Ukrainian minister threatens state of emergency

January 27, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's justice minister is threatening to call for a state of emergency unless protesters leave her ministry building, which they occupied during the night.

The seizure of the building early Monday underlined how anti-government demonstrators are increasingly willing to take dramatic action as they push for the president's resignation and other concessions. Protesters now occupy four sizable buildings in downtown Kiev, including the city hall.

Justice Minister Elena Lukash said early Monday that she would ask the national security council to impose a state of emergency if the protesters don't quit the building. But she did not specify a deadline for leaving.

Imposing a state of emergency likely would cause anger to spike among protesters, who have clashed with police repeatedly over the past week. Three protesters have died. Lukash, in a televised statement, noted that the "so-called protesters" seized the building as ministry employees were working on measures to grant amnesty to protesters and to make changes in the constitution to return the country to a system where the prime minister's powers are stronger.

Beleaguered President Viktor Yanukovych on Saturday offered the prime minister's post to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, one of the opposition's most prominent leaders. Yatsenyuk, while not flatly rejecting the offer, said protests would continue and that a special session of parliament called for Tuesday would be "judgment day."

It's not clear if constitutional changes will be on the agenda for that session, but granting more power to the prime minister could both sweeten the offer and allow Yanukovych to portray himself as seeking genuine compromise.

The prospect of a state of emergency comes after other official statements suggesting the government is considering forceful moves against the protesters in the wake of the violent clashes between demonstrators and police over the past week. Three protesters died in the clashes, two of them after being shot and the third of unspecified injuries. Authorities have said police do not carry the sort of weapons that allegedly killed the two men who were shot.

Interior Minister Vitali Zakharchenko, one of the ministers most despised by the protesters, on Saturday warned that demonstrators occupying buildings would be considered extremists and that force would be used against them if necessary. He also claimed demonstrators had seized two policemen and tortured them before letting them go, which the opposition denied and called a ruse to justify a crackdown.

The protests began in late November when Yanukovych shelved a long-awaited agreement to deepen ties with the European Union and sought more support from Russia. The demonstrations grew in size and intensity after police violently dispersed two gatherings. Demonstrators then set up a large tent camp on downtown Kiev's main square.

Anger boiled over into clashes on Jan. 19, days after Yanukovych pushed through harsh new anti-protest laws. Protests also spread into other parts of the country, including to some cities in the Russian-speaking east, the base of Yanukovych's support.

250 arrested, 19 police injured in Paris protest

January 27, 2014

PARIS (AP) — Paris police say 19 officers were injured and some 250 people detained after a protest against President Francois Hollande's leadership degenerated into violence.

Police said Monday that none of the injuries is critical. The numbers of injured and detentions is high compared with other protests in recent weeks expressing discontent with Hollande, who is particularly unpopular for his handling of the economy.

Police say some 17,000 people took part in Sunday's largely peaceful protest, while organizers put the number several times higher. Some 50 associations were involved, including conservative and far right groups. Also present were supporters of provocateur-comic Dieudonne, who has been repeatedly convicted of anti-Semitism and racism.

Peru gets more ocean, Chile keeps fishing grounds

January 28, 2014

LIMA, Peru (AP) — The United Nations' highest court set a maritime boundary between Chile and Peru on Monday that grants Peruvians a bigger piece of the Pacific Ocean while keeping rich coastal fishing grounds in the hands of Chilean industry.

Despite high emotions over the dispute, especially in Peru, the ruling is expected to have little effect on cordial ties between the two neighbors whose economic interdependence has grown greatly in recent years.

Chile's outgoing president, Sebastian Pinera, called the International Court of Justice's ruling "a lamentable loss" in a nationally televised address. But President-elect Michelle Bachelet, who takes office in March, said that "most of the fishing occurs inside the area that the court ratified as belonging to our country."

Peru's leader, Ollanta Humala, told his countrymen on national TV that he was satisfied with the outcome, saying the court had recognized Peru's argument that no maritime treaty previously existed between the South American neighbors.

Peruvian patriots might crow, but Chilean commercial fishing fleets appeared to be the biggest beneficiaries, analysts said. In Chile's northern port of Arica, police dispersed a group of fewer than 100 small-time fishermen with water cannon after some, considering themselves losers, hurled stones at a military barracks.

"Only the rich are profiting from this," said Eduardo Ferreira, a street vendor who sells paintings on the main square of Chile's capital, Santiago, where police had to break up a few heated arguments between Chileans and Peruvians.

The ruling announced in a European courtroom ends a decades-old dispute centered on nearly 38,000 square kilometers (14,670 square miles) of the world's richest fishing grounds - the value of the area's annual catch has been estimated at $200 million.

Peruvian historian Nelson Manrique called the ruling an "intelligent verdict" that is "not going to please anyone but it's also not going to bring anyone to fits." The case filed by Peru in 2008 was a matter of national pride for Peruvians, some of whom maintain rancor over the 1879-83 War of the Pacific in which Chile gained its three northernmost provinces by winning territory from Peru and Bolivia. Bolivia lost its coast in the conflict.

Humala, a retired army officer when he was elected Peru's president, called Monday "one of the days that will mark my life, and I feel proud to have lived as a soldier and now as a politician. I feel prouder every day to be Peruvian." The national anthem then played.

Peru had sought a sea border perpendicular to the coast, heading roughly southwest. Chile insisted the border extend parallel to the equator. The court, whose rulings cannot be appealed, compromised by saying a border already existed parallel to the equator extending 80 nautical miles from the coast. From there, it drew a line southwest to where the countries' 200-mile territorial waters end.

Patricia Majluf, a leading Peruvian fisheries scientist, said the area remaining in Chilean hands "is where the Chilean boats fish the most." "All the anchoveta is fished in that zone," she said. The species of anchovy is converted into fish meal for an insatiable global market that uses it in animal feed, fertilizer and fish oil pills. Peru is the world's No. 1 exporter of fish meal and Chile is second as they share the world's most productive fishing grounds, the cold Humboldt current,

Majluf said about 1 million tons of anchoveta are harvested annually off the northern Chile coast, about the same amount as off the southern Peruvian coast. Peruvian economist Juan Carlos Sueiro said the verdict maintains the status quo in the anchovy industry, benefiting in particular Chile's Grupo Angelini, while Peruvian fishermen can catch shark, tuna, mackeral, cuttlefish and mahi-mahi farther offshore will also benefit.

The director of Peru's largest producer of fish meal, Humberto Speziani of TASA, predicted "a positive impact" for big Peruvian fishing fleets like his although environmentalists expressed concern about overfishing by such fleets continuing to deplete stocks.

The leader of small-time Peruvian fishermen in the region, David Patino, was not happy, however. "We haven't won anything. We are in the same situation as the past," he said. Despite differences over fishing, the border area has been a model of coexistence. Citizens of both countries travel across it freely, with Chileans crowding into hospitals and clinics in Tacna, Arica's sister city for cheaper health care. Peruvians work in construction and other day jobs on the Chilean side.

Peru and Chile have seen their annual trade grow from $500 million in 2006 to $4.3 billion today. Chilean government figures put Peruvian investment in Chile at $11 billion last year and Chilean investment in Peru at $13.5 billion.

Associated Press writer Frank Bajak reported this story in Lima, Peru, and Mike Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. AP writers Eva Vergara and Luis Henao in Santiago, Chile, and Franklin Briceno in Lima contributed to this report.

Big Boy locomotive begins California farewell tour

27th of January 2014, Monday

POMONA, Calif. (AP) — An enormous steam locomotive that has been entertaining train enthusiasts at a California museum for years began a trek of more than 1,200 miles on Sunday with the ultimate goal of putting the engine back on the nation's rails.

The 600-ton Big Boy locomotive left the Pomona fairgrounds on its way to a Union Pacific rail yard in Colton, about 60 miles away, where it will be available for two weekends of public viewing before moving on to Cheyenne, Wyo., for restoration work. The goal is to eventually get Engine 4014 back on the rails, said Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt.

The engine, which weighs 1.2 million pounds when its fuel car, or tender, is included, was one of 25 massive steam engines that began riding the transcontinental rails in 1941.

It pulled heavy freight trains over the Wasatch Mountains between Ogden, Utah and Green River, Wyo., and retired after a 17-year career.

In 1962, the behemoth was donated to the RailGiants Train Museum in Pomona.

Since November, the locomotive has been slowly moved across the grounds at the Pomona fairplex on 4,500 feet of temporary track.

On Sunday, Union Pacific pushed the locomotive onto the main tracks, where it will be towed by modern diesel freight locomotives 56 miles to Colton — a last stop before heading to Wyoming. The repairs there could take several years, Union Pacific has said.

In exchange for getting No. 4014 back, Union Pacific plans to deliver diesel locomotive No. 3105, a caboose and a box car to the RailGiants museum, company officials said.

Israelis urged to prepare for battlefields dominated by robots

Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI)
Jan 27, 2014

Israel's military planners and high-tech defense industry must accelerate development of robotic and unmanned systems that will dominate the future battlefield, eliminating the need for large armies with fighter jets, tanks and warships, a study recommends.

That's a message the U.S. Department of Defense acknowledges it's already received with its recent technological vision of how wars will be fought in the years ahead, one in which robots and drones will be "critical to the future success" of the United States' armed forces.

A 2012 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service found 31 percent of the U.S. warplanes currently in service are drones, changing the way wars are fought.

The Israeli study by the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, unveiled at a recent institute conference, included research by 30 specialists in public policy-related fields over the last two years.

They were tasked with putting together a report to be presented to Israel's decision-makers and generals as a guide to formulating military policy, budgets and priorities for the defense of the Jewish state in 2035.

"The bottom line of the grand project was that any army that wishes to continue to function as an army in the future will need to rebuild itself and to adapt its manpower, its chain of command, and its combat strategy, to a situation in which the real field work is executed by swarms of unmanned devices," defense analyst Yuval Azulai observed.

Israel is already a leading producer and exporters of unmanned aerial vehicles, which are increasingly a critical element in combat operations for the world's most advanced armed forces, including the United States, Britain, France and Israel.

These are largely produced by a cluster of defense companies, most of them state-owned, headed by the flagship Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Elbit Systems, Aeronautics Defense Systems and the recently privatized Israel Military Industries.

Israel's 176,500-strong military operates some of the most advanced weapons and surveillance systems available, thanks to a well-funded research and development program and enterprising defense companies. This has produced some unique systems, such as Rafael's Iron Dome, designed to shoot down short-range rockets and missiles but ignore those headed for uninhabited areas, and the Arrow-3 exo-atmospheric anti-ballistic interceptor.

Azulai observed that the researchers arrived at three main conclusions concerning unmanned systems in 2035: "It will be possible to plan almost any military operation using autonomous unmanned devices; it will be possible to carry out most military operations using such devices; and unmanned devices will operate in swarms.

"In other words, hundreds of devices, of different kinds, will communicate with one another in real time, will react to the changing reality, and will attain the desired outcome on the battlefield, with no human presence on the scene."

Azulai went on: "The research methodology is based on a set of central technologies, by assessing the rates and directions in which they will be developed over the next 20 years.

"This includes technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotic automation, general awareness, communication, survivability and information security, energy resources and more.

"Alongside these, future capabilities that would enable unmanned devices to repair themselves, to replicate, to change shape, to camouflage effectively in broad daylight, to operate with stealth and invisibility, and more, were accounted for as well.

"There is no doubt these abilities, even if only some become reality, will change the landscape of the battlefield, and, moreover, will change the role of humans in warfare," Azulai noted.

Lead researcher Liran Antebi said she estimated that within two decades unmanned systems will be capable of performing 70-80 percent of "classic military tasks."

"We'll need human fighters in this era too," she noted, "but they'll serve within very specialized frameworks and will be trained to execute specific tasks that have been determined to be better for human to execute, and this is because of morals and ethics.

"It's reasonable to assume that by then there will be an organized system of considerations based upon which it will be decided whether to allow a machine to decide in real time whether to open deadly fire on a human being, or where it is preferable ... to deploy a force of human soldiers."

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Israelis_urged_to_prepare_for_battlefields_dominated_by_robots_999.html.

British astronaut says space travel vital to survival of human race

London (UPI)
Jan 24, 2014

A British astronaut preparing to go into space next year says space travel and learning to work and live in space is vital to the survival of humanity.

Tim Peake, due to spend 6 months on the International Space Station beginning in late 2015, made the remarks recently while undergoing intensive mission training in Germany.

"Humanity's aim is to explore the solar system, not just for the sake of exploration," Peake told BBC News. "I genuinely believe it is for the sake of our own survival in the future.

"Whether it's an asteroid mission or a moon mission the ultimate aim is the future exploration of the solar system and get to Mars on a manned mission," he said.

Peake will travel to the ISS on a Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in November or December of next year to begin his six-month stay.

Peake said he believe that in the not-too-distant future astronauts would journey to another world.

"We are being trained for these kinds of missions on the new launch systems," he said. "It's easy to dismiss this stuff about 'Moon, Mars and Beyond' as NASA propaganda. But they are taking it seriously and I think it really will happen."

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/British_astronaut_says_space_travel_vital_to_survival_of_human_race_999.html.

Aging ISS a space lab of 'unlimited' opportunity

Washington (AFP)
Jan 27, 2014

It may be 350 kilometers (215 miles) above Earth and a place that only a privileged few will ever visit, but the International Space Station is crucial to advances in science, health and technology, experts say.

Earlier this month, NASA said the life of the $100 billion ISS would be extended by four years, or until at least 2024, allowing for more global research and scientific collaboration.

John Holdren, a senior White House adviser on science and technology, hailed the space station -- mainly built with US money -- as "a unique facility that offers enormous scientific and societal benefits.

"The Obama administration's decision to extend its life until at least 2024 will allow us to maximize its potential, deliver critical benefits to our nation and the world and maintain American leadership in space," he said.

The orbiting outpost, which was launched to fanfare in 1998, has more living space than a six-bedroom house and comes complete with Internet access, a gym, two bathrooms and a 360-degree bay window offering spectacular views of Earth.

Its entire structure is made up of various working and sleeping modules, and extends the length of a football field (about 100 meters or yards), making it four times bigger than the Russian space station Mir and about five times as large as the US Skylab.

The aging structure requires regular maintenance, which is done by astronauts who don spacesuits and venture outside the lab.

One such repair was completed Christmas Eve when two Americans stepped out to replace a failed ammonia pump that served to cool equipment at the ISS.

Julie Robinson, an ISS scientist at NASA, insisted that the space station, which has a mass of 924,739 pounds (420,000 kilograms) but is near-weightless in space, is worth the trouble and expense.

The ISS, which is maintained by a rotating crew of six astronauts and cosmonauts who have hailed from 14 countries, allows scientists to study the long-term effects of weightlessness on the human body, she said, while testing new space technologies that will be essential for missions to Mars.

"The goal of using the space station is to make discoveries that cannot be made anywhere else... and do research that is really focused on bringing benefits back to Earth by developing knowledge that can directly help bio-medical treatments, make new materials, have better Earth and climate observations," she told AFP.

Robinson added that "many of our early research results are making their way into drug development, medical technologies, pathways. We also have Earth-remote sensive instruments that provide unique data about the Earth and its climate and there are a number of new instruments going up in the next two years.

"When you put all of that together it's really an extraordinary set of benefits back here on Earth."

Robinson noted that a robotic arm used at the space station can save lives during brain surgery.

"What was special about this one is the ability of the arm to perform inside an MRI machine so that doctors are able to see the tumor and then use the ability of the robotic arm to be more stable than the human hand," she said.

"Those two things together have allowed surgery on patients who were considered inoperable before."

Cheryl Nickerson, a professor of microbiology at Arizona State University, has been involved since 2006 in research that has taken place as part of the space program, for example homing in on the salmonella bacteria that causes food poisoning.

"I believe that the discovery potential at microgravity research is enormous and holds potential to provide ground-breaking discoveries in some of the major causes of human morbidity and mortality on Earth," she said.

"That stems from the fact that there is no way on Earth that we can study our cells and biological systems respond without the force of gravity affecting it."

Robinson described the possibilities at the ISS as "unlimited," and noted that a growing amount of private money was supporting research at the space station.

"This is an era of space research that is unlike the past and we are looking at the decades ahead as the time when science can finally pursue these boundaries, explore these frontiers and make these unique discoveries," she said.

"I think as we look back, 20 or 30 years from now, we will call this the era of the space station... because of the number of advances and benefits that will come out."

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Aging_ISS_a_space_lab_of_unlimited_opportunity_999.html.