Big Brother UC Berkeley Now Taking DNA Samples From New Students

UC Berkeley is adding something a little different this year in its welcome package -- cotton swabs for a DNA sample.

In the past, incoming freshman and transfer students have received a rather typical welcome book from the College of Letters and Science's "On the Same Page" program, but this year the students will be asked for more.

The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students own records.

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Neanderthal Gene Found in Human DNA of People Living Out of Africa

They have been extinct for 30,000 years, but a small part of the Neanderthals lives on in the DNA of every person with ancestors outside Africa.

The genetic code of Neanderthal Man has revealed that Homo sapiens mated with our closest evolutionary relatives soon after migrating out of Africa, leaving traces that can still be detected in human DNA.'

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Police State USA: TSA to Swab Airline Passengers' Hands in Search For Explosives

To the list of instructions you hear at airport checkpoints, add this: "Put your palms forward, please."

The Transportation Security Administration soon will begin randomly swabbing passengers' hands at checkpoints and airport gates to test them for traces of explosives.

Previously, screeners swabbed some carry-on luggage and other objects as they searched for the needle in the security haystack -- components of terrorist bombs in an endless stream of luggage.

But after the Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit, Michigan, the TSA began a program of swabbing passengers' hands, which could be contaminated by explosive materials, experts say. The TSA will greatly expand the swabbing in the coming weeks, the agency said.'

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Inter-agency Report Warns Air Travelers About Radiation From Full Body Scanners

Air passengers should be made aware of the health risks of airport body screenings and governments must explain any decision to expose the public to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation, an inter-agency report said.

Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is “extremely small,” said the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety report, which is restricted to the agencies concerned and not meant for public circulation. The group includes the European Commission, International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Energy Agency and the World Health Organization.'

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Airline Passengers Have 'No Right' to Refuse Naked Body Scanners

Airline passengers will have no right to refuse to go through a full-body search scanner when the devices are introduced at Heathrow airport next week, ministers have confirmed.

The option of having a full-body pat-down search instead, offered to passengers at US airports, will not be available despite warnings from the government's Equality and Human Rights Commission that the scanners, which reveal naked bodies, breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act.'

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Once again it is a matter of the public 'en mass'  to refuse this infringement of their civil liberties - but will this happen?  Baaaaaa