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Dec 3, 2008 | 2
Last week's deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai that left 171 dead and scores more injured were only the latest in a long string of violent strikes in India. As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Pakistan urging that country to cooperate with its historic rival's probe into the militant assaults, the University of Maryland released data from its Global Terrorism Database (GTD) showing that there were more than 4,100 terrorist attacks and 12,539 terrorist-related deaths in India between 1970 and 2004 (the latest year for which data is available).
Oct 15, 2008
Sixty years ago, the Raytheon Company gave us the first microwave oven. Today, the company, perhaps better known for its missiles, is looking to sell the U.S. military a microwave-based weapon they say will help soldiers control crowds without the risk of seriously injuring anyone.
Raytheon calls its Active Denial System (ADS) technology a "revolutionary non-lethal protection system that employs millimeter wave technology to repel individuals without causing injury." Here’s how it works: Active Denial emits a focused beam of wave energy that travels at the speed of light, heating the water in a person's outer layers of skin and producing an "intolerable heating sensation that causes targeted individuals to flee." Translation: You feel intense pain, but you don’t get hurt, according to Raytheon, which claims that tests show the effects can reach through cracks in and around concrete walls and even through the glass of automobiles.
Aug 1, 2008 | 3
Little more than a month after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes, the nation was shaken by a new wave of attacks. Five people died--and 17 more people were sickened by--anthrax (an acute infectious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium) sent to unwitting residents, reporters and government officials. Nearly seven years later, a microbiologist has died of an apparent drug overdose as prosecutors prepared to charge him in connection with the mailings.
Bruce Ivins, 62, who for the past 18 years worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a federal biodefense research laboratory Fort Detrick in Maryland, died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after ingesting massive amounts of prescription Tylenol with codeine. The Washington Post reports that the feds had alerted him that they planned to charge him with bioterrorism and were considering whether to seek the death penalty in the event of a conviction.
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