Science and Information Technological
Iran has material for 4 nuclear bombs: Israeli general
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses parliament before presenting his proposed budget in Tehran on February 1, 2012. AFP
Iran has enough radioactive material to produce four nuclear bombs, Israel's chief of military intelligence, General Aviv Kochavi, asserted at a security conference on Thursday.
"Today international intelligence agencies are in agreement with Israel that Iran has close to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of uranium enriched to 20 percent, which is enough to produce four bombs," he told the annual Herzliya conference.
"Iran is very actively pursuing its efforts to develop its nuclear capacities, and we have evidence that they are seeking nuclear weapons," he said.
"We estimate they would need a year from when the order is given to produce a weapon."
Israel and much of the international community have long accused Iran of using its nuclear programme to mask a drive for weapons, a charge Tehran denies.
The Jewish state has pushed for tough sanctions against Iran and warned that it retains the option of a military strike if necessary to prevent Tehran from obtaining atomic weapons.
Israel has the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear arsenal, which international experts believe contains between 100 and 300 nuclear warheads, but it has never confirmed or denied such reports.
Earlier on Thursday, Defence Minister Ehud Barak praised new European sanctions against Iran's oil sector after talks with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, and called to expand sanctions to the financial system and central bank.
Later at the Herzliya conference, Barak said there was currently "broad international understanding that if the sanctions do not achieve their desired goal of stopping the Iranian nuclear military programme, the need to consider action will arise."
He also stressed the need for timely "action" against Iran, without specifying its nature.
"Many experts, not only in Israel but also in the world, believe that refraining from action would necessarily lead to a nuclear Iran, and that dealing with a nuclear Iran would be more complicated, more dangerous, and would cost more lives and money, than stopping it today," Barak said.
"Whoever says 'later,' might find that 'later' is too late," he warned.
Speaking at the same conference, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon said Iranian nuclear facilities, believed to be underground and heavily reinforced, were not immune to attack.
"In my military experience, any site protected by humans can be penetrated by humans," said Yaalon, a former head of Israel's armed forces, in comments broadcast on Israeli public radio.
"At the end of the day all their sites can be hit."
"We argue that one way or another the Iranian military nuclear programme must be stopped," he added. "Such an unconventional regime must not have an unconventional (weapons) capability.
"A combination of tools are available to the West," Yaalon said. "That combination must include diplomatic isolation of the regime; the second tool is economic sanctions... and the last thing is a credible military option."
Yaalon also referred to an Iranian military facility rocked by a deadly explosion in November, claiming Iran had been developing a missile there intended to threaten the United States.
He said the site, at Bid Ganeh, near Tehran, was conducting research and development on a missile with a range of 10,000 kilometres (6,213 miles) at the time of the blast which killed at least 36 Revolutionary Guards.
It was "aimed at America, not us," a statement from the organisers of the Herzliya Conference quoted him as saying.
Iran's military said the explosion was the result of an accident.
The chief of staff of Iran's armed forces said at the time that the base was used in the production of "an experimental product" that would unleash "a strong fist in the face" of the United States and Israel.
Kochavi also warned on Thursday that Israel's enemies now command "some 200,000 rockets and missiles."
Intelligence estimates, he said, showed "one in every 10 houses in south Lebanon is a storage facility for missiles or rockets or a launch pad for devices that are increasingly accurate and destructive."
"From Lebanon, Syria and of course from Iran, they can hit the heart of our cities, and the whole region of Tel Aviv is within their reach," Kochavi said.
Published on February 02, 2012
Authored by: VALERIA COVO/AFP
163 dead as cold snap grips Europe
A cold snap kept Europe in its icy grip Thursday, pushing the death toll to 163 as countries from Ukraine to Italy struggled with temperatures that plunged to record lows in some places.
Entire villages were cut off in parts of eastern Europe, trapping thousands, while road, air and rail links were severed and gas consumption shot up during what has been the severest winter in decades in some regions.
In Ukraine, tens of thousands headed to shelters to escape the freeze that emergencies services said has killed 63 people -- most of them frozen to death in the streets, some succumbing to the hypothermia later in hospitals.
Nine more people died in Poland as the mercury dropped to minus 32 Celsius (minus 25.6 Fahrenheit) in some parts, bringing the country's toll to 29 since the fearsome spell of cold weather started last week, police said.
Homeless people in the region are at highest risk, warned the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
"Although we expect harsh winters in this part of the world, this current freeze has come towards the end of a mild winter," said Zlatko Kovac, IFRC representative for Belarus and Ukraine.
"Homeless people have been caught unawares and unprepared. They don’t follow long-range forecasts and are extremely vulnerable."
Red Cross Societies have helped with hot meals, warm clothing and blankets. The organisation said it had released more than 100,000 euros ($140,000) from its Disaster Relief Emergency Fund to boost the aid effort.
Russian gas giant Gazprom, meanwhile, said it had boosted deliveries to Europe, while several European countries reported drops in Russian supplies, with operators in Austria and Slovakia both reporting falls of 30 percent.
Ukraine -- the transit point for most Russian gas headed to Europe -- denied it was taking a greater than usual share of the gas.
Tens of thousands of people in Ukraine have sought help in more than 2,000 temporary shelters as temperatures fell to minus 33 degrees Celsius in the Carpathians and minus 27 in the capital Kiev.
"I am unemployed. I have somewhere to live but nothing to eat. I ate here and it was good -- bread with a slice of fat and an onion as well as porridge," said Olexander Shemnikov after visiting a shelter in Kiev.
In Romania, eight people died overnight, bringing the country's overall toll to 22, the health ministry said. Schools remained closed in some parts.
In Bulgaria, at least 10 people have died, according to media.
With parts of the Danube river freezing, authorities moved some vessels to ports further away to protect them from the advancing ice.
And in the capital Sofia, some residents found their money frozen as automated teller machines stopped functioning, according to local media.
In Latvia, 10 people have died around the capital Riga alone, with no figures available for the rest of the country. In neighbouring Lithuania a 55-year-old homeless man became the ninth victim of the deep chill.
In Estonia, organisers had to postpone a trio of cross-country skiing events after temperatures plunged to minus 30. Many Friday and weekend sports events have been cancelled elesewhere on the continent.
In north and central Italy, hundreds were trapped overnight on trains as freezing temperatures and heavy snowfalls caused widespread transport chaos.
The cold has so far killed an infant in Sicily and a 76-year-old in Parma during what forecasters say is the coldest weather in Italy in 27 years.
In France, 41 of the 101 regions were on alert for snow or "deep cold". In Paris, the army set aside nearly 600 places in military buildings to shelter the homeless from the cold.
Two people died in Austria, and seven perished in Serbia, where 11,500 others were trapped mostly in remote mountain villages inaccessible by road.
Five have died in the Czech Republic and two each in Slovakia and Greece.
In Belgrade, homeless people unable to secure one of the 140 spots in the capital's sole shelter took refuge in trolley buses and trams.
Published on February 02, 2012
Authored by: VALERIA COVO/AFP
The dark web: Guns and drugs for sale on the internet's secret black market
Out of reach of regular internet searches is the secretive online world known as the 'dark web' - anonymous, virtually untraceable global networks used by political activists and criminals alike.
"You have the availability of multiple dealers so you can compare products - and customers can review the dealer's product, too."
American student, David - not his real name - explains why he chooses to buy illegal drugs on the so-called 'dark web'.
"You don't have to go in front of a street dealer, where there might be a risk of violence," he adds.
And it is not just drugs which are available on this online black market. Fake passports, guns - even child pornography.
Anonymous drug dealers The dark web is facilitated by a global network of computer users who believe the internet should operate beyond the supervision of law enforcement agencies.
The BBC's 5 live Investigates team found class A drugs and guns for sale on the dark web
It allows users like David, and those who sell him drugs, to remain anonymous. Users often do not know the real identity of the fellow users they are dealing with, and it is very difficult - although not impossible - for authorities to track them.
5 live Investigates spoke online with a number of anonymous dark web users.
One told the programme "I feel much safer [online] than doing transactions in the real world. I used to sell drugs in the real world. Nowadays I almost strictly use the dark web for any drug transaction."
Another said: "If you're young and trying to find a contact for drugs harder than marijuana it is practically impossible without risking exposure and arrest."
“Start Quote
We don't have enough courts, we don't have enough judges, and we don't have enough police officers to tackle the real scale of illegal behaviour on the internet” End Quote John Carr Internet security adviser
Getting access to the dark web depends on users downloading freely available software, based on peer-to-peer file-sharing technology, which effectively scrambles the location of users and dark web websites.
It is not just a criminal domain, either - the dark web has proved a crucial tool in concealing the identity of political campaigners living in countries with oppressive governments.
It is said to have helped some of the organisers behind the Arab Spring protests.
That said, the potential for criminal enterprise is significant.
Researchers from the 5 live Investigates team successfully accessed the dark web, and made a purchase of the hallucinogen DMT - a class A drug, ranking it on a par with heroin and cocaine.
An extra layer of secrecy is added to the dark web by the use of Bitcoins - an electronic currency which is used legitimately by online gamers, but which can be used by criminals to mask their financial transactions.
After a wait of around 3 weeks a package arrived in the post with a Spanish postmark. Concealed between two thin strips of cardboard was a white powder.
Analytical Services International, at St George's University and London Hospital examined the drugs.
The lab test proved the powder was DMT - and that the dark web works.
We have no idea who sent the drugs to us. They have now been destroyed by the lab as possession of DMT can lead to a jail sentence of up to seven years.
Dealers of DMT can face a maximum life term in prison.
But what is being done to police the criminal activity that takes place on the dark web?
"Police officers on both sides of the Atlantic say the same thing," says John Carr, an internet security advisor to the British government and the United Nations.
“Start Quote
Many people share the belief, myself included, that drugs should be legal and the dark web is that belief put into action”End Quote 'David' Dark web user
"We don't have enough courts, we don't have enough judges, and we don't have enough police officers to tackle the real scale of illegal behaviour on the internet.
"What that means is increasingly we're going to have to look to technical solutions, we're going to have to look to the internet industry to help civil society deal with this really enormous problem the dark web has created," Mr Carr told the BBC.
"The police service is acutely aware of the large and growing problem of cybercrime and is actively working with police nationally and internationally along with the private sector in a bid to combat criminality on the web," says Deputy Assistant Commissioner Janet Williams, the lead on e-crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers.
Yet for all their efforts much of the illegal activity on the dark web remains beyond the reach of the police, and to some supporters of the dark web, its anonymity is its virtue.
They point to the protection it has offered to anti-government bloggers who spread the message of revolution during the Arab Spring.
And they argue that it continues to provide cover for dissidents who might otherwise face persecution in China.
For US student and dark web user David, it is about freedom of choice:
"Many people share the belief, myself included, that drugs should be legal and the dark web is that belief put into action."
Brains may be wired for addiction
Red areas show parts of the brain more active in drug users. Blue regions are abnormally decreased in drug users.
Abnormalities in the brain may make some people more likely to become drug addicts, according to scientists at the University of Cambridge.
They found the same differences in the brains of addicts and their non-addicted brothers and sisters.
The study, published in the journal Science, suggested addiction is in part a "disorder of the brain".
Other experts said the non-addicted siblings offered hope of new ways of teaching addicts "self-control".
It has long been established that the brains of drug addicts have some differences to other people, explaining that finding has been more difficult.
Experts were unsure whether drugs changed the wiring of the brain or if drug addicts' brains were wired differently in the first place.
This study attempted to answer that by comparing the brains of 50 cocaine or crack addicts with the brain of their brother or sister, who had always been clean.
Both the addicts and the non-addict siblings had the same abnormalities in the region of the brain which controls behaviour, the fronto-striatal systems.
The suggestion is that these brains may be "hard-wired" for addiction in the first place.
Lead researcher Dr Karen Ersche said: "It has long been known that not everyone who takes drugs becomes addicted."
Case Study
I met two of the participants in the study in Cambridge yesterday.
Sophia has the pallour and nervousness of a long-term user of cocaine and crack. Her elder sister Teresa is smartly-dressed and describes herself as a control freak.
They went through the tests and the scans and were surprised to find that they share the same abnormalities of the brain. It's a discovery that makes their contrasting lives all the more remarkable.
Sophia is receiving treatment but admits she has trouble with self-control. Theresa, with a similar biological predisposition to addiction, has found the strength of character to stay clean.
Poles apart, they are nevertheless devoted to each other and these findings bring them closer. A unique project has an unexpectedly moving outcome.
She told the BBC: "It shows that drug addiction is not a choice of lifestyle, it is a disorder of the brain and we need to recognise this."
However, the non-addicted siblings had a very different life despite sharing the same susceptibility.
"These brothers and sisters who don't have addiction problems, what they can tell us is how they overcome these problems, how they manage self-control in their daily life," Dr Karen Ersche said.
Dr Paul Keedwell, a consultant psychiatrist at Cardiff University, said: "Addiction, like most psychiatric disorders, is the product of nature and nurture.
"We need to follow up people over time to quantify the relative risk of nature versus nurture."
It is possible that the similarities in the sibling's brains may not be down to genetics, but rather growing up in the same household. Research on the relationship between addiction and the structure of the brain is far from over.
However, many specialists believe these findings open up new avenues for treatment.
"If we could get a handle on what makes unaffected relatives of addicts so resilient we might be able to prevent a lot of addiction from taking hold," said Dr Keedwell.
David Shukman watches as sisters Sophia and Teresa are tested
By David Shukman
Science Editor, BBC News
Key Internet operator VeriSign hit by hackers
SAN FRANCISCO — VeriSign Inc, the company in charge of delivering people safely to more than half the world's websites, has been hacked repeatedly by outsiders who stole undisclosed information from the leading Internet infrastructure company.
The previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the Reston, Virginia-based company, which is ultimately responsible for the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov.
VeriSign said its executives "do not believe these attacks breached the servers that support our Domain Name System network," which ensures people land at the right numeric Internet Protocol address when they type in a name such as Google.com, but it did not rule anything out.
VeriSign's domain-name system processes as many as 50 billion queries daily. Pilfered information from it could let hackers direct people to faked sites and intercept email from federal employees or corporate executives, though classified government data moves through more secure channels.
"Oh my God," said Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and before that the top lawyer at the National Security Agency. "That could allow people to imitate almost any company on the Net."
The VeriSign attacks were revealed in a quarterly U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in October that followed new guidelines on reporting security breaches to investors. It was the most striking disclosure to emerge in a review by Reuters of more than 2,000 documents mentioning breach risks since the SEC guidance was published.
Even if the name system is safe, VeriSign offers a number of other services where security is paramount. The company defends customers' websites from attacks and manages their traffic, and it researches international cybercrime groups.
VeriSign would possess sensitive information on customers, and its registry services that dispense website addresses would also be a natural target.
Ken Silva, who was VeriSign's chief technology officer for three years until November 2010, said he had not learned of the intrusion until contacted by Reuters. Given the time elapsed since the attack and the vague language in the SEC filing, he said VeriSign "probably can't draw an accurate assessment" of the damage.
Baker said VeriSign's description will lead people to "assume that it was a nation-state attack that is persistent, very difficult to eradicate and very difficult to put your hands around, so you can't tell where they went undetected."
VeriSign declined multiple interview requests, and senior employees said privately that they had not been given any more details than were in the filing. One said it was impossible to tell if the breach was the result of a concerted effort by a national power, though that was a possibility. "It's an ugly, slim sliver of facts. It's not enough," he said.
The 10-Q said that security staff responded to the attack soon afterward but failed to alert top management until September 2011. It says nothing about a continuing investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about an inquiry or recommendations for VeriSign customers.
Until August 2010, VeriSign was one of the largest providers of Secure Sockets Layer certificates, which Web browsers look for when connecting users to sites that begin "https," including most financial sites and some email and other communications portals.
If the SSL process were corrupted, "you could create a Bank of America certificate or Google certificate that is trusted by every browser in the world," said prominent security consultant Dmitri Alperovich, president of Asymmetric Cyber Operations.
VeriSign sold its certificate business in the summer of 2010 to Symantec Corp, which has kept the VeriSign brand name on those products.
Symantec spokeswoman Nicole Kenyon said "there is no indication that the 2010 corporate network security breach mentioned by VeriSign Inc was related to the acquired SSL product production systems."
Some smaller issuers of such validation certificates have been compromised in the past, and false certificates have been used to spread the most sophisticated malicious software yet detected, including Stuxnet, which attacked the Iranian nuclear program.
In written Senate testimony on Tuesday, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called the known certificate breaches of 2011 "a threat to one of the most fundamental technologies used to secure online communications and sensitive transactions, such as online banking." Others have said SSL as a whole is no longer trustworthy and effective.
In a section of its filing devoted to risk factors, VeriSign said it was a frequent subject of "the most sophisticated form of attacks," including some that are "virtually impossible to anticipate and defend against."
Security experts said the breach reminded them of last year's attack on RSA, an authentication company owned by storage maker EMC Corp. RSA's SecurID tokens authorize remote access and have been in wide use by government agencies and military contractors including Lockheed Martin Corp, which said it was probed on the heels of the RSA breach.
"This breach, along with the RSA breach, puts the authentication mechanisms that are currently being used by businesses at risk," said Melissa Hathaway, a former intelligence official who led U.S. President Barack Obama's cybersecurity policy review and later pushed for the SEC guidance. "There appears to be a structured process of hunting those who provide authentication services."
Even if VeriSign's certificates were not compromised, a significant breach "means that prevention is futile," Alperovich said. He said he hoped new legislation on cybersecurity, expected to reach the Senate floor this month, would call for more disclosures and bring more aid to companies under attack. Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters
Science decodes 'internal voices'
The studies focused on a part of the brain associated with sounds called the superior temporal gyrus
Researchers have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words.
The technique reported in PLoS Biology relies on gathering electrical signals directly from patients' brains.Based on signals from listening patients, a computer model was used to reconstruct the sounds of words that patients were thinking of.
The method may in future help comatose and locked-in patients communicate.
Several approaches have in recent years suggested that scientists are closing in on methods to tap into our very thoughts.
In a 2011 study, participants with electrodes in direct brain contact were able to move a cursor on a screen by simply thinking of vowel sounds.
A technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to track blood flow in the brain has shown promise for identifying which words or ideas someone may be thinking about.
By studying patterns of blood flow related to particular images, Jack Gallant's group at the University of California Berkeley showed in September that patterns can be used to guess images being thought of - recreating "movies in the mind".
All in the mind Now, Brian Pasley of the University of California, Berkeley and a team of colleagues have taken that "stimulus reconstruction" work one step further.
"This is inspired by a lot of Jack's work," Dr Pasley said. "One question was... how far can we get in the auditory system by taking a very similar modelling approach?"
The team focused on an area of the brain called the superior temporal gyrus, or STG.This broad region is not just part of the hearing apparatus but one of the "higher-order" brain regions that help us make linguistic sense of the sounds we hear.
The team monitored the STG brain waves of 15 patients who were undergoing surgery for epilepsy or tumours, while playing audio of a number of different speakers reciting words and sentences.
The trick is disentangling the chaos of electrical signals that the audio brought about in the patients' STG regions.
To do that, the team employed a computer model that helped map out which parts of the brain were firing at what rate, when different frequencies of sound were played.
With the help of that model, when patients were presented with words to think about, the team was able to guess which word the participants had chosen.
They were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound on the basis of what the computer model suggested those waves meant.
The technique hinges on plotting brain activity across a number of frequencies
"There's a two-pronged nature of this work - one is the basic science of how the brain does things," said Robert Knight of UC Berkeley, senior author of the study.
"From a prosthetic view, people who have speech disorders... could possibly have a prosthetic device when they can't speak but they can imagine what they want to say," Prof Knight explained.
"The patients are giving us this data, so it'd be nice if we gave something back to them eventually."
The authors caution that the thought-translation idea is still to be vastly improved before such prosthetics become a reality.
But the benefits of such devices could be transformative, said Mindy McCumber, a speech therapist at Florida Hospital in Orlando.
"As a therapist, I can see potential implications for the restoration of communication for a wide range of disorders," she told BBC News.
"The development of direct neuro-control over virtual or physical devices would revolutionise 'augmentative and alternative communication', and improve quality of life immensely for those who suffer from impaired communication skills or means."
