Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report paints a horrifying picture of failures in the construction industry and officialdom – but justice is some way off. The report of the public inquiry into the causes of the Grenfell Tower fire has been published – and it forms a devastating verdict on the incompetence, dishonesty and greed that made possible a disaster in which 72 people died.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report chronicles failures in the construction industry, the council, regulators and central government. “The simple truth is the deaths that occurred were all avoidable,” Moore-Bick said at the report’s launch.
img: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grenfell_Tower_fire_%28wider_view%29_%28cropped%29.jpg, author: Phoenix7777, licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.
IT and security teams at Wirral University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust worked around the clock following a major cyber incident, with services disrupted with initially, no timeline for resolution.
The cyber attack, which initially came to light on Monday 25 November, is believed to have affected all clinical activity at multiple sites including Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge Hospitals. The Trust was forced to cancel surgical procedures and turn away outpatients, although emergency care remained up and running.
img: Rodhullandemu, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
More than 1,000 planned operations and over 3,000 outpatient appointments have been postponed amid disruption caused by a cyber attack that impacted London hospitals.
Synnovis, an agency which manages labs for NHS trusts and GPs in south-east London, was the victim of a data hack on 3rd June 2024.
New figures, external from NHS England show that since then, 3,396 appointments and 1,255 elective procedures have been postponed.
In a statement, the chief executives of two affected trusts said they were continuing to manage the attack as a "critical incident".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw0y49g8vy9o
img: ID 59986331 © Slawek Kozakiewicz | Dreamstime.com
An air ambulance service said it has experienced some near-collisions involving drones. Wiltshire Air Ambulance pilots say that the trend of drone collisions is going up and they are seeing more people fly drones over accident sites. During one incident in Bath, they only narrowly avoided a drone as they were coming in to land. Matt Wilcock, chief pilot at Wiltshire Air Ambulance, said: "When you hit one of those [drones] doing 150mph, they will come through the wind screen and they can injure the crew. If you injure the pilot, we all see where that would end." He added: "When we come into landing sites, often what's happening is there's commotion on the ground, there's lights and people want to pop a drone up and have a look at what is going on.
"We come in and, while drones are at 400ft and most aviation traffic is at 500ft, the exception is when we come in to land. "This hasn't happened too often, but the trend is on the up." He added that when coming in to land at an accident site in Bath, his crew suddenly caught something coming against the aircraft. "We realised it was a small drone. "Had we hit that, it could have damaged us."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rdx4ypvdxo
image: ID 182463420 © Estelle Bowden | Dreamstime.com
A software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike inadvertently disrupted IT systems globally—taking Windows machines offline. Banks, airports, TV stations, health care organizations, hotels, and countless other businesses all faced widespread IT outages, leaving flights grounded and causing widespread disruption, after Windows machines have displayed errors worldwide.
In the early hours of the incident, companies in Australia running Microsoft’s Windows operating system started reporting devices showing Blue Screens of Death (BSODs). Shortly after, reports of disruptions started flooding in from around the world, including from the UK, India, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US: TV station Sky News went offline, and US airlines United, Delta, and American Airlines issued a “global ground stop” on all flights.
https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-windows-outage-crowdstrike-global-it-probems/
image: crowdstirke ID 327905900 © Valeriia Lukashova | Dreamstime.com
- Tesla Cybertruck's first fatal crash raises safety concerns for Elon Musk's electric pickup
- Dagenham tower block fire reignites calls for cladding probe just days ahead of Grenfell report
- FAA audit of Boeing’s 737 production found mechanics using hotel card and dish soap as makeshift tools
- Top Execs at Toyota’s Daihatsu Bow Out Over Safety-Test Scandal