Pilots Want Drone Tests Over Collision Fears

Tests should be carried out to discover what would happen if a drone struck a passenger jet after a number of recent near misses, according to airline pilots.

The British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) is calling on the Department of Transport (DfT) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to support research into the possible consequences of such an event.

Steve Landells, a former RAF and British Airways pilot, warned that a collision between a drone and an airliner could result in an uncontrolled engine failure or a smashed cockpit windscreen.

Some 23 near misses between jets and drones were investigated by the UK Airprox Board (UKAB) in just six months.

Twelve of these incidents were given an A rating - meaning there was "a serious risk of collision".

Mr Landells, who is BALPA's flight safety specialist, said there is a large amount of data on the effects of bird strikes on planes, but he said this does not provide a true representation of what would happen with a drone because "birds don't have a big lump of lithium battery in them".

He said it is "very likely" the battery of a standard quadcopter drone entering the core of a jet engine would cause an uncontained engine failure.

"You end up with very high velocity bits of metal going anywhere they like," he said.

"That could be through fuel tanks, through hydraulic lines and even into the cabin.

"Losing the engine is not going to cause an aircraft to crash because they are designed to fly with one engine down.

"But an uncontained engine failure is going to be different every time. That could be very serious indeed."

Mr Landells explained what he would like the testing, which could cost around £250,000, to involve.

"The first thing we want to do is get a drone or at least the critical parts of a drone flying at a windscreen of an aircraft," he said.

"The indications so far with computer modelling are that you'll end up with penetration of a windscreen.

"One possibility is that the battery smashes the windscreen and the inside layer of the windscreen shatters and you end up with a lot of glass in the cockpit, probably moving at quite high speed."

A CAA spokesman said: "The CAA has a number of on-going activities aimed at raising awareness around the basic safety requirements of using drones, which includes our 'Dronecode' safety awareness campaign.

"Furthermore, we are already working alongside the DfT and industry partners, to better understand the potential risks and outcomes of a drone hitting a manned aircraft, and this work will provide us with further evidence to drive safety regulation of drones."

The DfT said it will set out more details of its plans to ensure proper regulations are in place in a Government strategy on the use of drones later this year.

Osama bin Laden in secret speech: I know why U.S. soldiers commit suicide

A newly released trove of documents confiscated from the Pakistani home in which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs includes a speech that notes a spike in suicides among U.S. troops because of the brutality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The documents, kept secret by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence until Tuesday, cover an array of themes, and includes one called “The America Speech.”

The speech is not dated, but likely was penned before Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006. Bin Laden said in the speech that Zarqawi had started an organization “whereby Iraq has become a point that attracts and gathers Mujahid energies.” Bin Laden then underscored the psychological impact on U.S. troops as they faced insurgents attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and noted that one American officer had recently compared U.S. soldiers in Iraq to ducks in a barrel.

“Do you know why the rate of suicide among your soldiers in Iraq has risen?” bin Laden asked. “Look at these pictures from the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan that reveal that hell and the psychological state of the soldier as he gathers the limbs of his brothers, and he will be like them today or tomorrow.”

The speech shows again how bin Laden — who possessed a library that included everything from U.S. counterinsurgency manuals to porn — kept up with the news of the day while facing a massive manhunt by the United States. In 2006, the Army, in particular, coped with a rash of suicides. There were 99 confirmed suicides in the service that year, a third of which occurred in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Bin Laden argued in the speech that the intensity of combat faced by the U.S. military in Iraq had prompted U.S. officials to “dispense with optimistic phrases about the war.” That again may provide a hint on when it was written: U.S. officials began to acknowledge skyrocketing sectarian violence in 2006, ahead of the U.S. troop surge there that was ordered in January 2007.

WhatsApp To End Support For BlackBerry, Nokia Operating Systems By 2017

WhatsApp announced Friday that services for BlackBerry and Nokia devices will be discontinued.

Earlier last week, the chat service celebrated its 7th anniversary along with its one billion users.

What took some of the users by surprise is the announcement that the company will be discontinuing its services for older operating systems.

This includes BlackBerry up to BlackBerry 10, Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60, Windows Phone 7.1 and Android 2.1 and 2.2.

The most notable part of the announcement is the inclusion of BlackBerry and Nokia's Symbian platforms.

The BlackBerry 10 operating system was first launched in 2013, and it has the same OS as the BlackBerry Leap which was only released April 2015.

BlackBerry has now moved on to the Android platform with its latest smartphone, the Priv.

As for Nokia, a lot of users will surely be affected, especially those in developing countries.

"When we started WhatsApp in 2009, people's use of mobile device looked very different from today," the company explained in a blog post.

"Mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft - which account for 99.5 percent of sales today - were on less than 25 percent of mobile devices sold at the time," the post read.

The company stated that it wants to focus on the mobile platforms that the majority of its users are on.

To put it simply, these older platforms don't have the requirements that the company needs in order to improve and expand its service's features.

The company also hinted that it wants to improve the security features for the future versions of the app.

"This was a tough decision for us to make, but the right one in order to give people better ways to keep in touch with friends, family, and loved ones using WhatsApp," WhatsApp said in its blog post.

The Facebook-owned service has suggested to its users that they should upgrade to a more recent Android, iOS or Windows device.

For users who are still using devices on these older platforms, they will have until the end of 2016 before support for WhatsApp ends. 

A Senator Who Joked About Killing Ted Cruz Says Republicans Might Have to Rally—Behind Cruz

Former presidential candidate and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday Republicans might have to support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in order to stop Donald Trump from winning the nomination—just days after he joked about killing Cruz on the floor of the Senate.

“Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means, and I don’t wish him ill—I was making a joke about Ted—but we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump, and I’m not so sure that would work,” Graham told CBS, as Trump solidified his position as frontrunner with a string of Super Tuesday victories.

Asked to confirm if he would rather support Cruz than see a Trump nomination, Graham laughed. “I can’t believe I would say yes, but yes,” he said.

Cruz is widely disliked by his Senate colleagues, none of whom have endorsed his candidacy.

Trump Celebrates Sweeping Super Tuesday Wins

Steamrolling to a string of Super Tuesday victories, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has vowed to beat Hillary Clinton in November's election.

With results trickling in from the day's nationwide vote, he is projected to win at least seven victories as he vies to lock down his party's White House nomination.

Twelve US states held primaries and caucuses on Tuesday and Mr Trump is expected to win Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas and Vermont.

Arch-conservative Texas Senator Ted Cruz breathed a sigh of relief after a crucial win in his home state of Texas and in Oklahoma.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican party favourite, was the projected winner of his first contest, the Minnesota caucuses.

At a victory rally in Palm Beach, Florida, Mr Trump congratulated Mr Cruz, but scorned "lightweight" Mr Rubio.

The tycoon told supporters: "Once we get all of this finished, I'm going to go after one person and that's Hillary Clinton."

He added: "We have politicians who truly, truly, truly don't know what they're doing."

:: Profile: Donald Trump 

In the Democratic race, frontrunner Hillary Clinton is projected to win seven states, while her rival, Bernie Sanders, is expected to take four.

Trailing in the race for the Republican nomination are Ohio Governor John Kasichand retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Candidates are vying to win delegates who will vote for them at the parties' conventions in July.

In the Republican race, 595 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday, including 155 in Texas.

:: Profile: Ted Cruz

This is nearly half of the 1,237 delegates needed for a candidate to win the nomination.

Before Super Tuesday, Mr Trump had 82 delegates, Mr Cruz was on 17 and Mr Rubio 16.

:: Profile: Marco Rubio

Republican party leaders fear the frontrunner will damage their prospects of recapturing the White House after President Barack Obama's two terms.

Mr Trump has repeatedly courted controversy in the campaign with inflammatory outbursts.

But on Tuesday he sought to defuse claims he is too divisive, insisting he was a "unifier" who would grow the party.

Arms-control rules restricting software 'to be rewritten'

Cybersecurity tools could become easier to export as the US seeks to amend an international arms-control deal that controls their spread.

A congressman said the US wanted to renegotiate the Wassenaar Arrangement.

The deal restricts the flow of arms - including "intrusion software" - to oppressive regimes. But some have said it also covers tools that can improve cybersecurity. 

The move was praised by online freedom campaigners.

The proposal to amend the deal "represents a major victory for cybersecurity here and around the world," said US congressman Jim Langevin in a statement announcing the news.

"While well-intentioned, the Wassenaar Arrangement's 'intrusion software' control was imprecisely drafted, and it has become evident that there is simply no way to interpret the plain language of the text in a way that does not sweep up a multitude of important security products."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has also campaigned on the issue, agreed the deal had been reached with the best of intentions but its wording was too vague. 

While the EFF was happy changes were to be considered, it remained concerned the amended arrangement would continue to have "serious chilling effects on security research".

'Dangerously vague'

Last year, the US authorities faced calls from Google to step back from restricting the flow of software as part of the 41-nation arms-control deal.

At the time, Google said the definition of "intrusion software" was "dangerously broad and vague" and included information about bugs and vulnerabilities that could be vital to protect systems.

Google's lawyer Neil Martin said the Wassenaar Arrangement would "hamper our ability to defend ourselves, our users, and make the web safer". 

But the US authorities insisted it balanced computer security with foreign policy concerns.

Now, though, the US administration has said it supports making cyber-intrusion tools available overseas for legitimate cybersecurity activities.

The EFF said: "Human rights advocates have recognised that surveillance software designed and sold by companies in Western countries has been responsible for serious abuses around the world.

"We at EFF have long fought such abuses in court.

"We believe strongly that this is a fight worth having, but export controls are simply the wrong tool for the job."

Exploits

Efforts to come up with a workable US rule have highlighted the difficulty of applying the export controls restricting physical items to a virtual world that relies on the free flow of information for network security. 

Many companies operate in multiple countries and routinely employ foreign nationals who test their own corporate networks across borders.

In May, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security proposed denying the transfer of offensive tools, defined as software that uses "zero-day" exploits, or unpatched new vulnerabilities, and "rootkit" abilities that allow a person administrator-level access to a system.

But in the cyber-world, testing a network often requires determining first how to exploit it and then attempting to do so.

US government departments did not respond to requests for comment.

Super Tuesday: What's behind the rise of Donald Trump?

History shows the Republican candidate who wins most of the states on Super Tuesday wins the nomination.

And so Donald Trump is now on course to stand on the stage in Cleveland, Ohio, in the summer and follow in the footsteps of Nixon, Reagan, Bush (both of them), Dole and McCain.

His rise has been spectacular and surprising.

He wondered about running for president in 2000 for the Reform Party. But eventually he decided not to seek the nomination saying it was too splintered to mount a successful run at the White House.

He also didn't like the main figures in the party. One was Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon speechwriter who twice attempted to secure the Republican presidential nomination himself - he was accused of anti-Semitism while disputing the numbers of Jews killed by the Nazis at the Treblinka death camp.

Another was David Duke; at one point a prominent Republican politician in Louisiana, but perhaps better known as the former Grand Wizard of the racist Ku Klux Klan. Trump left saying, "That is not the company I wish to keep".

Yet, when asked about David Duke expressing support for Trump's election campaign this week, the billionaire businessman said he had no idea who Duke was. He didn't initially disavow his support. And he claimed he didn't have enough information about white supremacist groups to reject any endorsement they might offer.

Within hours - and perhaps aware of the storm that he had created, Trump eventually rejected Duke's backing.

Visceral anger

The Southern Poverty Law Center ,which tracks hate groups in the US, were astounded by Trump's claims. Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the group, speaking from its headquarters in Alabama, said the idea Trump had to look up the Klan was "astounding".

He added: "I've never seen anything like that in mean stream politics, literally, for decades."

Trump has managed to harness a visceral anger in the US, where people feel politicians have failed to deliver on promises, where they are ignored and the system and the economy is rigged against them.

A similar anger has helped propel the Bernie Sanders campaign on the Democrats side.

Potok tried to explain it like this: "There is a large working class and lower middle class white America who feel they are in trouble and they feel they country is changing around them and they're angry".

And he believes Trump was initially reluctant to repudiate the Klan on the chance that would impact on the constituency he was trying to reach.

Controversy after controversy

Throughout this campaign, Trump has attacked and attacked.

He launched his campaign claiming many of the immigrants making their way from Mexico were "murderer and rapists"; he mocked a disabled reporter; he called Iowa voters stupid and dismissed former Republican presidential hopeful, John McCain, a man who was a prisoner of war during Vietnam, as a "loser" because he was captured by the North Vietnamese; he got involved with a spat with the popeover his plans to build a border wall with Mexico; and he famously announced he wanted to stop all Muslims temporarily entering the US.

Each and every time he's made the comments, the crowds have roared with approval.

And despite people thinking that each new controversy would finish his campaign, he's gotten stronger and bolder.

For many of Trump's supporters, the last eight years have brought massive changes: there is a black man in the White House; gay marriage has been legalised; and a form or universal healthcare has been introduced.

One columnist in Houston, Cory Garcia, argues Trump is the best thing to happen to American politics believing the businessman has exposed a dark underbelly.

Sitting in a conference room at his weekly paper, The Houston Press, he told me: "Donald Trump is the answer to I think a lot of Republican questions about 'what would happen if we were just honest? What if we didn't beat around the bush about race, or immigration, or terrorism? What if we just said what we meant? Like, would we be punished for that? Would people be, would we be isolated, would we be marginalised? And the answer is, at least to Republican voters, no.'"

For Trump, there is no coded language, no hidden message, no dog whistles that only Republicans understand.

It's all there, on show and the people respect his blunt, unvarnished presentation. He doesn't care who he upsets.

And the people have responded with support and more importantly, votes.

The Republican establishment thought Trump's campaign would fall apart. He didn't have the discipline. He didn't have the organisation.

Now, they are deeply worried he will be the party's standard bearer in November's presidential election.

And after Super Tuesday, that is more likely than not.