back to school: May 2016

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

USA Today 4 hours ago

It’s getting hot in here! Newly released video shows lava shooting into the sky from a lava lake at the summit of Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s big island. The video, taken by the U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on May 26, shows lava spattering, which is caused by bubbles releasing gas in the lake causing lava particles to eject into the air. According to the video, some small particles of lava reached 80 feet. While that might seem like an alarming height, spattering is “typical of normal activity in the lava lake,” according to USGS. The organization said two new lava flows broke out at the Kilauea volcano last week, though neither flow is affecting nearby communities. Kilauea ...

Newsweek 6 hours ago

Relations between NATO and Russia continue to deteriorate after Moscow promised to neutralize any threats to its presence in the Black Sea. The country’s envoy to NATO, Alexander Grushko, told state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta that the Black Sea would not become a “NATO lake.” Russia sees the region as vital to its foreign policy—since the annexation of Crimea two years ago more than a dozen warships have been stationed there. Earlier this month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the Financial Times that Russia was trying to tighten its grip on the Black Sea and the area is one of several zones where NATO allies will discuss reinforcement in the upcoming summit in Poland. Erdogan expressed ...

Publishing Perspectives 13 hours ago

With a 96-percent literacy rate reported in 2015, and a young population engaged in narrative, The Philippines is a study in contrasting opportunities and challenges in the lineup of The Markets: Global Publishing Summit in October at Frankfurt. A reminder: If you’re interested in entering the WildCard competition for a free stand at Frankfurt Book Fair 2016, today, May 31, is the deadline for your three-question application. Median age 23.5 in an Island Nation Among the seven outstanding publishing regions spotlit in The Markets: Global Publishing Summit (#themarkets2016) on October 18, The Philippines brings a distinct element of youth and energy to the conference. One prime example of this is in the fact that the country is second only to the United States in visitors that Wattpad receives each month. ...

UPI 4 hours ago

New research suggests the mysterious and controversial "Planet 9" isn't an original member of our solar system. According to a new computer simulation developed by astronomers at Lund University in Sweden, the ninth planet is an exoplanet -- stolen by the sun from its original host star. "It is almost ironic that while astronomers often find exoplanets hundreds of light years away in other solar systems, there's probably one hiding in our own backyard," researcher Alexander Mustill said in a news release. The new simulation suggests that as our sun and another star passed by each other, the gravitational pull of our sun pulled in an exoplanet -- a theft that's gone unnoticed until recently. ...

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

World Business Insider Sun, May 22 10:00 PM PDT

China and Japan are redefining the nature and purpose of the Coast Guard. Americans still think in terms of air-sea rescue or chasing drug smugglers when they think about their Coast Guard. China and Japan think about their Coast Guards in terms of realpolitik. The two nominally civilian services are on the front lines of territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. Both countries are adding to their coast guard fleets at a breakneck pace. One could almost call it a Coast Guard arms race, except that the vessels are lightly armed if armed at all. Japan is reinforcing its Coast Guard contingent in the waters around the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea with 10 new 1,500-ton ...

SPACE.com 5 hours ago

The first galaxies to ever form in the cosmos lie far from the Milky Way (due to the expansion of the universe), making them a challenge to detect. Using a natural magnifying-glass process known as gravitational lensing, scientists have spotted one of the faintest of these early galaxies that they have ever observed. Scientists are seeing the galaxy as it appeared only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang kicked off the formation of the universe. Without this natural magnification of the galaxy's light, "we would not have been able to see it," Kuang-Han Huang, of the University of California-Davis, said in a statement. Huang lead a team of international astronomers that combined images ...

CBS News 8 hours ago

CAIRO -- An Egyptian forensic official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that human remains from the EgyptAir flight 804 crash in the Mediterranean suggest there was an explosion on the aircraft before it went down, but the claim was later rejected by outside experts and Egypt's government. The AP said the official was a member of the Egyptian investigation team who had personally examined the dozens of pieces of recovered remains at a morgue. "There isn't even a whole body part, like an arm or a head," said the official who spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity. "The logical explanation is that it was an explosion." The official did not suggest any trace of explosives had been found on ...

Bloomberg 11 hours ago

El Nino has ended. The tropical Pacific Ocean is in a neutral state and outlooks suggest little chance of indicators returning to El Nino levels, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said on its website on Tuesday. That means mid-May marks the end of the event that reduced Indian rainfall, parched farmland in Asia and curbed cocoa production in parts of Africa. “Sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific have cooled to neutral levels over the past fortnight, supported by much cooler-than-average waters beneath the surface,” the weather bureau said. “In the atmosphere, indicators such as the trade winds, cloudiness near the Date Line, and the Southern Oscillation Index have also returned ...

AFP 8 hours ago

Plans by the Philippines' controversial president-elect to give late dictator Ferdinand Marcos a hero's burial triggered outrage on Tuesday, with martial law victims warning it would whitewash the strongman's crimes.

Rodrigo Duterte, who won this month's elections in a landslide, announced on Monday he would allow Marcos to be buried at the Heroes' Cemetery in Manila, in what would be another big win for the dictator's family as it cements a remarkable political comeback.

"Burying him at the (cemetery) will whitewash all crimes he committed against the people and will send the wrong message to the world: that in the Philippines, crime pays," Bonifacio Ilagan, who was detained and tortured by Marcos forces, told AFP.

Ilagan, who heads a group trying to stop the Marcos family from returning to power, said the highly emotional and symbolic burial of the dictator at the cemetery -- where the nation's most revered war heroes have been laid to rest -- would trigger street protests.

Marcos's two-decade rule ended in 1986 when millions of people took to the streets in a famous military-backed "People Power" uprising, forcing the family into US exile where the patriarch died three years later.

Marcos and his wife Imelda were accused of plundering $10 billion from state coffers and overseeing widespread human rights abuses by security forces. Rights groups say Marcos's forces killed or tortured thousands of people.

However Imelda and her children were allowed to return and over the past two decades have enjoyed a stunning rise back into the political elite while fending off a barrage of lawsuits and criminal probes.

Imelda is a congresswoman representing the family's northern provincial stronghold, while Ferdinand Marcos Jnr was elected to the Senate in 2010.

Marcos Jnr ran for the vice presidency in this month's elections. Although he looks set to narrowly lose, at age 58 he is still young enough to achieve his goal of becoming president.

Duterte said Monday he wanted to have the body of Marcos, currently embalmed and enclosed in a glass casket, to be buried at the Heroes' Cemetery to end decades of divisions in society over the issue.

However Nilda Lagman-Sevilla, chairwoman of a group of families whose relatives vanished under Marcos's rule, said healing would only come from discovering what happened to their loved ones and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Her brother, a human rights lawyer who vanished in 1977, is among 882 people who disappeared under Marcos's rule, according to the group.

"They (the families of people who vanished) are still in pain because of the absence of closure," Lagman-Sevilla said.

Vox 13 hours ago

Over the weekend, skywatchers got a rare treat. The planet Mars was bigger and brighter than it has been in a decade. That's because Mars and the sun were aligned in "opposition." When that happens, the planet shines extra bright in the night sky. A bonus was the fact that Mars is nearing its closest approach to the Earth, so it appears larger than usual to us. In the weeks before and after opposition, Mars is easy to view with the naked eye. So what happens, then, when you point humanity's most famous telescope at it? Behold Mars, the cheddar-colored marble. This image was captured by Hubble a little more than a week before opposition, on May 12. It shows detail on the surface usually revealed ...

The Motley Fool 2 hours 24 minutes ago

Huntington Ingalls (NYSE:HII) loves to build aircraft carriers -- in all shapes and sizes. At the large end of the scale, Huntington's Newport News division is America's only dedicated builder of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers such as the USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74), currently on tour in the South China Sea, and the new USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). At the low end, Huntington's namesake Ingalls Shipbuilding division builds a wide variety of amphibious assault ships. Designated either LPD, LHA, or LHD, depending on their specific form and function, Huntington's amphibious assault ships are basically mini aircraft carriers, capable of undertaking everything from disaster relief missions to offering ...

The National Interest 10 hours ago

The Navy is arming four forward-deployed destroyers with an emerging ship-defense weapon able to track and destroy attacking enemy missiles, drones, aircraft, small boats and other threats, officials said. The SeaRAM weapons system, designed to fire Rolling Airframe Missiles out of a Close-in-Weapons System, will be installed on the USS Porter, USS Carney, USS Ross and USS Donald Cook, Navy spokesman Ensign Marc Rockwellpate told Scout Warrior. “SeaRAM combines two highly successful U.S. Navy systems: the MK 15 Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) and the MK 31 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) launching system,” Rockwellpate said. The SeaRAM system builds upon the infrastructure and radar of the Close-in-Weapons-System, ...

back to school

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

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About Me

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Watch: Video shows lava spattering at Kilauea volcano

Russia's NATO envoy warns allies on Black Sea "threats"

Frankfurt's The Markets: A Snapshot of The Philippines

Study suggests Planet 9 is stolen exoplanet

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Japan and China are locked in a Coast Guard 'arms race'

Light Bending Trick Reveals Supremely Old, Faint Galaxy

EgyptAir flight 804 forensic investigator in Egypt says human remains suggest explosion on Airbus A320

Farewell El Nino, It’s La Nina’s Turn to Cause Trouble Now

Hero's burial plan for Philippine dictator Marcos sparks outrage

Hubble can see galaxies impossibly far away. Here’s what happens when it looks at Mars.

More Mini Aircraft Carriers Mean More Money for Huntington Ingalls -- The Motley Fool

The US Navy's Battleplan to Crush Enemy Missiles, Drones and Aircraft