The London Daily Telegraph reports: “Cyber warfare is now a reality with at least five nations including the United States and Russia already armed with virtual weapons, according to a report.

A wave of politically-motivated cyber offensives this year – such as attacks on the White House and the US Department of Homeland Security – show that the international arms race is now moving online, a study claims.

The report warns that cyber strikes could have a ‘devastating’ impact on national infrastructure with power grids, water supplies and financial markets all at risk.

While the potential of online warfare has long been talked up, the Virtual Criminology Report released by the web security firm McAfee claims that it is now moving from science fiction to fact.

France, Israel and China are among the countries known to have cyber weapon programmes, according to Paul Kurtz, the former White House adviser who complied the study based on interviews with more than 20 experts.

‘McAfee began to warn of the global cyber arms race more than two years ago, but now we’re seeing increasing evidence that it’s become real,’ said Dave Dealt, president of McAfee.

‘Now several nations around the world are actively engaged in cyber warlike preparations and attacks. Today, the weapons are not nuclear, but virtual, and everyone must adapt to these threats.’

The infrastructure of most developed nations is connected to the internet and vulnerable to hackers because of insufficient security controls, the report warns.

Companies will also be caught in the crossfire of future cyber wars between governments because so many essential services are privately run, it advises.

Last month a congressional advisory panel in the US warned that China appears to be using the growing technical abilities to collect US intelligence through a sophisticated and long-term computer attack campaign…” (This is the most devastating and dangerous moment in history as cyber warfare could paralyze the U.S. A. and most of the world – I Timothy 3:1; and Luke 21:25 portrays: “Nations in distress with perplexity” [mass confusion].)

BBC News reports: “Researchers working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they are delighted with the progress made since the machine restarted on Friday.

One official said the collider had done more in a few hours than it did in five days of operations last year.

The LHC is being used to smash together beams of protons in a bid to shed light on the nature of the Universe.

Housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the Franco-Swiss border, it is the world’s largest machine.

During the experiment, scientists will search for signs of the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle that is crucial to our current understanding of physics. Although it is predicted to exist, scientists have never found it.

The machine was heavily damaged when an electrical fault caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak into the tunnel just nine days after it was first launched in September last year.

During 14 months of repairs dozens of giant superconducting magnets that accelerate particles at the speed of light had to be replaced.

Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), the LHC will create similar conditions to those which were present moments after the Big Bang.

‘We are further advanced now than where we were after five days of experiment last year,’ said Cern’s director of accelerators Steve Myers.

He added that the extra year had allowed researchers to upgrade instrumentation and computer software…” (This collider will become the most horrendous explosion ever attempted in history as it tries to recreate the “Big Bang Theory”. It won’t happen as scientists attempt to play God – Genesis 1:1; Proverbs 30:4; Colossians 1:16-17. See also the next report.)

BBC News reports: “The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment on the French-Swiss border has set a new world record for energy.

The LHC pushed the energy of its particle beams beyond one trillion electron volts, making it the world’s highest energy particle accelerator.

The previous record was held by the Tevatron particle accelerator in Chicago.

Officials say it is another milestone in the LHC’s drive towards its main scientific tests set for 2010.

The LHC is designed to smash together beams of sub-atomic particles at just under the speed of light. Researchers hope to see signs of new physics in the aftermath of the collisions, helping them unlock the secrets of the Universe.

Operated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (better known by its French acronym Cern), the LHC is built inside a 27km-long circular tunnel.

‘We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is going,’ said Cern’s director general Rolf Heuer.

‘It is fantastic. However, we are continuing to take it step-by-step, and there is still a lot to do before we start physics in 2010. I’m keeping my champagne on ice until then.’

Until now the LHC had been operating at a relatively low energy of 450 billion electron volts.

On Sunday, engineers increased the energy of this ‘pilot beam’, reaching 1.18 trillion electron volts at 2344 GMT.

The previous record of 0.98 trillion electron volts has been held by the Tevatron accelerator since 2001.

The LHC is eventually expected to operate at some seven trillion electron volts.

Last week, the machine circulated two beams of protons for the first time and carried out its first low-energy beam collisions…”