AUSTRALIA FIREFIGHTER UPDATE
Another firefighter has died battling Australia's bushfires, authorities say


        Nick Perry,Associated Press 1/12/2020

A plume of smoke rises from fire in a huge wood chip pile 
at a mill in Eden, Australia, Saturday, Jan. 11, 2020. Associated Press/Rick Rycroft

Another firefighter has died battling Australia's bushfires, authorities said Sunday.The firefighter was one of the few professionals battling the blazes — most of the firefighters currently working are merely volunteers.It's unclear how the firefighter died.The news brings the death toll to at least 27 people. Four of the casualties were firefighters.

BURRAGATE, Australia (AP) — Another firefighter has died battling the Australian wildfire crisis and the prime minister on Sunday said his government was adapting and building resilience to the fire danger posed by climate change.

The firefighter — one of the few professionals among mainly volunteer brigades battling blazes across southeast Australia — died on Saturday near Omeo in eastern Victoria state, Victorian Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp said. No details of the circumstances were released.

The tragedy brings the death toll to at least 27 people in a crisis that has destroyed more than 2,000 homes and scorched an area larger than the US state of Indiana since September. Four of the casualties were firefighters.

Authorities are using relatively benign conditions forecast in southeast Australia for a week or more to consolidate containment lines around scores of fires that are likely to burn for weeks without heavy rainfall. The reprieve from severe fire conditions promises to be the longest of the current fire season.

The crisis has brought accusations that Prime Minister Scott Morrison's conservative government needs to take more action to counter climate change, which experts say has worsened the blazes. Thousands of protesters rallied late Friday in Sydney and Melbourne, calling for Morrison to be fired and for Australia to take tougher action on global warming.

Morrison said his government was developing a national disaster risk reduction framework within the Department of Home Affairs that will deal with wildfires, cyclones, floods and drought. The government was currently working through the details of the framework with local governments.

"This is a longer-term risk framework model which deals with one of the big issues in response to climate changing and that is the resilience and the adaptation that we need in our community right across the country to deal with longer, hotter, drier seasons that increase the risk of bushfire," Morrison told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

 A Rural Fire Service firefighter Trevor Stewart views a flank of a fire on January 11, 2020 in Tumburumba, Australia. Sam Mooy/Getty Images

Morrison said his government accepted that climate change was leading to longer, hotter and drier summers, despite junior government lawmaker George Christensen posting on social media over the weekend that the cause of the latest fires was arson rather than man-made climate change. Another junior lawmaker Craig Kelly has also publicly denied any link between climate change and fire crisis.

State authorities have said a minority of fires are deliberately lit.

American firefighters receive a heartwarming welcome as they arrive in Australia to help battle the country's devastating bushfires

Ashley Collman  Jan 10, 2020

A contingent of 39 firefighters from the United States

 and Canada arrive at Melbourne Airport in Australia 

on January 2, 2020 to help fight the country's wildfires.

Julian Smith/AAP Image via AP


Dozens of American firefighters arrived in Sydney, Australia on Thursday to lend a hand in fighting the country's bushfires.

Video shows crowds gathered in front of arrivals spontaneously bursting into applause to show their gratitude to the arriving Americans.

The US and Australia has exchanged firefighters for about 15 years.

A second group of American firefighters arrived in Australia on Thursday to fight the country's bushfires, and locals wasted no time in thanking them for volunteering.


Shane Fitzsimmons, the commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, was at Sydney Airport to welcome the incoming US firefighters.

He took a video showing how the crowd at the arrivals area burst into a spontaneous round of applause as the firemen started streaming in with their bags of gear, ready to get down to work.—Shane Fitzsimmons (@RFSCommissioner) January 9, 2020

Autumn Snyder told CNN that her husband Sean was among the firefighters welcomed in Sydney this week, and she was "very humbled" by the response.

"It's so refreshing and gratifying to see them be welcomed and appreciated," she said.

She said her husband volunteered to go to Australia and was happy to be picked for the assignment, which will last at least 30 days. He works as an assistant fire management officer for the US Forest Service in Talladega, Alabama.

A photo shows a general view of the Dunn Road fire in

 Mount Adrah, Australia on Friday. Sam Mooy/Getty

Autumn said they are a "public service family" and she and her three kids are "super proud of the work" her husband is doing.

As of Friday, there were more than 250 American firefighters in Australia to fight the wildfires, according to the Associated Press, making it the largest-ever deployment of American firefighters abroad.

The US and Australia have been exchanging firefighters for about 15 years. The most recent exchange happened in 2015 when Australian firefighters flew to the US to fight wildfires in California. The US has similar partnerships with New Zealand, Mexico, and Canada.

Terrance Gallegos, 39, was one of the first American firefighters to be sent to Australia to fight this year's wildfires. He told the Associated Press on Thursday that he's proud of the long-standing partnership between American and Australian firefighters.

A satellite image from January 4 shows wildfires burning

 in Victoria and New South Wales, Australia. NASA via AP

"I've been on incidents when Australians have actually come and assisted me on my division and helped me out operationally," Gallegos said. "It's a great opportunity to come here and help our brothers and sisters from Australia with their fire operations and just lend them a hand."

Since it's the winter down season, the Americans could afford to send volunteers to Australia, where it's summer and the fires have been raging since September.

The US plans to send about 100 more firefighters to Australia next week.

Carrie Bilbao, a spokesperson for the National Interagency Fire Center, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that the next group heading to Australia is getting trained on venomous snakes and insects they might encounter down under.

The fires have claimed the lives of at least 27 so far and destroyed more than 2,000 homes. The fires have impacted an area that combined are twice the size of the state of Maryland.

A same-sex couple took pictures in traditional South Asian clothes, and now the stunning photos are going viral   POSTING THIS I AM DOING MY VIRAL BIT

Samantha Grindell
Jan 9, 2020

People loved the representation the couple provided for same-sex couples from South Asia. Sarowar Ahmed

A California-based couple named Sufi Malik and Anjali Chakra met on Tumblr, and they've been together since 2018.
They went viral in the summer of 2019 after they did a photo shoot spotlighting their queer, interfaith relationship.
Malik and Chakra are now using their platform to advocate for others in marginalized communities.
"People message us so often to say that they're so happy they found us because they didn't realize that there were any other queer South Asian people out there," the couple told Insider.
You can follow their YouTube channel here.
A California-based couple named Sufi Malik and Anjali Chakra met on Tumblr.

The couple has been together since July 2018. Sarowar Ahmed

Chakra is an event planner and producer, and Malik is an artist and teacher. The two had connected online seven years before they became a couple.

"We had followed each other's blogs on Tumblr for seven years, and somewhere in there we followed each other on Instagram," the 23-year-olds told Insider.

"I DM'd Sufi one day asking if we could talk about her experience as a queer South Asian woman, and she agreed," Chakra said. "Eventually, we met in New York, where Sufi lived at the time."

The couple has been together since July 2018.

The couple went viral in the summer of 2019 when they took part in a brand's photo shoot.

Malik and Chakra went viral in the summer of 2019. Sarowar Ahmed

"The shoot was actually for a brand called Borrow the Bazaar, which rents South Asian clothes to people for special occasions," they said.

"Sufi and I were attending two weddings that weekend, so we did a photo shoot with the brand in exchange for free outfit rentals to wear to the wedding," Chakra explained.

Their photographer, Sarowar Ahmed, tweeted photos from the shoot with the caption "A New York love story," and he got over 50,000 likes.


Malik and Chakra then posted additional photos of themselves a week later, which also went viral.

People loved the representation the couple provided for 

same-sex couples from South Asia. Sarowar Ahmed

"The photos really took off on Twitter, and then we actually hit news websites, papers, and TV within a couple of days in India, Pakistan, and the UK," they told Insider, with people celebrating the representation the photos provided for same-sex couples from South Asia.

"I grew up witnessing and watching different kinds of love, some in my family and some in Bollywood. After I got a little older and realized what my sexuality was, I never saw representation of people who looked like me. I'm so glad I have the opportunity to be that with the love of my life," Malik wrote in an anniversary post.

"We were just in disbelief that so many people loved our photos," the couple said of the online attention.


People showed enthusiasm for their relationship both because Malik and Chakra are queer and because they are an interfaith couple — Malik is Muslim-Pakistani, while Chakra is Hindu-Indian.

T

he couple is also interfaith. Sarowar Ahmed

"We found that the media fixated on those aspects of our relationship a lot when they covered our story, which was interesting to us because our differences have never really been something we dwell on," they told Insider.

"We are careful not to focus on those differences in our content because that wouldn't be true to life for us."

The couple does teach one another about their cultures, however. "There's so much similarity there, because our countries were once one, but also so many differences to explore," they said.

"We cook together and talk about the different types of dishes from each country," they said. "We share music with each other, and Sufi is teaching Urdu slowly but surely. There's so much more to our cultures than those things, but those are the easiest to exchange every day."

"Sometimes Sufi plays the Quran in the car, and other times we'll read prayers to one another just for the sake of sharing how they sound and what they mean," Chakra added. "Both religions have so much to offer and learn from."


"People message us so often to say that they're so happy they found us because they didn't realize that there were any other queer South Asian people out there," the couple told Insider.

The couple are bringing visibility to queer South Asian people. Sarowar Ahmed

"The fun part is that every time we get one of those messages, it's another person also telling us that we are not alone," they said.

"It goes both ways, and that's a really magical feeling."

"Both of us had our own battles to accept our sexuality, so having such widespread support was wonderful and validating to another degree," they added.


Now, the couple is trying to use their platform to help other minorities through their YouTube channel.

The couple advocates for other marginalized groups. Sarowar Ahmed

"We're aware that a big part of our having the audience that we do is because of certain privileges we hold — cis privilege, and also thin privilege and light-skin privilege, which are especially emphasized in the South Asian community," they told Insider.

"To us, using our platforms responsibly means sharing about others doing important work for our communities without those privileges."

"We also love sharing about artists and small business owners who are queer, trans, or people of color," they added.

You can follow their YouTube channel here, as well as find out more about their individual businesses.


Chakra and Malik also use harassment from people as an opportunity to advocate for others who are dealing with prejudice.

The couple has experienced negative online attention 

since going viral. Sarowar Ahmed

"I think the most important thing we did was remind ourselves that the people attacking us with homophobic mindsets are from places or communities that are more conservative than the people we've chosen to surround ourselves with," they said of harassment they have experienced.

"It comes to us online, but for others, it's discriminatory laws, closed-minded communities, and real-life violence."

"That's typically how we frame discussions about the hateful messages we get — we try to amplify the voices of those facing the real-world issues those words reflect," they added.


"We always make each other's lives easier," they said of their relationship.

The couple told Insider they compliment each other.

Sarowar Ahmed

"We are each good at really different things, so in our everyday lives, we just complement each other so well," they said of their relationship.

"Sufi helps me slow down, prioritize, and be mindful when I'm overworked, and I help Sufi believe in herself and jump in when she has new projects and opportunities but doesn't have the confidence to take that first step," Chakra said.

"One thing we're both really good at is making the other person belly laugh, and we do that often," the couple added.

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The Justice Department investigation into Trump's claims of Hillary Clinton's corruption is reportedly over, and found nothing

REPEAT OFTEN "DOJ CLINTON INVESTIGATION FOUND NOTHING"

Paulina Cachero Jan 10, 2020

Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, meets Russian

 President Vladimir Putin at a summit in 2012. 

REUTERS/Mikhail Metzel

An investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) into alleged corruption by Hillary Clinton has effectively ended with no results, according to The Washington Post.

The claims, often repeated by President Donald Trump and his allies, related to Clinton's conduct as Secretary of State, and also to the Clinton Foundation nonprofit.

Despite more than two years of effort, the investigation failed to substantiate the underlying claims, the Post report.

Although the probe's work is said to be over, the DOJ has yet to formally end it.

A yearslong Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into claims of corruption by Hillary Clinton is over, and found nothing, according to The Washington Post.

The probe failed to substantiate a collection of allegations, made repeatedly by President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans, the Post reported.

Their claims relate to Clinton's behaviour as Secretary of State and her involvements in the nonprofit Clinton Foundation, subjects to which Trump has returned often, and devoted considerable effort to pursuing.

However, after more than two years, the probe set in motion by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in November 2017 found "no tangible results," the Post said.

It reported that the work of the investigation is over, although the DOJ has not formally closed it.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017

The probe was launched after Trump and fellow Republicans claimed the FBI had not "fully pursued" corruption at the Clinton Foundation.

In particular, they complained of insufficient scrutiny of the sale of a company called Uranium One, which the US government allowed to take place during Clinton's tenure as Barack Obama's Secretary of State.

They accused the Obama administration of allowing Uranium One, which had mining interests in the US, to be sold to a Russian company because of donations made to the Clinton Foundation.

The probe, led by US attorney John Huber, also looked at Clinton's use of a private email server while Secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton in 2014 with her family — husband Bill Clinton,

 their daughter Chelsea, her husband Marc Mezvinsky, 

and their daughter Charlotte, then a newborn. AP

According to the Post, Huber essentially finished his report by early 2019, having found "nothing worth pursuing."

The Post cited anonymous sources who said that nobody involved in the probe really expected to find anything.

But, the Post reported, Trump officials tried to keep it alive longer. It said Matthew Whitaker, in his time as Acting Attorney General, tried to push for a more "aggressive" approach.

This too appears to have produced no results.

The Justice Department declined to comment on Huber's investigation when asked by the Post.

Fox News anchor Shep Smith annihilates his network's favorite Hillary Clinton 'scandal,' the Uranium One deal
Eliza Relman
Nov 15, 2017, 7:59 AM

Fox News anchor Shep Smith tore apart the allegations

 behind the Uranium One "scandal." Screenshot/Fox News

The Fox News anchor Shepard Smith discredited the Uranium One "scandal," a theory his network has promoted about Hillary Clinton.
Republicans have aggressively promoted the unsubstantiated theory and pushed for a special counsel to investigate the claims.
Fox News viewers attacked Smith, suggesting he should work for another network.


The Fox News anchor Shepard Smith discredited an unsubstantiated theory that his network and other conservative media outlets and Republican politicians have aggressively promoted as Hillary Clinton's Uranium One "scandal."


During Tuesday night's broadcast, Smith succinctly debunked Republicans' claims that the Obama administration and the Clinton-led State Department approved a deal allowing a Russian company to buy a Canadian company with mining interests in the US in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Smith's report came as Republican calls for a special counsel to investigate the deal are mounting. President Donald Trump has called the issue "Watergate, modern-age," and his surrogates and supporters say it amounts to the "real Russia scandal." Smith played a clip of Trump making the allegations — which were first promoted by a Breitbart News editor named Peter Schweizer — on the campaign trail in 2016 and then called Trump's statement "inaccurate in a number of ways."

Smith pointed out that the Uranium One deal was unanimously approved by representatives of nine government agencies, just one of which was the Clinton-led State Department. And there is no proof that Clinton personally approved the deal, as one of her deputies officially signed off on it.

"The accusation is predicated on the charge that Secretary Clinton approved the sale. She did not," Smith said. "A committee of nine evaluated the sale, the president approved the sale, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others had to offer permits, and none of the uranium was exported for use by the US to Russia."

Smith's segment was met with harsh criticism from many Fox News viewers who suggested he should leave the network for CNN or MSNBC.

"The worst part of a relaxing day is when Shepherd Smith starts talking. He is a smartass that needs to be on CNN. @FoxNews," one viewer, Jana Jo, tweeted.

Shep Smith just took apart the Uranium One conspiracy theory in what amounts to a methodical annihilation of his own network's coverage of the story. pic.twitter.com/D439QyIBWU— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 14, 2017

SEE ALSO: Mueller's charges have Republicans freaking out over a report tying Hillary Clinton to a Russian uranium deal

The highly anticipated Iowa poll reveals a narrow frontrunner in Iowa: Bernie Sanders
Lauren Frias  Jan 10, 2020

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren embrace at at July 2019 

Democratic debate. Paul Sancya/AP Images

In a new — and highly anticipated — Des Moines Register/CNN poll ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders leads the narrowing Democratic pool, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Vice President Joe Biden fighting for second.
Sanders leads with 20% of Democratic Iowa caucus-goers indicating him as their number-one candidate, with Warren was in second position with 17%.
Just behind her was former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg polling at 16%, and former Vice President Joe Biden with 15%.
The poll could indicate where each of the candidates stand ahead of the Iowa caucuses next month.


The much-anticipated poll of caucus-goers on Iowa was released Friday evening, revealing a new front-runner in the final stretch to the Iowa caucuses.

A new Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll revealed 20% of Democratic caucus goers favor Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont as their first-choice candidate.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren was close in tow with 17%, and just behind her is South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg with 16%. Former Vice President Joe Biden trailing by one percent with 15%.
—Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) January 10, 2020

Sanders' surge and Buttigieg's decline in the polls makes for a surprising turn of events in comparison to the last poll conducted in mid-November. It has been a tight competition in Iowa, with each of the top four candidates having held the lead at one point of the 2020 race, the Register reported.

The poll could indicate where each of the candidates stand ahead of the Iowa caucuses next month, as well as help get candidates who have yet to qualify for the January/February debates on the stage.

Since the November Iowa poll, there has been a 10% surge in the number of people who have a sure candidate chosen, with 40% of Democratic caucus goers indicating they have already made up their mind on a candidate.

"The poll of 701 likely Democratic caucus goers was conducted Jan. 2-8 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points," the Register reported.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Latest trouble at the border: Vultures are defecating and urinating all over a CBP radio tower
The mess is coating the entire 320-foot tower in southern Texas that the agency needs to communicate. The birds are also vomiting onto buildings below the tower and dropping prey from hundreds of feet in the air, an agency spokesperson said.


 Hooded vultures wait for scraps of meat at Bissau's main slaughter house on November 26, 2019. - Tens of thousands of Hooded Vultures flock to the city of Bissau to in search of food left behind in heaps of garbage or around market areas. Photo by JOHN WESSELS / AFP

A radio tower for the US Customs and Border Protection near the US-Mexico border has been plagued by vultures that roost there and drop feces, vomit, and even prey on the buildings below.Around 300 vultures have taken over the tower in the past six years, Quartz reports, and have coated the structure with "droppings mixed with urine," as well as corrosive vomit that eats away at the metal.CBP spokesperson told Quartz that the birds create a "terrifying and dangerous" environment at the workplace, and said there are anecdotes of them dropping prey from as high as 300 feet in the air.The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits killing the vultures, but CBP is planning to install a "viable netting deterrent" to stop the vultures from roosting in its radio towers.

For a radio tower and surrounding buildings operated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) near the Texas-Mexico border, vultures are no joke. Around 300 of the carnivorous birds have roosted in its radio tower, and are creating communications issues thanks to their corrosive vomit and feces.

Quartz reports that CBP filed a request for information that includes details about the problems the vultures have created at the radio tower, which is now entirely coated in "droppings mixed with urine" that have also fallen on the ground and surrounding buildings below, where people work and equipment is kept.

Furthermore, a CBP spokesperson told Quartz that workers have anecdotes of the vultures dropping prey from as high as 300 feet above, creating a "terrifying and dangerous" work environment for the past six years.
fernando sanchez/Shutterstock

Vultures regurgitate a corrosive vomit as a defense mechanism that can kill bacteria on their legs but also eat away at the metal radio tower, making it unsafe for maintenance workers to climb it and reducing the tower's lifespan.

Large groups of vultures also smell like corpses – the species is known, of course, for feeding on dead flesh, or carrion. Undigested bones and fur can be found at the base of where vultures roost.

But CBP can't kill the vultures, as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act made that illegal in 1918. Instead, the agency is searching for a "viable netting deterrent" to stop the vultures from roosting on the radio tower. CBP told Quartz that it's working with the Fish and Wildlife Agency, the USDA, environmental experts, and the Texas State Historical Preservation Officer to find a solution that doesn't harm any of the vultures.

The agency also says there are no nests or baby birds in the tower. There are plans to clean and repair the radio tower before installing nets by August, before the natural heavy roosting cycle begins in the fall. 

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Scientists detected ripples in space and time from a potentially new class of collision in the universe. Their observatory cracked a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

An artist's rendition of two neutron stars merging. National Science Foundation/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet

Large collisions in space, like those between black holes or neutron stars, create ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. The phenomenon was first predicted by Albert Einstein.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) recently sensed gravitational waves from a collision of two neutron stars — the second such event ever detected.
But these neutron stars were more massive than scientists thought possible, and nobody picked up light or radiation from the aftermath of their collision.
That could indicate a new a new type of collision in deep space, in which neutron stars meet and immediately collapse into a black hole.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.


Scientists may have stumbled upon a previously unknown class of massive collision in the universe.

On Monday, researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced that they had yet again detected ripples in space-time. They think these particular disturbances in the fabric of the universe — which were observed in April 2019 — came from the collision of two neutron stars, the super-dense remnants of dead stars.

That would make this the second neutron-star collision ever detected, but it was quite different from the earlier one.

After the first collision was detected in 2017, telescopes turned to its location in the sky. Scientists studied the collision's aftermath in visible light, radio waves, X-rays, and gamma rays. But this time, they didn't find any signs of the collision other than its ripples in space-time.

That has led astrophysicists to wonder whether they've discovered an entirely new class of cataclysmic event in deep space — one in which neutron stars meet and immediately collapse into a black hole, leaving no trace behind.

Einstein's predictions led scientists to violent new events in space

Artist's depiction of a black hole about to swallow a neutron star. Carl Knox, OzGrav ARC Centre of Excellence

Ripples in space-time are called gravitational waves. They usually come from distant collisions between massive objects, like black holes and neutron stars. Albert Einstein first predicted the phenomenon, but he didn't think gravitational waves would ever be detected. They seemed too weak to pick up on Earth amid all the noise and vibrations.

For 100 years, it seemed Einstein was right.

But in the late 1990s, LIGO's machines in Washington and Louisiana were built in an attempt to pick up the signals Einstein thought we'd never detect.

The L-shaped LIGO observatory in Hanford, Washington, 

is one of three gravitational wave detectors in operation.

LIGO Laboratory/NSF

Finally, in September 2015, after 13 years of silence, LIGO detected its first gravitational waves: signals from the merger of two black holes some 1.3 billion light-years away. The discovery opened a new field of astronomy and earned a Nobel prize in physics for three researchers who helped conceive of LIGO.


Since then, LIGO and its Italian companion Virgo have identified two other types of collisions. The observatories registered gravitational waves from two neutron stars merging for the first time in October 2017. In August 2019, LIGO and Virgo detected what scientists believe was a black hole swallowing a neutron star.

The waves LIGO picked up in April most likely came from another collision of two neutron stars, about 520 million light-years away. That's about four times more distant than the 2017 event.

Virgo did not detect the latest gravitational waves (probably because of the distance); only the more sensitive LIGO detector in Louisiana picked them up. Its companion machine in Washington was temporarily offline for maintenance.

As a result, scientists didn't get much data beyond the neutron stars' distance and mass. They calculated that the neutron stars were 3.4 times the mass of the sun — far more massive than scientists thought possible.

Something else was weird, too: Scientists didn't see any gamma rays, the radiation signals that are supposed to arrive just seconds after gravitational waves from a neutron-star merger.

A new class of massive space collision?

This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. The black region in the center represents the black hole’s event horizon, where no light can escape the massive object’s gravitational grip. NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)

Scientists expect neutron stars to collide in high-energy explosions, causing heavy elements to form and emitting bright light and gamma-ray radiation. This explosion is known as "kilonova" because it's about 1,000 times brighter than a nova (the bright flash emitted by newborn stars).

But the gamma rays were mysteriously missing following the collision, and no telescopes spotted a bright light, either.

"We're in that uncertain position of not knowing if we didn't observe a kilonova because there really wasn't one, or if we simply didn't observe it because it was too far away," Martin Hendry, a LIGO scientist and astrophysicist at the University of Glasgow, told Business Insider.

Scientists think a possible explanation could be that the colliding neutron stars were so massive that they collapsed immediately into a black hole, as astrophysicist Ethan Siegel proposed in a Forbes article.


"Perhaps, above a certain mass threshold, higher-mass neutron-star mergers simply interact and go directly to a black hole, swallowing up all of the matter associated with both stars, producing no heavy elements and emitting no further observable signal at all," Siegel wrote.
This supercomputer simulation shows one of the most violent events in the universe: a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole. A neutron star is the compressed core left behind when a star born with between eight and 30 times the sun's mass explodes as a supernova. Neutron stars pack about 1.5 times the mass of the sun — equivalent to about half a million Earths — into a ball just 12 miles across. NASA Goddard

If true, that could mean collisions between low-mass neutron stars — which produce kilonovae — have dramatically different results than collisions between massive neutron stars, which might not explode at all.

In that case, the newly observed neutron-star merger would represent an entirely new class of catastrophic collision.

"For a long, long time we had a sample size of zero, and now we've got a sample size of two," Hendry said. "So there's the tantalizing question as to whether they really are two distinct classes or whether it's just that, as we observe more and more, we'll kind of fill in a continuum." 

Hundreds of Earths' worth of gold and platinum

Liquid gold. Pascal Lauener/Reuters

When the 2017 neutron-star collision was confirmed, the discovery solved a long-standing mystery about the origins of most of the universe's heavy elements.

Scientists discovered that the explosion had forged roughly 50 Earth masses' worth of silver, 100 Earth masses of gold, and 500 Earth masses of platinum. The gold alone was worth about $100 octillion at 2017 market price, or $100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 written out.

A bit of nuclear alchemy called the rapid process, or r-process, is responsible for creating these metals.

It goes like this: As neutron stars move toward each other, a tiny bit of their material gets shot into space at incredible speeds. Those neutrons are very hot and crowded, so they smash together while moving outward, forming giant atomic cores. Very big atoms are highly unstable, so they almost immediately break apart and decay into smaller atoms — stuff like platinum, gold, silver, and even iodine.
 

An illustration of two neutron stars colliding. NASA

However, if the neutron stars in the most recent collision collapsed directly into a black hole as some astronomers suspect, there would have been no r-process, and the crash would not have forged gold or platinum, Hendry said.

Astronomers could detect new collisions every day by the mid-2020s

Researchers install a new quantum squeezing device into

one of LIGO's gravitational-wave detectors. Lisa Barsotti

To detect more gravitational-wave events with more precision, researchers are fitting the LIGO and Virgo detectors with a series of technical upgrades. In December 2019, they installed a device that squeezes light, allowing LIGO to make 50% more detections.

"We're really looking, by the middle of this decade, at having an event every day or so," Hendry said.

Most of the gravitational waves observed so far have come from collisions between two black holes. But the ability to make more detections could mean that scientists wind up finding dozens of neutron-star mergers each year.

An upcoming Japanese observatory, the Kamioka Gravitational-wave Detector (KAGRA), will also help scientists narrow down the source of gravitational waves to smaller points in the sky.

The KAGRA system is housed in a giant L-shaped tunnel 

located 200 meters underground in Hida, Gifu, Japan. 

This photo was taken November 6, 2015.

The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images

KAGRA was built underground and will use cryogenically cooled mirrors to help protect sensitive instruments from picking up false signals. The detector is slated to come online by April 30, but scientists will then need to fine-tune its instruments before it can fully join the gravitational-wave hunt later this year.

Another observatory, LIGO India, is expected to join the global network in 2025.

Together, these new and upgraded detection tools could help scientists determine whether there are indeed various classes of catastrophic neutron-star collisions in space.

"What we need to do is observe a whole bunch of neutron-star events," Hendry said. "It's too soon to say with only our second neutron-star merger, but once we have a few dozen or so, we can start really looking at the statistics."

SEE ALSO: An experiment that solved a 100-year-old mystery posed by Einstein just got up to 50% more powerful by squeezing light

NOW WATCH: A new discovery with gravitational waves has helped scientists fill in a gaping hole in the periodic table

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The US warned Iraq that its access to a key bank account holding billions is in jeopardy if the country expels American troops

U.S. soldiers gather at a military base north of Mosul, Iraq, January 4, 2017. Reuters/Mohammed Al-Ramahi

• The United States government is flexing its muscles to Iraq over the country's threats to oust some 5,300 US troops from the country. 
• The US State Department warned that if its troops are expelled, the US could cut off access to a key Iraqi bank account held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that holds billions in oil revenues, Iraqi officials told The Wall Street Journal. 
• Shutting off the spigot to Iraq could squeeze the country's access to cash, gumming up its financial system and wreaking havoc on its economy. 
• The warning to Iraq is the latest in the fallout from the US missile strike on Iraqi soil last week that killed a top Iranian general

The United States government is flexing its muscles to Iraq, warning there could be stiff financial consequences if the country follows through on efforts to expel US military forces in response to the US missile strike on Iraqi soil last week that killed a top Iranian general.

In light of overtures by Iraqi politicians to remove some 5,300 US troops, the US State Department reportedly threatened that it could cut off access to a key Iraqi account held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that holds billions in oil revenues, Iraqi officials told The Wall Street Journal. 

The New York Fed provides banking services to roughly 250 central banks and other government institutions, according to WSJ. Shutting off the spigot to Iraq could squeeze the country's access to cash, gumming up its financial system and wreaking havoc on its economy. 

The warning is the latest political dustup resulting from the January 3 assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport, which has inflamed political tensions in the region.

Following the attack, the Iraqi parliament passed a nonbinding resolution to oust the US military presence from the country, which earned backing from Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

President Trump responded by threatening sanctions on Iraq if it follows through on the reprisals.

Amid Abdul-Mahdi's support for the troop expulsion, US officials also reportedly warned the prime minister in a call on Wednesday of the potential fallout with the New York Fed and ensuing economic damage.

Representatives for the Fed, as well as the State and Treasury departments, declined to comment to the WSJ.  Spokesmen for Iraq's prime minister, central bank, and embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. 

The move to freeze Iraq's assets at the Fed wouldn't be unprecedented. 

The Federal Reserve has the power to cut off access to funds for countries facing sanctions or if it suspects the money could violate US law, the WSJ reported.

It did just that in 2015, halting Iraq's access to its funds at the Fed for several weeks amid suspicions the money was being funneled into the coffers of Iranian banks as well as ISIS. 

It isn't clear how much of Iraq's money the Fed currently holds, but it had $3 billion in overnight deposits from the country's central bank at the end of 2018, according to WSJ. 

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The UK is abandoning its alliance with Trump as the United States 'withdraws from its leadership around the world'

The UK threatens to tear up its defence alliance with the US after Trump's Iran crisis triggers a rupture between the two countries.

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace says that the UK is looking to forge stronger alliances with other international partners which share its priorities.

He says the US risks "[withdrawing] from its leadership" of the world under Trump.
Wallace also reveals Trump threatened to tear up its intelligence-sharing relationship with the UK.

Donald Trump's decision to assassinate Qassem Soleimani has triggered a major rupture between the United States and its historically closest ally in the United Kingdom.

In remarkably outspoken comments, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Sunday that Trump's isolationist foreign policy stance meant the UK was now looking for alternative allies around the world.

"I worry if the United States withdraws from its leadership around the world," he told the Sunday Times.

He added: "The assumptions of 2010 that we were always going to be part of a US coalition is really just not where we are going to be."

The comments came after Boris Johnson's government distanced itself from the attack last week, with the UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab labelling it a "dangerous escalation," which risked a conflict in which "terrorists would be the only winners."


A spokesman for the Prime Minister was also quick to condemn Trump's threats to target Iranian cultural sites as a breach of international law and a potential war crime.

With the Iran crisis ongoing, the UK is now openly threatening to tear up its longstanding defence partnership with the United States.
The US 'withdraws from its leadership' of the world under Trump

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson GettyUK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the Sunday Times that the UK was increasingly looking for alternative international allies,

"Over the last year we've had the US pullout from Syria, the statement by Donald Trump on Iraq where he said Nato should take over and do more in the Middle East," Wallace said.

"The assumptions of 2010 that we were always going to be part of a US coalition is really just not where we are going to be."


Wallace said the UK would need to reduce its dependence on US military assets.

"We are very dependent on American air cover and American intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets. We need to diversify our assets."

Wallace told the paper that the UK would increasingly need to turn to other allies that more closely share the UK's interests.

"Regardless of what the US does... we are going to have to make decisions that allow us to stand with a range of allies, the Five Eyes [intelligence partnership with America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand] and our European allies where our interests converge," he said.
Trump is threatening to cut intelligence ties with the UK
GettyWallace also revealed that the Trump administration had threatened to cut off its intelligence sharing partnership with the UK, if Johnson's government pursued its plan to allow the Chinese telecoms company Huawei a role in Britain's 5G network.

"They have repeatedly said that. They have been clear about that," he told the paper.

"President Trump, the national security adviser. The defence secretary said it personally to me directly when we met at Nato. It's not a secret. They have been consistent. Those things will be taken into account when the government collectively decides to make a decision on it."

He added: "Friends and enemies that are independent make you choose."

The media is ignoring why Trump’s assassination of Suleimani was such an egregious betrayal
By Joshua Holland January 11, 2020
- Commentary

The mainstream debate over Trump’s order to kill Iranian general Qassim Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, has been typically superficial. The primary argument in support of the drone strike is that Suleimani was a bad guy with blood on his hands, which is a juvenile non sequitur. There are any number of military commanders around the world who would fit that description at any given time and, despite his prominence, Suleimani implemented policies rather than formulating them. As Maysam Behravesh wrote at Foreign Affairs, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “is a complex institution with deep roots, making it less than susceptible to ‘leadership decapitation,’” and the killing of Suleimani will only “prompt it to act more ruthlessly and with greater calculation” in the future. Opposition to the assassination has largely centered on the legal questions surrounding Trump’s order, his refusal to notify Congress and the potential for blowback against the United States.

While it’s appropriate and understandable that most analyses have centered on the geopolitical conflict between the US and Iran, there is a tragic irony in the way that Iraq–still traumatized by decades of shock and awe at the hands of Western powers and still struggling to stand up a legitimate, nominally democratic government–has basically been relegated to a backdrop against which tensions between Tehran and Washington play out.

The conversation might be very different if Iraq’s interests, and how the attack may impact its stability and domestic political conflicts, were featured more prominently.

More than a decade ago, in 2007, Raed Jarrar and I reported for AlterNet that the American media were largely ignoring an important story. After years of civil strife between various parliamentary factions, a legislative majority had emerged to demand the withdrawal of US troops from their ostensibly sovereign country. The Bush administration worked with its hand-picked Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki (a previously little-known figure whom they liked in part because of his independence from Iran), to undermine their position, ignoring the constitution that had been adopted after a lengthy and difficult process led by the Bush administration’s occupation government. The international community then ignored Iraqi legislators later that year when a majority of them asked the United Nations not to extend the mandate allowing US troops to remain in the country.

Something similar is playing out today. In the aftermath of the Suleimani assassination, the Iraqi parliament once again passed a resolution demanding the US withdraw troops from the country. It’s worth noting that while there are MPs who support a continuing American military presence in the country for the sake of stability, they voted “present” because Trump’s strike made it politically toxic to vote against the measure.

Following the vote, the current PM, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who resigned last fall but continues to serve in a caretaker role, asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to send a delegation to Iraq tasked with formulating the mechanism for the withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq,” according to the Associated Press, but Pompeo claimed that the effort to expel US troops from their country is an Iranian plot rather than an expression of popular sentiment in Iraq and Trump threatened to levy sanctions on Iraq “like they’ve never seen before” if the Iraqi government follows through. (That threat is especially pernicious given that the last US sanctions regime lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. ) As is consistent with a long pattern, Iraqis are being denied agency by Washington.

On Iraqi PM asking him to start negotiating withdrawal of US troops immediately, Pompeo: “OK, he didn’t quite characterize the conversation correctly.“But…we are happy to continue the conversation with the Iraqis about what the right structure is” while continuing mission. https://t.co/1tyv6FFukV
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 10, 2020

The media is ignoring why Trump’s assassination of Suleimani was such an egregious betrayal

If Iraqis’ perspectives featured into the reporting on Trump’s attack, Americans might come to appreciate how outraged they are that al-Muhandis and other Iraqi nationals were killed in a strike on Iraqi territory. They might understand that Suleimani was in Iraq as a guest of the government on routine business when the strike occurred, and that he was seen as a hero to many Iraqis, who credited him for defeating the feared and almost universally loathed Islamic State.

And as Trita Parsi points out on this week’s podcast, while Suleimani was a brutally efficient commander, he was, contrary to the dominant narrative in the US, a moderating influence on Iraq’s sprawling network of Shia militia groups. Iraq’s loosely organized militias are influenced by Tehran rather than tightly controlled by the Islamic state, and no other member of the Iranian establishment held the same sway with these groups.

Iraqis are now fearful of becoming caught in a crossfire in an escalating conflict between the US and Iran–of Iraqi civilian deaths mounting as the rivals wage a proxy war within their borders. They have reason to be. And many are furious at both the US and Tehran for trampling over their hard-fought sovereignty.

Just 17 years after a US war of choice that was sold to the world on a pack of lies and which led to the death and displacement of millions of Iraqis, it is this reality that most of the discussion here at home simply ignores.

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Blackwater founder Erik Prince pushed Trump allies to assassinate Gen. Suleimani: Mueller documents

January 11, 2020 By Bob Brigham


New details continue to emerge about Donald Trump ordering the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

“Erik Prince, the Blackwater-founder-turned-unofficial-2016-Trump-campaign-adviser, advocated to the campaign years ago for the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, according to a recently disclosed memo that reveals some of the earliest thinking circulated within Donald Trump’s team regarding his approach to Iran,” CNN reported Saturday.

Prince is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos

“Prince made the pitch in a memo emailed to Steve Bannon, then running the conservative website Breitbart, who forwarded the memo to then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski,” CNN explained. “It’s not clear whether the message reached Trump, but Prince’s outreach on foreign policy later got him audiences with future national security adviser Michael Flynn and Donald Trump Jr.”

Prince referred to the Iranian general as “the Heinrich Himmler of the Iranian State” and said it was a “national disgrace” he was not already dead.

However, the assassination may have been just what Suleimani wanted.

Also on Saturday, The New York Times reported on a meeting Suleimani had with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon.

Nasrallah has said he warned Suleimani that his photo was being shown in the news in America, telling him it represented the “media and political preparation for his assassination.”

“But as he recalled, General Suleimani laughed, and said that, in fact, he hoped to die a martyr and asked Mr. Nasrallah to pray that he would,” The Times reported.

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