Free Republic

The association was also forced to address rumours circulating online that Yan had cheated during the competition by using anal beads equipped with wireless transmitters to send and receive signals. Yan allegedly clenched and unclenched rhythmically to communicate information about the chess board via code to a computer, which then sent back instructions on what moves to make in the form of vibrations, according to reports circulating on the Chinese social site Weibo.

The Illinois Tollway is examining the possibility of embedding equipment into I-294 that would charge electric vehicles as they drive along the road. The agency is at the start of a $4 billion project to rebuild and widen a 22-mile stretch of I-294, also known as the Tri-State. As part of the project, the Tollway wants to add infrastructure to charge electric vehicles. Off the highway, that could include both conventional charging stations and “super-charger” stations that power up electric cars and trucks more quickly. The agency also is studying “smart-powered lanes,” a type of technology being tried in Sweden...

Radio transmitters to track merchandise are one thing, but are people ready for ID imbedded in their bodies? It is the technology that is everywhere and no place. It is invisibly inserted into the perky keyless remote that unlocks your car. It opens the garage door. It is wedged in the pass cards that let employees into office buildings. Subtle and controversial, the radio frequency identification device, or RFID, makes our lives more convenient in myriad small ways. But on a larger scale, critics warn that these dime-sized radio transmitters will one day become digital tattle-tales, a tool of what...

CODAN, an Adelaide company that supplies remote-area long-distance communications to Afghanistan, may inadvertently have helped al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden escape a US missile strike. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a news agency that works closely with local people in war situations, reported in late 2001 that the al-Qaeda leader escaped from a house in Kabul three hours before it was hit. Quoting an al-Qaeda source, the report said terrorist spotters across Afghanistan had used the sophisticated Codan radio network to warn bin Laden of the approaching missile attack. "Bin Laden's foreign legion is equipped with a sophisticated...