USEC IM UK Edition

Two questioned after UK plane alert

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:18:35 +0000

Police boarded Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight, originally en route to Manchester from Lahore, after it was diverted to Stansted on Friday.

The British nationals being held are aged 30 and 41, Essex Police said.

Police later released the plane and passengers were flown to Manchester.

Passengers said they had heard threats had been made on board, but there has not been any official confirmation.

The plane was scheduled to leave Lahore – the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab – at 09:35 local time (05:35 BST) on Friday and had been due to arrive in Manchester at 13:30 BST.

‘Strong argument ‘

One passenger told the BBC the pilot had informed them there had been threats.

The man said: “We were about half-an-hour away from landing in Manchester and we saw that the plane was taking different actions.

“We did not know anything about it other than the pilots announced that they have landed at Stansted. And we landed, safely. Then he announced that he had a threat from someone, which was why he had landed the plane.”

Supt Darrin Tomkins: “At this point no suspicious items have been recovered”

Another passenger, Umari Nauman, told Sky News cabin crew had said two men had repeatedly tried to get into the cockpit.

The plane remained at a spot on the north side of Stansted Airport with flights carrying on as normal, before being released by police allowing passengers to be flown to Manchester.

On arrival, one passenger told the BBC there had been a “strong argument between the crew and one passenger”.

Another said it was a “fuss about nothing”, adding that the pilot had “over exaggerated”.

Pakistan International Airlines flight PK709: Diverted route

1. Pakistan International Airlines flight PK709 was due to arrive at Manchester Airport at 13:30 BST after leaving Lahore, Pakistan, at about 09:35 local time (05:35 BST)
2. After an alert was raised, the flight was diverted to London Stansted Airport, in Essex, and Typhoon jets from RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire, were scrambled to escort the plane
3. After the plane landed at London Stansted, two men were arrested by police on suspicion of endangerment of an aircraft

PIA said there had been 308 passengers on board, as well as 14 crew including pilots, with a mixture of Pakistani and British passport holders.

‘Investigate’

An MoD spokesman said Typhoon jets could be scrambled after the pilot or crew of a passenger aircraft sends out an emergency signal.

“The purpose of going up is to investigate what the situation is,” he said.

RAF Typhoon jets were scrambled to escort the airliner to Stansted.

“Often when a quick reaction alert aircraft is launched the details are not known, but it is known that a signal has been sent.”

In 2011, two PIA passenger planes were the subject of bombs threat coming from Pakistan.

A Boeing 777, with the same flight number as in the latest incident, carrying 347 passengers plus crew and bound for Manchester from Lahore was forced to land at Ataturk International airport in Istanbul.

The second plane, carrying 176 passengers, landed safely at its destination in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Source: bbc.co.uk

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Man injured escaping from Tranent house fire

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:16:41 +0000

Fire Scotland said the man appears to have jumped from the two-storey mid-terraced house in Tranent, East Lothian.

Firefighters from Tranent, Musselburgh and Haddington were called to the fire at about 23:40 on Friday.

They managed to extinguish the flames but the property is reported to be “severely damaged”.

Source: bbc.co.uk

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Avoiding the pitfalls of texting and walking

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:15:09 +0000

By Anna Lacey Producer, BBC Health Check

We’ve all done it. You’re walking down the street and the familiar beep of an incoming text becomes too tempting to resist. As you start to fire off a quick reply – bam! You clash shoulders with a fellow pedestrian doing exactly the same.

If you take YouTube as a benchmark, watching unsuspecting texters colliding with lamp-posts and dustbins is pretty hilarious – the modern day equivalent of slipping on a banana skin. But the consequences aren’t always a laughing matter.

It is possible to sustain a really serious injury.”

Mr Alex Stoker Clinical Fellow in Emergency Medicine

Alex Stoker is a Clinical Fellow in Emergency Medicine at Frimley Park Hospital, Surrey. “If it’s a tall object like a wall or a lamp-post that someone walks into, then one might expect facial injuries such as a broken nose or fractured cheekbone,” he told the BBC.

“If on the other hand the collision results in falling over, then they’re much more liable to things like hand injuries and broken wrists. There’s a complete spectrum but it is possible to sustain a really serious injury.”

Man hole avoidance

A new app called CrashAlert aims to help save people from themselves. It involves using a distance-sensing camera to scan the path ahead and alert users to approaching obstacles.

The camera acts like a second pair of eyes – looking forward while the user is looking down.

CrashAlert is at prototype stage

Just as a Nintendo Wii or Xbox can detect where and how a player is moving, CrashAlert’s camera can interpret the location of objects on the street.

When it senses something approaching, it flashes up a red square in a bar on top of the phone or tablet. The position of the square shows the direction of the obstacle – giving the user a chance to dodge out of the way.

“What we observed in our experiments is that in 60% of cases, people avoided obstacles in a safer way. That’s up from 20% [without CrashAlert],” says CrashAlert’s inventor Dr Juan David Hincapié-Ramos from the University of Manitoba.

What’s more, the device doesn’t distract the user from what they’re doing. Hincapié-Ramos’s tests showed it can be used alongside gaming or texting without any cost to performance.

Dangers on the high street

Although CrashAlert is currently a bulky prototype, collision statistics suggest a final version could prevent a lot of accidents.

A US study in the Journal of Safety Research showed that in 2008 there was a two-fold increase in the number of ‘eyes-busy’ related accidents compared with the previous year. In other words, people are so busy looking at their phones or iPods, that they stop paying attention to their surroundings.

The Perils of Lamp-Post Collisions

Although a standard slapstick gag, walking into a lamp-post can cause serious injury.

The force of a collision, and thus the damage inflicted, is determined by how fast a person is moving, their mass and whether they walk into a hard or soft object.

A soft object provides a ‘crumple zone’, absorbing and dispersing some of the energy from the collision -meaning less potentially destructive energy is transmitted to the crash victim.

A hard object, such as a lamp-post, is going to hurt. There is no ‘crumple zone’ and hence nearly all the energy is going to be transferred to the victim.

A person walking at 5km/h into a lamp-post would experience a g-force of around 1.5G. This is the same force that astronauts experience on re-entry.

If you’re lucky, you can escape a lamp-post collision with nothing more than a bruised ego. But it can lead to a broken nose and other serious facial injuries.

Walking into walls and lamp-posts can cause a lot of damage (see box). But put a car into the mix and that’s where the danger really starts.

Failing to look properly is reported in 59% of car accidents involving the death or injury of a pedestrian.

Kevin Clinton, head of road safety at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) said: “People should take care not to be dangerously distracted, whether by mobile phones, listening to music or being caught up in conversations with other people.

“Being able to use all of your senses is important when interacting with traffic.”

Keeping your eye on the ball

But it’s not just looking down at your shoelaces that causes a problem.

“You are also narrowing your field of view because of the attention you are placing on the device.” says Hincapié-Ramos. “By doing this, people stop noticing whatever is in front of them and that’s what causes a crash.”

Research by Prof Kia Nobre, who heads the Brain and Cognition Lab at Oxford University, has shown that despite our brain’s huge potential, it can only consciously pay attention to around three things at once.

This may seem surprising, as it can feel as though we are constantly absorbing information from the world around us. But in reality we are focusing on just a few key features.

This is why witnesses to a crime often fail to recall crucial details about what the perpetrator looked like or what they were wearing. In the heat of the moment, our brain simply cannot process what it is seeing.

Red squares show the location of danger

Apply this research to the problem of texting and walking, and it’s clear why accidents are inevitable. If you’re looking at your phone, then your brain is physically incapable of consciously attending to anything else.

A bit of common sense?

Despite designing CrashAlert, Hincapié-Ramos accepts that the best solution of all is for people to stop checking their phones in the first place.

“We should encourage people to text less while they’re walking because it isolates them from their environment. However people are doing it and there are situations where you have to do it. It’s for situations like this that CrashAlert can have a positive impact.”

But Dr Joe Marshall, a specialist in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of Nottingham, says that it’s not necessarily people who are to blame – but the phones themselves.

“The problem with mobile technology is that it’s not designed to be used while you’re actually mobile. It involves you stopping, looking at a screen and tapping away.”

Dr Marshall believes that if we want to stop people being distracted by their phones, then designers need to completely rethink how we interact with them. But so far, there is no completely satisfactory alternative.

“Google glass solves the problem of looking down by allowing you to look ahead. But you still have to pay attention to a visual display,” he told the BBC.

So for now at least, it seems vigilance is the key to avoiding lamp-posts and unexpected manholes.

But as mobile technology continues to dominate everyday life, it might not be too ludicrous to expect to rely on smart cameras to steer us in the right direction.

Source: bbc.co.uk

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BNP and EDL accused of attempt to fuel racial hatred after Woolwich terror attack

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:12:53 +0000

Oliver Wright , Nigel Morris

Muslim leaders have accused far-right extremists of trying to capitalise on the “sick and barbaric” murder of Lee Rigby to fuel racial hatred.

Islamophobic hate crimes are running at more than 10 times their usual rate, with more than 140 reported to a government-backed hotline in the 48 hours since the Woolwich killing.

They include nine attacks on mosques, assaults, racial abuse and anti-Muslim graffiti. An improvised petrol bomb was thrown at a mosque in Milton Keynes during Friday prayers, while attacks have also been reported in Gillingham, Braintree, Bolton and Cambridge.

The British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, who visited Woolwich yesterday, provoked widespread disgust for tweeting that the alleged killers should be wrapped in “pig skin” and shot again. The English Defence League, which has said the killing shows Britain is “at war” with Islamic extremism, will stage a march today in Newcastle, where it will protest over plans to open an Islamic school. It is also planning a demonstration in central London on Monday. Amid heavy security, Mr Griffin visited the site of the killing following a series of provocative tweets in which he claimed the attack was the result of “mass immigration”.

The BNP leader, whose party’s electoral support has collapsed in the past three years, has also called for a show of strength by activists in Woolwich next Saturday under the banner “United against Muslim terror”.

In an unprecedented open letter, the heads of nearly 100 mosques said they shared the “absolute horror” felt by the rest of British society at the crime committed “in the name of our religion”.

But they warned that across Britain “hate-fuelled individuals” had already attempted to attack mosques and individuals in the wake of Wednesday’s killing. They urged the public “not to be taken in” by the “mindless rantings” of extremists on both sides who, they said, should be “isolated and subject to the full force of the law”.

The Muslim leaders said they wanted to make clear that the murder of Drummer Rigby was a “heinous atrocity worthy of nothing but contempt”. But they warned they had already seen extremists “seeking to capitalise upon Wednesday’s terrible act”.

“The hate-fuelled individuals behind such attacks wish to polarise and tear apart our great country for their own sick ends,” they wrote. “They should be isolated and subject to the full force of the law.”

A spokesman for the hate crime hotline Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks said reported incidents were running at “a level we simply haven’t seen before”. He said: “Muslims at this moment are feeling a real and pervasive sense of fear.” Calls for action on the capital’s streets by the EDL and the BNP will leave the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, with the dilemma of whether to apply to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, to have them banned. A planned EDL march through Tower Hamlets in London, home to one of the country’s largest Muslim communities, was blocked by Ms May two years ago.

Far-right websites are linking the murder to population growth among ethnic minorities, while a number of social networking sites also carried messages calling for Muslim sites to be attacked. The “True British Patriots” Facebook page carried calls for mosques to be burned down. The official website of the National Front party berates “Muslim scum”.

Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think-tank, said: “The BNP and EDL, both in a state of near collapse, have little chance of using Woolwich to recover politically but their activities do often stir up local violence. Yet again the absurdly extreme Islamist clown Anjem Choudary shows he is a more effective recruiter for the far right than Nick Griffin has ever been. How much these two extremes need each other.”

In a speech in London, alongside representatives of the Army and the Muslim community, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg expressed fears that the Woolwich atrocity could lead to long-lasting damage to community relations. “Fear is an extraordinarily powerful emotion and when it takes root,” he said, “it has a very, very corrosive effect on every part of our lives. We have a choice to either allow that powerful corrosive feeling of fear to seep into every second and minute and hour of our lives or we can make a choice that we’re not going to change our behaviour.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury called for community unity. Speaking after a meeting of faith leaders in Leicester, the Most Rev Justin Welby said: “I want to recognise the response of churches, mosques and other faith and civil society groups as well as those of brave individuals who have done so much to bring our communities together at this time.

* A 22-year-old man will appear in court today after being arrested on suspicion of making malicious comments on Facebook following the murder of Lee Rigby. Benjamin Flatters, of Lincoln, was arrested after complaints made to Lincolnshire Police that alleged the comments were of a racist or anti-religious nature.

Source: independent.co.uk

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Four in 10 people think judges are too soft in manslaughter cases

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:06:51 +0000

By Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent

Four in 10 people think judges should give tougher sentences in some violent cases such as manslaughter, a Ministry of Justice study has suggested.

It also found that nearly a third of people thought burglary cases were too soft.

Tens of thousands of people were asked to study real life cases and then hand down their “verdicts”, which could be compared with what judges actually gave.

In all, 74,000 people took part in the “You be the Judge” online survey between March 2010 to the end of December last year.

After giving their views of sentencing, they were then invited to hear evidence from range of cases and decide on what sentence they would give.

Overall the study found 39 per cent of people came up with the same sentence as the judge, 16 per cent were more severe and 45 per cent were more lenient.

Just over half of the people who took part thought that initial sentencing by judges was “about right”, rising to three quarters after they had considered the cases.

Similarly 41 per cent of people thought judges’ sentences were too lenient at the start of cases, falling to 13 per cent at the end of the process.

However these figures masked big differences between different offences.

The study found that 42 per cent of the 513 people who “tried” the manslaughter case thought the judges’ eventual two and a half year jail term was too soft.

Similarly in the burglary case, 29 per cent of the 17,441 people who took part thought that the judge’s three and a half year verdict was not severe enough.

But two-thirds of people who “tried” the murder case, thought a 20 year jail term was appropriate, shorter than the 25 year term handed down by the judge.

The Ministry of Justice said the project was designed “to show users how judges and magistrates decide on the sentences they pass”.

However the MoJ acknowledged that the people taking part in the study were self selecting, by volunteering to take part, and were not a representative sample.

David Green, from the thinktank Civitas, said: “It looks like a ‘put-up job’ by the Ministry to give them a cover story for lenient sentences if they were serious they would do a proper random sample.

It was “ridiculous” that more than 60 per cent of persistent offenders with 15 or more convictions for indictable crimes do not get a custodial term, he said

He said: “If you look at serious crimes or persistent offenders most people would think there is too much lenient sentencing. The Government knows that and if it wants to be taken seriously, it should do proper random samples.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Previous research shows that public knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of the criminal justice system (CJS) and sentencing can be important factors in the public’s willingness to engage with the system.

“The ‘You Be The Judge’ website was launched in March 2010 and expanded with more cases in November 2012. Throughout this time 74,000 people have been in the judging seat.

“Findings show that more than 80 per cent of the public would give criminals a sentence that is more lenient or the same as a judge when presented with the full facts of a crime.

“Also more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of users who started their experience with the view that sentencing was ‘too lenient’, ended the process with the view that it was ‘right’.”

Source: telegraph.co.uk

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Murder provokes backlash across UK

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:04:51 +0000

Press Association

The murder of soldier Lee Rigby has provoked a backlash of anger across the UK, including the attacking of mosques, racial abuse and comments made on social media.

A 22-year-old man will appear before magistrates in Lincoln charged with making malicious comments on Facebook.

Benjamin Flatters, from the city, was arrested on Thursday after complaints were made to Lincolnshire Police about comments made on the social networking site which were allegedly of a racist or anti-religious nature, a Lincolnshire Police spokesman said. A second man was visited by officers and warned about his activity on social media, the spokesman added.

The charge comes after two men were arrested and released on bail in Bristol for making alleged offensive comments on Twitter about the murder.

Meanwhile, two men will also appear at Thames Magistrates Court charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour over an incident in an east London fast food restaurant on Thursday. Labourer Toni Latcal, 32, and plasterer Eugen-Aurelian Eugen-Beredei, 34, both from London, were arrested following the incident at 9.15pm on Thursday.

Latcal was charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour and causing criminal damage, while Eugen-Beredei was charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour.

Surrey Police said a 19-year-old man has been charged in connection with comments placed on a social media website following the murder of the soldier. Mohammed Mazar, of Woking, has been charged with improper use of public electronic communications network under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. A police spokesman said Mazar has been freed on police bail to appear at South West Surrey Magistrates’ Court on June 11.

An unemployed 28-year-old has been charged by police after allegedly posting an offensive message on Facebook. Sussex Police said Adam Rogers, of Kingsman Street, Woolwich, was arrested in Hastings, East Sussex, on Friday. He will appear at Brighton Magistrates’ Court accused of sending an “offensive, indecent or menacing message” online.

The killing has prompted a huge increase in anti-Muslim incidents, according to the organisation Faith Matters, which works to reduce extremism. Before the attack about four to eight cases a day were reported to its helpline. However the group said about 150 incidents had been reported in the last few days, including attacks on mosques.

Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters, told BBC Radio Five Live: “What’s really concerning is the spread of these incidents. They’re coming in from right across the country. Secondly, some of them are quite aggressive very focused, very aggressive attacks. And thirdly, there also seems to be significant online activity…suggesting co-ordination of incidents and attacks against institutions or places where Muslims congregate.”

Source: uk.news.yahoo.com

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Female Zoo Worker Killed In Tiger Attack

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:03:04 +0000

A female zoo worker who was injured in a tiger attack at an animal park in Cumbria has died, police have said.

Sarah McClay, 24, was in the big cat enclosure when she was mauled at South Lakes Wild Animal Park in Dalton-in-Furness on Friday afternoon.

She was taken by air ambulance to Royal Preston Hospital immediately after the incident, where she later died.

Ms McClay was from the Barrow-in-Furness area. Cumbria police described her death as “tragic”.

In a statement, the force said: “Sarah’s family are very shocked and distressed and request that they have privacy as they try to come to terms with their loss.

“Police and Barrow Borough Council are continuing to investigate the circumstances that led to this terrible incident.”

Officers said the tiger was locked in its enclosure following the attack and that members of the public were not at any risk during the incident.

Visitors were asked to leave the wildlife park before it closed early. It is thought possible that some of them could have seen the attack.

The animal that carried out the attack was a Sumatran tiger. The park’s website says it keeps both Amur (Siberian) and Sumatran tigers.

The animals can be up to three metres long and weigh around 300kg (47 stone).

David Gill, the owner and founder of South Lakes Wild Animal Park, said Ms McClay was very experienced in looking after big cats and that he had no explanation as to why she had entered the enclosure.

He said: “After investigation by the authorities here and the police, it does seem that she just basically failed to follow the correct procedures.

“For some unknown reason, an inexplicable reason, because there is no reason for why she did it, she opened the door and went into the tiger enclosure and straight into the tigers, and now we’ll never know why.”

Ms McClay had worked at the wildlife park for a number of years and was “very proficient” in her work with big cats.

Mr Gill told BBC Radio 5 Live that it was against strict safety protocols to walk into the tiger’s cage, adding that the zoo had passed a major inspection on Monday, in which it was praised for its safety standards.

The incident happened at about 4pm on Friday, when staff were working as normal and the park was open to the public.

The tiger has been at the park for 10 years since it was a cub.

Mr Gill said: “He didn’t make the mistake. He was just there. It’s so difficult because we don’t blame him for what has happened.

“It would be very much a tragedy for him. He’s one of the rarest animals in the world, a Sumatran tiger, and it’s something we don’t want to do.”

Source: uk.news.yahoo.com

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MI5 ‘tried to recruit suspect’

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:01:46 +0000

Press Association

A childhood friend of Woolwich murder suspect Michael Adebolajo has claimed that he was approached by MI5 six months ago and asked if he would work for the security service.

Abu Nusaybah told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that his friend, who was arrested after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby on Wednesday, had rejected the request.

During the interview Nusaybah said he thought Adebolajo had undergone a “change” following his detention by security forces on a trip to Kenya last year.

He said Adebolajo suggested he had been physically and sexually abused while he was interrogated in the African country, and after this he became withdrawn and “less talkative – he wasn’t his usual bubbly self”.

Nusaybah said Adebolajo told him that when he returned to the UK he was “followed by MI5″ who were “knocking on his door” – a claim which is unverified by Whitehall.

Nusaybah told the BBC: “His wording was, ‘They are bugging me – they won’t leave me alone.’ He mentioned initially they wanted to ask him if he knew certain individuals. But after him saying that he didn’t know these individuals, what he said was they asked him if he would be interested in working for them.”

Following the interview Nusaybah himself was arrested at the BBC in relation to terrorism offences. The Metropolitan Police said a 31-year-old man was arrested in relation to terrorism offences and search warrants were executed at two addresses in east London.

He was held on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism and is being held in custody at a south London police station. The arrest was not directly linked to Drummer Rigby’s death, the Met said.

Source: uk.news.yahoo.com

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Man charged with child sex offences

ollado — Sat, 25 May 2013 08:59:51 +0000

Press Association

A British man who handed himself in to Chinese authorities has been charged with a series of child sex offences dating back up to 15 years.

Neil Robinson, 47, from Staines, Surrey, was detained by officers after arriving at Heathrow Airport on Friday, Surrey Police said.

He was taken into Staines police station and later charged with six counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, one charge of taking an “indecent photograph/pseuo-photograph of a child” and one charge of encouraging prostitution of a girl under 16.

A police spokesman said the alleged offences took place between 1998 and 2002, and Robinson will appear at South East Surrey Magistrates’ Court later.

Detective Inspector Becky Molyneux, of the Staines Public Protection Unit, said: “Mr Robinson’s return to the UK is the result of weeks of hard work from a number of agencies and co-operation from the Chinese authorities; to whom we are extremely grateful.”

Source: uk.news.yahoo.com

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Video: Police Shoot Woolwich Attackers

ollado — Fri, 24 May 2013 11:25:43 +0000

video platform video management video solutions video player

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USEC IM UK Edition

Two questioned after UK plane alert

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