Wikileaks to release new Iraq files 'seven times bigger than the first'

Wikileaks has announced it will release a third set of war logs which will be seven times bigger than the last batch.

In a defiant posting on its official Twitter account, the website’s founders said it was ‘under intense pressure’ over the disclosure but vowed to press ahead anyway.

‘The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined. Keep us strong,’ they added.

The Twitter post from Wikileaks which promises to redefine 'global history'

It is not yet clear what the new logs would cover but such a vast information dump would create another firestorm in Britain and the U.S.

Generals on both sides of the Atlantic are still furious over the last set of 400,000 classified documents which covered the war in Iraq, the biggest military leak of all time.

The new leak is expected to total as many as three million documents.They detailed what Wikileaks founder Julian Assange called 'compelling evidence of war crimes' by the U.S. led coalition and the Iraq government and sparked calls for a full inquiry.

A far larger set of war logs could contain even more damaging revelations about similar crimes, or throw up entirely new incidents involving coalition troops.

They also raise the possibility of individual officers being named as perpetrators of ‘war crimes’ and special forces agents in the field having their identities revealed.

On Wikileaks’ Twitter page, its founders posted a rallying call to its supports and vowed to press on with publication.

‘Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. intense pressure over it for months. Keep us strong,’ it said.

Should Wikileaks go ahead with its promise, it will be the third time it has published such information in the face of opposition from military top brass around the world.

The first batch was about the war in Afghanistan and gave a grim picture of the day-to-day struggle against the Taliban and the frustrations of trying to train the Afghan police.

The second covered the period in the occupation of Iraq between 2004 and 2009 and contained revelations that America failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, rape, torture and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers.

The information also revealed that more than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents - U.S. and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

British soldiers patrol on a street in Kabul. Officials have complained that the Wikileaks could be endangering servicemen's lives

In addition, the logs claim that in one incident a British rifleman shot dead an eight-year-old Iraqi girl as she played in the streets.

The information will almost certainly have come from the Bradley Manning, the dissident U.S. army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked the first tranche, some 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in Afghanistan.

Adding to the controversy is the international arrest warrant which has been issued for Mr Assange by Swedish prosecutors over allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.

The allegations, which the 39-year-old Australian has repeatedly denied, relate to two women he met while on a visit to Sweden in August.

Assange’s London lawyer Mark Stephens, has said the claims were 'false and without basis’.

A Pill To Block Out The Bad Memories

There are some things everyone would rather forget – and scientists believe they may be able to help us do just that, with a pill that would block out painful memories.

In a medical breakthrough, researchers have discovered that proteins can be removed from the brain’s fear centre to wipe out traumatic memories.

Their findings could be of benefit to soldiers who have experienced distressing events and victims of violence. They could even help us get over the hurt of a painful break-up.

The U.S. research has parallels to the plot of the science fiction film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, which starred Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey. 

In the 2004 film, a couple’s past is wiped in a fictional procedure called ‘targeted
memory erasure’. For the U.S. study, scientists at Johns Hopkins University used rats to try to focus on the part of the brain that copes with fear.

They discovered a ‘window of vulnerability’ when unique receptor proteins are created in the brain as painful memories are made.

Because the proteins are unstable, they could be removed with drugs to eliminate the memory forever.

‘When a traumatic event occurs, it creates a fearful memory that can last a lifetime and have a debilitating effect on a person’s life,’ said researcher Professor Richard Huganir. 

He said his findings ‘raise the possibility of manipulating those mechanisms with drugs to enhance behavioural therapy for such conditions as post-traumatic stress disorder’.

Although the scientists used mice in the tests, they believe the results would be the same in humans. 

Breakthrough: The idea of wiping out traumatic memories has parallels with the plot of the film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

The rodents were conditioned using electric shocks so they would fear a tone. The sound then triggered the creation of the proteins, which formed for just a day or two in the fear centre, or amygdala, of the mice’s brains.

The Johns Hopkins scientists are working on re-opening the window by artificially recalling the painful memory and using drugs to get rid of the protein.

Professor Huganir believes the window may exist in other centres of learning in the brain and the treatment may one day be used to alleviate pain or combat alcohol or drug addictions.

However, Kate Farinholt, of a mental health support group in Maryland, warned there are still many unanswered questions. ‘Erasing a memory and then everything bad built on that is an amazing idea,’ she said.

‘But completely deleting a memory is a little scary. How do you remove a memory without removing a whole part of someone’s life, and is it best to do that, considering that people grow and learn from their experiences?’

Paul Root Wolpe, of the Centre for Ethics, at Emory University in Atlanta, said: ‘Human identity is tied into memory. It creates our distinctive personalities. It’s a troublesome idea to begin to be able to manipulate that, even if for the best of motives.’

Facebook launches Email service

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said last night email would go the way of the letter because it is too slow and informal.

The 26-year-old made the claim as he launched the social networking site's new messaging service, which integrates all web and text-based communications and works instantaneously.

The service, perceived as a direct rival to Google's Gmail, marks a new front in the ongoing and increasingly bitter battle between Facebook and Google to gain the loyalty of users.

Domination: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg talks about the new messaging service rumoured to be a 'Gmail-killer'

Mr Zuckerberg revealed that, as rumoured, the 500million people signed up to Facebook will have access to a ‘Facebook.com’ email address.

Entire conversation histories going back years will also be saved into users’ accounts and Spam will be completely filtered out, he claimed.

'We don’t think that a modern messaging system is going to be email,'
Zuckerberg said at a press conference in San Francisco.

'We want people to be able to communicate in whatever way they choose: email, text or Facebook message.'

Speculation had been mounting that Facebook’s email account would be a ‘Gmail Killer’, in reference to Google’s successful email service

Facebook’s new email system is modelled on instant messaging and on-line chat and will allow people to simplify their communications regardless of how they choose to do it.

Texts, email or instant messages will all come into one ‘feed’ and users can respond in any way they want.

One person could text a friend, for example, who will see the message come up on their Facebook page instantly and respond via an instant message or email.

Battling Google: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, pictured earlier this year, has launched a new messaging service which could rival Google's Gmail

Mr Zuckerberg said that he was changing Facebook because young people found email was too much of a ‘cognitive load’.

He said of the new programme: ‘It’s not email. It handles email... along with all the different ways you want to communicate.

'It’s true people are going to be able to have Facebook.com email addresses but this is not email. Email is one way people are going to use this system, but we don’t even think it’s going to be the primary way.

‘The goal of this product is to make it that we can seamlessly integrate across all of these different products very easily.’

Facebook's director of engineering Andrew Bosworth said that, over the course of time, users could look back on their relationships with friends going back years in a modern-day version of keeping letters in a box.

The changes will be rolled out over the coming months on an invite-only basis before being offered to all users worldwide.

Commenting on the launch, Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum, said: 'An email service from Facebook makes a lot of sense. 

'It has a huge base of 500 million users that already love to communicate and share, and Facebook is giving them richer ways to do this through virtual gifts, games, location and even voice thanks to the recent integration deal with Skype.

'Adding email to the mix is a logical step and Facebook could tap into user data to provide an attractive, highly personalised service. You would also expect it to push mobile features given its big move in this direction. '

Ease of access: Facebook aims to integrate text, web and email services for its 500million users

The move will certainly alarm Facebook's nearest rivals such as Yahoo and Google.

In recent months the relationship between Facebook and Google has become increasingly fraught amid the poaching of staff and efforts to throw up barricades to prevent users from easily shifting information, such as email contact lists, between the two platforms.

The changes to Facebook have been under development for more than a year and will be rolled out over the forthcoming months on an invite-only basis before going worldwide.

Last week, Google began blocking a Facebook feature that allows users to automatically import Gmail contact data into the social networking service.

Google accused Facebook of siphoning up Google data without allowing for the automatic import and export of Facebook users' information.

They are also increasingly vying for engineering talent in Silicon Valley. This week, Google internally announced plans to boost salaries by 10 per cent, according to media reports, in a move viewed as an effort to staunch an exodus of engineers and managers to Facebook.

Google has banned Facebook from importing its users' email contacts, a move it says it made because Facebook refused to allow the export of contact and friend data from within user profiles.

A new style of messaging: Mark Zuckerberg unveils Facebook's newest feature in San Francisco

The expected announcement by Facebook comes as former internet big-hitter AOL is opening the doors to its new web-based email program, code-named Project Phoenix, for a limited number of users. Starting next year, anyone will be able to sign up for access to a beta test site.

The Project Phoenix inbox page was designed to make it easier to fire off a quick email, text or instant message with just a few clicks on a ‘quick bar’ at the top of the page.

People can also send short replies directly from the inbox page, without having to click on a message first. The new design displays thumbnails of recent photo attachments at a glance, and lets people toggle between several open emails at a time.