Suicide bombers associated with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network have begun carrying bombs inside their bodies in the form of suppositories to circumvent strict security controls, the French daily Le Figaro reported yesterday.
Citing information supplied by the French anti-terrorist service DCRI, the report highlighted a recent assassination bid in Saudi Arabia in which the terrorist carried the bomb within his body.
“That is to say, it was undetectable,” a French Interior Ministry official said. “The suicide bomber had only to detonate it with his cellphone, which the palace guards did not have the presence of mind to remove.”
The target of the attack, Mohammed bin Nayef, the son of the Saudi interior minister, suffered only minor injuries.
However, the method used by the bomber has forced security officials to reconsider the controls used to prevent suicide bombings, particularly at airports.
“Our aviation controls are equipped with metal detectors, but in the case of the Saudi suicide bomber only an X-ray control would have detected the explosive,” a police official said.
“It is simply unthinkable to put X-rays into general use for security controls, since we know how often some passengers fly,” an Interior Ministry official said. “The health risks ... are too great.”
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
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Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
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