Police crackdown on illegal tow operations in Sydney

Friday, June 30, 2006

New South Wales Police, in connection with the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority, Tow Truck Authority and Centrelink (the agency responsible for providing income support) conducted random checks on tow trucks on Thursday. The checks were carried out in Bankstown, a suburb in Sydney’s South-West.

According to police, 50 tow trucks were pulled over during the operation, coined “Operation Hook” between 8:30 a.m. AEST and 4 p.m. Of those, 26 were directed to report to a vehicle inspection facility for further investigation.

Police issued 70 infringement notices (fines) during the operation. 11 were for being unlicensed to conduct business as a tow truck driver or business, and 13 for having incorrectly secured loads. 17 vehicles were issued defect notices as part of the operation.

Tow truck operators (business owners) are required to make a payment of AUD$770 per year to the NSW government, while drivers are charged $152 per year for their licence. An additional charge for tow truck number plates of $292 per year also applies.

The maximum penalty for operators not being licensed correctly is $11,000 or 12 months imprisonment, drivers without the correct licence can be fined $5,500 or sentenced to 6 months.

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Spanish Police kills Barcelona attack van driver

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Last Monday, the police of Barcelona, Spain killed Younes Abouyaaqoub at At Subirats, west of Barcelona. Before the kill, the police started international search for the van driver on the preceding Sunday. When policemans tried to arrest him, he faced them so the police opened fire. On Monday, a woman saw a man resemble Younes’s photo provided by police, and wear long sleeves on a hot 30°C day. The woman alerted police. Police sent a robot to remove the explosives in the body of the man to prevent the security of the policemans in case to be real and allow the identification of the suspect, after they shot the man and subsequently confirmed his identity. Abouyaaqoub was the driver of the van that trampled and killed 13 persons and injured more of one hundred persons in La Rambla of Barcelona.

When the police arrive to the place and they tried to arrest the fugitive, he opened his shirt and showed a fake suicide belt while he said in high voice “Allah is great” and he walked over 13 meters until policemans so the Mossos opened fire. Next, police used robots to remove a fake suicide belt from the man. The belt may have contained explosives. Then while a police helicopter was observing the scene from air, police approached the man and confirmed that there were no explosives. Then police confirmed the man’s identity and found he also had knives.

Younes was the twelfth suspect in the Thursday van attack at La Rambla pedestrian walk. Police suspected him as the van driver. Police had started looking for Abouyaaqoub in France and Catalonia on Sunday.

The Moroccan citizen Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22 years old, was being pursued by police in Catalonia and near the French border. He is the only one of the twelve suspects still at large. Authorities believe he was in France. Abouyaaqoub was suspected of being the driver of the van used in the attack. According to his family, he exhibited more religiously conservative behaviour over the past year and became became reluctant to deal with women. After finished the attack Abouyaaqoub had to stole a car to make his escape and the driver of this car was killed by him.

Abouyaaqoub was in Subirats, a city on west of Barcelona when he has found by the Barcelona police, Mossos, and they were shot and killed to the fugitive. The suspect of the attack in Barcelona was wearing an explosive belt and the police didn’t inmediately identify him as Abouyaaqoub. A robot was used to remove the explosives while polices did the identification of the man died. The fugitive aroused suspicion to a woman because he had inadeaquates clothes for a hot day. The area where Abouyaaqoub was killed is a rural area, with too little population and it has pine trees.

The attack took place at 17:10 local time, (UTC+0100). The van drove 500 meters along a pedestrian walkway, killing 13 people, injuring more than a hundred. The van driver fled on foot. Local police officers searched the surroundings and arrested two suspects, but the van driver they did not find was not arrested.

According to the local government, victims included citizens from 24 different countries, including France, Venezuela, Ireland, Peru, Algeria, China, Belgium (1 dead), Greece (1 injured), Australia (1 dead, 2 injured), Taiwan (2 injured), Hong Kong (1 injured), and Germany (unknown whether dead or injured). Many of the injured taken to the hospital were tourists unable to speak Spanish. The hospitals called for interpreters to assist in communication with the patients. An Australian seven-year old boy is among the dead. He was alive when he arrived at the hospital but did not survive.

Public transportation services had been stopped and the square of Catalonia has been closed to prevent further attacks and to allow emergency services reach any emergencies faster. The police, asserting safety concerns, have asked people not share images or data about the attack on the Internet.

According to a Spanish broadcaster RTVE, the local police arrested Driss Oukabir as a suspect, and his identification documents were found in the van involved in the attack. The local news outlet also said that the suspect claimed his identification documents were missing and might have been stolen by his brother. Local police refused to comment on the identity of the individuals arrested., Mossos D’Esquadra, denied this report. Via Twitter, Mossos D’Esquadra said they had arrested a suspect and the incident was investigated as a “terrorist attack”.–>

The Amaq news outlet, allegedly linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant group, claimed ISIS was responsible for the, saying “The executors of the Barcelona attack were soldiers of the Islamic State”. They did not disclose the identities of the attackers. They alleged the attack was meant to target a coalition of countries at war with Iraq and Syria.

A few hours after the first disaster, another attack took place in Cambrils, near Tarragona. The Catalonian police reported they had shot the suspects, killing at least five and injuring one. The police authorities said that the two attacks were connected. In the Cambrils attacks the police killed another Abouyaaqoub´s relatives, a brother and two cousings, all people were using fakes explosives belts, the car used by the three persons overturned and while they exited, the vehicle the police shot and killed them.

This was Spain’s deadliest attack since 2004, when 192 people were injured during their commute on trains in Madrid.

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Stranded Russian minisub is trapped by 60 tonne anchor

Friday, August 5, 2005

The Interfax news agency is reporting that a Russian minisub that was stranded underwater in the Pacific Ocean is trapped by two 60 tonne anchors.

The submarine propeller has snagged on the antenna of a sonar underwater coastal defense station, (or perhaps very long low frequency arrays, which can be thousands of yards) 623 ft below the ocean 43 miles off Kamchatka. “The anchor needs to be blown up” in order to be able to raise the AS-28 submarine, the commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet told Interfax.

“If the explosion is successful, the system will be raised to a depth of 100 meters and lit up by the Tiger [television camera], and we can at last be 100% sure that it’s the submarine, and deepwater divers will be able to continue work,” he continued.

The AS-28 submarine, with seven crew onboard, became entangled on Thursday while at a depth of 190 m.

Earlier reports that the submarine had been taken under tow have been proved false. Ships had attempted to trawl for the submarine in order to drag it into shallower water, but it is reported that they failed to capture the submarine.

The Pacific Fleet commander says that the crew have enough food and water to survive until Monday although oxygen will run out by Saturday. The three-man submarine was designed to supply the crew with a five day supply of oxygen, however with the seven man crew the supply has been greatly depleted.

Around ten Russian navy ships are attending, to be joined by four Japanese vessels on Monday. The US and UK navies are also flying in specialist rescue equipment, including two U.S. navy owned remotely-operated underwater robots capable of cutting through steel lines up to 1″ thick and one U.K. video array ROV. They will arrive on Saturday.

The crew have been using an underwater acoustic telephone to communicate with the surface, and are reported to be remaining calm. They have been told to keep still and to conserve the ship’s power supplies.

The same class of vessel, which measures 13.5 m by 3.8 m, was used during the ill-fated rescue attempt on the Kursk, which was lost with all hands almost exactly five years ago.

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NTSB announces safety recommendations to be made in aftermath of Comair Flight 5191 disaster

Saturday, June 9, 2007

The American National Transportation Safety Board has announced that it will make new airline safety recommendations. This comes a result of its investigation into the Comair Flight 5191 disaster, in which a Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) CRJ-100ER crashed whilst attempting take-off from the wrong runway at Blue Grass Airport, Lexington, killing 49 people and leaving just one survivor. The plane was unable to take off because that runway was too short.

The NTSB has now announced that, on July 26, the date on which the NTSB is to determine the probable cause of the accident, they will issue safety recommendations regarding methods of preventing a recurrence of the disaster.

One of the recommendations will concern developing and implementing a cockpit-based system that will inform pilots when they are in the wrong location. Another will involve rescheduling the workloads of Air Traffic Controllers to ensure they receive more sleep, a request they had previously made in April.

Regarding location warning systems, the FAA has pointed out that they have been working on methods of preventing runway incursions (in which a person, ground vehicle or another aircraft is on the runway when or where it should not be), to which the National Transportation Safety Board chairman Mark Rosenker responded “The FAA is doing a great job testing these systems. The question we have is, when will you finally implement that technology?” FAA Associate Administrator Margaret Gilligan responded by saying that they were currently looking at just such a system, adding “We do have airlines that have committed to put that technology on the flight deck once it’s approved”. The system referred to involves runway signal lights and is currently being tested at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The NTSB will also look at runway and taxiway markings and the ways they can confuse pilots, as this issue has been identified as a contributing factor in the accident. Rosenker said the NTSB was “very interested” in this area. 140 airports have unclear or confusing markings in the US, but it is not certain if Blue Grass Airport is one of them. However, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) made a submission to the NTSB stating that they had found that the markings at Blue Grass Airport did not match those on the charts the pilots were using. ALPA went on to recommend greater standardisation of airport runway markings.

Blue Grass Airport responded yesterday by saying that there was nothing wrong with their runway markings, with spokesman Brian Ellestad saying “We have had numerous inspections before and after (the Comair crash) and have had no issues… FAA reiterates that we meet all requirements for signage, markings, lighting, runways and taxiways.”

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2008 AutoTronics Taipei: Participants from IT industry to participate COMPUTEX uncertainly

Friday, April 11, 2008

Since the AutoTronics Taipei was held from 2006, companies from electronic and automobile-related industries steadily made their stages and a good complementary in this trade show.

Before the first holding in 2006, because of the establishment of Car Electronics Pavilion in 2005 TAITRONICS Autumn (Taipei International Electronic Autumn Show), it (the pavilion) ever became a hot topic in these 2 industries. And eventually, Yulon Group recruited their sub-companies grouping their own pavilion to showcase automobile parts, accessories, and applications.

Currently, automobile navigation, mobile entertainment, and road safety, were included in modern automotive devices. But in a keynote speech of TARC Pavilion, Jamie Hsu (Consultant of Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of the China) pointed out several threats and opportunities on the automotive industry, his words also echoed a notable quote by Yi-cheng Liu (Chairman of Taiwan Transportation Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association): “The automobile industry shouldn’t be monopolized by a company or its own industry. If this industry want to be grown up, it [the industry] should do more optimizations and transformations with the other related industries like IT and electronic.”

Although some participants like Renesas, Fujitsu, MiTAC, TomTom NV, and Agilent ever participated in Taipei IT Month, CeBIT, or Computex Taipei, but there were varied comments for participation on Computex 2008.

Computex 2008 will do a significant growth, of course. But we [Aglient] still consider to cooperate with Intel in a forum rather than showcasing in Computex.
We [the MiTAC Group] will appoint different sub-companies to participate in different trade shows by different industries. That’s why we showcase the same products in different shows by different sub-companies.

Renesas Technology, a participant of Computex 2007, won’t showcase in Computex 2008, but Fujitsu and TomTom both declared to participate in the 2008 Taipei IT Month.

Generally in the automobile industry, progressively conformed by the other industries, its success should depend on collaborations between different and similar industries because “not any company can do any monopoly in any industry” even though the automobile industry will become a “trillion industry” not only in Taiwan.

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US Marine killed after vehicle capsizes, sinks in Oceanside Harbor, California

Saturday, January 15, 2011

An amphibious vehicle belonging to the United States Marines capsized and sank to the floor of the Del Mar boat basin, California at 1130 PST (1930 UTC) resulting in one death and three injures.

Three instructors and three students were conducting driver training when the vehicle capsized and sank, trapping them inside. Three injured individuals were transported to hospital and two were uninjured. The deceased Marine was rescued at around 1415 PST and was transported to hospital where he was pronounced dead at 1447 PST. Oxygen was being pumped into the vehicle for hours in an attempt to keep the Marine alive.

Captain Daniel J. Thomas revealed that “There will be a thorough investigation into this mishap that occurred.” He continued, “[there will be] reports that come, lessons learned in terms of preventing anything like this from happening.” Major Thomas said that training would not be stopped, but “We’re going to take a look at this and the commander will then make a decision before anything goes back into place to make sure any safety briefing that need to be given are conducted.”

The identity of the dead Marine has not yet been revealed; the family have yet to have been notified.

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Security tightened at Singapore courts after two attempts to escape

Friday, June 13, 2008

Following a failed escape attempt on Wednesday at the detention facilities of the Subordinate Courts of Singapore, security has been increased.

At 1:45 a.m., Jamaluddin Salam, 32, and Salman Abu Samah, 28, tried to escape from the basement lock-up by requesting water. An officer opened the cell gate to fulfill the request, which is a breach of procedure; he should have merely passed water through a hole in the cell door. The prisoners took advantage of the open gate and overpowered the officer, violently punching and kicking him to the ground before heading to the gates at the lock-up’s exit, pressing a buzzer to inform the officer at the control room to unlock the gates. The officer did not check the security camera monitor to see who was at the gates before unlocking it, constituting another breach of procedure.

Following their successful exit from the lock-up, the duo used the lift just past the exit gates to reach the fourth floor of the facility, forcing open a locked door and going down a stairwell to reach the ground floor.

Within 10 minutes of the escape, the duo was spotted at the ground floor. The alarm was raised and officers were deployed to seal off all exits. Near the facility’s main entrance, Salman tripped and was quickly subdued. Jamaluddin made his way to the back entrance, but found it locked. He then doubled back to the front and dashed out of the facility. An officer tripped him with his baton about 100m outside of the facility.

The attempted escape came barely four months after terrorist-fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari fled the Whitley Road Detention Centre. Failure to observe procedures on the part of his minders was also a reason for that escape.

The two men were brought from Queenstown Remand Prison to the Subordinate Courts for bail purposes. Jamaluddin was facing six counts of robbery with hurt and drug charges, while Salman had three charges of robbery with hurt. Both cases are unrelated. Bail was set at $30,000 for Jamaluddin and $20,000 for Salman.

Police revealed yesterday that Jamaluddin and Salman were not the only inmates in the cell. It has not been revealed how many inmates were in the cell but it is known that they stayed put during the escape attempt.

In a statement, police said they have been upgrading the lock-up area since 2003, adding extra security grilles and enhancing the CCTV system.

A security audit of all lock-ups was conducted in March. The following month, a working group was set-up to look specifically into the security of the Subordinate Courts lock-up facilities.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is now investigating the circumstances of the attempted escape to see if any officers were negligent.

Due to the escape attempt, security at the facility has been tightened to prevent a similar incident from happening. New security measures include an extra lock fixed onto the lock-up exit gates so that another officer will need to check who is leaving the area when it is unlocked. The elevator has also been secured and can only be activated with a key.

Jamaluddian and Salman are now likely to face a barrage of charges including vandalism, police battery and escaping from legal custody.

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Two teenagers charged over shooting of student at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute, Toronto

Monday, May 28, 2007

Two 17-year-old men have been arrested and charged with first degree murder over the shooting last week of Jordan Manners, a 15-year-old student at the C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute. He was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest.

They cannot be named due to limitations in the Youth Criminal Justice Act. One was arrested in a raid early on Sunday morning, the other handed himself in later the same day. Three others, two men and a woman, were also arrested in raids but released without charge.

Toronto police Staff Insp. Brian Raybould stated at a press conference Monday that the two accused knew Manners and “probably were friends” with him. He also stated that a motive is yet to be established, but the attack was not gang-related. He also said that although there had clearly been only one shooter, both men had been charged with first degree murder. Crown prosecutors announced that they will seek full length sentences for the two, as opposed to restricted sentences reserved for minors.

Lawyers for the two accused have said that they have not been told exactly what the allegations against their clients are beyond the simple fact that they were involved in the shooting. The lawyers also said that the families were “shocked and upset” by the arrests.

Police have said that the two arrests came as a result of people within the school community coming forward with information regarding the shootings. They also urged more people to come forward to help clarify what they described as a “complex” case.

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News briefs:June 30, 2006

The time is 20:00 (UTC) on June 30th, 2006, and this is Audio Wikinews News Briefs.

Contents

  • 1 Headlines
    • 1.1 Interior Ministry, Fatah offices in Gaza hit by Israeli airstrikes
    • 1.2 Palestinian PM: Israel aims to topple gov’t
    • 1.3 Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs Freitas do Amaral resigns
    • 1.4 French Parliament adopts controversial copyright bill
    • 1.5 Police crackdown on illegal tow operations in Sydney
    • 1.6 Amsterdam to open a “Chocolate Factory”
    • 1.7 Australian shot in Thailand
    • 1.8 Germany master penalties to beat Argentina to semi-final spot
    • 1.9 Ullrich and Sevilla suspended from Tour de France
  • 2 Closing statements

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