CNN news 2012-12-04 加文本

cnn news 2012-12-04

Permanent observer or non-member observer state, now they might not sound like much of a difference between those two terms, but if you ask some Palestinian officials, the different is huge. Yesterday, the United Nations voted to upgrade the status of the Palestinian authority. Palestinian officials had been pushing for this. They think it will give them some leverage in negotiating with Israel, but Israel and the United States have been against this upgrade, they argue that it won’t have much of an effect on efforts to create Middle East peace deal.

When you hear about drones, unmanned aircraft you might think about them flying over Afghanistan. These are remote controlled vehicles, and they are used a lot by the U.S. military in the fight against terrorism. But drones could start popping up in the skies over the United States. Lisa Sylvester looks at the capabilities and the concerns that might come along for the ride.

Right now, only groups with special FAA permission like the U.S. Customs and Border Protection can operate drones in the United States, but that is going to change, Congress has asked the Federal Aviation Administration to find a safe way to expand the use of drones, or unmanned aerial system domestically.

“The bottom line is by 2015, the FAA has to have a comprehensive plan to open the air space to both public and private UAS.”

Think of the potential for crop dusting to news traffic reports to surveilling land to monitoring forest fires. There is a big industry pushing the federal government to open up the skies arguing these unmanned air craft systems are safer and less expensive.

Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones can be as large as fighter jet or only just a couple of feet long, and people have actually been flying unmanned vehicles or even model airplanes for years, but with certain restrictions. They can’t fly them above 400 feet, or in certain areas like airports without running into problems with FAA. That brings us to one of the problems the FAA is trying to solve, how to ensure safety if the sky suddenly become a lot more crowded.

“Some of the larger concerns are the construction of the aircraft. Who’s piloting them? The actually bandwidth, also, taking a look at some of those social issues, which we’ve all started to look into as far as privacy.”

It’s the privacy peace that Representative Edward Markey is most concerned about, could prying paparazzi hound celebrities? When can drones be used by law enforcement to gather evidence? And what about the information gathered by the drones?

“Is it possible that this is just going to be a rampant,

eyes in the sky gathering information about Americans with no rules, whatsoever.”

During the 2012 U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney only came face to face four times, they had their three debates and a fundraising dinner. On election night, President Obama suggested another get together.

“In the weeks ahead, I also look forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.”

That meeting happened yesterday. The former opponents got together for lunch at the White House. Now, we don’t know exactly what was said, there were no news media allowed. But a White House statement said President Obama and Governor Romney talked about America’s role in the world. And they promised to stay in touch with each other.