South Korean air force jets fired 360 rounds of warning shots Tuesday after a Russian military plane twice violated South Korea’s airspace off the country’s east coast, Seoul officials said in an announcement that was quickly disputed by Russia.

South Korea said three Russian military planes — two Tu-95 bombers and one A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft — entered the South’s air defense identification zone off its east coast before the A-50 intruded in South Korean airspace. Russia said later that two of its Tu-95MS bombers were on a routine flight over neutral waters and didn’t enter South Korean territory.

According to South Korean government accounts, an unspecified number of South Korean fighter jets, including F-16s, scrambled to the area and fired 10 flares and 80 rounds from machine guns as warning shots.

Seoul defense officials said the Russian reconnaissance aircraft left the area three minutes later but later returned and violated South Korean airspace again for four minutes. The officials said the South Korean fighter jets then fired 10 flares and 280 rounds from machine guns as warning shots.

South Korea said it was the first time a foreign military plane had violated South Korean airspace since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff summoned Russia’s acting ambassador and its defense attache to protest.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that its planes did not enter South Korean airspace. It also said South Korean fighter jets didn’t fire any warning shots, though it said they flew near the Russian planes in what it called “unprofessional maneuvers” and posed a threat.

”If the Russian pilots felt there was a security threat, they would have responded,” the statement said.

South Korea’s presidential national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, told top Russian security official Nikolai Patrushev that South Korea views Russia’s airspace violation “very seriously” and will take “much stronger” measures if a similar incident occurs, according to South Korea’s presidential office.

The former Soviet Union supported North Korea and provided the country with weapons during the Korean War, which killed millions. In 1983, a Soviet air force fighter jet fired an air-to-air missile at a South Korean passenger plane that strayed into Soviet territory, killing all 269 people on board. Relations between Seoul and Moscow gradually improved, and they established diplomatic ties in 1990, a year before the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The airspace that South Korea says the Russian warplane violated is above a group of South Korean-held islets roughly halfway between South Korea and Japan that have been a source of territorial disputes between the two Asian countries. Russia isn’t part of those disputes.

Japan, which claims ownership over the islets, protested to South Korea for firing warning shots over Japanese airspace. South Korea later countered that it cannot accept the Japanese statement, repeating that the islets are South Korean territory. Japan also protested to Russia for allegedly violating Japanese airspace.

South Korea said the three Russian planes entered the South Korean air defense identification zone with two Chinese bombers. South Korea said the Chinese planes didn’t intrude upon South Korean airspace.

The Russian statement accused South Korean aircraft of trying to hamper the flights of Russian jets before “a vague missile defense identification area” that it said South Korea unilaterally defined. Russia said it had raised its concerns about the zone before.

Before their reported joint flights with the Russian planes, the Chinese warplanes entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone off its southwest coast earlier Tuesday, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said. Seoul says Chinese planes have occasionally entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone in recent years.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry and Joint Chiefs of Staff registered their official protests with Beijing when they summoned China’s ambassador and defense attache.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was not clear about the situation but noted that the air defense identification zone is not territorial airspace and others are entitled to fly through it.

She took issue with a reporter’s use of the word “violation” to ask about China’s reported activity in South Korea’s air defense identification zone. “I feel that given China and South Korea are friendly neighbors, you should be careful when using it, because we are not clear about the situation,” she said.

The Justice Department told former special counsel Robert Mueller not to stray beyond his report on Russian election interference when he testifies to Congress on Wednesday.

In a letter sent Monday to Mueller, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer said he should not speak about redacted material from his report _ including material pertaining to pending criminal prosecutions, “uncharged third-parties” and “executive privilege,” such as “presidential communications privileges.”
 
The letter is entirely in line with what Mueller has already said _ that he doesn’t intend to speak beyond his report’s findings during Wednesday’s hearings before the House Judiciary and intelligence committees. But it gives Mueller a formal directive to point to if he faces questions he does not want to answer.
 
“The report is my testimony,” Mueller said in a televised statement in May. “I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.”

Still, Democrats are preparing questions to highlight the report’s most damning details. Judiciary panel Democrats planned to practice with a mock hearing behind closed doors Tuesday, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to publicly discuss the planning.

Attorney General William Barr has said congressional Democrats were trying to create a “public spectacle” by subpoenaing Mueller to testify and has offered to give Mueller an out, saying earlier this month that he and the Justice Department would support Mueller if he decided he didn’t want to “subject himself” to the congressional appearances. Barr has also said he’d block any attempts to force members of Mueller’s team to testify before Congress.

While Mueller’s 448-page report did not find sufficient evidence to establish charges of criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to swing the election, it said Trump could not be cleared of trying to obstruct the investigation.

The nation has heard the special counsel speak only once _ for nine minutes in May _ since his appointment in May 2017.

Mueller’s testimony will include an opening statement on Wednesday, but his spokesman said it would be similar in substance to his statement from late May at the Justice Department’s podium.

The Justice Department’s letter to Mueller was in response to a request from Mueller for information about limitations or potential privilege issues. Mueller’s spokesman did not immediately provide a copy of the letter the former special counsel had sent to the Justice Department earlier this month.
 

Marvel’s push for more women and people of color in its immensely popular film franchise is extending to behind the camera as it launches its next round of films after the massive success of “Avengers: Endgame.” Of the five films the superhero studio announced at Comic-Con on Saturday, only one is set to be directed by a white man. 

“It’s about fresh voices and new voices and great filmmakers who can continue to steer the (Marvel Cinematic Universe) into new places,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in an interview after the studio’s explosive Hall H panel. “And I am as proud of that lineup of directors as you saw today as any.”

In addition to a slew of women and people of color at the helm of the upcoming Marvel films, the weekend’s announcements promised more diversity on screen. 

First up for release is the long-awaited solo film starring Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, the lethal assassin she has played for nearly a decade. The film is set for release in May 2020.

Johansson said the search for “Black Widow” director Cate Shortland wasn’t easy.  

“It’s really interesting because when we were looking for a director, you start to see some of the systemic problems,” Johansson said. “Even looking for a female director who has had enough experience — who has had the opportunity to have the experience to sit at the helm of something huge like this, you know, choices are limited because of that. And it sucks.”

The actress added that she was proud to see the diversity on stage during Marvel’s Hall H panel.

“Looking out on that stage tonight, it was incredible. It was really moving, also just to see how incredibly diverse the universe is — and reflects what we see all around us. It’s incredible,” she said.

In terms of more diversity, “Black Widow” is just the beginning.

“The Eternals” will feature a cast full of actors of color, including Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, and Salma Hayek. Simu Liu will become Marvel’s first big screen Asian American superhero when “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” is released in February 2021. Natalie Portman will play a female Thor in the new “Thor: Love and Thunder,” which will also feature Tessa Thompson’s character, Valkyrie, as the MCU’s first LGBTQ superhero.  

“First of all, as new King (of Asgard), she needs to find her queen, so that will be her first order of business. She has some ideas. Keep you posted,” Thompson said during the panel. Feige later confirmed the news in an interview with the website io9.

The studio is also reviving one of Marvel’s most iconic black characters, Blade (previously played by Wesley Snipes), with the help of Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali. Feige told The Associated Press that right after winning his second Academy Award for “Green Book” earlier this year, Ali set up a meeting.

“Within 10 minutes, he basically was like, ‘What’s happening with ‘Blade’? I want to do it.’ And we went, that’s what happening with ‘Blade.’ Let’s do it,” Feige said.

“Captain Marvel,” released in March, was the first of Marvel Studios film to be centered entirely on a female character. It earned $427 million domestically, and along with the DC Comics film “Wonder Woman” has created momentum for more films with female heroes leading the way.

“Marvel is really focused on having very strong female characters at the forefront of their stories,” said actress Rachel Weisz, who also stars in “Black Widow.”

“And I think that’s great. This film has got three. It’s Scarlett, Florence Pugh, myself. So I think yeah, they are doing wonderful work to represent women, people of color, and tell different kinds of stories.”

The sliver of Hollywood still on the outside of the Marvel’s cinematic empire was paying close attention to the news. 

Actress, writer and director Lena Waithe tweeted Sunday: “Captain America is black. Thor is a woman. the new Blade got two Oscars. 007 is a black woman. And The Little Mermaid bout to have locs. (Expletive). Just. Got. Real.”

Behind America’s late leap into orbit and triumphant small step on the moon was the agile mind and guts-of-steel of Chris Kraft, making split-second decisions that propelled the nation to once unimaginable heights.

Kraft, the creator and longtime leader of NASA’s Mission Control, died Monday in Houston, just two days after the 50th anniversary of what was his and NASA’s crowning achievement: Apollo 11’s moon landing. He was 95.

Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. never flew in space, but “held the success or failure of American human spaceflight in his hands,” Neil Armstrong, the first man-on-the-moon, told The Associated Press in 2011.

Kraft founded Mission Control and created the job of flight director — later comparing it to an orchestra conductor — and established how flights would be run as the space race between the U.S. and Soviets heated up. The legendary engineer served as flight director for all of the one-man Mercury flights and seven of the two-man Gemini flights, helped design the Apollo missions that took 12 Americans to the moon from 1969 to 1972 and later served as director of the Johnson Space Center until 1982, overseeing the beginning of the era of the space shuttle.

Armstrong once called him “the man who was the ‘Control’ in Mission Control.”

“From the moment the mission starts until the moment the crew is safe on board a recovery ship, I’m in charge,” Kraft wrote in his 2002 book “Flight: My Life in Mission Control.”

“No one can overrule me. … They can fire me after it’s over. But while the mission is under way, I’m Flight. And Flight is God.”

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Monday called Kraft “a national treasure,” saying “We stand on his shoulders as we reach deeper into the solar system, and he will always be with us on those journeys.”

Kraft became known as “the father of Mission Control” and in 2011 NASA returned the favor by naming the Houston building that houses the nerve center after Kraft.

“It’s where the heart of the mission is,” Kraft said in an April 2010 AP interview. “It’s where decisions are made every day, small and large … We realized that the people that had the moxie, that had the knowledge, were there and could make the decisions.”

That’s what Chris Kraft’s Mission Control was about: smart people with knowledge discussing options quickly and the flight director making a quick, informed decision, said former Smithsonian Institution space historian Roger Launius. It’s the place that held its collective breath as Neil Armstrong was guiding the Eagle lunar lander on the moon while fuel was running out. And it’s the place that improvised a last-minute rescue of Apollo 13 — a dramatic scenario that later made the unsung engineers heroes in a popular movie.

Soon it became more than NASA’s Mission Control. Hurricane forecasting centers, city crisis centers, even the Russian space center are all modeled after the Mission Control that Kraft created, Launius said.

Leading up to the first launch to put an American, John Glenn, in orbit, a reporter asked Kraft about the odds of success and he replied: “If I thought about the odds at all, we’d never go to the pad.”

“It was a wonderful life. I can’t think of anything that an aeronautical engineer would get more out of, than what we were asked to do in the space program, in the ’60s,” Kraft said on NASA’s website marking the 50th anniversary of the agency in 2008.

In the early days of Mercury at Florida’s Cape Canaveral, before Mission Control moved to Houston in 1965, there were no computer displays, “all you had was grease pencils,” Kraft recalled. The average age of the flight control team was 26; Kraft was 38.

“We didn’t know a damn thing about putting a man into space,” Kraft wrote in his autobiography. “We had no idea how much it should or would cost. And at best, we were engineers trained to do, not business experts trained to manage.”

NASA trailed the Soviet space program and suffered through many failed launches in the early days, before the manned flights began in 1961. Kraft later recalled thinking President John F. Kennedy “had lost his mind” when in May 1961 he set as a goal a manned trip to the moon “before this decade is out.”

“We had a total of 15 minutes of manned spaceflight experience, we hadn’t flown Mercury in orbit yet, and here’s a guy telling me we’re going to fly to the moon. … Doing it was one thing, but doing it in this decade was to me too risky,” Kraft told AP in 1989.

“Frankly it scared the hell out of me,” he said at a 2009 lecture at the Smithsonian.

One of the most dramatic moments came during Scott Carpenter’s May 1962 mission as the second American to orbit the earth. Carpenter landed 288 miles off target because of low fuel and other problems. He was eventually found safely floating in his life raft.  Kraft blamed Carpenter for making poor decisions. Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff” said Kraft angrily vowed that Carpenter “will never fly for me again!” But Carpenter said he did the best he could when the machinery malfunctioned.

After the two-man Gemini flights, Kraft moved up NASA management to be in charge of manned spaceflight and was stunned by the Apollo 1 training fire that killed three astronauts.

Gene Kranz, who later would become NASA’s flight director for the Apollo mission that took man to the moon, said Kraft did not at first impress him as a leader. But Kranz eventually saw Kraft as similar to a judo instructor, allowing his student to grow in skills, then stepping aside.

“Chris Kraft had pioneered Mission Control and fought the battles in Mercury and Gemini, serving as the role model of the flight director. He proved the need for real-time leadership,” Kranz wrote in his book, “Failure Is Not An Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond.”

Born in 1924, Kraft grew up in Phoebus, Virginia, now part of Hampton, about 75 miles southeast of Richmond. In his autobiography, Kraft said with the name Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., “some of my life’s direction was settled from the start.”

After graduating from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1944, Kraft took a job with aircraft manufacturer Chance Vought to build warplanes, but he quickly realized it wasn’t for him. He returned to Virginia where he accepted a job with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, not far from Phoebus.

Kraft’s first job was to figure out what happens to airplanes as they approach the speed of sound.

After his retirement, Kraft served as an aerospace consultant and was chairman of a panel in the mid-1990s looking for a cheaper way to manage the shuttle program.

Later, as the space shuttle program was being phased out after 30 years, Kraft blasted as foolish the decision to retire the shuttles, which he called “the safest machines ever built.”

Kraft said he considered himself fortunate to be part of the team that sent Americans to space and called it a sad day when the shuttles stopped flying.

“The people of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo are blossoms on the moon. Their spirits will live there forever,” he wrote. “I was part of that crowd, then part of the leadership that opened space travel to human beings. We threw a narrow flash of light across our nation’s history. I was there at the best of times.”

Kraft and his wife, Betty Anne, were married in 1950. They had a son, Gordon, and a daughter, Kristi-Anne.

Mexico set a new record for homicides in the first half of the year as the number of murders grew by 5.3% compared to the same period of 2018, fueled partly by cartel and gang violence in several states. 

Mexico saw 3,080 killings in June, an increase of over 8% from the same month a year ago, according to official figures. The country of almost 125 million now sees as many as 100 killings per day nationwide. 

The 17,608 killings in the first half of 2019 is the most since comparable records began being kept in 1997, including the peak year of Mexico’s drug war in 2011. Officials said 16,714 people were killed in the first half of 2018. 

In particular, drug cartel turf wars have become increasingly bloody in the northern state of Sonora, where the number of homicides was up by 69% in the first half of the year. But in Sinaloa, where the cartel of convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is based, homicides declined by 23% so far this year compared to last.

Given cutbacks and a widespread reorganization of security forces under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, it is not clear who, if anyone, is doing the analysis and intelligence work to find out exactly which conflicts are causing the rise in homicides.

“I could give you 10 potential, plausible reasons, but the truth is we don’t know, and that is perhaps the biggest problem,” said security analyst Alejandro Hope. “There is very little systematic research that would allow us to conclude what is really happening.”

And other types of crime, like extortion, have become increasingly frequent and violent.

As if to underscore that, officials said Monday the five men killed Sunday at a bar in the resort of Acapulco were allegedly part of a gang of extortionists who shook down business owners for protection payments.

Guerrero state prosecutor Jorge Zuriel “we now know that the members of this gang met daily at this bar to coordinate charging extortion payments and to collect the daily take.” 

One suspect has been arrested in the shootings, which left six people wounded. Zuriel said the killers were members of a rival gang.

US President Donald Trump on Monday praised Beijing’s handling of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, a day after suspected triad gangsters attacked demonstrators in a bloody escalation.

Hong Kong has been plunged into its worst crisis in recent history by weeks of marches, which drew millions, and sporadic violent confrontations between police and pockets of hardcore protesters.

The demonstrations have evolved into a call for democratic reforms, universal suffrage and a halt to sliding freedoms which China had promised to respect in the semi-autonomous territory after its handover from Britain in 1997.

“I know that’s a very important situation for President Xi” Jinping of China, Trump said during a White House meeting with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan.

When a reporter suggested that the Hong Kong and Chinese governments were ignoring violence against the protesters, Trump replied that “I think it’s been relatively nonviolent.”

Hospital authorities said 45 people were wounded in the attack late Sunday which led to the arrest of six men, some of whom police alleged had triad gangster backgrounds.

“China could stop them if they wanted,” Trump said of the protests.

“I’m not involved in it very much but I think President Xi of China has acted responsibly, very responsibly,” said Trump, who last year began a trade war with China that has led to tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in mutual trade, a dispute still unsettled.

After Sunday’s violence critics accused Hong Kong police of responding too slowly.

“They’ve been out there protesting for a long time. I’ve never seen protests like it where you have that many people. It looks like two million people,” Trump said.

“Those are big protests. … I hope that President Xi will do the right thing, but it has been going on a long time, there’s no question.”

Hardcore protesters have stormed Hong Kong’s legislature, and on Sunday some demonstrators targeted with eggs and graffiti China’s representative office in the financial hub, which China’s foreign ministry called “absolutely intolerable.”

Iceland’s first glacier to be lost to rising temperatures is to be marked with a memorial carrying a grim warning about the impact of climate change if the world fails to act on time.

“In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path,” reads a plaque to be installed next month near where Okjokull, also known as Ok Glacier, was until it was lost in 2014.

“This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it,” it reads in English and Icelandic, under the words “A letter to the future.”

Icelanders call their nation the “Land of Fire and Ice” for its other-worldly landscape of volcanoes and glaciers, immortalized in literature. But the glaciers are melting and scientists say rising global temperatures are to blame.

“This will be the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world,” said Cymene Howe, and anthropologist with Houston-based Rice University who made a 2018 documentary about the glacier’s disappearance.

“By marking Ok’s passing, we hope to draw attention to what is being lost as Earth’s glaciers expire.”

Grim predictions

The shrinking of the glaciers heralds profound shifts in Iceland’s weather patterns, water flows, flora and fauna, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

Volcanic activity is expected to increase, as the melting of glaciers relieves pressure on volcanic systems, with the eruption of glacier-tipped volcanoes causing major melting of ice.

This could lead to floods of historic proportions, which could alter landscapes, devastate vegetation, and threaten lives and infrastructure, scientists have warned.

Rice University said its researchers would join key local figures and members of the public for the memorial’s installation on Aug. 18.

“With this memorial, we want to underscore that it is up to us, the living, to collectively respond to the rapid loss of glaciers and the ongoing impacts of climate change,” said Howe in a statement announcing the memorial.

Four Turkish nationals have been kidnapped at gunpoint in central Nigeria, police said on Monday, in the latest such incident in the country.

Gunmen stormed a bar in the village of Gbale in the state of Kwara and seized the men on Saturday, national police spokesman Frank Mba told AFP.

“We are working frantically to secure their release,” he added.

Mba did not say if any ransom demands have been made.

Local media said the Turks were working for a construction firm in the state.

Kidnapping for ransom is common in Nigeria, especially in the oil-rich south and the northwest.

The victims are usually released after a ransom is paid although police rarely confirm if money changes hands.

Earlier this month, two Chinese nationals were kidnapped in the southern state of Edo.

Nigerian police could not confirm if they are still being held.

There have also been many abductions in the northeast, where an insurgency led by Boko Haram jihadists has killed 27,000 people and forced some two million to flee their homes since 2009.

 

 

 

 

From mobile phones, tablets and laptop computers to all the different types of social media out there, modern day society as a whole is distracted in a way it never has before.  Scientists have noticed that as technology becomes more prevalent, people are also getting fatter.  VOA’s Elizabeth has the details on a Rice University study examining whether there is a link between technology habits and obesity.

The party of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy won the most votes in Sunday’s parliamentary election giving the president a mandate to carry out sweeping changes in the country beset by conflict and high-level corruption. The former comedian and TV celebrity won a landslide victory in the April 21 presidential election and has called for snap elections to gain parliamentary support.  His party, Servant of the People, is named after his popular TV show, which satirized government corruption. Another new party, Voice, is headed by Ukraine’s most popular singer. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke rports the two may join to form a ruling coalition.

Education has been a key issue for Democratic candidates running for president in the 2020 race, especially as they seek the support of younger Americans who have now replaced Baby Boomers as the country’s largest voting bloc. But education is not the only concern for these young voters.  Other social issues are likely to motivate them to go to the polls in 2020.  Sahar Majid has more in this report for VOA narrated by Kathleen Struck. 
 

As drought-hit towns across New South Wales and Queensland edge closer to completely running out of water, federal and state governments in Australia are trying to come up with ways to guarantee supplies into the future. But on the other side of the continent, the city of Perth is leagues ahead in its water efficiency following a long-term decline in rainfall. Part of its survival plan relies on recycled water from toilets, a move that many consumers elsewhere still consider to be unpalatable.

Since 2017, residents in the Western Australian city of Perth have been drinking water recycled from sewage. It is filtered using a process called reverse osmosis, which is similar to forcing water through a giant sponge. It is then disinfected with ultra-violet light at a treatment plant, pumped into natural aquifers, and extracted.

Perth is a city of two million people, and Clare Lugar from Western Australia’s Water Corporation said it has had to get used to climatic changes.

“We know from the mid-70s onwards Perth’s rainfall has been declining by about 20 percent, and that has had a huge impact on our water sources that are dependent on the climate.”

Lugar said convincing residents of the benefits of drinking recycled sewage did take time.

“So, it is only a small percentage of the water that comes into the plant is actually from our toilets. But getting over that perception, that kind of image you might be drinking the water that you flushing down the toilet – that was probably one of our big challenges initially,” said Lugar.

Two desalination plants supply about half of Perth’s water. Aquifers are also crucial, but recycling produces only two percent of the total. But that figure is soon expected to rise.

Ian Wright, an expert in environmental science at Western Sydney University, believes other parts of Australia should embrace recycling.

“In Sydney that is probably 150 liters per day per person of waste water that is completely wasted, and, yes, we have the availability of desalination on the coast, but Canberra does not have desalination and then the poor drought-stricken towns like Tamworth and Dubbo, and Broken Hill, they could really, really use that now,” he said.

Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent. Water is precious, and, in many places, scarce. More than 95 percent of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, is officially in drought, and the next three months are forecast to be drier than average.

 

India will make a second attempt Monday to send a landmark spacecraft to the Moon after an apparent fuel leak forced last week’s launch to be aborted.

The South Asian nation is bidding to become just the fourth nation — after Russia, the United States and China — to land a spacecraft on the Moon.

The mission comes 50 years after Neil Armstrong became the first person to step foot on the moon, an occasion celebrated by space enthusiasts globally on Saturday.

The fresh launch attempt for Chandrayaan-2 — Moon Chariot 2 in some Indian languages including Sanskrit and Hindi — has been scheduled for 2:43 pm (0913 GMT) on Monday, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

“Chandrayaan 2 is ready to take a billion dreams to the Moon – now stronger than ever before!” it said on Thursday.

The first launch attempt was scrubbed just under an hour before the scheduled lift-off because of what authorities described as a “technical snag.” Local media, citing ISRO officials, said that issue was a fuel leak.

The agency tweeted Saturday that a rehearsal for the launch was completed successfully.

Chandrayaan-2 will be launched atop a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) MkIII, India’s most powerful rocket.

Experts said setbacks were to be expected in such missions given their complexity, and that it was more prudent to delay the launch instead of taking risks that may jeopardise the project.

“In such an ambitious and prestigious mission like Chandrayaan, one cannot take a chance even if a small flaw is detected,” Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, head of space policy at the New Delhi think tank the Observer Research Foundation, told AFP.

Former NASA scientist Kumar Krishen said India’s space agency should be praised for taking on ambitious projects like Chandrayaan-2.

“We should keep in mind that space exploration is risky as many systems have failed in the past and many lives lost,” he told AFP.

National pride

Aside from propelling India into rarefied company among spacefaring nations, Chandrayaan-2 also stands out because of its low cost.

About $140 million has been spent on preparations for the mission, a much smaller price tag compared with similar missions by other countries — whose costs often run into billions of dollars.

Chandrayaan-2, and India’s space program as a whole, are a source of national pride in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has outlined an ambitious plan to launch a crewed space mission by 2022, and India hopes to seek out commercial satellite and orbiting deals.

The new mission comes almost 11 years after the launch of India’s first lunar mission — Chandrayaan-1 — which orbited the Moon and searched for water.

The rocket carrying Chandrayaan-2 will launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, an island off the coast of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

The spacecraft will carry an orbiter, lander and a rover, which has been almost entirely designed and made in India.

The orbiter is planned to circle the Moon for about one year, imaging the surface and studying the atmosphere.

The lander, named Vikram, will head to the surface near the lunar South Pole carrying the rover. Once it touches down, the rover will carry out experiments while being controlled remotely by ISRO scientists.

It is expected to work for one lunar day, the equivalent of 14 Earth days, and will look for signs of water and “a fossil record of the early solar system”.

 

 

 

U.S. President Donald Trump contended Sunday that four minority Democratic congresswomen he has been feuding with are not “capable of loving our Country.”

“They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said,” Trump said on Twitter. “They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!”

I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country. They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said. They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

LOS ANGELES — Joe Biden, a former U.S. vice president and Democratic presidential candidate, has compared Republican President Donald Trump to the late George Wallace, a prominent supporter of racial segregation. 

Biden, in California for a two-day swing to campaign and raise funds, told a gathering on Friday that Trump is “more George Wallace than George Washington.” 

Wallace, remembered for his white supremacist views, served as Alabama’s governor for 20 years, beginning in 1967, and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination several times. 

His 1972 presidential bid ended when he was shot, but he survived. Wallace died in 1998. 

Biden’s comment came days after Trump said in a tweet that four U.S. congresswomen of color “should go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” 

The tweet kicked off a weeklong furor in Washington, with Democrats, and some Republicans, denouncing the comment as racist. Three of the four congresswomen were born in the United States, and all are U.S. citizens. 

“Our children are listening to this. What the president says matters. It matters, because the president is the face of the nation,” Biden said in California. 

Trump’s re-election campaign responded with a series of tweets highlighting what they said were Biden’s own past links to Wallace. 

Inspired by Charlottesville rally

Biden, 76, says he was inspired to launch his 2020 White House bid after a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a woman protesting was 
murdered. After the rally, Trump said that there were “good people on both sides.” 

Biden, who served under former Democratic President Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, has found his own record on race in the spotlight since launching his White House bid. 

Presidential rival Kamala Harris, a U.S. senator from California and a woman of color, challenged Biden on the issue during the first Democratic debate, leading to its most contentious exchange. 

Biden has also tried to tamp down criticism after recent comments that he, as a U.S. senator from Delaware in the 1970s, worked with two Southern segregationist senators to get things done. 

Biden has stressed that he entered politics in the early 1970s to fight for civil rights for minorities and civil liberties. 

Biden and Harris are two of 25 Democratic candidates vying to become the party’s nominee to take on Trump in the November 2020 election. The two Democrats will face off in a second televised debate on July 31. 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with Turkey’s foreign minister on Saturday and expressed disappointment over the country’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 missile system, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. 

Washington had opposed Turkey’s purchase of the Russian missile defense system and threatened to impose sanctions. Since then, President Donald Trump has been unclear about whether his administration was planning such an action. 

Several Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Thursday pressed Trump to impose sanctions on Turkey for the purchase. 

HONG KONG — Tens of thousands gathered in Hong Kong on Saturday to voice support for the police and call for an end to violence, after a wave of protests against an extradition bill triggered clashes between police and activists and plunged the city into crisis. 
 
The rally, called “Safeguard Hong Kong,” came a day ahead of another mass protest planned against the government and its handling of the now-suspended extradition bill that would have allowed people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China for trial. 
 
Police have called for calm ahead of Sunday’s protest, where security is expected to be tight. Authorities have removed metal barriers — which activists have used to block roads during previous demonstrations — from areas around the march route. 
 
“We are experiencing the most serious revolution after Hong Kong’s handover,” said former Legislative Council President Jasper Tsang. “We are also experiencing the most serious challenge for “One Country, Two Systems,” he added, referring to the system under which Hong Kong is governed since its handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997. 

Explosive found in raid
 
Also Saturday, the Associated Press reported that police in Hong Kong found about 2 kilograms of a powerful homemade explosive, TATP, and arrested a man in a raid on a commercial building late Friday night. TATP, or tri-acetone tri-peroxide, has been used in terrorist attacks worldwide. 
 
Local media reported that police found materials voicing opposition to the extradition bill at the site, the AP reported. A police spokesman said no concrete link between the explosives cache and the march had been established, and they were continuing to investigate. 
 
Hong Kong’s embattled leader, Carrie Lam, has apologized for the turmoil the extradition bill has caused and declared it “dead,” although opponents say nothing short of its full withdrawal will do. 
 
Demonstrators, mostly middle-aged or older and dressed in white, braved heavy rain and thunderstorms to gather at the city’s Tamar Park, next to the Legislative Council, which protesters stormed and raided on July 1, the 22nd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese rule. 
 
Some waved Chinese flags as others chanted “Hong Kong Cheer Up” and “Support Hong Kong Police.” 

‘We’re all in the same boat’
 
A fleet of around 12 fishing boats circled Victoria Harbor next to the rally with banners draped over the side of the vessels that read “Put away the combat, fight for Hong Kong” and “Cherish Hong Kong, we’re all in the same boat.” 
 
“Violence is intolerant. We are distressed about our home and we should absolutely stand out to support Hong Kong police, to maintain stability and rule of law in society,” said Tsol Pui, 85, president of Hong Kong Veterans’ Home. 
 
Echoing that sentiment, Tang King Shing, Hong Kong’s former police commissioner, said: “Police, we support you. You should not have suffered from the disaster made by those thugs. … We Hong Kong people come out to safeguard Hong Kong.” 
 
Organizers said 316,000 attended the rally. Police put the number at 103,000 at the peak. 
 
Violence  
 
Last weekend two initially peaceful protests degenerated into running skirmishes between baton-wielding riot police and activists, resulting in scores of injuries and more than 40 arrests. 
 
Those fights followed larger outbreaks of violence in central Hong Kong last month, when police forced back activists with tear gas, rubber bullets and beanbag rounds. 
 
Activists and human rights groups have called for an independent investigation into what they describe as excessive use of force by police. 
 
The groups are also demanding the word “riot” be withdrawn from the government’s description of demonstrations and the unconditional release of those arrested. 
 
What started as protests over the extradition bill have now morphed into demands for greater democracy, the resignation of leader Lam, and even curbing the number of mainland Chinese tourists to Hong Kong. 
 
Under the terms of the handover from Britain in 1997, Hong Kong was allowed to retain extensive freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and right to protest. 
 
But for many Hong Kong residents, the extradition bill is the latest step in a relentless march toward mainland control. 

Future protests
 
Other anti-government protests are planned over coming weekends in areas including Mong Kok, a gritty working-class district across the harbor from the financial center, and in Tseung Kwan O and Sham Shui Po, one of the city’s poorest areas. 
 
Opponents of the extradition bill fear it would leave Hong Kong people at the mercy of Chinese courts, where human rights are not guaranteed, and have voiced concerns about the city’s much-cherished rule of law. 
 
Some material from the Associated Press is included in this article. 

The United States and Pakistan this month started cracking down against armed militant groups, in what analysts describe as establishing a groundwork ahead of the meeting between the U.S. President Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in Washington early next week.

Pakistani authorities in Punjab province Wednesday arrested the head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, Hafiz Saeed, who is alleged to have been the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans.

Trump, in a tweet following the detention, praised the “great pressure” exerted over the past two years against the cleric.

Some experts say the move by the Pakistani government just days ahead of Khan’s maiden trip to Washington serves as a goodwill gesture to improve relations with the Trump administration, which has accused Pakistan of failing to rein in extremists operating on its soil.

Marvin Weinbaum, the director of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Program at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told VOA that Pakistan is hoping its recent moves against armed Islamists could convince U.S. officials that it is playing an effective role in the fight against terrorism.

“Pakistan has campaigned for months to convince the international community that it does not harbor terrorists,” Weinbaum told VOA.

He said Pakistan authorities, in an effort to gain economic leverage from Washington, are stepping up their efforts against militants targeting India, while at the same time influencing the Taliban in Afghanistan to hold peace negotiations with the U.S.

“There is a recognition in Pakistan that despite the rhetoric used by the political leadership, it needs the U.S. on the economic front,” Weinbaum said.

Suspension of aid

Trump last year suspended $300 million in military aid to the Pakistani government, which he accused of giving safe havens to terrorists launching attacks in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has received more than $33 billion in U.S. assistance since 2002, including more than $14 billion in Coalition Support Funds (CSF), which is a U.S. Defense Department program for reimbursing allies that incur costs while supporting the U.S.-led counterinsurgency and counterterror operations in the region.

The United States, Afghanistan and India have accused Pakistan of being selective in its counterterror operations, targeting only those groups that pose a threat to its national security and ignoring others that plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan.

Pakistan has rejected those accusations, noting that thousands of its civilians have died in militant attacks because of its anti-terror efforts with the U.S. The country also said it targets militants indiscriminately.

Peace talks

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Tuesday that his country’s efforts to facilitate peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban have led to a “gradual warming” of U.S.-Pakistan relations.

He said Trump’s invitation to Khan underscored the “inherent importance of the relationship” for both countries.

The meeting between Trump and Khan, scheduled for Monday, will focus on counterterrorism, defense, energy and trade, according to a White House statement.

“It will focus on strengthening bilateral cooperation to bring peace, stability and economic prosperity to South Asia,” it said.

Zubair Iqbal, a Pakistan analyst with the Middle East Institute, said the expected meeting between the two leaders and recent actions against militants show both sides are willing to defuse months of tensions.

“The U.S. government seems to have changed its attitude toward Pakistan,” Iqbal said, adding that Pakistan could play a vital role in Afghanistan’s peace process.

FATF list

Some analysts charge the improved relations between the two countries could also help Khan in his bid to prevent his country from being blacklisted by the global anti-terror watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

FATF in 2017 placed the country on its “gray list” for allegedly not taking adequate action against terror financing and money laundering in the country. The president of FATF last month told VOA that it was possible that Pakistan could be blacklisted during the global terror financing watchdog’s plenary session in October.

“It is in Pakistan’s interest that the FATF meeting in October does not put it on the blacklist,” said Imran Malik, a Punjab-based defense analyst and retired brigadier. The blacklist, he noted, could hurt Pakistan’s economy.

For its part, Washington has attempted to fix the strained relations with Islamabad by targeting anti-government separatist militants operating in Baluchistan province in southwestern Pakistan, Malik said.

U.S. designation

The U.S. earlier this month designated the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) as a terrorist group, vowing to deny the organization access to resources for planning and carrying out attacks. The move was welcomed by Pakistan’s Foreign Office, and shortly afterward, Islamabad filed 23 terrorism and terror financing charges against Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD), Falah-i-Insaniyat and Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, all U.S.-designated terror groups.

These moves by Pakistan could also be seen as “quid pro quo for the U.S. designation of the Baluchistan Liberation Army as global terrorists,” Malik charged.

“The U.S. action has created the right environment ahead of the meeting between Prime Minister Imran Khan and President Donald Trump,” he added.

Weinbaum, of the Middle East Institute, said the improving relations with Islamabad also reflected Washington’s desire to end the 18-year-old Afghan war, and what it considers the role Pakistan could play.

“For the U.S., the priority will be to discuss Pakistan’s role after the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan,” he added. “When the U.S. is ready to leave Afghanistan, it needs to be comfortable that it has Pakistan’s word that it will stabilize the country.”

The Wall Street Journal says Equifax will pay around $700 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over a 2017 data breach that exposed Social Security numbers and other private information of nearly 150 million people.

The Journal, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, said the settlement could be announced as soon as Monday. Equifax declined to comment.

The report says the deal would resolve investigations by the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and most state attorneys general. It would also resolve a nationwide consumer class-action lawsuit.

Spokesmen for the FTC and the CFPB didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment Friday night.

The breach was one of the largest affecting people’s private information. Atlanta-based Equifax did not notice the attack for more than six weeks. The compromised data included Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver license numbers and credit card numbers.

The company said earlier this year that it had set aside around $700 million to cover anticipated settlements and fines.
 

Joaquin Guzman, the convicted Mexican drug lord known as “El Chapo,” has been transferred to a “Supermax” prison in Colorado from which no one has ever escaped, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in a statement Friday.

Guzman was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years on Wednesday in a federal court in Brooklyn after a jury convicted him of drug trafficking and engaging in multiple murder conspiracies as a top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s largest, most violent drug trafficking organizations.

Before he was finally captured in 2016, Guzman twice escaped maximum-security prisons in Mexico.

“We can confirm that Joaquin Guzman is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at United States Penitentiary (USP) Administrative Maximum (ADX) Florence, located in Florence, Colorado,” the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said in its statement.

The Bureau of Prisons declined to comment further.

Guzman was whisked away early Friday from a secret location in New York, on his way to the Supermax prison in Florence, his attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told the Denver Post.

The prison is about 115 miles (185 km) south of Denver and opened in 1994. It has about 375 inmates.

Guzman joins a long list of notorious criminals there. They include “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, Terry Nichols from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Ramzi Yousef from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.

The Colorado Supermax prison is nicknamed “Alcatraz of the Rockies” after the San Francisco prison whose inmates included the gangsters Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly, as well as Robert Franklin Stroud, known as the Birdman of Alcatraz.

Like other prisoners, Guzman will likely be confined for around 23 hours a day to a solitary cell that has a narrow window about 42 inches (107 cm) high and angled upward so only the sky is visible.

He will be able to watch TV in his cell, and will have access to religious services and educational programs.

Special restrictions are used to ensure that inmates cannot exert influence or make threats beyond prison walls. Prisoners cannot move around without being escorted. Head counts are done at least six times a day.