Huawei dilemma
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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/07/business/huawei-russia-china-splinternet-intl/index.html
2019-06-07 07:30:00Z
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James Griffiths is a Senior Producer for CNN International and author of "The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet."
Some of the 1.8 tonnes of methamphetamine hidden in speakers shipped from Thailand is shown after it was seized by Australian Border Force on Friday. (Australian Federal Police via AP)
MELBOURNE: Australian officials have seized the nation's largest haul of methamphetamine at the Melbourne waterfront in a shipment of almost 1.8 tonnes of the illicit drug hidden in stereo speakers shipped from Bangkok, authorities said on Friday.
In total, 1.7 tonnes of the drug in a form known as crystal meth or ice and 37kg of heroin was seized in the recent shipment, Australian Border Force said in a statement. The drugs had an estimated street value of A$1.2 billion ($835m) and A$19 million ($13 million) respectively, the statement said.
Police have yet to make an arrest, the statement said.
Australia is being increasingly targeted by international drug cartels because of the relatively high prices Australians are prepared to pay for illicit drugs. Illicit drugs other than cannabis had been seen as a problem of large cities, but ice is now having a devastating effect on regional and rural communities.
Australian Border Force Regional Commander Craig Palmer said the record detection would have a significant impact on the drug supply in Victoria state.
"Without the sophisticated targeting and detection capabilities of the ABF, these drugs would have made it to the streets of Melbourne and beyond,'' Mr Palmer said.
"This is the largest meth bust we've ever seen in this country and demonstrates not only the brazen nature of those involved in this criminal activity, but the resolve of the ABF in Victoria and around the country to stop these imports,'' he added.
The largest naval, air and land operation in history occurred 75 years ago. D-Day, as it is simply known today, was just one part of the larger Operation Overlord, the codename for the Battle of Normandy. While Allied airborne forces parachuted into drop zones across northern France, ground troops landed on five assault beaches – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The goal was to open up a second front to relieve pressure on the Soviet Union and also lead to the liberation of France and Western Europe. For the first time since 1940, the Allies would bring the fight back to Nazi Germany in Northern Europe.
When Allied forces landed on the Normandy coast as part of Operation Neptune their success hinged on several technological innovations. This isn't to say that the bravery of those involved should be understated, but without some key new technologies, the invasion may not have succeeded.
WEATHER TO GO
Past amphibious landings left a lot to chance, but everything from the location to land to the timing was based on scientific research.
"An interesting point about the technologies used by the Allied forces during D-Day is how closely their development mirrors approaches used today," Charles King, technology analyst for Pund-IT, told Fox News. "There were formal projects led by trained scientists and researchers, such as the tide prediction mechanism created by British mathematician Arthur Thomas Doodson, which was used to identify the precise days/times that the H-Hour landings for D-Day should take place."
D-DAY DECEPTION: HOW PHANTOM ARMIES AND FAKE INFORMATION HELPED WIN THE BATTLE OF NORMANDY
Doodson had been working since 1942 to determine the ideal time for a landing, while Allied planners also consulted with meteorologists in the days and even hours leading up to invasion to make a determination on the weather conditions. O
n June 4 Group Captain James Stagg, the chief meteorological officer, who was working with data from weather stations in Canada, Greenland and Iceland, as well as from weather ships in and flights over the Atlantic, called for a last-minute delay. Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed and D-Day was pushed back a day.
German forecasters believed stormy conditions wouldn't weaken for at least a week. As a result, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who had been tasked with defending the French coast, returned home to Germany for his wife's birthday.
The weather wasn't ideal on June 6, resulting in Allied paratroopers landing miles off target while rough seas caused some landing craft to capsize, but the Germans were caught off guard!
DELIVERING THE TROOPS
Anyone who has seen “Saving Private Ryan,” knows that the Allied soldiers didn't arrive at a port in France. Without a port facility, the Allies had to rely on a variety of landing craft and one of the most important was the LCVP (landing craft, vehicle, personnel), more commonly known as the "Higgins Boat" after its designer Andrew Higgins. Based on boats made for operating in swamps and marshes, and made primarily of plywood, the LCVP could operate in shallow water and carry around 36 men ashore.
The boat's importance to the success of D-Day has earned it a place in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
D-DAY'S INGENIOUS TACTICS IN PICTURES: FROM INFLATABLE TANKS TO 'GHOST' SOLDIERS
"The LCVP could operate in just 18-inches of water, and that made it flexible," Mike Oister, CEO of the National Inventors Hall of Fame told Fox News. "It wasn't just the design but Higgins' ability to produce the needed boats, and he did so in New Orleans. Higgins was aggressive and took on the larger shipbuilding companies in Baltimore and along the East Coast, and during the war, he relied on a fully integrated workforce of 30,000 people. That just wasn't happening at the time."
The Higgins Boats were vitally important in other invasions, notably across the Pacific. His contribution was noted years later by Eisenhower, according to Pund-IT's King. "Higgins produced 23,398 LCVPs during World War II, and in 1964 Eisenhower said, 'Andrew Higgins is the man who won the war for us’," King explained.
In addition to the beach landings, another 15,000 airborne troops played a major role in flanking the Germans and helped the amphibious landing to form a beachhead on the shore. Most of these men parachuted in, but more than 1,000 landed in gliders also made of plywood and fabric! The Horsa gliders, which were first produced in 1942, could deliver heavier equipment that couldn't be dropped via parachute but it was a rough ride for those onboard.
"The Allies had looked at how the Germans had used gliders earlier in the war, but even at D-Day it was a new and unfounded technology," said military history consultant Captain Dale Dye, USMC (retired).
D-DAY 1944: NAVY BATTLESHIP 16-INCH GUNS BOMBARDED NAZIS AT OMAHA BEACH
"It wasn't perfect either, there were too many wrecks and too many casualties, but the Allies knew they had to get masses of troops inland," Dye told Fox News. "Another division of paratroopers wasn't an option, so it meant men had to go by glider. It wasn't easy, they had to survive the crash and then cobble together as a unit and get in the fight."
SUPPLY AND BREAKOUT
Getting the troops to Normandy and establishing a beachhead was quite literally just half the battle. Supplying those soldiers without a port took a considerable effort and that again is where innovation and ingenuity played a major role.
The British had learned valuable lessons a generation earlier in the First World War when it found supplying the troops at Gallipoli on the Turkish coast was difficult, to say the least.
As the Allies knew that it was unlikely that a harbor would be captured quickly in France – not to mention the fact that the Germans were expected to destroy any harbor facilities before they could be captured – the Allies opted to bring a harbor with them. The result was the Mulberry Harbours, which were created by sinking outdated ships – dubbed "Corncobs" – and by installing large concrete structures or "Phoenixes." From these floating roadways and piers – dubbed "Whales" – a type of pier was created.
"There were lessons from Gallipoli and Eisenhower certainly understood that the army needed to be supplied quickly," said Dye.
However, for all the hype, the artificial harbor really didn't live up to the job as expected. Many historians have said it was a success but that the efforts could have been used elsewhere.
"The harbors are overrated for their impact on the invasion," said military historian John Coyne McManus, professor of military history at Missouri University of Science and Technology and author of “The Dead and Those about to Die: D-Day: the Big Red One at Omaha Beach.”
"The Allies were better at supplying the army on the beaches and moving inland," McManus told Fox News. "Of bigger importance was the Allied efforts to find beaches that would support tanks and other heavy vehicles."
HISTORY OF THE 'JEEP' IN PICTURES
The other technology created for the eventual breakout of Normandy was PLUTO (Pipe-Lines Under The Ocean), which was developed by Arthur Hartley, chief engineer of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The goal was to lay a pipeline and pump the necessary fuel to keep the tanks and trucks moving, and while it has remained a great feat of military engineering the performance of PLUTO was disappointing. It only carried about 150 imperial barrels of gasoline per day – a fraction of what the Allied war effort required.
"The majority of the fuel came off ships," explained McManus.
A far bigger contribution to the Battle for Normandy was actually something not considered by the planners but showed true innovation. It was the medal "tusks" fitted to the Allied tanks, which allowed the vehicles to cut through the French hedgerows or “bocage,” the earth dikes that were covered with tangled hedges and bushes.
"The hedgerows provided an ideal fortification for the Germans and this created a layer of defense that wasn't considered in the planning stages," McManus told Fox News. "It provided an ideal terrain for the defenders."
American Sergeant Curtis. G. Culin came up with a solution, which was to put the steel teeth or tusks on the front of the tanks. It began with little more than scrap steel welded to the front of the tank, but it was enough to break through the hedgerows.
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"It was just the type of technology that was developed on the fly," said Dye. "The Americans and British were able to innovate like that. They might not have always seen what they needed, but they found a solution. That's how we won not only in the landings, but eventually all the way to Germany."
A court in Germany has handed life sentence to a nurse, believed to be the most prolific serial killer in the country's post-war history, for the "unfathomable" crime of murdering 85 patients in his care.
Judge Sebastian Buehrmann on Thursday called Niels Hoegel's killing spree "incomprehensible" and acknowledged the trial left many families with painful unanswered questions.
The 42-year-old murdered patients, selected at random, with lethal injections between 2000 and 2005, when another nurse caught him in the act of injecting medication that had not been prescribed into a patient.
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The 85 victims Hoegel was convicted of murdering ranged in age from 34 to 96. He was acquitted on 15 counts for lack of evidence.
Hoegel has already spent a decade in prison following a previous life sentence he received for six other murders.
The exhumation and autopsy of more than 130 bodies were necessary to build the case for the prosecution.
Police suspect that Hoegel's final death toll may be more than 200.
But the court was unable to say for sure because of gaps in Hoegel's memory and because many likely victims were cremated before autopsies could be performed.
Buehrmann of the regional court in the northern city of Oldenburg said the number of deaths at Hoegel's hands "surpasses human imagination".
"Your guilt is unfathomable," he told the defendant. "Sometimes one's worst nightmares fail to capture the truth."
He expressed regret that the court had not been "fully able to lift the fog" for loved ones about other likely victims.
On the final day of hearings on Wednesday, Hoegel asked his victims' families for forgiveness for his "horrible acts".
"I would like to sincerely apologise for everything I did to you over the course of years," he said.
Caught in 2005 while injecting an unprescribed medication into a patient in Delmenhorst, Hoegel was sentenced in 2008 to seven years in prison for attempted murder.
A second trial followed in 2014-2015 under pressure from alleged victims' families.
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He was found guilty of murder and attempted murder of five other victims and given the maximum sentence of life.
At the start of the third trial in October, Buehrmann said the court aimed to establish the full scope of the killing that was allowed to go unchecked for years.
"It is like a house with dark rooms - we want to bring light into the darkness," he said.
Christian Marbach, whose grandfather was killed by Hoegel and who has served as a victims' representative, welcomed the "big and clear verdict".
But he noted that many more families hoped they would find closure from the trial with a definitive explanation as to what happened to their loved ones.
"It can't satisfy us entirely. It is what was legally possible," he said.
Marbach said the families would now file suit against the two hospitals where Hoegel killed patients.
"We're finished with the defendant. Now we can bring those people to justice who made his crimes possible," he said.
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After admitting on the first day of testimony to killing 100 patients in his care, Hoegel later revised his statement.
He now says he committed 43 murders but denies five others.
For the remaining 52 cases examined by the court, he says he cannot remember whether he "manipulated" his victims - his term for administering the deadly injections.
OLDENBURG, Germany — The former nurse’s crimes were “incomprehensible,” a German judge told the court on Thursday, reaching his arms across the breadth of the bench as if to capture in one gesture what he sensed his words had failed to define — the enormity of murdering 85 patients who had been placed in the care of the nurse but instead had found death.
“Your guilt is so large that one can’t explain it,” the presiding judge, Sebastian Bührmann, told the nurse, Niels Höge, in a courtroom packed with the relatives of the 100 patients whose deaths he was charged with orchestrating. “It is so large, you can’t show it.”
Mr. Högel is believed to be the most prolific serial killer in peacetime Germany, and perhaps the world. His trial in the 85 murders sought to provide a measure of comfort and answers to some of the victims’ families, more than a decade after they died. His conviction on Thursday was the third for the nurse.
[Read our previous coverage: Hundreds of Bodies; One Nurse]
Officials suspect Mr. Högel may have killed as many as 300 patients while working at two clinics in northern Germany between 2000 and 2005. He was accused of administering overdoses of drugs that caused cardiac arrest so that he could try to revive patients heroically. His colleagues called him “Resuscitation Rambo.”
In its sentencing, the court barred Mr. Högel from working as a nurse, emergency medical responder or any other job providing care. “We want to be sure that you never, ever again are able to work in such a job,” the judge said.
From the trial’s opening in October, Judge Bührmann had stressed that the purpose went beyond trying to determine guilt: It was to try to find answers to how and why the patients had died. But he acknowledged that in 15 cases, the court had failed to find enough evidence to support murder convictions.
“Despite all of our attempts, we could only lift part of the fog that hangs this trial,” he said. “That fills us with a certain sadness.”
Throughout the more than 90 minutes that the judge read out the sentencing, he repeatedly and directly addressed Mr. Högel. The former nurse, dressed in a black T-shirt and wearing a thick chain necklace, sat with his head resting in the palm of his right hand, listening passively.
“The human ability to understand capitulates when faced with the sheer number of deaths, week for week, month for month, year for year,” Judge Bührmann said. In the early days of the trial, going through the names of each patient, their medical records and the details of how and when they had died left him feeling “like a bookkeeper of death,” he said.
Mr. Högel had confessed to killing 43 his patients, and spent the early days of the trial going through the medical files of each of the 100 patients with the judge. For most of the others he told the court that he couldn’t remember, or couldn’t rule out, murdering the patients. He denied five charges outright.
[Read: A doctor in Ohio was charged with killing 25 people over four years.]
The court, citing his past behavior and expert testimony, questioned whether Mr. Högel’s statements had been truthful. “The most difficult part was evaluating what you said,” the judge told him, citing specific cases where written evidence contradicted the former nurse’s testimony. “You didn’t always tell the truth, and that makes it so difficult,” the judge said.
Under German law, a person convicted of murder can be sentenced only to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years, depending on the severity of the crime. Mr. Högel is already serving a life sentence for other murders, and the judge made clear that his record would ensure that he would not be eligible for early parole.
Citing the United States justice system, where for each death a life sentence is handed down, the judge said that even if Mr. Högel were to serve 15 years for each of the 85 murders, it would add up to 1,275 years in prison. “That is an indication of what I call incomprehensible,” he said.
The judge also said that Mr. Högel’s “complex bundle of motives” was also proving challenging to understand. He cited psychologist testimony and assessments that the former nurse was a narcissist who liked to cast himself as a hero. “You lacked empathy and depersonalized those whose deaths you caused,” Judge Bührmann said.
Prosecutors had sought to charge Mr. Högel with 97 murders, but the defense argued that only 55 cases had been proved beyond a doubt. The defense said that Mr. Högel should be found guilty of attempted murder in 14 cases and acquitted of an additional 31.
The verdict can be appealed, but Mr. Högel’s defense team did not indicated whether they would do so.
The true number of murders may never be known. Reluctance on the part of the directors of the first hospital where he worked, in Oldenburg, Germany, to alert authorities to their suspicions, followed by the reluctance of previous state prosectors to take up the case once the second hospital did alert them, cost precious time and evidence.
“That was time we can’t get back,” Judge Bührmann said. “Years passed and evidence was lost.” Many witnesses couldn’t remember, he added, while others deliberately sought to hide information.
In his ruling, the judge condemned the director of the main Oldenburg hospital by name for failing to take action that could have stopped Mr. Högel and saved lives. Instead, the hospital moved him first to a different ward, then wrote him a glowing recommendation and let him go. Weeks later, he took his next job in a hospital in nearby Delmenhorst, about 20 miles away. There, he continued killing.
Judge Bührmann ordered eight of Mr. Högel’s former colleagues to be investigated on perjury because of suspicion they had lied to the court or had withheld evidence in the most recent trial. Two doctors and two head nurses from the Delmenhorst hospital have been charged with manslaughter, and the authorities are investigating other hospital employees, also from Oldenburg. Mr. Högel could be called to testify in those trials.
After closing arguments on Wednesday, Mr. Högel read a prepared apology to the packed courtroom. “I would like to sincerely apologize for what I have done to each and every one of you,” he said.
For family members, his attempt at an apology fell flat. “He’s a liar through and through,” said Christian Marbach, whose grandfather was found to be a victim of Mr. Högel in a previous trial and had followed the recent proceedings.
More important, he said, is that other criminal investigations against the doctors and head nurses from the clinics where Mr. Högel worked and was allowed to kill would now be allowed to proceed.
“The wall of silence has been broken,” Mr. Marbach said. “Now it is very important that those who were in positions of power be brought to justice.”
President Trump’s speech on Thursday honoring the brave Allied fighters who "stood in the fires of hell" on the 75th anniversary of D-Day drew unexpected acclaim from two of his biggest mainstream media critics: CNN’s Jim Acosta and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.
“This is perhaps the most on-message moment of Donald Trump’s presidency today. We were all wondering if he would veer from his remarks, go off of his script but he stayed on script, stayed on message and, I think, rose to the moment,” Acosta said on CNN immediately following the speech.
The CNN White House reporter is often combative with Trump and members of his administration but praised Trump’s remark that the men who stormed the beach are among the greatest Americans who have ever lived.
“That could not be more of a fact check true,” Acosta said. “It was really one of those moments that Donald Trump needed to rise to in order to, I think, walk away from the cemetery, walk away from this hallowed ground and have people back at home saying, ‘You know what, no matter what I think about the current president of the United States, he said the right thing at Normandy. He did the right thing at Normandy.’”
PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SPEECH AT 75TH D-DAY ANNIVERSARY IN NORMANDY IN FULL
Acosta then said Trump “hit all of the right moments” when paying respect to the D-Day heroes.
Over on MSNBC, recurrent Trump critic Scarborough echoed Acosta’s thoughts.
“[Trump] delivered what, again, I believe is the strongest speech of his presidency,” Scarborough said, noting that it was a “beautiful moment” when Trump acknowledged that many of the troops feel the “heroes were the ones that never came back” but the survivors formed a remarkable generation.
Viewers on the pair of liberal networks were presumably shocked, as Acosta and Scarborough typically condemn Trump’s every step. Acosta even has a book coming out titled, “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America,” which is billed as “an explosive, first-hand account of the dangers [Acosta] faces reporting on the current White House while fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth” as “public enemy number one.”
Acosta, who has raised eyebrows inside CNN for blurring the line between reporter and pundit, was recently named the media member who “hates” Trump the most by “Unmasked — Big Media's War Against Trump” authors L. Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham of the Media Research Center.
“He would proudly wear the moniker of the face of the Resistance if it was bestowed on him by us, but we won’t do that. No man in the world of journalism has made a mockery of his profession quite like this man,” Bozell and Graham wrote.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” duo Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski share the second spot on the list of media members who clearly loathe the president. The married co-hosts were famously tight with Trump before eventually turning on him. They now criticize the president on a regular basis, but Scarborough had nothing but positive remarks about Trump’s D-Day speech.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.