Category Archives: Cloning

MUMBAI: Bank account holders in Nalasopara are waking up to debit card cloning in the past few days, with over 50 customers losing around Rs 10 lakh to the fraud.

Nalasopara police in the west and Tuling police station in the east have registered cases of skimming (card cloning) between August 2 to 8. In most cases, victims received SMSes of cash withdrawals though they didn't withdraw money from an ATM and had their cards with them. While cases under section 420 (cheating) of the IPC and sections 65(d) and 66(k) of the Information Technology Act have been registered against unknown persons, police suspect the withdrawals were done from outside Maharashtra.

In Nalasopara, on August 4, businessman Ravindra Dhimre (51) was woken up by an SMS at midnight. He was shocked to learn Rs 70,000 was withdrawn from his Union Bank account. Dhimre rushed to look for his debit card which he found was intact in his wallet. Dhimre then approached the police.

In the next few days, around 40 victims approached police with similar complaints, with cash involved varying from Rs 7,000 to Rs 70,000. The total amount lost to skimming so far in Nalasopara (West) alone is to Rs 8.01lakh.

In Nalasopara (East), a 46-year-old man lost Rs 20,000 to skimming. The victim received an SMS of the withdrawal.He was in possession of his debit card and had not made any withdrawals in the past few days. Investigating officer N K Patil said so far around 15 victims have approached the police, adding most victims lost money between August 2 to 8.

Excerpt from:

Over 50 Nalasopara residents lose Rs 10 lakh to debit card cloning - Times of India

In a scientific first, researchers have created piglets that could possibly one day provide organs for human transplants. Though the science is still early, it's a big step forward in the quest to use pig organs to help the hundreds of thousands of people every year who await organ transplants.

In a report published Thursday in the journal Science , scientists from Harvard University, the biotech company eGenesis and several other institutions were able to use gene editing and cloning to create virus-free piglets that could potentially be used in the future for human organ transplants. As the New York Times reports , researchers have wanted to explore using pigs as organ sources in the past, but plans were thwarted by the fear that viruses from the pigs, called retroviruses, could infect humans through the transplants.

In the new report, scientists detail how they took pig cells and edited them using the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 to target and hinder their virus-related DNA. They then cloned those edited cells and developed an embryo. Those embryos were implanted into sows and then became piglets.

As STAT reports, out of 37 piglets, all were born without retroviruses. Not all were brought to term, and some were killed so the scientists could check how their organs were developing, but today, 15 piglets are still alive.

Study author George Church, a geneticist at Harvard and founder of eGenesis, told the Times he thinks that pig-to-human transplants could happen within two years. However, other researchers argue that it could be years before scientists even know if pig organ transplants are safe.

[ New York Times]

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Scientists are Getting Closer To Using Pig Organs For Human Transplants - TIME

Pictures have been revealed on Facebook of a modified Franken-Fiat modified to look like a Porsche 911.

This magnificent project is apparently the result of someone in Greece with too much time on their hands. Given the state of the country's economy over the last few years, the price of a brand new Porsche 911 would probably get you the country's national bank.

While Porsche is exploring the limits of taste with its range of supersized sporting SUVs, the German manufacturer has yet to dip a toe in the small car waters, unlike its more premium competitor Aston Martin, which brought us the Toyota iQ-based Cygnet back in 2012.

The Fiat 500 base car is a decent choice, given that both it and the Porsche 911 have engines mounted in the back of the car, but in many ways any of the similarities end there.

You might also imagine that the creator of this entrancing automotive drag act might have picked a better end product than the visually challenging 1998-2004 996 model of 911, but looking at what they've done, such discussions are probably moot.

At any rate, feast your eyes on thisvehicular delight we can't seem to tear ours away.

Source:How Not to Design a CarFacebook page

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Porsche 911-Look Fiat 500 Is Like A Cloning Experiment Gone Wrong - Motor1.com

Guilty until proven innocent?

The Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (VACC) is this week shining a light on the most heinous practice of number-plate cloning, which it claims has left numerous car dealers fighting traffic infringement penalties.

In one case, the VACC says, a Licensed Motor Car Trader was fined over $16,000 for a single incidence of number plate cloning.

The process of cloning a number plate is said to be as simple as spying a vehicle of identical model and colour, noting its number plate, and reproducing it as easily as printing a mocked-up copy or hand-drawing it.

VACC Executive Director, Geoff Gwilym, says that while any motorist can be a victim, it is car dealers a group the VACC represents most likely to be targeted.

Criminals go online, or drive past a dealership, and note the registration of a particular vehicle. They then get these plates copied and go driving all over town in a similar vehicle, accumulating speeding and red light fines, CityLink tolls and parking infringements, all while the original vehicle has been on the dealers lot, Gwilym says.

He said that unsold, registered vehicles sitting on dealer lots are a popular target because offenders can use the cars number plate details for sometime without the crime being detected.

Victims of this crime often dont know anything about it until a fine arrives in the mail. By this time, the penalty may be considerable. Several dealer members have reported fines in the thousands of dollars.

So far, Gwilym says, victims have been told to prove their innocence in court, and authorities have revealed no plans to combat the issue.

Anyone receiving a suspect fine should challenge the decision. Those affected can request of Civic Compliance that they issue photographs of the alleged offence. This can be used in creating a defence. Importantly, bring the indiscretion to the attention of Civic Compliance as soon as possible and build a case.

The VACC has proposed a barcoded sticker, placed on the inside surface of a vehicles windscreens, would be harder to replicate and thus a possible solution to ruling out victim as perpetrator.

VACC calls on the appropriate authorities to investigate all possible solutions to this wide-spread crime that potentially could affect every motorist in Australia, said Mr Gwilym.

CarAdvice has contacted VicRoads, Victoria Police and Civic Compliance for comment, and will update this story if a response is forthcoming.

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VACC warns of number-plate cloning scam, motorists left to prove innocence - CarAdvice

You just bought a brand new shiny SSD and want to throw it into your aging mid-tower PC. But wait, the horror of having to reinstall Windows again and all of your applications begins to set in. If you dont want to deal with the hassle of reinstalling Windows, you can use a simple cloning utility to clone your old drive to your new SSD. Weve rounded up three free cloning utilities that are easy to use so you dont have to go through the effort of reinstalling your OS and applications all over again.

Note: Before you attempt to clone your hard drive or SSD, w e highly recommend backing up all your data first. In addition, make sure the drive you are cloning to has enough storage space to take all the cloned data. For instance, you wouldn't want to try and clone a 2TB HDD on to a 256GB SSD now would you?

The first data copying method we'll go over pertains to Samsung Data Migration. So make sure you plop that new Samsung SSD in along with your old OS drive you want to clone from.

Note: You will need a Samsung SSD installed on your machine for this software to work.

Step 1: Download the installer from http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads.html

Step 2: Run the installer and click "I accept" at the end of it to agree to the terms and conditions.

Step 3: Once the software is installed, it will launch and ask if you if you want to update to the latest version. Click on Update and you will begin downloading the newest patches for it.

Step 4: After the update is complete the software will have you install patches and will have you agree to the Samsung terms and conditions again.

Step 5: From this window, you will select the Source Disk and Target Disk . The Target Disk must be a Samsung SSD , but the Source Disk can be any C: Drive you currently have your OS on . Once youve selected your disks, you can start cloning by clicking Start and the cloning process will begin. Note: Leave your computer alone while you're cloning the OS, as you may corrupt the clone if other processes are being run at the same time. This goes for the other cloning utilities as well.

After the software is done cloning, you can shut down your PC and boot from your newly-cloned SSD.

The second method we will discuss uses the program Macrium Reflect and will work with any drive, regardless of brand. So before you begin, make sure you plop in that new drive along with your old drive you want to clone from.

Step 1: Go to the free version of Macrium here.

Step 2: Click on the download button in the Macrium Reflect Download Agent and then run the softwares installer.

Note: Make sure to read the fine print throughout the installation process to not install any adware. Cnet's Download.com has become infamous for sneaking it in (Here are some general tips to avoiding installing malware/adware).

Step 3: Open up the software and click on Clone this disk Once you do this the software will let you choose which disks you want as your source and target disks. When you have selected your disks, click next to start cloning your drive.

Macrium Reflect useful tips:

Creating bootable rescue media: Macrium Reflect can also help you make bootable rescue media. This tool is located under Other Tasks. We always recommend making recovery media, just in case your hard drive or SSD fails on you.

Creating an image of your hard drives: Under Backup Tasks, you can also create a disk image of your hard drive or SSD too.

These are but three cloning tools, there are many others such as Seagate's DiscWizard ( for Seagate drives) along with other free storage cloning tools such as G-Parted and Clonezilla.

Link:

How to clone a hard drive or SSD - PC Gamer

One of the eeriest mysteries of the sea is the sudden surge in jellyfish over the last few decades. Consider the tale of the moon jellyfish. Since the first big moon jellyfish bloom was recorded in the Adriatic in 1910, moon jelly populations seemed to follow a predictable cycle. Theyd turn up in normal numbers most years, and every couple of decades, clog the shores in huge gummy swarms.

Then in 1999, something alarming happened. The huge blooms that had stippled the Adriatic only every few decades now appeared year after year. The cycle had tightenedbut what, exactly, had tightened it continues to mystify scientists.

Now a team of Slovenian marine biologists thinks theyve found a key culprit: natural gas rigs.

Computer simulations by Martin Vodopivec and his team that recreate ocean dynamics and moon jellyfish life cycles suggest that gas platforms are helping to sustain moon jellyfish blooms in the Adriatic, according to a new peer-reviewed study in Environmental Research Letters.

How exactly do gas platforms help moon jellies survive? The answer involves the most fascinatingand disturbingthing about jellyfish biology: the truly bizarre way in which they reproduce.

When two adult jellyfisha.k.a. medusasmate and produce a fertilized egg, that egg doesnt just grow into a tiny version of themselves, like most creatures. Instead, that egg is actually a totally different creatureone that will never turn into a medusa like its parents.

Also called planulae or larvae, these free-swimming eggs are tiny and are shaped a bit like a miniature flattened pear, as the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History helpfully puts it. A planula drifts around until it bangs into a smooth, hard surface that it can latch on to. Once settled, it grows into a polyp, sprouting tentacle-like appendages so that it looks like a cross between a tiny tree and a sea anemone.

Then, when conditions are right, those arm-like things begin pulsating, and out pop a dozen or so baby jellies (which scientists call ephyrae). Those are the creatures that ultimately grow into that familiar umbrella-shaped beastie that we think of when we hear the word jellyfish. Polyps can repeat that process a few more times before they croak.

So far, so linear. But polyps have a nifty trick for whiling away the months (or years) until its showtime for baby-pulsating: They reproduce asexually. Meaning, they clone themselves.

And those clones? They clone themselves too, forming dense polyp families on whatever surface theyve colonized. What look like delicate little gardens are actually high-octane jellyfish-making factories.

This seed-bank strategy is pure evolutionary golda hedge against the possibility that medusas might starve, get eaten by predators, or killed by bad weather before they can mate. Its designed to create jellyfish en masse. Since medusas odds of producing fertilized eggs that make it to the polyp phase arent great, the more clones a polyp creates, the greater the chance of species survival.

But that all depends on little pear-shaped planulae finding a good home and hunkering down on a smooth, hard surface.

A few centuries ago, those homes were scarce. The best real estate going was typically a rock or a shell. Those lucky few that managed to find one didnt tend to have much space for growing a clone colony.

An Adriatic gas rig, thoughnow theres a nice place to settle down and raise a (very extended) jellyfish family.

Drilling platforms first went up in the natural gas-rich Adriatic in the 1960s. Now there are around 150 of them, according to Vodopivec and his co-authors. That means theres scads of space for polyps to expand their insane clone posses.

Mass polyp colonization certainly would help explain why blooms began taking off around the same time the Adriatics natural gas bonanza did. But finding evidence is tricky when the proof stands only a single millimeter tall.

In 2008, Italian researchers found moon jelly polyps clustered on a sunken iron motorboat (pdf) off the coast of Italy. The polypswhich were attached both to the oysters that had settled on the stern and directly to the ship itselfsat in clusters as many as 40 polyps per square centimeter. (At that density, more than 2,400 polyps would fit on a 3M Post-It Note.)

Across the Adriatic in Slovenia, Alenka Maleja veteran jellyfish biologist and co-author of the latest paperhad been searching for moon jelly polyps since 2000, clocking more than 1,000 hours peering through at seafloor rocks through scuba masks. Malej herself never found any polyps. However, in 2009, however, an ecological survey team took a peek under the port of Koper. Encrusted with oysters, the dock pillars teemed with moon jelly polyps in maximum densities of around 27 per square centimeter. The scientists were restricted to surveying a single pier; they found polyps on all 574 of its pillars. According to their estimates, the Koper pier colony capably of releasing as many as 50 billion baby jellyfish (pdf, p.1) in the space of days.

Since then, similar moon jelly polyp colonies have been found in ports in Split and Ploe. Malej also identified a polyp colony onyou guessed iton a gas platform.

Still, even though the simulations run by Vodopivec and Malej suggest a connection, we dont know for sure that polyps are settling on rigs en masseand leading to big jellyfish bloomsfor the simple reason that theyre so hard to find.

The idea that the blooms and the boom are connected isnt far-fetched, though. Theres plenty more anecdotal and experimental evidence around the globe to support the hypothesis that the burgeoning of manmade marine surfaces drives coastal jellyfish blooms, as Malej and other jellyfish biologists argued in an exhaustive 2013 survey. For instance, 2014 study by leading jellyfish biologist Shin-ichi Uye found that after a new pier was installed in the Inland Sea of Japan, polyps quickly settled there; 25 million extra baby jellies appeared soon after. And a group of German scientists found a similar relationship between moon jelly abundance and wind farms in the Baltic Sea (paywall).

Still, the cryptic nature of these polyp colonies means a clear causal relationship remains elusive. Adding to the challenge is the fact that jellyfish blooms are also influenced by warming temperatures, overfishing, and eutrophication, to name just a few of many factors.

This mystery feeds into a much deeper jellyfish controversy. A slew of leading scientists are skeptical that a jellyfish takeover is actually happening at all.

Its clear that blooms are on the riseboth in magnitude and frequencyin some patches of the world, according to research done over the last couple decades. One of the only studies to quantify anecdotal information suggested that in more than three-fifths of large marine areas, jellyfish abundance was on the rise. Only 7% of large marine areas reported a decline.

However, the reigning counterargument to the global rise in jellyfish was put forth by many of the all-stars of jellyfish biology in 2013. Jellyfish populations, these scientists argued (pdf), go through 20-year oscillations. The oscillation camp notes that while there has been a small linear rise in jellyfish blooms since the 1970s, more data are required to determine whether this trend marks a true shift in the baseline of their abundanceor just another oscillation.

To their chagrin, academic journals seemingly love the idea of a global jellyfish takeover. A recent analysis found that a whopping half of published papers suffered from jellyfish invasion biasa narrative with horror-movie appeal that the media merrily runs with.

It may be a while before biologists know for sure whether the jellyfish invasion is temporary or here to say. But lets hope the oscillation hypothesis is correctnot just because of the havoc the creatures wreak on fishing and coastal plants, but for the sake of tourists trying to enjoy a sting-free seaside vacation.

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A natural gas boom in the Adriatic has created teeming nurseries of self-cloning baby jellyfish - Quartz

The United States Patent and Trademark Office considers non-naturally occurring, nonhuman, multicellular living organisms, including animals, to be patentable subject matter. Here are some of the famous living creatures that were patented:

Dolly the sheep She was the worlds first mammal produced by cloning. Instead of being the product of a fertilised egg, her DNA material was taken from the cell of another sheep.

Dolly was cloned in 1996 and lived a normal life until she was euthanised in 2003. The Roslin Institute researchers who did the cloning tried to patent Dolly, her offspring, and the process of cloning her. However, the institute was only allowed to patent the process used in cloning Dolly

OncoMouse This is the worlds first patented animal. Created to study the formation and treatment of cancer in humans, Harvard University was granted a patent in April 1988 for the OncoMouse, which was classified as a Transgenic Non-Human Mammal.

Later, Harvard licensed it to chemical company DuPont, which had been involved in its development. The patent generated some controversy among animal rights activists, who questioned the morality of patenting a living creature.

Pseudomonas Bacteria A new species of oil spill eating Pseudomonas bacteria was the first genetically modified creature ever patented. It was made by inserting into a single species the DNA from four species of oil spilleating bacteria in the Pseudomonas genus

AquAdvantage Salmon This is the first patented and genetically modified salmon that has been approved by the FDA for commercial production and consumption. A product of AquaBounty Technologies, it is made by adding genes to an Atlantic salmon from the Pacific Chinook and the ocean pout. The result is a GM salmon that grows two times faster than regular salmon.

GloFish The GloFish is the worlds first genetically modified pet. It is a patented zebra-fish that glows under ultraviolet light. Initially, the GloFish was not made as a pet but as a sort of biological instrument to detect water pollution. The first GloFish was made by Singaporean scientists who wanted fish that glowed whenever the water they inhabited was polluted.

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Here's the list of some of the famous living creatures that were patented - Economic Times

As US President Donald J. Trump gropes with a set of bad options for responding to North Koreas rapidly expanding nuclear and ballistic missiles program, he risks creating a similar, potentially explosive dilemma in the Middle East with his efforts to tighten the screws on Iran, if not engineer an end to the two-year old nuclear agreement Iran concluded with world powers.

In fact, Mr. Trumps apparent determination to either humiliate Iran with ever more invasive probes of universally certified Iranian compliance with the agreement or ensure its abrogation could produce an even more dangerous crisis than the one he is dealing with in East Asia. Putting an end to the nuclear agreement could persuade Iran, as did US policy under former president Barak Obama in the case of North Korea, that a nuclear military capability is central to its security.

The risk in East Asia is a devastating military confrontation in which in the words of US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who warned, quoting Mr. Trump, that If theres going to be a war to stop (North Korea), it will be over there. If thousands die, theyre going to die over there. Theyre not going to die over here.

The key difference between North Korea and Iran is not the specter of massive casualties in case of military action. It is the fact that in contrast to East Asia where the pariah states nuclear proliferation has not prompted others in the region like South Korea and Japan to launch programs of their own, an Iranian return to an unsupervised nuclear program would likely accelerate an already dangerous arms race in the Middle East to include countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE seeking a nuclear capability of their own.

Even without the arms race, Israel, the Middle Easts only, albeit undeclared, nuclear power, threatened prior to the conclusion of the nuclear agreement, to militarily take out Iranian facilities.

A termination of the agreement could also accelerate thinking in Riyadh and Washington about the utility of fostering unrest among Irans ethnic minorities in an attempt to destabilize the Islamic republic and create an environment conducive to regime change. The strategy risks not only adding to conflict already wracking the Middle East, but further endangering stability in Pakistan.

Even without a covert effort to destabilize Iran, Iranian leaders would likely see an end to the nuclear agreement as part of an effort to ultimately topple them a perception that would enhance the attractiveness of the North Korean model.

The risk is enhanced by another difference between the North Korean crisis and a potential one involving Iran. World powers agree that the North Korean program needs to be curbed but differ on how that can best be achieved.

When it comes to Iran, the United States is, however, likely to find itself out on a limb by itself. The USs partners in the agreement with Iran China, Russia, France, Germany and Britain believe Iran is in full compliance and there is no justification for endangering an accord that prevents the Islamic republic from developing a nuclear military capability for at least a decade. Similarly, the USs closest allies in the Gulf, dread the prospect of escalated tensions with Iran.

Few countries have more to lose in such a scenario than Washingtons Gulf Arab allies, which is why they have urged the United States to rigorously enforce, but not scrap, the nuclear agreement.As long as the JCPOA is in force and being implemented, Iran will not become a nuclear power and there is therefore no need for a dangerous and unpredictable military confrontation. Without it, such a conflict, or the equally alarming and unacceptable emergence of Iran as a nuclear power, could become inevitable, said Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Gulf-funded Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. Mr. Ibish was referring to the nuclear agreement by its acronym.

A litmus test of which way Mr. Trump will go looms large when the president in three months time must decide whether to certify to Congress for a third time that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear agreement. Indications suggest that the president is looking for a way to either unilaterally abrogate the agreement or provoke Iran to walk away from it.

Mr. Trumps problem is that his unsupported view of the nuclear agreement is not an isolated issue but fits a pattern that has alarmed the United States European and Asian allies as well as China and Russia. The pattern was established by his unilateral termination of US adherence to the Paris climate change accord, cancellation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), cutting of funding to UN agencies, sowing of doubts about the USs commitment to the NATO principle that an attack on one is an attack on all, and an overall sense that he threatens security and stability by undermining the international order.

Last month Mr. Trump instructed White House aides to give him the arguments for withholding certification in October. The Trump administration is also looking at pushing for more intrusive inspections of Iranian military sites that it deems suspicious, a move Iran has rejected and considers inflammatory. Mr. Trump would likely argue that an Iranian refusal would amount to a violation of the agreement.

On the plus side, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster fired two proponents of tougher action against Iran, Derek Harvey and Ezra Cohen-Watnick. proteges of Mr. Trumps strategic advisor and far-right ideologue Steve Bannon, Messrs. Harvey and Cohen-Watnick were the two remaining hires of Mr. Mc Masters short-lived predecessor, General Michael Flynn, an anti-Iranian firebrand.

Concerned that new US sanctions imposed this month will scare off potential European investors, Iran, in a precursor of the kind of volatility that would be sparked by an end to the nuclear agreement, said that it would strengthen its Revolutionary Guards and its Al Quds Force. The targets of the US sanctions, the Guards are the spearhead of growing Iranian influence across the Middle East with their involvement in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Trumps presidency could follow the same trajectory as the man he so often ridicules: George W. Bush that of a president who manufactured a crisis, ignited an endless conflict, and eroded Americas standing around the globe, warned businessman and scholar Amir Handjani in a commentary on the US effort to end the nuclear agreement.

The rest is here:

Playing with Fire: Trump's Iran Policy Risks Cloning North Korea - International Policy Digest (press release) (blog)

James Dorsey

James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and commentator on foreign affairs who has covered ethnic and religious conflict and terrorism across t

By scrapping the accord, Iran is likely to adopt a North Korean outlook: that nuclear military capability is central to its security.

As US President Donald Trump grapples with a set of bad options for responding to North Koreas rapidly expanding nuclear and ballistic missiles program, he risks creating a similar, potentially explosive dilemma in the Middle East with his efforts to tighten the screws on Iran, if not engineer an end to the nuclear agreement. In fact, Trumps apparent determination to either humiliate Iran with ever more invasive probes of universally-certified Iranian compliance with the agreement or ensure its abrogation could produce an even more dangerous crisis than the one he faces in East Asia.

Putting an end to the accordcould persuade Iran as did US policy under former President Barack Obama in the case of North Korea that a nuclear military capability is central to its security.

The risk in East Asia is a devastating military confrontation. In the words of US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who warned, quoting Trump: If theres going to be a war to stop [North Korea], it will be over there.If thousands die, theyre going to die over there. Theyre not going to die over here.

The key difference between North Korea and Iran is not the specter of massive casualties in case of military action. It is the fact that in contrast to East Asia, where the pariah states nuclear proliferation has not prompted others in the region like South Korea and Japan to launch programs of their own, an Iranian return to an unsupervised nuclear program would likely accelerate an already dangerous arms race in the Middle East to include countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates seeking a nuclear capability of their own. Even without the arms race, Israel the Middle Easts only, albeit undeclared, nuclear power threatened prior to the conclusion of the nuclear agreement to militarily take out Iranian facilities.

A termination of the agreement could also accelerate thinking in Riyadh and Washington about the utility of fostering unrest among Irans ethnic minorities in an attempt todestabilize the Islamic Republic and create an environment conducive to regime change. The strategy not only risks adding to conflict already wracking the Middle East, but further endangering stability in Pakistan.

Even without a covert effort to destabilize Tehran, Iranian leaders would likely see an end to the nuclear agreement as part of an effort to ultimately topple them a perception that would enhance the attractiveness of the North Korean model.

The risk is enhanced by another difference between the North Korean crisis and a potential one involving Iran. World powers agree that the North Korean program needs to be curbed but differ on how that can best be achieved. When it comes to Iran, however, the United States is likely to find itself out on a limb by itself. US partners in the agreement with Iran China, Russia, France, Germany and Britain believe Tehran is in full compliance and there is no justification for endangering an accord that prevents the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear military capability for at least a decade. Similarly, Washingtons closest allies in the Gulf dread the prospect of escalated tensions with Iran.

Few countries have more to lose in such a scenario than Washingtons Gulf Arab allies, which is why they have urged the United States to rigorously enforce, but not scrap, the nuclear agreement As long as the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] is in force and being implemented, Iran will not become a nuclear power and there is therefore no need for a dangerous and unpredictable military confrontation. Without it, such a conflict, or the equally alarming and unacceptable emergence of Iran as a nuclear power, could become inevitable, saidHussein Ibish, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute.

A litmus test of which way Trump will go looms large when the president,in October, must decide whether to certify to Congress for a third time that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear agreement. Indications suggest the president is looking for a way to either unilaterally abrogate the agreement or provoke Iran to walk away from it.

Trumps problem is that his unsupported view of the nuclear agreement is not an isolated issue, but fits a pattern that has alarmed Washingtons European and Asian allies as well as China and Russia. The pattern was established by his unilateral termination of US adherence to the Paris climate change accord; cancellation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership; cutting of funding to UN agencies; sowing of doubts about Americas commitment to the NATO principle that an attack on one is an attack on all; and an overall sense that he threatens security and stability by undermining the international order.

In July, Trump instructed White House aides to give him thearguments for withholding certificationlater this year. The Trump administration is also looking at pushing formore intrusive inspectionsof Iranian military sites that it deems suspicious, a move Iran has rejected and considers inflammatory. The president would likely argue that an Iranian refusal would amount to a violation of the agreement.

On the plus side, National Security Advisor H.R. McMasterfired two proponents of tougher action against Iran, Derek Harvey and Ezra Cohen-Watnick. Protgs of President Trumps strategic advisor and far-right ideologue, Steve Bannon, both Harvey and Cohen-Watnick were the two remaining hires of McMasters short-lived predecessor, General Michael Flynn, an anti-Iranian firebrand.

Concerned that new US sanctions imposed this month will scare off potential European investors, Iran, in a precursor of the kind of volatility that would be sparked by an end to the nuclear accord, said it wouldstrengthen the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its Al Quds Force. The target of US sanctions, the IRGC is the spearhead of growing Iranian influence across the Middle East with its involvement in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Trumps presidency could follow the same trajectory as the man he so often ridicules: George W. Bush that of a president who manufactured a crisis, ignited an endless conflict, and eroded Americas standing around the globe, warnedAmir Handjani in an article on the US effort to end the nuclear agreement.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

Photo Credit: donfiore / Shutterstock.com

Join our community of more than 1,800 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world.

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Trump's Iran Policy Risks Cloning North Korea - Fair Observer

Vehicle security company Tracker is flagging up statistics which reveal that one in 12 of the 37 million cars, lorries and motorbikes registered in the UK is likely to have false plates.

While vehicle cloning is most commonly associated with cars, it is increasingly being used to hide the identity of stolen motorcycles.

More than 26,000 motorcycles are stolen every year and many are often used for serious criminal offences such as burglaries and robberies.

Andy Barrs, head of police liaison at Tracker, said: Fraudsters continue to use more sophisticated methods to hide the true identity of stolen motorcycles and then sell them on to innocent buyers who think theyre getting a dream bike at a bargain price.

The majority of bikes that are stolen are less than three years old and a staggering 80 per cent of all cloned motorcycles end up in the dealer network.

Cloning is the vehicle equivalent of identity fraud criminals steal a motorbike or scooter and give it a new identity copied from a similar make and model bike already on the road.

The criminal disguises the unique 17 digit Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on the stolen motorcycle and uses a stolen V5/logbook to try to legitimise its identity. A vehicle with a cloned identity is more difficult for police to identify, and in turn, easier for a thief to sell on.

Tracker says that data from the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators a global organisation representing those involved in the prevention of car crime shows an estimated 0.8 per cent of all vehicles in Britain may have been cloned.

Fraudsters use cloning to sell a stolen motorcycle for a quick profit and Tracker is now warning that buyers should look out for any bike with a too good to be true price tag.

They say that prospective buyers should always check the market value and avoid anything thats being offered for less than 70 per cent of that price, stressing that no legitimate seller will want to lose money on a sale.

Buyers should never pay cash only for a vehicle, particularly if they are paying more than 3,000 as most crooks would rather walk away from a sale than take a payment that can be traced back to them.

Whilst a tracking device wont stop a motorbike being stolen, it can significantly increase the chances of the police locating and returning it to its rightful owner, said Mr Barrs.

Without any SVR (stolen vehicle recovery) protection, the probability of a stolen bike being offered for sale as a clone is greatly increased.

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That dream bike may not be the bargain you hoped for as the number plates may be cloned - Leicester Mercury