Cause still unclear in passenger train collision
BAD AIBLING: Nine people were killed and more than 100 were injured when two passenger trains collided head-on near a Bavarian spa town about 60km south-east of Munich yesterday, German police said.
Among the 108 people injured, 18 were in a serious condition, after the crash at a peak commuter time of 6.48am near Bad Aibling in the southern state of Bavaria, near the border with Austria. One of the trains was derailed.
Dozens of rescue teams were on site and helicopters took some of the casualties to nearby hospitals.
The area was sealed off, and alongside the rescue effort a crash investigation had begun, police said.
The trains’ operator, Meridian, is part of French passenger transport firm, Transdev, which is jointly owned by stateowned bank CDC and water and waste firm Veolia.
Transdev said that management and staff were terribly shocked by the “exceptionally serious accident”, and that their chief executive, Jean-Marc Janaillac, was at the scene.
German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt, also at the site of the crash, said it was unclear whether it had been because of a technical failure or because of human error.
State-owned Deutsche Bahn is responsible for the track. The line has a system that makes a train brake automatically if it goes through a red light.
Meridian runs train, tram and bus networks in 19 countries, and had revenues of
6.6 billion (R118 billion) in 2014. – Reuters LONDON: Britain’s planned law to give spies and the police wide-ranging new surveillance powers was rushed, did not do enough to protect people’s privacy and required major change, a powerful committee of politicians said yesterday.
Britain unveiled the bill in November after police and intelligence agencies warned that they had fallen behind those they were trying to track, as advances in technology and the growth of services like Skype and Facebook increasingly put criminals beyond their reach.
Critics say the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill represents the West’s most far-reaching surveillance law, one that could change the international landscape in this area, while large tech companies have warned it would damage their own security systems.
The proposals would force communications firms to collect and store vast reams of data about almost every click of British online activity.
Inconsistent
The bill would also place explicit obligations on service providers to help intercept data and hack suspects’ devices.
“Overall, the privacy protections are inconsistent and in our view need strengthening,” the report by parliament’s intelligence and security committee said, describing the bill as a “significant missed opportunity”.
“The draft bill appears to have suffered from a lack of sufficient time and preparation,” it added, saying the bill adopted a “rather piecemeal approach” to privacy protection, which should have formed the backbone to the measure.
Debate about how to protect privacy while helping agencies operate in the digital age has raged since former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of mass surveillance by British and US spies in 2013.
That means the British bill is being watched closely by governments and tech companies around the world. It will come before parliament for debate this year to replace legislation which is due to expire.
A parliamentary committee set up to scrutinise all aspects of the proposed bill is due to give its conclusions tomorrow. The reports will then feed into the wider parliamentary debate. – Reuters