Wednesday, June 12, 2013

A two-vehicle road traffic accident in County Donegal in Ireland has left one person dead and injured two others. The accident occurred when a camper van collided with an oncoming car on the N15 road between the towns of Ballybofey and Donegal at approximately 1540 BST (1440 UTC) on Monday.

The fatality was reportedly a man in his 70s from the town of Lifford; he has not yet been publicly identified. He was taken to Letterkenny General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The female passenger he was travelling in the car with, thought to be the wife of the man, was taken to the same hospital after suffering serious injuries.

The man and woman in the camper van were transported to Sligo Regional Hospital. The condition of the two occupants is not clear, although the woman in the vehicle reportedly injured her leg in the accident.

The road where the crash occurred was closed to allow the Garda to investigate the incident.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

United States defense officials acknowledged that Iraqi insurgents successfully intercepted live video feeds from U.S. MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles with widely available software. The story broke on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal with a defense official, anonymously, informing them it is an old problem, which has already been fixed.

The Journal says U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they seized a Shi’ite militant’s laptop containing drone video feeds.

Senior defense and intelligence officials say insurgents were able to take advantage of an unprotected communications link in the systems of the remotely-piloted aircraft. The insurgents used software that is available online and costs about $26.

While U.S. defense officials say the issue has been fixed, the Journal quoted senior intelligence officials as saying it was not yet clear if the problem had been completely resolved.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants had been able to take control of the drones. But the intercepted video feeds could show where the planes are operating.

The Journal also reported that U.S. drone feeds have also been intercepted in Afghanistan.

Officials say the U.S. government has known about a flaw in the drone communication system since the NATO intervention in Bosnia in the 1990s. At the time, the military assumed local adversaries would not know how to exploit it.

The report says fighters in Iraq used software programs such as one called “SkyGrabber” from the Russian company SkySoftware, which is designed to intercept data transmitted by satellite Internet.

The Journal quoted one of the program’s developers, Andrew Solonikov, as saying it was designed to download legal content — such as music and video — and that it was never intended to intercept military data. Solonikov said in a email to the paper, “It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet — no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content.”

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

On the final day of campaigning before the vote in the London mayoral election, incumbent Ken Livingstone attacked main rival Boris Johnson as “a joke”. He warned Londoners that they were not voting in a “Celebrity Mayor” contest.

Livingstone unveiled a campaign poster in West Ham that will also be printed on postcards and sent to one million Londoners. It reads: “Don’t vote for a joke. Vote for London.”

“It’s not an election for the host of Have I Got News For You or a celebrity mayor. It’s about who is best placed to run an £11bn budget every year,” Mayor Livingstone said, referring to the panel game show, for which Boris Johnson has been a guest host.

“Tomorrow you have a choice between new policies and fresh energy from a new mayor in City Hall or more of the same from a tired, out-of-date administration that is beset by allegations of sleaze,” responded Johnson in a mass e-mail to over 500,000 voters. “I am optimistic about London’s future and believe we can make London a greater place to live in.”

London will be voting for mayor tomorrow, May 1. Ken Livingstone is the candidate for The Labour Party and Boris Johnson is the candidate for the Conservative Party. There are a number of other candidates, but recent opinion polls have shown it to be a two-person race, with some polls predicting a victory for Livingstone and others Johnson.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

At the company’s own Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the next generation of software products from Apple. Apple unveiled Lion, the new version of their Mac OS X operating system for desktop and laptop computers that brings new features to the software. They also demonstrated iOS 5, a new version of the operating system that powers iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. Alongside both announcements, Jobs also announced a new iCloud service to sync data among all devices. All 5,200 participating developers will spend the rest of the week in workshops with Apple employees; developer releases of each product were made available today.

Mac OS X Lion will be shipped in July through the online Mac App Store available on Mac computers for US$29. According to Apple, the update adds over 250 new features to the OS. Employee Phil Schiller discussed new multitouch gestures along with a dynamic task manager named Mission Control that shows open applications. During the keynote, Schiller said, “The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion we plan to keep extending our lead.” It also adds full support for the Mac port of the popular App Store, full screen applications, iOS-style app icon lists called Launchpad, and other iOS-like features including a revamped Mail and Auto Save among others. Mac OS X Lion was announced at a different Apple event several months ago and will replace Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which was released in 2009.

Soon after, the company also introduced the latest installment in its popular mobile operating system iOS. The fifth version (iOS 5) introduces around 200 new features, including a revamped notification system, which combines messages and notifications from all applications installed on the user’s device. Scott Forestall, an Apple employee, also revealed that iOS devices would no longer require a computer for setup, allowing users to ‘cut the cord’ between their devices and PCs. Magazines and newspapers also have a new folder interface; the Twitter social network is now integrated significantly into iOS devices. Improvements to the mobile Safari browser were also announced; tabbed browsing and a Reader feature introduce desktop-like functionality. Finally, new camera features are built in, including the ability to take snapshots from the lock screen, as well as iMessages, a new messaging platform for iPhones and iPads.

CEO Steve Jobs returned to the stage to reveal Apple’s new cloud services offering, iCloud. The service integrates with Lion and iOS applications and syncs data between a user’s iOS devices. For example, calendar events created on a user’s laptop would be sent to their iPhone through iCloud. Apps, books, documents, photos, and more purchased or created on one device will be shared with others. The service is intended to launch in the fall of 2011 alongside iOS 5 and will be available with 5 gigabytes (GB) of storage for 10 devices for free. Earlier this year, Apple opened a 500,000 square foot data center in North Carolina intended to facilitate this new service. Jobs rounded the services off by unveiling a new iTunes feature that mirrors a user’s library in the cloud, allowing them to listen and download music to authorized devices. “We are going to demote the PC to just be a device. We are going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud,” said Steve Jobs during the keynote. iCloud and iOS 5 will be released in the fall of 2011; Apple announced no new hardware products.

Sunday, July 9, 2006

India‘s most sophisticated Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) to date, the Agni III was test-fired off the Orissa coast earlier today. The missile took off from a fixed platform at the Integrated Test Range at Wheeler Island at 11:05 IST (05:35 GMT) in the presence of Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and his scientific advisor M. Natarajan.

The missile took off vertically into space before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down near Nicobar Island in the Bay of Bengal. Three sophisticated radars, six electro-optical tracking systems and three telemetric data stations on the mainland at Dhamra, Chandipur and the Andamans, together with a ship anchored near the splash-down point monitored the missile’s trajectory. According to eyewitnesses, the missile blasted off into the sky leaving behind a trail of thick yellow smoke and disappeared out of sight into the clouds within seconds.

The Agni-III, which has a range of 3,500 km and can carry up to 1000 kg of payload, has been described as the most powerful missile developed by India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation. The missile, which is 16 metres long and has a diametre of 1.8 metres, has solid fuel boosters and is capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads. The Agni-I and Agni-II, which were the earlier versions of the Agni series developed under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), have already been inducted into the Indian Army. Boosters for the earlier two missiles had been provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation, however, the Agni-III uses an entirely new booster vehicle.