The Metropolitan Police has announced it will use live facial recognition cameras operationally for the first time on London streets. From a report: The cameras will be in use for five to six hours at a time, with bespoke lists of suspects wanted for serious and violent crimes drawn up each time. Police say the cameras identified 70% of suspects but…
Tag: Wales
As UK Police Deploy Facial Recognition, Questions Raised About False Positives
“When British police used facial recognition cameras to monitor crowds arriving for a soccer match in Wales, some fans protested by covering their faces,” reports the Associated Press. “In a sign of the technology’s divisiveness, even the head of a neighboring police force said he opposed it.” The South Wales police deployed vans equipped with the technology outside Cardiff stadium this…
Aussie Firefighters Save World’s Only Groves Of Prehistoric Wollemi Pines
As wildfires tear through Australia, a specialized team of firefighters has managed to save hidden groves of the Wollemi pine — a rare prehistoric tree that outlived the dinosaurs. The trees are so rare, they were thought to be extinct until 1994. From a report: It was a lifesaving mission as dramatic as any in the months-long battle against the wildfires…
Australia’s Wildfires Have Created More Emissions Than 116 Nations
“The wildfires raging along Australia’s eastern coast have already pumped around 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” reports MIT’s Technology Review, “further fueling the climate change that’s already intensifying the nation’s fires.” That’s more than the total combined annual emissions of the 116 lowest-emitting countries, and nine times the amount produced during California’s record-setting 2018 fire season….
Australian Megafire Engulfs Nearly 1.5 Million Acres
Two wildfires in New South Wales and Victoria have merged, forming a fire covering 2,300 square miles (6,300 square kilometers). Source: https://www.livescience.com/australian-megafire.forms.html
Police in Australia Are Accusing 24 People of Deliberately Setting Bushfires
The Australia wildfires are a countrywide catastrophe, mainly caused by drought and extreme heat, but dozens of people are directly to blame for some of the problem, officials say. From a report: Police have charged at least 24 people for intentionally starting bushfires in the state of New South Wales, according to a statement the New South Wales Police released Monday….
Will Australia’s Wildfires Change the Country Forever?
Australia’s wildfires have already burned at least 12 million acres, reports NBC News, with more than 100 blazes still active. “And the season has yet to reach its peak.”
The ability of animals to recover from Australia’s wildfires is also a concern. Scientists are estimating that more than half a billion animals have already died in the fires, a figure that Stuart…
Ferocious fires in Australia intensified this week
The outlook for the bushfire situation in Australia continues to be grim. This post is an update via NASA, containing NOAA-NASA satellite images of actively burning fires and the resultant billowing smoke. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ferocious-fires-in-australia-intensified-this-week…
Bushfires Release Over Half Australia’s Annual Carbon Emissions
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The unprecedented bushfires devastating swathes of Australia have already pumped out more than half of the country’s annual carbon dioxide emissions in another setback to the fight against climate change. Fires blighting New South Wales and Queensland have emitted a combined 306 million tons of carbon dioxide since Aug. 1, which is more…
Astronomers find ‘missing’ neutron star after 32 years
Thirty-two years ago, Supernova 1987A erupted in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. Astronomers using the ALMA radio telescope now say they’ve found the small, compact neutron star created in this mighty star explosion. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/astronomers-find-missing-neutron-star-sn1987a…