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Researchers say they've lessened the effects of stroke in rats by transplanting stem cells into the rodents' brains. The treatment also seemed to help rats fight a condition similar to human cerebral palsy.  There's no indication yet that the treatment will work in humans, and the lead researcher cautioned that the strategy is no "magic bullet." However, tests in people could begin as early as next year, said Cesario V. Borlongan, an associate professor of neurology at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Will not be a total cure The treatment is "not something that will totally cure stroke...

What will Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, discover as he looks into covert military intelligence program Able Danger, said to have discovered Mohamed Atta, by name, and his al Qaeda cell working in the U.S. before the attacks of September 11, 2001?

Jerrold Nadler's Two Faces on Terror By Jacob LaksinFrontPageMagazine.com | June 13, 2005Last Friday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Patriot Act had already been adjourned, but Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic blimpish congressman from New York and one of the leftmost members of the House Judiciary Committee, was too wound up to care: “We are not besmirching the honor of the United States, we are trying to uphold it,” bellowed the hefty Nadler. By this, Nadler meant to defend his attacks on the alleged abuses of the (in fact) privileged  prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Thanks to the efforts of the...

Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards. The Real ID Act hands the Department of Homeland Security the power to set these standards and determine whether state drivers' licenses and other ID cards pass muster. Only ID cards approved by Homeland Security can be accepted "for any official purpose" by...

Warning signs of an ischemic stroke may be evident as early as seven days before an attack and require urgent treatment to prevent serious damage to the brain, according to a study of stroke patients. Warning signs of an ischemic stroke may be evident as early as seven days before an attack and require urgent treatment to prevent serious damage to the brain, according to a study of stroke patients published in the March 8, 2005 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Eighty percent of strokes are ischemic, caused by the narrowing of the...

President George W. Bush apparently is using a LifeVest wearable defibrillator. This would mean he is at risk of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) or sudden cardiac death (SCD). The LiveVest is a wearable version of "the paddles" you have seen in emergency room scenes on TV. He started using it sometime after his January 2002 fainting spell, which was attributed to choking. Photos of Mr. Bush and the device seem to show that this is the mysterious bulge seen on his back in the debates. The first graphic is a back view showing the two large electrodes that are equivalent...

TIA now verifies flight of Saudis The government has long denied that two days after the 9/11 attacks, the three were allowed to fly. By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer Published June 9, 2004 The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, better known as the 9/11 Commission, sent a list of questions to Tampa International Airport. It appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight. TAMPA - Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left. The...

The government has long denied that two days after the 9/11 attacks, the three were allowed to fly. TAMPA - Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left. The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky. The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned...

<p>As the 9/11 Commission examines whether the tragedy of Sept. 11 could have been prevented, we should ask if seven clicks of a computer mouse might have alerted us to the danger.</p>

Immediately after 9/11, politicians and pundits slammed the Bush administration for failing to “connect the dots” foreshadowing the attack. What a difference a little amnesia makes. For two years now, left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly every proposal to use intelligence more effectively--to connect the dots--as an assault on “privacy.” Though their facts are often wrong and their arguments specious, they have come to dominate the national security debate virtually without challenge. The consequence has been devastating: just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction.

The 9/11 Commission hearings have focused public attention again on the intelligence failures leading up to the September attacks. Yet since 9/11, virtually every proposal to use intelligence more effectively — to connect the dots — has been shot down by left- and right-wing libertarians as an assault on "privacy." The consequence has been devastating: Just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction. The privacy advocates — who range from liberal groups focused on electronic privacy, such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center, to traditional conservative libertarians,...

U.S. Pressing for High-Tech Spy Tools (AP) Retired Adm. John Poindexter, senior vice-president of Syntek Technologies Inc., WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite an outcry over privacy implications, the government is pressing ahead with research to create powerful tools to mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists. Congress eliminated a Pentagon office that had been developing this terrorist-tracking technology because of fears it might ensnare innocent Americans. Still, some projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press. In addition, Congress left...

Pentagon failed to study privacy issues in data-mining effort, IG says By William New, National Journal's Technology Daily A December report by the Defense Department's independent watchdog on the now-defunct Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) data-mining project has begun the new year with a discussion of privacy issues. The report said the TIA technology once being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) could have been valuable against terrorism but would have required specific steps to address privacy concerns. "A review of the TIA program ... showed that although the TIA technology could prove valuable in combating terrorism,...

The USA PATRIOT Act lets the feds spy on your finances. But does it help catch terrorists? "This is really a bill which, if enacted into law, will be [a longer] step in the direction of stopping terrorism than any other we have had before this Congress in a long time," one of the bill’s sponsors declared. The legislation authorized broad surveillance of financial transactions, bypassing the Fourth Amendment’s normal protections against "unreasonable searches and seizures" by requiring businesses to collect and share information with the government. After the measure passed and was signed into law, the debate was far...

The US Homeland Security has warned airports all over the world against suspicious stuffed items among luggage after US intelligence concluded that Al-Qaeda operatives are being trained to conceal 'nitrocellulose' bombs inside them, reports said on Tuesday. Intelligence officials have confiscated Al-Qaeda manuals and picked up several indications that the network is attempting to create a chemical called nitrocellulose to fashion explosive devices that could be smuggled aboard jetliners, The Washington Post quoted Homeland officials as saying. "We judge this type of threat to be real and continuing. We have received reports from several credible, independent sources that Al-Qaeda is...

    Citizens strike back in intelligence war   09:20 13 October 03     With the recent demise of the Bush administration's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) programme to monitor everyone in the US, citizens now have a chance to get their own back. A website to be launched later in 2003 will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary. The two MIT researchers behind the project face one serious problem: how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false. The answer, they say, is to borrow a...

With the recent demise of the Bush administration's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) programme to monitor everyone in the US, citizens now have a chance to get their own back. A website to be launched later in 2003 will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary. The two MIT researchers behind the project face one serious problem: how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false. The answer, they say, is to borrow a technique from the underground music-swapping community. Instead of storing the data in one...

MIT Project Undertakes Intelligence War Abandoned By the Govt To Monitor Everyone In the US Citizens Strike Back in Intelligence War Citizens Strike Back in Intelligence War With the recent demise of the Bush administration's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) programme to monitor everyone in the US, citizens now have a chance to get their own back. A website to be launched later in 2003 will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary. The two MIT researchers behind the project face one serious problem: how to protect themselves against legal action...

Caught in the Matrix?States' data project ignites privacy fearsBy JIM KRANE Associated Press NEW YORK -- While privacy worries are frustrating the Pentagon's plans for a far-reaching database to combat terrorism, a similar project is quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen states -- and $12 million in federal funds.The database project, created so states and local authorities can track would-be terrorists as well as criminal fugitives, is being built and housed in the offices of a private company but will be open to some federal law enforcers and perhaps even U.S. intelligence agencies.Dubbed Matrix, the...

<p>Congress has pulled the plug on a data-mining computer program criticized by privacy advocates as a supersnoop system to spy on American citizens and is closing the Pentagon office that created it.</p> <p>"The outcome is we are not going to have Americans picked up by their ankles and turned upside down then shaken to see if anything funny falls out," said Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat and leading opponent of the office's activities.</p>