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There is presently an intense discussion if electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure has consequences for human health. This include exposure to structures and appliances that emit in the extremely low frequency (ELF) range of the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as emission coming from communication devices using the radiofrequency part of the spectrum.

William Bergman worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from July 1990 until early 2004. He served as an economist for eight years, and then moved to a senior analyst position in a new department researching financial market and payment system risk policy issues. In late 2003, he was asked to consider an assignment in the money laundering area. Bergman accepted the assignment, underwent a background check, received credentials affording access to confidential banking information, and began working in the area. He was told that he was “part of the fight against terrorism” and that he “had been asking good questions.”

On New Year's Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached 3,004 -- 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead, with the Veterans Administration reporting that more than 150,000 veterans of the Iraq war are receiving disability benefits.

Advances in military technology are keeping the death rate much lower than during the Vietnam War and World War Two, Dr. Col. Vito Imbascini, an urologist and state surgeon with the California Army National Guard, told IPS, but soldiers who survive attacks are often severely disabled for life.

"If you lost an arm or a leg in Vietnam, you were also tremendously injured in your chest and abdomen, which were not protected by the armour plates back then," he said. "Now, your heart and chest and lungs and heart are protected by armour, leaving only your extremities exposed."

Dr. Imbascini just returned from a four-month deployment to Germany, where he treated the worst of the U.S. war wounded. He said that an extremely high number of wounded soldiers are coming home with their arms or legs amputated. Imbascini said he amputated the genitals of one or two men every day.

New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists who study everything from caribou mating to global warming. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Top officials at the Interior Department's scientific arm say the rules only standardize what scientists must do to ensure the quality of their work and give a heads-up to the agency's public relations staff.

Look into the future of the digital world and you might find the digital world is looking right back at you. Advances in remote sensing are giving computer networks the eyes and ears they need to observe their physical surroundings. Sensors detect physical changes in pressure, temperature, light, sound, or chemical concentrations and then send a signal to a computer that does something in response. Scientists expect that billions of these devices will someday form rich sensory networks linked to digital backbones that put the environment itself online. The goal, says David Tennenhouse, the former chief scientist at DARPA and current director of research at Intel, will be to use dense arrays of networked sensors to extract as much "information per unit volume," about the environment as possible.

Civil libertarians cheered yesterday upon news that Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle signed a law making it a crime to require an individual to be implanted with a microchip. Activists and authors Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre joined the celebration, predicting this move will spell trouble for the VeriChip Corporation, maker of the VeriChip human microchip implant.

The VeriChip is a glass encapsulated Radio Frequency Identification tag that is injected into the flesh to uniquely number and identify people. The tag can be read silently and invisibly by radio waves from up to a foot or more away, right through clothing. The highly controversial device is also being marketed as a way to access secure areas, link to medical records, and serve as a payment device when associated with a credit card.

President George Bush has ordered U.S. government agencies to issue a new, multipurpose smart card ID starting Oct. 27, and officials say the first cards will come off the press on that date. However, the ambitious project faces bumps in the road as vendors protest and some agencies seek to delay their participation.

An Electronic Passport is the same as a traditional passport with the addition of a small integrated circuit (or “chip”) embedded in the back cover. The chip will store the same data visually displayed on the data page of the passport, a biometric identifier in the form of a digital image of the passport photograph, which will facilitate the use of face recognition technology at ports-of-entry, the unique chip identification number and a digital signature to protect the stored data from alteration.