest walk yet - a 12.8 mile hike, following a series of GPS waypoints. Soldiers at Ft. Benning seemed intrigued by the idea of a mechanical pack mule that could one day carry some of their load.
global warming rocket with nasa satellite crashes from ap: A rocket carrying a NASA satellite crashed into the ocean near Antarctica after a failed launch early Tuesday, ending a $280 million mission to track global warming from space. The Taurus XL rocket carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory blasted off just before 2 a.m. from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. But minutes later, a cover protecting the satellite during launch failed to separate from the rocket, a preliminary investigation found. The 986-pound satellite was supposed to be placed into an orbit some 400 miles high to track carbon dioxide emissions. The project was nine years in the making, and the mission was supposed to last two years. Scientists currently depend on 282 land-based stations - and scattered instrumented aircraft flights - to monitor carbon dioxide at low altitudes. "Certainly for the science community it's a huge disappointment," said John Brunschwyler, Taurus project manager for Orbital Sciences Corp., which built the rocket and satellite. "It's taken so long to get here."
officials: how were bird flu viruses sent to unsuspecting labs? from canadian press: Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made "experimental virus material" based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company. That company, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then disseminated the supposed H3N2 virus product to subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Authorities in the four European countries are looking into the incident, and their efforts are being closely watched by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control. Though it appears none of the 36 or 37 people who were exposed to the contaminated product became infected, the incident is being described as "a serious error" on the part of Baxter, which is on the brink of securing a European licence for an H5N1 vaccine. That vaccine is made at a different facility, in the Czech Republic. "For this particular incident ... the horse did not get out (of the barn)," Dr. Angus Nicoll of the ECDC said from Stockholm. "But that doesn't mean that we and WHO and the European Commission and the others aren't taking it as seriously as you would any laboratory accident with dangerous pathogens - which you have here."
US energy dept cannot account for nuclear materials at 15 locations from global security newswire: A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records. That's just one of the findings of a report released [2.3mb PDF] yesterday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded "the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material."
analyzing body language to detect terrorists & tourists from itbusiness: As soon as you walk into the airport, the machines are watching. Are you a tourist - or a terrorist posing as one? As you answer a few questions at the security checkpoint, the systems begin sizing you up. An array of sensors - video, audio, laser, infrared - feeds a stream of real-time data about you to a computer that uses specially developed algorithms to spot suspicious people. The system interprets your gestures and facial expressions, analyzes your voice and virtually probes your body to determine your temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and other physiological characteristics - all in an effort to determine whether you are trying to deceive. Fail the test, and you'll be pulled aside for a more aggressive interrogation and searches. That scenario may sound like science fiction, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is deadly serous about making it a reality.
army preparing to test future combat systems from defence talk: Soldiers and civilians with the Future Combat Systems program at White Sands Missile Range are working overtime preparing to put future Army technology to the test. Soldiers - along with technicians for the companies that produce the various systems that make up FCS - are loading up vehicles with data collection equipment that will be used to test the systems later this year.
update: US military says 'fireballs' spotted over texas are not related to satellite collision from wikinews: The United States military Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has said that the 'fireballs' spotted over areas of Texas in the United States on Sunday February 15, are not related to the collision of a U.S. and Russian satellite in space. According to spaceweather.com, NASA says the object was a meteor. "There is no correlation between the debris from that collision and those reports of re-entry," said STRATCOM military spokeswoman Major Maj. Regina. "It's a natural meteor, definitely," said Bill Cooke, an astronomer at NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.
cern atom-smasher relaunch delayed to september from afp: Researchers announced Monday a new delay for the restart of Europe's Big Bang atom-smasher, saying the faulty multi-billion dollar machine would now be turned back on in late September. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) had planned to relaunch the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this spring before delaying it to the summer. But CERN management decided to aim for a September restart to reinforce protection systems. "The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data," CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer said in a statement. "It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start-up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year."
who'll be the next darpa chief? from danger room: Tony Tether, the long-time chief of Darpa, is stepping down. So who'll be the next to head up the Pentagon's premiere research agency - and become the country's most visible defense geek? Several different names keep coming up. In no particular order, they include:
Dr. Lisa Porter, physicist, head of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity ("Darpa for spies"), and former NASA associate administrator;
Dr. Mark Lewis, aeronautical engineer, University of Maryland professor, and former Chief Scientist of the Air Force;
Dr. Michael Goldblatt, CEO of Functional Genetics, former head of Darpa's Defense Sciences Office, former science and technology chief at McDonald's Corporation;
Dr. Jane "Xan" Alexander, physicist, former deputy director of Darpa and the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency;
Dr. Regina Dugan, mechanical engineer, former Darpa program manager;
Zach Lemnios, electrical engineer, Chief Technology Officer at MIT's Lincoln Lab, and former director of Darpa's Microsystems Technology Office;
Dr. Amy Alving, aerospace engineer, Chief Technology Officer at SAIC, and former director of Darpa's Special Projects Office.
boeing says spysat-spying spysats on track for launch from register: US aerospace colossus Boeing says it has conducted successful ground testing of America's planned "space surveillance" satellite system. The idea, essentially, is spy satellites to spy on other spy satellites. Boeing and the US Air Force refer to the new watcher-watcher kit as Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS). "The SBSS team is making good progress on the path toward launch," said Colonel James Jordan of the USAF Space Superiority Wing in Los Angeles. The colonel was speaking of recent tests in which a space-command ops centre in Colorado successfully sent control signals over "the encrypted Air Force satellite control network" to an SBSS spacecraft on the ground. The plan is for the first SBSS sats to be launched this spring. Once in space they will be able to monitor other objects in near-Earth space using optical sensors. America would like to be able to do this primarily because keeping track of opposition spy satellites is difficult from the Earth's surface... SBSS watcher-sats high in space can monitor a large part of an entire hemisphere, unaffected by weather. Not only can they keep tabs on opposition spybirds as they orbit, they can also watch what happens after things are launched into space. "The importance of a space-based capability to monitor space assets cannot be overstated," said Craig Cooning, Boeing veep in charge of space monitoring stuff. Well, maybe it can be just a little.
amerithrax lab halts research after toxin-tracking scare from danger room: When the Pentagon needs to handle the deadliest biowarfare threats, it turns to the labs of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Maryland. It's the only place in the American military complex equipped to handle the worst of the worst diseases -- those that have no cure and are transmissible by air. Which makes it extremely unnerving, that the place had to suspend biodefense research on Friday, "after discovering apparent problems with the system of accounting for high-risk microbes and biomaterials." That's the scoop from the new ScienceInsider blog, which notes that "the lab has been under intense scrutiny since August, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation named former USAMRIID researcher Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks." The concern this time is that the lab may not be accurately tracking the use and storage of all of its biological organisms in an internal government database - leaving the door open to misplacement, mishandling, or worse. According to an internal memo obtained by ScienceInsider, "any materials found without a corresponding record in the database must be reported to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army." "I believe that the probability that there are additional vials of BSAT [biological select agents and toxins] not captured in our … database is high," institute commander Col. John Skvorak wrote. This is not a good thing.
nerve agent may be missing from utah depot from deseret news: Is the Army missing some nerve gas? Pentagon auditors concede that is a remote possibility because of discrepancies in records between how much chemical weapons agent was initially stored and how much of it was later destroyed at Utah's Deseret Chemical Depot and other bases nationwide. But officials believe all the nerve agent in question was destroyed, according to a partially censored U.S. Army Audit Agency report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Auditors list in it several reasons that could have caused apparent-but-unreal variances in those records. But auditors concluded, "The (Army Chemical Materials) Agency didn't have complete assurance that amounts recorded in the system were accurate, which increased its chances for heightened levels of program scrutiny by federal, state and international organizations that have a vested interest in the elimination of chemical weapons." Such words can cause shivers among Utahns who remember such things as the death of thousands of sheep in Skull Valley in 1968 that were blamed on nerve gas tests that went awry at nearby Dugway Proving Ground, and Skull Valley residents who have blamed mysterious illnesses on exposure to tiny amounts of nerve agent from such tests.
kyrgyzstan closing US base key to afghan conflict from ap: Kyrgyzstan's president said Tuesday his country is ending U.S. use of an air base key to military operations in Afghanistan - a decision with potentially grave consequences for U.S. efforts to put down surging Taliban and al-Qaida violence. A U.S. military official in Afghanistan called President Kurmanbek Bakiyev's statement "political positioning" and denied the U.S. presence at the Manas air base would end anytime soon. The United States is preparing to deploy an additional 15,000 troops in Afghanistan and Manas is an important stopover for U.S. materiel and personnel. Ending U.S. access would be a significant victory for Moscow in its efforts to squeeze the United States out of Central Asia, home to substantial oil and gas reserves and seen by Russia as part of its strategic sphere of influence. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev spoke on a visit to Moscow minutes after Russia announced it was providing the poor Central Asian nation with billions of dollars in aid. Bakiyev said when the U.S. forces began using Manas after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the expectation was that they would stay for two years at most.
military official: we don’t have an end game in afghanistan from thinkprogress: President Obama is finalizing a plan to send tens of thousands of more troops to Afghanistan as “part of a push to beat back the resurgent Taliban and secure regions of Afghanistan that are beyond the reach of the weak central government in Kabul.” NBC’s military correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reports that Pentagon officials haven’t been able to provide an answer to Obama’s concern about having an “end game” strategy in place: According to military officials during last week’s meeting with Defense Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon’s “tank,” the president specifically asked, “What is the end game?” in the U.S. military’s strategy for Afghanistan. When asked what the answer was, one military official told NBC News, “Frankly, we don’t have one.” But they’re working on it. The New York Times reported recently, “Even as Mr. Obama’s military planners prepare for the first wave of the new Afghanistan ’surge,’ there is growing debate, including among those who agree with the plan to send more troops, about whether — or how — the troops can accomplish their mission, and just what the mission is.”
no US/pakistan deal on drone attacks from press tv: Pakistan denies reports that Islamabad had clinched a secret deal with Washington allowing drone attacks inside the country's tribal zones. Pakistani Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Mohammad Sadiq said on Wednesday that "There is no understanding between Pakistan and the United States on Predator attacks." His comments came in response to the remarks of US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in his testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, who said Washington would continue strikes on Pakistan and Islamabad was aware of that.
obama's hypocrisy for raytheon: #2 at dod worked for military-industrial complex from youtube: Obama has already U-turned on a new policy of not allowing lobbyists in his administration to work with issues they have lobbied on in the past. However, just two days after stating his policy, he is already made an exception to his own rule by allowing William Lynn, a defense lobbyist for Raytheon to become the deputy defense secretary.
video: and you thought bush was bad from sociostudent: I don't see what's so hard to understand about this: Obama is just a front-man for the New World Order, the "brand name" of tyranny for the next 4 to 8 years. He's not the Christ OR the Anti-Christ: He's just an empty suit full of empty promises.
al-zawahiri calls obama 'a house negro' from washington post: Soon after the November election, al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader took stock of America's new president-elect and dismissed him with an insulting epithet. "A house Negro," Ayman al-Zawahiri said. That was just a warm-up. In the weeks since, the terrorist group has unleashed a stream of verbal tirades against Barack Obama, each more venomous than the last. Obama has been called a "hypocrite," a "killer" of innocents, an "enemy of Muslims." He was even blamed for the Israeli military assault on Gaza, which began and ended before he took office. "He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection," an al-Qaeda spokesman declared in a grainy Internet video this month. The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under al-Qaeda's skin. The departure of George W. Bush deprived al-Qaeda of a polarizing American leader who reliably drove recruits and donations to the terrorist group.
obama claims to seek space weapon ban from reuters: President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon. Moments after Obama's inauguration last week, the White House website was updated to include policy statements on a range of issues, including a pledge to restore U.S. leadership on space issues and seek a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites. It also promised to look at threats to U.S. satellites, contingency plans to keep information flowing from them, and what steps are needed to protect spacecraft against attack. The issue is being closely watched by Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, the biggest U.S. defense contractors, and other companies involved in military and civilian space contracts. Watchdog groups and even some defense officials welcomed the statement, which echoed Obama's campaign promises, but said it would take time to hammer out a comprehensive new strategy. Enacting a global ban on space weapons could prove even harder.
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Welcome to New World Next Week - the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week: 
Visit NewWorldNextWeek.com to get previous episodes in various formats to download, burn and share. We also have weekly episodes from FoodWorldOrder.com. And as always, stay up-to-date by subscribing to the feeds from Corbett Report here and Media Monarchy here. We also have weekly episodes from FoodWorldOrder.com Thank you.
