„By recruiting at 16, the UK isolates itself from its main political and military allies and finds itself instead sharing a policy with the likes of North Korea and Iran. These are not states which the UK would normally want its military to be associated with,“ said Richard Clarke, director of Child Soldiers International.

„Ninety percent of the public not only in Germany and the European Union but beyond as well would view such a step as an aggravation of the situation,“ Schaeuble said. He also said he hoped for an improvement in relations with Russia in time.
„Increasing the defence budget at the present moment would not be a smart move. In fact it would be the opposite of what we need,“ he added.

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(21.05.)

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President Obama takes a moment to interact with ASIMO, a robot at Japan‘s Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation

(24.06.2013) A three-piece band made entirely from robots plays guitar, drums and keyboard alongside Japanese pop singers in Tokyo on Monday. The trio, called Z-Machines, was designed by engineers and academics at Tokyo University who hope to one day send them to play in space. The robots performed to a crowd of 100 people and accompanied Japanese group Amoyamo

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Toyota humanoid robot running at 7km/h.

Le robot Cheetah développé par Boston Dynamics a été encore amélioré et peut maintenant courir à une vitesse de pointe de 45,5 km/h (28,3 mph) au lieu de ses 30 km/h d‘origine. Ce robot quadrupède court ainsi plus vite que Usain Bolt.

Crabster CR200 continuous walking on land, carefully and carefully step by step!!

Monsters of the deep will have a man-made horror to contend with, as the Crabster CR200 is released into the oceans. Weighing over half a ton, the six-legged, crustacean-inspired robot is intended for the most dangerous undersea exploration.
Developed by the Korean Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), the Crabster offers a solution to a longstanding problem.

An informant working for the F.B.I. coordinated a 2012 campaign of hundreds of cyberattacks on foreign websites, including some operated by the governments of Iran, Syria, Brazil and Pakistan, according to documents and interviews with people involved in the attacks.

(24.04.2014) “These intrusions, all of which were suggested by Sabu while cooperating with the FBI, affected thousands of domain names and consisted largely of foreign government websites, including those of Turkey, Brazil, Iran —,” Hammond managed to say before being silenced by US District Court Judge Loretta Preska. Moments later, Preska sentenced him to the maximum time behind bars allowable under a mutually agreed upon plea deal: 120 months.

(28.04.2014) Brown writes to the hacker: “It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to tell Stratfor that you guys will consider making any reasonable redactions to emails that might endanger, say, activists living under dictatorships with whom they might have spoken… If they fail to cooperate, it will be on them if any claims are made about this yield endangering anyone”.

Ghappour told the Guardian that he found it ironic that the government had accused Brown of something so vastly different from what he actually did. “The government charged Brown with criminally transferring credit card information, when in fact what he did was to offer to redact sensitive material.”

(24.12.2012) Over a year ago, it was revealed that the federal contractors HBGary Federal, Palantir, Berico, and Endgame Systems had combined forces to create a sort of cyber-offense unit called Team Themis. With the assistance of the law firm Hunton & Williams, they went about collecting potential clients, including two institutions which desired to go on the offensive against certain activist groups. One of these institutions, the Chamber of Commerce, provided them with the names of various individuals believed to be involved with groups that opposed their policies, and asked them to come up with a plan by which to discredit them. This was one of the options that Team Themis came up:

„Create a false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information, and monitor to see if U.S. Chamber Watch acquires it. Afterward, present explicit evidence that such transactions never occurred. Also, create a fake insider persona and generate communications with CtW. Afterward, release the actual documents at a specified time and explain the activity as a CtW contrived operation. Both instances will prove that Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth.“

In the eyes of the Justice Department, this sort of thing does not constitute even probable cause of criminal activity on the part of any of the individuals involved, or their companies, or the various other employees who viewed these kinds proposals. I say this because no one involved has had their apartment door knocked down and their equipment and notes seized by the FBI, as I have. The fact that Team Themis also discussed the option of hacking the servers of Wikileaks, and engaging in a campaign of intimidation against the journalist Glenn Greenwald due to his support of the organization, did not seem to generate much activity over at the DoJ or FBI, either. Perhaps this is because these latter measures were proposed for another of Team Themis‘ prospective clients, Bank of America, and that Bank of America first got in touch with Team Themis and Hunton & Williams after they were recommended to them by the Justice Department itself.

(07.08.2013) When the FBI raided the Dallas home of journalist Barrett Brown in March 2012, the travails of the Vanity Fair and Guardian contributor didn’t get much ink — that is, until Michael Hastings published an exclusive on the Brown raid on Buzzfeed.

The story included a copy of the search warrant that revealed why the government was so interested in Brown: Along with colleagues at the research wiki he started, ProjectPM (PPM), Brown was looking into a legion of shadowy cybersecurity firms whose work for the government raised all sorts of questions about privacy and the rule of law.

Since Hastings was familiar with the government contractors listed in the search warrant, he was also potentially culpable in whatever “crimes” the feds believed Brown and PPM were guilty of. Is this why he was being investigated in the days before his fatal crash on June 18, 2013? By then, Hastings had established a reputation as a fearless muckraker, whose stories often stripped the haloes from the powerful and well-connected:

(26.03.2013) Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post that what is known about the single-vehicle crash is „consistent with a car cyber attack.“

Clarke said, „There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers“ — including the United States — know how to remotely seize control of a car.“

A car, which has the ability to remember a route and drive itself, has been unveiled by engineers from Oxford University.

Witnesses said that the car sped towards the gate before it exploded outside the parliament building where lawmakers were holding a meeting.

The two sources, who do not want to be named, confirmed three people died and an unknown number of others were wounded.
The sources do not believe it was a suicide bombing.