Tag: drone

Albanian drone sparks riot

albaniaA drone, probably released by the brother of the Albanian Prime Minister, managed to spark another Balkan war, yesterday.

A football draw between Albania and Serbia, played at the FK Partizan stadium in Belgrade was always going to be a little tense. However it was made a lot worse by the presence of a drone.

The drone apparently belonged to Olsi Rama, the brother of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who released it from the VIP box where he was sitting. It was not clear how he smuggled the drone into the country, but apparently if you are the brother of the Prime Minister airport security is a little lighter.

The drone  had a “Greater Albania” flag attached and it shows territory within Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, northern Greece and the autonomous region of Kosovo, which the Serbian government still claims. The flag depicts the word “indigenous,” as well as portraits of Ismail Qemali and Isa Boletinim, two Albanian nationalist leaders.

The Serbians were a little miffed about this slight to their greatness and right to rule anywhere in the Balkans with a Serbian population. They started charting the popular poem “kill, slit their throats, exterminate the Albanians” which indicates the genocides carried out by their forces were probably just accidental and human shields were just a terrible mistake.

Its team burnt a NATO flag which is the sort thing you pack to bring  to a football match if you are a football team, right after your boots and the oranges.

Then a riot broke out completely out of the blue.

Albania’s coach Giovanni de Biazzi of Italy has told Albanian media that four of his players were injured in the scuffle. He said that Serbian security staff decided it someone else’s job to protect players and waded into the Albanians themselves.

Serbian state media is reporting police have arrested Rama on suspicion that he masterminded the whole thing.

However, Albanian Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri has denied reports about Rama’s arrest, describing made up . Rama had left the stadium for the airport. He did not say if he was carrying a rather large drone shaped package with him.

It was the first time that the Albanian national soccer team had travelled to Belgrade since 1967 to play Serbia in a European Championship qualifying match.  One has to wonder what they were thinking about.

Domino’s wants to drone you a pizza

dominos-minuteman-siloDrones don’t exactly have a good reputation nowadays, as most people associate them with flying killer robots raining death from above on militants and anyone who happens to get in the way. However, they can be fun, they can be used to save lives or in this case alleviate hunger.

Domino’s Pizza is testing a pizza delivery drone, but we’re not sold on the concept, which basically looks like an elaborate PR stunt. The DomiCopter is a project cooked up by T+Biscuits and designed by UK based drone specialist AeroSight. Although it doesn’t pack Hellfire missiles, it can deliver a pizza to anywhere in a four mile radius in under 10 minutes, faster than a bloke on a scooter.

Of course, this is just a stunt and we won’t see a fleet of drones carrying around pizzas, curries and kebabs anytime soon. It probably costs a pretty penny, the range is limited and we’re not sure about efficiency, either. It also needs a human operator and trained drone operators tend to get paid a bit more than delivery boys.

A couple of decades ago Domino’s used to guarantee pizza delivery in 30 minutes or less. Eventually it dropped the promise for whatever reason, but not before it was borrowed by  Minuteman missile crews who came up with an iconic and rather morbid Cold War joke.

Although we are suckers for PR stunts, we believe Domino’s would be better off investing the time and effort into making better tasting pizzas.