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An airliner came within just 80ft of colliding with a quadcopter drone after it was 'deliberately flown' at the passenger plane as it flew over Essex, an official report reveals. The 74-seater aeroplane was travelling over Southend when the pilot spotted the remote-controlled quadcopter 'very close' to the right wing-tip. An investigation launched into the incident recorded the risk of collision as 'high', in what is believed to be the first ever near-miss between a passenger plane and a drone in the UK.

I am staying in Aschaffenburg, Germany on business with a car and a 3-day weekend coming up. I am looking for suggestions on interesting things to do within a 60-90 minute driving range in any direction. Last time we had enough time off we planned on Heidelberg one day then Strausborg, France the next. Both were 2.5-3 hour drives. We were so burnt out after Heidelberg that we never made the trip to France the next day. So this time I'm trying to keep it a bit closer. I know Aschaffenburg had a large military presence for many years so...

'F*** You Chinatown': Guide Stuns A Bus Load Of Tourists With A Racist Tirade In San Francisco's Famous Asian District Tour guide launched into a racist rant about San Francisco's Chinatown She warned people against moving to the area saying it's 'a horrible place' German tourist filmed the expletive-laden tirade and put it on YouTube Guide said: 'F*** your noise, f*** your parades, f*** your dragons, f*** this' By JENNY AWFORD 23 October 2014 A tour guide stunned a bus load of tourists when she launched into a racist tirade about San Francisco's Chinatown on her last day of the...

Here’s a post from the AMSAT-UK high altitude balloon blog. It’s a great story about a balloon cruising at about 12km above the Earth completing its sixth circumnavigation of the planet. That post is from October 4th, and two weeks later the balloon is still going strong. Right now it’s over the Baltic heading into Russia with no sign of stopping or popping any time soon. The balloon was launched July 12, 2014 from Silverstone, UK. In the 100 days since then, this balloon has covered 144168 kilometers and has crossed its launching longitude six times. Even if this balloon...

... James had been boasting for days on Twitter about obtaining drugs, and alluded to sessions 'taking blow' with his 24-year-old wife. On Sunday, Mr Gaskell wrote on Twitter: 'One prescription in India (after you have told the doctor what to write) will take you faaaaaar...' Later the same day, he sent another boastful message, writing: 'Codeine under the counter here. With Valium, Xanax and Lyrica. Winning.' The first pictures taken inside their room at Hotel Maya show strips of coloured capsules next to their bodies as they lay slumped on the bed. ... 'In India I have eaten an...

Any Freepers preparing to retire in the next 5 to 10 years? What are you plans? What are you doing to get ready to enter the next level of your life? I'm considering retiring in 3 - 5 years and I feel like I don't have all my ducks in a row. Know what I mean? I'm not asking about financial advise, but would like to know what one should do to be ready to sleep in the first day of retirement.

In February 2014, while promoting his World War Two film, The Monuments Men, Hollywood A-List actor George Clooney declared that Britain should send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece. Despite claiming they came from the Pantheon in Rome rather than the Parthenon in Athens (and also that they had been taken by Lord "Eljin"), he felt that returning them was now appropriate. This was fiercely controversial territory. However, once the furore had died down, most people wrote it off as a kooky PR stunt. Until last week, when it emerged that George Clooney’s new wife, Amal Clooney, a lawyer specialising...

Link only. This will put a smile on your face for sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK-T_t166TY&feature=youtu.be

Because the technologies required to land large payloads on Mars are significantly different than those used here on Earth, investment in these technologies is critical,” said NASA’s Principal Investigator for NASA’s Propulsive Descent Technologies (PDT) project Robert Braun. “This is the first high-fidelity data set of a rocket system firing into its direction of travel while traveling at supersonic speeds in Mars-relevant conditions. Analysis of this unique data set will enable system engineers to extract important lessons for the application and infusion of supersonic retro-propulsion into future NASA missions.” While NASA and other organizations have researched similar technologies – no...

We took a hacker to a café and, in 20 minutes, he knew where everyone else was born, what schools they attended, and the last five things they googled. In his backpack, Wouter Slotboom, 34, carries around a small black device, slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, with an antenna on it. I meet Wouter by chance at a random cafe in the center of Amsterdam. It is a sunny day and almost all the tables are occupied. Some people talk, others are working on their laptops or playing with their smartphones. Wouter removes his laptop from his backpack,...

Doctors didn't have much of a medical history to help them unwrap the cause of death of their oldest patient, a 2,100-year-old female mummy... Doctors performed a CT scan on the mummy Oct. 10 to come up with the working diagnosis. Relying on the scans, they reviewed her bone structure, size and teeth. They compared their findings to X-rays that were taken of the mummy more than 40 years ago. The older scans had initially led doctors to believe the mummy was somewhere between the age of 4 and 9, and that she had died of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis had been...

Conventional estimates for the collapse of the Aegean civilization may be incorrect by up to a century, according to new radiocarbon analyses. While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BCE, this latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier. Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece, to be radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4% accuracy using Bayesian statistical methodology at the University of Oxford and the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg, Germany. 'Until very recently...

More than 1,500 years after its demise, the Roman Empire remains a vibrant part of modern-day Trier. Near the borders of France, Luxembourg and Belgium, today’s city of 105,000 was once the administrative capital of the Western Roman Empire and with its monolithic architecture became known as Roma Segunda — the Second Rome. The Romans brought to Trier a high standard of living, exquisite artwork and their famed architectural and engineering skills. In northern Europe, on an arc from the Alps to the North Sea, in what was once called northeast Gaul and Upper Germania, the remnants of Roman civilization...

A group of nine Indus Valley copper plates (c. 2600–2000 BC), discovered from private collections in Pakistan, appear to be of an important type not previously described. The plates are significantly larger and more robust than those comprising the corpus of known copper plates or tablets, and most significantly differ in being inscribed with mirrored characters. One of the plates bears 34 characters, which is the longest known single Indus script inscription. Examination of the plates with x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrophotometry indicates metal compositions, including arsenical copper, consistent with Indus Valley technology. Microscopy of the metal surface and internal structure...

Initial examination of the ruins suggests the site was an ancient cult complex—a rather large one at that with side walls measuring up to 52x52 feet. Thus far arch[a]eologists have uncovered mask fragments (parts that covered the nose), connected cups (their purpose has yet to be discovered), scarabs (stone representations of the beetle typically used as an amulet) and very large vessels known as pithoi. The relics suggest the site was use as a cult complex, likely dedicated to the worship of a god, though the researchers can't say with any certainty which one that might have been. The most...

A Dallas hospital nurse exhibiting Ebola-like symptoms and her husband, travelling on board Carnival Magic, have been denied entry to Belize. The couple has been prevented from entering Belize City to be airlifted to the U.S.A., and is currently on a ship tender unable to return to the cruise ship, according to the Belizean media reports.

11 Individuals, One Inspiring Journey Home is where the heart is. For the Inion family (www.traveldeepandwide.com), that means everywhere. When Brent and Stacey-Jean set out from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on a family road trip in 2007, their goal was to explore the United States. As their itinerary grew to include Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Belize, and Mexico, so did their number. There are now 11 Inions, including four kids adopted from China, India, Egypt, and South Korea. Their ninth child, Jeriah, was born with Down syndrome and a heart condition. Four of their other children have special needs as well, with...

To every single human being I have seen cutting across multiple lanes to rush to their highway exit: this could happen to you. Amazingly the person driving this Ford Focus, 25-year-old Jasmien Claeys, survived the multiple-impact wreck. As Carscoopsreports, she told Belgian HLN that the crash put her in a coma, shattered her hand, and broke her top two vertebrae, but she is recovering.

A new study says that the Mars One concept could fail on several points: oxygen levels could skyrocket unsafely. Using the local resources to generate habitability is unproven. The technology is expensive. But the founder of Mars One says the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student study is based on the wrong assumptions. “It’s based on technology available on the ISS [International Space Station],” said Bas Landorp in an interview with Universe Today. “So you end up with a completely different Mars mission than Mars One. So their analysis has nothing to do with our mission.” The mission has sparked...

A 60-year-old American was killed by a camel which escaped from its pen and attacked him at a wildlife center he owned in the Mexican beach resort of Tulum, local emergency services said on Tuesday. Richard Mileski, who was from the Chicago area, was found dead early on Monday, said Antonio Gomez, a Tulum emergency services spokesman. “When we arrived, the people who were there said (the camel) got out of its stable and attacked him,” said Gomez. “It dragged him, climbed on top of him, was kicking him, biting him and sat on top of him.” Gomez said the...