A large number of mysterious drones have been reported flying over parts of New Jersey in recent weeks, sparking speculation and concern over who sent them and why.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and law enforcement officials have stressed that the drones don’t appear to be a threat to public safety, but many state and municipal lawmakers have nonetheless called for stricter rules about who can fly the unmanned aircraft.
The FBI is among several agencies investigating, and it has asked residents to share videos, photos and other information they may have about the drones.
Dozens of witnesses have reported seeing drones in New Jersey starting in November.
At first, the drones were spotted flying along the scenic Raritan River, a waterway that feeds the Round Valley Reservoir, the state’s largest aquifer, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of New York City.
But soon sightings were reported statewide, including near the Picatinny Arsenal, a U.S. military research and manufacturing facility, and over President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.
The aircraft have also recently been spotted in coastal areas.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith said a Coast Guard commanding officer told him a dozen drones closely followed a Coast Guard lifeboat near Barnegat Light and Island Beach State Park in Ocean County over the weekend.
Gov. Murphy has said the aircraft do not pose a threat, but has not provided any details to support this.
Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, who was briefed by the Department of Homeland Security, said the reported drones have been up to 6 feet in diameter and sometimes travel with their lights switched off. This is much larger than those typically flown by drone hobbyists and she said they appear to avoid detection by traditional methods such as helicopter and radio.
Officials say some witnesses may actually be seeing planes or helicopters rather than drones.
Authorities say they do not know who is behind the drones.
The FBI, Homeland Security and state police are investigating the sightings. Authorities say they don’t know if it is one drone that has been spotted many times or if there are multiple aircraft being flown in a coordinated effort.
Speculation has raged online, with some expressing concerns that the drone or drones could be part of a nefarious plot by foreign agents. Officials stress that ongoing state and federal investigations have found no evidence to support those fears.
Two Republican Jersey Shore-area congressmen, Smith and U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, have called on the military to shoot down the drones, citing safety concerns.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that “our initial assessment here is that these are not drones or activities coming from a foreign entity or adversary.”
The flying of drones for recreational and commercial use is legal in New Jersey, but it is subject to local and Federal Aviation Administration regulations and flight restrictions.
Operators must be FAA certified.
Sightings also have been reported in neighboring New York and Pennsylvania.
Drones were also spotted last month in the U.K. The U.S. Air Force said several small unmanned aircraft were detected near four bases in England that are used by American forces.
Scotland’s professional football clubs have been reported to the UK’s competition watchdog over the rules for registering child footballers.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been asked to investigate how young players are registered with elite clubs and move between them.
Complaints to the CMA from Scotland’s Children’s Commissioner and grassroots campaigners argue the current system exploits young players and breaks competition law.
The Scottish Football Association (SFA) said significant progress has been made to protect young players involved in the game.
The SFA added its registration system was in line with world governing body Fifa and pointed out it had already amended some of its processes after input from the children’s commissioner.
Children can register for a professional club in Scotland from the age of 10 and a compensation system is in place when young players moves between elite teams.
Players in these teams in the 15 to 17-year-old age group sign for a two-year period that can only be terminated if both parties agree.
It is these rules, along with a cap on moves between clubs, which critics claim are restricting young players’ freedom of movement.
In 2020, Holyrood’s petitions committee raised “genuine concerns” about whether the current registration system adequately protects the rights of children and called for reform.
The SFA has since changed some of its registration rules but Nick Hobbs, head of advice and investigation at the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, claimed they have not gone far enough.
He said: “The current rules give child footballers less protection, and less control over their own lives, than adult professionals.
“There is a massive power imbalance between them and the clubs they sign for which can amount to economic exploitation – this is a fundamental breach of their human rights.
“We feel that the SFA is effectively failing children, this is something that has needed to change for a very long time now.
“They have not been willing to do it voluntarily so we are hoping they will now be forced to do it.”
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Scott Robertson, co-founder of the Real Grassroots campaign group which brought the 2010 Holyrood petition pushing for changes to the registration system, has also submitted a complaint to the CMA.
He said: “We have seen many examples of our professional clubs parading players as young as ten in front of press stands signing registration forms.
“The kids, and some parents, think it’s the road to riches without being informed of the implications.
“Rather than promote competition and grow our game, these rules have done untold damage to Scottish football. The clubs place their interests and profit margins before kids.”
What are the registration rules?
The vast majority of youth players in Scotland between the ages of ten and 17 sign amateur registration forms which last one season.
For those in the elite youth football teams, which come under the SFA’s Club Academy Scotland (CAS) programme and are run by 11 of the country’s professional clubs, there are different rules.
Players in these teams in the 15 to 17-year-old age group sign for a two-year registration period that can only be terminated if both parties agree.
It is in this period when players are usually offered their first professional contract or released by clubs.
It is also possible to cancel a registration if a player has played in less than 25% of the eligible games or via an appeal to a SFA Young Players Wellbeing Panel.
The movement of young players between CAS clubs can also be subject to compensation to cover training costs when the player signs their first professional contract.
Elite level clubs can only sign one player from a club within the same age group each season.
The SFA has previously said its registration forms are a binding legal document but not a contract, something which campaigners and some lawyers disagree with.
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Billy Gilmour is one of the stars of the current men’s national team who came through the club academy system as a youngster
What can the CMA do?
The CMA is the UK government body responsible for taking action against businesses and individuals that take part in anti-competitive behaviour.
The CMA will spend the next few months considering the two complaints made against both the SFA and SPFL before deciding if it is going to launch a formal investigation into the claims.
The complaints centre on the argument that the current setup amounts to an anti-competitive ‘no poach’ deal – where clubs effectively agree not to compete to recruit youth players from each other.
The complainants will also argue recent developments, such as the Lassana Diarra and Fifa case, mean players should have more power to move and work where they wish.
If the watchdog concludes there has been an infringement of competition laws it can issue a fine and direct Scotland’s football authorities to modify or cease their registration rules.
Footballer Kieran Gibbons says he fell foul of the registration when he wanted to move clubs when he was a teenager
Footballer Kieran Gibbons has described the push to allow young players more freedom to move between clubs as a “no brainer”.
The 29-year-old, who currently plays for Tranent, but when he was 13, he was registered to one of the SFA’s club academy teams and wanted to leave.
“The training facilities were not the best and didn’t even have changing rooms,” he explained.
“I was travelling a distance and had to come straight from school and had grown tired of this. When the time came to sign on for the following season I asked to leave.”
Kieran said the club “were not happy” but agreed to let him go – though he says unbeknownst to him they held onto the registration.
The player says this only came to light when other senior teams in Scotland invited him for trials and were told by the club he had just left that they would need to pay a £9,000 fee to take over his registration.
He added: “At that time no one was able or willing to pay that for a 13-year-old, who may or may not make it to professional level.”
Kieran says he was then “left in limbo” for more than nine months, retuning to amateur football, before eventually moving to Aberdeen for his first professional contract.
“I was just a kid and I just wanted to play football. There needs to be a change so people in my situation can more easily walk away,” he added.
‘Significant progress’
A spokesperson for the SFA said it had “consulted extensively” on the subject of improving youth football in the near 15 years since the issue first went in front of Holyrood’s petitions committee.
They added: “We were pleased that the report published in 2020 by the public petitions committee acknowledged the significant progress made to protect children and young people involved in our game.
“Since the publication of the report, we have continued to evolve our policies and procedures in line with the Fifa statutes.
“Indeed, we have successfully amended the process of reimbursement of training costs based on input from the children’s commissioner, ensuring training compensation is only due when the player signs their first professional contract.”
What can’t this guy do? Run in the Olympics. That is something IShowSpeed cannot do. Unfortunately, with the way the Olympics are currently constructed, in order to participate in their coveted 100m dash event, you must be one of the 56 fastest human beings on the planet. Which IShowSpeed is not.
Sorry, I just saw some fake news being circulated online and felt responsible to issue a correction. I’m afraid IShowSpeed has Olympic Track & Field confused with boxing. Where if you have a big enough following and are annoying enough on the internet, the world will placate your delusions and just kinda blindly go along with the facade that is your “professional boxing career”. Because in the end people just want to watch an unlikable Gen Z kid beat up a likable 58-year old rapist, then bemoan the downfall of a sport they never cared about in the first place. Somehow there is a BOAT LOAD of money in that.
Now if IShowSpeed had done the boxing equivalent of “barely losing” to a jogging Noah Lyles in an event he only showed up for because it was a free $100k he could pass off to charity…
…then IShowSpeed would probably be awarded with a chance to fight Sylvester Stallone in full Rocky character at the Wells Fargo Center in a sanctioned fight for $50 million. As a matter of fact, a $10 million fight between IShowSpeed and Jake Paul appears to already be in the works.
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But that’s aside the point. That’s not what the Olympics are about. Although to be fair, 2028 is a long way away. Maybe things will have changed by then. Maybe by 2028 the Olympics will also be a complete fucking joke, and in order to qualify for any event you must prove that you’re able to hold ‘x’ amount of concurrent viewers on Twitch over a certain amount of time. That’s probably not out of the realm of possibility. But if that doesn’t happen… I’m sorry Mr. ShowSpeed… I’m afraid you’re not Team USA material.
To be perfectly frank, I’m getting a little tired of this IShowSpeed guy. I understand I’m not helping things by blogging about him (again). But this motherfucker’s big dumb face will not stop popping up on my timeline telling me how fast he is.
We get it dude. You’re a fast and athletic guy. Faster and more athletic than most. Every time a professional athlete takes you up on a challenge, their takeaway is always, “Oh wow! This YouTube streamer is better than I had originally anticipated! I’m very impressed!”
Then the internet gives you a polite golf clap and acknowledges the fact that you are indeed above average at __.
You can’t do the Jake Paul boxing thing with track though. I feel like that’s the road you’re trying to go down here. But it doesn’t work. There are concrete times you have to run that you won’t be able to match.
Although the more I think about it… I wish the Olympics would allow him in. In fact, if I were the Olympic Committee, I’d say, “You know what, IShowSpeed… we’ve been so impressed by your athletic achievements on YouTube that we’ve decided to automatically qualify you for every individual Olympic event. You’ll be running the 100M, 200M, 400M, long jump, high jump, all the swimmings, everything. You will compete in literally everything.”
Then we get it all out of the way at once. The Olympics will be completely unaffected. Everything will go off as normal. We’ll just have IShowSpeed bringing up the rear by a WIDE margin in every event. We’ll all get to see exactly how fast and athletic he is in comparison to the best in the world, then we can all get on with our lives.
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P.S. I really wish we could go back in time to the point where we decided to let people go by their screen names in real life and nip it in the bud. I don’t mind a stage name (i.e. Big Cat or KFC). But I wish we never just started calling people by their @’s. YouTube streamers are out there introducing each other to people with x’s and numbers in their names. “Have you met my friend xxApocolypse99? You probably haven’t heard of him, but he’s massive among autistic Asian teenagers. He has 90,000,000,000 followers across all platforms and owns 50% of the Philippines”. I just miss people having names.
