French voters deal blow to gov't, help far right

March 31, 2014

PARIS (AP) — French voters dealt a severe blow to the Socialist government in Sunday's municipal elections, but the party saved face by retaining the crown jewel, Paris, which got its first female mayor.

The anti-immigration far right, which claims that France's large Muslim population is "Islamicizing" the nation, made solid advances, fulfilling National Front promises to begin building a grassroots base.

Socialist leaders conceded defeat in the final round of the voting seen as a referendum on unpopular President Francois Hollande, who was expected to reshuffle the Cabinet in an effort to give the government a boost. Hollande has earned record-low poll ratings for his failure to cure France's flagging economy or cut into the jobless rate, which hovers around 10 percent.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls announced deep losses for his Socialist Party, saying it lost to the mainstream right some 50 cities of more than 30,000 it had held previously, and about 155 towns and cities of all sizes. Toulouse, France's fourth-largest city, moved to the right.

The far right may win up to 15 towns in the voting, Valls said before results were complete. Party leader Marine Le Pen said the performance amounted to "an incontestably great success" that will give her National Front more than 1,200 local councilors — surpassing her goal.

"This vote is a defeat for the government and the (Socialist) majority," said Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. "This message is clear ... The president will draw conclusions, and he will do so in the interest of France," he added, in a clear reference to a Cabinet reshuffle. It was unclear when a new government might be announced, or whether Ayrault would keep his job.

Paris also gets a new look, as Anne Hidalgo defeated conservative right candidate Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. Hidalgo, 54, spent 13 years as deputy to outgoing Mayor Bertrand Delanoe. She was able to profit from popular programs he initiated such as the Velib bike-sharing and Autolib auto-sharing services, and the creation of a beachfront each summer on the banks of the Seine.

"I am the first woman mayor of Paris. I am aware of the challenge," Hidalgo said in a victory speech. The Socialists also managed to save Lyon, France's third-largest city, from the conservative right UMP party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as large cities like Strasbourg and Montpellier. Significantly, the Socialists took the southern town of Avignon from the UMP and prevented a far-right victory in the town known worldwide for its summer theater festival.

Le Pen's National Front was using the two-round elections to sink local roots around France in view of national voting, including the 2017 presidential vote and May's European parliamentary elections. The party won the blighted northern town of Henin-Beaumont in last week's first round.

The far right took the Cote d'Azur town of Frejus and notably won the 7th district of Marseille, France's second-largest city with a large percentage of residents of immigrant origin, many from Muslim North Africa. The district's population is about 150,000 — the party's biggest win.

However, Marseille stayed in the hands of conservative right Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin. Le Pen said her party has ended "bipolarization" of French politics in which the traditional right and left divvy up votes.

"A third political force has been born," she said, adding that the party, which wants France to withdraw from the European Union, would begin campaigning immediately for elections for the European Parliament, where she is a deputy.

Le Pen's father, National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, shocked France and the world in the 2002 presidential vote when he faced off against incumbent President Jacques Chirac.

Greg Keller in Paris contributed to this report.

UK's Cameron orders probe of Muslim Brotherhood

April 01, 2014

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered the country's intelligence agencies to investigate the Muslim Brotherhood, amid reports the group is using London as a base to plan militant activities after a crackdown in Egypt.

The prime minister's office said Tuesday that the Cameron had commissioned a review "into the philosophy and activities" of the Brotherhood and the government's policy toward the organization. Cameron said "we will only get our policy right if we fully understand the true nature of the organization that we are dealing with."

He told reporters at a press conference with Italian premier Matteo Renzi that it was important to understand the organization's beliefs, its stance on violent extremism, its links to other groups and its presence in Britain.

Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi was ousted as Egypt's president in July, and Egypt has declared it a terrorist group. The Brotherhood says it is a peaceful charitable and political organization, but opponents accuse it of orchestrating a wave of deadly attacks on Egyptian police and military targets.

Among the questions for Britain's investigation is whether the group was behind a bomb attack on a tourist bus in the Sinai peninsula that killed three South Koreans and the Egyptian driver. Britain's investigation will be led by John Jenkins, Britain's ambassador to Saudi Arabia — a country that has joined Egypt in declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

The Brotherhood has long had a presence in Britain, but the government is investigating whether its ranks have been swelled by members fleeing Egypt. In a statement, the Brotherhood said it would cooperate with the British probe and insisted it "follows a peaceful ideology."

Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report.

Venezuela's street barricades a deadly protest

April 02, 2014

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Like a beaver dam of urban detritus, the piles of tires, old mattresses and heavy steel grates in Venezuela's streets have sparked some of the most violent episodes of this tumultuous season of protest and repression.

The barricades in Caracas' middle-class neighborhoods and swaths of opposition-governed cities aim to disrupt, frustrate and ultimately trigger a popular revolt. But like the broader, mostly peaceful anti-government movement it grew out of, the tactic has so far failed to sow wider unrest.

Indeed many in the opposition regard the barricades as a gift to embattled President Nicolas Maduro, who hasn't missed an opportunity to highlight the hours-long traffic jams caused by the obstructions that frustrate Venezuelans on both ends of the political spectrum. Calling them "guarimbas," which Venezuelans associate with home base in a child's game of hide-and-seek, Maduro has repeatedly cited the barricades as evidence that his opponents aren't fit to govern.

He also portrays them as a small minority that wants to undo Venezuela's socialist policies aimed at helping the poor. "The anti-government protests are being carried out by people in the wealthier segments of society who seek to reverse the gains of the democratic process that have benefited the vast majority of the people," Maduro wrote in an op-ed piece published in Wednesday's New York Times.

Although contested details obscure a conclusive count, the government says at least 11 people, among them student protesters and pro-government motorcycle riders, have been killed clearing or defending the barricades, or simply crashing into them. Some say the real toll is double that amount. As quickly as they are erected, pro-government militias attempt to tear them down, sparking a violent turf war for control of the streets.

While marches by Venezuelans fed up with a tottering economy, rampant crime and crackdown on dissent still fill streets by day in many parts, the barricades are often erected in mostly middle-class, opposition neighborhoods at night.

On a recent evening, a half dozen figures dragged heavy sacks of debris, twisted metal and watermelon-size chunks of concrete into the middle of a Caracas street. In minutes they'd erected a sizeable barricade, topped with a wooden sign that read "Libertad," Spanish for freedom. Just as quickly, they melted back into the shadows.

But one activist, nearly double the age of the others, lingered on the corner. He was the king of the guarimba in this part of town. Gustavo Perez, a 41-year-old chef with close-cropped salt and pepper hair, didn't flaunt his royal bearing and it's unlikely anyone outside his two-block kingdom was aware of his position. Still, that's how a waiter from the cafe across the street introduced Perez with more than a hint of disdain.

"You create chaos. All day you create discomfort, a delay in everything," said Perez as he explained his strategy of insurrection. "The people don't arrive early to their jobs, sometimes they can't leave. The little food there is to distribute doesn't arrive to the supermarkets. Then it creates a domino effect. The idea is to collapse the city so that people go out into the streets."

But the plan never reached critical mass and ultimately Perez's neighbors felt the pain more than the government did. Not surprisingly many of the barricades in Caracas, including Perez's, have disappeared as opponents adopt new creative forms of protest, such as colorful sit-ins outside the offices of the United Nations.

Outside Caracas, in restive cities such as San Cristobal and Valencia, the barricades remain strong and aren't limited to middle-class neighborhoods. True to their roots as a symbol of radical activism since the days of the French Revolution, some are fiercely defended with rocks and Molotov cocktails and passage denied to nearly anyone as locals tried to defend areas from pro-government vigilantes. The government says that in their most devious form, they included thin wires stretched taught across the street, oil slicks and segments of garden hose spiky with nails.

Some of the loyalist groups, known as colectivos, have gone into the street to clear the barricades, at times by force, said Lisandro Perez, a founder and political director for the Tupamaros in the Chavista stronghold of 23 de enero.

"That is what we've done: clean the streets, take down the barricades," said Perez, also known as Comandante Mao. "In some areas of Caracas and the country, most of all in Tachira, yes, we have had to clash. That is to say, to try to eliminate the guarimba."

Carlos Balladares, a history professor at the Central University of Venezuela, said the barricades first appeared in 2004, when residents of middle and upper class Caracas neighborhoods protested after signatures gathered to force a recall referendum on then President Hugo Chavez were rejected. But they didn't spread beyond Caracas and then as now haven't met their goal of producing a political awakening among even Venezuela's better off.

"I believe it could have the opposite effect," he said. "People are going to be more annoyed by you and with the protest." That was certainly Perez's experience with his barricade. Within a 50-yard radius of his barricade are a cafe, a women's clothing shop, a store selling barbecue grills and a gourmet deli with tiny jars of caviar. There could not be many places more intensely opposed to Maduro's socialist revolution.

"There are a lot of ways to protest other than this," said Gilda Da Silva, owner of the clothing shop. "Because this, what it does is harm all of us." Da Silva said her sales were way off since the barricade went up. "I want to work. I have to work. I can't stop."

Ramon Muchacho, mayor of the wealthy Caracas district of Chacao, said that while he supports the protests he has begun pleading with his constituents not to block the streets. His job may depend on them heeding his call: The Supreme Court has used the failure to keep streets open as justification to sentence two opposition mayors to prison.

"We've had confrontations between neighbors who are all opposed to the government, but one blocks the street and the other wants to open it," he said in an interview. Ramon Suarez, a 55-year-old taxi driver from the outskirts of Caracas, said he has suffered gridlock traffic. He said the obstacles only reinforce his view of the opposition.

"They are the upper-middle class who don't like to do anything, including work," he said. "They like everything easy."

Associated Press writer Vivian Sequera in San Cristobal contributed to this report.

Brazil police push into Rio de Janeiro slums

March 30, 2014

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — More than 1,400 police officers and Brazilian Marines rolled into a massive complex of slums near Rio de Janeiro's international airport before dawn Sunday in the latest security push ahead of this year's World Cup.

Not a shot was fired as the Mare complex of 15 slums became the latest impoverished area to see security forces move in to take control and try to push out heavily armed drug gangs that have ruled Rio's shantytowns for decades.

In the coming days, Army soldiers will begin patrolling the virtually treeless, flat area of about 2 square miles (5 square kilometers) in northern Rio that hugs the main road to the airport and is home to about 130,000 people.

Security forces will eventually set up permanent posts in Mare as part of the "pacification" program that began in 2008 and is meant to secure Rio ahead of not the World Cup and also the 2016 Summer Olympics. Police have installed 37 such posts in recent years in an area covering 1.5 million people.

Sunday's operation comes at a critical time for the security effort. In recent months, gangs have brazenly attacked police outposts in other shantytowns on orders from imprisoned gang leaders who want to stymie the spread of "pacified" slums. With each area policy occupy, gangs lose valuable territory for the manufacture and sale of drugs.

Hilda Guimares, an elderly woman who slowly shuffled down a street on her way to church in Mare as officers from Rio's elite BOPE police unit quickly moved past, said she welcomed the presence of the state.

"This had to happen and it's about time," said Guimares, a longtime resident of the area. "We've needed to clean up this neighborhood for so long, but we've always been ignored. For too many years these gangs have been ruling this place."

Other residents, most of whom were too afraid of both the police and the gangs to give their names, had mixed feelings. Over the arc of the 5-year-old "pacification" program, shootouts in the affected slums are unquestionably down. But many residents complain of heavy-handed police tactics.

More than 20 police who patrolled in Rio's largest slum, Rocinha, are facing charges for the torture, disappearance and presumed death of a slum resident there, whom they were questioning in an effort to find caches of drugs and guns in the community.

Additionally, residents say that after police set up permanent posts in slums, the state is not following up with strong social programs that would improve their lives. "I didn't believe the police would actually come until I saw them enter before dawn," said Sabrina, a 15-year-old girl working at a snack stand who asked that her last name not be used, saying she was afraid of retribution by gang members. "Those of us who live here are stuck between the gangs and the police; we don't know who is really going to control this place."

Radical Muslim leader shot dead in Kenya

April 01, 2014

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A radical Islamic leader who had been sanctioned by the United States and the United Nations for supporting an al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group was assassinated late Tuesday, his lawyer and officials said.

The killing by unknown gunmen came as the Kenyan government announced it had begun an operation to stop a wave of attacks in the country as authorities arrested more than 650 people in Nairobi following a bomb attack Monday.

Attorney Mbugua Mureithi said Abubakar Shariff Ahmed was shot dead along with another unidentified man near the Shimo la Tewa prison in the coastal town of Mombasa. The killings threaten to spark retaliatory violence.

Ahmed's death is the latest to hit the Masjid Shuhadaa Mosque, which officials call an incubator of terrorism. Sheik Aboud Rogo Mohammed — a friend of Ahmed's — was assassinated in August 2012. A year later another mosque leader was killed. There have been no arrests in either case.

Mohammed had been sanctioned by the U.S. and U.N. for allegedly supporting al-Shabab, which has vowed to carry out terrorist attacks on Kenyan soil to avenge Kenya's sending of troops to Somalia. Following the first two killings, Ahmed, also known as Makaburi, told The Associated Press in October that he believed he was marked for death.

"I'm living on borrowed time. The same guy who ordered Aboud Rogo's death is going to order mine," Ahmed said. Ahmed had clear links with al-Shabab, said Matt Bryden, the former head of the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea and a top expert on al-Shabab. Bryden said Ahmed's death may cause the militant group to plan retaliatory attacks against Kenya.

Ahmed had often said he was in danger of being killed by security agents, Mureithi said. He said Ahmed started making those claims soon after he and Mohammed were nearly abducted outside a court building in Nairobi in July 2012.

Mureithi said Ahmed's last interview with a local TV station in which he appeared to justify the killings of civilians during the September terrorist attack on an upscale mall in Nairobi may have contributed to his death.

Riots broke out in Mombasa after Mohammed was killed in August 2012 and after Sheik Ibrahim Ismael was killed in October. Ahmed was charged with inciting violence. Kenya is still on edge following the September attack on Nairobi's Westgate Mall that killed at least 67 people. Since then al-Shabab sympathizers have been blamed for an explosion at Nairobi's main airport, a grenade attack on tourists on Kenya's coast, a blast on a bus in Nairobi, and three blasts Monday night in the capital that killed six people.

Authorities said Tuesday they had arrested 657 people following the latest attack. Kenya frequently makes mass arrests after attacks only to release nearly all of those arrested. Last month, police on the coast discovered a car bomb packed with explosives that a police official has said was meant to target a shopping mall. Later in the month gunmen killed six people in a church outside Mombasa.

A senior Kenyan security official said that security agencies believe a large scale attack is imminent. He said because police foiled the planned car bomb in Mombasa, terrorists are more determined to carry out another.

Bryan N. Kahumbura, a Horn of Africa analyst with the International Crisis group, said a mix of issues is fueling the escalation of attacks. The disappearances and executions of Muslim youth suspected of having links to terror are angering the Kenyan Muslim community, Kahumbura said. Many Muslims feel they are being profiled by police, he said.

EU ready to deploy delayed military mission to CAR

Sat Mar 29, 2014

The European Union (EU) has signaled it is ready to send troops to the Central African Republic (CAR) to help contain the violence in the strife-torn country.

After obtaining new contributions and additional support from France, the "commander of the operation has recommended the launch of the operation and expects a progressive increase in troops in Bangui," AFP quoted a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton as saying on Saturday.

The peacekeeping force was due to deploy last week, but the deployment was delayed by the failure of European governments to provide key soldiers and equipment.

The date of the operation is expected to be announced Wednesday following a Tuesday meeting of EU member states.

The EU has drawn up plans to send 800 to 1,000 soldiers to join 6,000 African and 2,000 French troops already on the ground in the country.

The conflict in the CAR erupted after Christian militias launched coordinated attacks on the mostly Muslim Seleka group, which toppled the government last March.

French and African troops have been unable to end the carnage and even in some occasions they have been accused of killing Muslims.

According to the United Nations, more than 950,000 people have been displaced and thousands more killed by the violence in the CAR.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/29/356505/eu-ready-to-send-military-mission-to-car/.

6U Solar Panels Complete Qualification Program

Seattle WA (SPX)
Apr 01, 2014

Andrews Space have successfully completed space qualification of their new 6U solar panel. This qualification effort extends the qualified power systems products for small satellites applications beyond batteries and satellite power management to now include solar panels.

The solar panels provide a simple power generation solution for 6U CubeSat form factors and can be easily combined to create more complex strings for microsatellites.

The panels are a complementary addition to the CORTEX 130 Electrical Power System card and CORTEX Battery Unit; in combination these products provide a complete electrical power solution for your small spacecraft.

The panels nominally produce 19.4 Watts of power (BOL, 28C) using 16 high efficiency (30%) triple-junction GaAs cells with cover glass. Additionally each panel comes standard with an integrated 1K RTD temperature sensor and photodiode sun sensor.

The solar panels were subjected to rigorous environmental testing including Vibration, Shock, and Thermal Vacuum, to ensure they would be able to survive launch conditions and a nominal 3-year mission design life in low Earth orbit. Details on the test levels and other performance specifications can be found at www.andrews-space.com/solar-panels.

All Andrews Products and Components are built domestically using Andrews' AS9100C certified quality procedures for spaceflight hardware.

Source: Solar Daily.
Link: http://www.solardaily.com/reports/6U_Solar_Panels_Complete_Qualification_Program_999.html.

India to have own satellite navigation system by 2015

Ahmedabad, India (IANS)
Apr 02, 2014

India is expected to have its own satellite navigation system by the first quarter of 2015 with four of its satellites in space, said an official of Indian space agency. India is expected to have its own satellite navigation system by the first quarter of 2015 with four of its satellites in space, said an official of Indian space agency.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will be launching the second navigational satellite badged Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System-1B (IRNSS-1B) April 4 evening at 5.14 p.m.

The 1,432 kg satellite will be carried by Indian rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDSC)-SHAR director M.Y.S.Prasad told IANS: "Though the IRNSS is a seven satellite system, it could be made operational with four satellites."

According to him, even if a navigation system has more than four satellites, the final precise data is picked from four satellites.

The IRNSS-1B satellite with a design life span of 10 years will be part of the seven-satellite Indian regional navigational system. The first navigational satellite IRNSS-1A was launched in July 2013.

The navigational system, developed by India, is designed to provide accurate position information service to users within the country and up to 1,500 km from the nation's boundary line.

The system is similar to the global positioning system of the US, Glonass of Russia, Galileo of Europe, China's Beidou or the Japanese Quasi Zenith Satellite System.

The system will be used for terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation, disaster management, vehicle tracking and fleet management, integration with mobile phones, mapping and geodetic data capture and others.

While the ISRO is silent on the navigation system's strategic application, it is clear that the IRNSS will be used for defense purposes as well.

According to the ISRO, the IRNSS-IB has been realized within seven months of the launch of the IRNSS-1A.

Meanwhile Indian space agency officials are getting ready for the 58 and half hour launch countdown slated to begin April 2 around 6.45 a.m.

"Normally 53 hour countdown is sufficient. But we have decided to an extended countdown so that some break time could be given for the officials," Prasad said.

Source: GPS Daily.
Link: http://www.gpsdaily.com/reports/India_to_have_own_satellite_navigation_system_by_2015_999.html.

Revolutionary solar cells double as lasers

Cambridge, UK (SPX)
Apr 01, 2014

Commercial silicon-based solar cells - such as those seen on the roofs of houses across the country - operate at about 20% efficiency for converting the Sun's rays into electrical energy. It's taken over 20 years to achieve that rate of efficiency.

A relatively new type of solar cell based on a perovskite material - named for scientist Lev Perovski, who first discovered materials with this structure in the Ural Mountains in the 19th century - was recently pioneered by an Oxford research team led by Professor Henry Snaith.

Perovskite solar cells, the source of huge excitement in the research community, already lie just a fraction behind commercial silicon, having reached a remarkable 17% efficiency after a mere two years of research - transforming prospects for cheap large-area solar energy generation.

Now, researchers from Professor Sir Richard Friend's group at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory - working with Snaith's Oxford group - have demonstrated that perovskite cells excel not just at absorbing light but also at emitting it. The new findings, recently published online in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters [doi 10.1021/jz500528], show that these 'wonder cells' can also produce cheap lasers.

By sandwiching a thin layer of the lead halide perovskite between two mirrors, the team produced an optically driven laser which proves these cells "show very efficient luminescence" - with up to 70% of absorbed light re-emitted.

The researchers point to the fundamental relationship, first established by Shockley and Queisser in 1961, between the generation of electrical charges following light absorption and the process of 'recombination' of these charges to emit light.

Essentially, if a material is good at converting light to electricity, then it will be good at converting electricity to light. The lasing properties in these materials raise expectations for even higher solar cell efficiencies, say the Oxbridge team, which - given that perovskite cells are about to overtake commercial cells in terms of efficiency after just two years of development - is a thrilling prospect.

"This first demonstration of lasing in these cheap solution-processed semiconductors opens up a range of new applications," said lead author Dr Felix Deschler of the Cavendish Laboratory. "Our findings demonstrate potential uses for this material in telecommunications and for light emitting devices."

Most commercial solar cell materials need expensive processing to achieve a very low level of impurities before they show good luminescence and performance. Surprisingly these new materials work well even when very simply prepared as thin films using cheap scalable solution processing.

The researchers found that upon light absorption in the perovskite two charges (electron and hole) are formed very quickly - within 1 picosecond - but then take anywhere up to a few microseconds to recombine. This is long enough for chemical defects to have ceased the light emission in most other semiconductors, such as silicon or gallium arsenide.

"These long carrier lifetimes together with exceptionally high luminescence are unprecedented in such simply prepared inorganic semiconductors," said Dr Sam Stranks, co-author from the Oxford University team.

"We were surprised to find such high luminescence efficiency in such easily prepared materials. This has great implications for improvements in solar cell efficiency," said Michael Price, co-author from the group in Cambridge.

Added Snaith: "This luminescent behavior is an excellent test for solar cell performance - poorer luminescence (as in amorphous silicon solar cells) reduces both the quantum efficiency (current collected) and also the cell voltage."

Scientists say that this new paper sets expectations for yet higher solar cell performance from this class of perovskite semiconductors. Solar cells are being scaled up for commercial deployment by the Oxford spin-out, Oxford PV Ltd. The efficient luminescence itself may lead to other exciting applications with much broader commercial prospects - a big challenge that the Oxford and Cambridge teams have identified is to construct an electrically driven laser.

Source: Solar Daily.
Link: http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Revolutionary_solar_cells_double_as_lasers_999.html.