BRISBANE, Australia — Dozens of Queensland’s most dangerous criminals have been charged and others are running scared after the biggest organized crime bust in Australian history. Police have arrested 38 people on more than 150 charges in Queensland alone as a result of Operation Ironside, the three-year, covert operation revealed on June 8. The operation included police forces in every Australian state and territory, the Australian Federal Police, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It used an app as a kind of Trojan horse. Criminals across Australia, and also the world, came to trust it so thoroughly that they openly discussed everything from murder…
Author: zenger.news
ADELAIDE, Australia — A brazen plot to gun down a man leaving a restaurant in Adelaide last year was foiled by Operation Ironside, the international sting on organized crime, police have revealed. The plot involved members of the Comancheros bikie gang luring the man to the suburban Norwood location before using a machine gun in the killing. Assistant Commissioner Peter Harvey said the conspirators were being monitored and police moved to seize a motorbike that was to be used in the killing to prevent it from happening. “The conspirators then stole another motorcycle to set up the plot to continue,” he…
NAIROBI, Kenya — A Kenyan innovator, Kenneth Guantai, who has developed electric tuk-tuk (auto-rickshaws) and handcarts, hopes to mass-produce them in December 2021, after receiving orders from several East African countries. “I have received proposals from business people in countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo who want me to set up assembly lines,” Guantai told Zenger News. Six years since he first assembled his inventions, he says has done an in-depth market analysis that will change the perception of using hand-pulled carts and petrol-powered tuk-tuks. “We will customize them, and we anticipate the price to be…
PERTH, Australia — Coronavirus test results could be returned within 10 minutes through a saliva-based detector being developed in Australia. Perth-based drug and alcohol test manufacturer Alcolizer is working to manufacture a new medical device called the Virulizer. The federal government has handed the company an AU$742,000 ($574,308) grant to work with researchers and the industry to develop the saliva-based antigen test for the mass market. Alcolizer is aiming to combine patented breakthrough technologies developed by the University of Technology Sydney with its own hardware. The test has been mooted to return coronavirus test results from asymptomatic and symptomatic people within 10 minutes.…
A 2,000-year-old basilica complex dating to Roman times will be fully unearthed, restored and opened to visitors as part of a renovation project in Tel Ashkelon National Park. The complex, the largest of its kind in Israel, was discovered in archaeological excavations led by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) as part of an extensive development project of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, the Ashkelon municipality and the Leon Levy Foundation. The likely builder of the basilica is Herod the Great, whose family may have come from Ashkelon. Herodian coins discovered in the bedding of the structure’s ancient floors strengthen…
SYDNEY — There will be no limit on the number of taxis in the south-eastern Australian state of New South Wales, with taxi licenses no longer able to be bought and sold under major reforms announced by the state government. The move to further deregulate the struggling taxi industry is meant to help taxi businesses, drivers, and users, the government says. But it will leave license holders concerned about how much financial assistance they will receive. Abolishing the cap on the number of taxi licenses will mean taxis can operate freely and based on actual demand patterns, the government says. The…
KOLKATA, India — India reported its first case of an animal dying of coronavirus despite zoos being shut for public viewing due to a severe Covid-19 scenario. Last month, the first case of an animal testing positive was discovered. Neela, a nine-year-old lioness, died on June 3 in a Chennai zoo in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Eight other lions also tested positive in the Arignar Anna Zoological Park. Zoo authorities said that five lions started showing loss of appetite and coughing on May 26. A team of experts was formed, and samples of the big cats were sent for testing.…
When Ofir Aharon was finishing his PhD in electro-optics engineering, his mother was diagnosed with melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer. He decided to channel his knowledge into inventing a potentially lifesaving device that could detect unique patterns of light movements in the skin before visible signs such as changes in pigmentation show up on the surface. “Physicians say 50 percent of skin cancer starts out ‘innocent’ and then becomes cancer, but pathologists familiar with tissue structure say 95 percent of lesions that look innocent already started as cancer. I wondered why there was no tool that could show…
If you’ve ever seen a tire graveyard piled high with trashed rubber, you can easily understand that Israeli company EcoTech Recycling has a green gem of an idea. EcoTech’s nontoxic process produces a unique material, Active Rubber (AR), from end-of-life tires. With 1.6 billion tires manufactured annually, and 290 million tires discarded each year in the United States alone, tires are the world’s largest source of waste rubber. “Rubber is a valuable commodity, and we are making it reusable,” said CEO and President Gideon Drori. “AR is a substitute for synthetic rubber that can be used to make new tires,…
A rare bronze oil lamp shaped like a grotesque face was recently discovered in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the City of David National Park. Archaeologists Ari Levy and Yuval Baruch believe the lamp, discovered in the foundations of a building on the pilgrimage road, was intentionally buried in order to bring good luck to the building’s residents. “The offering of this lamp may attest to the importance of the building, which may have been linked to the protection of the Siloam Pool, the city’s primary water source,” they said. The building on the Pilgrimage Road where…