Stephen Hawking has once again warned that humanity could wipe itself
out before it has a chance to establish far-flung space colonies.
At a recent talk in England, the famed physicist singled out nuclear
war, genetically engineered viruses and global warming as likely
culprits. According to Hawking, the odds of a planetary disaster in the next millennia are high.
"Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may
be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the
next thousand or 10 thousand years," Hawking told the audience in a
public Q&A session after this year's BBC Reith lecture in England. [9 Real Ways the World Could End]
Humans could survive if they have colonized other planets and stars before disaster strikes, he said.
But we're now entering a particularly perilous period, as humans haven't established a cosmic backup plan, as of yet, he added.
"We will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least
the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period,"
Hawking said. Repeated warnings
This isn't the first time the theoretical physicist has warned of planetary doom. Early last year, Hawking warned that human aggression threatened to wipe us all out. He's also spoken out about the potential for nonhuman threats, and has expressed concern that artificial intelligence
could "spell the end for the human race." Both Hawking and billionaire
entrepreneur Elon Musk have warned of the dangers of killer robots, and
they both co-signed a public letter last year urging world leaders to ban killer robots.
Yet despite his gloomy prognostications, Hawking doesn't believe
catastrophe is inevitable. Though he believes danger looms on the
horizon, he said he is an "optimist" who believes humanity can overcome
the risks facing it.
And Hawking, who has done groundbreaking work on black holes, string
theory and other theoretical physics topics, has a positively cheery
outlook on his own life and time.
"From my own perspective, it has been a glorious time to be alive and
doing research in theoretical physics. There is nothing like the eureka
moment of discovering something that no one knew before," Hawking said.
Listeners can hear Hawking's Reith lectures online on BBC Radio 4 on Jan. 26 and Feb. 2.
Speaking at a briefing during the Defence and Security Equipment
International show in London, analysts from NOMS described drone use as
an “emerging threat” which will increase as UAV technology becomes
cheaper and easier to use.
NOMS said the number of attempts to infiltrate prisons using four or
six-rotor drones widely available over the internet or from high street
retailers remains small but is rising rapidly. In the five months to May
this year, nine incidents were detected in England and Wales, compared
to four for the entirety of 2014.
Drones operated by organised crime gangs pose an increasing threat to
security in Britain’s prisons by offering a new route to smuggle drugs
and potentially firearms into the hands of criminals, senior officials
have admitted.
Small commercial drones are being used to lift packages containing
illicit goods from mobile phones to synthetic drugs into jails, where
they threaten security by increasing the availability of intoxicants
which can provoke disorder in prisons.
Intelligence officers at
the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) revealed they are also
concerned at the potential to use remote-controlled Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAVs) to drop lethal weaponry into jails after a package the
same size and weight of a gun was successfully dropped unnoticed into an
unnamed maximum security prison during covert testing earlier this
year.
Investigations suggest that several incidents where drones
have been used to overfly prisons or deliver packages in the last 18
months were linked to serious crime groups. As a result, governors are
now bracing themselves for security breaches by UAVs to become a more
frequent problem across Britain’s 150 prisons.
Eve Richard, a senior analyst at the NOMS intelligence unit, said:
“In a nutshell, our intelligence suggests that the use of UAVs to
release items into our prisons is an emerging threat. It’s not a huge
issue at the moment but there is the potential for it to increase and
become more of an issue.”
Slides shown at the briefing underlined
the nature of the threat, adding: “Intelligence suggests the use of UAVs
to convey items into prisons will become more common as technology
advances, costs reduce and confidence in their use and functionality
grows.”
Ms
Richard added: “All prisons are vulnerable - it doesn’t matter where
they are, it doesn’t matter what type of prisoner they have, it doesn’t
matter what kind of security category they are. Everywhere is vulnerable
because it is air space and as long as you can get [a UAV] over the
wall you are vulnerable.”
The NOMS analysts said drones were being used as an alternative to
established and significantly less hi-tech ways of smuggling illegal
items into prisons such as using visits or “throw overs”, where packages
are simply thrown over prison walls into exercise yards.
A
sophisticated UAV capable of being precisely manoeuvred using GPS
technology and carrying a payload of up to a 1.5kg can be bought for
less than £1,000 and flown with minimal training.
Recent incidents
where drones were used to breach security include an attempt in March
to fly a UAV into Bedford Prison with a package containing mobile phones
and drugs. The aircraft became entangled in barbed wire after it was
believed to have been destabilised by its cargo.
A drone was also
spotted overflying HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire at night on a
possible reconnaissance or distraction mission while another was found
two weeks ago after crashing into fencing at Liverpool Prison.
The items found on board the UAVs include smartphones and SIM cards -
as well as accessories such as chargers and batteries - to enable
career criminals to continue offending from inside prison, and
consignments of synthetic psycho-active drugs such as “Spice”.
Managers
are concerned that the ability of drones to deliver larger quantities
of these drugs into prisons could have a knock-on effect on security by
increasing the risk of violence against staff and between prisoners.
Lorna
Shore, head of the NOMS Intelligence Analysis Unit, said: “On a day to
day basis we are managing assaults against staff and prisoners and they
are getting more serious and more difficult to manage. We don’t actually
understand the reasons why but there might be some links with new
psycho-active substances coming in.”
One of the most troubling
threats posed by drones is their potential for infiltrating concealed
weapons into even the most secure prisons.
As part of a
three-month study of UAV risks, NOMS said it had carried out a test
flight of a drone over a maximum security prison. The drone managed to
fly over the prison and drop a package of similar size and weight to a
handgun before withdrawing without being noticed by any of the staff on
duty.
Ms Richard said: “We have had no intelligence that drones
are being used for trafficking weapons; however, we can obviously all
recognise that the potential is there.”
NOMS said it was working with the National Crime Agency after
investigations suggested that individuals with potential links to
serious and organised crime networks were behind some of the drone
flights.
Ms Shore said: “We need to understand further whether there is a co-ordinated effort behind this.”
Officials
are now looking into acquiring technology which may counter the threat
of drones, including products which can interfere with the radio signal
controlling UAVs and bring them safely to ground.
In the meantime,
the intelligence officials underlined that the prospect of a drone
being used to airlift a prisoner out of jail remains highly unlikely.
They pointed to one recent attempt by a drone enthusiast to lift himself
using multiple UAVs harnessed to a metal frame, which resulted in the
man being lifted off the ground for just two seconds.
Drone dangers
Passenger jets
A
number of incidents in which drones have “buzzed” aircraft as they took
off or landed at four UK airports, including Heathrow, resulted in a
warning from the Civil Aviation Authority this summer that UAV pilots
faced jail if their devices flew too close to jets. The Emirates and other landmarks Security guard Nigel Wilson was this week fined £1,800
and banned from owning drones after he flew his UAVs around a series of
prominent buildings, including Arsenal’s Emirates football ground and
the Houses of Parliament before posting the footage on YouTube. A judge
told Wilson, 42, his actions were “the height of arrogance in terms of
public safety”. Shopping by air
Several
companies, including Amazon (below), have expressed a headline-grabbing
interest in using drones to deliver goods. Among the suggestions are the
establishment of separate airspace for UAVs to avoid collisions as they
zero in on customers’ smartphones or home addresses. Regulators are as
yet unconvinced.
NOMS said it was working with the National Crime Agency after
investigations suggested that individuals with potential links to
serious and organised crime networks were behind some of the drone
flights.
Ms Shore said: “We need to understand further whether there is a co-ordinated effort behind this.”
Officials
are now looking into acquiring technology which may counter the threat
of drones, including products which can interfere with the radio signal
controlling UAVs and bring them safely to ground.
In the meantime,
the intelligence officials underlined that the prospect of a drone
being used to airlift a prisoner out of jail remains highly unlikely.
They pointed to one recent attempt by a drone enthusiast to lift himself
using multiple UAVs harnessed to a metal frame, which resulted in the
man being lifted off the ground for just two seconds.
Google
has hurriedly rushed out a link to D-Day material after failing to
honour the 70th anniversary in its famous daily doodle.
Initially the UK homepage of the search engine had a doodle honouring a Japanese Go player.
It admitted to the Daily Telegraph that that had been uploaded in error, and quickly removed it.
Beneath its logo there is a now a link to letters, photos and maps of the Normandy landings.
The original doodle honoured the 185th birthday of Honinbo Shusaku
There was anger on Twitter about the goof.
"What were you thinking #Google?" asked one.
In response Google's director of communication Peter Barron
said: "We always intended to highlight a new exhibition of imagery and
archive material commemorating D-Day on our homepage.
"Unfortunately a technical error crept in and for a short
period this morning an international doodle also appeared. We're sorry
for the mistake, and we're proud to honour those who took part in D-Day"
The link to D-Day material takes users to the Google Cultural
Institute, which has content on the Normandy landings and access to
more than 400 records, some of them published for the first time.
The idea of marking cultural moments via the Google logo was
born in 1998 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, placed a
stick figure drawing behind the second 'o' in Google as a message to
users that they were out of the office.
Later in the year a turkey was added on Thanksgiving Day, and two pumpkins were made out of the o's in October 1999.
Since 1998 there have been over 2,000 doodles on its home
pages around the world, honouring major anniversaries and the birthdays
of famous people including Albert Einstein and Michelangelo.
Google now has a full time doodle team of illustrators, animators and artists.
President Obama humiliated the marine who he asked to hold his umbrella by making him ‘look like a butler’, a respected military general claimed today.
Thomas McInerney, a former United States Air Force Lieutenant General, said that the President showed a ‘lack of respect’ by making the soldier shelter him from a shower.
He also said that the President has plenty of aides so did not understand why one of them could not have held the umbrella.
Hoping for a break in the storm: Obama faced a barrage of questions over three simultaneous scandals engulfing his administration
Broken Regulations: US Marines hold umbrellas during light rain for US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
The President caused a stir when he summoned over two marines to keep him dry at a press conference in the Rose Garden.
The marines held an umbrella over the President and the Turkish Prime Minister individually as Obama made jokes about the weather.
However, for some the move was not a laughing matter particularly as it is a breach of protocol for marines to hold umbrellas while in uniform.
Lt Gen McInerney told MailOnline that he found it particularly insulting how the President at one point his his hand under the marine’s arm ‘like he wasn’t doing a good job or something’.
He said: ‘The President has stood in the rain before without an umbrella and a marine would generally stand there without holding an umbrella.'
‘He isn’t some kind of butler or something.
‘It makes the other guy (the other marine) look like a butler too.'
‘I think it’s a lack of respect for the marine, that’s what I think.'
‘I don’t understand why one of his aides could not have held the umbrella. The marine is a warrior but the aides are not.’
Lt Gen McInerney, 76, served in Vietnam and fought with NATO and was commander of the 11th Air Force in Alaska before retiring.
He said: ‘If I was his (the marine’s) commander...I’d say good job, you did what he wanted you to do but you can’t, really he has to keep his comments to himself because if you say anything you’re going to get in trouble.'
‘Any time a marine has said something...one general who spoke out, he got fired, he got canned from his job.’
Lt Gen McInerney also lashed out at the President for not doing enough to support soldiers when they return home from combat.'
He said: ‘The President talks a good line but he doesn’t follow a good line. These guys are coming home and they’re not getting what they are supposed to get.'
‘The guy’s (Obama) got to get real and he’s got to start doing stuff the right way and answering questions in the right manner, not changing subject in the middle of the interview.’
According to Marine Corps regulations, not even the President of the United States can request a Marine to carry an umbrella without the express permission of the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
The Marine Corp Manual, which is the bible for all soldiers serving, specifically states that a soldier's uniform dress code does not allow the carrying of an umbrella and 'no officer or official shall issue instructions which conflict with, alter, or amend any provision without the approval of the Commandant of the Marine Corps.'
Indeed, male Marines are informed never to carry an umbrella from the earliest phases of training.
Regulation MCO P1020.34F of the Marine Corps Uniform Regulations chapter 3, rules out any use or carrying of an umbrella while a Marine is in uniform.
However, female Marines 'may carry an all-black, plain standard or collapsible umbrella at their option during inclement weather with the service and dress uniforms. It will be carried in the left hand so that the hand salute can be properly rendered.'
Insensitive? Many have questioned the President's actions
Rule Breaker: President Barack Obama, center, watches a Marine remove the umbrella after it stopped raining during his joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Many commentators found the use of the marines to be particularly insensitive, given the President was answering questions on Benghazi.
The lack of marines protecting Ambassador Chris Stevens at the Libyan consulate and the failure to deploy marines to protect him amid the outbreak of violence has come under fire ever since last year's attack on September 11.
Usually a marine guard would be in force at an overseas diplomatic compound but in Benghazi the government opted to use a private Libyan security team.
Stevens had made repeated appeals for improved security at the Libyan base but to no avail.
Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty were part of a CIA security team stationed a mile away who heard gunshots and intervened to try and help Stevens. They were also killed in an attack on their compound.
When violence broke out there were also delays sending in marines to assist.
A rapid response team were twice told to stand down amid the chaos while reports at the time said the Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team was delayed because the state department ordered them to deplane and change into civilian clothing.
Answering questions on Benghazi, President Obama said the government was ' continuing to review our security at high-threat diplomatic posts' in light of the attack.
At the press conference originally intended to be a victory lap for the United States' relationship with Turkey, Obama stood alongside Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan and fielded questions which quickly shifted to the trio of scandals that are engulfing his administration.
Critical:Thomas McInerney, a former United States Air Force Lieutenant General, said that the President showed a ‘lack of respect’
Admission: Obama admitted that the U.S. needs to 'learn the lessons of Benghazi' but he called it an 'incident' rather than a terror attack
He also dodged questions about the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, and said 'I offer no apologies' for the Department of Justice's secret seizure of reporter's phone records in search of a classified intelligence leak.
He has been under growing pressure over these issues and Benghazi in recent weeks.
It has emerged that his State Department political appointees intervened in the aftermath of the 2012 terror attack, in a process that resulted in a misleading set of talking points which ignored terrorism in favor of a more muted explanation, in the midst of a re-election campaign.
Addressing the Benghazi fallout pre-emptively before Erdogan spoke, Obamasaid that 'at my direction, we've been taking a series of steps that were recommended by the review board.'
He spoke of various measures he was recommending, to 'learn the lessons of Benghazi.' But he referred to the murders of four Americans there as an 'incident,' not a terror attack.
He said: 'That's why, at my direction, we've been taking a series of steps that were recommended by the review board after the incident. We're continuing to review our security at high-threat diplomatic posts, including the size and nature of our presence; improving training for those headed to dangerous posts; increasing intelligence and warning capabilities.'
'And I’ve directed the Defense Department to ensure that our military can respond lightning quick in times of crisis.'
And his remarks focused on 'properly funding' the State Department and Pentagon-run security at diplomatic posts, shifting the burden to Congress to 'provide resources and new authorities so that we can implement all the recommendations of the Accountability Review Board which issued a report last month'.
He said: 'We’re going to need Congress’s help in terms of increasing the number of our Marine Corps Guard who protect our embassies.
'We're not going to be able to do this alone,' Obama said. 'We need Congress.'
The review board is under fire for failing to interview high-level Obama administration figures, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Interviewing Clinton, Republicans on Capitol Hill have said, would have provided insights into who was accountable for lapses in security that left the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya vulnerable to attack.
The Tea Party Patriots and other conservative groups provided a powerful rallying force during the 2010 midterm elections. It was around the same time that the Obama administration's IRS began targeting such groups that applied for tax-exempt nonprofit status
But despite Obama's plea for more funding, money was not an issue in the months before the Benghazi attack when consular officials in Libya asked the State Department for more security forces.
Those requests were repeatedly denied, and neither Hillary Clinton nor other State Department officials have raised a lack of funding as the reason more special forces were not on the scene.
On the night of the Benghazi attack, the State Department refused to authorize an existing special forces team in the Libyan capital city of Tripoli to board a military C-130 plane headed to Benghazi, despite their readiness to intervene.
The Obama administration said later that the decision was made because the forces would not have arrived at the consulate, which was under attack, in time to make a difference.
The State Department has been silent on the question of how it knew how long the armed, military-style assault from Islamist terror groups would last.
Obama addressed the need to for ''increasing intelligence and warning capabilities' at 'diplomatic posts around the world,' and asked Congress for money to 'increase the Marine Corps contingents' at State Department facilities.
On the IRS scandal, Obama said he knew nothing of what was going on.
'My main concern is fixing a problem,' Obama said.
'It is just simply unacceptable for there to be even a hint of partisanship' in the IRS.
Barack Obama (R) and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan hold a joint news conference in the White House Rose Garden, but most of the focus was on three unfolding White House scandals
He also expressed 'complete confidence' in Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department deputies saw two months of phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors.
Holder has told Congress he recused himself from the investigation, but admitted Wednesday during a Capitol Hill hearing that he failed to put that recusal in writing.
The investigation centered on a secret CIA operation in Yemen that foiled a terror plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner.
AP were believed to have received a leak of information from a government source.
'Leaks related to national security can put people at risk,' Obama said.
'I offer no apologies' for putting a high premium on national security, he said, while also allowing that the First Amendment's press freedoms are important to him philosophically.
Despite the wide range of topics up for discussion it is the umbrella incident which certainly captured chatter online.
A mock Twitter account was set up for the marine involved while numerous videos appeared online poking fun at the issue.
It doesn't rain it...Air Force One Staff Sergeant Brian Barnett is pictured following behind the President with an umbrella as he boards Air Force One in 2011
Keeping dry: Many different individuals have held umbrellas for the commander in chief
Not singing in the rain: President Obama was pictured struggling with an umbrella himself in New Orleans in 2010 but he managed to laugh at himself moments later
It is not the first time Obama has struggled when it comes to keeping dry.
Often assistants are on hand to offer the President cover - be it leaving a car or embarking Air Force One.
On one occasion the President's own struggles navigating an umbrella showed why.
He managed to smile for cameras in 2010 when he got in a muddle trying to get an umbrella over a fence.
He was trying to do the gentlemanly thing and protect wife, Michelle, from the rain.
AllThingsD said talks with Yahoo and Tumblr are in the “serious” stage, and a later report by AdWeek mentioned the figure for the buyout could be $1 billion.
Yahoo is struggling to try and stay in business against Internet giant Google, despite being one of the first search engines. Marissa Meyer, the chief executive of Yahoo, has been trying to keep the company afloat after a multi-year decline in revenue and user engagement on its website. The deal with Tumblr could be just the thing to boost the company’s earnings.
“Yahoo needs to grow and better engage its audience, and Tumblr would find itself in possession of a key new weapon: the Yahoo homepage, not to mention the massive scale of Yahoo’s various digital media properties,” AllThingsD reported. “Needless to say, the Tumblr demographic skews young and likely mobile, which is the product category that Yahoo has itself trained its sites on; Yahoo has expressly stated that it is working to become a mobile-first, or at least focused company.”
Tumblr was founded in February 2007 and has 175 employees in offices across the country. It hosts nearly 108 million blogs, over 50 billion posts, and 70.6 million daily posts. Last November, Tumblr was ranked as the ninth most popular Web site in the US, with more than 61.3 million monthly US visitors and 170 million monthly visitors around the world. According to Forbes.com, the company made $13 million in 2012 and is looking to bring in about $100 million due to new advertising initiatives.
Yahoo’s chief financial officer Ken Goldman said earlier this week at a financial conference in Boston that one of the company’s biggest challenges is having an aging demographic.
“Part of it is going to be just visibility again in making ourselves cool, which we got away from for a couple of years,” Goldman said, according to CNET.
Adding Tumblr to Yahoo’s repertoire could be just the thing to help the company seem a little more hip.
Stephen Hawking (shown here in 2008) has been vocal about fears that an advanced alien civilization might wipe out humanity.
