A team of researchers at an Israeli university has successfully tested a technology using fluorescent bacteria and lasers that could become a safer system for detecting buried landmines. An estimated 100m landmines are scattered in some 70 countries, a legacy of often long-past conflict, and the devices injure up to 20,000 people a year.

Mine clearance work is typically dangerous, labour-intensive and costly. The team at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University has tested mine detection using bacteria genetically modified to give off a fluorescent signal when mines – often made out plastic – are close, which can then be detected with a laser.

Reporting the findings in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the researchers say their approach relies on tiny amounts of vapour given off by the explosives in the mines.

It was recognised that some plants reacted to those vapours, and the research used modified bacteria that essentially glow in contact with the explosive vapour. Encased in polymer beads scattered on the suspected minefield, that fluorescence is then detected by a laser system that researchers suggest could be mounted on a vehicle – including drones.(guardian)…[+]

Cyclone Cook has struck New Zealand with power outages, fallen trees and landslides reported around much of the central and eastern North Island, which bore the brunt of the storm.

Cook, which forecasters feared could be the worst storm to strike New Zealand in decades, made landfall just after 6pm local time but by then many coastal villages were abandoned as five-metre swells combined with high tide and smashed against the deserted shoreline. Although a few rogue spectators braved the elements to gape at the raging surf, most residents seemed to heed civil defence warnings and had moved to higher ground hours before. Schools and offices closed in Auckland at about lunchtime as civil defence staff urged residents to leave the city immediately and remain at home. Extra public transport was laid on for the thousands of people escaping the city. By late afternoon, however, the MetService said Cook had just bypassed New Zealand’s largest and most populated city, and the weather warning was dropped. Further south in the Coromandel and Bay of Plenty regions, power remains out in tens of thousands of homes, and gale-force winds have been reported.(guardian)…[+]

Russian authorities failed to take sufficient steps to stop the 2004 Beslan school siege in North Ossetia in which more than 330 people were killed, the European court of human rights has ruled. The court said Russian authorities had received information that a terror attack was being planned and security at the school was not increased sufficiently. Chechen militants stormed the school on 1 September 2004, beginning a three-day hostage crisis involving more than 1,100 hostages. The death toll included 184 children.The authorities had been in possession of sufficiently specific information of a planned terrorist attack in the area, linked to an educational institution,” the court said in its judgment. “Nevertheless, not enough had been done to disrupt the terrorists meeting and preparing.”

It added that “insufficient steps had been taken to prevent them [the terrorists] travelling on the day of the attack; security at the school had not been increased; and neither the school nor the public had been warned of the threat”.

The court also ruled that Russian authorities breached European human rights laws when they stormed the school. A further 750 people were wounded when security forces – using “tank cannon, grenade launchers and flamethrowers”, the court said – moved in to free the hostages.(guardian)…[+]