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The Trump administration is trying to give private companies a boost in their efforts to capitalize on space as a business venture.
U.S. President Donald Trump Thursday signed a space policy directive aimed at streamlining regulations on commercial use of space.
Trump signed the directive just days after Space X launched another rocket from California carrying satellites into orbit.
WATCH: Trump space policy
The launch and several others planned for June are examples of private industries’ growing interests in space for commercial and scientific research.
“It’s a bit of a renaissance, a bit of a space 2.0. Finally, the commercial sector is starting to come back and do some really interesting things,” said Will Marshall, co-founder and chief executive officer of Planet, a leading provider of geospatial data.
The company has put up approximately 200 satellites that image Earth’s entire land mass each day. Marshall said prior to Planet, satellite imagery was only taken every year or several years. The regular images of Earth can be used in many different industries.
“You can use that data to improve crop yields so farmers can use it to decide when to add fertilizer, when to add water because we can tell crop yield from orbit. Or, it can be used by a commercial consumer mapping companies that are trying to improve their maps you see online, or it could be used by governments for a wide range of things from border security to disaster response,” Marshall said.
Satellites also orbit the planet for purposes of national security.
“We just launched a few months ago a satellite that was just like this, but also had laser communication. We were able to send at 200 megabits per second high data rates down to the ground and the ability for satellites to actually talk to each other. The same satellites that are put up to look at the Earth could be looking around the neighborhood and doing neighborhood watch for the benefit of national security and space situational awareness,” Steve Isakowitz, president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Corporation, an organization that works with the U.S. Air Force and intelligence community.
Also orbiting Earth is the International Space Station, or ISS, an outpost of great interest to some major companies and research institutions. The ISS National Laboratory and astronauts inside conduct a wide range of experiments that would not be possible on Earth.
“When you remove the gravity vector out of the equation which is what we’re used to here on Earth, we see certain impacts and phenomena associated with that, such as lack of sedimentation, lack of convection, lack of buoyancy,” said Jennifer Lopez, commercial innovation technology lead at the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, or CASIS, which manages the ISS National Laboratory.
The space station orbits Earth 16 times a day, with exposure to extreme temperatures and radiation, providing a unique environment for experiments.
Some experiments, including those geared to helping people with bone loss and injuries, may benefit life on Earth; however, the findings can also help with future human exploration into deep space. Lopez notes there is research is “looking at bone loss and muscle wasting in a space environment and the effects that a microgravity environment can have on our biological systems.”
“There is so much opportunity right now in space; Mars is one of those opportunities,” said Chad Anderson, chief executive officer of Space Angels, which invests in the space industry.
While NASA works on sending humans to the moon and Mars, the space near Earth and beyond will become busier as businesses explore this final frontier.
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From: MeNeedIt
Another person has died in Congo of a confirmed case of Ebola, bringing the number of fatalities to 12, said the country’s Health Ministry.
The new death happened in Iboko, a rural area in northwestern Equateur province, said the Health Ministry statement released Sunday. There are also four new suspected cases in the province, said the statement.
Congo now has 35 confirmed Ebola cases.
Health workers have identified people who have been in contact with confirmed Ebola cases in three areas in Equateur province, the rural areas of Bikoro and Iboko and Mdbandaka, the provincial capital of 1.2 million that is a transport hub on the Congo River.
Congo’s health minister Saturday flew by helicopter to Bikoro and Iboko to see the deployment of health workers who will be tracing those who have been in contact with Ebola cases and inoculating them with a new experimental vaccine. Health minister Oly Ilunga was accompanied by representatives of the World Health Organization and UNICEF. The vaccination campaign in those rural is to begin Monday.
The vaccination campaign is already under way in Mbandaka, where four Ebola cases have been confirmed. About 100 health workers have been vaccinated there as front-line workers face high risk from the virus, which is spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead.
The next few weeks are crucial in determining whether the outbreak can be brought under control, according to the World Health Organization. Complicating factors include its spread to a major city, the fact that health workers have been infected and the existence of three or four “separate epicenters” that make finding and monitoring contacts of infected people more difficult.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting in Geneva on Saturday that ”I am personally committed to ensuring that we do everything we can to stop this outbreak as soon as possible.”
WHO is using a “ring vaccination” approach, targeting the contacts of people infected or suspected of infection and then the contacts of those people. More than 600 contacts have been identified.
WHO also is accelerating efforts with nine neighboring countries to try to prevent the Ebola outbreak from spreading there, saying the regional risk is high. It has warned against international travel and trade restrictions.
This is Congo’s ninth Ebola outbreak since 1976, when the hemorrhagic fever was first identified.
There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
From: MeNeedIt
New shops appear in New York City every day, but Phluid Project, which recently opened its doors on Broadway, is different. One of the first gender-fluid boutiques in the world, Phluid Project sells clothing for men, women and everyone in between. Both the clothes and the mannequins here are gender-neutral, and as an added selling point, its store owners say the prices are more than affordable. Elena Wolf visited the one-of-a-kind store, where no one feels out of place.
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From: MeNeedIt
Smog, industrial waste and contaminated water are just a few of the environmental problems facing many of the biggest cities today. But there is another type of pollution that’s becoming increasingly prevalent in our cities: noise pollution. Medical experts say people exposed to constant noise can suffer from a variety of psychological and physical ailments. As Saleem Shayan reports, it’s a particularly serious problem in megacities like Karachi in Pakistan where noise is a constant companion.
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From: MeNeedIt
Since its first edition in 1990, the Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal has become a key event in the world of African contemporary art. This year, the main international expo features the work of 75 artists from 33 countries. But the biennial also offers a chance for local Senegalese artists to showcase their work. Sofia Christensen reports from Dakar’s historic Medina neighborhood.
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From: MeNeedIt
The World Health Organization’s annual conference ended on a high note Saturday, with the organization’s director general praising delegates for giving him a strong mandate to implement an ambitious program of reforms and initiatives that will improve global health.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus paid homage to his predecessor, Margaret Chan, saying the reforms begun under her leadership to make the World Health Organization more responsive and better able to tackle emergencies were now paying off.
“The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has demonstrated exactly that. … Let me assure you that I am personally committed to ensuring that we do everything we can to stop this outbreak as soon as possible,” Tedros said. “And the commitment of the government, of course, and the leadership is at the center, which we really admire.”
The World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO, passed a number of resolutions aimed at improving global health. Some deal with diseases that have plagued humanity for centuries, while others are newly emerging.
But all these decisions, Tedros said, involve commitments to make the world a healthier, safer place. For example, he noted the assembly had approved a road map to reduce deaths from cholera by 90 percent by 2030.
“You endorsed our five-year strategic plan on polio transition, to strengthen country health systems that could be affected by the scaling down of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative,” he said. “You passed resolutions on tuberculosis and noncommunicable diseases. … And you have agreed to increase the development and use of digital technologies to improve health and keep the world safe.”
Tedros urged the delegates to go back to their countries with renewed determination to work every day for the health of their people. How well they succeed in this endeavor, he said, will be measured by the outcomes, by whether they result in real change on the ground.
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From: MeNeedIt
The UN children’s fund warned the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo threatens the health and well-being of children, and special care must be taken to help them survive.
Ebola is highly contagious, killing between 20 and 90 percent of its victims, and the UN children’s fund is engaging communities in the fight against Ebola. UNICEF spokesman, Christophe Boulierac said schools are crucial for minimizing the risk of transmission among children.
“UNICEF is scaling up prevention efforts in schools across all three affected health zones,” he said. “This includes on-going efforts to install hand washing units in 277 schools and supporting awareness raising activities reaching more than 13,000 children in Mbandaka, Bikoro and Iboko.”
Previous outbreaks of Ebola in DRC and most recently in the horrific epidemic in West Africa have shown the high-level of trauma experienced by children at the loss of family members. Boulierac told VOA orphaned children often become social outcasts because of their association with this fatal disease.
“There is as you mention, rightly, the risk of stigma and the risk that the child when his father, his care-giver, his mother is affected; the child is psychologically affected,” he said.
Boulierac said UNICEF is taking preventive measures, including providing trained therapists to families affected by the Ebola outbreak and helping children cope psychologically with the trauma of losing loved ones.
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From: MeNeedIt
Real-world debates permeate this year’s Venice Biennale on architecture, from commemorating spaces once part of the U.S. slave trade to maintaining the delicate status quo at religious sites in the Holy Land.
The sprawling exhibition, which opens Saturday for a six-month run, reflects not only on the political implications of what gets built but also on the empty spaces in between.
“We have to be aware of the political issues in order to make buildings which protect, in so far as we can, the status of the human being in the world,” said Shelley McNamara, co-curator with Yvonne Farrell of the main exhibition, “Free Space.” “We are acutely aware of the things that are threatening the quality of life of human beings.”
Israeli Pavilion
The Israeli Pavilion, subtitled “structures of negotiation,” outlines the consequences of multiple claims on revered religious places and how daily use defines monuments.
It doesn’t comment on how the Trump administration’s recent decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv might impact the Middle East conflict. But the curators agreed it is easy to draw inferences.
“What we know is that sometimes political events have a very heavy impact on the status quo of the holy places and vice versa, and even if the equilibrium of the status quo in the holy places is for some reason violated it has an influence on the political situation,” said the pavilion’s co-curator Tania Coen Uzzielli.
Take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, revered as the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial and one of the pavilion’s five case studies. The exhibit features a color-coded, three-dimensional model of the church made for an Ottoman-era pasha to make clear which denomination controlled which area.
In the early part of the last century, a conflict over who had the right to clean a raised stone in the church courtyard led to violence, said pavilion co-curator Deborah Pinto Fdeda.
“Tens of people died,” she said. “It is through the usage of places over time that these communities gain or lose power.” Yet even there the status quo evolved: “Today the Latins and Orthodox agree to clean it as if the other doesn’t exist.”
US pavilion
The U.S. pavilion comments on the meaning of citizenship as governments dictate who belongs and who doesn’t.
Amanda Williams and Andres Hernandez created, in collaboration with Shani Crowe, “a pocket of retreat” in the courtyard behind a protective veil of black braids. The refuge is built on a rail, symbolizing the underground railroad that helped bring slaves to freedom. It projects upward, toward a better future.
“The piece tries to embody that trajectory from fighting and surviving for your citizenship to thriving,” Williams said.
Inside, a group called Studio Gang brought 800 stones from a 19th century landing in Memphis linked to the slave trade. Co-curator Ann Lui said the project was about “taking a moment to think about these fraught sites” without proposing, yet, how to remember them.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is one of six countries participating for the first time in the architectural Biennale, with a project that focuses on urban sprawl in the kingdom’s four major centers: political capital Riyadh, religious capital Mecca, the oil city of Dammam and the port city of Jeddah.
“The sprawl is the result of the oil boom but the result of the sprawl is actually social isolation,” said curator Sumayah Al-Solaiman.
Participation in the Biennale is yet another sign of recent opening in Saudi Arabia, giving Saudis an important chance to communicate their experiences directly to the world.
“I think it is becoming more and more relevant to be involved in things that relate in art and culture,” said architect Abdulrahman Gazzaz. “I think it is truly fascinating to us to be present at such a wonderful shift in the dynamic of the country.”
The Vatican
The Vatican also is participating for the first time in the Biennale of architecture after joining the contemporary art fair in 2013 and 2015. The Holy See entrusted world-renowned architects including Norman Foster to create chapels in a wooded area on an island in the Venetian lagoon.
Curator Francesco Dal Co said the woods provided a metaphor “of where you get lost in life” and the chapels “are always a place of encounter, meeting experience and orientation.”
The chapels may stay on as a permanent presence on San Giorgio island after the Biennale closes on Nov. 25.
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From: MeNeedIt
Thousands of flags wave proudly this weekend at tombstones in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, just outside Washington. For more than 60 years, the army’s ceremonial unit, known as the Old Guard, has been placing the flags at graves in the huge military cemetery in preparation for Memorial Day. The national holiday, observed the last Monday in May, honors the men and women who died while serving in the military. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to the annual tradition known as “Flags in.”
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From: MeNeedIt
To many Americans the Star-Spangled Banner, also known as Old Glory, is almost a religious icon. That hasn’t always been the case. Back in the late 1700s, during the American Revolutionary War, regiments of George Washington’s Continental Army used various flags to declare their independence from Great Britain. VOA’s Nikoleta Ilic spoke with an expert on U.S. flags about the origins and the various iterations of the Star-Spangled Banner.
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From: MeNeedIt