After months of anticipation, Congress finally heard testimony from former special counsel Robert Mueller. So what now? 
 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Mueller’s appearance was “a crossing of a threshold,” raising public awareness of what Mueller found. And Democrats after the hearing said they had clearly laid out the facts about the Mueller report, which did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but detailed extensive Russian intervention in the 2016 election. Mueller also said in the report that he couldn’t clear President Donald Trump on obstruction of justice. 
 
But it remains to be seen how the testimony will affect public views of Trump’s presidency and the push for impeachment. Mueller said some of the things that Democrats wanted him to say — including a clear dismissal of Trump’s claims of total exoneration — but he declined to answer many of their questions, and he spoke haltingly at times. Trump claimed victory, saying Mueller did “a horrible job.”

Democrats say they will continue to hold Trump to account. A look at the ways they will try to do that in the coming months: 
 
Investigations continue 
 
Democrats have struggled to obtain testimony from some of the most crucial figures in Mueller’s report, including former White House counsel Donald McGahn. And the few people they have interviewed, such as former White House aide Hope Hicks, have failed to give them new information beyond what’s in Mueller’s report. 
 
But Democrats have multiple investigations of the president ongoing that don’t require cooperation from the White House or Justice Department. The House intelligence and financial services committees are probing Trump’s finances, an area that Mueller appears to have avoided. And the intelligence panel is investigating Trump’s negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the campaign. 
 
Their day in court 
 
To obtain the testimony from McGahn and others, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Wednesday that his panel will file lawsuits this week. 
 
Democrats will seek to obtain secret grand jury material from Mueller’s report that has been withheld from Congress by the Justice Department. They will also try to force McGahn to provide documents and testimony. 
 
As part of the suits, the House is expected to challenge the White House’s claim of “absolute immunity,” which has been used to block McGahn and others who worked in the White House from testifying. 
 
While going to court can be a lengthy process, Democrats believe it will be their best chance of obtaining information after Trump declared he would fight “all of the subpoenas.”  
 
Calls for impeachment inquiry
 
Almost 90 House Democrats have called for an impeachment inquiry, and more are certain to do so after Mueller’s testimony. Those who support opening proceedings say it would bolster Democrats’ court cases and show the American people they are moving decisively to challenge what they see as Trump’s egregious behavior.

But Pelosi isn’t there, not yet. And a majority of the caucus is siding with her, for now. 
 
Pelosi said Wednesday she wants “the strongest possible hand” by waiting to see what happens in court. 
 
August recess 
 
The House is expected to leave town for a five-week August recess on Friday, so some of the Democrats’ efforts will be on hold until September. 
 
During that time, they’ll be at home listening to their constituents and judging how urgently voters want them to act. Those conversations and town halls could inform next steps in the fall. 
 
Still, not everyone will be taking a break. Rhode Island Representative David Cicilline said Wednesday that members might fly back in August if witnesses are available for testimony. He said the judiciary panel understands “the urgency of the moment and are prepared to do whatever is necessary to secure the attendance of witnesses and documents.” 
 
Election security 
 
Democrats in both the House and the Senate want to move forward with legislation to make elections more secure after Mueller extensively detailed Russian interference. 
 
House Democrats have passed legislation to secure state election systems and try to prevent foreign meddling, but bipartisan legislation in the Senate has stalled. Democrats tried to bring up an election security bill in the Senate on Wednesday, but Republicans objected.  
 
Justice Department reviews 
 
The Justice Department isn’t done with its own investigations into what happened before the 2016 election. 
 
There are two ongoing reviews into the origins of the Russia probe that Mueller eventually took over — one being conducted by the Justice Department’s inspector general and another by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr to examine surveillance methods used by the Justice Department. 
 
Republicans have said the department, then led by Obama administration officials, was biased against Trump. They are eagerly anticipating the results of those probes. 
 
Republican say it’s over 
 
Republicans say that nothing should be next, at least when it comes to investigations of the president. They have strongly defended Trump, who’s called Mueller’s probe a hoax, and have said the country wants to move on. 
 
“Today was [the] day we closed the book on this investigation,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy after Mueller’s hearing. 
 
Georgia Representative Doug Collins, the top Republican on the judiciary panel, said at the hearing that “we’ve had the truth for months — no American conspired to throw our elections.”

Said Collins: “What we need today is to let that truth bring us confidence and closure.” 

White House officials on Thursday were baffled as to why a doctored presidential seal — including an eagle clutching golf clubs in its talons instead of arrows — was projected on stage at an event at which U.S. President Donald Trump spoke.

The seal was displayed on Tuesday at Turning Point USA’s student summit, where Trump gave a raucous 80-minute speech and was greeted warmly by the youthful audience.

The image included a two-headed eagle, instead of just one head, which the Washington Post said closely resembles the bird on the Russian coat of arms and also appears on the flags of Serbia, Albania and Montenegro.

The eagle has a set of golf clubs in its talons instead of the traditional seal’s clutch of arrows.

There were suspicions at the White House that the organizers had found the doctored image online and mistakenly used it.

“We never saw the seal in question before it appeared in the video,” said a White House official. “The White House had no knowledge of it.”

Officials referred questions to Turning Point USA, which could not immediately be reached for comment.

The political nonprofit group was founded to organize conservative students on college campuses by Charlie Kirk, an outspoken supporter of Trump. It maintains a controversial Professor Watchlist of college professors it deems too liberal.

As a political nonprofit, the group may raise and spend unlimited sums of money and engage in educational efforts around politics, but it is prohibited from using its resources to campaign for a candidate for elected office.

The prospects of U.S. Democratic lawmakers impeaching President Donald Trump appears to have significantly diminished after former special counsel Robert Mueller offered no new explosive allegations about the U.S. leader in hours of congressional testimony this week.

One of the overseers of Mueller’s hearing, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, told CNN on Thursday, “We do need to be realistic, and that is, the only way he’s leaving office, at least at this point, is by being voted out” in the 2020 election in which Trump is seeking a second four-year term.

“Should we put the country through an impeachment?” Schiff asked rhetorically. “I haven’t been convinced yet that we should. Going through that kind of momentous and disruptive experience for the country, I think, is not something we go into lightly.”

He said Democratic “efforts need to be made in every respect to make sure we turn out our people” to vote against the Republican Trump in the November 2020 election.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee that questioned Mueller for more than three hours on Wednesday, has pushed to launch impeachment hearings against Trump. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has blocked the effort so far, fearing the political repercussions and believing it ultimately would prove to be an empty gesture. 

Even if House Democrats were able to muster the simple majority vote necessary to approve articles of impeachment, the Republican-controlled Senate would not vote by the required two-thirds majority to convict Trump and remove him from office.

Schiff said, “I would be delighted if we had a prospect of removing him through impeachment, but we don’t, and the most attractive thing to me about an impeachment is that it’s among the strongest forms of censure we have. But the same is true of an acquittal for the president. That’s the strongest form of exoneration for him, and that stays my hand.”

After the Mueller hearings before the judiciary and intelligence committees, Pelosi declined to take impeachment off the table as a possibility, but also did not endorse immediate impeachment hearings. Instead, she continued to call for Democrats to pursue multiple investigations of Trump and his administration’s policies and supported legal challenges to the White House’s refusal to allow congressional testimony by key current and former Trump officials.

“If we have a case for impeachment, that’s the place we will have to go,” Pelosi told reporters. “Why I’d like it to be a strong case is because it’s based on the facts — the facts and the law, that’s what matters. The stronger our case is, the worse the Senate will look for just letting the president off the hook.”

But Pelosi said the Democrats’ investigations are “not endless in terms of time.”

“If it comes to a point where the cone of silence and the obstruction of justice and the cover up in the White House prevents us from getting that information, that will not prevent us from going forward and in fact, it’s even more grounds to go forward,” Pelosi said.

About 90 of the 235 Democrats in the 435-member House of Representatives have called for Trump’s impeachment or the start of an impeachment inquiry, One more Democratic lawmaker, Congresswoman Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, added her name to the list after Mueller’s testimony. Some Democratic lawmakers had thought many more might support an impeachment call after hearing Mueller’s testimony. 

Republicans have scoffed at even the possibility of attempting to impeach Trump.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Thursday, “Why would you even bring up impeachment after that (Mueller) hearing? Why would they even put the American public through this?”

Schiff’s assessment downplaying impeachment as a way to oust Trump from the White House came a day after hours of Mueller’s sometimes halting testimony about the 448-page report he and his team of prosecutors compiled about their 22-month investigation. They probed Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

Mueller, as he had vowed to do, stuck closely to his team’s findings, rebuffing Democratic lawmakers’ entreaties to offer damning new information about Trump or to discuss Republican lawmakers’ claim that his investigation should never have been opened or was biased against Trump. 

The prosecutor had concluded there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with conspiring with Russia to help him win the election, even though his campaign had dozens of contacts with Russian operatives.

 

In his report, Mueller laid out as many as 11 instances when Trump allegedly engaged in obstructive behavior, although Mueller declined to decide whether Trump should be charged with a criminal offense because of a Justice Department policy prohibiting criminal charges against a sitting president. Subsequently, Attorney General William Barr and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said no charges were warranted against Trump.

Trump has repeatedly claimed exoneration in the probe, but Mueller said he had not cleared the president of obstruction allegations and that Trump could be charged after he leaves office.

Trump said this week that lawmakers calling for his impeachment “have gone totally crazy.”

National polls in the U.S. show majorities against impeaching Trump, with a recent Washington Post-ABC News survey saying that 59% oppose Trump’s impeachment and 37% favor it.

Congressional Democrats are pivoting away from questions of impeachment by saying they are going to “own” the August recess on issues like health care and prescription drug costs.

Majority Democrats gathered on the House steps under brilliant sunshine Thursday to talk policy goals as they prepared to leave Washington for five weeks. Not among their talking points was the testimony a day earlier by former special counsel Robert Mueller, which dulled some Democratic hopes of moving closer to formal impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, “We are going to own August, make it too hot to handle for the Senate” to ignore Democratic legislative goals to streamline government and lower the cost of health care and prescription drugs.

Libya’s coast guard says dozens of Europe-bound migrants are missing and feared drowned after the rubber boats they were traveling on capsized in the Mediterranean Sea.

Spokesman Ayoub Gassim says they rescued around 125 migrants on Thursday. The U.N. refugee agency says up to 150 may have perished at sea.

Libya became a major conduit for African migrants and refugees fleeing to Europe after the uprising that toppled and killed Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. Traffickers and armed groups have exploited Libya’s chaos since his overthrow.

 

France plans to launch mini surveillance satellites to enhance the protection and defense of French satellites from 2023, its defence minister said on Thursday, signalling an intensification in the race to militarize space.

Defense Minister Florence Parly said France was not being sucked into an arms race and that the creation of a new French “space command” announced by the president was central to a strategy to bolster defense capabilities, rather than offensive.

“If we want to be able to carry out real military operations in space, then we need to develop the ability to act alone,” Parly said, speaking at the Lyon-Mont Verdun air base.

The “space command,” Parly said, would fall under the air force’s control. With space fast becoming one of the greatest challenges to national security, the government would draw up new legislation to hand oversight of all French activities in space to the Defense Ministry.

President Emmanuel Macron’s desire to create a space command, which Parly announced will go live on Sept. 1, followed U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to usher in a new space force that will form the sixth branch of the U.S. military by 2020.

Parly described the mini-satellites that will patrol space from 2023 as “fearsome little detectors that will be the eyes of our most valuable satellites.” Space and aeronautics company Thales had ambitions in the field, she said.

She called on France’s European partners to work together on space surveillance. “In particular I count on Germany to be at the heart of space surveillance.”

French convictions of the need to strengthen defense capacities in space were strengthened when a Russian satellite last year attempted to intercept transmissions from a Franco-Italian satellite used by both countries armies for secure communications in what it called an “act of espionage.”

Oversight of French activities in space currently lies with the French Space Agency (CNES).
 

Three bombs rocked the Afghan capital of Kabul Thursday, killing at least 15 people, officials said, as the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff was meeting top U.S. and NATO officials in the city.

Eight employees of the ministry of mines and petroleum were killed and 27 wounded in an attack on their bus, ministry officials said in a statement. Five women and a child were among the dead.

Minutes after the blast, a suicide bomber blew himself up a few meters away, killing at least seven people and wounding 20.

Three blasts

“First a magnetic bomb pasted to a minibus exploded, then a suicide bomber blew himself near the bus attack site and the third blast happened when a car was blown up by unknown militants,” said Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesman of the interior ministry in Kabul. “The death toll could rise from all the three blasts,” he said.

The Taliban, fighting to restore strict Islamic law after their 2001 ouster at the hands of U.S.-led troops, claimed responsibility for the car bomb alone.

Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said nine foreign forces were killed and two vehicles destroyed, but government officials did not confirm the Taliban claim.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Marine General Joseph Dunford also met U.S. peace envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who is leading talks with Taliban militants to end the 18-year war.

The United States is trying to negotiate a deal that would see foreign forces pull out of Afghanistan in return for security guarantees by Taliban militants, including a pledge that the country will not become a safe haven for terror groups.

Peace talk leverage

Afghan security experts said the insurgents were increasing attacks to gain greater leverage in the peace talks. The eighth round is expected to begin this month in Qatar.

The Taliban also clashed with Afghan forces in northern province of Takhar to secure control over checkpoints and capture several districts. Both sides said that they have inflicted heavy damage on their opponents.

In the eastern province of Nangarhar, a roadside bomb hit a wedding party on Thursday. Six women and three children were killed in the blast in Khogyani district, the provincial governor’s office said in a statement.

No group has claimed responsibility for that attack.

Americans love ice cream so much that in 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. VOA’s Karina Bafradzhian traveled to Savannah, Georgia, to try ice cream at a legendary parlor that has been making the cool treat for almost a century. 

Scientists at IBM’s Zurich-based research lab and the University of Zurich have used machine learning to analyze millions of cells from breast cancer tissue of 140 tumors, creating what they describe as an ‘atlas’ of these tumors. Faith Lapidus reports.

The United States reclaimed its ranking in the top five countries in the world for economic innovation, while China climbed from 17th to 14th position in the new list of nearly 130 nations released Wednesday.

The Global Innovation Index 2019 released by the U.N. intellectual property agency, one of its co-sponsors, says “innovation is blossoming around the world” despite an economic slowdown, brewing trade battles and high economic uncertainty.

The index keeps Switzerland in the No. 1 spot, a position it has held since 2011, followed by Sweden, the United States, the Netherlands and Britain. The United States had fallen from fourth place in the 2017 rankings to sixth in 2018.

Israel climbed one spot to enter the top 10 for the first time at No. 10, becoming the first country from the northern Africa and western Asia region to crack the top group. South Korea edged closer to the top 10 at No. 11, up from No. 12.

80 indicators

Now in its 12th edition, the index ranks 129 economies based on 80 indicators, from traditional measurements like research and development investments and international patent and trademark applications to newer indicators including mobile-phone app creation and high-tech exports.

The index is sponsored by the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization, Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business and INSEAD, the graduate school of business with campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

According to the report, China’s continuing rise firmly establishes the country “in the group of leading innovative nations.”

“China’s innovation strengths become evident in numerous areas: It maintains top ranks in patents by origin, industrial designs, and trademarks by origin as well as high-tech net exports and creative goods exports,” the report said.

When comparing levels of innovation to economic development, the report said India, Vietnam, Kenya and Moldova “stand out for outperforming on innovation relative to GDP for the ninth consecutive year — a record.” Other economies outperforming in innovation relative to their GDP include Costa Rica, Thailand, Georgia, the Philippines, Burundi, Malawi and Mozambique, it said.

India most innovative

The report singled out India, ranked No. 52, for continuing to be the most innovative economy in central and southern Asia. India consistently ranks among the top countries in the world in “innovation drivers” such as information and technology services exports, graduates in science and engineering, high quality universities, creative goods exports and “gross capital formation, a measure of economy-wide investments,” it said.

Francis Gurry, director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, said the gains on the index “by economic powerhouses like China and India have transformed the geography of innovation and this reflects deliberate policy action to promote innovation.”

Other regional leaders in innovation in addition to India and Israel include South Africa, Chile and Singapore with China, Vietnam and Rwanda topping their income groups, the report said.

“In developed and developing economies alike, formal innovation — as measured by research and development and patents — and less formal modes of innovation are thriving,” it said.

The report said global expenditures on research and development have been growing faster than the global economy, with government expenditure rising about 5% in 2017 and business expenditure 6.7%.

“Never in history have so many scientists worldwide labored at solving the most pressing global scientific challenges,” it said.

But many countries still lack innovation in their economies. The 10 countries at the bottom of the index, in descending order, are Nicaragua, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Benin, Zambia, Guinea, Togo, Niger, Burundi and Yemen.

Looking ahead, the report said two concerns stand out that could slow growth in innovation.

First, public research and development expenditures “particularly in some high-income countries responsible for driving the technology frontier are growing slowly or not at all,” it said.

“Second, increased protectionism — in particular, protectionism that impacts technology-intensive sectors and knowledge flows — poses risks to global innovation networks and innovation diffusion,” the report said.
 

“I’ll refer you to the report on that.”

“That’s accurate based on what’s in the report.”

“I don’t want to wade in those waters.”

So it went for more than five hours as former special counsel Robert Mueller appeared before two congressional committees Wednesday to testify about his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and alleged presidential obstruction of justice, closely hewing to a final report he submitted to Attorney General William Barr in March.

Ahead of his appearance before the House judiciary and intelligence committees, Mueller, a former FBI director, had warned that he’d not stray beyond his 448-page legal thicket. He stuck to his word, frustrating both Democrats and Republicans in the process.

Differing outcomes

Democrats had hoped the public would hear from the special counsel himself damning details of misdeeds by President Donald Trump. With Mueller clearly unwilling to deliver, they were forced to read portions of the report for him, robbing the hearings of the power of a compelling witness’s words.

Republicans wanted to focus the testimony on the origins of a “witch hunt” based on bogus testimony. But Mueller made clear at the outset that he would not answer questions about how the investigation got started in 2016 — months before his appointment as special counsel — and what role the so-called Steele dossier, a largely debunked report claiming ties between Trump and Russia, played in it.

The result was a pair of hearings that elicited little fresh information that the public didn’t already have.

A typical exchange came early during Mueller’s testimony before the judiciary committee between Mueller and committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat:

Nadler: “Director Mueller, the president has repeatedly said that report completely and totally exonerated him. But that is not what your report said, is it?

Mueller: Correct. That is not what the report said.

Nadler: I’m reading from Page 2 of Volume 2 of your report. It’s on the screen. You wrote: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.” Does that say there was no obstruction?

Mueller: No.

The Democrats, and to a lesser extent the Republicans, followed the same formula during both hearings.

In the judiciary committee, the Democrats took turns highlighting five episodes of potential obstruction of justice by Trump, ranging from the president’s attempt to have the special counsel removed, to his “efforts to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.” In the intelligence panel, they enumerated extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, even though Mueller found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy.

Nothing new

In the end, much to their frustration, Mueller said virtually nothing new as he paused, hesitated, and at times asked members to restate their questions or cite the page number. When a member appeared to be directly quoting from the report, the special counsel would simply offer, “If it’s in the report, it’s accurate.” And if he thought a member was mischaracterizing the report, he’d respond, “I’d not subscribe to that characterization.”

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said Mueller’s reticence took the drama out of the hearings.

“Today was not really about fact-finding. It was about the drama,” she said. “And when Robert Mueller’s answers are all some version of ‘Yes, no, or look at the report,’ it completely takes the air out of the room. It takes any drama out.”

Mueller concluded his 22-month investigation of Russian election interference in March. In his final report, he wrote that he found little evidence that the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

But he left undetermined the question of whether Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice, citing a long-standing Justice Department policy that says a sitting president can’t be indicted, and writing that the U.S. Constitution offers a separate process for dealing with presidential offenses.

Stayed out of the fray

Many Democrats wanted to use the hearings to discuss impeachment, but Mueller refused to be drawn into it, carefully avoiding the word even when it was pointed out to him that he had used it in his own report. And when several Republicans harshly criticized him for refusing to “exonerate” the president of obstruction of justice, he offered little in his own defense.

Levinson said the hearings gave Democrats little to make the case for impeaching the president.

“I think if we look at today, people are thinking, ‘I can’t imagine this Congress conducting impeachment proceedings,’” Levinson said.

The only time Mueller pushed back against critics was when Republicans renewed old accusations that most of the 19 lawyers on Mueller’s former team included Democrats who had contributed money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“We strove to hire individuals who could do the job,” he said. “What I care about is the capacity of the individual to do the job, and do the job seriously and quickly and with integrity.

He also strongly disputed the claim his investigation of Russian interference in a U.S. election was a “witch hunt,” and warned that the Russians will try again to undermine the American political system. He stressed the need for U.S. intelligence agencies to work together to protect U.S. elections from foreign adversaries.

Half a century after astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon, a new space race is underway to exploit the skies for commercial profit.

Tech giants and startups pursuing bold plans such as selling space tourism, mining asteroids and beaming giant adverts into the skies are winning millions in investment with pledges to bring the stars into reach.

Annual revenues from space-related business, currently worth $350 billion, could nearly triple in size by 2040, estimates U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley.

But the rapid growth of a market with seemingly boundless potential has sparked concerns about a lack of laws and potential conflicts over resources, prompting calls for more rules to govern humanity’s use of the cosmos.

“By 2040 (we believe) there will be 1,000 people living and working on the moon and 10,000 annual visitors,” said Aaron Sorenson, a spokesman from the Japanese lunar exploration startup ispace.

“Our company vision is to extend human presence into outer space. We believe that begins with the expansion of the earth’s economy to the moon,” he said.

Drops in launch costs brought about by technological advances such as the development of commercial reusable rockets have caught the interest of startups and investors.

Super-rich businesspeople including Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos who want to colonize space to support human life are pouring cash into cutting-edge private spacecraft.

In addition, a resurgence in national space programs of countries such as India, which this week launched a rocket aiming to get a rover on the moon, as well as the United States and China could provide a source of funding for businesses.

Grand ambitions

Space hotels, cosmic business insurance, celestial advertising billboards, and in-space manufacturing are among the businesses being explored by firms hoping that technology will open up new horizons amid a boom of commercial space activity.

“I think very soon you are going to see major, traditional nonspace businesses taking notice,” said Sorenson, whose company is working to develop a high-frequency shuttle between earth and the moon.

Aerospace companies such as Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin are aiming to become the first private firm to launch a human into space.

A handful of firms have also been exploring the potential of mining asteroids for minerals and resources, a business that for now remains in the realm of science fiction but which space companies think could be possible in a decade or two.

Governments are positioning to take advantage of these new markets even before they become a reality.

The United States and Luxembourg have both passed legislation aiming to allow property rights on planets and create regulations to permit space mining, with Russia indicating earlier this year that it may follow suit.

But it is doubtful whether some of the more futuristic firms have yet established a clear business model, said Ian Christensen from the Secure World Foundation, a space advocacy group.

Cluttered skies?

The rush of speculation in space has also revealed gaps in the international laws and treaties governing its use and sparked calls for greater oversight.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, with more than 100 nations party to the agreement, provides the main framework for space law, and says no nation can claim ownership of outer space and it must be free for use by all countries.

“In those days everybody thought that space was basically for a few states, for military purposes,” said Frans von der Dunk, a professor of space law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “Nobody really foresaw the commercial development which we have seen since. So in that sense a lot needs to be clarified.”

Key questions include whether companies can claim ownership over space minerals, according to von der Dunk. If so, how should countries divide up access rights to ensure the spoils are shared fairly?

There is also debate about how to deal with the growing amount of “space junk” hurtling around the earth, such as broken satellites and spent rocket parts, which can cause serious damage to spacecraft.

“If it goes on like this then maybe 10 or 20 years from now it will be nearly impossible to conduct safe space operations because there’s so much junk floating around,” said von der Dunk.

Another worry is that plans by companies like Amazon and SpaceX to launch thousands of satellites will jam space with yet more clutter and increase the risk of collisions, said Christopher Newman, a space law and policy expert from Britain’s Northumbria University.

Clarifying the rules of doing business in space could benefit commercial operators by offering them stability and clearer costs and risks, say legal experts.

But the likelihood of world powers agreeing to any major new international space treaties or a body to referee disputes between nations are slim, Newman said.

He added that treaties that give away sovereignty are “out of fashion.”

Until a clearer picture emerges of the future of space infrastructure, he said, space players will continue to enjoy a degree of “anarchy.”

“Space is congested, competitive and contested … and it’s only going to get worse as the technology, orbital population and access to space all increase,” he said.
 

WASHINGTON — A Trump administration proposal to tighten eligibility for food stamps could undercut access to basic nutrition for millions of Americans and hurt some low-cost retailers, according to an analysis conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which runs the program. 

The study clashes with the administration’s defense of the proposed rule change, unveiled Tuesday, which it said would end widespread abuse of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by Americans with sufficient resources. 

“The proposed rule may also negatively impact food security and reduce the savings rates among those individuals who do not meet the income and resource eligibility requirements for SNAP,” the Agriculture Department said in the text of the rule published in the federal registry. 

The USDA research also said retailers would see a drop in their sales as a result of the proposed change. “All retailers would likely see a drop in the amount of SNAP benefits redeemed at stores if these provisions were finalized,” it said. 

On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue defended the rule change that would cut an estimated 3.1 million Americans from food stamp eligibility. He said the administration was “closing a loophole” that allowed exploitation of the program by Americans that had substantial savings and assets. 

He also said the move would not affect food sales: “The people that are affected by this have resources other than that. … I don’t think that’s a decrease in food expenditures at all,” he said. 

Advocacy groups and Democrats have bashed the proposal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called it “cruel,” and said it would “steal food off the table of working families and hungry children.” 

The SNAP program provides free food to 40 million Americans, or about 12 percent of the total U.S. population. Currently, 43 U.S. states allow residents to qualify for food stamps automatically through SNAP if they receive benefits from another federal program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, according to the USDA. 

The Agriculture Department wants to change that by requiring people who receive TANF benefits to pass a separate review of their income and assets to determine whether they are also eligible for free food from SNAP, officials said. 

If enacted, the rule would save the federal government about $2.5 billion a year, according to the USDA. 

Last year, Congress blocked efforts to pass new restrictions on SNAP.