Thursday, June 1, 2017
NATION/WORLD
NASA spacecraft
will aim straight
for sun next year
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
(AP) — A NASA spacecraft
will aim straight for the sun next
year and bear the name of the
astrophysicist who predicted the
existence of the solar wind nearly
60 years ago.
The space agency announced
Wednesday that the red-hot
mission would be named after
Eugene Parker, professor emeritus
at the University of Chicago. It’s
the first NASA spacecraft to be
named after a researcher who
is still alive, noted the agency’s
science mission chief, Thomas
Zurbuchen.
Scheduled to launch next
summer from Cape Canaveral, the
Parker Solar Probe will fly within
4 million miles of the sun’s surface
— right into the solar atmosphere.
That will be considerably closer
than any other spacecraft, and
subject the probe to brutal heat and
radiation like no other man-made
structure before. The materials
weren’t available until now to
undertake such a grueling mission.
The purpose is to study the
sun’s outer atmosphere and better
understand how stars like ours
work.
NASA spacecraft have traveled
inside the orbit of Mercury, the
innermost planet.
“But until you actually go there
and touch the sun, you really can’t
answer these questions,” like why
is the corona — the outer plasma-
loaded atmosphere — hotter than
the actual surface of the sun, said
mission project scientist Nicola
Fox of Johns Hopkins University’s
Applied Physics Laboratory.
Parker Solar Probe will venture
seven times closer than any
previous spacecraft, Fox said.
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory via AP
This image made available by the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory on Wednesday depicts NASA’s Solar
Probe Plus spacecraft approaching the sun.
likely consequences of a U.S.
withdrawal. Trump himself kept
everyone in suspense, saying
he was still listening to “a lot of
people both ways.”
The White House signaled that
Trump was likely to decide on
exiting the global pact — fulfilling
one of his principal campaign
pledges — though top aides were
divided. And the final decision may
not be entirely clear-cut: Aides
were still deliberating on “caveats
in the language,” one official said.
Abandoning the pact would
isolate the U.S. from a raft of
international allies who spent years
negotiating the 2015 agreement to
fight global warming and pollution
by reducing carbon emissions in
nearly 200 nations. While traveling
abroad last week, Trump was
repeatedly pressed to stay in the
deal by European leaders and the
Vatican. Withdrawing would leave
the United States aligned only
with Russia among the world’s
industrialized economies.
Trump to announce
decision on Paris
climate pact Thursday
House committee issues
subpoenas; Comey
OK’d to testify
WASHINGTON (AP) —
President Donald Trump says he
will announce his decision on
whether to pull the United States
out of the Paris climate accord
during a Rose Garden event
Thursday afternoon.
Trump promoted his
announcement Wednesday
night on Twitter, after a day in
which U.S. allies around the
world sounded alarms about the
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
House intelligence committee
said Wednesday it is issuing
subpoenas for former national
security adviser Michael Flynn and
President Donald Trump’s personal
lawyer, Michael Cohen, as well
as their businesses, as part of its
investigation into Russian activities
during last year’s election.
In addition to those four
subpoenas, the committee has
issued three others — to the
National Security Agency,
the FBI and the CIA — for
information about requests that
government officials made to
“unmask” the identities of U.S.
individuals named in classified
intelligence reports, according to a
congressional aide.
The subpoenas were announced
as the special counsel overseeing
the government’s investigation into
possible Trump campaign ties to
Russia has approved former FBI
Director James Comey to testify
before the Senate intelligence
committee, according to a Comey
associate.
At a Wednesday briefing, press
secretary Sean Spicer said inquiries
about the Russia investigation must
be directed to Marc Kasowitz,
another of Trump’s personal
attorneys. It marked the first time
the White House had officially
acknowledged that outside counsel
had been retained. Calls and emails
to Kasowitz’s New York firm
were not immediately returned
Wednesday.
Lawmakers are likely to ask
Comey about his interactions with
Trump as the bureau pursued its
investigation into his campaign.
Tweet that: #covfefe
signals return of
@realDonaldTrump
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Covfefe (cuv-fey-fey) noun: A sure
sign that President Donald Trump
has regained control of his Twitter
account.
For more than a week, the
tweets from @realDonaldTrump
were, well, boring.
Throughout his first big foreign
trip last week, Trump’s tweets
had the vibe of a garden-variety
politician: statements of solidarity
with world leaders, retweets of his
wife’s visits with students and sick
children, video clips from arrival
statements and formal ceremonies,
photos of official dinners.
Yawn.
Well, Twitterverse, he’s back.
Starting with a wee-hours tweet
that contained the mystifying
nonword “covfefe,” Trump
on Wednesday unleashed a
string of tweets that showed the
president was holding nothing
back, on matters both trivial and
consequential.
He lashed out at the
government’s Russia investigation
as a “Witch Hunt!”
He scolded celebrity Kathy
Griffin for a video that showed
what looked like Trump’s severed
head: “My children, especially my
11-year-old son, Barron, are having
a hard time with this. Sick!”
He stoked suspense about
whether he’ll pull the U.S. out of
an international climate change
agreement: “I will be announcing
my decision on the Paris Accord
over the next few days. MAKE
AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
But the internet flipped out
over this baffling post-midnight
tweet (later deleted): “Despite the
constant negative press covfefe”
With that, Trump’s twitter feed
went silent for the next five and
half hours.
Press secretary Sean Spicer
played it straight at an afternoon
briefing when reporters asked
about the puzzling tweet.
“I think the president and
a small group of people know
exactly what he meant,” Spicer
dead-panned, drawing laughter
from the group.
Death toll at 90 in huge
suicide bombing in
Afghan capital
KABUL, Afghanistan
(AP) — A suicide attacker struck
the fortified heart of the Afghan
capital with a massive truck bomb
Wednesday, killing 90 people,
wounding 400 and raising new
fears about the government’s
ability to protect its citizens nearly
16 years into a war with insurgents.
The bomber drove into Kabul’s
heavily guarded diplomatic quarter
during the morning rush hour,
leaving behind a bloody scene of
chaos and destruction in one of the
East Oregonian
Page 7A
worst attacks since the drawdown
of foreign forces from Afghanistan
in 2014.
Most of the casualties were
civilians, including women and
children, said Ismail Kawasi,
spokesman of the public health
ministry. But the dead also
included Afghan security guards
at the facilities, including the U.S.
Embassy, while 11 American
contractors were wounded — none
with life-threatening injuries, a
U.S. State Department official said.
“I have been to many attacks,
taken wounded people out of many
blast sites, but I can say I have ever
seen such a horrible attack as I saw
this morning,” ambulance driver
Alef Ahmadzai told The Associated
Press. “Everywhere was on fire
and so many people were in critical
condition.”
There was no claim of
responsibility for the attack, which
came in the first week of the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The Taliban flatly denied any
involvement in an email to news
outlets and condemned all attacks
against civilians.
Russia fires cruise
missiles, targets IS
positions in Syria
MOSCOW (AP) — Russians
warships in the Mediterranean Sea
have fired four cruise missiles at
the Islamic State group’s positions
in Syria, the Russian defense
ministry said on Wednesday.
The announcement came as
Syrian government troops pushed
ahead in their offensive against
IS and militants in central and
northern Syria.
Moscow said in a statement that
the Admiral Essen frigate and the
Krasnodar submarine launched the
missiles at IS targets in the area of
the ancient town of Palmyra. There
was no information on when the
missiles were launched.
Syrian troops have been on the
offensive for weeks in northern,
central and southern part of the
country against IS and U.S.-backed
rebels under the cover of Russian
airstrikes.
Most recently, Syrian troops
and their allies have been marching
toward the IS stronghold of
Sukhna, about 37 miles northeast
from Palmyra.
The strategic juncture in the
Syrian desert aids government
plans to go after IS in one of the
militants’ last major strongholds in
Syria.
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