Friday, December 28, 2018

Police on Tuesday warned new owners of drones to obey the law after Gatwick Airport, the second-largest airport in Britain, faced days of closure on account of drone sightings. About 150,000 travellers have had their plans affected. Two suspects were arrested but later released without charge.

Airport authorities closed the facility’s single runway on December 19. The airport briefly reopened two days later, on Friday, but was shut down again after renewed drone activity. In total the airport, which serves London, was not able to operate normally for about 36 hours.

Over the three days, people reported seeing drones fly over the airport 67 times but, according to Sussex Police Detective Chief Superintendent Jason Tingley as of Monday, there was no video of any drone activity and “always a possibility that there may not have been any genuine drone activity in the first place”, though the police generally referred to the sightings as credible and were examining a downed drone found not far from the airport.

“Before anyone uses a drone it is vital that they make themselves aware of their responsibilities and the rules to make sure these devices are operated in a safe and responsible way” said Deputy Chief Constable Serena Kennedy, a national lead on drone policing. The law on drone misuse was tightened in July and presently provides for fines and up to five years in prison. She continued “Police officers will use all available powers to investigate reports of drones being misused and seek the appropriate penalty”.

The law prevents drone use above 400ft and within a kilometre of airports. UK rules planned for late next year mandate registration of any drone above 250g (about 9oz) and the taking of an online safety exam before piloting them.

Airport authorities grounded all planes in the airport, and diverted the planes meant to arrive at Gatwick to other airports in England or even other countries, such as London Heathrow, Luton, Birmingham, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Manchester, Dublin in Ireland, Glasgow in Scotland, and Paris in France.

Gatwick Airport authorities instructed travellers to check how their flights had been affected before coming to the airport. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has said since this is an “extraordinary circumstance”, travellers may not be owed money by the airline they were travelling with.

The British army was called in during the incident. Police said there was no reason to think the incident was terrorism, but was probably a deliberate attempt to disrupt the airport.

Couple Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk were arrested on Friday and named in several newspapers, before being cleared by police and released without charge. They said on Monday they feel “completely violated” by the incident and its press coverage. In light of a landmark legal ruling earlier this year, libel lawyer Mark Stephens of media law specialists Howard Kennedy said they were likely in line for a payout of £75,000 to £125,000 if they chose to take any publishers to court.

Hacked Off, a campaign group seeking media reform, was also critical of the media outlets that named the couple. Trevor Kavanagh, former politics editor at The Sun, defended that paper’s decision to release their names, on the basis press attention had hastened the police’s identification of a “cast-iron, watertight alibi” proving their innocence. TV personality Piers Morgan apologised for claiming Gait and Kirk were “terrorists”.

Planes can sustain significant damage from collisions with drones. The Guardian recently outlined a few possible ways to stop drones from entering restricted areas, such as blocking the radio signals. This was used in English prisons in an attempt to stop drugs from being smuggled in via drones. However, in an airport, this could also stop important signals getting through. Training eagles to take down drones has also been attempted by the Dutch police. Another possible method is firing nets at the drones.

According to The Guardian, most drones can fly for roughly half an hour. The drone sightings at Gatwick continued for hours. The Guardian speculated there might have been multiple drones involved or an operator changing out the battery packs to allow the drone or drones to relaunch quickly. However, the packs take time to recharge, so it would take a large number of packs and effort to operate drones for so long, constantly.

According to The Guardian, despite this short flying time, most drones’ range is mainly limited by signal strength. Some drones are able to fly up to five miles away from the controller. With a big enough budget, drone range is nearly unlimited.

Gatwick airport’s CEO said that he is sorry about the disruption, but must keep the travellers’ safety as the most important thing. He claimed he was working with the police and government to resolve this problem. He said the incident highlighted a weak area in British aviation and drones should not be able to do this much damage.

Prime Minister Theresa May said she “feels for all those passengers” affected. Britain’s transport secretary said that this was an “entirely new kind of threat”.

Gatwick Airport offered a £50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the ongoing investigation. Crimestoppers chair Lord Ashcroft added another £10,000 to the sum.

Drone incidents are increasing in the UK, with the CAA reporting for the year until December 4, 120 incursions of drones into airspace close to other aircraft. This represents a roughly 30% increase from the previous year. 2014, by contrast, had less than ten such occasions. According to Farming UK on Monday, in an incident earlier this year a Tornado jet belonging to the Royal Air Force came within 22m (about 70ft) of an agricultural drone whilst flying at low altitude at over 500mph. The drone was at a 100m (about 330ft) altitude and the incident came to CAA attention after being reported by the farmer.

Also reported earlier this month, in August a Boeing 737 approaching Stansted Airport, which also serves London, came within 15m (about 50ft) of hitting a drone at a 10,000ft altitude. Gatwick, meanwhile, is not the only English airport to face disruption over the Christmas travel period. On Sunday Birmingham Airport closed for two hours due to malfunctioning air traffic control equipment.

Friday, March 13, 2009

With a Queensland state election coming up in Australia, many minor parties will be looking to hold balance of power and making the major parties listen to what they have to say. The Queensland Greens are one of these parties.

Wikinews reporter Patrick Gillett held an exclusive over-the-phone interview with Greens candidate for the electoral district of Maroochydore, Brenton Clutterbuck.

Mr. Clutterbuck is a graduate of Sunshine Coast Grammar School and is currently studying Education at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Queensland’s unicameral parliament is up for election on March 21. The election campaign will run for a total of 26 days following the issue of the writs by Governor Penelope Wensley.

Sunday, July 4, 2021

On Thursday, 130 countries and jurisdictions in the 139-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agreed to support an overhaul to the international taxation system that would introduce a global minimum corporate tax rate, committing most of the world’s economies to a two-pillar “solution”.

The states which agreed to the plan’s key components included regional divisions such as Gibraltar, Hong Kong and Montserrat, tax havens according to the Associated Press (AP) Bermuda and the Cayman Islands and all Group of Twenty (G20) countries, according to an OECD list, but not Barbados, Estonia, Hungary, Ireland, Kenya, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Peru also abstained, but due to its lack of government, reported The Guardian.

Those that have signed represent over 90% of global gross domestic product (GDP). A press release by the OECD called the framework the result of “negotiations coordinated by the OECD for much of the last decade” and criticises the “century-old international tax system” for being “no longer fit for purpose”. The plan was backed by United States president Joe Biden according to multiple sources, and comes after a similar Group of Seven deal on international taxation agreed on June 5.

The plan, officially the “OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting”, adopted a pillared approach. An implementation plan is to be finalised by October.

If implemented, the first would force multinational enterprises (MNEs) with global turnover exceeding €20 billion and profitability above 10% to reallocate tax on over USD100 billion in profit from their home markets to each market jurisdiction it derived at least one million or 250 thousand euros from, depending on its GDP. An OECD statement confirmed the threshold for affected MNEs under pillar one may change to those exceeding ten billion euros in turnover, dependent on the results of a review to be conducted in seven years’ time.

The second pillar consists of two “Global anti-Base Erosion Rules” allocating top-up tax of a minimum of 15%, and one treaty-based “Subject to Tax Rule” to be made effective in 2023.

The effects of both pillars, though dependent on the plan’s final framework, was estimated by the OECD to increase global corporate income tax (CIT) reserves by between 1.9 and 3.2%, or 50 and 80 billion USD. If including the existing US tax on global intangible low-taxed income, the growth of CIT reserves would be between 2.3 and 4%, or 56 and 102 billion USD. This would also protect against tax avoidance practices the OECD says costs countries between 100 and 240 billion USD in lost revenue per year, according to the AP.

The OECD also projects a “relatively small” negative effect on investment and activity equivalent to 0.1% of GDP in the medium- to long-term. Other concerns cited include the potential governments may lose the ability to use tax incentives for policy objectives, as well as the cost of ensuring compliance.

Countries opposed include Hungary and Ireland who have, according to Politico, sought lower rates to attract foreign direct investment, and have, in addition to Estonia according to the BBC, at least some corporate rates below the proposed floor of 15%. The Irish and Hungarian headline corporate rates stand at 12.5 and 9%, respectively, according to The Guardian, with Ireland standing to lose over two billion euros in the next four years according to Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). A PricewaterhouseCoopers tax summary mentions a tax exemption on undistributed corporate funds in Estonia, in addition to instances where a 14% rate is applicable.

OECD secretary general Mathias Cormann said in the press release “this historic package will ensure that large multinational companies pay their fair share of tax everywhere”, adding while it “does not eliminate tax competition […] it does set multilaterally agreed limitations”.

Biden said the deal means the world is in “striking distance of full global agreement to halt the race to the bottom”, which US treasury secretary Janet Yellen described as a race “no nation” has won, according to The Guardian. Finance minister for France Bruno Le Maire called it the “most important international tax agreement in a century”, according to the BBC.

According to RTÉ, finance minister for Ireland Paschal Donohoe said while he “expressed Ireland’s reservation”, he remains “committed to the process” and assures the global community “Ireland will continue to play our part in reaching a comprehensive and, indeed, historic agreement”. According to Reuters, on June 9, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán called the proposal “absurd”, and insisted the country’s low rates “is not meant to attract certain companies to declare their taxes here”, nor makes it “a tax haven”.

Venice, Italy is to host G20 finance ministers and central bank governors at a “G20 High-Level Tax Symposium” on July 9, according to the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Two Santa Clara, Utah teenagers were critically injured today after being struck by lightning. Two seventeen-year-old boys were hit at about 3 p.m. when they were caught outside of the Snow Canyon High School during a sudden lightning storm. They were standing beneath a tree in view of other students at the time.

School employees took the boys inside and began administering CPR straight away; an ambulance carried them to the Dixie Regional Medical Center. According to the St. Georgia police, a helicopter forwarded them to the University Medical Center in Las Vegas, where they have been admitted to the burns unit.

The Washington County School District has identified the teens as Alex Lambsen and Christopher Dane Zdunich. According to Zdunich’s mother Leslie, doctors have observed signs of both boys improving. The boys’s classmates and friends turned out yesterday to support the pair. Fellow debate team member Madi Leavitt described the boys as intelligent and humorous.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Newspaper The Guardian reports today that the sale of the BBC subsidiary BBC Resources Ltd., has cost £3.4m in consultancy fees — over £1m more than the £2.3m trading profit the commercial division is estimated to have made for the last financial year. Details of the failed privatisation were released by the BBC following a freedom of information request, and prior to publication of its annual report on July 8.

Fourteen months after advisers were appointed to try to sell BBC Resources Ltd., only one of the three main business units has been sold — its Outside Broadcast division to Satellite Information Services Limited (SIS), for an estimated £20m. On March 7, 2008 it was also announced that the studios operation would remain in BBC ownership and in early June, the fate of the third business was put on hold with the BBC stating that “like Studios, Post Production will remain within BBC Resources, which will continue to operate as a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC.”

BBC Resources Ltd. made an operating profit of £6.1m for 2005-06, down from £7.4m the year before, with the BBC accounting for 83.3% of its turnover, down from 87.4% for 2004-05. Last year’s published figure for 2006-07 was £5.2 million — with BBC business at 80% of turnover.

BECTU Assistant General Secretary Luke Crawley is quoted as saying: “It’s fairly outrageous that around half the profit of the company [announced last year] has been spent trying to sell it. It’s an inordinate amount of money. The BBC was promised big returns if it sold BBC Resources but it’s only managed to sell outside broadcasts and we do not know how much it made out of that. We think the £3.4m is a poor investment.”

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Monday, April 25, 2005

The All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health has begun a campaign to instruct street vendors in India how to safely prepare food for their customers to avoid inflicting ‘Delhi belly’–severe diarrhea–which afflicts about half of the visitors to the region. Over 150,000 “stall wallahs” in Calcutta will be shown how to properly prepare dishes such as jhalmuri (a rice, tomato, and onion dish) and ghughni (a chick pea curry dish).

“Do not set up your stall in the middle of a rubbish dump, drain or sewage channel,” the report recommends. “Wash your hands before cooking and do not let large swarms of flies settle on food displays.”

“One of the tips we’ve been given is to wear aprons,” Banahari Saha, a stall operator on Camac Street, in Calcutta, told UPI. “We’ve also been told how important it is to make sure the water is clean and uncooked food is protected from flies,” he said.

The campaign is also sponsored by the World Health Organization. Tourists will be given maps pointing to street vendors who have been approved by the All India Institute.

“My customers say they’re happy with the changes I’ve introduced,” Saha told UPI.