Teenagers are using repeat abortions as a form of birth control, with some girls having four or more terminations by the age of 18, it has been claimed.

Nearly 1,500 of the 19,000 girls under 18 who had a termination last year had previously undergone one earlier abortion for an unwanted pregnancy – and in at least one case a teenage girl had her eighth abortion.

Department of Health data for 2008 reveals 74 teenagers had their third abortion and a further 15 girls under the age of 18 had previously had between three and six earlier abortions.

But the exact details remain hidden from public scrutiny because of Government secrecy on abortion figures owing to fears that patients could be identified.

Campaigners say the figures raise the possibility that for some girls abortion is not seen as a traumatic life event, but a routine way of dispensing with an unwanted pregnancy, even though it carries health risks that can harm fertility later in life.

Pro-life campaigners argue that increasing availability of early medical abortion, by allowing it to take place in GPs’ surgeries, has served only to further promiscuity among teenagers who are ignorant of the health and emotional risks that may ensue.

Julia Millington of the Pro-Life Alliance said: ‘When girls of 18 are having three, four or more abortions we seriously need to question what is going on. It would seem abortion is being used as a form of contraception.

‘These girls are coming back again and again. Who is looking after their physical and emotional wellbeing? Surely it would be better for them not to get pregnant in the first place, but no one seems to want to question this use of repeat abortion on girls.’

Dr Kate Guthrie, consultant in sexual health and spokeswoman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said she was shocked and saddened to learn about the repeat abortion figures.

But she added: ‘These girls are not the majority of under-18s. Women undergoing abortion do not find it pleasant and most make sure it does not happen again.’

- From Prophecy News Watch

China’s completion of an historic natural gas pipeline with Kazakhstan bypassing Russia this week tightens the Asian behemoth’s grip on energy resources needed to fuel a burgeoning economy, a desire also forcing it on a quest for oil and gas wealth in other corners of the globe.

China is not alone in this scramble for energy security. Hungry for oil and gas, world powers like Russia and the United States are also relying on different strategies to grab resource treasures but their efforts have raised questions about conflicts down the road.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration describes China as the second largest energy consumer behind the United States . Taking advantage of the world’s financial crisis, the Asian powerhouse has tapped currency reserves to invest in both Russia and Central Asia , helping to construct power plants and other domestic infrastructure in return for long-term oil and gas supplies, said Ben Montalbano, a senior research analyst at the Washington-based Energy Policy Research Foundation.

Lacking energy reserves, China has been “working hard to lock in” investments in Africa, Central Asia and Venezuela , Montalbano told OilPrice.com. The country has also sought natural gas to satisfy increasing consumption and built many liquefied natural gas receiving terminals over the last year, he added.

“Cut off from African natural resources . . . China ’s growth stops,” warned Peter Pham, director of the Africa Project at the New York-based National Committee on American Foreign Policy and an associate professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg , Virginia .

This intensive bid for energy, however, has caused friction with the world community. Under an investment strategy in Africa, China “wins over very easily governing elites but doesn’t necessarily win over the populace,” Pham charged.

Chinese state-owned companies tend not to invest in exploration but prefer to offer “inducements,” he said. China’s offer of multibillion-dollar credit facilities to Angola was pivotal for the African nation to get “off the hook” from negotiating with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to meet “serious reform and certain conditions” before the organizations granted such facilities, he argued. China then bought stakes from the Angolan state oil company, he said.

China, moreover, has helped the Khartoum government to evade United Nations sanctions by assisting in the building of at least three weapons factories in Sudan , he said.

Not to be outdone, Russia has returned to Africa in “considerable force” pursuing natural resources in part to recover its “great power status,” said Pham. Russian firms are trying to “lock in partnerships” with resource producers to form, for example, the “stream of a natural gas OPEC,” he said.

Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves and the eighth largest oil reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Next year, its federal budget will be nearly 50 percent derived from oil and gas exports, emphasizing a reliance on gas exports to “feed the budget,” Montalbano of the Energy Policy Research Foundation told OilPrice.com. To some extent, China and Russia have worked together in the oil and gas domain. Earlier this year, China announced a $25-billion loan to Russian firms in return for a 20-year supply of crude oil.

Russia is not the “behemoth of financial reserves” it was two years ago and has a “fairly weak” banking system and industry, Montalbano maintained. While the country is discussing certain projects with Iran and potentially with Iraq , it is mainly concerned with opening up huge Arctic gas fields because its existing fields are declining, he noted.

Russia and other northern countries have increasingly turned to the melting Arctic but the region is “still up for delineation,” said Boyko Nitzov, director of the Eurasia Energy Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington . “The Arctic is still fairly off limits for large-scale production of oil and gas” and difficult to access especially during the winter, Nitzov explained.

For American oil companies, an over-reliance on the Middle East for energy needs has shifted its attention to Africa, a major energy supplier over the last several years edging out the Persian Gulf in energy imports to the United States , Pham explained. U.S. firms tend to forge production-sharing agreements or explore resource development, but lack carte blanche in their pursuit of oil riches in places like Africa due to U.S. government sanctions and public pressure, he said. This puts the United States at “a slight disadvantage” relative to Russia and China , he added.

Competition for energy assets will probably not lead to open conflict but rather to increasing political tension, predicted Africa expert Pham. Leading African organizations, Europe and the United States never recognized Guinea ’s military coup last year, which led to a subsequent massacre of opposition members. Yet China signed a deal with the military junta, risking a perception as a “rogue operator in the single-minded pursuit of resources,” he warned.

Although Russia and China, meanwhile, have both benefited from joint oil and gas investments, making conflict doubtful in the forseeable future, “10, 20 years down the road, who knows,” Montalbano added.

* Update * – PetroChina Wins Approval for $1.8 Billion Acquisition In Canadian Oil-Sands – Dec 30th

- From Prophecy News Watch

In a luxury hotel at Suweima, on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea, the Russians held a “Track II” conference this week designed to send a clear message to the Arab world: “We are back.”

The conference, covered widely in the Arab world but hardly at all in Israel, took place just weeks after the re-launch – after an absence of some 18 years – of an Arabic version of the Moscow News. It also comes at a time of diplomatic stagnation in the Middle East that has led to increased calls from many quarters – particularly the Palestinians and the EU – for various actors in the international community to step in and impose a solution on the parties.

Russia, obviously, wants to be one of these actors. Hence the two-day conference, part of the Valdai Discussion Club, put on jointly by the Ria Novosti, the Russian News and Information Agency funded by the government, and the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, the equivalent to the Council on Foreign relations in the US.

The organizers invited a slew of Mideast experts from Russia and the region – including Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the “State of Palestine,” Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, with a couple of people from the UK, US and France thrown in for good measure – to discuss whether a comprehensive settlement is possible in the Middle East by 2020.

The hope of the conference, said Sergei Karaganov of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy at its outset, was to “generate fresh ideas.” Forget about it. The real agenda, it seems, was to implant in the Arab public a sense that Russia has returned to the region and is a player.

Some 50 Arab media outlets covered the conference, according to its organizers, and Ria Novosti quoted Al Jazeera as saying, “This is perhaps the first large-scale conference on the Middle East that Russia has organized in recent years.”

Having so much Arab press there, from Al Jazeera to Hizbullah’s Al Manar, may have been good for raising Russia’s profile, but it essentially blocked any chance of a real or substantial discussion.

For once the cameras started to roll, the Arab participants – at least those who were willing to tolerate the presence of a small Israeli delegation and did not back out at the last minute like the delegates from Iran and Bahrain – were grandstanding for their home audiences, competing with themselves about whose tone could be more strident, angry and uncompromising on Israel.

And it wasn’t only the Arabs. Alexei Vasilyev, director of the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the time had come for the region to have a “collective solution imposed on it.” He added that the solution he advocated was a one-state one.

All of which led Maj.-Gen (res.) Yaakov Amidror – one of the Israeli delegation that also included Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, and Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University – to comment during the conference’s opening session that if the participants, including the Russians, wondered why Israel never wanted to attend international peace conferences like the much touted and proposed Moscow Conference, all they needed to do was look around the room and hear themselves talk.

“If you think the Israelis are stupid enough to go to places where all are against us, you have to change all your attitudes,” Amidror said with characteristic candor. There was nothing new in the proceedings, he said, just the “same old slogans.”

Israel, however, would do well to pay close attention to at least one of these slogans, because it is being heard again and again, and is gaining traction: That there is the need for a more international approach to the conflict. According to this narrative, one also adhered to by the Israeli Left which Baskin represented, since it was obvious that the parties themselves could not reach an agreement, outside actors were needed to come and actively push them there.

This is a theme becoming increasingly dominant in discussion about the Middle East, especially at a time when the Obama administration’s initial thrust into the area has hit a wall.

This theme was evident in the Swedish effort earlier this month to pass a EU resolution that would have essentially declared that a solution to the Jerusalem question would necessitate dividing the city, with east Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

The theme was repeated when the new EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, in her maiden address to the European parliament last week, called for a much stronger role for the Quartet, made up of the US, EU, Russia and the UN.

The theme can also be seen as the main reason why the Palestinians continue to refuse to go to negotiations, holding out the hope that if they don’t, the world will eventually step in and dictate a solution.

Just listen to what leading Palestinian officials are saying. Nimer Hammad, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ political adviser, said at the conference that the idea that both sides could solve the conflict “has no basis.”

“It is very difficult at this stage to reach a settlement,” he said. “There is an Israeli government that talks about negotiations, but is changing the situation on the ground.”

The Palestinians, he said, don’t believe negotiations will lead to a solution, and that the international community must instead play a central role.

The international community must get involved, he stressed, and not just the US, which he intimated could not be trusted as an honest broker because of the “powerful Jewish lobby.”

“What is required is real international participation, all partners of the Quartet. Israel can’t say it doesn’t want international participation – leave us alone to solve the conflict.”

Hammad wants to see the convening as soon as possible of the Moscow Conference, originally conceived as a follow up to the Annapolis conference, which would provide an international framework for negotiations.

“If both sides are not able to solve the conflict then the international community has to do so, because this really affects the stability around the world,” he said.

And Hammad’s call is not falling on deaf ears. Russia, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov, has not abandoned the idea of holding the conference.

“We expect that some steps, which are currently being devised by us and our American partners, and the other Quartet partners, will open possibilities for the restart of the Palestinian-Israeli dialogue, and correspondingly, create favorable conditions for the convocation of the Middle East conference,” Saltanov said, adding that the conference could “help really push the Mideast settlement process.”

This push is likely to come in the form of the Quartet putting forward a framework agreement that would serve as the basis for negotiations. This idea was articulated by Yevgeny Primakov, one of the leading Middle East authorities in Russia who has served variously as the country’s prime minster, former minister and head of its intelligence agency. Primakov said that the unsettled conflicts in the Middle East produce terrorism and fundamentalism, threatening the entire world.

As a result, he said, it is incumbent for the world to get involved and break the deadlock. He called for the Quartet to work on a “framework document” dealing with all the parameters of the issues, and then the establishment of a “monitoring process” to monitor Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on this framework, and the implementation of their obligations under the agreements.

“The framework format of the Quartet would serve as the basis for the negotiations which should be limited in time,” he said.

Primakov laid out what he felt should be the parameters of the framework: The creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with agreed upon alterations; the refugee issue to be solved through compensation payments and repatriation to a future Palestinian state, albeit with an Israeli agreement to take in a certain “quotas;” and Jerusalem as the capital of both states.

“Syria must be included in the process or else Syria will move even closer to Iran,” he added. “Syria must be included and our Israeli colleagues must understand this.”

What is more important for Primakov’s Israeli colleagues to understand, however, is that while his thinking about “frameworks” and “monitoring mechanisms,” may not be formal Russian policy yet, it is a strong trend, and not only in Russia, but in the EU as well.

Diplomatic history in this region teaches that in the absence of any real movement in the political process, other actors will step in and try to fill the vacuum by imposing their own solutions to the conflict. The Russian-sponsored conference in Jordan was a signal that these efforts are once again picking up speed. Israel would ignore these signals at its own peril.

- From Prophecy News Watch

Russia needs to develop “offensive strike systems” to preserve strategic balance with the United States, without producing its own missile defense, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.

Putin’s comment, made at a press briefing in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, echoed a similar call from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week.

“If we want to retain the balance, we have to establish an exchange of information: Let the U.S. partners provide us information on [their] missile defense while we will give them information on [our] offensive weapons,” Putin said.

Putin also spoke positively about ongoing negotiations between the two countries on a new nuclear arms control agreement that would replace the U.S.-Russian START treaty, which expired December 5.

The United States and Russia plan to complete it and sign it at the beginning of 2010, Russian and American leaders have said. As envisioned, the new treaty would significantly reduce nuclear arms on both sides.

“I think that we need certain rules on weapons limitation which could be equally understood, easily verifiable and transparent,” Putin said. “The existence of those rules is better than their absence.”

He repeated that offensive and defensive arms should be linked, because they are closely related.

“It was the balance of forces — including missile defense, air defense and offensive weapons systems — that preserved peace even during the Cold War,” Putin said.

“Since we are not developing our own missile defense, there is a threat that our U.S. partners would feel totally secure having created an umbrella against our offensive systems,” he added. “Then our partners might do whatever they want; the aggressiveness in real politics and economics would increase because of the broken balance.”

Last week, in Medvedev’s year-end live interview with three Russian TV channels, he reiterated that Russia will continue to develop strategic offensive missiles after the signing of the new START treaty.

“This is normal,” Medvedev said. “The whole world is doing this. Of course, this work needs to take place within the framework of conventions and agreements, including our future agreements with the Americans. But this process will continue and our nuclear shield will always be effective and sufficient for protecting our national interest.”

Medvedev added, “That doesn’t mean that we cannot talk about a nuclear-free world. It’s a beautiful and right goal. But we should approach it gradually. … Not only Russians and Americans, but also other countries who are looking forward to joining the ‘nuclear club,’ thus causing many problems, should take part in it.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

Lebanon’s al-Nahar reported Tuesday that Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani warned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak against an Israeli attack on his country.

Larijani told Mubarak that if Israel dared to attack its nuclear facilities, Iran would launch a counterattack on Israel and all US bases in the country, as well as countries of the Gulf region.

The two leaders met nine days ago. al-Nahar’s report cites “diplomatic sources in Beirut” as saying that Larijani had asked Mubarak to convey his message to a number of Gulf States the latter was visiting.

According to the report Mubarak did indeed convey the message to leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, who fear Iranian aggression within their boundaries.

Larijani stressed that Iran intended to retaliate only against American bases used against it, the report says, and therefore urged the states to ask the US not to use bases situated on their territory to attack the Islamic Republic.

The report adds that Mubarak’s visit to the Gulf States focused on prevention of a regional conflict between Israel and Iran, and that he updated the Islamic Republic as to as to efforts made by the US to the same effect.

- From Prophecy News Watch

Ten years ago, we would have been blown away by a cellphone with far more computing power and memory than the average PC had in 1999, along with a built-in camera and programs to manage every aspect of our lives. Ten years from now, the iPhone and its ilk will be antiques.

Over the next decade, the evolution of computing and the Internet will produce faster, increasingly intelligent devices. More of our possessions will contain sensors and computers that log our activities, building digital dossiers that augment our memories, help us make decisions and tame information overload.

Such ideas may sound futuristic and excessive today, and technological predictions are notoriously off-base. Short-term forecasts tend to assume too much change, and long-term forecasts underestimate the possibility of sudden, major shifts.

Even so, this vision of interconnected devices that produce and filter massive amounts of data in the 2010s is a logical progression of the Web, computers and gadgetry that emerged in the 2000s. Moore’s Law, the principle that computing power doubles every two years without increasing in cost, still rules.

The Way We Were: Slow

Recall the personal computer, circa 2000. It likely had a “clock speed” — a measure of how fast it could do things — just one-sixth of many computers today.

Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) 1999 iMac came with 64 megabytes of RAM, memory that helps computers switch among programs. Today’s iMac today has 60 times as much. The vintage iMac had a 10-gigabyte hard drive for storing digital photos and other files. Now iPods have more space than that, and iMac drives start at 500 gigabytes.

Remember dial-up? In 2000, fewer than 10 percent of U.S. households had broadband Internet, according to Forrester Research. In 2008, 61 percent of homes had it.

As computers and Internet connections got faster, we enjoyed them more. In October 2002, the average American spent about 52 hours a month on a home computer, according to the Nielsen. This October, the figure was nearly 68 hours a month.

We filled ever-more-spacious hard drives with music and photographs, as households with digital cameras jumped from 10 percent in 2000 to 68 percent last year, and those with an MP3 player climbed from less than 2 percent in 2000 to 41 percent in 2008, according to Forrester.

How We Connected

We increased the ways we could stay connected: More of us got cellphones, camera phones, smartphones and the iPhone. We bought more laptops and came to expect Internet connections almost everywhere.

Personal home pages were replaced by blogs that could be set up in seconds, which gave anyone with a computer and Web access the potential to reach a bigger audience than many newspapers. First-generation social networks, little more than online address books, gave way to sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where we add our words, photos, links and video posts to a collective stream of consciousness.

Online, we also tripped over the line between private and public. We shared intimate details with our network of online “friends,” and sometimes it was simply too much information, especially when our boss was reading.

All these changes unfolded because of an explosion in computing power and connectivity that only figures to accelerate in the next decade.

More Data, More Info, More Speed

As we move through our lives, we’ll leave more and more digital detritus. Some of it will resemble what we share online today. Some will be emitted quietly by devices, just as mobile phones can signal their location.

We’ll also have access to more data about the world around us, dwarfing the real-time stock quotes, government statistics, scientific databases and other information stores available today.

In the next decade as conjured by Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey, all that information will be available instantaneously, anywhere. He imagines spotting an acquaintance at a conference and having at his fingertips links to the person’s most recent research, plus a reminder of her husband’s name.

Software will remember everything McQuivey buys, reads online and watches on TV. A “smart filter” will use his past choices to suggest the next book or show, or even what he should eat for dinner. It’s a more powerful version of the way Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) make book or movie recommendations.

He also thinks we’ll all use this technology just to keep up with everyone else. He likens the situation to calculators in math class: At first teachers banned them but now they’re required. Leaving yours at home on test day would be a big disadvantage.

Clouds Everywhere, and an App for Everything

Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) chief research and strategy officer, believes we are near a long-wished-for era of computers that respond to speech, gestures and handwriting.

In Mundie’s vision, “digital assistant” programs will help us solve specific problems. Imagine you’re moving to a new city and need to find a house. “Relocation assistant” software would listen as you brainstorm out loud about whether you want to drive to work or take the bus, about school preferences and the market value of your current house. As you converse with it, the program scouts real estate listings and plots the best on a map.

Our smaller devices will also benefit from speedy connections to “the cloud” — powerful networks of computers that perform services remotely. In a decade, Manny Vara, chief evangelist for Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Labs, imagines he’ll tap the power of the cloud on trips to foreign countries, speaking into his phone and seeing a translation on his screen within seconds.

In another scenario, Vara imagines we will each wear a tiny camera. It could snap a photo of the cutie next to you in the bar and send it up into the cloud for analysis. If it matches your friend’s nasty ex, a voice could whisper into your earpiece that it’s time to move on. Your portable devices don’t have to be powerful enough to run facial recognition software; they just need a connection to the cloud.

Such ideas aren’t brand new, but budding technology might finally make them happen. In the 1990s, Mark Weiser, then chief technology officer at Xerox’s (NYSE: XRX) Silicon Valley research center, wrote about “calm technology” that will exist in the periphery and come forward to claim our full attention when needed. We won’t “go on the Internet.” Rather, it will become built-in, ubiquitous and unremarkable, much as electricity is today.

“Every physical object will have a digital cloud around it,” says Marina Gorbis, executive director at the Institute for the Future.

That raises new challenges for our privacy, and it opens the door to a new leader in the technology industry.

The 2000s saw Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) become one of the world’s most powerful companies because it helped us get a grip on the sprawling content of the Web. What we will need next, however, is a company that doesn’t just organize data. Google, or the next Google, will have to synthesize all that information and help us understand what it all means.

- From Prophecy News Watch

It might sound like a contradiction in terms, but for the first time one of the main Irish consumer banks is moving to cashless banking in all its branches.

National Irish Bank has written to thousands of its customers this month informing them of a “new style of banking” in which branches will not handle over-the-counter cash transactions.

The letter says branches will no longer handle cash withdrawals and lodgements, night safe lodgements and foreign currency cash. Branches will continue to lodge cheques, drafts and postal orders and issue drafts.

Customers are advised to obtain cash from “ATMs nationwide” or to seek “cash-back” on their debit cards.

A spokesman confirmed that cashless banking was being introduced across the entire NIB branch network over the next 18 months, and had already been introduced successfully in a number of branches. He said the feedback from customers was positive with few complaints.

“These branches provide better security for staff and allow us to spend more time, in a better setting, with our customers . . . Customers like them, as our staff have more time to discuss customers’ overall needs.”

However, NIB customer Frank Barry from Malahide described the change as hilarious and ridiculous: “A bank refusing to accept cash . . . I thought that’s what they are for?”

Mr Barry contacted The Irish Times after his wife Catherine Gralton received two letters informing her that the local branch would stop handling cash from next February.

“If I did have a cash lodgement, I would have to go to another bank, buy a bank draft and then go to NIB to lodge it,” he said.

An NIB spokesman said the changes followed the model used by NIB’s parent, Danish-owned Danske Bank. Cashless banking is far more common in Scandinavia. while Irish dependence on cash is among the highest in Europe.

The spokesman said it recognised that some business customers may need to lodge and withdraw cash and it would offer these a number of options.

However, he declined to say what these options were, citing security reasons.

NIB announced earlier this month it was cutting 150 jobs and closing 25 of the bank’s 58 branches because of the recession and changes in the banking sector.

ACC Bank, which specialises in business lending, has also moved to cashless operations.

The Irish Banking Federation said it was not aware of any other main banks introducing cashless banking at this stage, though a spokesman added that “they would all love to”.

Handling cash is more expensive than the non-cash alternatives such as internet banking or debit and credit cards.

Cash also poses greater security threats for the banks, whereas consumers bear many of the risks associated with non-cash transactions.

NIB in particular has suffered a number of high-profile robberies and one of the branches it has already converted to cashless banking, on Dublin’s Howth Road, was the scene of a so-called tiger robbery in 2006

- From Prophecy News Watch

In what is being touted as the first time humans have remotely controlled insects, University of California at Berkeley engineers successfully implanted radio-equipped, “miniature neural stimulation” systems into flying beetles–most notably, the “elephant” beetle Megasoma elephas (pictured above), which can grow up to 20 cm (about 7 + inches) in length.

There’s just one problem: while the engineers are able to control the bug’s muscle movements, so far, the beetles can’t fly–due to the heft of the micro electronics “on board”. Further refinements will need to be made to these systems. Currently, tests are being conducted with miniature solar cells, piezoelectrics (pressure-generated electric power), and other micro-electro-mechanics (MEMs) to power these devices and minimize their weight.

The final step would be to equip the insects with miniature cameras and/or microphones. The “cybug” project (note: entomologists do not consider beetles to be true “bugs”; this is a colloquial term) is being funded by DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in the hope that one day the insects might be employed on the battlefield (e.g., to spy on troop movements) or perhaps even sent to spy directly on military commanders’ strategy meetings. The chief engineers at UC Berkeley for this cybernetic insect project are Michel Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato.

The implantable devices consist of three electrodes, a micro battery, and a micro controller, which can then receive signals from a remote operating system, such as a laptop. Other beetles used in these experiments are Cotinus texana and mecynorhina torquata (2 cm and 7 cm respectively).

In a recent BBC feature, it was suggested that one other use for these cyborg beetles–admittedly an illegal one–could be as carriers of chemical or biological agents for targeted assassinations.

- From Prophecy News Watch

A new-look leadership structure designed to streamline the European Union begins in earnest on Friday when Spain assumes the rotating presidency alongside the bloc’s first president, Herman Van Rompuy.

But as Spain’s prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Van Rompuy and the head of the EU commission José Manuel Barroso jostle for position at the bloc’s top table, critics say that the situation is risks becoming more hydra than hybrid.

“In fact, the new system is no less complex and multi-layered than the previous one,” said Antonio Missiroli, an analyst at the European Policy Centre, warning of a “hybrid situation.”

“Making it work will not be an easy task.”

Van Rompuy’s position was created under the terms of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which also creates the role of a foreign policy and security supremo, a post that the 27 EU member states bestowed upon Catherine Ashton, a British peer.

While the much-vaunted treaty was supposed in part to answer Henry Kissinger’s famous question “who do I call if I want to call Europe,” he may find that in fact the EU phone book has just got bigger.

The pre-existing system, whereby an EU nation assumed the rotating presidency for a six-month period, is retained, but not for EU summits and foreign ministers’ meetings, when the EU Council president, Van Rompuy, and the foreign policy High Representative, Ashton, will be in the chair.

That still leaves meetings of environment ministers, finance ministers, interior ministers etc.

“The great weakness of the Lisbon Treaty is that it maintains the rotating EU presidency,” said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Green group in the European Parliament.

Since taking up his post at the start of the month, the former Belgian premier, Van Rompuy, has been careful not to tread on the Swedish EU presidency’s toes thanks to a gentleman’s agreement.

Stockholm will hand over the reins to Madrid in the new year but already it seems that Van Rompuy has agreed to grant Spain more elbow-room.

Zapatero has managed to secure several EU summits for his home turf, notably an EU-US summit with Barack Obama as well as meetings with Latin-American nations, the Mediterranean Union and an EU-Morocco summit.

“We have made a gentleman’s agreement,” said the Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos.

“Mr Van Rompuy will preside at the meetings, but Mr Zapatero will be beside him playing a key role.

“There will be no competition between the Spanish presidency, the council president and the high representative, but a complementarity,” he added.

Spain will be offering foreign policy supremo Ashton its expertise over a broad swathe of her remit: the Middle East, Latin America, north Africa and the Mediterranean.

Barroso, the head of the EU executive arm, will be seeking a large slice of influence for himself, bolstered by the recent decision of EU nations to grant him a second five-year term.

Indeed Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister, can be seen as the “the big winner” in the new game of EU musical chairs, according to at least one diplomat.

Barosso certainly has built a higher international profile than Van Rompuy and Ashton put together, thanks to five years of gladhanding world leaders at the commission’s headquarters in central Brussels and abroad.

“It will take some time for the new institutional architecture to be put into place fully and even longer to reach a new equilibrium,” said Missiroli.

On top of all this there is also the European parliament, the only elected body in the whole EU set up.

In an on-line end-of-year message EU parliament head Jerzy Buzek hailed the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty which gets rid of several national vetoes on European policy and hands more power to the MEPs.

“We have a new institutional tool,” he declared.

- From Prophecy News Watch

When armies clash in the not-too-distant future, remotely-operated robotic weapons will fight the enemy on land, in the air and at sea, without a human soldier anywhere on the battlefield.

The first robotic systems are already being used by the Israel Defense Forces and other armies across the world, and only budgetary constraints seem to be keeping science fiction from becoming reality.

In places where there is no choice but to send in troops, constantly improving broadband technologies, developed from the civilian communications industry, will serve as an essential part of the infrastructure for all modern military forces.

A helicopter that spots suspicious movement on the ground will, for instance, be able to relay a command to a drone aircraft to photograph the site and transmit the picture in real time to troops on the ground and to the command posts in the rear.

Soldiers will be able to mark their target by its coordinates and with lasers, allowing missiles launched from dozens of kilometers away to be guided by global positioning systems, ensuring accuracy and destruction of the target.

The systems will be coded to prevent enemy interception of the operation. Spy satellites that today weigh several tons will be shrunk down to anything between one and 100 kilograms or less, with engines the size of postage stamps. Infantry rifles will be computerized and fire “smart” rounds telling them when and where to explode. New rockets will also be able to think by themselves to enhance their accuracy.

Israel’s military industries, already world leaders in arms technology, are hard at work developing weaponry for the 2020s. Development of new weapons for the IDF is generally carried out with assistance and in cooordination with the Defense Ministry?s research and development arm.

The Israeli military’s demands are the cornerstone of the local weapons industry, and they can be summed up in two words: miniaturization and accuracy. The former will enable the troops in the field to carry their weapons or communications equipment more easily, and the latter will help avoid civilian casualties.

Military censorship prevents disclosure of the Israeli arms industries? most exciting and futuristic devices, but a good picture of what can be expected can be compiled using what is already in the public domain.

Pin-point accuracy

“The Protector, which we are already marketing, is a vessel that sails all over in all kinds of places without a living soul on board,” says Roni Postman, vice president for R&D at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. “It can get close up to a terrorists’ boat, address it through a loudspeaker, and open fire at it. In the past, a thing like this required a boat with seven or eight crewmen who were in constant danger. This type of remote control is one of the clearest characteristics of the future battlefield. It will be a battlefield devoid of troops, with vehicles doing what soldiers have done until now.”

Unmanned boats, land vehicles and aircraft will be either controlled remotely or will function autonomously, pre-programmed to carry out a mission from start to finish, such as reaching an enemy bunker, transmitting a photograph back to a command post, launching a projectile at it, and returning, or blowing itself up to destroy the target and the people inside it.

Another characteristic of weapons now undergoing development is pin-point accuracy for urban warfare, especially in a world that has become less accepting of “collateral damage.”

“Whereas up to a decade ago, planes would drop bombs that destroy everything within a 20 or 30-meter radius without any restraints in order to hit a certain target, that’s all over today,” Postman says. “We are working on capabilities that will make it possible to place a missile launched 70 kilometers away through a specific window of a certain house. It is also a question of costs. Armies will pay a lot for a missile only if they are sure that it will hit the target head-on.”

On top of these requirements, the weapons of the future will also be more efficient in terms of the ordnance delivered to the target. No longer will the same bomb or missile be used to deal with a man on a bike and a three-story building.

Forces will be equipped with what they need to deal with certain objectives and not simply with “the lowest common denominator,” says Postman.

On the other hand, Rafael is also developing cross-platform systems for armies looking to cut down on costs. For example, one goal is a missile that can be fired from a helicopter, a fixed-wing plane, a boat, or a land vehicle and that can destroy tanks and above-ground structures and bunkers.

“The miniaturization trend that has taken hold of the civilian market enables the introduction into military systems of things we couldn’t even dream of before, because of their size, weight and volume,” says Postman. “This is a worldwide tendency and future battlefields will be full of weapons and other items that are much smaller than they have been until now. For example, something that is today a square meter will be reduced to five square centimeters. This is especially useful in unmanned air vehicles, whose weight-carrying capacity is limited by the size of their engines, the amount of fuel they must carry and the altitudes they have to attain. Every gram counts. If they are loaded down with heavy systems, they won’t be able to carry out their missions.”

Israel Aerospace Industries, for example, has developed the Mosquito, a UAV with a 40-centimeter wingspan and a silent engine, that can be launched from the shoulder of a single soldier. Even this device may be shrunken down, if the military so requires.

Micro-satellites and nanotechnology

The future battlefield will also include outer space. GPS-based technology fed by satellites are already becoming a fundamental element in future military systems. Moreover, the ability to equip satellites with IAI-produced radar that sees through clouds will enable every field commander to obtain, in daylight and at night and in any weather conditions, a picture of his target.

Moreover, space-based weapons, or satellites, will also serve as a component in projects for the destruction of long-range missiles from distant enemies facing Israel, such as Iran. And when satellites become a critical means in military operations, defending them becomes just as critical, making space wars a realistic development.

Israel is one of seven members of the club of countries that have proved their independent ability to put satellites into orbit, alongside the United States, Russia, India, China, Japan and Western Europe – which has a unified space program based on French capabilities. Iran has recently also demonstrated a preliminary capability to launch satellites.

Israel’s satellites are all manufactured by IAI, and include optical observation and radar platforms as well as communications satellites. IAI engineers are working on technologies for future satellites, ranging from construction materials to advanced designs that will enable, for example, the deployment of antennae with a radius of dozens of meters in space.

Such antennae could lead to a revolution in advanced satellite communications.

At the same time, IAI is working on developing integrated systems of up to 10 smaller satellites that will upgrade inter-satellite communications and the data picked up by land stations.

“Within this group, technology-wise, we are second only to the United States, and in certain niches we are even number one, especially in mini-observation satellites,” says Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israel Space Agency, referring to an observation satellite developed by IAI and Rafael, which also serves espionage purposes and weighs 300 kilograms. The American counterpart weighs three or four tons.

The need to reduce the size of the satellite sprang from the fact that unlike other countries which launch their orbiters eastward and can therefore take advantage of the speed of the earth’s spin, Israel launches westward for regional security reasons, against the direction of the earth’s rotation. As a result, the Israeli launches lose a great deal of energy.

The solution was to reduce the size of the satellite and all of its component parts, its engine and photographic instruments.

“Our miniaturization capability comes from the security requirements,” says Ben-Israel. “It was strengthened after the signing of the peace treaty with Egypt, because ironically it was then that we found ourselves unable to send planes on aerial photography missions into Sinai to check out the deployment of forces there.”

Launching a 250-kilogram satellite costs an estimated $75 million, while the satellite itself costs $100-200 million, depending on its payload.

They last for six or seven years in space. The evolving threats require ongoing technological upgrades.

“We want to go down to satellites that weigh less than 100 kilograms,” says Ben-Israel. “That way, the launch obstacle will be removed. Today, to launch a satellite at the appropriate speed an expensive rocket is required. If it were possible to launch it from a jet fighter aircraft, for example, it would be a much easier proposition. It would be possible to put satellites in orbit for much less money and at any time. It is beginning to become feasible in these very days.”

The next generation of satellites, now being developed, will weigh ten kilograms (micro-satellites) or one kilogram (nano-satellites) and some speak of even lighter ones. They will orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers above the surface of the earth. Ben-Israel says one way of sending up a 100-kilogram orbiter without losing any of its operational capability is to break it into 10 units each weighing 10 kilograms.

But technology must be developed that will be enable each part to migrate to the correct place after launch, after which they will continue to orbit together as a cluster.

“That’s the direction being taken,” says Ben-Israel. “That way, each part can be shot from a plane separately and even at different times, and in this manner build the satellite in space over a week.”

Rafael’s Postman believes that a satellite weighing less than 100 kilograms will cost eight to 10 times less than a large orbiter. “Because it will cost less, it will be possible to put a formation of 10 satellites into space, and to time their orbits in such a way that it will be possible to maintain an unbroken 24-hour watch over the enemy,” he says.

The main problem with micro-satellites is that their shelf life in space is shorter than larger ones, by approximately one or two years. However, because of the relatively lower costs, he believes, this will be the direction taken by many states seeking to avail themselves of observation satellites.

“I believe that Israel will bring these good tidings to the world, because it requires miniaturization of communications and electrical propulsion that not every country is capable of.”

Small wonders from a small country

Even without any miniaturization, Israel possesses unique technologies that can upgrade future satellites. Elbit Systems is working on an advanced optical system that will be able to transmit multicolored pictures and that will be able to function at night. In addition, IAI radar will improve the resolution of the pictures. Today, satellite pictures can be found on the open market with a resolution of 70 centimeters.

Israel already has technologies for satellite photography at higher resolutions, and they are expected to yet improve. The achievements of Israeli space technologies are reflected in both the MSAR (mini-synthetic aperture radar) project of the U.S. space agency NASA and the French Venus project.

“MSAR is a mission undertaken by NASA in order to map the surface of the planet Venus, to see if it will be possible to land there in the future,” explains Ben-Israel.

Venus is surrounded by clouds of toxic gases and the project requires synthetic aperture radar which can take photographs through fog, dust and darkness. There are seven countries capable of developing synthetic aperture radar systems and one of them is Israel, through ELTA, a subsidiary of IAI. Israel’s miniaturization capabilities were also helpful in this project.

American satellite radar weighs four tons, and the Venus satellite has to be relatively light, so NASA put out a tender for bids that was won by IAI over aeronautical giants like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

NASA is now weighing whether to launch satellites to Venus or Mars or other planets, as it can?t afford to do them all simultaneously.

“If the mission to Venus is the one that is budgeted, in five years we’ll be seeing the first photographs of that planet from a satellite which will apparently be constructed entirely in Israel, because of our unique miniaturization abilities,” says Ben-Israel, adding that the Northrop Grumman will be the marketer of the project.

The soldier of the future

What will the next war look like? Will it be waged on land, tank against tank, like previous wars? Will it be waged against terrorist organizations? Or against the threat of long, medium and short-range missiles?

“From the point of view of Elbit Systems, life is complex and a response must be found for Iran, for terrorists in Gaza and also for Syria,” says Haim Rousso, vice president for technological and engineering excellence at Elbit. “Intelligence will always be necessary, in both peace and wartime, so we at Elbit are constantly working on developments in the sphere, from satellites to tactical systems on the ground.”

He says that the systems are evolving in the direction of giving real time information, with analysis and application capability, making it possible to respond immediately.

To cope with the challenges emanating from Iran, Syria and Lebanon, Elbit is working on perfecting its multispectral camera, Rousso says.

“In the security world what they look for is camouflaged targets; they want to be able to distinguish between what is real and what only looks like a target, to find things that are buried under the ground,” he says. “So we do not ask what the eye can see, but rather what is the color or the combination of colors that is being sought. The great challenge is to build a camera with a reasonable size and price tag that can be carried on an uncomplicated platform and which we can tell precisely which colors to find – first color A, then color B. Another challenge is to build a bank of targets, to understand what we are interested in, and what is the spectral signature of the target. This involves research, collection and construction of databases, because colors change in different weather conditions, for instance. This camera will be able to see things that no other instrument today can see. We expect this to be a key element of the future battlefield.”

The defense establishment’s demand for products that are light, small and not too expensive is a function of the nature of land warfare, which will continue to keep military forces occupied for years. It will require miniaturization in optics, electronics and power supply.

“We want to give every soldier the capability to identify targets and other objects, and to communicate with the whole world, and when such large quantities of equipment are involved, the price becomes a significant element,” says Rousso. “Everyone in the world – the United States, Europe, Australia – is busy working on the soldier of the future. In the war on terror, a low-intensity conflict, the individual soldier is given a great deal of weight. He needs the means of talking to the system, to get a picture and to transmit data. Technologically speaking, each soldier is a sensor and a platform.”

Rousso says nanotechnology is on its way.

“It was not developed for the military but the anticipated evolution of the next decade could cause a revolution. That’s why we are studying the technology and its military applications. Also of interest to us are the mini-robots that can get into tunnels or buildings and move around mapping the interior and transmitting pictures. It already exists, but in the long term it will be honed and use of it will increase. Elbit has developed the Viper robot, and we are already speaking of a family of smaller robots. In the sphere of unmanned aircraft we are also talking about ongoing upgrades in the construction materials, the aerodynamics, the ability to stay longer in the air at higher altitudes and better maneuverability.”

In addition to their UAVs, both Elbit and Rafael have developed sea-faring drones, and Elbit and IAI have developed unmanned land vehicles that carry out pre-programmed missions, as distinct from remotely-controlled robots.

The goal is to give the vehicles a degree of artificial intelligence that will enable them to react like human drivers in cases where they encounter unanticipated obstacles on the way, such as large puddles of water. These vehicles will also possess an attack capability.

“It will apparently take many years before these things are actually built,” says Rousso. “But today we already have intelligent systems that know how to identify dangers and to think what has to be done to cope with them. An investment in the technology of artificial intelligence, in computerized vision and accurate navigation is required.”

The threat from afar

IAI is currently aiming to give soldiers on the ground capabilities that are today available only to the air force, says the company’s vice president for R&D, Dan Peretz, adding that IAI has moved over from producing traditional weaponry to advanced comprehensive systems.

GPS is being used for the first time, through miniaturization, for the next generation of smart rockets, making them more accurate.

“Accuracy is no longer a function of range. The same degree of accuracy can be had at 250 kilometers as at 10 kilometers.” says Peretz. “And when I have an accurate system, I don’t need a large warhead anymore, because I hit the target right on the nail. There are already some accurate missiles, but they are expensive. The introduction of GPS into warfare has already begun in the United States in the sphere known as Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems. It enables forces under fire to return fire without calling in air support, as the Americans did in Iraq.”

The Tzayad (Hebrew for “hunter”) system in use in the Israeli army, developed by Elbit, enables a commander in the field today equipped with a handheld computer to get a picture from a UAV and to call in helicopter fire. The new IAI system will be able to mark the target’s coordinates, making it possible to hit it from the rear with smart rockets.

The system included GPS-guided or laser-homing rockets.

“I put a laser dot on a target, and a laser sensor in the rocket head can home in on it,” says Peretz. “There are systems today that work on laser detectors – the smart, accurate missiles. Now there will also be laser-guided rockets.”

Lev Tahor (“pure heart”) is a smart mortar shell. It carries a GPS computer and can do what until now only missiles could do, but it is 10 times smaller.

“We are the first in the world who have taken a laser detector system to rockets, the first in the world to fire mortar shells that are guided by GPS,” says Peretz. “We are developing the ability to hit targets with the first shell, without hitting the wrong target.”

Peretz says IAI is collaborating with the American company Raytheon to sell the systems to the U.S. military, with the first demonstrations due in 2010.

“In five years’ time, this technology will be taken for granted,” he says.

Another development that miniaturization has made possible is Refaim (“ghost”) which involves fitting a tank’s fire-control system onto a rifle, enabling it to gauge the range of a target and to order the projectile that it fires to explode where it will do the most damage.

For example, a grenade could be told to explode at a point above enemy personnel hiding behind a wall.

“The Refaim system will include a 40mm round that contains a computer and I can command to explode in the air at a certain range, to explode on contact, or to explode after contact. If I want to shoot into a room, I would tell it to explode three meters after going through the window, in order to kill the people inside. It can also self-destruct, so as not to leave dangerous explosives on the ground if it doesn?t hit its target.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu often mentions the threat facing Israel from afar, or the “third circle” of enemies not inside or bordering Israel, like Iran.

The IAI is continuing to develop unmanned aircraft and is going on to new tasks defined for it by the defense establishment, including handling the third circle.

Moreover, the unique radar that penetrates fog and dust will be miniaturized in the future so that it will have more applications and be more accurate and able to identify the sources of fire within the first and second circles, in all weather conditions.

Sources in the defense establishment say that the IAI is directing much of its resources to address the threats of the third circle, first and foremost an advanced Arrow system for the accurate interception of long-range missiles. The Arrow will leave the Earth’s atmosphere and enter outer space, employing innovative technologies to locate its target and destroy it.

In facing far-reaching enemies, the defense establishment must develop lightweight and accurate ordnance that can be carried by small aircraft or on the American F-35 jets now under development, which has outstanding stealth properties but is relatively small.

The Israel Navy is not being left out of planning for the future, and its vessels are to be equipped with a new anti-aircraft missile system that IAI is developing in collaboration with India, integrated with advanced radar and fire control systems. Submarines will also have a key role in future wars, and they will be equipped with technology enabling them to stay underwater for longer periods and with new attack capabilities.

- From Prophecy News Watch