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• Alleged attacker is filmed brandishing knife and cleaver
• Two suspects shot by armed police
• Ministers holding emergency Cobra meeting

Follow the latest reports on the Woolwich attack here

Dramatic footage of the suspected terrorist attack near the Woolwich barracks today that left one man dead has emerged, showing a man with blood covered hands using jihadist rhetoric to justify the violence.

Tonight the Prime Minister David Cameron vowed that Britain will "never buckle" in the face of terrorist incidents, and condemned the "absolutely sickening" killing.

As the government's emergency committee Cobra convened in central London to assess the implications of the incident, ITV News broadcast footage of one of the alleged attackers.

Brandishing a cleaver and a knife, and with the body of the victim lying yards away, the man said: "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

"We must fight them. I apologise that women had to witness this today.

"But in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don't care about you."

The man then walks away and talks to another suspected attacker.

Later footage shows the aftermath after the two suspects were shot by police.

It is believed the person died after suffering knife injuries, possibly around the head area.

Two people have been taken to hospital after they were shot by armed police.

There were reports that the man who was fatally attacked was wearing a Help for Heroes T-shirt.

The Woolwich and Greenwich MP, Nick Raynsford, said it was his understanding that one person, a serving soldier, was dead but there was no immediate confirmation of this from the Ministry of Defence.

The prime minister said: "Tonight, our thoughts should be with the victim, with their family, with their friends."

"People across Britain, people in every community, I believe, will utterly condemn this attack.

"We have had these sorts of attacks before in our country and we never buckle in the face of them."

Cameron was speaking at a Paris press conference with French president Francois Hollande but confirmed he would cut short the visit to return to the UK tonight to chair a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency committee in the morning.

Chiefs at the Woolwich barracks were understood to be trying to account for military personnel, amid reports the dead person may have been connected to the military. The incident happened 300-400 metres from the perimeter of the barracks.

The barracks is home to the Princess of Wales regiment and the Kings Troop, which is a ceremonial unit, that relocated to Woolwich last year.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the shooting by police, which is standard in cases where officers open fire.

In a statement the IPCC said it had "been made aware by Metropolitan Police Service of an incident in Woolwich, south London. IPCC investigators have been deployed to the scene and to the post-incident process. The IPCC has declared this as an independent investigation."

Earlier Raynsford said: "The incident occurred early afternoon. One individual is dead, two others are seriously injured and in hospital.

"We think a serving soldier was the victim. We don't know the circumstances surrounding the incident.

"We do know a number of weapons have been seized. They include a gun, various knives, and a machete, apparently."

• London
• Crime
• Police
• Independent Police Complaints Commission
• Metropolitan police

Countless wearers of Google Glass stalked the halls of this year's Google I/O developer conference, but only a lucky few were sporting the prescription model, which makes room for lenses in a more conventional glasses frame. Among those lucky early adopters with imperfect vision was Thad Starner, a Georgia Tech professor who, in 2010, was recruited to join a top-secret project at Google's fabled X Lab. That project, as it turned out, was Glass, and Starner's role on the team as a technical lead would be a vital one.

Starner invented the term "augmented reality" in 1990 and, after experimenting with wearable technologies for 20 years now, offered us a rare perspective on where the stuff has been and where it's headed. So, then, we were very glad to get a few moments to chat with the man at I/O and get his insight into how we got to be where we are and, indeed, get some suggestions from him on where we're going from here.

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Here's a full-on "disk" shot of the planet, taken by NOAA's GOES-13 satellite. (Fun fact: NOAA is pronounced like the name "noah.") You can see the storm over the central part of the US.

Click to launch the gallery.

Satellites from NASA, NOAA, and others captured the devastating tornado that this week destroyed many towns and houses and claimed the lives of several (the exact death toll is still unclear) in Oklahoma. Click above for a tour through those shots.

[via Flickr]

• Soldier killed, according to local MP Nick Raynsford
• Armed police shot two men 'carrying weapons'
• Terrorist attack feared as Cobra emergency committee meets

Do fungi have a foot fetish? When researchers mapped the fungal species living on the surface of the human body, they found the skin on the feet harbors the most diverse fungal community. The work is in the journal Nature . [Keisha Findley et al, Topographic diversity of fungal and bacterial communities in human skin ]

We all agree it's a terrible feeling when you drop a phone -- that fraction of a second when you realize, only too late, that your handset is headed toward the ground. Worse, of course, is knowing it won't be hitting concrete, but instead performing a beautiful swan dive into water. Rice in a bag or mysterious crystal desiccants are what most folks use as a go-to for water damage repair on their handsets, but the folks at DryBox have another answer. Using a box that will dry your phone in 25 minutes or so using a combination of heat, vacuum pump and light, DryBox claims up to 80 percent success for recovering your waterlogged handset.

A rep from DryBox explained to us that as long as a handset is left alone after getting wet and gets to them within 36 hours, the likelihood of recovery are very good; after that, your chances start to dwindle fast. Interestingly, iPhones have the best recovery record -- especially the iPhone 5 -- though whether that's because it's a sealed device or because so many exist is a mystery to DryBox. The patent-pending DryBox system isn't a home solution for sure; rather, Drybox envisions a profit sharing deal whereby stores set up the devices and share the revenue. Pricing is set by the dealer, but is typically somewhere between $20 and $40. A few locations are already up and running in San Antonio and Austin, Texas, so if you're in that area with a bricked phone, it might be worth checking them out.

Gallery: Drybox Rescue Station: the ultimate cellphone drying system hands-on

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A copy of the genetic code of an H7N9 avian flu-similar to, but not exactly the same as the flu that has killed 36 people in China-arrived in a lab in Boston Easter Sunday, 2011. By Saturday, scientists had made a vaccine against it, the Boston Globe reported.

That turnaround time is weeks faster than the current best vaccine-making methods. The new shot-making strategy still needs to undergo approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It also needs tweaking before it would able to make the large amounts of vaccine needed during a flu outbreak, the editors of the journal Science wrote in a summary of the work. If the method does make it to market, however, it could speed the response to flu pandemics.

"I think it does have great potential for more rapidly preparing vaccines for new strains as they evolve," Robert Finberg, chair of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a flu researcher, told the Boston Globe.

The new method uses synthetic biology, or the creation of biological materials, such as viruses, without using nature's usual reproductive methods. In this case, scientists from the U.S. pharmaceutical company Novartis and from the J. Craig Venter Institute built H7N9 viruses from looking at the genetic code they received on Easter. Normally, vaccine manufacturers don't make copies of a flu virus simply from a "paper" (In this case it was electronic, like an email) copy of its code. They actually have to have some virus to make more virus.

It's as if in the past, scientists always needed to have a burger on hand to make more burgers. The Novartis and J. Craig Venter Institute scientists, on the other hand, looked at a recipe for a burger and made more burgers from individual ingredients. Scientists around the world have previously used synthetic biology to engineer bacteria. J. Craig Venter, namesake of the institute involved in making the new vaccine, made a bacterium almost entirely from scratch in 2010.

Once they had their synthetic H7N9, scientists made a vaccine from a benign form of the virus that stimulates the human immune system, but can't give people the actual flu. They also came up with some other innovations helped them speed the vaccine-making process. The Boston Globe has more details.

Making the original virus synthetically helps with speed because it's much faster to send electronic copies of a virus' code around the world than it is to carefully ship samples of the actual virus, MIT Technology Review reported.

The biggest bottleneck now is performing the tests that will convince regulatory agencies that this method makes safe, effective vaccines, the Science editors wrote. Science published a paper about the synthetic vaccine last week.

The FCC's underground bunker, situated beneath Portals II, 445 12th Street SW, has recently been visited by a rising star of the tablet world. Toshiba's AT10LE-a, the company's Tegra 4-powered slate that's reportedly running Android 4.2.1 has been dissected by those fine folks at the FCC. The unit is carrying WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC radios, and now that they've been passed safe for human consumption, we can only assume that an official announcement won't be too far behind.

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Via: Mobileaks (Translated)

Source: FCC

Prime minister rejects calls from Eurosceptics to hold vote before planned date of 2017, or even to hold two votes

David Cameron has issued a blunt warning to Conservative Eurosceptics that his "very clear, very decisive policy" to hold a referendum on Britain's EU membership by the end of 2017 is not up for renegotiation.

In an attempt to draw a line under a bumpy few weeks in which Eurosceptics demanded a toughening of his policy and Tory traditionalists criticised him for pressing ahead with a gay marriage bill, the prime minister said he would stand firm.

But Cameron, who spoke of his pride in legalising gay marriage, tried to reach out to the right by saying he would now focus on the "big picture" issues of the economy rather than social issues.

"Is this the first now of many other issues like that," he asked in an interview on the Today programme on Radio 4. "No it isn't. The government now is going to be absolutely focused on the big picture which is fixing our economy, reforming welfare, making sure there are good schools for our children to go to."

But the prime minister adopted a different tone as he rejected calls from Eurosceptics to hold a referendum before the planned date of 2017, or even to hold two votes. David Davis, the former Tory leadership contender, is calling for an initial "mandate" referendum to give the prime minister authority from the British people to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership.

Cameron said: "On 24 January I set out a very clear, very compelling policy for the country towards Europe, which is to renegotiate our relationship with Europe, to make the European Union more open, competitive and flexible, and then to offer the British people something they haven't had for decades – an in-out referendum. It's a very clear, very decisive policy.

"Let me say, this policy, it doesn't matter the pressure I come under from outside the Conservative party, or in Europe, or inside the Conservative party, this policy isn't going to change. The question isn't going to change. The number of referenda isn't going to change. The date by which we hold this referendum isn't going to change. The fact is, it's the right policy for the country."

The prime minister also joined forces with Nick Clegg in vowing that the coalition would last the full five-year term. He said on Today: "That is absolutely my intention and has always been. To anyone who doubts what life there is left in the coalition, I would argue there is more to come – very bold reforming, and strong government, and that is what we'll be right up until polling day."

Clegg urged the Conservatives not to shift to the right in a doomed bid to head off Ukip. The deputy prime minister warned Tory MPs off "arcane, shrill and tongue-twisting manoeuvres in parliament", saying it distracted the public from the government's main goal of sorting out the economy.

Speaking at a press conference in Westminster, Clegg told the Conservatives they were wasting their time trying to stir up a leadership crisis in his own party, but admitted long-term differences between the two parties over Europe would continue.

Insisting he was confident of his place in the coalition, he said: "Anyone who is wargaming about what may or may not happen in my party is wasting their time. I am going to be leader of this party up to, through and beyond the next general election. The Liberal Democrats, despite all the predictions to the contrary, have proved to be the calmest, most resilient and most united party in British politics today."

• David Cameron
• Conservatives
• Nick Clegg
• European Union
• Europe

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Someone came in two years ago and set up our Drupal instance... what NOW?

Defense Distributed's plastic, 3-D printed "Liberator" single-shot handgun was here for a moment and then it was gone in more than one sense. For one, the news cycle turned over. Moreover, the State Department came down on Defense Distributed asking it to pull the CAD file for the Liberator off its servers until the lawyers could figure out if putting a free, downloadable CAD file up on the Web violated any arms export regulations. But the Liberator is back and--presumably to Defense Distributed co-founder Cody Wilson's glee--it is evolving.

By the time the State Department asked Defense Distributed to pull down the CAD file for the Liberator, it was already replicating across the Web. And one of the people who appears to have gotten his hands on it is a Wisconsin engineer who identified himself to Forbes only as "Joe." Joe has printed what he adorably calls the "Lulz Liberator" on a $1,725 Lulzbot A0-101 consumer-grade 3-D printer--a printer that is far less expensive than the industrial-grade one used by Wilson and company to create the original Liberator, which essentially was a disposable pistol--one shot and the barrel breaks, requiring the user to print another.

Joe's Lulz Liberator--cost: $25--successfully fires eight rounds through a single barrel (and a ninth round through a replacement barrel) in the video below, proving that plastic guns have already leapt beyond the one-shot-per-print limitation. The Lulz Liberator is still a single-shot weapon--that is, it only holds a single round at a time--but it can be reloaded and fired multiple times using a single barrel.

Joe made his Lulz Liberator from PA-747 ABS plastic, a standard kind of ABS that is the working material for most consumer-grade 3-D printers. Yet he claims that it's stronger than the more expensive stuff Wilson prints with in his larger, more costly Stratasys printer. Joe also augmented his version with a few components not found on the original Liberator, which is all plastic except for the firing pin made from a standard nail. The Lulz Liberator uses a metal nail for a firing pin, but also employs metal screws--available for pennies at your local hardware store--to hold the body of the firearm together rather than relying on plastic pins as Wilson's does. And like Wilson's, it contains a non-functioning piece of steel designed to bring it into alignment with the Undetectable Firearms Act.

The Lulz Liberator reportedly misfired several times during tests, and some of the screws and firing pins had to be replaced throughout the testing. Reloading is also no simple matter; each spent .380 cartridge expanded enough that they had to be pounded free of the chamber with a hammer. So it's not like the Lulz Liberator is a rapid-fire, or even a semi-rapid fire plastic firearm.

What it is: A confirmation that Wilson's Liberator design indeed functions the way he says it does, as well as proof that now that this thing is out there in the maker ecosystem it's going to evolve independent of Wilson and Defense Distributed.

One key difference between Wilson's Liberator and Joe's Lulz Liberator: the Lulz Liberator design file is not available for download online and it's unclear if or when Joe might release it into the wild. But it doesn't really matter. Defense Distributed's file is still circulating out there, and it's unlikely Joe is the only maker out there tinkering with new ways to make better firearms from cheap plastic.

[Forbes]