At this week's press conference a question - which appeared to be planted - was asked about the release of intellectual property on vaccines.
Mr Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, who will, with our WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus both had extensive replies on hand, indicating that they were not taken by surprise. There is no criticism of that. However, their replies were focussed on two issues - neither of which were public safety or, ironically, intellectual property.
27 year old Jared Trent Atkins, of Phoenix, Arizona, USA used Iridium-192 in his work where it was used, in sealed capsules, to examine underground pipes. For reasons not made public, he became suicidal and stole some of the material. But first he committed several acts of violence unrelated to the theft of the material. All signs were that he was setting up a situation where he could invite "suicide by cop," as the USA entertainingly puts it. There is nothing entertaining about the spiral of behaviour in this case.
The USA's Securities and Exchange Commission has issued proceedings against Jose Luis Casero Sanchez alleging insider trading. That's not the interesting stuff.
Tyrome Lewis, who organised and led a gang with the media-nickname "the Oxy-Bandits" that committed 15 armed robberies of independent “mom-and-pop” pharmacies throughout Southern California, has been sentenced to 240 months in federal prison. He was convicted earlier this year and sentenced yesterday.
The USA's Securities and Investment Commission has issued proceedings against Sky Group USA LLC, a payday loan company based in Miami, and its CEO, Efrain Betancourt, Jr. alleging fraud in the issue of some USD66 million of promissory notes, primarily within the Venezuelan community in what the SEC calls "affinity fraud" but which we have for several decades referred to as "intra-community fraud."
It is becoming increasingly clear that my earlier argument that, if F1 is serious about providing the closest racing and the best spectacle, it really should abandon the massive shift in car design that is, now, only eight (or less) races away. The new qualifying format creates ample opportunity for the grid to be turned on its head and that helps but, as the race in Zandvoort showed, the fact that the lower budget teams have now had the chance to catch up with the big spenders has brought most of the pack into contention, as McLaren's historic first and second demonstrated in Monza.
It's obvious as one reads around the 'net that while the hardware and software cartels have decided that floppy disks are obsolete, that is not how many users see it. What happens when your backups of old files are on floppies that you've not looked at for 20 years because you haven't needed them in that time?
