Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Britain's House of Commons votes to legalize gay marriage in England, Wales

End Of Days News

Campaigners demonstrate for a "yes" vote to allow gay marriage, as they protest outside Parliament in London February 5, 2013 (Reuters / Luke MacGregor)

Britain's House of Commons has voted to legalize gay marriage in England and Wales. British MPs approved the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill by 366 votes to 161.
The bill will move onto the House of Lords, where it is expected to face opposition.
Several Tory MPs spoke out against the bill, which has caused tensions within the party. The Labour and Liberal Democrat leaderships backed the bill.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Islam could be dominant UK religion in 10 years – census analysis

End Of Days News

Islam could be dominant UK religion in 10 years – census analysis


 Shiite Muslims gather in Hyde Park in West London to mark the final day of Ashura. (AFP Photo/Shaun Curry)
A new analysis of the 2011 census by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the number of Christians was falling 50 per cent faster than had previously been thought. Earlier analysis of the statistics showed only a 15 per cent decline, but the ONS found that this figure had been beefed up by 1.2 million foreign-born Christians.One in 10 people under 25 are Muslim, while Christianity is in decline, the 2011 UK census reveals. An explosion in the Muslim population and an aging Christian demographic could mean Islam will be the dominant religion in the UK in 10 years.
Furthermore, the re-analysis showed that the majority of Christians were over the age of 60 and for the first time less than half of young people describe themselves as Christian. As a result the ONS has calculated that in a decade only a minority will classify themselves as Christians in England. Christianity is still the dominant religion in the UK with over 50 per cent of the population regarding themselves as believers.

However, this may be set to change as the British Muslim population has surged dramatically over the past 15 years, increasing by 75 per cent in England and Wales. The 2011 census puts the Muslim population of the UK at around 5 per cent, a total that has been boosted by around 600,000 Muslim immigrants who have arrived in the UK over the past decade.

Monday, February 4, 2013

UK deploys toy-sized spy drones in Afghanistan

End Of Days News

PD-100 PRS (Image from proxdynamics.com)
 
British troops in Afghanistan are now using 10-centimeter-long 16-gram spy helicopters to survey Taliban firing spots. The UK Defense Ministry plans to buy 160 of the drones under a contract worth more than $31 million.
­The remote-controlled PD-100 PRS aircraft, dubbed the Black Hornet, is produced by Norwegian designer Prox Dynamics. The drone is a traditional single-rotor helicopter, scaled down to the size of a toy. British troops use the drones for reconnaissance missions, sending them ahead to inspect enemy positions.

Each drone is equipped with a tiny tillable camera, a GPS coordinate receiver and an onboard autopilot system complete with gyros, accelerometers and pressure sensors, which keeps it stable in flight against winds as strong as 10 knots, according to reviews. The tiny aircraft is agile enough to fly inside compounds, and is quiet enough not to attract unwanted attention. If detected, the drones are cheap enough to be considered expendable.

The auto-pilot either follows a preprogrammed flight plan or receives commands from a manual control station, which is about the size of a large smartphone. The drone's camera can feed compressed video or still images to an operator up to a kilometer away, and its rechargeable battery provides power for about 30 minutes of flight.

In addition to the drone and the controller, each system comes with a ground base station, which houses the operating system, main electronics, internal batteries and chargers. It also protects the drone while being transported. The weight of the entire kit is about a kilogram, easily portable in the field.
PD-100 PRS (Image from proxdynamics.com)
PD-100 PRS (Image from proxdynamics.com)
 
­Prox Dynamics started working on the nano-drone in 2008, and released a video of the first prototype in flight a year later. The manufacturer initially planned for it to be put to civilian use, to scout sites of natural or man-made disasters for survivors and provide intel to rescue teams. A marketable version of the Black Hornet was first presented at the Counter Terrorist Expo in London in April 2012.

The British Ministry of Defense announced last November that it was awarding Prox Dynamics a contract to supply the drones to its troops in Afghanistan. The initial contract is worth about $4 million, but will likely be expanded to more than $31 million.