NASA planning Europa mission, Jupiter's potentially life-hosting moon

by Brooks Hays
Pasadena, Calif. (UPI)
Feb 3, 2015

The big ticket items -- the Space Launch System, the Orion capsule, the Commercial Crew program -- grabbed the big bucks and the headlines, as NASA unveiled the White House's 2015 budget proposal. But some astronomers and science fans are most excited about the inclusion of a new mission: a trip to Europa, Jupiter's fourth largest moon.

While the capturing of an asteroid, a return to the moon and a trip to Mars remain the sexiest of NASA's long-term objectives, experts say a robotic mission to Europa could be the most likely to locate extraterrestrial life.

"Looking to the future, we're planning a mission to explore Jupiter's fascinating moon Europa," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at an event announcing the new budget on Monday.

"Without a doubt, the new commitment to Europa is the most exciting feature of the President's 2016 budget request for NASA," Casey Dreier, a blogger at The Planetary Society, wrote in the wake of the announcement.

Europa is appealing to astronomers due to the oceans hidden beneath its icy surface. Though the moon is far away from the warmth of the sun, the tidal forces exerted by Jupiter cause friction that warms Europa's innards and keeps its oceans melted and moving. Researchers believe there are likely hydrothermal vents on Europa's ocean floor, and that the moon's icy crust features plate tectonic-like behavior.

While Jupiter's moons are subjected to an overload of radiation, scientists say the Europa's thick surface of ice likely protects the water below (and any potential biosphere) from the ill effects. In fact, the radiation may be responsible for reacting with the icy crust to form nutrients that make life possible. Of course, many of these ideas are simply conjecture (even if they're based on plausible science), but only a more intimate look at Europa's icy world could settle doubts.

"Europa's ocean, to the best of our knowledge, isn't that harsh of an environment," Kevin Hand, deputy chief scientist for the Solar System Exploration division at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explained at a media event on Monday -- according to Discovery News.

While fans of a Europa mission are no doubt hoping for a plan to plunge into the moon's oceans, the latest plans involve a flyby mission using a probe concept called the Europa Clipper. The flyby would include several low-flying orbits -- a chance for the Clipper to observe the moon's icy surface and gather data on the oceans below.

"The way we framed the Europa mission science objectives is not to specifically look for life, but to understand habitability; the ingredients for life," Hand said.

Europa missions have been stalled in the research and concept phases for years, but NASA engineers are hopeful that the new funding will make the mission official, and instigate the more specific planning phase -- a phase that would include more details on vehicle design, instrumentation and scientific teams.

"We are really looking forward to next spring when, hopefully, we'll become another flagship mission," Sara Susca, a Europa Clipper payload systems engineer, said.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_planning_Europa_mission_Jupiters_potentially_life-hosting_moon_999.html.

Kremlin pursues military modernization despite economic woes

February 04, 2015

MOSCOW (AP) — Hundreds of new Russian aircraft, tanks and missiles are rolling off assembly lines. Russian jets roar through European skies under NATO's wary eye. Tens of thousands of troops take part in war games showing off the military's readiness for all-out war.

The muscle flexing suggests that Russia's economic woes so far are having no impact on the Kremlin's ambitious military modernization program. Most Russian economic sectors face a 10 percent cut this year as Russia heads into recession. The military budget, meanwhile, rose by 33 percent to about 3.3 trillion rubles (some $50 billion). The buildup reflects President Vladimir Putin's apparent readiness to raise the ante in a showdown with the West over Ukraine — but it is unclear whether Russia can afford the modernization drive amid slumping oil prices and Western sanctions.

A new Russian military doctrine, endorsed by Putin in December, names NATO as a top threat to Russia and lays out a response to what the Kremlin sees as the alliance's expansion into Russia's sphere of interests. In the Ukraine crisis, Moscow for the first time demonstrated its new capacity for what experts call "hybrid" warfare, a combination of military force with a degree of deniability, sleek propaganda and political and economic pressure.

It is not only in Crimea — the strategic peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine — that the nation's 1 million-strong military is beefing up its presence. Russia is also reviving Soviet-era airfields and opening new military bases in the Arctic. Last fall the military rattled sabers by briefly deploying state-of-the art missiles to Russia's westernmost Baltic exclave — Kaliningrad — and it is planning to send strategic bombers on regular patrols as far as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

NATO defense ministers, meeting Thursday in Brussels, are expected to approve further measures to enhance the alliance's ability to deter and, if necessary, respond to military threats from Moscow, officials said.

As outlined by NATO officials, key decisions expected include upgrading the existing NATO Response Force, an official go-ahead for a proposal to establish six new command and control centers in Eastern Europe, and expansion of a multinational headquarters in Poland.

The West first got a sense of Russia's revived military might during last February's Crimea invasion. The U.S. and its NATO allies were caught off guard when waves of Russian heavy-lift military transport planes landed on the Black Sea peninsula days after the ouster of Ukraine's former Moscow-friendly president, unloading special forces which swiftly took over key facilities in the region and blocked Ukrainian troops at their bases. Dressed in unmarked uniforms and equipped with state-of-the-art weapons, the Russian troops were a far cry from the ragtag demoralized force the military was just a few years ago. The Kremlin first claimed they were local volunteers, but Putin recognized after the annexation that they were Russian soldiers.

Another surprise for the West came a few weeks later, when well-organized groups of gunmen took over local government offices and police stations in several cities across Ukraine's mostly Russian-speaking eastern industrial heartland, triggering a rebellion that evolved into a full-scale war that has killed more than 5,300 since April.

As fighting escalated in the east, the Russian military showed its agility by quickly deploying tens of thousands troops near the border with Ukraine. Ukraine and the West said that thousands of them crossed into Ukraine, helping turn the tide in the rebels' favor. The Kremlin denies that, although it has acknowledged that Russian volunteers have joined the insurgency.

Unlike the past, when the Russian military was filled through unpopular conscription, the force has grown more professional and motivated. Relatively high salaries have attracted increasingly more contract soldiers, whose numbers are set to exceed 350,000 this year from 295,000 in 2014. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that by the end of this year all battalion tactical groups — the core units in the Army, the Airborne Forces and the Marines — will be manned entirely by professional soldiers.

And in sharp contrast to the early post-Soviet years, when combat jets were grounded and navy vessels rusted dockside for lack of fuel, the military has dramatically increased both the scope and frequency of its drills. Ground forces conducted massive maneuvers near the Ukrainian border involving tens of thousands of troops, while navy ships sailed on regular missions and combat jets flew regular patrols near European borders to probe NATO's defenses. The alliance said it intercepted Russian aircraft more than 400 times last year and complained they posed a danger to civilian flights.

In Crimea, Russia had leased a major naval base even before the annexation. Now it has deployed dozens of combat jets, including nuclear-capable long-range bombers, along with air defense missiles, modern drones and other weapons. It is also preparing to dispatch more troops there.

Another key priority for the military is the Arctic, where global rivalry for major untapped oil and gas reserves is intensifying as polar ice melts. The military has restored long-abandoned Soviet-era airfields and other bases in the region after two decades of neglect. It formed a separate Arctic command to oversee its troops in the region.

Russia's weapons modernization plan envisages spending 20 trillion rubles on new weapons in 2011-2020. It produced some highly visible results last year, with the military receiving the highest numbers of new planes, missiles and armor since the 1991 Soviet collapse:

—Last year, the Russian armed forces obtained a record number of 38 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. This year they are to get another 50, allowing the military to fulfill its ambitious goal of replacing Soviet-built nuclear missiles, which are approaching the end of their lifespan. Officials say the new ICBMs have the capacity to penetrate any prospective missile defenses.

—In a major breakthrough, the Russian navy finally conducted a series of successful test launches of the Bulava, a new submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missile, proving its reliability after a long and troublesome development. The navy already has two submarines equipped with the Bulava, and is to commission a third one next year. Five more are to follow.

—The ground forces are receiving large batches of Iskander missiles, which are capable of hitting enemy targets up to 500 kilometers (310 miles away) with high precision. Russian officials said the missiles, which can be equipped with a nuclear or conventional warhead, could be used to target NATO's U.S.-led missile defense sites. In a show of force, Iskanders were briefly deployed in December to the Kaliningrad exclave bordering NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

—The Russian air force received more than 250 new planes and helicopters last year and is set to receive more than 200 this year — numbers unseen since Soviet times. They include new models such as Su-34 bombers, Su-35 fighter jets and Mi-28 helicopter gunships equipped with sophisticated electronics and high-precision missiles.

—The Russian army this year is set to receive a new tank, which also will be used as the basis for a lineup of other armored vehicles. The model called Armata will be shown to the public during a Red Square parade in May. It surpasses all Western versions in having a remotely controlled cannon and a superior level of crew protection.

Its security enhanced by a new-look military, the Kremlin can be expected to pursue a defiant course in Ukraine and may raise the stakes further if the peace process fails. The threat for Putin — who has insisted that Russia will not be drawn into a costly arms race with the West — is whether the massive military buildup will stretch the nation's economic potential beyond the limit.

Despite such challenges, the Kremlin made it clear that it will not cut corners on defense. "The task set by the president not to allow anyone to get a military advantage over Russia will be fulfilled no matter what," Shoigu, the defense minister, said at a meeting with the top brass last week.

Associated Press writer John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels contributed to this report.

Argentine prosecutor considered call for president's arrest

February 04, 2015

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Investigators examining the death of a prosecutor who accused Argentine President Cristina Fernandez of agreeing to shield the alleged masterminds of a 1994 terror bombing said Tuesday they have found a draft document he wrote requesting her arrest.

Chief investigator Viviana Fein said the draft detention request was found in a trash bin of the apartment where Alberto Nisman's body was discovered on Jan. 18. It was not included in a complaint the prosecutor had filed in federal court days earlier.

"To formally go after a sitting president like this, especially somebody like Cristina, is a huge deal," said James Cooper, professor at California Western School of Law and an expert on legal reform in Latin America. "It makes you wonder if Fein is getting pressure not to press the case further?"

Nisman was found dead of a gunshot wound in his bathroom hours before he was to appear in Congress to detail his allegations that Fernandez agreed to protect those responsible for the 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires' largest Jewish community center. The attack, which killed 85 people, remains unsolved. Fernandez has dismissed the allegations against her.

Fein at first denied the existence of the document requesting the president's arrest after Argentina's Clarin newspaper published an article about it on Sunday. Cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich ripped up the article in front of reporters on Monday and said it was a lie produced by the "opposition media."

But Clarin then published a copy of the draft, which was dated from June 2014. It said Nisman also had considered requesting arrest orders against Fernandez's foreign minister, Hector Timerman, and other officials in the government.

Fernandez's government and Clarin often clash, and the Nisman case has reignited the dispute. For years, Fernandez has been trying to break up Grupo Clarin, one of the leading media conglomerates in Latin America, while her government works to build up a large media presence of its own.

On Tuesday, Fein clarified her earlier statement, acknowledging the existence of the draft document and saying she made an error of "terminology and interpretation," and there had been a miscommunication with her office.

"The words I should have used are: 'I know that there was a draft'" of a document, she said. But she said its existence "is not important enough to change the course of the investigation." The final complaint Nisman submitted to judicial authorities called for Fernandez and Timerman to face questions in court instead.

Why Nisman may have changed tack is unclear, but it brings the focus back to Fernandez, who has tried to distance herself from the case, in part by suggesting rogue elements in intelligence services were behind Nisman's death.

She is currently in China seeking investments, and before she left she submitted a proposal to Congress to reform the Secretary of Intelligence. A Senate committee took up the bill on Tuesday. Conspiracy theories have swirled around Nisman's death since his body was found. Authorities initially said he likely committed suicide, but his supporters insisted the prosecutor would not have killed himself and even Fernandez has said that, contrary to initial findings, his death could not have been a suicide.

Nisman had spent almost a decade building up a case that Iran was behind the 1994 attack on the Jewish center. Iran's government has repeatedly denied the allegation. Nisman had feared for his safety and 10 federal police were assigned to protect him. The officers were suspended as part of the investigation but none have been named as suspects.

Nisman alleged that Fernandez agreed to cover up Iran involvement in the bombing in exchange for trade benefits, especially in oil. Fernandez has argued Argentina had nothing to gain from such a deal.

350 community schools aim to help S. Sudan's children

30 January 2015 Friday

Some 350 community learning centers have been launched in South Sudan to help children between the ages of eight and 12 who missed out on early learning.\

"Keeping poor children in school is not easy, especially as their parents are not willing to send them to school and prefer keeping them doing work at home or in cattle camps," Abu Bakar Siddigue, country director of BRAC, a Bangladesh-based international development organization working in South Sudan's education sector, said at the inauguration of the learning centers.

"So these schools will be supported by the communities and teachers will be recruited from their own communities with a class of no more than 30 children so that students get equal attention," he explained.

Siddigue added that, under the USAID-funded program, a four-year learning syllabus would be condensed into three, following completion of which students will be able to join primary five in formal schools.

The project aims to enroll 10,500 children, 60 percent of whom will be girls.

Learning centers have been set up in the states of Central Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria, Western Equatoria and Lakes.

"Where the communities are on the move, like with pastoralists, the program will provide mobile education, with teachers travelling with the communities to be closer to the learners," said Siddigue.

In an education situation report issued at the inauguration ceremony in Juba, BRAC said some 1.4 million South Sudanese children were out of school.

It added that South Sudan had the worst literacy rate in the world, with adult literacy standing at 27 percent.

"South Sudan, even before the crisis, had a very poor level of turn up in school due to cultural ideologies and the long war [for independence]," Siddigue said.

South Sudan, which became independent in 2011, has been shaken by violence since late 2013, when President Salva Kiir accused his sacked vice president, Riek Machar, of leading a failed coup attempt against his regime.

Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese have since been displaced in fighting between the two rivals, close to two million people have been uprooted from their homes, and hundreds of thousands now seek shelter in refugee camps scattered across the country.

Nearly 400,000 children had their education disrupted in Upper Nile, Jonglei and Unity states as a direct result of the crisis.

According to UNICEF, in 2014, some 12,000 children – mostly boys – were recruited as soldiers by armed forces and groups in South Sudan.

"Children between the ages of 14 and 17 are the ones now fighting this war instead of going to school," lamented Education Minister John Gai Yoh.

"It is very clear that the education system in South Sudan has a lot of work to be done," he said at the inauguration.

"A large number of our boys and girls are out of school and therefore need to find alternatives," noted Yoh. "These community schools can help us in this critical area."

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/154064/350-community-schools-aim-to-help-s-sudans-children.

AU summit to green-light anti-Boko Haram taskforce

30 January 2015 Friday

The African Union (AU) summit will back plans to deploy a taskforce mandated with fighting the Boko Haram militant group in four African countries, the AU commissioner for peace and security has said.

"The AU summit will approve the deployment of 7,500 African troops to fight Boko Haram in Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon," Ismail Chergui told The Anadolu Agency on Friday.

He gave no details, however, as to which countries would contribute troops for the force.

Chergui said the Boko Haram issue had dominated Thursday's meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council.

"This terrorist organization is threatening the security and stability of countries in West and Central Africa," he said.

The AU summit kicked off on Friday in Addis Ababa with 40 African heads of state attending the two-day event.

Outlawed in Nigeria, Turkey and the United States, Boko Haram first emerged in the early 2000s in Nigeria, where it preached against government misrule and police corruption.

In 2009, the group became fanatically violent following the death of its leader while in police custody.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/154089/au-summit-to-green-light-anti-boko-haram-taskforce.

Africans open new front in war on terror to fight Boko Haram

January 30, 2015

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — Schoolgirls torn from their families in a mass kidnapping and forced into sexual slavery. Bombs that ripped through bus stations. The slaughter of hundreds of villagers, many with their throats cut.

Nigeria has suffered through years of violence from the Muslim extremist group known as Boko Haram, and now its neighbors are starting to take on the militants, too. African nations are opening up a new international front in the war on terror, discussing Friday the formation of a five-nation force of 7,500 troops to confront the looming regional threat from Boko Haram. The United States promised more technical support, training and equipment.

On Thursday, neighboring Chad sent a warplane and troops that drove the extremists out of a northeastern Nigeria border town in the first such act by foreign troops on Nigerian soil. "We saw the fighter jet when it started shelling and bombarding the insurgents," said Abari Modu, who watched the attack from a nearby village in Chad, where he had sought refuge. He praised the prowess of the Chadian forces.

Chad's victory, and the need for foreign troops, is an embarrassment to Nigeria's once-mighty military, brought low by corruption and politics. The foreign intervention comes just two weeks before hotly contested national elections in which President Goodluck Jonathan is seeking another term.

The offensive by Chad came days after Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau warned Nigeria's neighbors not to intervene. "African kings ... I challenge you to attack me now. I am ready," he taunted in an Arabic video message translated by SITE intelligence monitoring service. Shekau regularly praises the Islamic State group and al-Qaida.

Boko Haram has declared an Islamic caliphate that now encompasses about 130 towns and villages in a large swath of northeastern Nigeria, according to Amnesty International. The country's 170 million people are split almost equally between a mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.

Global concern has grown in recent months as the terrorist group known for recruiting across borders launched a series of brazen attacks in northern Cameroon even as it increased the tempo and ferocity of attacks on Nigerian soil.

One video this week showed boys learning to shoot assault rifles, with one child appearing to be no taller than his weapon. In what Amnesty International called the most deadly massacre of the 5-year-old Islamic uprising, Boko Haram killed hundreds of civilians — some say as many as 2,000 — in a Jan. 3 attack on Baga, a border town with a key military base on the northeastern border with Cameroon. Nigeria's military said only 150 people were killed.

Boko Haram attracted international outrage in April when it kidnapped 276 schoolgirls at a boarding school in the remote town of Chibok. Dozens escaped on their own, but 219 remain missing. The U.S., Britain, France and China offered help to find the girls, and Jonathan has repeatedly pledged to return them to their parents, but not one has been rescued. He refused to swap the girls for illegally detained Boko Haram suspects.

Suicide bombings in recent months by young girls — one looked no more than 10 — has raised fears that Boko Haram is using the kidnap victims in its conflict, which has displaced more than 1 million people and killed about 10,000 in the last year, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The new multinational force proposed Friday would also be mandated with searching for and freeing all abductees, including the Chibok girls, according to a statement from the African Union. "We will never forget the girls kidnapped from Chibok last April, and I will never stop calling for their immediate and unconditional release," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a guest at the African summit.

"The Boko Haram insurgency poses a clear danger to national, regional and international security," he said. For years, Nigeria has looked down on its smaller, francophone neighbors, and Nigerian troops have clashed with soldiers from Chad and Cameroon in the past over border disputes.

Analysts say the neighboring countries worry how much Boko Haram has infiltrated Nigeria's military. Even Jonathan has said that he fears his Cabinet is infiltrated by sponsors of the extremists. A year ago, he fired his entire military command and the defense minister.

Even as Nigeria's military is humiliated by the foreign aid, witnesses say it has been ill-equipped to defend civilians from a series of vicious attacks. In Baga, Nigerian soldiers fought valiantly for hours, then fled when they ran out of ammunition, witnesses told The Associated Press.

The Defense Ministry said last week that troops were fighting to retake Baga, but residents who fled to nearby areas say there is no more fighting and Boko Haram remains in control. The military and government often make statements that later turn out to be untrue.

Jonathan said Thursday that troops have recaptured the Michika local government area in Adamawa state. But fleeing residents told the AP on Friday that while soldiers have moved into the town of Michika, Boko Haram fighters still are rampaging in many surrounding villages.

Also on Thursday, the insurgents launched a second attack in a week on Maiduguri, the biggest city in northeastern Nigeria. Soldiers fled when the insurgents began launching rockets just outside the city of 2 million, but the militants were held off by a civilian self-defense group armed with homemade hunting rifles and captured weapons, according to the group's spokesman, Muhammad Gava.

Nigeria, Africa's richest nation and the continent's biggest oil producer, has an estimated annual military budget of between $5 billion and $6 billion, according to John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Yet he cites reports of troops going into battle with just 30 bullets each. Soldiers say they are frequently dumped in the bush without rations, water or tents for shelter, and that their officers steal part of their salaries.

The once-proud military is now riven by the same ethnic and religious divisions that some fear could tear apart the country, Campbell said. And Nigeria has alienated some of its old friends. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited this week to promise help in fighting Boko Haram and to urge Jonathan and Buhari to refrain from fomenting post-election violence. About 800 people were killed in northern protests after Buhari lost the 2011 election.

U.S. training of a battalion to fight Boko Haram was inexplicably canceled by Nigeria in its final stages last year. Nigerian officials complain the U.S. has refused to sell it arms, including helicopter gunships. Washington is hobbled by laws that prevent certain weapon sales to countries whose military forces are accused of gross human rights abuses. Nigeria is accused of killing thousands of civilians in its fight to put down the uprising.

Jonathan's candidacy for re-election has divided even his own party, because he has broken an unwritten rule to rotate power between a Christian southerner, like himself, and a Muslim northerner. The Feb. 14 balloting likely will be the most closely fought ever. Jonathan's chief rival is former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim northerner who ruled with an iron fist that some see as the only way to fight Boko Haram.

Faul reported from Dakar, Senegal. Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Ibrahim Abdulaziz in Yola, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

NATO to deploy small units in 6 Eastern European nations

January 30, 2015

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO will deploy small units in six Eastern European nations to help coordinate a spearhead force set up in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine, the alliance's secretary-general said Friday.

Jens Stoltenberg said the units in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania will be the first of their kind there. Defense ministers from the 28-nation military alliance will discuss the full force, which can react quickly to any hotspots in Europe, when they meet on Feb. 5.

Stoltenberg said countries responsible for providing the several thousand troops to the force should be known next week. The forward units will comprise a few dozen personnel only. They will plan and organize military exercises, and provide command and control for any reinforcements the force might require.

"They're going to plan, they're going to organize exercises, to provide ... some key command elements for reinforcements," Stoltenberg said. France, meanwhile, is pledging tanks and armored vehicles to bolster NATO forces in Poland, where leaders are increasingly uneasy about Russia.

The French military equipment is expected to remain in Poland for two months. As tensions increased in 2014, NATO forces conducted about 200 military exercises, and Stoltenberg vowed this would continue as the alliance adapts to the increased presence of Russian warplanes in European skies. NATO intercepted Russian aircraft more than 400 times last year.

Stoltenberg also warned that Russia has continued to build up its military, as European NATO allies cut budgets again last year. "It is not possible to get more out of less indefinitely. That is the reason why we have to stop the cuts and gradually start to increase defense spending as our economies grow," he said.

"Despite the economic crisis, despite the financial problems they are facing, Russia now is still giving priority to defense spending."