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NoneBy BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS After weeks of fear and bewilderment about the drones buzzing over parts of New York and New Jersey , U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer is urging the federal government to deploy better drone-tracking technology to identify and ultimately stop the airborne pests. The New York Democrat is calling on the Department of Homeland Security to immediately deploy special technology that identifies and tracks drones back to their landing spots, according to briefings from his office. Schumer’s calls come amid growing public concern that the federal government hasn’t offered clear explanations as to who is operating the drones, and has not stopped them. National security officials have said the drones don’t appear to be a sign of foreign interference. “There’s a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Fox News Sunday. “The answer ‘We don’t know’ is not a good enough answer.” President-elect Donald Trump posted on social media last week: “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge? I don’t think so. Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down.” Certain agencies within the Department of Homeland Security have the power to “incapacitate” drones, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “But we need those authorities expanded,” he said, without saying exactly how. The drones don’t appear to be linked to foreign governments, Mayorkas said. “We know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the Northeast. And we are vigilant in investigating this matter,” Mayorkas said. Last year, federal aviation rules began requiring certain drones to broadcast their identities. It’s not clear whether that information has been used to determine who is operating the drones swarming locations in New York and New Jersey. Mayorkas’ office didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether they’ve been able to identify drones using this capability. Schumer is calling for recently declassified radar technology to be used to help determine whether an object is a drone or a bird, identify its electronic registration, and follow it back to its landing place. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday said federal officials were sending a drone detection system to the state. “This system will support state and federal law enforcement in their investigations,” Hochul said in a statement. The governor did not immediately provide additional details, including where the system will be deployed. Dozens of mysterious nighttime flights started last month over New Jersey, raising concerns among residents and officials. Part of the worry stems from the flying objects initially being spotted near the Picatinny Arsenal, a U.S. military research and manufacturing facility and over Trump’s golf course in Bedminster. Drones are legal in New Jersey for recreational and commercial use, but they are subject to local and Federal Aviation Administration regulations and flight restrictions. Operators must be FAA certified.Mumbai: Technology companies have rejected telecom operators ' demand to bring OTT messaging channels like Meta's WhatsApp and Google RCS under the centralised blockchain system and regulate them to check spam, saying it wasn't technically possible. The telcos' call to look at anti-spam measures through the prism of regulation was flawed and overlooked the need for innovation to check the menace, they said. Instead of pressing regulators to bring apps such as WhatsApp and RCS under regulation, telecom companies should focus on investing in innovation to bring down their own compliance costs, they suggested. "Pressing the regulatory framework is not the solution to controlling spam as there is abundant proof that telecom companies have not been able to do that," a senior executive of a leading global tech company told ET. "In fact, they (telcos) are late to the party in using AI (artificial intelligence) to control spam while technology companies have been doing it for a decade." He was referring to Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea recently introducing AI/ML-based solutions to control spam messages and calls, after being pushed by the regulator. The chief executive of a communications company said telcos are arguing for regulation to counter advanced communication channels which are innovating faster and better than them. "The telecom companies have failed in a fruitful implementation of the TCCCPR (Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulations) 2018 because of price wars among themselves," said this executive. "It has been eight years, and the digital consent acquisition piece-the most important module of the regulation-is still not implemented," he added. Strategy Succession Planning Masterclass By - Nigel Penny, Global Strategy Advisor: NSP Strategy Facilitation Ltd. 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Telecom companies have been seeking "same service, same rules" for communication apps that offer calling and messaging services similar to what telcos provide. Tech companies say the reason for the telcos' demand was due to the fact that they face hefty price competition from the likes of WhatsApp and RCS which offer services at cheaper rates than SMS. Carriers argue apps can afford to provide cheaper services as they don't need to adhere to regularity responsibilities or invest in telecom infrastructure, which involve a cost. Bharti Airtel recently wrote to the telecom regulator to bring OTT platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal under the common blockchain filtering and digital consent acquisition system. But bringing WhatsApp and RCS under the decentralised blockchain system is technically and operationally non-feasible, technology experts said. The reason being that telecom and information services are not interoperable. The blockchain is designed to filter SMS headers, templates and user consent. WhatsApp Business, for example, does not operate in the same manner. "While this can be done by OTT channels operating a separate node in the blockchain, it will be an extremely chaotic situation," said the product head at a blockchain technology firm. "Imagine the complexities for businesses who need to maintain separate templates for SMSes, WhatsApp messages, RCS messages which are vastly different in form. An SMS header, for example, 'VM-HDFCBK' is not the same as a WhatsApp Business account 'HDFC Bank'. This means if telecom and OTT channels are non-interoperable, there is no practical use of bringing them on the blockchain," this person said. He added that rich media like images, pdf documents, audio, location, etc., cannot be scrubbed (or filtered) on the existing system. Nominations for ET MSME Awards are now open. The last day to apply is December 15, 2024. 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It’s time for our roundup of the biggest Pinocchios of the year. President-elect Donald Trump featured on this list for the 10th straight year. As usual with Trump, it’s hard to isolate a particular falsehood, but we focused on four — two having to do with immigration, one on tariffs and another on the unemployment rate. His running-mate, JD Vance, also landed on the list (not for the first time) for an immigration-related claim that Trump echoed in a presidential debate. In fact, five of the 12 claims below relate to illegal immigration — showing it was a potent issue in the election season. President Joe Biden merited two spots, for a false claim on the inflation rate and for a roundup of his unverified claims about his life (this is a perennial). Biden’s flip-flop on pardoning his son Hunter earned a bonus award. This list has no particular order. President-elect Donald Trump. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post “The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money [for hurricane relief]. ... They spent it all on illegal migrants. ... They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them.” — President-elect Donald Trump, Oct. 3 Trump sought to weaponize Hurricane Helene relief efforts, accusing the Biden administration of failing to provide adequate assistance. As part of his critique, he claimed there was no money available for hurricane relief because it was spent already to handle the surge of migrants at the southern border. This was false: Money was not running short, and the Biden administration did not spend FEMA disaster money on migrants. What’s even richer is that when Trump was president, he did exactly what he claimed Biden did — funding migrant programs with FEMA disaster aid. In 2019, the Trump administration, in the middle of hurricane season, told Congress that it was taking $271 million from DHS programs, including $155 million from the disaster fund, to pay for immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum seekers who had been forced to wait in Mexico. Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama). Melina Mara/The Washington Post “I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12 .... President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.” — Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama), March 7 In the centerpiece of the Republican response to State of the Union, Britt told a long story about a victim of sex trafficking who she suggested was recently abused in the United States and suffered because of President Biden’s policies. But Biden had nothing to do with the travails of Karla Jacinto Romero, later identified as the person Britt referenced in the speech. In fact, Jacinto was never trafficked to the United States; she worked in Mexican brothels during the George W. Bush administration. Vice President-elect JD Vance. Allison Robbert for The Washington Post “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” — Vice President-elect JD Vance, Sept. 9 Vance sparked one of the oddest controversies of the campaign season by falsely claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets — a tweet inspired by a false rumor on a Facebook post about migrants eating cats. His running-mate piled on during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Soon after, bomb threats repeatedly forced the evacuation of schools and government offices in the city. Amid the backlash, Vance doubled down, insisting he had raised legitimate issues that were ignored or belittled by the media. But Ohio officials said the claims of pet-eating migrants were not true. President Joe Biden. Allison Robbert for The Washington Post Inflation “was at 9 percent when I came in and it’s now down around 3 percent.” — President Joe Biden, May 14 Inflation was an albatross for Democrats in this election year. After decades of stable prices — inflation of about 2 percent a year — the sudden increase early in President Joe Biden’s term was a shock, both for consumers and policymakers. Inflation, as measured by the year-over-year percentage change in the consumer price index, spiked to a 9 percent annual rate in June 2022 — the highest level in 43 years. By Election Day, it had fallen below 3 percent, but that was not good enough for many Americans. Biden tried to explain that inflation was largely the fault of the coronavirus pandemic, not his policies, and that his administration has made strides in reducing it. But in doing so, he was sloppy in his phrasing. He flatly has said inflation was 9 percent when he became president — when it was actually 1.4 percent. Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks Oct. 1 at campaign event at Discovery World in Milwaukee. AP photo “Over 13,000, the exact number’s 13,099, convicted illegal, alien murderers are now on the loose.” — Trump, Oct. 1 Illegal immigration surged during the Biden administration, and Trump made many false claims about the issue during his campaign. This statement — which became a standard line in his speeches — was especially egregious. Trump twisted a report on the number of noncitizens with criminal convictions that were not detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make it sound like they had been released under Biden. But the data went back 40 years. Most of these killers are in some sort of detention (just not ICE), and have been since before Trump was president. President Joe Biden, with his fingers crossed, speaks to reporters Nov. 26 after being asked a question about a Gaza ceasefire, at the White House in Washington. AP photo Biden, like many politicians, likes to tell stories — stories in which he tries to connect his own life with his audiences’, and that make up an essential part of his persona. But throughout his career, Biden’s propensity to exaggerate or embellish tales about his life have led to doubts about his truthfulness. That hasn’t changed in his last year as president. He claimed “I used to drive an 18-wheeler” — not true, but an amalgam of driving a school bus in college and being a passenger on a 47,000-pound cargo truck. He said he was a list of 10 most eligible bachelors; no such list can be found. He said he was the first in his family to go to college — but evidence suggests his father did. And he claimed he was the state runner-up in scoring in high school football; he was in fifth place. Jesse Watters appears on Fox News “The Five” in New York on Oct. 10, 2019. AP photo “Tyson Foods has its eyes on a different class of workers. The company is now offering new jobs to asylum seekers in other states .... They’re firing Americans and offering perks to illegals.” — Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters, March 14 Watters put Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest meat-packer, in the spotlight. With his platform on Fox News, he generated a firestorm on the right by claiming that Tyson was firing workers in Perry, Iowa, “one of the great American suburbs,” and hiring undocumented immigrants elsewhere in the country. An investment fund that claims it invests only in companies with conservative values earned headlines by announcing it had divested its Tyson stock. But Watters misleadingly connected two unrelated events — in a textbook example of how events taken out of context can be weaponized for political purposes. FILE – Shipping containers are stacked at a port in Tianjin, China, Jan. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) “A tariff is a tax on a foreign country. That’s the way it is, whether you like it or not. A lot of people like to say it’s a tax on us. No, no, no. It’s a tax on a foreign country. It’s a tax on a country that’s ripping us off and stealing our jobs. And it’s a tax that doesn’t affect our country.” — Trump, Aug. 17 Trump has said he will impose an across-the-board tariff on all imported products. But in making the case for his policy, he repeated the false claim he made often during his first term as president — that the entire tariff is paid by a foreign country. Economists do not debate this fact; they agree that tariffs — essentially a tax on domestic consumption — are paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, which in turn pass on most or all the costs to consumers or producers who may use imported materials in their products. Even an economist recommended by the Trump campaign said a 10 percent tariff would increase prices for consumers. In this courtroom sketch, defendant Alexander Smirnov speaks Feb. 26 in Federal court in Los Angeles. William T. Robles via AP When House Republicans prepared to impeach President Biden (remember that?), the star witness was supposed to be a confidential FBI source who alleged that Biden and his son Hunter Biden had each been paid $5 million to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor and protect a Ukrainian energy company that placed Hunter on its board. The source’s allegations were discovered because of a project launched by then-Attorney General William P. Barr soon after Trump was impeached for the first time. The FBI, however, decided the claims were not worth pursuing. Then-Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) publicly released the FBI’s 2017 interview with the source, forcing the reevaluation. Investigators determined he had lied, even when given a chance to recant, and Alexander Smirnov was arrested in February when he landed in Las Vegas. The Biden impeachment effort quickly collapsed. Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump during a Jan. 21 campaign stop in Rochester, N.H. AP photo “We had the best unemployment rates ever. And they were real unemployment, not like you have today where nobody’s working and they consider it to be.” — Trump, Jan. 21 Trump rode to victory in 2024 in part because of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the economy, especially inflation. The unemployment rate, however, was a bright spot — the lowest numbers in 70 years. So Trump reached back to the playbook he used in the 2016 election, when the economy was also on an upswing — suggesting the unemployment numbers are fake. That was false. And naturally he falsely claimed that he had the best unemployment rate ever — when in fact Biden beat him. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania). Melina Mara/The Washington Post “McCormick’s promised the richest people in America a massive tax break. To pay for it, he’s made clear he’ll slash your Medicare and Social Security and cut Medicaid for nursing home care.” — Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania), Oct. 10 The Senate race between Casey, the incumbent, and former hedge fund manager Dave McCormick was one of the closest in the nation. In an ad, Casey walked out of a bank vault as he complained that McCormick’s “billionaire buddies” have spent $150 million attacking him. Then he did something unusual — he directly attacked McCormick as having “made clear he’ll slash your Medicare and Social Security and cut Medicaid for nursing home care.” Usually, negative ads use voice-overs or text to make incendiary claims as a way to shield the candidate from possible fact checks. McCormick had said no such thing, and Casey’s campaign had no evidence to back up the claim. The ad did not seem to help Casey, who lost the race by about 15,000 votes out of 7 million cast. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California). Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post “Something I’ve heard that doesn’t seem to be being covered are the Epstein files. These files were released. And, like, Donald Trump is sort of all over this.” — Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California), July 9 Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado unsealed nearly 200 pages of grand jury testimony related to the 2006 Florida case involving disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was alleged to have raped teenage girls. Trump’s name was not mentioned in any of the transcripts, but that did not stop Lieu from relying on dubious social media posts to claim that there was something about Trump in the documents. “One of the highest trending hashtags on Twitter right now is about Trump and Epstein,” he told reporters. But when we explored what was available in the public record, we found no credible allegation had emerged to connect Trump to any of Epstein’s crimes. President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden walk Nov. 29 in downtown Nantucket Mass. AP photo On June 13, Biden was emphatic: “I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter ... I’m not going to do anything. I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that. And I will not pardon him.” Less than six months later, there was the flip-flop: The president not only pardoned his son for his conviction on three felony gun charges, three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses — he issued a sweeping pardon that absolved Hunter Biden of any possible federal crimes he might have committed between 2014 and 2024. As we reported, the arguments he marshaled in defense of a pardon could have been made back when he firmly stated that he would not pardon his son. He also never addressed the fact that he once pledged not to pardon his son — a clear but unacknowledged “flip-flop” from a previously held position. We invite you to add your comments. We encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas and information on this website. By joining the conversation, you are agreeing to our commenting policy and terms of use . More information is found on our FAQs . You can modify your screen name here . 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US agencies should use advanced technology to identify mysterious drones, Schumer says
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