Airline passengers are to be screened with facial recognition technology rather than checks by passport officers, in an attempt to improve security and ease congestion, the Guardian can reveal.
From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers’ faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.
– The Guardian
The mystery over the Israeli bombing of Syrian territory last year took a new twist yesterday when US intelligence agencies showed a video claiming to prove that the target was a covert nuclear plant being built with North Korean help. The White House described the alleged reactor as “a dangerous and potentially destabilising development for the region and the world”.
After seven months of silence and evasion from the Bush administration, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, briefed members of the Senate and House armed services, intelligence and foreign affairs committees, saying his weapons specialists found the evidence compelling.
– The Guardian
The government was censured over its anti-terror laws in the courts again yesterday when a judge ruled that five men had had their assets frozen unlawfully after being labelled terrorists by the Treasury.
The five, all British nationals, have never been convicted of any terrorist offence and said the orders had had a “humiliating and devastating” effect.
– The Guardian
China has overtaken the US as the world’s biggest user of the internet, thanks to a rise of more than 61 per cent of people in the country using the web in the past year.
More than 221 million Chinese were online at the end of February compared with 137 million at the start of 2007, tying for first place with the United States. But experts say that the number is sure to have risen steeply in the past few weeks, placing China in the undisputed number one position.
– The Times
Olympic chiefs are prepared for deaths along the torch relay route, The Times has learnt.
In a confidential memorandum, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has drawn up possible scenarios including incidents where people are hurt or killed during demonstrations in China and cities around the world that are hosting the torch
– The Times
The Olympic torch relay was shepherded through the streets of Canberra amid a large security presence yesterday as thousands of Chinese supporters descended on the Australian capital to counter the high-profile protests being waged around the world by Tibetan campaigners.
Although a small number of arrests were made for minor offences and a few isolated scuffles broke out, the event passed without major incident as hundreds of armed police used barricades to prevent Chinese supporters from clashing directly with ethnic Tibetans and free Tibet demonstrators.
– The Financial Times
