NASA launched the last of its longtime tracking and communication satellites Friday, a vital link to astronauts in orbit as well as the Hubble Space Telescope.

The end of the era came with a morning liftoff of TDRS-M, the 13th satellite in the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network. It rode to orbit aboard an unmanned Atlas V rocket. There were handshakes all around two hours later, when the satellite successfully separated from the rocket’s upper stage.

“We’re going to really celebrate this one,” said launch director Tim Dunn.

NASA has been launching TDRS satellites since 1983. The 22,300-mile-high constellation links ground controllers with the International Space Station and other low-orbiting craft including Hubble.

“It’s like our baby,” said NASA’s Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation.

“People have invested their soul and their sweat into making it happen” over the decades, Younes said on the eve of launch. “This spacecraft has served us so well.”

This latest flight from Cape Canaveral was delayed two weeks after a crane hit one of the satellite’s antennas last month. Satellite maker Boeing replaced the damaged antenna and took corrective action to prevent future accidents. Worker error was blamed.

The rocket and satellite cost $540 million.

Space shuttles hoisted the first-generation TDRS satellites. The second in the series was aboard Challenger’s doomed flight in 1986. It was the only loss in the entire TDRS series.

TDRS-M is third generation. NASA’s next-generation tracking network will rely on lasers. This more advanced and robust method of relaying data was demonstrated a few years ago during the moon-orbiting mission LADEE. NASA hopes to start launching these high-tech satellites by 2024. Until then, the space agency will rely on the current network.

NASA needs seven active TDRS satellites at any given time, six for real-time support and one as a spare. The newest one will remain in reserve, until needed to replace aging craft.

Besides serving other spacecraft, the satellites help provide communication to outposts at the South Pole. In 1998, the network provided critical medical help to a doctor diagnosed with breast cancer.
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From: MeNeedIt

As national parks traveler Mikah Meyer wraps up the last leg of his journey across the western state of Utah, he appears to have saved the best for last – with visits to Bryce and Zion national parks — the last two of the five national parks that make up the ‘Mighty 5.’ He shared highlights of his experiences in some of the most stunning desert landscapes he’s seen on his epic national parks journey so far with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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From: MeNeedIt

The United Nations should name and shame countries that fail to protect health workers in war zones and audit what steps they take to keep medics safe, an aid expert said on Thursday.

International law bounds all warring parties to respect and protect medical personnel, but the provision is largely disregarded, with hospital and medics often deliberately targeted in conflict areas, aid agencies say.

Last year, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for an end to impunity for perpetrators, but little has been done to implement it, said Leonard Rubenstein, head of Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, a network of aid groups.

“Since 2016, we have had complete international paralysis,” he told an event in London, blaming the stalemate on divisions between Russia and other members of the Security Council.

At least 80 people were killed in attacks on health facilities in 14 countries in the first three months of 2017, according to the World Health Organization.

More than half the attacks were in Syria.

Rubenstein said impartial investigations and reforming both military training and practice could improve safety for health workers — but nations had to be pushed into adopting them.

“The only way to get them to do it is to shame them,” he told a panel at the Overseas Development Institute via video link, ahead of World Humanitarian Day on Aug 19.

In order to do so, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights should issue annual reports highlighting what steps countries have taken to implement resolutions made the year before, Rubenstein said.

“It’s not the most powerful mechanism that we have — but it is the only one that we (have) really got at the moment, and I think that would go a long way to forcing the states to take the actions that they have committed to do,” he said.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

A U.S. researcher says she has developed automated ways to identify links between online sex trafficking ads and the digital currency Bitcoin, techniques that may help locate children being sold for sex.

Law enforcement and anti-trafficking groups could use the methods to investigate Backpage.com, an online classified advertising site where sex ads can be found, according to a statement by the University of California Berkeley, where the research was based.

About 1.5 million people in the United States are victims of trafficking, mostly for sexual exploitation, according to anti-trafficking groups.

Most sex trafficking victims are children, and most are advertised or sold online, according to a U.S. Senate subcommittee report released this year.

Algorithms do the digging

The new research uses an algorithm that analyzes writing styles to identify authors and could be applied to online trafficking ads, Rebecca Portnoff, its lead author, said Thursday.

A second algorithm can use time stamps to trace ad payments to accounts, known as wallets, at Bitcoin, a web-based digital currency that allows money to move quickly and anonymously.

Comparing time stamps of ad purchases on Bitcoin and time stamps and information on Backpage ads could help identify who is paying for them, said Portnoff, a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate in computer science who developed the techniques as part of her dissertation.

“Where previously you might have five different phone numbers that you had no idea were connected, when you can see that they all came from the same wallets, that the same person paid for them, that’s a concrete sign that these five phone numbers are all related to each other,” she said.

“I knew this was an issue that law enforcement was especially interested in,” she added.

Boost for law enforcement

Having automated style and time stamp analyses to identify sex ads by authors and Bitcoin owners is significant, said Damon McCoy, a New York University Tandon School of Engineering assistant professor of computer science and engineering and a co-author of the research.

“Any technique that can surface commonalities between ads and potentially shed light on the owners is a big boost for those working to curb exploitation,” McCoy said in a statement.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has said more than 70 percent of the reports it gets of trafficked children involve Backpage, based in Dallas, Texas.

Backpage did not respond to a request for comment.

The findings will be published by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, UC Berkeley said.

It said the work was funded by the Amazon Web Services Cloud Credits for Research Program, the technology and security firm Giant Oak, Google, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.
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From: MeNeedIt

The August 21 solar eclipse, the first to travel coast to coast in the United States in nearly a century, has inspired dozens of citizen science projects involving solar physics, atmosphere and biology.

“Millions of people … can walk out on their porch in their slippers and collect world-class data,” said Matthew Penn, an astronomer with the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

Penn is coordinating a citizen science effort to photograph the sun’s volatile outer atmosphere, known as the corona.

The corona’s pearly light is typically obscured by the bright glare of the sun, but during a total eclipse, scientists can get a clear view of the outer crown, a mysterious region that triggers solar flares and other storms that can disrupt satellites, power grids and other systems on Earth.

The view does not last long. Because the moon is moving at more than 2,000 mph (3,200 kph), it blocks the sun for only a couple of minutes, not long enough to detect key changes in the corona.

93-minute show

The eclipse will cast the moon’s 70-mile-wide shadow, called the “path of totality,” across the United States over 93 minutes, temporarily bringing darkness to daytime skies.

Penn’s project, called The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse Experiment, or Citizen CATE, involves a network of volunteers who will be stationed along the path of the eclipse with identical telescopes to take digital photos of the corona. The pictures will later be spliced together into a 93-minute movie.

Citizen CATE participants require special equipment and training, but dozens of other projects are open to anyone in the path of totality with a camera or cellphone.

Google and the University of California-Berkley are teaming up for Eclipse Megamovie 2017, a crowdsourced compilation of eclipse imagery.

For a project called Life Responds, the California Academy of Sciences wants field reports about how animals and plant life react during the eclipse. Using an app called iNaturalist, amateur scientists will log their observations and get help identifying flora and fauna.

“We want to collect exactly what all these animals are doing as it gets dark — what do we see, what do we hear,” said University of Missouri astronomer Angela Speck.

A number of zoos, wildlife preserves and 20 national parks are in the path of the eclipse.

EclipseMob

Another app-driven science project is called EclipseMob, organized by George Mason University in Virginia and the University of Massachusetts in Boston. It aims to collect information about radio waves passing through Earth’s ionosphere, the electrically charged outer layer of the atmosphere.

When sunlight is blocked during an eclipse, the ionosphere is suddenly transformed. Using home-built radio receivers and smartphones, participants will pick up radio waves transmitted by EclipseMob in Colorado and California and record how the signals change.

Other apps will record temperature changes and monitor clouds. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the American Astronomical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have lists of citizen science projects on their websites.

“This is an opportunity to draw people from across the country into being fans of science,” said astronomer Speck, co-chair of the American Astronomical Society’s National Total Solar Eclipse Task Force.

“The change in light is so fast and what you get to see is so amazing that even people who chase eclipses and have seen dozens of them will still be wowed by this,” Speck said. “It’s not just visual, it’s an all-over experience.”
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From: MeNeedIt

They’re muscular, fit, and in much better physical shape than most people. They’re competitive body builders, and many of them in the U.S. are women, something that was evident at a recent Washington-area competition called the OCB Presidential Cup. At that event, three-quarters of the competitors were women. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi hit the gym and a few places you might not expect in this report on what it takes to make it in the world of competitive bodybuilding.
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From: MeNeedIt

From the sky over occupied Europe to an elephants stable in India and to its final resting place in an air museum in England, this was the 100-year journey for one of the world’s first strategic bombers. And the last part was the most astonishing because the planes’ remains, found in India, were almost beyond recognition. VOA’s George Putic has the story.
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From: MeNeedIt

Reading to children is one of the best ways to prepare them for a lifetime of learning. It introduces babies to language and teaches youngsters about colors, shapes and letters. But an Australian quantum physicist is experimenting with something different. He’s writing science books for babies and toddlers. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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From: MeNeedIt

Egypt’s antiquities ministry says that archaeologists have discovered three tombs dating back more than 2,000 years, from the Ptolemaic Period.

The discovery was made in the Nile Valley province of Minya south of Cairo, in an area known as al-Kamin al-Sahrawi.

Tuesday’s statement by the ministry says the unearthed sarcophagi and clay fragments suggest that the area was a large necropolis from sometime between the 27th Dynasty and the Greco-Roman period.

One of the tombs has a burial shaft carved in rock and leads to a chamber where anthropoid lids and four sarcophagi for two women and two men were found. Another tomb contains two chambers; one of them has six burial holes, including one for a child.

Excavation work for the third tomb is still underway.
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From: MeNeedIt

Daniel Craig will return for a fifth go-around as James Bond.

The actor confirmed reports he would reprise his role as the suave British spy for “Bond 25” during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday night.

The announcement is a reversal for Craig, who told Time Out London in 2015 he’d rather slash his wrists than do another Bond film.

Craig chalks up that comment as “a stupid answer” and tells Colbert he “couldn’t be happier” to return to the role.

Craig breathed new life into the Bond franchise when he took over as 007 for 2006’s “Casino Royale.”

“Bond 25” hits theaters in November 2019.
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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump is renewing his attacks on e-commerce giant Amazon, and he says the company is “doing great damage to tax paying retailers.”

Trump tweets that “towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt — many jobs being lost!”

The president has often criticized the company and CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.

Many traditional retailers are closing stores and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online. But the company has been hiring thousands of warehouse workers on the spot at job fairs across the country. Amazon has announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers by the middle of next year.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

The impact of the latest round of U.N. sanctions leveled against North Korea could be greater than the projected $1 billion cut in its export revenue if fully implemented, a high-profile North Korean defector told VOA’s Korean Service, and this would deal a significant financial blow to a regime intent on advancing its nuclear and missile programs.

“The new U.N. restrictions are perhaps the strongest sanctions ever imposed on Pyongyang because they demand a complete shutoff of markets for its most lucrative exports,” said Ri Jong Ho, who previously served various high-level roles in central agencies of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, overseeing the country’s overall production and trade and replenishing the Kim regime’s foreign currency reserves. “They certainly could threaten the Kim Jong Un regime’s lifeline.”

In response to North Korea’s two tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles in July, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed another round of sanctions earlier this month — the seventh since the regime’s first nuclear weapons test in 2006. Many experts in Washington welcomed the measure, calling it the biggest diplomatic victory of the Trump administration, which has been seeking to build international pressure on North Korea.

“I think the latest U.N. resolution is yet another good, incremental step toward increasing pressure on North Korea,” said Bruce Klingner with the Heritage Foundation Asian Study Center. “Each U.N. resolution is better than its predecessor and each one is the strongest in history against North Korea.”

The sanctions call for, among other things, a total ban on the North’s principal exports, including coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. The goal is to slash a third of the regime’s annual revenue, which total about $3 billion by U.N. estimates in the August 5 resolution drafted by the United States.

Garment production

Ri said North Korea’s annual export earnings are in fact significantly lower averaging about $2 billion in recent years. Pyongyang’s garment production, which on the record brings up to $1 billion, actually yields $100 million at best, he said, covering only labor and costs incurred in maintaining production facilities and equipment.

Garment processing not included in the U.N. sanctions has been one of the country’s biggest exports, with many firms, particularly based in China, taking advantage of low-cost labor available in the North to produce various kinds of clothing. Suppliers often send fabrics and other raw materials to North Korean factories where garments are assembled and exported with a “Made in China” label.

From 2014 until 2016, Pyongyang exported some 15 to 22 million tons of coal and 2.5 million tons of iron ore per year, worth roughly $1.1 billion and $200 million respectively, Ri said, adding lead and lead ore exports in the same period averaged about $100 million and seafood sales $300 million a year.

If countries — including China, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of North Korean trade — “thoroughly implement the recent ban on these principal exports, addressing all the potential loopholes, the North may face up to $1.7 billion a year in losses — or more than 80 percent — not just a third — of its annual export revenue,” Ri said. “This is a country whose economy is heavily reliant on its exports of natural resources — a major source of hard currency for the regime — and banning its coal, iron and iron ore, lead and lead ore, and seafood exports is tantamount to a total blockade on all trade.”

Natural resources exports

The effects of sanctions aren’t limited to these key exports, Ri said. Prohibiting North Korea’s exports of natural resources would cut off its supply of foreign currency, with an anticipated resulting drop in imports of strategic goods including fuel, food and fertilizers as well as various other raw materials and equipment necessary to keep production and construction activities going, said Ri.

“In that case,” he added, “the North Korean regime will inevitably experience financial strains, which would put a damper on its pursuits” such as building a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike the U.S mainland.

The new sanctions omit crude-oil supplies from Russia and China, which Ri said would be a crippling measure for the regime, one that Pyongyang’s traditional allies would not want to take. But because the current sanctions are expected to further diminish North Korea’s limited holdings of hard currency, the regime would be unable to purchase as much oil as it did before.

In an earlier interview with VOA, Ri said North Korea imports up to 200,000 to 300,000 tons of diesel from Russia and some 50,000 to 100,000 tons of gasoline from China every year. China also supplies the North with roughly 500,000 tons of crude oil by pipeline, all of which though goes toward Kim’s massive military, all of which is free of charge.

Ri added the sanctions could also result in an increase of the already rampant smuggling activities across China’s border and a fierce competition for survival within North Korea.

For three decades, Ri worked in “Office 39,” which the U.S. Treasury Department once described as a North Korean government branch that engages “in illicit economic activities and managing slush funds and generating revenues for the leadership.” His last posting was in Dalian, China, as the head of the Korea Daehung Trading Corporation.

Ri defected to South Korea in October 2014, and came to the United States in March 2016.

Jenny Lee contributed to this report which originated with VOA’s Korean service (www.voakorea.com ).
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From: MeNeedIt