Good afternoon, its Peter here with your Letter today. I hope youre okay and that you can join me tonight at the usual time of half past six. Yet more medals for us today in the Olympics. Its very exciting isnt it? Even if youre not normally that keen on sport, I think its quite easy to get caught up in it.
Your Face Its the stuff of James Bond movies I think. Facial recognition scanners are being trialled at a UK airport as part of the governments efforts to improve security and reduce passenger congestion. It works by scanning passengers faces and comparing them to their photograph stored on the computer and its being trialled in Manchester airport. The government is hoping itll help identify criminals and terrorists trying to enter the country illegally. The system can be used by any adult holding a biometric passport from the UK and European economic area and that includes about thirteen million people in the UK and a further thirty million people in Europe. I dont think Id heard of biometric passports before, but they contain a microchip holding biographical information and images. The people with a biometric passport at Manchester airport will be able to bypass all the queues and pass through unmanned gates. The scanner will check their passport for any tampering and will ch! eck that the individual is not on any security lists. They will then pass through into the next gate where the scanner will check their face. If the scanner rejects this information, then theyll go through to immigration for further checks, or if not, then theyll proceed to the flight. Obviously it takes a while to roll out this biometric passport, but any new UK passports for the past two years have been biometric. So if your passport is up for renewal, then youll be issued with one of these. Manchester airport is the first airport to trial this technology and then the system will be introduced in Stansted in September before being rolled out to all major UK airports after that. So there you go. New facial scanners are being used in airports to check you against your passport photo! I hope your passport photos look like you!! People are always complaining they look nothing like their photo! Age Restrictions Well, movies have had this rating for a long time, but now childrens books could have age restrictions printed on the cover. If youre a parent, what do you reckon to this? Do you think it sounds like a good idea? From this autumn, a number of publishing houses will age band their childrens books, so as to give parents a good idea if the book will be suitable for their child. Each book will carry a specific marking indicating which age band theyre in and theyll be 5+, 7+ 11+, 13+/teen. This will also give shops or libraries an indication where the book should be placed or which shelf to put them on. So there you go. What do you reckon? As a parent, do you think this will help you buy books for your kids? Have you in the past had to read books yourself to make sure theyre suitable? Or have you bought a book that was completely unsuitable for your child? Let me know what you think to this one? Id love to hear your views. As always, its [EMAIL PROTECTED] Well, that's it from me for now. I hope you can join me tonight. Take care and remember your brolly if youre out and about today, Peter And for the latest news and more where you live, go to: http://bbc.co.uk/humber and http://bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire Your email address will be held by the BBC and kept confidential, and will only be used in relation to this newsletter. You will be given the option to unsubscribe from this newsletter each time you receive it. Please visit the BBC's Privacy & Cookies Policy (www.bbc.co.uk/privacy) for more information ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the BBC Look North newsletter, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/looknorthhull/newsletter/newsletter_index.shtml, enter your email address in the unsubscribe box. 1.94.4
