Thai protesters storm army headquarters

November 29, 2013

BANGKOK (AP) — Protesters in Thailand stormed onto the grounds of the national army headquarters on Friday, breaking into their latest high-profile target in a bid to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

The crowd of about 1,200 people broke the padlocked gate at the Royal Thai Army compound and forced their way inside as they called on the military to join their anti-government campaign, said army spokesman Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd.

The compound is next to the United Nation's Asia-Pacific headquarters in Bangkok. "They are now gathering in the courtyard, but they have not entered buildings," Sansern said. "We will make them understand that this is a security area and we will ask them to leave."

Yingluck has been reluctant to use force to evict the opposition-led protesters for fear of escalating the country's tense political crisis and sparking bloodshed. Security forces have done little to stop protesters who have spent the week seizing government buildings and camping out at several of them in an effort to force a government shutdown while asking civil servants to join their rally.

The demonstrations that started Sunday have raised fears of fresh political turmoil and instability in Thailand and pose the biggest threat to Yingluck's administration since she came to power in 2011.

The protesters accuse Yingluck of serving as a proxy for her billionaire brother Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister who was ousted in a 2006 military coup but retains strong support from the rural majority in Thailand.

Protesters branched out to several spots on Friday, with another crowd staging a rally outside the headquarters of Yingluck's ruling Pheu Thai Party, where hundreds of riot police stood guard to prevent them from entering.

A separate crowd of more than 1,000 people marched through central Bangkok to the U.S. Embassy to convey the protesters' message that Yingluck's leadership is illegitimate, in response to a statement from Washington that expressed concern about the protests.

Crowd sizes peaked Sunday at over 100,000 and have dwindled in recent days to tens of thousands, but organizers have kept each day dramatic by targeting new and different seats of power. Crowds of protesters have occupied the Finance Ministry since Monday and others have remained holed up since Wednesday at a sprawling government complex that houses the Department of Special Investigations, the country's equivalent of the FBI. On Thursday, the demonstrators cut power at Bangkok's police headquarters and asked police to join their side.

Yingluck has publicly pleaded for the protesters to stop and asked leaders of the movement to negotiate. "Please call off the protests for the country's peace," Yingluck said Thursday. "I'm begging you."

But protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, who resigned as an opposition Democrat Party lawmaker to lead the protests, says he will not negotiate. He says his goal to rid the country of Thaksin's influence and to appoint a new leader chosen by an appointed "people's council."

Suthep has called for bigger crowds to join the campaign over the weekend. Thaksin, who lives in Dubai to avoid serving a jail term for a corruption conviction he says was politically motivated, is a highly polarizing figure in Thailand. So much so, that an ill-advised bid to push a general amnesty law through parliament — which would have paved the way for his return — sparked the latest wave of protests earlier this month.

Before Thaksin was toppled in a coup — allegedly for corruption, abuse of power and insulting the nation's revered king — he won over Thailand's rural underclass by introducing populist policies designed to benefit the poor. His political movement grew to become the most successful in modern Thai history.

But his opponents, largely members of the urban middle class and elite, saw him as arrogant and a threat to democracy and their own privileges. The country has been gripped by alternating protests from both sides since 2006.

Leader of Thai protests says he's prepared to die

November 27, 2013

BANGKOK (AP) — A few years ago, Suthep Thaugsuban was a suit-and-tie wearing deputy prime minister of Thailand and a senior executive of the country's oldest political party.

Now, the 64-year-old career politician has ditched his office attire, distanced himself from the opposition Democrat Party and found a new calling as a street fighter. Suthep is the mastermind of Thailand's latest round of street protests and has vowed to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra by taking over every government ministry. After storming the Finance Ministry earlier this week and camping there two nights, Suthep led protesters for a fourth day Wednesday in what he calls a people's power uprising.

Whistle-blowing throngs massed inside or around at least six of the government's 19 ministries, although they left half of them after a few hours. One large group led by Suthep entered a sprawling government office complex that houses the Department of Special Investigations, the country's equivalent of the FBI, and prepared to camp there overnight.

"We like peaceful methods," Suthep told reporters, his voice hoarse from speaking above the crowd's roar. But he added, "If we don't succeed, then I am prepared to die in the battlefield." "The people will quit only when the state power is in their hands," he said. "There will be no negotiation."

The brash threat is the boldest challenge yet to Yingluck's embattled administration, and it has raised fears of fresh political violence in the divided Southeast Asian nation. Yingluck has repeatedly said she wants to avert violence and offered to negotiate an end to the crisis. So far, security forces have not even fired tear gas to prevent protesters from forcing the closure of multiple government offices. A warrant was issued for Suthep's arrest, but he has ignored it.

"We must not regard this as a win-or-lose situation," Yingluck told reporters at Parliament. "Today no one is winning or losing, only the country is hurting." Protesters want Yingluck to step down amid claims she is a proxy for her brother, billionaire former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup but remains central to Thailand's long-running political crisis. Thaksin lives overseas to avoid a corruption conviction that he says was politically motivated.

In broad terms, Thailand's political crisis pits Thailand's elite and the educated middle-class against Thaksin's power base in the countryside, which benefited from populist policies designed to win them over. Thaksin's party is the most successful in modern Thai political history. He became the only prime minister to serve out a full term, and Thaksin or his allies have won every election since 2001. The Democrats were crushed by Yingluck's ruling party during the election that brought her to power in 2011.

On Sunday, more than 100,000 demonstrators took to Bangkok's streets for the largest rally in years, uniting against what they call the "Thaksin regime." The crowds Wednesday were far lower — in the tens of thousands — indicating that Suthep is unlikely to meet his goal of bringing down the government this week without more popular support, or judicial or military intervention.

But Suthep has proven a few things during his time in the street. Notably that he is tenacious and unpredictable. Before becoming a protest leader, Suthep was the man assigned to deal with unruly anti-government protesters when the Democrats were in power.

In 2010, when Suthep was deputy prime minister under a Democrat government, he signed an order that authorized the military to disperse Thaksin's "Red Shirt" protesters who had occupied a large section of downtown Bangkok. The eight-week protests and crackdown left more than 90 people dead and about 1,800 injured. It was Thailand's worst political violence in decades.

Now that the tables have turned, many fear that Suthep is leading Thailand back to volatility. "Have we learned our lessons? Is history going to repeat itself?" Bangkok Post editorial page editor Sanitsuda Ekachai wrote in a column Wednesday. "On one side are the protest leaders looking for blood. On the other side is the government — unrepentant for its abuse of majority power — set to fight to the end. The scenario ahead looks gloomy indeed."

For years, Suthep was the behind-the-scenes dealmaker for the Democrat Party, whose public face was the clean-cut, Oxford-educated Abhisit Vejjajiva. Abhisit was prime minister during the 2010 crackdown.

The party often relied on Suthep to do its dirty work, according to a U.S. Embassy cable from 2008 leaked by Wikileaks. "Several Democrats have privately complained to us that he engages in corrupt and unethical behavior," the cable said. "While Abhisit appears publicly as an ethical intellectual, Suthep serves as the party's backroom dealmaker."

The anti-government campaign started last month after Yingluck's ruling Pheu Thai party tried to pass an amnesty law that would have enabled Thaksin to return home as a free man. The Senate rejected the bill in a bid to end the protests, but the rallies gained momentum.

Suthep seized the opportunity to step into the spotlight. He resigned as an opposition lawmaker in mid-November to lead the demonstrations, which morphed into a wider anti-government campaign with ever-shifting strategies.

After initially pledging to lead a law-abiding show of "civil disobedience," Suthep switched to the tactic of occupying government offices. At first, he called for Yingluck's resignation but now says he won't rest at that. He says his goal now is to replace the government with a non-elected council — an apparent call for less democracy, not more. He says the change is necessary to uproot the Shinawatra political machine from Thai politics.

Suthep has rejected new elections, which the opposition Democrats are certain to lose. He insists that he has no ambition to be prime minister, and on Wednesday said he is settling into his new role. "Being a member of Parliament, you wear a suit and tie, you act smart in an air-conditioned room. When you stand up and say something, people applaud," a tired and sweating Suthep told reporters, dressed in his now-regular outfit of all black.

"Here, you speak until you lose your voice," Suthep said. "But I've made up my mind, that I'd rather work here for the people."

Associated Press writers Thanyarat Doksone, Todd Pitman and Yves Dam Van contributed to this report.

Thai protesters call for nationwide uprising

November 26, 2013

BANGKOK (AP) — Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra fought a two-front political war Tuesday, fending off attacks during a parliamentary no-confidence debate while protesters besieged and occupied several ministries in their attempt to topple her from power.

Protest leaders threatened to extend the battlefield to government offices in provincial areas, while police issued an arrest warrant for protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, a former opposition lawmaker who led the storming of the Finance Ministry a day earlier.

Police said Suthep would not be arrested at the rally as part of a pledge to avoid clashes with demonstrators. A spokesman for the protesters promised that they would not seize Bangkok's airports, which anti-Thaksin activists did in 2008, shutting down air travel to the capital for a week.

But the situation remained volatile, as thousands of demonstrators fanned out to new targets in Bangkok, emboldened by their takeover of the Finance Ministry, where Suthep and hundreds of protesters camped overnight. The transport, agriculture and tourism ministries were also closed Tuesday because of their proximity to protests.

Demonstrators surrounded the Interior Ministry and then cut electricity and water to pressure people inside to leave. Security personnel locked themselves behind the ministry's gates, with employees still inside.

Protesters say they want Yingluck, who took office in 2011, to step down amid claims her government is controlled by her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup in 2006.

Thaksin has lived in self-imposed exile for the past five years to avoid a two-year prison sentence on a corruption conviction. On Sunday, more than 100,000 demonstrators took to Bangkok's streets, uniting against what they call the "Thaksin regime."

What started a month ago as a campaign against a political amnesty bill has morphed into a wider anti-government movement. Protest leaders now say their ultimate goal is to uproot the Shinawatra network from Thai politics, with no explanation of what that means.

The occupation of the ministry offices has raised fears of violence and worries that Thailand is entering a new period of political instability. They also recall previous protests against Thaksin and his allies in 2008, when demonstrators occupied and shut down the prime minister's offices for three months.

The protesters appeared to have converted the Finance Ministry into a headquarters, and declared Tuesday a "rest day" as they erected tents in the parking lot. "Tomorrow there will be a nationwide movement," Akanat Promphan, a protest spokesman, told reporters inside the emptied ministry. He said the aim is to paralyze government operations by seizing offices and state agencies so they cannot be "used as a mechanism for the Thaksin regime."

There was no immediate sign the call would be heeded. The anti-Thaksin movement is strongest in Bangkok and the country's south, and Thaksin's many supporters might well challenge actions in other areas, raising another prospect for violence.

Separately on Tuesday, the opposition Democrat Party, which is spearheading the protests, launched a parliamentary no-confidence debate against Yingluck. They accused her administration of corruption and called her an incompetent puppet whose brother pulled the strings. The vote has no chance of unseating Yingluck as her ruling Pheu Thai party controls the House of Representatives.

Yingluck called for calm and offered to negotiate with protest leaders. "If we can talk, I believe the country will return to normal," she said. Yingluck has vowed not to use violence to stop the protests but expanded special security laws late Monday to cover the entire capital. The Internal Security Act was already in place for three districts of Bangkok since August, when there were early signs of political unrest. It authorizes officials to impose curfews, seal off roads, restrict access to buildings and ban the use of electronic devices in designated areas.

The anti-government campaign started last month after the ruling party tried to pass an amnesty bill that critics said was designed to absolve Thaksin and others of politically related offenses. The Senate rejected the bill in a bid to end the protests, but the rallies have gained momentum.

Thaksin's supporters and opponents have battled for power since he was toppled in 2006 following street protests accusing him of corruption and disrespect for the country's constitutional monarch. The battle for power has sometimes led to bloodshed. About 90 people were killed in 2010 when Thaksin's "Red Shirt" supporters occupied parts of central Bangkok for weeks before the government, led then by the current opposition, sent the military to crack down.

The protesters' takeover of government offices has drawn criticism from the United States and the European Union, which issued a statement on Tuesday calling upon "all concerned to avoid escalation and to resolve differences through peaceful means."

Associated Press writers Jocelyn Gecker and Grant Peck contributed to this report.

Thai protesters force way into gov't ministries

November 25, 2013

BANGKOK (AP) — Anti-government demonstrators in Thailand occupied parts of two government ministries on Monday, turning up the pressure in their offensive against the administration of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

Protesters say they want Yingluck to step down amid claims that her government is controlled by her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup in 2006. On Sunday, more than 150,000 demonstrators took to Bangkok's streets in the largest rally Thailand has seen in years, uniting against what they call the "Thaksin regime."

The incursions into the finance and foreign ministries were the boldest acts yet in opposition-led protests that started last month. They highlighted the movement's new strategy of paralyzing the government by forcing civil servants to stop working.

Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban led the crowd at the Finance Ministry on a day when protesters fanned out to 13 locations across Bangkok, snarling traffic and raising concerns of violence in the country's ongoing political crisis, which has revolved around Thaksin for years.

"Go up to every floor, go into every room, but do not destroy anything," Suthep told the crowd before he entered the ministry and held a meeting in its conference room. "Make them see this is people's power!" said Suthep, a former deputy prime minister and opposition lawmaker.

Protesters sang, danced and blew noisy whistles in the hallways as part of their "whistle-blowing" campaign against the government. One group cut power at the Budget Bureau to pressure the agency to stop funding government projects.

Police made no immediate move to oust them. The protesters in the evening burst onto the Foreign Ministry grounds, which was not on their original list of targets. "The protesters are on the ministry's compound but they promised they will not enter the buildings," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sek Wannamethee said by phone. "We are now asking them to provide ways for the officials who were still working to leave the offices and they will likely have to work from home tomorrow." He did not know how many protesters there were, though Thai media said there were several hundred.

More than two dozen Bangkok schools along the protest route were closed Monday and police tightened security at the protest destinations, which included the military and police headquarters and the five television stations controlled by the military or the government.

Despite a heavy police presence at most protest sites, there was limited security at the finance and foreign ministries. At another protest near the prime minister's office, police were outnumbered by more than 1,000 protesters who scuffled with officers and tore down a razor wire barricade. A foreign freelance journalist in the crowd was punched by protesters who accused him of biased reporting before security personnel intervened.

Many fear that clashes could erupt between the anti-government protesters and Thaksin's supporters, who are staging their own rally at a Bangkok stadium and have vowed to stay until the opposition calls off its demonstrations.

Thaksin's supporters and opponents have battled for power since he was toppled in 2006 following street protests accusing him of corruption and disrespect for the country's constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thaksin has lived in self-imposed exile for the past five years to avoid a prison sentence on a corruption conviction.

The battle for power has sometimes led to bloodshed on Bangkok's streets. About 90 people were killed in 2010 when Thaksin's "Red Shirt" supporters occupied parts of central Bangkok for weeks before the government, led then by the current opposition, sent the military to crack down.

The latest protests have ended two years of relative calm under Yingluck's government. Yingluck's administration has struggled to contain the demonstrations, which started over opposition to a government-backed political amnesty bill that critics said was designed to bring Thaksin home from exile. The Senate rejected the bill earlier this month in a bid to end the protests. But the rallies have gained momentum and leaders have now shifted their target to toppling the "Thaksin regime."

The intrusion at the government ministries raised the specter of a repeat of 2008 protests when Thaksin's opponents were protesting a different Thaksin-allied government and occupied the prime minister's office compound for three months.

Search for habitable planets should be more conservative

Philadelphia PA (SPX)
Nov 27, 2013

Scientists should take the conservative approach when searching for habitable zones where life-sustaining planets might exist, according to James Kasting, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, including when building Terrestrial Planet Finders.

That conservative approach means looking for planets that have liquid water and solid or liquid surfaces, as opposed to gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn. The habitable zone in a solar system is the area where liquid water, and by extension life, could exist.

Defining the habitable zone is key to the search for life sustaining planets in part because the idea of a habitable zone is used in designing the space-based telescopes that scientists would use to find planets where metabolism -- and potentially life -- life might exist.

"It's one of the biggest and oldest questions that science has tried to investigate: is there life off the earth?" Kasting said. "NASA is pursuing the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System, but some of us think that looking for life on planets around other stars may actually be the best way to answer this question."

Recent research by Ravi Kopparapu, a post-doctoral researcher working with Kasting, suggests that the frequency of Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of stars known as M-dwarfs is 0.4 to 0.5. To find four potential Earth-like candidates, scientists would need to survey the habitable zones of about 10 cool stars.

This data came from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which collected information on transiting exoplanets for almost four years before being partially disabled. Previous estimates put this frequency at 0.1, which would have forced scientists using planet finders to survey more stars, searching farther away from our Solar System.

An even more recent estimate of the frequency of Earth-like planets was announced by Eric Petigura and colleagues at the Kepler Science Conference in early November. They calculated the figure at 0.22 around stars more similar to the Sun. But Kopparapu and Kasting think Petigura and colleagues' estimate could be too high by a factor of two because they used an overly optimistic estimate for the width of the habitable zone. If so, then the old value of 0.1 may be closer to the truth.

The ability of a planet to sustain liquid water is traditionally part of the criteria when searching for life-sustaining planets. While some have argued that subsurface water would be enough to sustain life, testing that hypothesis remotely would be virtually impossible, so the focus for astronomers should remain on surface water, Kopparapu and Kasting note in a special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"All life that we know of is carbon-based and depends on the presence of liquid water during at least part of its life cycle," Kasting notes in the paper. "Hence, if we see a planet that shows evidence for liquid water, we can immediately think about the possible presence of carbon-based life."

While no federal funding to build a Terrestrial Planet Finder is currently in place, the amount of research related to exoplanets is strengthening. A TPF would allow for the detection of gases -- or lack thereof -- in planets' atmospheres. If, for example, no signs of life are found after searching the habitable zones of 30 stars, that could be a reason for pessimism, said Kasting, who is also part of Penn State's Earth and Environmental Systems Institute.

And, while it may be more appealing to know that there is evidence of life on other planets, learning that there is not would have scientific implications.

"Maybe every planet out there that has the right conditions develops life," Kasting said. "We don't really know the answer to that. But, it could be. If you're an optimist, you think it just takes the right conditions. It happened on Earth, why wouldn't it happen somewhere else?"

It is possible that initial observations of Earth-like exoplanets could give an ambiguous answer, Kasting added. For example, oxygen might be found, but not methane. But even that could open the door to further exploration.

While the pursuit of life in the outer reaches of the sky might seem far-fetched at first glance, Kasting noted that astronomers have talked about it as a second Copernican revolution.

"Did it make any difference when we figured out that the Earth was going around the sun rather than vice versa? If you're just a practical-minded person, it made absolutely no difference to your life because life goes on Earth just the way it did," Kasting said.

"But if you expand your mind a little bit, it helped us figure out our place in the universe -- that we're actually on a little planet going around a rather normal star amongst many other stars in the galaxy, and there are many galaxies out there. It's been one of the most profound changes ever in human thought. We think of TPF as the next step in the Copernican revolution, to figure out if there are other Earths out there and if there is life on those planets."

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Search_for_habitable_planets_should_be_more_conservative_999.html.

South Korea to launch homegrown rocket by 2020

Seoul (XNA)
Nov 27, 2013

South Korea plans to launch its homegrown space launch vehicles to put a satellite in orbit by 2020, the government said Tuesday.

The National Space Committee on Tuesday approved the renewed space development program, including developing and launching its own space launch vehicles, landing its first spaceship on the moon, strengthening international cooperation on deep space exploration to Mars and small asteroids and setting up a space watch program.

The country is expecting to launch its indigenous space rocket that can put a 1.5-ton satellite into space before June 2020, 15 months earlier than its previous plan, according to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

"Considering the daily growing competition in space development and the country's need to secure leadership in space development for security purposes, the government approved a revised plan for the development of a Korean launch vehicle that moves up the timeline by one year and three months," Yonhap news agency quoted the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning as saying.

The ministry said the government will spend a total of 1.96 trillion won (around 1.85 billion U.S. dollars) to fund the program.

South Korea successfully sent a satellite into space with the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, also known as Naro, in January 2013. But Naro was built in Russia and South Korea.

The country will also land a spacecraft on the moon in 2020 with its own launch vehicle, the ministry said.

Besides, the government will keep on developing its own satellites and encourage the private sector's participation to boost the country's space industry.

At present, South Korea's space market only accounts for 0.45 percent of the total global space market, according to the ministry.

The ministry said the renewed space program will help more than triple the size of the country's space industry to about 2.64 billion U.S. dollars by 2017 and create some 4,500 new jobs.

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/South_Korea_to_launch_homegrown_rocket_by_2020_999.html.

Virgin Galactic allows customers to pay for space flights with Bitcoins

By Evan Bleier
Nov. 25, 2013

Nov. 25 (UPI) -- Virgin Galactic customers will now we able to pay for flights to space with Bitcoins, company founder Richard Branson announced in a blog post.

    “Virgin Galactic is one of the universe’s most exciting, futuristic companies. Bitcoin, the virtual currency, has really captured the imagination recently as one of the world’s most innovative businesses looking to the future. So we think it is about time Virgin Galactic customers can choose to pay with bitcoins.

    One future astronaut, a female flight attendant from Hawaii, has already purchased her Virgin Galactic ticket using bitcoins, and we expect many more to follow in her footsteps. All of our future astronauts are pioneers in their own right, and this is one more way to be forward-thinking.”

The company is expected to launch its space flights next year, with seats costing as much as $250,000.

“I have invested in some bitcoins myself, and find it fascinating how a whole new global currency has been created. For people who can afford to invest a little in bitcoins, it’s worth looking into,” Branson wrote.

Bitcoin is a cybercurrency that is facing increasing scrutiny after 26,000 Bitcoins were seized during the shut down of the Silk Road online drug marketplace.

“The days of carrying cash and coins could soon be over,” Branson wrote. “Sometime in the future, innovative payment models such as Square, Clinkle and Bitcoin will become serious challengers to traditional banks, which will spur more competition and give customers even more options.”

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/Blog/2013/11/25/Virgin-Galactic-allows-customers-to-pay-for-space-flights-with-Bitcoins/6331385388806/.