Russia media compassionate about Putin's divorce

June 07, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian media have reacted with unusual compassion to Thursday's announcement of President Vladimir Putin's divorce.

Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, rarely seen in public, announced the end of their marriage less than two months shy of their 30th anniversary in an interview with Russian television. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov could not say when they would formally divorce, adding that this did not matter.

Divorce is common in Russia, and nearly 700,000 couples dissolved their marriages in 2009, according to UNICEF. But Russian leaders, unlike their American counterparts, generally keep their domestic lives well out of public view and divorce among top officials in Russia is unprecedented.

Lyudmila Putina, 55, was rarely seen in public during her husband's long tenure at the top of Russian politics, fueling rumors that she and Putin had separated. While break-ups involving prominent politicians are exceptionally rare, some sections of the media often sneer at celebrity splits.

Russian media, however, were unusually compassionate to the Putins' decision. Opposition-leaning Kommersant Radio lauded the couple's announcement for keeping the public informed instead of keeping it secret.

"Perhaps a lot of people feel better now that the president did what he did instead of living a double life for the sake of following some false protocol," prominent columnist Viktor Loshak said on Kommersant FM Friday morning. "The president and his wife acted like real people."

One of Russia's best-selling tabloids, Moskovsky Komsomolets, credited the president with breaking a long-held taboo for talking about their private lives, let alone problems and affairs. "There was hardly any politics-savvy Russian in the country who could not have guessed that the first couple wasn't particularly intimate. Lyudmila Putina's long-time absence at political events was telling," Mikhail Rostovsky said. "Putin has broken a taboo by showing that he is a man like everyone else. Even the president is entitled have a private life — and entitled to have failures in it, too."

The Putins married on July 28, 1983, and have two daughters, Maria and Yekaterina, who haven't been seen in public for years. There have been hints that Lyudmila Putina was unhappy. In a 2005 interview with three Russian newspapers, she complained that her husband worked long hours, forgetting that "one needs not only to work, but also to live."

The floodwaters of Mars

Paris (ESA)
Jun 07, 2013

Dramatic flood events carved this impressive channel system on Mars covering 1.55 million square kilometres, shown here in a stunning new mosaic from ESA's Mars Express.

The mosaic, which features the spectacular Kasei Valles, comprises 67 images taken with the spacecraft's high-resolution stereo camera and is released during the week of the 10th anniversary of the spacecraft's launch to the Red Planet.

Kasei Valles is one of the largest outflow channel systems on Mars - from source to sink, it extends some 3000 km and descends by 3 km in altitude. The scene covered in the mosaic spans 987 km north-south (19-36N) and 1550 km east-west (280-310E).

The channel originates beyond the southern edge of this image near Valles Marineris, and empties into the vast plains of Chryse Planitia to the east (right).

Kasei Valles splits into two main branches that hug a broad island of fractured terrain - Sacra Mensa - rising 2 km above the channels that swerve around it. While weaker materials succumbed to the erosive power of the fast-flowing water, this hardier outcrop has stood the test of time.

Slightly further downstream, the flood waters did their best to erase the 100 km-wide Sharonov crater, crumpling its southern rim. Around Sharonov, many small streamlined islands form teardrop shapes rising from the riverbed, carved as water swept around these natural obstacles.

The region between Sacra Mensa and Sharonov is seen in close-up detail in the perspective view below, looking downstream from the northern flank of Kasai Valles.

Zooming into the valley floor reveals small craters with bright dust 'tails' seemingly flowing in the opposite direction to the movement of water. In fact, these craters were formed by impacts that took place after the catastrophic flooding, their delicate tails created by winds blowing in a westwards direction 'up' valley.

Their raised rims influence wind flow over the crater such that the dust immediately 'behind' the crater remains undisturbed in comparison to the surrounding, exposed, plains.

Kasei Valles has likely seen floods of many different sizes, brought about by the changing tectonic and volcanic activity in the nearby Tharsis region over 3 billion years ago.

The landscape was pulled apart under the strain of these forces, groundwater bursting from its ripped seams to create not only violent floods, but also the unique fracture patterns seen at Sacra Mensa and Sacra Fossae.

Snow and ice melted by volcanic eruptions also likely contributed to torrential, muddy outpourings, while glacial activity may have further shaped the channel system.

Now silent, one can only imagine from examples on Earth the roar of gushing water that once cascaded through Kasei Valles, undermining cliff faces and engulfing craters, and eventually flooding onto the plains of Chryse Planitia.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/The_floodwaters_of_Mars_999.html.

German police, protesters in standoff near ECB

June 01, 2013

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — German police and thousands of anti-capitalist protesters are engaged in a standoff near the headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

Police in Germany's financial capital say about 7,000 protesters are refusing to move after officers encircled a group of about 200-300 people for refusing to remove face masks. Organizers of the "Blockupy" protest say up to 20,000 people have come to demonstrate against the ECB's role in pushing European countries to cut government spending as part of efforts to reduce public debt.

Frankfurt police spokesman Erich Mueller said Saturday that officers had used pepper spray and batons to stop some protesters from breaking through police lines. He says there have been no arrests or reported injuries so far.

Scotland gives green light to $710M wood biomass heat-power plant

June 5, 2013

GRANGEMOUTH, Scotland, June 5 (UPI) -- A new wood biomass power plant approved for a Scottish seaport will be "responsibly" sourced for fuel, Energy Minister Fergus Ewing promised this week.

Ewing announced planning approval Monday for a $710 million combined power-heat biomass generator at the Port of Grangemouth on the River Forth, which will generate as much as 120 megawatts of electricity -- the equivalent of the amount needed to power around 130,000 homes.

It will also be aimed at industrial users with 200 megawatts thermal of heat, thus making "a valuable contribution to Scotland's ambitions to decarbonize electricity generation."

The plant, expected to be up and running by 2017, will create 70 permanent jobs and up to 500 during the three-year construction phase.

The energy minister also said it would be supplied only with environmentally certified wood fuel not linked to deforestation.

Environmentalists have raised objections over the effects of large-scale biomass generators on shrinking global biodiversity, international deforestation, air pollution, human rights and other concerns.

"In consenting [to] this application I have put in place a series of conditions to protect local residents from inconvenience, safeguard the appearance of the area, and protect the environment and air quality," Ewing said.

"The conditions to the consent also ensure that the fuel used in the biomass is from sustainable and responsible sources."

The massive plant is one of a series of four such biomass generators once proposed in Scotland by Forth Ports Ltd. and SSE PLC, with others originally slated for the ports of Leith, Dundee and Rosyth.

The joint venture company Forth Energy says the projects represent a $1.7 billion investment in renewable energy to produce as much as 300 megawatts of electricity and 260 megawatts thermal of heat.

Wood fuel, it says, "is safe and dependable and provides a source of energy which can be constantly generated."

But plans for the Leith plant were shelved last year after strong opposition from opponents, who claimed the government is backing away from a pledge to use local fuel sources for biomass generation and instead has opted for large-scale efforts that require the importation of masses of trees.

In 2011, seven people were arrested during a protest against the power station at the Grangemouth docks after about 20 protesters blocked access roads to the port and locked themselves to scaffolding tripods, the BBC reported.

"[The government] claims to have a policy favoring use of biomass in small-scale plants, off the gas grid, using primarily local sources of supply," Friends of the Earth Scotland Director Richard Dixon told the broadcaster.

"Now it approves a massive power station importing over a million tons of trees a year to burn for electricity, with no guarantee that Forth Energy will find customers for the heat it produces."

The Grangemouth approval also brought criticism from the Scottish Green Party.

Member of Scottish Parliament for Lothian Alison Johnstone told the BBC the government had "made a poor decision, and should instead be supporting genuinely sustainable heat and power at a local level.

"Chopping down swathes of foreign forest to burn in Scotland is plain daft."

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2013/06/05/Scotland-gives-green-light-to-710M-wood-biomass-heat-power-plant/UPI-55851370404980/.

Death toll hits 10 in European flooding

June 04, 2013

BERLIN (AP) — Germany dispatched thousands of soldiers Tuesday to help cities and towns cope with flooding from the rain-soaked Danube and other southern rivers — reinforcements that came a day after the Bavarian city of Passau saw its worst flooding since 1501.

The death toll rose to at least 10, including seven in the neighboring Czech Republic, where a man was found dead in the water in eastern Bohemia. Another nine people have been reported missing in the floods that have also swept through Austria and Switzerland.

Chancellor Angela Merkel toured flooded German regions, pledging 100 million euros ($130 million) in immediate federal help and holding out the possibility for more. She told reporters in Passau, a city of 50,000 on the Austrian border, that the damage looked even worse than during the massive flooding that hit central Europe in 2002.

Some 5,000 German soldiers were called in as well as more than 2,000 federal disaster workers and 700 federal police to sandbag areas in danger of flooding and provide other assistance. Water levels were still rising in major rivers such as the Danube and Elbe as well as tributaries.

In the Czech Republic, authorities evacuated animals from the Prague zoo and closed a major bridge in the capital on Tuesday. The rain in Prague has halted but the Vltava river that runs through the city and flows into the Elbe was still raging, with currents and water levels far exceeding the norm. The famous Charles Bridge was closed as a precaution.

On the outskirts of Prague, a major Staropramen beer brewery on the river bank was closed as a protective measure — as were several major chemical factories. One of them — Spolana — released dangerous toxic chemicals into the Elbe during the devastating floods of 2002.

Authorities said the level of the Vltava in Prague has now begun to drop but excess water was expected to soon hit the Elba river, into which it flows downstream. This year's spike in water levels has been far less than in 2002 so far, but still forced the Prague Zoo to evacuate animals after the lower side of the park was submerged and will once again need major reconstruction.

Passau, a city built around the intersection of the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz rivers, has been one of the worst hit by the flooding in central Europe. After hitting the highest level in more than 500 years in Passau on Monday, the floodwaters there had dropped by an estimated 2.5 meters (nearly 8 feet) Tuesday but cities downstream like Regensburg were bracing for the water's arrival.

Peak floodwaters coursing out of the Czech Republic were expected to hit Dresden, capital of the German province of Saxony, along the Elbe in three to four days. Already, the German cities of Pirna and Meissen were reporting flooding in their historic centers.

Cities and towns in the German states of Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia and Brandenburg were also hit with flooding.

Karel Janicek contributed to this report from Prague.

Central Europe hit by floods after days of rain

June 02, 2013

BERLIN (AP) — Authorities in parts of central Europe issued disaster warnings and scrambled to reinforce flood defenses Sunday as rivers swelled by days of heavy rain threatened to burst their banks.

Several people have died or are missing in the floods in Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland since Thursday. Some residents also have been evacuated from flooding in southwestern Poland. Czech officials said the waters of the Vltava river could reach critical levels in Prague late Sunday and that special metal walls were being erected to prevent flooding.

Interim Mayor Tomas Hudecek said authorities were shutting down eight stations of the capital's subway network and urging people not to travel to city. He said the entire subway would close at 11 p.m. Sunday, one hour earlier than normal, and that all three subway lines in central Prague will remain closed Monday.

Anticipating traffic problems, the mayor said all nursery, elementary and high schools in the Czech capital will be closed on Monday. In the nearby town of Trebenice where a woman was found dead in the rubble after a summer cottage collapsed due to the raging water, authorities discovered the dead body of a man, Czech public television reported. Separately, at least three other people were reportedly missing.

Many roads and train lines were closed, including a major one from Prague to the eastern part of the country. Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said 300 soldiers have been deployed to help local authorities and that up to 2,000 have placed on standby. The government also declared a state of emergency in six regions, in the western half of the country and Prague, that have been badly hit by the flooding.

Thousands of people have had to be evacuated from their homes across the country, mainly in the north and the south. In Prague, authorities have ordered the evacuation of the parts of the city's zoo located by the river. Also patients from a Prague hospital have been moved to a higher ground.

In Germany, where at least four people have died or are missing, Chancellor Angela Merkel promised federal support for affected areas and said the army would be deployed if necessary. Several cities including Chemnitz in the east, and Passau and Rosenheim in the south, issued disaster warnings.

Passau, which is located at the confluence of three rivers, could see waters rise above record levels of 2002, said Mayor Juergen Dupper. German news agency dpa reported that large stretches of the Rhine, Main and Neckar rivers have been closed to ship traffic.

Evacuations are also taking place in neighboring Austria and Switzerland. Rivers also were spilling over their banks in some rural areas of southwestern Poland, and people being evacuated. In one place flood waters swept away a fire truck.

Meteorologists are predicting the rainfall will ease in the coming days.

Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic, and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.

UN court acquits 2 Serbs of Balkan war atrocities

May 30, 2013

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A U.N. court on Thursday acquitted two former allies of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic of setting up and arming notorious Serb paramilitary gangs that committed atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, a verdict that further distanced Belgrade from rebel Serb crimes elsewhere in the region.

The verdicts at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal came just three months after appeals judges at the tribunal acquitted the former chief of the Yugoslav National Army of aiding and abetting atrocities by rebel Serbs in Bosnia. Both rulings support Belgrade's often-stated assertion that it didn't deliberately assist in atrocities committed by rebel Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia.

Serbia's prime minister, Ivica Dacic, quickly welcomed the acquittal. "The Serbian government has always supported fair trials before the tribunal, because fair trials are the only way to establish the truth about the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, start the process of reconciliation and create conditions for lasting stability in the region," Dacic said in Belgrade.

Prosecutors had demanded life sentences for the two men acquitted, Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic. Stanisic, 62, was head of Serbia's state security service until Milosevic fired him in 1998. Simatovic, 63, was his deputy and headed the agency's special operations arm.

In a majority decision, the three-judge panel ruled that Serb fighters did commit crimes in Croatia and Bosnia, but that there was insufficient evidence linking Stanisic and Simatovic to the crimes. "The chamber found that the prosecution had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused planned or ordered the crimes charged in the indictment," Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said.

Explaining the complex judgment, the tribunal said in a statement that two of the three judges were "unable to conclude that the accused shared the intent to further the common criminal purpose" of an alleged criminal plan to drive non-Serbs out of large parts of Bosnia and Croatia. Judge Michele Picard of France dissented.

Neither man showed any emotion as Presiding Judge Alphons Orie ordered them freed, but they later hugged their lawyers before leaving the courtroom. Both men will be taken back to the court's detention unit before being released.

Stanisic's lawyer, Wayne Jordash, said his client would likely return to Belgrade on Friday. It was "the right result and Mr. Stanisic is very happy and he can get on with his life," Jordash said outside the court, which is formally called the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia or ICTY.

"The ICTY has shown today that it can consider evidence, apply a standard and burden of proof and deliver justice," he added. Prosecutors can appeal the acquittals. Milosevic was named at the trial as part of the alleged criminal plan to drive non-Serbs out of parts of Bosnia and Croatia. Milosevic himself died in his U.N. cell in 2006 before judges in his long-running trial could reach verdicts on charges that he fomented violence throughout the Balkans in the 1990s.

Murat Tahirovic, of a group called the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide, said he was shocked by the acquittals. "Everyone from Bosnia or Croatia knows what these men's involvement was during the conflict," he said.

Natasa Kandic, a prominent human rights activist in Belgrade, also said she was surprised. "The explanation of the verdict given by the tribunal is in total contradiction to the facts that are absolutely clear," Kandic said. "Based on this verdict, we can conclude that (military or paramilitary) units in Serbia were formed by themselves, without permission and backing by anyone."

Associated Press writer Jovana Gec in Belgrade and video journalist Alex Furtula in The Hague contributed to this story.

Austria to quit U.N.'s Golan force over Syria violence

By Crispian Balmer
BEIRUT | Thu Jun 6, 2013

(Reuters) - Austria said on Thursday it would pull out of a U.N. force on the Golan Heights after battles between Syrian troops and rebels there, in a blow to a mission that has kept the Israeli-Syrian war front quiet for 40 years.

Israel, anxious for the international mission to remain in place, worried that the Golan could become a springboard for attacks on Israelis by Islamist militants fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"While appreciating Austria's longtime contribution and commitment to peacekeeping in the Middle East, we nevertheless regret this decision and hope that it will not be conducive to further escalation in the region," the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

But the departure of the Austrians, who make up about 380 of the 1,000-member United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), threatens the whole operation.

"Austria has been a backbone of the mission, and their withdrawal will impact the mission's operational capacity," said U.N. spokeswoman Josephine Guerrero.

"The members of the Security Council expressed their deep concern at the risk that all military activities in the area of separation conducted by any actor pose to the long-held ceasefire and the local population," the U.N. council said in a statement.

The Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss the Austrian withdrawal. British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, the council president this month, said peacekeeping officials were meeting with contributing countries to see whether any states would be willing to offer troops to replace the Austrians.

"We consider UNDOF to be an extremely important mission," Lyall Grant said. "We support it and we want it to continue."

Anti-Assad rebels briefly seized the crossing between Israel and Syria, sending U.N. staff scurrying to their shelters before Syrian soldiers managed to push them back and reassert their control of Quneitra.

The rebel attack appeared to be an attempt to regain some momentum after Assad's forces, backed by well-trained Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, on Wednesday seized control of Qusair, a town on a vital supply route close to Lebanon.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Paski said: "We've been very clear about our concerns over regional instability caused by the crisis in Syria. This is of course another example of that, and we continue to call upon all parties to avoid any action that would jeopardize the long-held ceasefire between Israel and Syria."

Meanwhile, Russia announced it has deployed a naval unit to the Mediterranean Sea in a move President Vladimir Putin said was to defend Russian security, as Moscow faces off with the West over its support for Assad's government.

"This is a strategically important region and we have tasks to carry out there to provide for the national security of the Russian Federation," Putin said.

Syrian government troops and their allies have won a string of successes in recent weeks, boosting Assad at a time when the United States and Russia are struggling to organize a peace conference aimed at ending the civil war that has killed more than 80,000 people.

Looking to ram home their victory, Assad's troops have turned their fire on villages northeast of Qusair, where hundreds of rebels and civilians were holed up, prompting one group of activists to issue a desperate plea for rebel support.

"God has given us the strength to persevere, but until when only God knows. We beg you to move as quickly as possible to rescue us," said a message posted on social networking sites.

Shortly afterwards, Syrian television announced that the army had "restored security and stability" to one of the villages in its sights - Debaa.

France, which earlier this week accused Assad of deploying nerve gas in the civil war, said on Wednesday the situation on the ground needed to be "rebalanced" after the fall of Qusair, but did not say how that could be achieved.

Russia said it was concerned that allegations of gas attacks might be used as a pretext for foreign intervention.

"I do not rule out that somebody wants to use it to state that a red line has been crossed and a foreign intervention is necessary," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow with his German and Finnish counterparts.

QUAGMIRE

Western countries have shown little appetite for getting sucked into the Syrian conflict, but there is also a clear aversion to letting Assad, heavily backed by Shi'ite Iran and their Hezbollah associates, emerge victorious.

France and Britain last month pushed the European Union to drop its ban on arming the rebels, who are mainly Sunni Muslims. London and Paris have not yet said if they plan to arm the fighters. They wanted the ban lifted to apply pressure on Assad.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was negotiating with Syria to reach areas surrounding Qusair to deliver medical assistance to the wounded. Humanitarian groups have estimated that up to 1,500 people might need help.

"Today the conflict is extremely fragmented, and this is one of the biggest operational challenges for the ICRC," said Robert Mardini, the head of Red Cross operations in the Middle East.

Qusair lies along a corridor through the central province of Homs, linking the capital Damascus to the coastal heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Many rebels and civilians fled the town early on Wednesday, heading to the villages of Debaa, 5 kilometers (3 miles) northeast, and Buwayda, another 7 km in the same direction.

"We have a large number of civilians and wounded in Buwayda," said activist Mohammed al-Qusair.

Russia, which has thrown its weight firmly behind Assad West, cautioned Damascus that the conflict could only be resolved through diplomacy.

"The undoubted military success of the government forces should not in our opinion be used by anyone to create the illusion about the possibility of solving all the problems faced by Syria by force," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

With sectarian divisions widening in the region, the leader of Sunni Islamist group Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Syrians to unite against Assad and thwart what he called U.S. plans to set up a client state to safeguard Israel's security.

NEIGHBORING PROBLEMS

The longer the civil war has continued, the more neighboring countries have felt the spillover.

Two men died after a gunfight with Lebanese soldiers near the Syrian border early Thursday, while the Turkish military said one Turkish soldier was wounded in a clash with gunmen who were part of a group of about 500 people trying to reach Turkey.

Israel, which has kept a wary eye on the Golan Heights, exchanging sporadic fire with assailants and warning of swift retaliation should its forces come under attack, said it expected the United Nations to maintain the monitoring mission.

Austria defended its decision to leave, saying it could no longer justify its troop presence.

"Freedom of movement in the area de facto no longer exists. The uncontrolled and immediate danger to Austrian soldiers has risen to an unacceptable level," Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and his deputy Michael Spindelegger said in a statement.

Japanese and Croatian troops also have left the UNDOF in recent months, while the Philippines has said it might leave after Syrian rebels held its peacekeepers captive.

(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow, Michael Shields in Vienna and Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations.; Writing by Christopher Wilson; Editing by Jim Loney)

Source: Reuters.
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/06/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE9530VE20130606.

Bosnian police free people trapped in Parliament

June 07, 2013

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Some 1,500 lawmakers, civil servants and foreign guests have been freed from the Parliament building after police special forces formed a human cordon to break a siege by protesters demanding action on a new ID law.

Nearly 3,000 people formed a chain around Bosnia's Parliament on Thursday, trapping politicians, civil service workers and foreign guests attending an investment meeting. The protesters demanded a new law on personal ID numbers after the old one lapsed in February, leaving all babies born since without personal documents. Protesters intended to prevent lawmakers from leaving until they passed new legislation but were persuaded to give in because of the foreigners trapped inside.

The crowd dispersed after the evacuation at around 4 a.m. local time on Friday.

Situation in flood-hit German city 'dramatic'

June 03, 2013

PASSAU, Germany (AP) — Swollen rivers gushed into the old section of Passau in southeast Germany on Monday, as water rose in the city to levels not seen in more than five centuries.

The city was one of the worst hit by flooding that has spread across a large area of central Europe following heavy rainfall in recent days. At least eight people were reported to have died and nine were missing due to floods in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

"The situation is extremely dramatic," Herbert Zillinger, a spokesman for Passau's crisis center, told The Associated Press. Much of the city was inaccessible on foot and the electricity supply was shut down as a precaution, he said. Rescuers were using boats to evacuate residents from flooded parts of the city. Authorities in the afternoon evacuated a prison that was in danger of being flooded, moving 60 inmates to two other nearby facilities on higher ground.

But with water from the Danube, Inn and Ilz rivers relentlessly pouring into the city, water was advancing into previously dry streets — in one case going from dry to ankle-deep within half an hour. Markers set in 1954, when the city suffered its worst flooding in living memory, have disappeared beneath the rising water.

The German news agency dpa said the water levels were the highest recorded since 1501 in Passau, a city of 50,000 people that dates from before Roman times. The German army said it has sent 1,760 soldiers to help local authorities and volunteers reinforce flood defenses, particularly in the south and east of the country. Chancellor Angela Merkel planned to visit flood-hit areas Tuesday, her spokesman said.

Elsewhere, authorities in the Czech Republic said more than 7,000 people had to be evacuated as of Monday afternoon as the flood-swollen Vltava River continued to rise. Those evacuated included residents of southern neighborhoods in Prague and the town of Terezin also known as Theresienstadt, the former Jewish concentration camp during the Nazi WWII occupation, which is located north of the capital.

Prague's central sewage treatment plant was shut down on Monday to prevent its damage by the high water. That means that the sewage from the capital goes directly to the river. The plant may be restarted Tuesday or Wednesday.

Interim Mayor Tomas Hudecek said animals from a zoo located by the river had been taken to safety. Parts of the city's subway transportation network also were shut down because of flooding. The Charles Bridge — normally packed with tourists at this time of year — was closed as were some other popular spots near the river at the foot of Prague Castle. Rescuers evacuated some 2,700 people across the western half of the country where the government declared a state of emergency in most regions.

Some had to leave their homes in the southern neighborhoods of Prague, while further evacuations have been under way in the northern Czech Republic, awaiting a flood wave later Monday.

Frank Jordans in Berlin and Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic, contributed to this report.

Europe launches record cargo for space station

Kourou, Guyana (AFP)
Jun 05, 2013

A European rocket blasted off from French Guiana on Wednesday carrying a record 6.6 tonnes of cargo for the International Space Station (ISS) and its orbiting crew.

A space freighter with food, water, oxygen, science experiments and special treats for the astronauts was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou as planned at 6:52:11 pm (21:52:11 GMT).

The robot craft dubbed Albert Einstein is scheduled to separate from its launcher an hour after liftoff, somewhere over New Zealand, and enter orbit at an altitude of 260 kilometers (160 miles).

The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) will then deploy four energy-generating solar panels and start its autonomous navigation, guided by starlight, to the space station.

It is set to dock with the ISS on June 15 at an altitude of about 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the planet -- at a speed of some 28,000 kilometers (18,000 miles) per hour.

At nearly 20.2 tonnes, the fourth and penultimate cargo delivery of the European Space Agency (ESA) to the ISS is the heaviest spacecraft ever launched by an Ariane rocket.

The robot space freighter is the size of a double-decker bus -- 10 meters (33 feet) long and 4.5 meters (15 feet) in diameter.

The Albert Einstein boasts the largest assortment of goods yet for the ISS -- a total of 1,400 individual items that include clothes, tools and enough food for several months.

Its dry cargo is the heaviest ever at nearly 2.5 tonnes, packed into 209 bags fixed to the vessel's internal shelves.

It is also loaded with some 4.8 tonnes of fuel needed to dock with the ISS and give it a boost into higher orbit with the ATV's onboard engines.

The ISS is in a low Earth orbit and encounters atmospheric resistance which causes it to fall towards our planet at a rate of about 100 m (300 feet) per day.

The ATV can also push the ISS out of the way of oncoming space debris.

The Albert Einstein carries 860 kg (1,760 pounds) of propellant to be pumped into the ISS itself, more than 500 kilos (1,100 pounds) of water and 100 kilos of oxygen and air, according to the Astrium space company which built the lifeline craft.

It's pressurized cabin will provide welcome extra space for the ISS crew -- Americans Chris Cassidy and Karen Nyberg, Russians Fyodor Yurchikhin, Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, and Italian Luca Parmitano.

After completing its mission, the ATV-4 is set to undock from the ISS in October filled with about six tonnes of garbage and human waste, and burn up over the Pacific.

ESA is contracted to provide five ATVs as its contribution to the ISS, a US-led international collaboration.

The previous three missions had performed flawlessly, muting criticism of the billion-euro ($1.3 billion) development cost.

Europe's ATVs are the largest cargo carriers to the ISS since the retirement of the US space shuttle in 2011.

But increasing competition in the space launch sector has prompted ESA to opt for a different route in future -- supplying ATV-derived hardware for NASA's Orion spacecraft which is being designed to take humans to the Moon and beyond, and is scheduled for a test flight in 2017.

The fifth and final ATV, named Georges Lemaitre after the father of the Big Bang theory of the Universe's creation, is scheduled for blastoff next year.

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Europe_launches_record_cargo_for_space_station_999.html.

Massive asteroid with moon to pass Earth today

Washington (AFP)
May 29, 2013

An asteroid nearly two miles (three kilometers) wide is set to pass by Earth Friday with no risk of impact, offering scientists a rare chance to study a massive flying object with its own moon.

Asteroid 1998 QE2 will make its closest approach to Earth at 4:59 pm (20:59 GMT), at a distance of 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon, the US space agency said.

"This is the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries," NASA said.

The asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye, but radar astronomers are already studying it with complementary imaging telescopes in California and Puerto Rico and will continue to analyze it until June 9.

On Thursday, NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California reported that the asteroid, first discovered in 1998, also appears to have its own moon.

The huge flying object is known as a binary asteroid, and is circled by a satellite, or moon, that is about 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide, NASA said.

Scientists hope that measurements gathered as the asteroid approaches will help space agencies track other asteroids, including those that might impact the Earth, and calculate their orbits further in advance.

"Radar measurements of asteroid distances and velocities often enable computation of asteroid orbits much further into the future than if radar observations weren't available," NASA said.

The asteroid-moon duo is in rare company -- NASA says about 16 percent of asteroids that are 655 feet (200 meters) or larger are binary or triple systems.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Massive_asteroid_with_moon_to_pass_Earth_today_999.html.

New technique can track solar storms as they head toward Earth

Beijing (UPI)
May 31, 2013

Chinese scientists say they've found a new way to track solar coronal mass ejections, hazardous ejections of matter from the sun that can affect Earth.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with colleagues from the United States and Europe, have developed a technique called geometric triangulation that can determine the trajectory and velocity of CMEs in real time as they travel in space, China's official Xinhua news agency reported Friday.

Triangulation, used in fields such as surveying and navigation, involves using observations from two separated points to determine the location of a third point.

Researcher Liu Ying and his fellow researchers said data from NASA's solar observation mission known as STEREO, which utilizes twin spacecraft in Earth orbit -- one slightly ahead of the planet and one slightly behind -- can provide geometric triangulation to determine the trajectory and velocity of CMEs.

That data can allow predictions of when a CME will reach Earth and at what velocity, the researchers said.

"Once a CME has occurred, we will be able to track it continuously and determine its path and velocity with the triangulation measurements, in much the same way the terrestrial weather forecast works," Liu said.

CMEs, when they reach Earth, can be hazardous to spacecraft, satellites and astronauts in orbit and can disrupt power grids, satellite navigation and mobile phone networks.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_technique_can_track_solar_storms_as_they_head_toward_Earth_999.html.

Scientists suggest cosmic 'billiards' to protect Earth from asteroids

by Alexey Eremenko for RIA Novosti
Moscow (RIA Novosti)
Jun 02, 2013

The meteorite that blew up over Russia's Urals in mid-February, leaving 1,500 injured, came as a striking reminder of how vulnerable we are on our small, blue planet. It was suddenly palpably clear that we have no way of preventing celestial bodies from slamming into Earth.

The way out just might be to hit dangerous asteroids with other asteroids, Russian scientists say.

Several near-Earth asteroids can be towed into the vicinity of the planet to serve as a cache of celestial projectiles against incoming space threats, said Natan Eismont of the Space Research Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences.

"I was skeptical about it myself, until we actually tried to do computer modeling of the situation," Eismont, one of the project's authors, told RIA Novosti in a recent interview.

The orbiting asteroids can be "lined up" so that one passes 100,000 to 200,000 kilometers from Earth every few weeks or months, ready to be used against non-cataloged and hazardous asteroids, recent research by the Space Research Institute and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow suggests.

There are currently more than 9,000 near-Earth asteroids, or asteroids whose orbits bring them within 1 astronomical unit (149 million km or 92 million miles) of the Sun, and thus relatively close to the Earth as well. But this figure could be as little as 1 or 2 percent of their total number, Eismont said. New asteroids are discovered every day.

Most suitable asteroids have elliptical orbits that bring them close to Earth at certain points, while the rest of the time they are several astronomical units away.

It is currently possible to send an unmanned Proton rocket - a staple of the Russian space program -to land on an asteroid, carrying with it up to 2 tons of rocket fuel, Eismont said. Properly anchored, the rocket fuel would then ignite at a designated time, tweaking the asteroid's orbit.

Space rocks best suited for planetary defense weigh 1,500-2,000 tons and are 10 to 15 meters in diameter - smaller than the meteorite that blew up over the Urals, which measured 17 meters across and weighed over 9,000 tons.

The 99942 Apophis - which was considered a potential hazard until updated calculations rolled in earlier this year - is estimated to be 325 meters in diameter and weigh 40 megatons.

Asteroids the size of Apophis hit Earth about once every 63,000 years, experts say, but the casualties from this kind of event could reach 10 million, and that warrants some caution.

Meteorites such as the one that blew up over the Urals hit once every 50 to 80 years, Eismont said.

The asteroid 1998 QE2, which is 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) in diameter, will zip past Earth at a distance of 5.8 million km (3.6 million miles) - or 15 lunar distances - at 20:59 universal time Friday (0:59 Saturday, Moscow time.)

The program costs about $1 billion per Proton launch, and the equipment needed to maneuver an asteroid into position can be developed within 10 to 12 years, Eismont said.

This whopping price tag may suggest that the plan is doomed to the realm of sci-fi. But in fact, NASA is already doing something similar with its Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization project, which proposes to rope in a 500-ton asteroid and bring it into lunar orbit, where it can be studied by manned missions starting in 2025. The White House has supported a plan to allot $105 million in 2014 for the first stage of the NASA project, which has a total price tag of $2.6 billion.

The Russian project saw money from a state "megagrant" of 150 million rubles ($4.8 million) plowed into it, but so far remains purely on paper.

Commenting shortly after the meteorite incident in the Urals last winter, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that planetary defense is a priority for Russia's space industry. But the Russian government has so far not expressed any interest in the asteroid-ramming project.

The approach may counter some classes of celestial hazard, said Donald Yeomans, who heads the search for near-Earth objects at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena - a job that landed him on Time magazine's 2013 list of 100 most influential people in the world.

"If the asteroid that was predicted to strike Earth was fairly large and massive, its deflection as a result of a controlled impact by a small asteroid might make some sense," Yeomans told RIA Novosti.

However, smaller asteroids, though still dangerous, are better intercepted by ramming them with more maneuverable spacecraft, not other asteroids, he told RIA Novosti.

The Russian project raises a lot of technical problems, such as developing the asteroid-maneuvering equipment and anchoring it to the asteroid, said Vladimir Surdin of Moscow State University's Sternberg Astronomical Institute.

"There are other problems too, but nothing fatal. The method needs work, [but] it should be in the planetary defense arsenal," Surdin said.

And mankind needs just such an arsenal, given that, at least in Eismont's view, some kind of "attack" from space is inevitable.

"Nobody can tell you when the next asteroid will come, but everyone would tell you that come it will," Eismont said.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Scientists_suggest_cosmic_billiards_to_protect_Earth_from_asteroids_999.html.

Cassini Finds Hints of Activity at Saturn Moon Dione

Pasadena CA (JPL)
May 30, 2013

From a distance, most of the Saturnian moon Dione resembles a bland cueball. Thanks to close-up images of a 500-mile-long (800-kilometer-long) mountain on the moon from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found more evidence for the idea that Dione was likely active in the past. It could still be active now.

"A picture is emerging that suggests Dione could be a fossil of the wondrous activity Cassini discovered spraying from Saturn's geyser moon Enceladus or perhaps a weaker copycat Enceladus," said Bonnie Buratti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who leads the Cassini science team that studies icy satellites. "There may turn out to be many more active worlds with water out there than we previously thought."

Other bodies in the solar system thought to have a subsurface ocean - including Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa - are among the most geologically active worlds in our solar system. They have been intriguing targets for geologists and scientists looking for the building blocks of life elsewhere in the solar system. The presence of a subsurface ocean at Dione would boost the astrobiological potential of this once-boring iceball.

Hints of Dione's activity have recently come from Cassini, which has been exploring the Saturn system since 2004. The spacecraft's magnetometer has detected a faint particle stream coming from the moon, and images showed evidence for a possible liquid or slushy layer under its rock-hard ice crust. Other Cassini images have also revealed ancient, inactive fractures at Dione similar to those seen at Enceladus that currently spray water ice and organic particles.

The mountain examined in the latest paper -- published in March in the journal Icarus -- is called Janiculum Dorsa and ranges in height from about 0.6 to 1.2 miles (1 to 2 kilometers). The moon's crust appears to pucker under this mountain as much as about 0.3 mile (0.5 kilometer).

"The bending of the crust under Janiculum Dorsa suggests the icy crust was warm, and the best way to get that heat is if Dione had a subsurface ocean when the ridge formed," said Noah Hammond, the paper's lead author, who is based at Brown University, Providence, R.I.

Dione gets heated up by being stretched and squeezed as it gets closer to and farther from Saturn in its orbit. With an icy crust that can slide around independently of the moon's core, the gravitational pulls of Saturn get exaggerated and create 10 times more heat, Hammond explained. Other possible explanations, such as a local hotspot or a wild orbit, seemed unlikely.

Scientists are still trying to figure out why Enceladus became so active while Dione just seems to have sputtered along. Perhaps the tidal forces were stronger on Enceladus, or maybe the larger fraction of rock in the core of Enceladus provided more radioactive heating from heavy elements.

In any case, liquid subsurface oceans seem to be common on these once-boring icy satellites, fueling the hope that other icy worlds soon to be explored - like the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto - could have oceans underneath their crusts. NASA's Dawn and New Horizons missions reach those dwarf planets in 2015.

Source: Saturn Daily.
Link: http://www.saturndaily.com/reports/Cassini_Finds_Hints_of_Activity_at_Saturn_Moon_Dione_999.html.

NASA's IRIS Mission to Launch in June

by Karen C. Fox for Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt MD (SPX)
Jun 06, 2013

Lying just above the sun's surface is an enigmatic region of the solar atmosphere called the interface region. A relatively thin region, just 3,000 to 6,000 miles thick, it pulses with movement: Zones of different temperature and density are scattered throughout, while energy and heat course through the solar material.

Understanding how the energy travels through this region - energy that helps heat the upper layer of the atmosphere, the corona, to temperatures of 1 million kelvins (about 1.8 million F), some thousand times hotter than the sun's surface itself - is the goal of NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, scheduled to launch on June 26, 2013, from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.

"IRIS will extend our observations of the sun to a region that has historically been difficult to study," said Joe Davila, IRIS project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Understanding the interface region better improves our understanding of the whole corona and, in turn, how it affects the solar system."

Scientists wish to understand the interface region in exquisite detail, because energy flowing through this region has an effect on so many aspects of near-Earth space.

For one thing, despite the intense amount of energy deposited into the interface region, only a fraction leaks through, but this fraction drives the solar wind, the constant stream of particles that flows out to fill the entire solar system. The interface region is also the source of most of the sun's ultraviolet emission, which impacts both the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate.

IRIS's capabilities are uniquely tailored to unravel the interface region by providing both high-resolution images and a kind of data known as spectra. For its high-resolution images, IRIS will capture data on about 1 percent of the sun at a time. While these are relatively small snapshots, IRIS will be able to see very fine features, as small as 150 miles across.

"Previous observations suggest there are structures in the solar atmosphere just 100 or 150 miles across, but 100,000 miles long," said Alan Title, the principal investigator for IRIS at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, Calif.

"Imagine giant jets, like the huge fountains you see in Las Vegas. Except these jets have a footprint the size of Los Angeles, and are long enough and fast enough that they would zoom around Earth in 20 seconds. We have seen hints of these structures, but never with the high resolution or the information about velocity, temperature and density that IRIS will provide."

The velocity, temperature and density information will be provided by IRIS' spectrograph. While ultraviolet images look at only one wavelength of light at a time, spectrographs show information about many wavelengths of light at once. Spectrographs split the sun's light into its various wavelengths and measure how much of any given wavelength is present.

This is then portrayed on a graph showing spectral "lines." Taller lines correspond to wavelengths in which the sun emits relatively more light. Analysis of the spectral lines can also provide velocity, temperature and density information, key information when trying to track how energy and heat moves through the region.

Not only does IRIS provide state-of-the-art observations to look at the interface region, it makes uses of advanced computing to help interpret what it sees. Indeed, interpreting the light flowing out of the interface region could not be done well prior to the advent of today's supercomputers because, in this area of the sun, photons of light bounce around so much that it is difficult to understand the path the photon traveled.

"When you observe the interface region, there is no intuitive approach to understanding the light's path from the sun's surface and that's been a major stumbling block," said Bart De Pontieu, the IRIS science lead at Lockheed Martin. "We're trying to understand something that's hidden in a fog - but now, thanks to the enormous advance of computers and sophisticated numerical models, the fog is lifting."

This modeling of the IRIS data takes place on cutting-edge supercomputers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Moreover, science teams at Lockheed Martin and the University of Oslo in Norway have worked over the last year to create and refine the models to interpret the dominant processes expected to be at work in the interface region.

For its launch at the end of June, IRIS will take flight using a Pegasus XL rocket, carried aloft by an Orbital Sciences L-1011 aircraft from Vandenberg. IRIS weighs 400 pounds, and upon deployment, will extend its solar panels to reach 12 feet across. IRIS will travel in a polar, sun-synchronous orbit, traveling around Earth at the globe's sunrise line, ranging from approximately 390 miles to 420 miles above Earth's surface.

Each orbit will take IRIS around 97 minutes to complete. This orbit was selected because it provides nearly eight months of eclipse-free sun viewing and also maximizes IRIS' ability to downlink data, by traveling over several ground receivers.

After launch, the IRIS team will perform post-flight checkouts for about 60 days before the official science campaign begins. Once the campaign starts, IRIS will join a host of other spacecraft currently observing the sun and its effects on Earth. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and the joint NASA-Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hinode, for example, both capture high-resolution images of the sun, but focusing on different layers of the sun.

Together, the observatories will explore how the corona and solar wind are powered - Hinode and SDO monitoring the solar surface and outer atmosphere, with IRIS watching the region in between.

"Relating observations from IRIS to other solar observatories will open the door for crucial research into basic, unanswered questions about the corona," said Davila.

Answering such fundamental physics questions about the sun's atmosphere has applications outside of simply understanding the sun, as well. Explosions in the corona can send radiation and solar particles toward Earth, interfering with satellites, causing power grid failures and disrupting GPS services.

By knowing more about what causes such solar eruptions, scientists can improve their ability to forecast such space weather. Moreover, the better we understand this closest star, the better we can understand how other stars are energized as well.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASAs_IRIS_Mission_to_Launch_in_June_999.html.

10 years on, Europe salutes its Martian scout

Paris (AFP)
June 01, 2013

It was built on a relative shoestring, was completed in just five years and was designed to survive for just 687 days.

Ten years later, after more than 12,000 swings around the Red Planet, Europe's Mars Express is still going strong.

Along with NASA's massively successful fleet of probes and landers, the orbital scout has helped pull aside the veil of secrecy surrounding our sister planet.

It has pointed to the presence of subterranean water and a wild volcanic past and shed light on the bizarrely-pocked martian moons.

"The mission has already provided countless breathtaking views of Mars in three dimensions," says the European Space Agency (ESA).

"It has traced the history of water across the globe, demonstrating that Mars once harbored environmental conditions that may have been suitable for life."

The orbiter's seven instruments have detected minerals that form only in the presence of water and seen underground formations of water ice. Scans of the surface suggest volcanism on Mars may have persisted until recent times.

And its chemical analysis of the martian atmosphere indicates the possible presence of methane -- which on Earth is attributed to active volcanism and biological life.

The first European mission to explore another planet, Mars Express was launched from Baikonur cosmodrome by a Russian Soyuz rocket on June 2 2003, just when Earth and Mars were approaching their closest alignment in 17 years.

The mission ran into a humiliating setback that December with the crash of a small British-built lander, Beagle-2, whose loss remains unexplained to this day.

But the mission, designed to last for one martian year, has already been extended four times, and its latest closure date is for the end of 2014.

Mars Express is proving to be so sturdy that its builder, Astrium, believes it may even be around in January 2016 to welcome ExoMars, an unmanned European-Russian mission that will explore the methane enigma.

"Nobody would have believed it back then," says the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which developed what is arguably the star instrument aboard Mars Express: a stereoscopic camera that has imaged more than two-thirds of the planet in color and 3D to a resolution of 20 meters (65 feet) per pixel.

Memorable images include Mars' icy southern pole and Olympus Mons which towers 26,000 meters (84,500 feet) above the surrounding plains.

Conceived as a streamlined, low-cost project, Mars Express was a gamble for ESA.

It broke with conventional thinking that planetary exploration required individually-tailored probes that took a decade to make and inevitably cost a billion bucks apiece.

To save costs, ESA's contractors essentially resorted to mass production.

The basic box-like design for Mars Express, and for a sister spacecraft called Venus Express -- launched in 2005 and also doing fine -- is the same platform as for Rosetta, a comet-chasing probe whose mission is due to climax next year.

So far, exploration of Mars has cost ESA 300 million euros ($390 million), which is minute for a mission that has returned such wonders.

And not a single life has been placed at risk.

Last week came proof that a manned trip to Mars would be health-threatening unless today's chemical rockets are replaced by much faster transport.

Measurements made aboard the Mars Science Laboratory, an unmanned NASA rover and mobile lab that landed in August 2012 showed exposure to high levels of radiation during its 253-day trip.

These are particles spewed out by the Sun, or coming from beyond our Solar System, that can slice through DNA and boost the risk of cancer.

"In terms of accumulated dose, it's like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days," said Cary Zeitlin of the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI) Space Science and Engineering Division.

"Radiation exposure at the level we measured is right at the edge, or possibly over the edge of what is considered acceptable in terms of career exposure limits defined by NASA and other space agencies."

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/10_years_on_Europe_salutes_its_Martian_scout_999.html.

Putins attend ballet, then announce their divorce

June 07, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — Vladimir Putin pulled off one of his most audacious pieces of stagecraft, attending a ballet with his rarely seen wife, then emerging smiling and announcing their marriage is over.

The end of the marriage of the Russian president and Lyudmila Putina less than two months shy of their 30th anniversary came on state television after a Thursday evening that started out like a model of domestic contentment — a devoted husband taking his wife out for an artsy interlude.

After the performance of "Esmeralda" at the Great Kremlin Palace, the two came into a luxurious room to speak to a reporter. "Excellent. Great music, excellent production," Putin said and Lyudmila echoed his praise.

After about a minute, the reporter asked about rumors that the two didn't live together. Putin smiled slightly, like a boy caught misbehaving, and turned his head toward Lyudmila. "This is so," he said.

It wasn't immediately clear if that meant just separate domiciles. After a few more comments, the reporter gently prodded: "I am afraid to say this word 'divorce.'" "Yes, this is a civilized divorce," Lyudmila said.

The peculiar format for the announcement appeared aimed at underlining that this wasn't just a powerful man dumping his faithful helpmate. That's a potentially important strategic move for Putin, who has based his public image on rectitude and support of traditional values.

Tabloid reports in 2008 claimed that Putin already had divorced Lyudmila and planned to marry a gymnast less than half his age. The Interfax news agency cited presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying the divorce has not been formalized and that the televised comments were only an announcement of the decision to divorce.

Divorce is common in Russia, and nearly 700,000 couples dissolved their marriages in 2009, according to UNICEF. Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who studies Russia's political elite, said the divorce probably won't hurt Putin in the public eye — as long as he doesn't take a trophy wife.

"If a young wife appears, then the reactions in society may be very different," she said in an article published by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on its website. For some of his detractors, the move even seemed to earn some grudging approval.

"For years I've heard that it would be good if Putin told the truth and divorced. And what now? Everyone's criticizing him for the divorce," Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite and supporter of Putin's opposition, wrote on Twitter.

Russian leaders, unlike their American counterparts, generally keep their domestic lives well out of public view. Lyudmila Putina, 55, was rarely seen in public during her husband's long tenure at the top of Russian politics.

"I don't like publicity and flying is difficult for me," said the former Aeroflot flight attendant. The 60-year-old Putin, however, seeks the spotlight. His penchant for macho media events ranging from riding with bearded motorcyclists to petting a polar bear have earned him admiration — or derision — and his televised annual news conferences that stretch beyond four hours are legend.

"All my activities, all my work, is linked with publicity. Absolute publicity. Some people like it, some people don't. But there are people who absolutely can't stand it," Putin said. What he rarely shows in public is any hint of vulnerability and the divorce announcement didn't have the air of a man brooding over the fading of love's bloom. Rather, Lyudmila portrayed him as a man devoted to his country.

"Vladimir Vladimiorvich is absolutely concentrated on his work," she said. Putin in turn aimed for a touch of gallantry, remarking on his wife's forbearance. "Lydumila Alexandrovna has kept the watch for eight years, even nine," he said, apparently referring to his first two terms in the Kremlin and his year-old non-consecutive third term.

The Putins married on July 28, 1983, and have two daughters, Maria and Yekaterina, whose lives get little public view. "We love them very much and we are proud of them," Putin said. There have been hints that Lyudmila Putina was unhappy. In a 2005 interview with three Russian newspapers, she complained that her husband worked long hours, forgetting that "one needs not only to work, but also to live."

Associated Press writer Lynn Berry in Moscow contributed to this report.

Erdogan calls for end to Turkey protest

June 07, 2013

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey's prime minister took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end.

In the first extensive public show of support since anti-government protests erupted last week, more than 10,000 supporters cheered Recep Tayyip Erdogan with rapturous applause outside Istanbul's international airport.

Despite earlier comments that suggested he could be softening his stand, Erdogan delivered a fiery speech on his return from a four-day trip to North Africa. "These protests that are bordering on illegality must come to an end as of now," he said.

Tens of thousands of protesters have held demonstrations that have spread to dozens of cities across Turkey, sparked by the violent police reaction last Friday to what started out as a small protest against a plan to develop Istanbul's central Taksim Square.

Since then, three people have died — two protesters and a policeman — and thousands have been wounded. One protester is on life support in a hospital in Ankara. Protesters from all walks of life have occupied the square and its park, objecting to what they say is Erdogan's increasingly autocratic and arrogant manner — charges he vehemently denies.

Turks have been awaiting Erdogan's words upon his return, seeing them as a signal of whether the demonstrations would fizzle or rage on. Erdogan at times was almost drowned out by his supporters, part of the base that has helped him win three landslide elections. "God is Great," they chanted, and soon moved on to slogans referring specifically to the protesters in Taksim Square.

"Let us go, let us smash them," they shouted. "Istanbul is here, where are the looters?" Erdogan had initially referred to the protesters as looters and troublemakers, while also acknowledging that excessive police force might have been used, and promising it would be investigated.

Erdogan's speech, delivered from atop an open-air bus outside the airport terminal, appeared at first to be an attempt to strike a unifying note. "They say I am the prime minister of only 50 percent. It's not true. We have served the whole of the 76 million from the east to the west," he said, referring to his election win in 2011, when he took 50 percent of the vote.

"Together we are Turkey. Together we are brothers," he said, adding "We have never endeavored to break hearts. We are in favor of mending hearts." But he soon became more combative. "We have never been for building tension and polarization. But we cannot applaud brutality," he said.

In his last speech in Tunisia before flying to Istanbul, Erdogan had said that terrorist groups were involved in the protests, saying they had been identified. In a twist, Erdogan implied that bankers were also part of a conspiracy that was fuelling the protests. He added that the flames of dissent had been fanned by other groups too.

"Those who call themselves journalists, artists, politicians, have, in a very irresponsible way, opened the way for hatred, discrimination and provocation," he said. Speaking before Erdogan's return, Koray Caliskan, professor of political science and international relations at Bosporus University, pointed out that the prime minister was maintaining a hard line because "until now Erdogan had always gained support by increasing the tension in the country."

"Turkey is absolutely at a crossroads. Erdogan won't be able to point at Turkey as a model of democracy anymore," he said. In his earlier comments in Tunisia, Erdogan acknowledged that some Turks were involved in the protests out of environmental concerns, and said he had "love and respect" for them.

Those comments don't appear to have swayed many of the thousands of protesters who thronged the square for a sixth day Thursday. More than 10,000 others filled a busy street in a middle class area of Ankara.

"I do not believe his sincerity," said protester Hazer Berk Buyukturca. Turkey's main stock market revealed the fears that Erdogan's comments would do little to defuse the protesters, with the general price index plunging by 8 percent after his comments on concerns that continuing unrest would hit the country's economy.

Over the past week the demonstrations have spread to 78 cities, growing into public venting of what protesters perceive to be Erdogan's increasing arrogance. That includes attempts to impose what many say are restrictive mores on their personal lives, such as how many children to have or whether to drink alcohol.

So far, 4,300 people have been hurt or sought medical attention for the effects of tear gas during the protests, the Turkish Human Rights Foundation said. One person is on life support in Ankara. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said more than 500 police officers had been injured. A total of 746 protests had erupted, causing some 70 million Turkish Lira ($37 million) in damages, he said. Nearly 80 protesters were still hospitalized, and almost all detained protesters had been released.

Fraser reported from Ankara. Ezgi Akin in Ankara contributed.

Canada slaps new sanctions on Iran

Ottawa (AFP)
May 29, 2013

Canada's top diplomat announced Wednesday more sanctions against Iran, including a total ban on all trade with the Islamic republic, ramping up pressure on Tehran to scrap its nuclear program.

Ottawa also added 30 individuals and 82 companies to its Iran sanctions blacklist, accusing them of supporting Tehran's nuclear efforts and helping the country avoid international sanctions.

"Canada's grave and sincere concern over Iran's nuclear program again compels us to act decisively," Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said.

"In round after round of talks with both the International Atomic Energy Agency and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany), Iran has failed to engage meaningfully while the risk posed by its enrichment activities only increases.

"The absence of progress... leads Canada to ban, effective immediately, all imports to and exports from Iran," he added.

The move is part of an apparent coordinated effort by Western governments to isolate Iran.

Western powers have demanded that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program, fearing that Tehran would use the material to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and intended solely for civilian energy purposes.

The sanctions blacklist bans Canadian entities and individuals from any financial or commercial relations with those named.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Canada_slaps_new_sanctions_on_Iran_999.html.

Woolley mammoth discovered; liquid blood fuels cloning hope

Friday, May 31, 2013

By Vladimir Isachenkov
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOSCOW —  A perfectly preserved woolly mammoth carcass with liquid blood has been found on a remote Arctic island, fueling hopes of cloning the Ice Age animal, Russian scientists said Thursday.

The carcass was in such good shape because its lower part was stuck in pure ice, said Semyon Grigoryev, the head of the Mammoth Museum, who led the expedition into the Lyakhovsky Islands off the Siberian coast.

“The blood is very dark, it was found in ice cavities below the belly and when we broke these cavities with a poll pick, the blood came running out,” he said in a statement released by the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, which sent the team.

Woolly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago, although scientists think small groups of them lived longer in Alaska and on islands off Siberia.

Scientists have deciphered much of the woolly mammoth’s genetic code from their hair, and some believe it’s possible to clone them if living cells are found.

Grigoryev said the find could provide the necessary material. The blood of mammoths appeared not to freeze in extreme temperatures, likely keeping mammoths warm, he said.

The temperature at the time of excavation was 14 to 19 degrees Fahrenheit.

The researchers collected the samples of the animal’s blood in tubes with a special preservative agent. They were sent to Yakutsk for bacterial examination in order to spot potentially dangerous infections.

The carcass’ muscle tissue was also in perfect condition.

“The fragments of muscle tissues, which we’ve found out of the body, have a natural red color of fresh meat,” Grigoryev said.

Up to 13 feet in height and 10 tons in weight, mammoths roamed across huge areas between Great Britain and North America and were driven to extinction by humans and the changing climate.

Source: Telegram.
Link: http://www.telegram.com/article/20130531/NEWS/105319772/1052/.

Mali youth hold 1st protest against French

May 30, 2013

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Youth in the recently-liberated Malian city of Gao held a sit-in on Thursday to protest against what they see as France's tacit support of the Tuareg ethnic group, the first indication that the mood toward the French in Mali is changing.

Gao was the first city where Islamic extremists were pushed out by French forces in January, and is now where the population is staging the first act of protest against the French. The youth staged the sit-in in an area in the center of the city that came to be known as "Shariah Square" during the city's 10-month-long occupation last year by the radical Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO. Countless accused thieves were strapped to chairs and had their hands sawed off by the jihadists in the square, in scenes of horror that had never previously been witnessed in this part of the world that has long practiced a more tolerant version of the religion.

Moussa Boureima Yoro, who took part in the protest, said the youth are unhappy with what they see as France's bias toward the Tuaregs, including the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, or NMLA, a Tuareg rebel group which is currently controlling the city of Kidal, located 350 kilometers (220 miles) north of Gao.

"We want to give France a heads-up and to tell them that they are allowing a situation to take place in Kidal that we do not understand," Yoro said. "We want France to tell us what they are up to — because we are confused when they say on the one hand that Kidal is part of Mali, and at the same time, they act as if it doesn't belong to Mali."

Yoro, who was a member of the committee that organized the sit-in, said: "It's true that France liberated us, but at the same time we don't want to be taken advantage of." The organizers of the early morning protest Thursday said more than 1,000 people participated, though officials said the number of people protesting was significantly less.

The protesters accuse France of long having given preferential treatment to the Tuaregs, a minority ethnic group whose members are predominantly from the country's north, a zone they refer to as the Azawad in the Tamashek language. Last year, the NMLA, made up of secular Tuaregs demanding independence, swept across the north, seizing towns and villages and briefly proclaiming the birth of a new Tuareg nation. They were swiftly kicked out by Islamic militants, who rode their coattails into the towns, only to then turn on their former allies, yanking down their multi-colored flags in order to replace them with the black flag of extreme Islam.

France, Mali's former colonial ruler, was greeted in Gao with shouts of "Vive la France" when they liberated the city on Jan. 26, and the scenes of exuberance were repeated throughout the northern towns they freed. With one major exception: Kidal.

The northernmost provincial capital has long been a Tuareg stronghold, and when French special forces entered the city they weren't accompanied by the Malian military. Nearly five months later, Malian soldiers have yet to step foot in Kidal. While the country's army has not been able to return, the NMLA was soon able to come back to Kidal. The protesters on Thursday accused France, which has a unit stationed at the Kidal airport, of simply looking the other way when the rebels returned.

Those gathered in the square also took issue with the Tuareg soldiers, who are part of a Tuareg battalion in the army, now patrolling Gao. The colonel leading the battalion defected during the events of 2012 and eventually went into exile along with his fighters in neighboring Niger. Col. Elhadji Gamou's brigade is now back in Gao, patrolling the streets. Civilians who are mostly from the darker-skinned, sub-Saharan ethnic groups accuse the Tuaregs of having shown complicity toward the Islamic extremists.

"We are here to denounce the presence of the Tuaregs in Gao. The soldiers loyal to Col. Gamou are doing everything they can to make the Tuaregs return in great numbers — and we are not OK with this. We suffered for many months here in Gao because of them," said Atayoubou Agaly Maiga, a member of one of Gao's self-defense groups which were created to ferret out the members of extremist groups hiding among the population after their ouster by the French.

Callimachi contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal.

Radiation Exposure Associated with a Trip to Mars Calculated

Boulder CO (SPX)
Jun 03, 2013

On November 26, 2011, the Mars Science Laboratory began a 253-day, 560-million-kilometer journey to deliver the Curiosity rover to the Red Planet. En route, the Southwest Research Institute-led Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) made detailed measurements of the energetic particle radiation environment inside the spacecraft, providing important insights for future human missions to Mars.

"In terms of accumulated dose, it's like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days," said Dr. Cary Zeitlin, a principal scientist in SwRI's Space Science and Engineering Division and lead author of Measurements of Energetic Particle Radiation in Transit to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled for publication in the journal Science on May 31.

"Understanding the radiation environment inside a spacecraft carrying humans to Mars or other deep space destinations is critical for planning future crewed missions," Zeitlin said.

"Based on RAD measurements, unless propulsion systems advance rapidly, a large share of mission radiation exposure will be during outbound and return travel, when the spacecraft and its inhabitants will be exposed to the radiation environment in interplanetary space, shielded only by the spacecraft itself."

Two forms of radiation pose potential health risks to astronauts in deep space: a chronic low dose of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) and the possibility of short-term exposures to the solar energetic particles (SEPs) associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

Radiation dose is measured in units of sievert (Sv) or millisievert (1/1000 Sv). Long-term population studies have shown that exposure to radiation increases a person's lifetime cancer risk; exposure to a dose of 1 Sv is associated with a 5 percent increase in fatal cancer risk.

GCRs tend to be highly energetic, highly penetrating particles that are not stopped by the modest shielding provided by a typical spacecraft. These high-energy particles include a small percentage of so-called heavy ions, which are atomic nuclei without their usual complement of electrons. Heavy ions are known to cause more biological damage than other types of particles.

The solar particles of concern for astronaut safety are typically protons with kinetic energies up to a few hundred MeV (one MeV is a million electron volts). Solar events typically produce very large fluxes of these particles, as well as helium and heavier ions, but rarely produce higher-energy fluxes similar to GCRs. The comparatively low energy of typical SEPs means that spacecraft shielding is much more effective against SEPs than GCRs.

"A vehicle carrying humans into deep space would likely have a 'storm shelter' to protect against solar particles. But the GCRs are harder to stop and, even an aluminum hull a foot thick wouldn't change the dose very much," said Zeitlin.

"The RAD data show an average GCR dose equivalent rate of 1.8 millisieverts per day in cruise. The total during just the transit phases of a Mars mission would be approximately 0.66 Sv for a round trip with current propulsion systems," said Zeitlin. Time spent on the surface of Mars might add considerably to the total dose equivalent, depending on shielding conditions and the duration of the stay. Exposure values that ensure crews will not exceed the various space agencies standards are less than 1 Sv.

"Scientists need to validate theories and models with actual measurements, which RAD is now providing. These measurements will be used to better understand how radiation travels through deep space and how it is affected and changed by the spacecraft structure itself," says Donald M. Hassler, a program director at Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the RAD investigation.

"The spacecraft protects somewhat against lower energy particles, but others can propagate through the structure unchanged or break down into secondary particles."

Only about 5 percent of the radiation dose was associated with solar particles, both because it was a relatively quiet period in the solar cycle and due to shielding provided by the spacecraft. Crew exposures during a human mission back and forth to Mars would depend on the habitat shielding and the unpredictable nature of large SEP events. Even so, the results are representative of a trip to Mars under conditions of low to moderate solar activity.

"This issue will have to be addressed, one way or another, before humans can go into deep space for months or years at a time," said Zeitlin.

Source: Space Mart.
Link: http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Radiation_Exposure_Associated_with_a_Trip_to_Mars_Calculated_999.html.