North Korea Says It Tested A New Long-Range Rocket Engine

SEOUL, South Korea –  North Korea said Saturday it has successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic rocket engine that will give it the ability to stage nuclear strikes on the United States.
The engine's ground test, if true, would be a big step forward for the North's nuclear weapons program, which saw its fourth atomic test earlier this year. But the North may still need a good deal of work before it can hit the U.S. mainland with nuclear missiles. South Korean officials say North Korea doesn't yet have a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile, let alone the ability to arm it with a nuclear warhead.
The test, announced by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, is only the latest in a string of what Washington and its allies consider North Korean provocations, including last month's launch of a medium-range ballistic missile that violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibit any ballistic activities by North Korea. It was the North's first medium-range missile launch since early 2014.
The North has also threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in an apparent response to ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills and tough U.N. sanctions imposed over the recent nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch earlier this year.
Some analysts think young leader Kim Jong Un's belligerent stance is linked to a major ruling party congress next month meant to further cement his grip on power. The outside pressure and anger caused by bombastic threats and repeated nuclear-related tests, the argument goes, is meant to rally the North Korean people around Kim as he stands up to powerful enemies trying to crush the North.
With typical rhetorical flourish, the North's KCNA said that Kim was delighted as the "higher-power" rocket engine spewed out "huge flames with (a) deafening boom" during the ground test at the Sohae Space Center in the country's northwest, the site of its February long-range rocket launch. KCNA did not say when the test was conducted.
The agency quoted Kim as saying that the North can now tip intercontinental ballistic missiles with more powerful nuclear warheads that could keep the U.S. mainland within striking distance and "reduce them to ashes so that they may not survive in our planet."
The North recently has gone to great lengths to tout alleged advancements in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Those claims have often been met with doubt by South Korean officials and experts. The North's official media on March 9 showed a smiling Kim posing with nuclear scientists beside what appeared to be a model trigger device of a nuclear warhead. Kim declared that warheads had been miniaturized for use on ballistic missiles.
The North has also claimed to have mastered a re-entry technology designed to protect a warhead from extreme heat and other challenges when it returns to the atmosphere from space following a missile launch. It also said it had successfully conducted a high-powered, solid-fuel rocket engine test. Solid-fuel missiles are generally harder to detect before they are launched than liquid-fuel missiles.

The most recent test, like all the North's atomic and missile claims, will cause worry in Washington and the North's neighbors, but outsiders have so far been powerless to stop the North's nuclear progress: international disarmament talks have been stalled for years and increasingly tough sanctions have done little to dissuade Pyongyang from pushing forward.

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Boston Globe denounces Trump candidacy in 'front page' satire

Headlines screaming "Deportations to begin" and "Markets sink as trade war looms" top a parody newspaper front page the Boston Globe posted on Saturday, with a scathing editorial denouncing Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's candidacy.The mock-up, offering the Globe's satirical view of America under a Trump presidency, was set to run as the front page of the newspaper's "Ideas" section, followed on page 2 of that section by the anti-Trump editorial.
The novel front-page spoof, says the editorial, is designed to take Trump's rhetoric and his policy positions to their "logical conclusion."
"It is an exercise in taking a man at his word," the editorial says. "And his vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page."
There was no immediate comment from Trump or his campaign.
The editorial brands the billionaire businessman as a "demagogue" whose own political vision is "profoundly un-American."
It casts his closest rival for the 2016 Republican nomination, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, as "equally extreme" and urges Republicans, if possible at the party's nominating convention in July, to draft a "plausible, honorable" alternative, suggesting U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan or former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
The mock Trump page was conceived and executed by the Globe's editorial writers, columnists and commentary editors, who make up the newspaper's editorial board, said Ellen Clegg, the newspaper's editorial page editor.
Noting that she reports to John Henry, the Globe's publisher, Clegg stressed to Reuters in a telephone interview that the front-page parody "does not involve our newsroom."
Clegg said she knew of no other such expression of political satire ever published by the Globe or any other major metropolitan daily in the United States during her 30 years at the newspaper. But it was reminiscent of the kind of parody regularly featured by the farcical online news outlet, The Onion.
The mock front page envisions a host of political, financial and international scenarios ranging from disturbingly surreal to darkly humorous, all playing on Trump's real pronouncements about illegal immigration, Muslims, national security and the First Amendment.
A color photograph of Trump making a speech is centered near the top of the page under a banner headline reading: "Deportations to begin," with a subhead reporting that Trump was calling for a tripling of immigration enforcement personnel as "riots continue."
A top story on the page opens with the paragraph: "Worldwide stocks plunged again Friday, completing the worst month on record as trade wars with both China and Mexico seem imminent."
Other mock entries include a story about unrest in the ranks of the U.S. military as soldiers refuse orders to kill family members of Islamic State militants, and the headline: "New libel law targets 'absolute scum' in press."
In a more tongue-in-cheek vein, a brief item reports Trump on the "short list" for the Nobel Peace Prize. "His feat? Healing a 1,385-year-old schism between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, which has fueled bloody conflicts across the globe for centuries."
Clegg said it was not the first time the Globe, which tends to lean Democratic on its opinion pages, has editorialized against Trump, but it marked its most "resolute" opposition to his candidacy.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman from Los Angeles; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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Nasa planning mission to explore life on Jupiter’s moon Europa

Europa is the sixth closest moon of Jupiter, and the smallest of its four satellites, and the sixth largest moon in the solar system. Photo: AFP/Nasa

New Delhi: US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is planning an ambitious mission involving international scientists to explore the possibility of life on Europa, the moon of planet Jupiter.
“We are planning to mount an international effort. We are trying to formulate a mission to go Jupiter’s giant moon Europa, because there are some scientists who believe in possibility of single-cell organisms being there in the waters of Europa.
“We don’t care where we find life elsewhere in Europa, but just imagine what that says about us and life, if we found out whether life exists at other places in (the solar system),” Nasa administrator Charles Frank Bolden said in New Delhi.
Europa is the sixth closest moon of Jupiter, and the smallest of its four satellites,

and the sixth largest moon in the solar system.
The Nasa chief said they are also hopeful of finding life on Mars. “I hope we can go find single-cell organism. The reason we are looking at Mars is because it appears to most scientists that it is the most likely planet in our solar system that once harboured life, does harbour life or can support life. That’s why (We are looking at) Mars,” he said

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Mission Manager Update: Kepler spacecraft in emergency mode

 

NASA engineers have declared a mission emergency for the agency's planet-hunting spacecraft Kepler, which has somehow switched into emergency mode. NASA just found out about the anomaly a day and a half ago, right before the agency tried to maneuver the spacecraft to point at the center of the Milky Way for a new observation campaign. Now that a mission emergency has been declared, the Kepler team has priority access to NASA's deep space telecommunications system in order to try to get the spacecraft back to normal operations.
It's the lowest operational mode the spacecraft has

Emergency mode is the lowest operational mode the spacecraft has. It also requires a lot more fuel than usual, which is why the Kepler mission team is working hard to get the spacecraft back to normal. But communication with Kepler isn't easy. The spacecraft is currently 75 million miles away from Earth right now, according to NASA, so any communications signal traveling at the speed of light will take up to 13 minutes to travel to and from the spacecraft. NASA said it will provide updates about its efforts when they are available.
This isn't the first time that Kepler has suffered some kind of malfunction. Kepler originally launched in 2009, with the goal of looking for planets outside of our Solar System. The spacecraft accomplished its main goal by 2012, after finding nearly 5,000 exoplanets. But in July of that year, Kepler experienced a failure in one of its four gyroscopic reaction wheels, which help aim the spacecraft. A second wheel was lost in May 2013, putting an end to its primary mission. But in 2014, NASA was able to extend Kepler's life into what is called the K2 mission, which involves using pressure from the Sun to help orient the spacecraft.

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