Feb. 18, 2013 — Miniature bibles that flew to the moon more than 40 years ago are now at the center of a custody dispute between the author who wrote about their history and the state caring for the reverend who was behind their creation.
The two-year legal battle, which became public on Sunday (Feb. 17) through the reporting of the Houston Chronicle, began in 2010 when the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS) intervened in a Dallas auction to prevent Oklahoma Christian author Carol Mersch from selling one of the so-called “lunar bibles” at auction. . . . [Full Story]
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently established a centralized training office, centralizing training throughout the organization and placing a supervisor from the air marshals in charge of the new office.
In so doing, FAMS officially combined with the TSA Office of Law Enforcement and stood up three new divisions: the Flight Operations Division, the Security Services and Assessments Division and the Field Operations Division. FAMS moved non-law-enforcement functions such as accounting, information technology and training to its parent agency, eliminating its former directorates for Administrative and Technical Services and Training and Workforce Programs.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), ranking member of the subcommittee, charged that the centralized training office should tackle problems highlighted in a recent report by the inspector general (IG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) entitled Allegations of Misconduct and Illegal Discrimination and Retaliation in the Federal Air Marshal Service.
Jackson Lee also promoted a bill (HR 71) she introduced, the FAMS Augmentation Act, to increase the number of air marshals in service. The bill would add another 1,750 air marshals to the current level.[Full story]
U.S. and European regulators approved Google Inc’s $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc and said they would keep a sharp eye on the web search giant to ensure patents critical to the telecommunications industry would be licensed at fair prices. [more]
The government announced Wednesday that ”further investment cannot be justified at this time” to help LightSquared gain approval for its wireless broadband system and new GPS standards may be coming, Inside GNSS reported. The words were delivered by U.S. deputy Secretary of Transportation John Porcari in an aviation subcommittee hearing. Porcari concluded that LightSquared’s most recent proposals were “simply not practical.” LightSquared on Tuesday had asked the FCC to create technical standards that could protect GPS receivers from interference in the case that neighboring spectrums, such as those eyed by LightSquared, were utilized. And there may be some movement in that direction, perhaps not in the way LightSquared had hoped. [more]
Families of those who died [from the shipwrecked luxury cruise liner off Costa Concordia on January 13, 2012] are likely to sue the ship’s operator, Costa Crociere and its corporate parent, Miami-based Carnival Corporation, for all the economic consequences and grief that the death of a loved one can cause. Thousands of other people who were among the approximately 4,200 passengers and crew aboard the ship, might also sue – not for actually dying, but for being scared to death.
There’s some precedent for this in aviation law, which grew up alongside maritime law and then flew past it as people crossed oceans by plane, rather than on seafaring vessels. In one noteworthy case that might help the Costa shipwreck survivors, 13 American Airlines passengers recovered $150,000 apiece for 28 seconds of terror during severe turbulence on a 1995 flight. [more]
Telecommunications providers Digicel Jamaica Limited and Oceanic Digital have filed an application in the Supreme Court challenging the jurisdiction of the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) in its legal attempt to roll back the Digicel-Claro deal.
Digicel is seeking a separate trial for the court to decide whether the Fair Competition Act applies to the transactions effected by the agreement which is the subject of the proceedings.
It is also asking the court to decide whether the FTC has jurisdiction in relation to the transaction struck with the owners of Claro for the Jamaican assets. The FTC has taken Digicel and Oceanic Digital Jamaica Limited, trading as Claro, to court over the acquisition. [Full story]
Northrop Grumman’s X-47B drone may represent “a major qualitative change in the conduct of hostilities” according to the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which reports to the Geneva Conventions. The X-47B is entering tests to see it land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, autonomously — without in-cockpit or remote-pilot input. That sort of capability is only a precursor to what’s coming. According to an Air Force report (PDF), the improvements in drone technology will eventually give drones the capacity to make life-or-death decisions while engaged in battle. And “increasingly humans will no longer be ‘in the loop’ but rather ‘on the loop.’” And that, according to ICRC president Jacob Kellenberger, may challenge international law. [more]
The Ministry of Communications Technology has released a draft of the national Information and Communications Technology (ICT) policy for the country as it called on all stakeholders of the Ministry and members of the public to review the draft policy and make contributions.
Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, had on August 25, 2011, set up an adhoc committee to harmonise all the various policies for the different sectors in the ICT industry, which includes Telecommunications, Broadcasting, Information Technology and Postal Services.
The harmonised ICT policy, when implemented, is expected to address appropriate policies, legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks as well as a converged ICT regulatory agency. It will address affordable and reliable access to ICT, investment in ICT, research and development in ICT, legislations in cybercrimes, ethical and moral conduct, privacy, copyrights, intellectual property rights, piracy and e-transactions. [Full story]
In the FY 2012 consolidated spending act (Public Law 112-074) signed by President Barack Obama last Friday, TSA received about $7.85 billion, up $153 million from 2011. TSA and US Customs and Border Protection, perhaps two of the three most visible DHS agencies along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, both received increases although the total DHS budget dropped to $39.6 billion in base discretionary funding in FY 2012, down about $111 million from last year. [more]
