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Agent Orange 'caused gene damage'
(BBC News, 28 July 2006)
New Zealand troops who served in the Vietnam War suffered significant genetic damage from exposure to Agent Orange, a study suggests. . . . The chemical was used by the US military in Vietnam in the 1960s. . . . It has been blamed for a variety of medical conditions suffered by soldiers and up to four million Vietnamese. . . . The US military sprayed some 80m litres of Agent Orange on North and South Vietnam. . . . The aim was to destroy jungle foliage in order to find communist fighters more easily. . . . Agent Orange contained highly toxic dioxins which have since been blamed for causing cancers and other illnesses. . . . They have also been blamed for birth defects suffered by the children and even grandchildren of Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese civilians. . . . A team from New Zealand's Massey University has now shown that the group of 24 Vietnam veterans it tested suffered significant genetic damage, compared with a similar sized group of soldiers who did not serve in Vietnam, our correspondent says.

posted by LoZo 6:37 PM

 

Bees and flowers decline in step
(BBC News, 21 July 2006)
Diversity in bees and wild flowers is declining together, at least in Britain and the Netherlands, research shows. . . . climate change and modern industrial farming are possible factors in the linked decline. . . . There is a chance, they say, that the decline in pollinating bees could have detrimental effects on food production. . . . The researchers also looked at hoverflies, and found a mixed picture, with diversity remaining roughly constant in Britain but appearing to increase marginally in the Netherlands. . . . Hoverflies do pollinate plants, but are less choosy than many bee species, and do not depend so directly on nectar to feed their young. . . . Overall, plants which pollinate via wind or water appear to be spreading, while those which rely on insects decline. . . . the root causes of the decline are clear, Dr Biesmeijer argues. . . . "The ultimate drivers are changes in our landscapes; intensive agriculture, extensive use of pesticides, drainage, nitrogen deposition. . . . While such changes may have significant impacts nationally, the team points out that the environments of Britain and the Netherlands, with their high population densities and long histories of agriculture, contain two of the least "natural" landscapes on Earth.

posted by LoZo 8:45 AM

 

Hackers stepping up attacks on Pentagon
(Siobhan Gorman, Baltimore Sun, July 2, 2006)
The number of reported attempts to penetrate Pentagon computer networks rose sharply in the past decade, from fewer than 800 in 1996 to more than 160,000 last year - thousands of them successful. At the same time, the nation's ability to safeguard sensitive data in those and other government computer systems is becoming obsolete as efforts to make improvements have faltered and stalled. . . . Launched in 1999, the program was to have been completed last year, but it fell behind in part because of differences between the NSA and the Pentagon. The NSA is trying to revamp the program, although the deadline has slid to 2012, with the most substantive security improvements planned for 2018. . . . An internal NSA report in April 2005 described the problem as "critical," noting that 30 percent of the agency's security equipment does not provide "adequate" protection; another 46 percent is approaching that status. . . . Pentagon computers, in particular, are under constant attack. Recently, Chinese hackers were able to penetrate and steal data from a classified computer system serving the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to two sources familiar with the incident. . . . "Numerous states, terrorist and hackers groups, criminal syndicates, and individuals continue to pose a threat to our computer systems," Maj. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, warned Congress this year. "Over the last few years, hackers have exploited thousands of [Department of Defense] systems." . . . In addition to the NSA's aging security technology, some of the tools required for encrypting data lack security protections and are vulnerable, so an infiltrator could uncover and possibly replicate the tools to access government data, according to the NSA's December 2005 planning document. . . . "The threat is much larger than we ever thought it was," said David Szady, a former top counterintelligence official at the FBI and the CIA. The Chinese "have been able to develop their military and their systems on the backbone of United States technology." . . . Meanwhile, given the pace of technology, every year that the project slips, it becomes less relevant, said a former government official familiar with the project. . . . "You're going to introduce something that is completely obsolete," he said.

posted by LoZo 10:36 AM