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While many tech moguls dream of changing the way we live with new smart devices or social media apps, one Russian internet millionaire is trying to change nothing less than our destiny, by making it possible to upload a human brain to a computer, reports Tristan Quinn.

“Within the next 30 years,” promises Dmitry Itskov, “I am going to make sure that we can all live forever.”

It sounds preposterous, but there is no doubting the seriousness of this softly spoken 35-year-old, who says he left the business world to devote himself to something more useful to humanity. “I’m 100% confident it will happen. Otherwise I wouldn’t have started it,” he says.

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Top scientists at Roche Holding AG and AstraZeneca Plc are sizing up potential allies in the fight against cancer: the trillions of bacteria that live in the human body.

“Five years ago, if you had asked me about bacteria in your gut playing an important role in your systemic immune response, I probably would have laughed it off,” Daniel Chen, head of cancer immunotherapy research at Roche’s Genentech division, said in a phone interview. “Most of us immunologists now believe that there really is an important interaction there.”

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking techies to help fight terrorism. The US military, after spending decades in a struggle to defend itself against improvised weapons, is now inviting inventors to get explosively creative.

Whatever device this article is currently being read on, in the wrong hands, could become a weapon. Technology such as USBs, off-the-shelf software and cell phones have all been deployed against US or US-backed forces. Now the US hopes to return the favor, according to Ars Technica.

What makes fighting against improvised weapons so difficult is that they can be made from almost anything, from non-military drones to gardening tools. In its announcement, DARPA encouraged inventors to use anything from widely-available commercial technology to “highly specialized, domain-specific technology such as construction, salvage, or surveying equipment.

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EU Justice Ministers Claims Cyber Attackers are terrorists. I wouldn’t say all of them are terrorists. Those who attack hospitals, attack government infrastructures, threaten markets, etc, are terrorists. The next door neighbor’s 13 yr old kid hacking to use your wireless internet service; not a terrorist.


European Union justice ministers on March 11th adopted a general approach on the directive on combatting terrorism, including serious cyber crimes, informs LETA/BNS.

On Friday the council greed its negotiating position on the proposal for a directive on combatting terrorism. The proposed directive strengthens the EU’s legal framework in preventing terrorist attacks by criminalising preparatory acts such as training and travel abroad for terrorist purposes – hence addressing the issue of foreign fighters – as well as aiding and abetting, inciting or attempting such acts. It also reinforce rules on the rights for the victims of terrorism, the Ministry of Justice said.

Estonian Justice Minister Urmas Reinsalu said in a speech at the Justice and Home Affairs Council that for Estonia it is very important that justice ministers were able to agree on defining serious terrorist cyber attacks as terrorist crimes. This gives the EU additional legal tools in such situations as the cyber attacks that followed the so-called Bronze Night riots that took place in Tallinn in April 2007, he added.

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