Russian parliament passes restrictions on NGOs

July 13, 2012

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's lower house of parliament on Friday passed a bill imposing new restrictions on non-governmental organizations that receive funding from abroad.

Although the bill, which is almost certain to pass the upper house and be signed into law by the president, does not prohibit any organization's operation, it is likely to create a chilling effect on groups' activities. It reflects the suspicion of the West and the fear of rising opposition sentiment held by President Vladimir Putin and his backers in the governing United Russia party.

The bill also adds strain to Russia's relations with Western countries. WHAT THE BILL DOES The bill requires any NGO that receives foreign funding — from governments, groups or private citizens — and engages in political activity to register itself as a "foreign agent," provide detailed reports of its finances and identify itself as a foreign agent in any material it distributes.

WHY THIS IS OF CONCERN TO NGOS "Foreign agent" is a loaded term for many Russians schooled in the country's longstanding self-image as an exceptionalist nation beleaguered by foreign malefactors ranging from Napoleon's troops to Nazi Germany. If an organization identifies itself as a foreign agent, that could undermine its credibility among Russians.

The bill's definition of political activity is so wide and vague that almost any initiative could be considered political, especially if it proposes new legislation or makes even tacit criticism of current conditions.

The financial-reporting requirements could be expensive and inconvenient for organizations with small staffs and shoestring budgets. In addition, the bill can be seen as a reminder to NGOs that they are under close and probably unsympathetic scrutiny.

WHY THE BILL IS USEFUL TO THE KREMLIN Putin and his circle have long exploited suspicion of foreign involvement in the country. He accused Western governments of trying to influence last December's parliamentary elections. A state-owned national television channel denounced Golos, the country's only independent election-monitoring organization, showing suitcases full of dollars the group allegedly had received.

After those fraud-tainted elections set off an unprecedented wave of massive protests, Putin accused the demonstrators of being in the pay of Washington. Although he won a new term as president in March, Putin is under increasing criticism in Russian society and even in the once-submissive parliament. The bill appears to be an attempt at limiting future challenges.

POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES Putin has proposed tripling the amount of state funding given to non-governmental organizations, to three billion rubles ($10 million). Although that could compensate for a reduction in foreign funding for NGOs, it is unclear how the money would be apportioned and any NGO critical of the Kremlin can probably count on little or any of it.

Most NGOs have said they would comply if the bill becomes law. But Lyudmila Alexeyeva, leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of the country's oldest human rights organizations, said Friday that "as soon as this law comes into effect, from that day we will refuse foreign grants" rather than register as a foreign agent.

RECENT ACTIONS AFFECTING OPPOSITION Last month, Putin signed a law sharply increasing the punishment for taking part in an unauthorized protest rallies to 300,000 rubles ($9,000), close to the average annual income in Russia. Although officials gave authorization for several of the massive protests over the winter, authorities historically have been reluctant to give such permission and there are fears the recent relative liberality will be curtailed.

On Friday, Parliament voted to recriminalize libel and slander, just six months after it was decriminalized and made an administrative offense. Although the recriminalization removes the threat of prison terms, it raises the maximum fine to 5 million rubles ($165,000).

Activists worry that the libel law could be used against them "The law about meetings, the law on NGOs, the law on libel, it's all one train and they're probably thinking up something else," Alexeyeva told the Interfax news agency.

EFFECT ON FOREIGN RELATIONS Within hours of the bill's passage, Foreign Ministry official Konstantin Dolgov issued an aggrieved denunciation of earlier U.S. State Department expressions of concern about the legislation.

"Such approaches cannot be perceived other than as attempts of absolutely inappropriate and gross interference in the activities of Russian government bodies and a sovereign lawmaking process," Dolgov said in a statement. The accusation of interference in domestic affairs is a frequent Russian response to foreign criticism.

Also Friday, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry summoned Russia's charge d'affaires to express concern about the bill.

Spanish civil servants protest wage cuts

July 13, 2012

MADRID (AP) — Spanish civil servants, many dressed in mourning black, took to the streets Friday in angry protest as the government approved new sweeping austerity measures that include wage cuts and tax increases for a country struggling under a recession and an unemployment rate of near 25 percent.

Spain is under pressure to get its public finances on track amid concerns in the markets over the state of the country's banks and the wider economy. "Spain is going through one of its most dramatic moments," Deputy Prime Minister Saenz de Santamaria said after a Cabinet meeting at which sales tax hikes and spending cuts were approved.

Admitting that the austerity measures were "neither simple, nor easy, nor popular," she said the government would try to enact the measures "with the maximum justice and equity." The conservative government has come under mounting criticism that the austerity measures are hitting the middle and working classes the hardest.

"The government should go after the big companies that don't pay tax and bankers that have committed fraud and have run this country to the ground," said Pablo Gonzalez, 52, who works for the Madrid regional government. "Instead, we have to pay."

The aim of the latest package of measures is to chop €65 billion ($79 billion) off the budget deficit through 2015, the biggest deficit-reduction plan in recent Spanish history. As dusk fell, several hundred mainly young protesters marched in Madrid, stopping to jeer outside the headquarters of the ruling conservative and opposition Socialist parties before heading to the parliament.

Though the increase in sales taxes, which risks slowing consumption and worsening Spain's recession, will take effect Sept. 1, other reforms will be left for later in the year, including a plan to speed up the gradual raising of the retirement age from to 65 to 67.

Meanwhile, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos announced the creation of a new mechanism to help Spain's 17 regions finance themselves more easily. Some, such as Valencia in the east, are finding it increasingly difficult to tap capital markets for much-needed cash.

The latest bout of austerity is prompting widespread opposition, not least from civil servants. In Madrid, several hundred government workers blocked traffic briefly in different parts of the city. In Valencia, several hundred Justice Ministry workers shouted "hands up, this is a stick-up" at a protest rally.

The civil servants — whose wages were cut 5 percent on average in 2010 in the first round of austerity cuts — are usually paid 14 times a year. The government is now axing an extra payment made just before Christmas. The prime minister, his cabinet and lawmakers will also suffer the cut. At the local, regional and central level, there are around 3 million public servants in Spain.

In the Puerta del Sol in downtown Madrid, about 500 civil servants gathered, about half dressed in black. Some women wore veils, as if at funerals. Protesters blew whistles and horns. Civil servants are often ridiculed in Spain and seen as lazy, clock-in and clock-out types with the luxury of lifetime jobs. But many earn as little as €1,000 a month.

Isabel Perez, a 40-year-old librarian, said "our wages have already been cut and now they take away the Christmas payment. I don't make it to the end of the month as it is. The extra payment gave some relief. We're not exactly millionaires." She earns €1,300 a month and had already faced a yearly €330 euro wage cut by the Madrid regional government.

The latest austerity package has come after Spain won approval from the other 16 countries that use the euro for the first €30 billion tranche of a bailout of up to €100 billion for its troubled banking sector. Spain also managed to secure an extra year to meet a European deficit reduction target of 3 percent of GDP. The size of Spain's economy in 2011 is estimated to have been $1.5 trillion.

Investors' response has been lukewarm, and the yield on Spain's benchmark 10-year bonds, a measure of investor wariness of a country's debt, remains very high at 6.61 percent, up 4 basis points for the day.

Investors are also becoming increasingly wary of placing money in Spanish banks, which are having to turn to the European Central Bank for financing. In June, Spanish bank borrowing from the ECB rose 17 percent from May. The accrued total as of the end of that month was €337 billion, 77 percent of all the money owed to the ECB and seven times the figure from June 2011.

A draft memorandum of understanding agreed by eurozone finance ministers for Spain's bank bailout suggests billions in problematic assets should be segregated into an "external asset management agency" to clean up Spanish banks' balance sheets.

It also says that by the end of the year certain areas of jurisdiction — sanctioning and licensing — should be transferred from the Spanish economy ministry to the Bank of Spain. This is seen as paving the way for Europe having a single bank supervisory body that will oversee central banks and be empowered to recapitalize Spanish and other troubled banks directly instead of via debt-laden government.

Harold Heckle contributed to this report.

Sorrow in Srebrenica: Bosnians bury 520 victims

July 11, 2012

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The pain that seared Srebrenica 17 years ago burned fresh Wednesday as tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims came to bury their dead in the town whose name is now synonymous with genocide.

In a ceremony broadcast live on television across the country, 520 coffins were placed in the ground as tears flowed like water from family and friends. On the anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II, 30,000 Muslims traveled to a memorial center in Srebrenica to honor the thousands of Muslim men and boys slaughtered in July 1995 by Serb forces.

Izabela Hasanovic, 27, sobbed over one of the coffins before it was lowered into a freshly dug pit. "My father, my father is here," she sobbed. "I cannot believe that my father is in this coffin. I cannot accept it!"

Another woman dropped on her knees next to a coffin, pressing her lips against the green cloth covering the wood. "It's your sister kissing you. It's me," she whispered, caressing the coffin with both hands until others lowered it.

Then the valley echoed with the sound of dirt landing on the coffins from thousands of shovels, as a voice read out the names of the victims and their ages from loudspeakers. Among them were 48 teenagers as well as 94-year-old Saha Izmirlic, who was buried next to her son who also died in the massacre. On the other side of her grave, an empty space is waiting for her grandson who has not yet been found.

Srebrenica was a U.N.-protected Muslim town in Bosnia besieged by Serb forces throughout Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Serb troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the enclave in July 1995, separated men from women and executed 8,372 men and boys within days. Dutch troops stationed in Srebrenica as U.N. peacekeepers were undermanned and outgunned and failed to stop the slaughter.

The bodies of the victims are still being found in mass graves throughout eastern Bosnia. The task has been made even more difficult by the fact that the perpetrators dug up mass graves and reburied remains in other areas to try to cover their tracks. The victims have been identified through DNA analysis and newly identified ones are buried at the Srebrenica memorial center every year.

So far 5,325 Srebrenica massacre victims found this way have been laid to rest. In Washington, President Barack Obama issued a statement honoring the memory of the "8,000 innocent men and boys" massacred in Srebrenica.

"The name Srebrenica will forever be associated with some of the darkest acts of the 20th century," Obama said, adding that the U.S. "rejects efforts to distort the scope of this atrocity, rationalize the motivations behind it, blame the victims, and deny the indisputable fact that it was genocide."

In London, Prime Minister David Cameron said Srebrenica should never be forgotten or denied and called on the world to "prevent such atrocities from taking place." Mladic was arrested last year in Serbia and is on trial now at the tribunal in The Hague. He faces 11 charges, including genocide, for allegedly masterminding Serb atrocities throughout the war that left 100,000 dead, especially the Srebrenica massacre. He denies wrongdoing.

Many Serbs still deny the Srebrenica genocide, including Serbia's newly inaugurated president, Tomislav Nikolic. Some of them view Mladic as a national hero. "Serbs believe he is an honorable and fair man," said Bosnian Serb Novica Kapuran from the town of Pale, near Sarajevo. "He is being blamed for something he has not done."

Tired of listening to political speeches every year, the families of the victims allowed only Holocaust survivor Rabbi Arthur Schneier of the Park East Synagogue in New York to address them during Wednesday's ceremony.

"Shalom, Salam," Schneier greeted the crowd, calling them "brothers and sisters." He said the Srebrenica genocide was a crime against humanity but also a crime allowed by the rest of humanity. "Silence is not a solution, it only encourages the perpetrators and ultimately it pays a heavy price in blood," Schneier said.

He reminded the audience that even today, the Syrian regime was killing its own people. "(It's time) for humanity to say in one clear voice: These crimes against people will end!" the rabbi declared. "Here on this sacred day we say 'Never again!' And we mean 'Never again!"

The crowd greeted his words with "Allah Akbar" — "God is great" in Arabic.

NASA Announces Design for New Deep Space Exploration System

Washington DC (SPX)
Sep 15, 2011

NASA is ready to move forward with the development of the Space Launch System - an advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle that will provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth's orbit. The Space Launch System will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable means of reaching beyond our current limits and opening up new discoveries from the unique vantage point of space.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth's orbit and destinations beyond. Additionally, the SLS will serve as a back up for commercial and international partner transportation services to the International Space Station.

"This launch system will create good-paying American jobs, ensure continued U.S. leadership in space, and inspire millions around the world," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we are doing at NASA. While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow's explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars."

The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle Program and the Constellation Program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs.

It will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system, which will include the RS-25D/E from the Space Shuttle Program for the core stage and the J-2X engine for the upper stage.

SLS will also use solid rocket boosters for the initial development flights, while follow-on boosters will be competed based on performance requirements and affordability considerations. The SLS will have an initial lift capacity of 70 metric tons.

That's more than 154,000 pounds, or 77 tons, roughly the weight of 40 sport utility vehicles. The lift capacity will be evolvable to 130 metric tons - more than 286,000 pounds, or 143 tons - enough to lift 75 SUVs. The first developmental flight, or mission, is targeted for the end of 2017.

This specific architecture was selected, largely because it utilizes an evolvable development approach, which allows NASA to address high-cost development activities early on in the program and take advantage of higher buying power before inflation erodes the available funding of a fixed budget.

This architecture also enables NASA to leverage existing capabilities and lower development costs by using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for both the core and upper stages. Additionally, this architecture provides a modular launch vehicle that can be configured for specific mission needs using a variation of common elements.

NASA may not need to lift 130 metric tons for each mission and the flexibility of this modular architecture allows the agency to use different core stage, upper stage, and first-stage booster combinations to achieve the most efficient launch vehicle for the desired mission.

"NASA has been making steady progress toward realizing the president's goal of deep space exploration, while doing so in a more affordable way," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. "We have been driving down the costs on the Space Launch System and Orion contracts by adopting new ways of doing business and project hundreds of millions of dollars of savings each year."

The Space Launch System will be NASA's first exploration-class vehicle since the Saturn V took American astronauts to the moon over 40 years ago. With its superior lift capability, the SLS will expand our reach in the solar system and allow us to explore cis-lunar space, near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons and beyond.

We will learn more about how the solar system formed, where Earth's water and organics originated and how life might be sustained in places far from our Earth's atmosphere and expand the boundaries of human exploration. These discoveries will change the way we understand ourselves, our planet, and its place in the universe.

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_Announces_Design_for_New_Deep_Space_Exploration_System_999.html.

Astronomers find extreme weather on an alien world

Toronto, Canada (SPX)
Sep 13, 2011

A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has observed extreme brightness changes on a nearby brown dwarf that may indicate a storm grander than any seen yet on a planet. Because old brown dwarfs and giant planets have similar atmospheres, this finding could shed new light on weather phenomena of extra-solar planets.

As part of a large survey of nearby brown dwarfs - objects that occupy the mass gap between dwarf stars and giant planets - the scientists used an infrared camera on the 2.5m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to capture repeated images of a brown dwarf dubbed 2MASS J21392676+0220226, or 2MASS 2139 for short, over several hours.

In that short time span, they recorded the largest variations in brightness ever seen on a cool brown dwarf.

"We found that our target's brightness changed by a whopping 30 per cent in just under eight hours," said PhD candidate Jacqueline Radigan, lead author of a paper to be presented this week at the Extreme Solar Systems II conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.

"The best explanation is that brighter and darker patches of its atmosphere are coming into our view as the brown dwarf spins on its axis," said Radigan.

"We might be looking at a gigantic storm raging on this brown dwarf, perhaps a grander version of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter in our own solar system, or we may be seeing the hotter, deeper layers of its atmosphere through big holes in the cloud deck," said co-author Professor Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and author of the recent book Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life beyond Our Solar System.

According to theoretical models, clouds form in brown dwarf and giant planet atmospheres when tiny dust grains made of silicates and metals condense. The depth and profile of 2MASS 2139's brightness variations changed over weeks and months, suggesting that cloud patterns in its atmosphere are evolving with time.

"Measuring how quickly cloud features change in brown dwarf atmospheres may allow us to infer atmospheric wind speeds eventually and teach us about how winds are generated in brown dwarf and planetary atmospheres," Radigan added.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Astronomers_find_extreme_weather_on_an_alien_world_999.html.

NASA unveils new launcher design for Mars missions

Washington (AFP)
Sept 14, 2011

NASA unveiled its plans Wednesday for a massive new launcher capable of powering manned space flights well beyond low-Earth orbit and ultimately to Mars.

NASA chief Charles Bolden made the announcement of the design for the new Space Launch System, which the space agency touted as the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V rocket put US astronauts on the moon.

"The next chapter of America's space exploration story is being written today," said Bolden.

"President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we are doing at NASA."

The launcher, which will take until 2017 to build and cost an estimated $35 billion, will fill a gap in US manned flight program created by the retirement of the last US space shuttle in July after 30 years of service.

But NASA said it will be far more powerful, capable of carrying much larger payloads beyond low-Earth orbit deep into space, and eventually to Mars.

Still, the so-called "Space Launch System" borrows heavily from the space shuttle, said John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

For instance, the first stage of the new launcher will use the shuttle's cryogenic engine fueled with a mix of hydrogen and oxygen kept at very low temperatures, he told AFP.

The system will be topped with a capsule initially capable of carrying into space payloads of 70 to 100 metric tonnes, and expanded over time to carry up to 130 metric tonnes.

"The booster will be America's most powerful since the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon and will launch humans to places no one has gone before," NASA said in a statement.

"The SLS will carry human crews beyond low-Earth orbit in a capsule named the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle," NASA said.

The first test launch is scheduled for 2017 followed by manned flights in 2021.

NASA could use it for a mission to an asteroid in 2025. NASA has indicated that it expects to send astronauts around Mars before eventually landing on the red planet, but not before 2030.

NASA's decision on the SLS design follows many months of deliberations while the space agency weighed different approaches that would ensure it could be adapted to changing missions and take advantage of new technologies that emerge in the future.

The project comes at a time when the United States is facing deep budget cuts that is likely to impinge on the costly space program, which is vital to the economies of a number of US states.

Bolden said the program will "create good-paying American jobs, ensure continued US leadership in space, and inspire millions around the world."

Champions of the space program in the US Congress welcomed the decision, noting that NASA has been losing jobs and had appeared to directionless after the end of the space shuttle program.

"This is perhaps the biggest thing for space exploration in decades," said Senator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut who represents Florida, a big beneficiary of NASA dollars.

Logsdon said however the vision for deep space exploration remains murky.

"Mars is a long way," he said, adding that getting there will take NASA "beyond the 2030s."

"The international community would prefer going back to the moon," he said. "This is possible if we have an integrated international plan with enough money to pay for this rocket and this spacecraft and pay for a landing vehicle."

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_unveils_new_launcher_design_for_Mars_missions_999.html.

NATO radar to be deployed in southeast: ministry

Ankara (AFP)
Sept 9, 2011

An early warning radar Turkey is planning to host as part of NATO's missile defense system will be deployed in a military facility base near Malatya in the southeast, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.

"The radar will be installed in a military base in Kurecik," in Malatya province, said the ministry in a statement.

Kurecik was hosting a US radar base in the past. The ministry statement also recalled that Turkey benefited from the base in the past for similar purposes.

The radar base is expected to be operational by the end of this year, according to the private NTV television.

Leaders of the 28-member NATO alliance gave their backing last year for the Europe-wide ballistic missile shield -- which US officials say is aimed at thwarting missile threats from the Middle East, particularly Iran.

Tehran criticized Ankara's decision, saying it would create tension and lead to "complicated consequences."

Turkey, a member of NATO since 1952, said the missile system targeted no specific country, adding that it only aimed at defending the NATO sphere.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/NATO_radar_to_be_deployed_in_southeast_ministry_999.html.