The Air Force has suspended decades-old Bible-centric ethics training intended to make Christian officers comfortable with the possible use of nuclear weapons. The training program was given to all new missile officers by Air Force chaplains.

"We're in the process of reviewing that training and we'll make a determination whether or not to continue [it] or if it will be a different course," Air Education and Training Command spokesman Dave Smith told Military.com.

Smith said the ethics training has been in place more than 20 years, although he didn't know exactly when it was begun.

The training slides include quotations from the Bible, portraits of Christian saints, prophets, and famous American generals known for their faith, including George Washington, Union Army Gen. Joshua Chamberlain, and Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.

Following revelations earlier this year by The Tech Herald that security firms with close ties to the Pentagon ran black ops for major U.S. banks and corporations, it became clear that proprietary software developed for the military and U.S. intelligence was being used to target Americans.

Those firms, including now-defunct HBGary Federal, parent company HBGary, Palantir (a start-up flush with cash from the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel) and Berico Technologies had partnered-up with the Bank of America's law firm Hunton & Williams and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and devised a sub rosa plan of attack against WikiLeaks and Chamber critics.

And when the cyber-guerrilla collective Anonymous published some 70,000 emails and documents filched from HBGary servers, it was off to the races.

Several former German ambassadors to Israel applauded Chancellor Angela Merkel's refusal to endorse the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September.

Addressing Merkel in a letter Tuesday, the six former ambassadors to Israel lashed out at 32 other retired German ambassadors and consuls who in an open letter in July had demanded that Merkel support the unilateral declaration.

The six envoys accused their colleagues of ignoring threats to Israel's existence and urged Merkel to stay the course.

"Just as you have made it clear to [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas in Berlin that unilateral steps will not help, we ask that you represent this position assertively within the European Union," their letter read in part.

"The recognition of a Palestinian state is in our opinion only possible if it goes hand in hand with an explicit recognition and guarantee of the existence of the Jewish state."

• FTSE closes down 3.4% - a 12-month low
• Dow Jones also falls by more than 350 points in morning trading
• Spanish and Italian markets drop 3%
• BoE holds interest rates at 0.5% for 29th month in row

Stock markets plunged yesterday in the biggest rout since the height of the financial crisis three years ago.

Panic tore through global financial centres, raising fears of a new world recession.

The FTSE 100 index saw £50billion wiped off the value of Britain's biggest companies, bringing a total fall of £125billion in the space of only a week.

The National Security Agency descends on the Las Vegas hacker convention looking for fresh blood to turn into "cyber warriors."

DefCon is an annual gathering of hackers in Sin City which incongruously allows people who've only conversed in IRC chat rooms to meet face-to-face. The convention will cover all of the hot topics in hackerdom today, including panels on techniques and a fair amount of boasting of hacker exploits. The cost to attend is $150 cash - no credit cards or trackable currency allowed - but many hackers will walk away from DefCon with a fancy new job. High-tech corporations always have a presence trying to recruit the often intelligent hacker community to work for them, but perhaps the most intriguing story is that the oft-misunderstood government agency - the NSA - is also entreating former hackers to become cyber warriors in the fight against America's enemies online.

Air France issued orders for only male staff to serve Dominique Strauss-Kahn when the former IMF boss -- accused of attempted rape in New York -- travelled on its planes, a report said Thursday.

Le Parisien newspaper also said that lawyers of Strauss-Kahn's accuser were calling for testimony from Air France female stewards who allegedly suffered inappropriate behaviour by him.

A spokesman for the airline however responded to the report by saying that "Air France formally denies having given any instruction about the composition of its crews."

Le Parisien said lawyers of Nafissatou Diallo -- the African hotel maid who made the accusations against the ex-International Monetary Fund chief -- had received at least two testimonies from air crew who had been importuned.

The paper quoted the lawyers as saying that "this inexplicable mindset which enables him to abuse women is further proof which gives credibility to the aggression suffered by Ms Diallo on May 14."

Spy agency probably the real (cyber) slim shady

A five-year operation targeting more than 70 global companies, governments and non-profit organisations was probably the work of an intelligence agency, according to McAfee.

The malware-powered cyber-snooping campaign - dubbed Operation Shady RAT - began in mid-2006 with a series of attacks that affected some organisations for up to 28 months. An analysis by McAfee, published on Tuesday, said that the malware had affected firms across 14 countries.

Victims included the US federal government, satellite communications companies, the Canadian government, the Vietnamese government, the Taiwanese government, the UN and more. Others affected included 13 defence contractors, three construction firms, four IT outfits (including two that specialised in information security) and five sporting organisations.

"The interest in the information held at the Asian and Western national Olympic Committees, as well as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency in the lead-up and immediate follow-up to the 2008 Olympics was particularly intriguing and potentially pointed a finger at a state actor behind the intrusions, because there is likely no commercial benefit to be earned from such hacks," writes Mitri Alperovitch, McAfee's VP of threat research.

A judge is allowing an Army veteran who says he was imprisoned unjustly and tortured by the U.S. military in Iraq to sue former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld personally for damages.

The veteran's identity is withheld in court filings, but he worked for an American contracting company as a translator for the Marines in the volatile Anbar province before being detained for nine months at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility near the Baghdad airport dedicated to holding "high-value" detainees.

The government says he was suspected of helping get classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces enter Iraq. But he was never charged with a crime and says he never broke the law.

Lawyers for the man, who is in his 50s, say he was preparing to come home to the United States on annual leave when he was abducted by the U.S. military and held without justification while his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or even whether he was still alive.

The Tamuz uses an advanced electro-optic camera that transmits the image of its target back to operators inside the APC, who then manually drive it toward the target. Tamuz teams work closely with an artillery unit, which operates Hermes 450 reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles that provide the intelligence on the targets that are then attacked by the Tamuz missile.


David Cenciotti also notes the crafty way in which the missile lofts itself high above a battlefield before hurtling down toward an unlucky person, place, or thing:

It initially climbs to an altitude that give its camera a good point of view of the presumed target area; then it moves (slowly) towards the target area (it seems to hover) and, as soon as a positive identification is obtained, it is guided to hit the target.

The non-partisan Institute for Truth in Accounting has identified Hawaii as a "Sinkhole" state because it is one of five states in the worst financial position in the country.

While Hawaii has $19.5 billion worth of assets, only $3.9 billion are available to pay $15.4 billion of bills as they come due. Each taxpayer's financial burden is $25,000.

"State officials say their budgets are balanced but do not include employee pension and healthcare obligations in their calculations," stated Sheila Weinberg, Founder and CEO of the Institute. "Unlike the federal government, states can't 'print money' to cover costs and shore up their financial conditions."

The Institute's newly released "Financial State of the States" Report reviewed each state's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) to offset assets against liabilities. For the first time, a detailed analysis of pension and healthcare liabilities was completed which uncovered the states' actual obligations. From these calculations, the Institute was able to determine the true Taxpayer's Burden for all fifty states.