Department that once investigated other-worldly sightings in Smethwick and north London could be revived after Pentagon report
28 May 2021 • 7:00pm
The Government may relaunch a team of UFO hunters in the wake of a US report into alien visitors, a senior defence source has revealed.
Ever since the Ministry of Defence s dedicated UFO desk was disbanded in 2009, no agency has been responsible for monitoring the skies over Britain for unidentified flying objects.
However, depending on the findings of a Pentagon report into UFOs, which have been renamed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, there is every possibility that the department could be revived.
Speaking exclusively to The Telegraph, the source said: I think that if there was enough evidence to suggest that there was something, and that we needed to do it as well as the US, then of course we d think about it. We d look at it. There s all sorts of things that we wouldn t rule out, and this would certainly be one of them.
NMA Chairman Pays Tribute To Outgoing CEO David Newell
News Media Association chairman Henry Faure Walker has paid tribute to the achievements of David Newell at the outgoing NMA chief executive s final NMA annual general meeting today.
Addressing the meeting of NMA members this morning, Mr Faure Walker welcomed incoming chief executive Owen Meredith who starts a month-long handover period with Mr Newell next week before his retirement at the end of June.
Mr Faure Walker thanked Mr Newell for his enormous contribution to the industry during his career at the NMA and formerly the Newspaper Society which he joined in 1984, as legal consultant and then head of parliamentary and legal affairs.
The Risks and Rewards for Democrats of Running on Trump Hatred
Commentary
“With Policies Failing, Democrats Turn to Trump-Hate,” wrote Conrad Black in these pages the other day. And as inflation, in particular, is only likely to get worse between now and next year’s mid-term elections, it will be more and more necessary for the Democrats to stick to Trump-bashing as the only possible distraction from their own failures.
Among the other failing policies mentioned by Lord Black are the chaos on the border, which Biden spokesfolks continue, ever more implausibly, to deny, as well as bad employment numbers, rising crime rates, continued fear-mongering over the coronavirus, insouciance over the ransomware attack on the Colonial pipeline by Russian hackers, and the politicization of school curricula with “woke” orthodoxies about race or “transgender” politics.
Peers have warned they “remain to be convinced” that the draft Online Safety Bill will not stop journalistic content being restricted.
The bill includes a statutory duty designed to stop the biggest social media giants from removing journalistic content via sweeping algorithm restrictions or moderation decisions. They will have to ensure the “importance of the free expression of journalistic content is taken into account”.
However peers in the Lords Communications and Digital Committee have now written to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden with fears the bill does not go far enough to protect the industry.
Lord Gilbert of Panteg, the Conservative chair of the committee, said: “We welcome the principle in clause 14 of the draft bill that journalistic content should receive special protection, although we remain to be convinced that the draft bill would not lead to access to such content being restricted.”
Lord Black Warns Threats To Journalism Are Existential
The need for trusted and verifiable sources of journalism has never been greater yet the threats it faces have become existential as advertising revenues evaporate, Lord Black of Brentwood has warned.
Speaking in a House of Lords debate on the Queen’s Speech this week, Lord Black said the Online Safety Bill was an opportunity to begin the journey of levelling the playing field between the tech platforms and news media publishers.
He warned that the situation for news media was grave “particularly for the local and regional press, which are now in real peril” and called for legislation to give the new Digital Markets Unit the statutory powers to tackle the tech platforms.