The US Air Force developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a display of military might at the height of the Cold War.

In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Dr Leonard Reiffel, 73, the physicist who fronted the project in the late Fifties at the US military-backed Armour Research Foundation, revealed America's extraordinary lunar plan.

'It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth,' he said yesterday. 'The US was lagging behind in the space race.'

The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.

...

Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.

The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.

There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.

When the US entertainment industry looks at India, it sees one gigantic copyright problem. That's why it wants India to remain on the US government's "Priority Watch List" for intellectual property issues in 2010, and that's why it blasted the country's new copyright proposals for (among other things) having too many legal reasons to bypass DRM.

But what happens when you look at India from the perspective of culture and consumers? The country comes out number one.

In other words, the entertainment industry thinks consumers should voluntarily install software that constantly scans our computers and identifies (and perhaps deletes) files found to be "infringing." It's hard to believe the industry thinks savvy, security-conscious consumers would voluntarily do so. But those who remember the Sony BMG rootkit debacle know that the entertainment industry is all too willing to sacrifice consumers at the altar of copyright enforcement.

Den vetenskapliga analfabetismen är ett hot mot demokratin, anser författarna till »Unscientific America«.

...

Författarna menar att USA drabbats av en ny sorts analfabetism. Flumläror tillåts härja fritt, stöttade av reaktionära krafter. Samtidigt dalar vetenskapsjournalistiken – och forskarna tiger.

EU-parlamentet röstade i dag ned det omstridda Swiftavtalet. Den konservativa gruppen försökte in i det sista få omröstningen uppskjuten – men nejsidan segrade. Välinformerade källor säger dock till DN.se att USA oavsett detta kommer att skaffa sig tillgång till sekretssbelagda uppgifter från europeiska banker.

...

Men EU-parlamentets skepsis mot Swiftavtalet ingår också dragkampen med ministerrådet och kommissionen om hur makten ska fördelas nu när Lissabonfördragets nya regler trätt i kraft. Fördraget ger parlamentet väsentligt mer makt, men hur det kommer att se ut på detaljnivå är inte klart.

Members of a European Parliament subcommittee dealt a blow to US-EU relations by voting to reject a proposed bank data sharing deal between the US and Europe in a preliminary vote on Thursday.

The agreement allows the US to access information gathered by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) about bank transfers within Europe. SWIFT manages global transactions between thousands of financial institutions in over 200 countries.

Members of the parliament's civil liberties committee voted by 29 votes to 23 to reject the SWIFT deal, arguing that the deal fails to protect the privacy of EU citizens.

US authorities say access to bank details is vital to counterterrorism efforts, but many in Europe object to the widespread invasion of privacy.

Kameror som gör det möjligt för flygsäkerhetspersonal att se igenom passagerarnas kläder ska införas även på storflygplatserna i Rom och Milano.

...

I USA används tekniken bland annat på ett 20-tal flygplatser.

The program would collect the name, gender and birth date of the approximately five million Canadians who fly through American airspace en route to destinations such as the Caribbean, Mexico and South America, even if their planes don't touch the ground in the States.

...

The council said this would force Canadian airlines to breach either Secure Flight or the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, a federal privacy law that applies to Canadian companies.

This domain is dedicated to the teaching of knowledge that was hidden from the human race all through history.