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Big bang over Siberia
Threats send octuplets’ mom into hiding
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No violence, no terrorist tag: US to Maoists
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Big bang over Siberia
Cape Caneveral (Florida), February 12 NASA said it would take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the crash, which occurred nearly 500 miles (805 kilometers) over Siberia on Tuesday. "We knew this was going to happen eventually," said Mark Matney, an orbital debris scientist at Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA believes any risk to the space station and its three astronauts should be low. It orbits about 270 miles (435 km) below the collision course. There also should be no danger to the space shuttle set to launch with seven astronauts on February 22, officials said, but that would be re-evaluated in the coming days. The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. The Russian satellite was out of control, Matney said. The Iridium craft weighed 1,235 pounds (560 kg), and the Russian craft nearly a ton. No one has any idea yet how many pieces were generated or how big they might be. "Right now, they're definitely counting dozens," Matney said. "I would suspect that they'll be counting hundreds when the counting is done." As for pieces the size of micrometers, the count will likely be in the thousands, he added. There have been four other cases in which space objects have collided accidentally in orbit, NASA said. But those were considered minor and involved parts of spent rockets or small satellites. As of Wednesday, there were 9,831 pieces of manmade debris -- not counting anything from Tuesday's collision -- orbiting Earth. The items, at least 4 inches (10 centimeters) in size, are being tracked by the US Space Surveillance Network, which is operated by the military. The network detected the two debris clouds created Tuesday. Litter in orbit has increased in recent years, in part because of the deliberate breakups of old satellites. It's gotten so bad that orbital debris is now the biggest threat to a space shuttle in flight, surpassing the dangers of liftoff and return to Earth. NASA is in regular touch with the Space Surveillance Network, to keep the space station a safe distance from any encroaching objects, and shuttles, too, when they're flying. "The collisions are going to be becoming more and more important in the coming decades," Matney said. Iridium Holdings LLC has a system of 65 active satellites which relay calls from portable phones that are about twice the size of a regular mobile phone. It has more than 300,000 subscribers. The US Department of Defense is one of its largest customers. The company has spare satellites, and it is unclear whether the collision caused an outage. An Iridium spokeswoman had no immediate comment. Initially launched by Motorola Inc. in the 1990s, Iridium plunged into bankruptcy in 1999. Private investors relaunched service in 2001. Iridium satellites are unusual because their orbit is so low and they move so fast. Most communications satellites are in much higher orbits and don't move relative to each other, which means collisions are rare. –– AP
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Threats send octuplets’ mom into hiding
Los Angeles, February 12 Nadya Suleman, 33, has come under mounting public ridicule for expanding her already large family via fertility treatments that led to the January 26-birth of six boys and two girls. The criticism has mushroomed as it was reported that she was divorced, living with her parents, unemployed for several years, receiving disability checks for three of her children - one of whom is autistic - and collecting nearly $500 per month in food stamps. She acknowledged these circumstances in a series of NBC television interviews but insisted in a segment aired on Tuesday on ''Dateline NBC'' that she was ''not living off any taxpayer money'' and that the assistance she now receives is temporary. Public relations consultant working for the family, Furtney, has said Suleman and the PR firm had been deluged with hostile telephone and email messages in recent days, some of them containing threats of violence and death. Suleman's mother, Angela, has called her daughter's decision to keep expanding her family ''unconscionable'' and she said she had pleaded with her daughter's fertility doctor not to implant her with more embryos.
–– Reuters
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No violence, no terrorist tag: US to Maoists
The visiting United States Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher on Thursday said the ruling Communist Party of Nepal Maoists will remain in the US terrorist watch list until they reject terrorism and renounce violence in practice. Wrapping up his two-day long tour in the HImalayan nation, Boucher told mediapersons that the US doesn’t yet have a “normal relationship” with the Maoist party. He said though the US has already started a review process to take them off the list, “but I don’t have a timetable yet.” Notably, Prime Minister and Unified CPN (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal had taken up the terrorist tag issue with the US dignitary during a meeting held earlier. “When we think they have done the necessary things to reject terrorism in word and deed. then we will be able to take them off the list and have a normal relationship with them as a party,” said Boucher, adding that dealings with the Maoist party and the government led by the Maoists are two different things. He said the US, along with other international donors like the United Nations, is there to support the process of management of former Maoist combatants.
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Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.
