Latest news with #emergencyCalls
BBC News
09-07-2025
- Health
- BBC News
More 999 alcohol calls for London in August than at Christmas
Almost 10,000 alcohol-related emergency calls to the London Ambulance Service (LAS) were made last summer, with paramedics urging people to drink service said it received more emergency calls in June, July and August individually, than it did in December during the Christmas party May and June this year have seen greater numbers for alcohol-related calls than in the previous two years, LAS service's Mark Faulkner said: "We are asking people to look after themselves and their friends. Every avoidable alcohol-related call we attend could take away from someone who might have a life-threatening condition." 'Please drink sensibly' Between June and August in London last year, LAS attended more than 9,700 alcohol-related calls and over 4,700 drug comparison, in December 2024 it received more than 2,600 alcohol-related calls and 1,100 drug-related Faulkner said: "We understand Londoners want to go out and have fun in the height of summer – particularly with the wealth of music festivals and outdoor events that London offers."August brings more alcohol-related calls than the Christmas party season so if you are enjoying the festival season, please drink sensibly."If you suspect that a friend is having a drug overdose, there are steps you can take to help to us them. This includes calling 999, telling us what they've taken and following the instructions of the 999 call-handler."There is no such thing as a reliable drug dealer. You do not know what you are taking and what it might have been mixed with. Even if you have taken the substance before, this does not mean it is safe."
WIRED
28-06-2025
- Politics
- WIRED
ICE Rolls Facial Recognition Tools Out to Officers' Phones
Photo-Illustration:WIRED published a shocking investigation this week based on records, including audio recordings, of hundreds of emergency calls from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. The calls—which include reports of incidents of staff sexual assaults, suicide attempts, and head injuries—indicate a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding. In a 6-3 decision on Friday, the US Supreme Court upheld a Texas porn ID law, finding that age verification for explicit sites is constitutional. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan warned that this determination ignores First Amendment precedent and will have privacy implications for adults. Looking at the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites last weekend, President Donald Trump posted initial announcements of the strikes on the social Network Truth Social, which then began suffering intermittent outages. And WIRED reported on assessments of the damage to the nuclear sites based on satellite photos taken before and after the bombing. Meanwhile, Taiwan is scrambling to make its own unmanned aerial vehicles domestically as drones increasingly become a crucial weapon of war. The urgency comes as a potential conflict with China looms. And Telegram launched a purge of Chinese cryptocurrency markets last month, banning black markets that sold tens of billions of dollars in crypto-scam-related services. Now, though, the markets are rebranding and bouncing back with no further action from the communication platform. But wait, there's more! Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn't cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now using a mobile app called Mobile Fortify that allegedly allows agents to identify individuals by pointing a smartphone at their face or capturing contactless fingerprints, 404 Media reports. The app reportedly taps into government databases, including Customs and Border Protection's Traveler Verification Service and a DHS biometric intelligence system, in an attempt to match facial images taken in the field against prior government-collected records. ICE says the tool is intended to help officers identify 'unknown subjects,' but civil liberties advocates tell 404 Media that it may open the door to surveillance-driven profiling and wrongful arrests. Nathan Freed Wessler of the ACLU told the site, 'Face recognition technology is notoriously unreliable, frequently generating false matches and resulting in a number of known wrongful arrests across the country. Immigration agents relying on this technology to try to identify people on the street is a recipe for disaster. Congress has never authorized DHS to use face recognition technology in this way, and the agency should shut this dangerous experiment down." US Feds Charge Group of Alleged Hackers Behind a Notorious Cybercrime Forum Global law enforcement this week announced the bust of a group of alleged cybercriminal hackers accused of carrying out years of profit-focused data breaches and running a notorious cybercriminal forum and market known as Breachforums. French authorities arrested four members of the group who went by the names 'ShinyHunters,' 'Hollow,' 'Noct,' and 'Depressed,' though the police sources who shared the news with the French newspaper Le Parisien didn't reveal the suspects' real names. The US Justice Department, meanwhile, criminally charged Kai West, a young British man, with carrying out a broad, years-long hacking spree under the handle 'Intelbroker' that inflicted $25 million total damage against victims before he was arrested in February. In addition to hacking and selling vast troves of stolen data, the group—or at least some subset of its members—appears to have served as administrators for Breachforums, a notorious sales forum for cybercriminal information and tools that was shut down in a law enforcement operation in 2023 but was later relaunched by its staff. Scattered Spider Hackers Shift Their Targeting to the Airline Industry The loose cybercriminal gang known as Scattered Spider has carried out data theft and ransomware incidents for years, most recently targeting the grocery industry, other retailers, and the insurance industry in the US and the UK. Now cybersecurity analysts at Mandiant and Palo Alto Networks say the group is turning their attention to the aviation and transportation sector. Specifically, hackers were behind a cybersecurity incident last week that took down some IT systems and the mobile app for Canadian airline WestJet, Axios reports. Now Hawaiian Airlines has said it's experiencing a 'cybersecurity incident' affecting its network, though it hasn't yet revealed more details or any evidence that Scattered Spider is responsible. Cybersecurity firms tracking the group warn that other potential aviation and transportation industry targets should be on the lookout for the group, which often uses sophisticated social engineering to trick staff into letting them bypass multi-factor authentication and gain a foothold on target systems. Hackers Breach a Norwegian Dam to Open Valve Here's a curiosity that we missed a couple weeks ago: A rare industrial control system hijacking incident in which an unknown hacker appears to have messed with the computer systems that control the Lake Risevatnet dam in southwest Norway, opening a valve to its maximum setting. The tampering, the motivation for which was far from clear, increased the dam's water flow by nearly 500 liters a second, but didn't come close to approaching a dangerous level. No one appears to have spotted the change for close to four hours. Officials told the Norwegian energy news outlet Energiteknikk, which broke the story, that a weak password on a web-accessible control panel allowed the unauthorized access.
CBS News
24-05-2025
- General
- CBS News
New Stanislaus County Sheriff's Office report shows faster response times
The Stanislaus County Sheriff's Office released its annual report Friday morning. In 2024, average response times for "priority one" calls in unincorporated areas dropped from nearly eight and a half minutes to seven minutes, a full minute faster than the year before. Priority one calls are the most urgent incidents, such as shootings, major disturbances, or other life-threatening emergencies. Sheriff's officials credit the improvement to several factors, including increased aerial support. A helicopter is now deployed seven days a week, typically flying from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m., providing real-time updates to ground deputies. "A deputy may not physically be on scene on the ground, but we have eyes on overhead," said Sgt. Nathan Crain. "They're giving us second-by-second updates as to what's occurring down below." While most areas saw improved response times, Waterford and Patterson experienced slight increases. The sheriff's office said that's due to safety protocols requiring deputies to wait for backup before entering potentially dangerous situations. The office also noted a 29% increase in proactive policing in 2024, as newer deputies fresh from the academy actively patrol and respond to incidents without waiting for a 911 call. Officials said the department's goal is to continue reducing response times across the county in the coming year.
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Minibus medics sent to answer 999 calls as 'underinvestment and understaffing' hits ambulance service
Scotland's 'overstretched' ambulance service is sending minibuses out to deal with emergency calls, it has been revealed. Patient transport vehicles (PTV) were dispatched to 320 999 calls last year, sparking fears of 'life threatening' consequences. The vehicles are designed to take patients to and from routine healthcare appointments, but statistics show they are now responding more regularly to far more serious calls. The transport vehicles carry less life-saving technology than ambulances and are crewed by staff with less medical training than paramedics. The ambulance service has said PTVs are only ever sent to emergencies after an assessment has been made by a first responder that it is suitable to do so. However, campaigners have hit out at the situation, stating the pressures the service and its staff are already under could exacerbate any risks. Pat McIlvogue, Unite industrial officer said: 'It can be appropriate for patients to be taken to hospitals in patient transport vehicles (PTVs) after assessment. 'The real issue is though that due to lengthy hospital delays and the acute stresses on the system by the time patients receive care assistance then their health situation may have deteriorated significantly. 'Staff should not be put in the awful position of making a decision about either transporting a patient to a hospital or waiting for an emergency back up which could take too long due to patient handover times for ambulances at hospitals. 'It really is a vicious and dangerous circle that many of our frontline health care professionals face. 'Any marginal improvements in ambulance waiting times or the use of PTVs in an emergency situation we need to remember is coming from a position of record high levels. 'The problem still remains that there is underinvestment and understaffing in our health and emergency services.' Figures released under Freedom of Information show patient transport vehicles attended 320 'emergency incidents' in 2024-25. This was slightly lower than the 376 incidents they were despatched to a year earlier and less than half of the massive 696 times they were sent to emergencies in 2022-23. However, the numbers are still far higher than they were in the four year period between 2018-19 and 2021-22. None of those years saw the vehicles attend more than 260 emergencies. Scottish Conservative shadow public health minister Brian Whittle MSP said: 'These alarming figures lay bare how overstretched Scotland's ambulance service is after years of chronic mismanagement by the SNP. 'It is concerning these vehicles are being used in emergency situations, including when patients are suffering cardiac arrests. 'Yet this is the life-threatening reality for many Scots, after years of mismanagement by nationalist health secretaries who've pushed frontline care beyond breaking point. 'Patient safety must always be the top priority, but this crisis is only getting worse on the SNP's watch. 'Neil Gray needs to cut the bloated bureaucracy in our health service and prioritise getting resources to the frontline.' Explaining its use of PTVs in its FOI response, the SAS said: 'The Scottish Ambulance Service will always dispatch an emergency ambulance for patients who require an ambulance intervention and/or monitoring on route to hospital. 'Patient Transport Vehicles only attend emergency incidents after clinical assessment through our Integrated Clinical Hub or clinicians at scene, who have identified that a patient requires further assessment at hospital, it is safe and appropriate for the patient to travel by this method and not necessary for an emergency ambulance to transport them to hospital.' The service also said that PTV's 'will and have been tasked to cardiac arrests where they are the closest resource'. However, it said the number of these deployments is less than five annually.
