Thursday, January 30, 2020



MoviePass Owner Collapses Into Liquidation, Leaders Quit


CRIMINAL CAPITALISM, BUSINESS AS USUAL 
  (Bloomberg) -- The owner of MoviePass, which promised theater-goers unlimited admission for $9.95 a month, collapsed into bankruptcy and said it will liquidate.
The chaos that often surrounded the defunct subscription service followed it into bankruptcy court, with papers filed by parent Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc. in Manhattan giving wildly conflicting figures about what it owns and owes. A separate regulatory filing showed the interim chief executive, interim chief financial officer and its remaining board members have all quit.
On top of that, the company is facing probes by the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, New York’s attorney general and four California district attorneys, the bankruptcy petition shows.
MoviePass was a subscription service that let theater-goers see a different film every day for a monthly fee. But skepticism abounded about how the cash-burning business model could be sustained, and as money ran short, frustrated customers were turned away by theaters.
The New York-based company got a hastily arranged short-term loan to resume operations in July 2018 from Hudson Bay Capital Management. Meanwhile, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, two theater chains, launched their own services to rival MoviePass.
Helios & Matheson formally shut down the service last September, citing a failed money-raising effort. The bankruptcy papers show that one of the largest unsecured non-priority creditors is Hudson Bay Master Fund Ltd. with more than $30 million in claims.
In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, a court-appointed official sells off assets to repay creditors. The initial petition shows publicly traded Helios & Matheson listed liabilities of as much as $50 million and assets of no more than $10 million.
MoviePass
But other pages list substantially different numbers -- one shows debts topping $267 million -- along with a disclaimer that it would be too expensive and burdensome to get current valuations of its assets. One tally, which cites intercompany claims, puts total assets close to half a billion dollars.
Interim Chief Executive Officer Parthasarathy Krishnan and interim Chief Financial Officer Robert Damon resigned, the company said. The shares have been effectively wiped out.
The case is Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., 20-10242, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan)
(Updates with pending investigations in the third paragraph)
--With assistance from Steven Church.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.


Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
  • MoviePass' owner, Helios and Matheson Analytics, filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Wednesday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
  • The company's interim CEO, Parthasarathy Krishnan, and CFO, Robert Damon, tendered their resignations upon filing.
Helios and Matheson Analytics, the owner of the defunct movie-ticket subscription startup MoviePass, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Wednesday, according to a filling with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company's interim CEO, Parthasarathy Krishnan, and CFO, Robert Damon, tendered their resignations upon filing. The remaining members of the board of directors — Prathap Singh, Gavriel Ralbag, Muralikrishna Gadiyaram, and Joseph Fried — did so as well. 
The bankruptcy filing comes four months after the MoviePass service shut down. MoviePass also filed for bankruptcy separately on Wednesday. 
Helios and Matheson had lost hundreds of millions of dollars since August of 2017, when it acquired MoviePass and its then-CEO, Ted Farnsworth, dropped the monthly subscription price to see a movie at any theater once a day from $50 a month to $10.
The price change made MoviePass a must-have for movie fans overnight as the company was bombarded with hundreds of thousands of new subscribers. But the company could not find a stable business model, as it had to repay the movie theaters full ticket price on most of the movies its subscribers saw.
The price drop eventually led to downfall of MoviePass — which could never keep up with the demand and, as Business Insider reported in its definitive at the company's rise and fall, went to extreme lengths to keep the company afloat, which several sources said included blocking some subscribers out of their accounts — and Helios and Matheson along with it. The company's stock plummeted and after months of trading below $1, it was delisted from the Nasdaq in February of 2019.
Farnsworth, the mastermind of the $10-a-month plan, stepped down as the CEO of Helios and Matheson soon after MoviePass shut down and submitted an offer to purchase MoviePass and other assets owned by Helios and Matheson, including MoviePass Films and Moviefone.
Helios and Matheson has yet to sell MoviePass or its other assets.

Read our four-month investigation on the rise and fall of MoviePass on Business Insider Prime.




  • A four-month investigation by Business Insider chronicles the rise and fall of the movie-ticket-subscription startup MoviePass.
  • We tell the story of cofounder Stacy Spikes, who sought to shake up the tired movie-theater business by starting a subscription service.
  • Enter Florida businessman Ted Farnsworth, who injected much-needed cash into the company and introduced the risky idea of lowering the monthly subscription price to an impossibly low $9.95 a month.
  • The price change helped MoviePass become a sensation, but it also led to the ousting of Spikes — and the use of questionable tactics to keep the company afloat.
  • This story was published on August 6. Subsequently, MoviePass' parent company announced the service would shut down on September 14.

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    ARACHNOPHOBIA TRIGGER WARNING
    Newly discovered neon-green spider named after the 'Lady Gaga of mathematics'
    By Laura Geggel - Associate Editor 

    The spider is named after Cédric Villani, known as the 'Lady Gaga of mathematics,' who also loves spiders

    The newfound Araniella villanii is an orb-weaver spider, a group that uses math to spin their webs.
    (Image: © Anatoliy Ozernoy)

    A newly discovered neon-green spider that uses math to build its incredibly precise and consistent webs has just been named after the "Lady Gaga of mathematics." The bright-green arachnid is part of the orb-weaver spider family (Araneidae), whose members "tend to build beautiful and architecturally aesthetic webs" that look like they adhere to the golden ratio, study lead researcher Alireza Zamani, a doctoral student in the Biodiversity Unit at the University of Turku in Finland, told Live Science.

    In fact, a close relative — the garden orb-weaver spider (Araneus diadematus) — creates about 30 radial threads (the spoke-like lines extending from the web's middle) that form "an astonishingly constant angle of about 15 degrees, which the spider carefully measures using its front legs," Zamani said.

    Related: Creepy, crawly & incredible: Photos of spiders

    The newfound spider has similarly precise webs, he noted. To highlight the spider's fastidious weaving, Zamani named the newly discovered species Araniella villanii, after French mathematician Cédric Villani — the winner of the 2010 Fields Medal, a prize awarded to mathematicians under the age of 40. Villani is also apparently a huge spider fan.

    "Villani’s love for spiders is evident by the constant presence of a spider brooch on his lapel," Zamani said. "Although he has never explained the reason behind his appreciation of these arachnids, we decided to make a connection between them in real life and name a mathematical spider after the spider-man mathematic!"


    Image 1 of 3
    The black "hairs" on the Araniella villanii spider are innervated, meaning they are sensory organs, much like a cat's whisker. (Image credit: Anatoliy Ozernoy)

    2/3
    The adult female Araniella villanii can grow to be 0.2 inches (6 millimeters) long. That's larger than the 0.1-inch-long (4.4 mm) males. (Image credit: Anatoliy Ozernoy)


    3/3 

    A juvenile spider (Araniella villanii) that researchers just recently described. (Image credit: Anatoliy Ozernoy)

    Granted, the similarities between Villani and the spider end there. Like other members of the Araniella genus, A. villanii eats small flying insects and builds its webs in woods, bushes and low vegetation, where the spiders' green bodies are camouflaged. (It's no wonder the nickname for Araniella is "green cucumber spiders," Zamani said.)

    "Living specimens of Araniella spiders usually have a beautiful, striking green coloration, which is quite rare in spiders," Zamani said. "This is due to certain bile pigments called 'biliverdin,' which makes them very difficult to detect in nature."

    A. villanii also has spiky black hairs covering its body. These hairs are innervated, meaning they can sense the outside world, much like a cat's whiskers.

    This discovery shows just how many unknown species are likely still out there. A. villanii "is known from southwestern Iran, eastern Kazakhstan and northern India, a distribution range covering at least 10 countries, and yet, the species was unknown to science until now," Zamani said.

    The study was published online Jan. 22 in the journal ZooKeys.
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    Originally published on Live Science.
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    New coronavirus may have started in bats. But how did it hop to humans?
    By Rachael Rettner - Senior Writer 

    A new study provides more clues to the virus' origins.

    (Image: © Shutterstock)

    As a new coronavirus spreads in China and around the world, scientists are scrambling to find out exactly where it came from. Now, a new study provides more clues to the virus' origins, and points to bats as the most likely hosts.

    In the study, published today (Jan. 29) in the journal The Lancet, the researchers analyzed 10 genome sequences of the novel coronavirus, dubbed 2019-nCoV, obtained from nine patients in China who were sick with the virus.

    They found that all 10 of the genome sequences were extremely similar — they shared more than 99.98% of the same genetic sequence, the authors said. This suggests the virus made its "jump" to humans very recently, because if that jump had happened long ago, the virus sequences would have differed more, given the fast rate at which viruses tend to mutate and evolve.

    "It is striking that the sequences of 2019-nCoV described here from different patients were almost identical," study co-lead author Weifeng Shi, a professor at the Key Laboratory of Etiology and Epidemiology of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Universities of Shandong Province, affiliated with Shandong First Medical University, said in a statement. "This finding suggests that 2019-nCoV originated from one source within a very short period and was detected relatively rapidly."
    Related: 10 deadly diseases that hopped across species

    Despite emerging in humans only recently, the virus has already infected about 6,000 people and caused 132 deaths in China, while spreading to 15 other countries, according to the World Health Organization. Most of the initial cases occurred in people who worked at or visited the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, China, where a variety of wild animals were sold.

    To learn more about the virus' origins, the researchers compared the 2019-nCoV genetic sequence with those in a library of viral sequences, and found that the most closely related viruses were two coronaviruses that originated in bats; both of those coronaviruses shared 88% of their genetic sequence with that of 2019-nCoV. (When compared with two other coronaviruses known to infect people — SARS and MERS — 2019-nCoV shared about 79% of its genetic sequence with SARS and 50% with MERS.)

    Based on these results, the authors said the 2019-nCoV likely originated in bats. However, no bats were sold at the Huanan seafood market, which suggests that another yet-to-be-identified animal acted as a steppingstone of sorts to transmit the virus to humans.

    "It seems likely that another animal host is acting as an intermediate host between bats and humans," said study co-lead author Guizhen Wu, of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Overall, the outbreak of 2019-nCoV "again highlights the hidden virus reservoir in wild animals and their potential to occasionally spill over into human populations," the authors wrote.

    A previous study suggested snakes, which were sold at the Huanan seafood market, as a possible source of 2019-nCoV. However, some experts have criticized the study, saying it's unclear if coronaviruses can infect snakes. 
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    The sun looks like caramel corn in highest-resolution image ever of our star

     By Nola Taylor Redd - Live Science 
    CLICK HERE TO READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE
    WITH VIDEOS AND LINKS

     The world's largest solar telescope has revealed its first detailed image of the sun.

     The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), the world's largest solar telescope, captured its first image of the sun — the highest-resolution image of our star to date — last month.

     The image begins what scientists hope will be a nearly 50-year study of the Earth's most important star. The new images reveal small magnetic structures in incredible detail. As construction on the 4-meter telescope winds down on the peak of Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui, more of the telescope's instruments will begin to come online, increasing its ability to shed light on the active sun.

     Inouye's unique resolution and sensitivity will allow it to probe the sun's magnetic field for the very first time as it studies the activities that drive space weather in Earth's neighborhood. Charged particles shed from the sun can interfere with Earth's mechanical satellites, power grids and communication infrastructure. The new telescope will also delve into one of the most counterintuitive solar mysteries: why the sun's corona, or outer layer, is hotter than its visible surface.

     "These are the highest-resolution images and movies of the solar surface ever taken," Inouye director Thomas Rimmele said during a news conference on Friday (Jan. 24). "Up to now, we've just seen the tip of the iceberg."

    The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope's first published image of the sun is the highest-resolution image of our star to date. (Image credit: NSO/NSF/AURA)

     "A Swiss Army Knife" 

     Construction began on the Inouye Solar Telescope in 2012. Since then, the telescope has remained on budget and on schedule, according to Dave Boboltz, the program director for the National Science Foundation Astronomy Division.

     The telescope captured the newly released image, which is its first engineering image, on Dec. 10, 2019, but the observatory is not yet complete. Only a single instrument, the Visible Broadband Imager (VBI), was operational at that time. The VBI takes extremely high-resolution images of the solar surface and lower atmosphere.

     The observatory's second instrument, the Visible Spectro-polarimeter (VISP), began operation on Thursday (Jan. 23). Like a prism, VISP splits light into its component colors to provide precise measurements of its characteristics along multiple wavelengths. The remaining instruments will be turned on as construction continues on the 13-story building, with full operations planned to begin in July 2020.

     "We're now in the final sprint of a very long marathon," Rimmele said.

     The first light-images captured are a false color image of the sun. Because the building is still under construction, the images were only processed but not analyzed for scientific results. However, Rimmele said that the magnetic structures that previously appeared in solar images as single bright points are now visible as several smaller structures, providing a hint the new solar telescope's capabilities.

     The next instrument that will be delivered to the summit will be the Cryogenic Near Infrared Spectra-Polarimeter, which will study the solar atmosphere at infrared wavelengths, in order to probe magnetic fields in the sun's corona over a large field of view. Soon after, the Diffraction Limited Near Infrared Spectrom-Polarimeter will arrive, eventually using optical fibers to collect spectral data at every point in a two-dimensional solar image, allowing it to simultaneously measure spatial and spectral information. The final instrument, the Visible Tunable Filter, will capture very high-resolution images of the sun while performing high speed scans of the light that can identify atoms and molecules.

     Inouye is meant to operate for 44 years, which should cover two of the sun's full 22-year solar cycles. Its suite of instruments will likely change over time.

     "The real power in the Inouye Solar Telescope is its flexibility, its upgradability," Boboltz said. "It's like having a Swiss Army Knife to study the sun."
    A close-up of the solar telescope's first published image. (Image credit: NSO/NSF/AURA)

    Solar solver 

     The sun constantly sheds material into space in all directions. This ongoing solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, causing the auroras.

     Other outbursts are more dramatic. Occasionally, the sun will spit out large chunks of plasma and particles known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs); if these reach Earth, they can affect satellites and power grids, with the most powerful causing blackouts. One of the best-known modern catastrophes occurred in 1989 when a geomagnetic storm hit Quebec, sparking a nine-hour blackout across the Canadian territory. Studies have set the cost of a widespread blackout from tens of billions to trillions of dollars, depending on the circumstances.

     Such effects could become more severe. "Our expanding dependence on technology greatly increases our vulnerability to space weather," Boboltz said.

     The effects can be small but devastating. In September 2017, as a trio of hurricanes advanced across the Caribbean, solar flares caused multiple radio blackouts on the sunlit side of Earth. Multiple radio blackouts halted communications during the dangerous time, sometimes for as long as 8 hours.

     "A naturally occurring event on Earth and a naturally event on the sun, when combined, represent a much bigger threat to our society," National Science Foundation Director Valentin Pillet said during the news conference.
    An infographic shows the scale of the features captured in the newly released image. (Image credit: NSO/NSF/AURA)

     The Inouye telescope should allow astronomers to learn more about what drives space weather. This understanding may help speed predictions for the most extreme events, allowing a faster response during dangerous situations.

     Inouye will not act alone to accomplish this. "To really understand the drivers and the impact of space weather, we need to use two complementary approaches," Pillet said. Inouye will handle the first, making in-depth observations of the magnetic surface of the sun.

     The second approach requires sending spacecraft close to the sun.

     NASA's Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 and will get within 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) at its closest approach to the star. In February, NASA and the European Space Agency will launch the Solar Orbiter, a mission dedicated to studying the sun's heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles blown into space by the solar wind. 

     The trio are "very complementary in different ways," Pillet said. While Inouye will provide a detailed look at the sun's magnetic field, the space missions will place its observations in context with solar activity and solar weather.

     Together, "they will be at the forefront of discovery for the next half century," Pillet said. "It really is a great time to be a solar astronomer," he said.

     "House of the sun" 

     Haleakala, Hawaiian for "House of the Sun," seems like the ideal setting for a solar telescope. World famous for its spectacular sunrises, the dormant volcano receives about 15 minutes more daylight than the sea-level portion of the island of Maui.

     According to Hawaiian tradition, the volcano took its name from a trick played on the sun by the demi-god Maui. Maui's mother complained that the sun sped across the sky so fast that her cloth could not dry. The trickster climbed to the top of the mountain and lassoed the sun, refusing to release it until the sun agreed to slow down. To secure his release, the sun agreed to travel more slowly for six months of the year.

     The spiritual significance of Hawaiian peaks has wreaked havoc for other telescopes. Protests about the growing astronomical presence on Mauna Kea have halted construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope. Inouye didn't escape opposition. In 2015 and 2017, hundreds of protesters gathered to block construction vehicles from traveling to the top of the peak.

     Since then, the telescope's officials have met twice a year with a working group of native Hawaiians, whom they intend to bring to see the finished telescope. A new Science Support Center was also built at the base of the mountain to provide off-site support, and the peak remains open to native Hawaiians who wish to practice their religion on its slopes.

     The National Solar Observatory has also put together a set of lesson plans for middle school teachers that highlight Hawaii's long history of astronomy that was presented to local teachers in 2019.

     "We've been able to smooth over a lot of that contention," Boboltz said.
    A million geysers of plasma spout from the sun, and scientists may finally know why 
    NASA eyes missions to track space weather threats with small satellites 
    See the sun flip out in wild new satellite view 

    l
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    Trove of Jewish artifacts discovered beneath a synagogue destroyed by Nazis during WWII

    Restorers discovered numerous objects concealed under the synagogue floor.

    By Mindy Weisberger - Senior Writer 

    Inscriptions on religious artifacts could reveal 
    the identities of Jewish people who donated 
    the objects to the synagogue.
    (Image: © Michał Wojenka)


    A historic synagogue near Kraków, Poland, was mostly destroyed by Nazis during World War II, but a secret hoard of precious ritual objects that was hidden there remained undetected and undisturbed — until now.

    Recently, restorers at the Old Synagogue, an 18th-century temple in Wieliczka, Poland, unexpectedly found a cache of Jewish artifacts and other silver items in a large, wooden crate that had been concealed under the floor. They uncovered the crate while digging a hole to test the soundness of the building's foundation, the Jewish Chronicle reported.

    The box — which measures about 3 feet high, 2 feet wide and 4 feet long (80 by 70 by 130 centimeters) — was crammed with around 350 objects, including a silver goblet with flowery designs, bronze vases inscribed with Hebrew writing and silver-plated candlesticks, according to the Chronicle.

    Also among the artifacts were two menorahs (nine-armed candelabras that are lit during Hanukkah), two rimonim (decorative ornaments that crown a Torah scroll) and an ornate silver plaque that hung at the front of a Torah, Polish news outlet Gazeta Wyborcza reported. On the plaque were raised images of lions on pillars holding a crown over the Ten Commandments, and an attached silver chain led to a yad, a ritual pointer used for reading the Torah.

    Time had rotted the wooden frame of the hidden box, but the objects inside, packed tightly together, were in good condition. Most of them are thought to date to the 19th century and would have been used in religious rituals, though there were some unusual exceptions: 18 badges from military caps of infantry officers in the Austro-Hungarian army. The badges bore the initials of Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph, who ruled from 1848 until 1916, according to Gazeta Wyborcza.

    Ritual objects were packed closely together in a wooden crate.
    (Image credit: Michał Wojenka)
    One possible explanation is that military caps were used to line the box and protect the ritual objects at the time when they were packed up and buried. But the fabric later rotted away, leaving only the badges behind, Michał Wojenka, a researcher with the Jagiellonian University Institute of Archaeology and leader of the investigation of the artifacts, told Gazeta Wyborcza.

    When the box was hidden and who concealed it remain unknown. However, further investigation of the religious artifacts could reveal clues about individuals in Wieliczka's Jewish community, as ritual objects are often inscribed with the names of the people who donated them, according to the Chronicle.

    Approximately 1,135 Jews lived in Wieliczka according to records from the 1920s, but most of the community was deported and murdered during World War II, and few who survived returned to the city after the war ended, the Chronicle reported.
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    AP Explains: How climate change feeds Africa locust invasion

    By CARA ANNA January 23, 2020   






         

    JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Locusts by the millions are nibbling their way across a large part of Africa in the worst outbreak some places have seen in 70 years. Is this another effect of a changing climate? Yes, researchers say. An unprecedented food security crisis may be the result.
    The locusts “reproduce rapidly and, if left unchecked, their current numbers could grow 500 times by June,” the United Nations says.
    Here’s a look at what’s going on and where the voracious insects might be going next.
    A LOCUST OUTBREAK? WHAT’S THAT LIKE?
    The swarms of desert locusts hang like shimmering dark clouds on the horizon as they scour the countryside in what are already some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, including Somalia. Roughly the length of a finger, the whirring insects in huge numbers have destroyed hundreds of square kilometers (miles) of vegetation and forced people in some areas to bodily wade through them.
    “A typical desert locust swarm can contain up to 150 million locusts per square kilometer,” the East African regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, has said. “Swarms migrate with the wind and can cover 100 to 150 kilometers (62 to 93 miles) in a day. An average swarm can destroy as much food crops in a day as is sufficient to feed 2,500 people.”
    Alarm and exasperation mix with curiosity as people try to shoo the locusts away by shouting, waving pieces of clothing or banging on sheets of corrugated metal. In rural Kenya, men dashed along a path waving leafy branches at the insects and laughing in astonishment.
    “These things here, they came to us from Ethiopia and are destroying everything along the way including our farm,” said Esther Ndanu in the Kenyan village of Ngomeni. “We want the government to move very quickly to bring the plane to spray them with the medicine that can kill them, otherwise they will destroy everything.”
    “I am seeing a catastrophe,” local official Johnson Mutua Kanandu said.
    WHERE IS THIS HAPPENING?
    An “extremely dangerous increase” in locust swarm activity has been reported in Kenya, East Africa’s economic hub, regional authorities reported last week. One swarm measured 60 kilometers (37 miles) long by 40 kilometers (25 miles) wide in the country’s northeast, IGAD said.
    Kenya hasn’t seen a locust outbreak like this in 70 years, Rosanne Marchesich, emergency response leader with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said Wednesday.
    “It’s the worst that we’ve seen in Ethiopia and in Somalia in 25 years,” she added, noting extensive damage to crops. Millions of people in both countries already cope with the constant risk of drought or flooding, as well as deadly unrest in Ethiopia and extremist attacks in Somalia.
    Now South Sudan, struggling to emerge from a civil war, and Uganda are bracing for the locusts’ arrival.
    “Uganda has not had to deal with a locust infestation since the ’60s so there is concern about the ability for experts on the ground to be able to deal with it without external support,” Marchesich said. “And in a country like South Sudan, already 47% of the population is food insecure.”
    This week Uganda’s prime minister told agriculture authorities that “this is an emergency and all agencies must be on the alert,” the government-controlled New Vision newspaper reported.
    HOW IS CLIMATE CHANGE INVOLVED?
    Heavy rains in East Africa made 2019 one of the region’s wettest years on record, said Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker. He blamed rapidly warming waters in the Indian Ocean off Africa’s eastern coast, which also spawned an unusual number of strong tropical cyclones off Africa last year.
    Heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures are favorable conditions for locust breeding and in this case the conditions have become “exceptional,” he said.
    Even now rainfall continues in some parts of the vast region. The greenery that springs up keeps the locusts fuelled.
    “Countries are trying to prepare but this took them by surprise,” Babiker said.
    The further increase in locust swarms could last until June as favorable breeding conditions continue, IGAD has said. But Babiker said it is hard to say for sure when this outbreak will be over.
    “This has become psychologically pressurizing,” he said, delicately.
    WHAT CAN BE DONE?
    Major locust outbreaks can be devastating. One between 2003 and 2005 cost more than $500 million to control across 20 countries in northern Africa, the FAO has said. It caused more than $2.5 billion in harvest losses.
    To help prevent and control outbreaks, authorities analyze satellite images, stockpile pesticides and conduct aerial spraying. In Ethiopia, officials have said they deployed four small planes to help fight the invasion.
    The U.N. on Wednesday allocated $10 million for aerial spraying, with humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock saying families across the region “now face the prospect of watching as their crops are destroyed before their eyes.”
    ___
    Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda contributed.

    PHOTO ESSAY

    Worst Locust Swarms in 

    Decades Hit East Africa

    Hundreds of millions of desert locusts are swarming in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia—some of the biggest numbers seen in more than 25 years. Unusually wet weather in the area toward the end of 2019 has contributed to the massive outbreak, driving an explosion of locusts that are destroying crops and threatening food security across the region. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is requesting international assistance to combat the swarms, and warning of the potential for massive growth if they are left unchecked.

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    NTSB: Kobe Bryant's chopper came within feet of clearing hillside
     IF IT HAD THIS SAFETY EQUIPMENT IT MAY HAVE MADE IT

    Homendy said the NTSB previously recommended that terrain awareness and warning systems be installed on all passenger-carrying helicopters in the United States, but the Federal Aviation Administration never followed up on that recommendation. The chopper carrying the group with Bryant did not have the safety feature on board.

    By Ed Adamczyk

    Smoke rises from the wreckage of a passenger helicopter that was carrying
     basketball star Kobe Bryant and seven others on Sunday, in Calabasas, 
    Calif. Photo by John McCoy/UPI | License Photo

    Jan. 29 (UPI) -- The helicopter carrying basketball icon Kobe Bryant, his teenage daughter and seven others came within a matter of feet of clearing a fast-approaching hill when it crashed in Southern California last weekend, the National Transportation Safety Board said in an investigation update.

    The NTSB said Tuesday night preliminary information indicates the Sikorsky S-76 chopper descended rapidly before impact, and crashed in one piece on the hillside in Calabasas, Calif., about 25 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

    The accident, the agency noted, occurred at about 1,085 feet above sea level and missed the top of the hill by as few as 20 to 30 feet. Pieces of the chartered helicopter were scattered across 600 feet of terrain.

    "The descent rate for the helicopter was over 2,000 feet a minute, so we know that this was a high energy impact crash," NTSB spokeswoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters."This is a pretty steep descent at high speed. So it wouldn't be a normal landing speed.

    "It was a pretty devastating accident scene."
    Investigators are closely looking into adverse weather conditions in the area when the helicopter crashed. A layer of fog was so thick that it grounded choppers from the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department that morning.

    Bryant, 41, his daughter Gianna, six acquaintances and the chopper pilot died in the crash on Sunday. Their bodies were recovered and identified earlier this week.

    Homendy said the NTSB previously recommended that terrain awareness and warning systems be installed on all passenger-carrying helicopters in the United States, but the Federal Aviation Administration never followed up on that recommendation. The chopper carrying the group with Bryant did not have the safety feature on board.

    Homendy also said pilot Ara Zobyan requested to be tracked by ground controllers but the helicopter was flying too low for it to be seen on radar.

    "When ATC asked the pilot what he planned to do, there was no reply," she said.

    The NTSB said a first-stage investigative report on the crash will be released within the next 10 days, and a full report in 12 to 18 months



    Kobe Bryant’s death throws spotlight on crash-warning system

    LIKE THE BOEING 737 MAX SAFETY DEVICES ARE AN 'OPTION'
    SAFETY SHOULD NEVER BE A COST CUTTING OR BOTTOM LINE  OPTION


    By BERNARD CONDON and JUSTIN PRITCHARD

    1 of 11
    Fans pay respect at a memorial for Kobe Bryant near Staples Center Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, in Los Angeles. Bryant, the 18-time NBA All-Star who won five championships and became one of the greatest basketball players of his generation during a 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, died in a helicopter crash Sunday. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The crash that killed nine people including Kobe Bryant has led to calls for crash-warning systems to be installed in more helicopters, but regulators and pilots worry that the instrument can trigger too many alarms and prove distracting.

    “Another warning system screaming at you isn’t going to help,” said Brian Alexander, a helicopter pilot and aviation lawyer. “You don’t want to inundate the pilot.”

    All nine people killed in the crash were officially identified as of Wednesday night, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner. The victims had previously been identified publicly by friends and family.

    The death of the basketball star Sunday has highlighted the debate over the merits of what’s known as the Terrain Awareness and Warning System, or TAWS, which would have sounded a voice alarm if the aircraft was in danger of hitting the ground or some object, such as a tower or a wire.

    It is required in medical helicopters but not in commercial ones like the one used by Bryant.

    National Transportation Safety Board officials say it is too early to tell whether a TAWS on Bryant’s Sikorsky helicopter could have prevented the crash. But they think it should have been installed on the aircraft, and they criticized federal regulators for not carrying out the NTSB’s recommendation over a decade ago to mandate such equipment on helicopters with six or more passenger seats.

    While some pilots believe TAWS is unnecessary and refer to its warnings as “nuisance alarms,” Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the NTSB, said there is “no reasonable excuse” for the system not to be installed on all choppers.

    “From a safety perspective, you want all the safety enhancements that are available,” he said. “The trade-off is worth it.”

    The NTSB recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration require the system after a Sikorsky S-76A carrying workers to an offshore drilling ship, crashed in the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston, Texas, killing all 10 people aboard in 2004. Ten years later, the FAA mandated such systems on air ambulances only.

    FAA officials had questioned the value of such technology on helicopters, which tend to fly close to buildings and the ground and could trigger too many alarms.

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    The pilot in Sunday’s crash, Ara Zobayan, had been climbing out of the clouds when the chartered aircraft went into a sudden and terrifying 1,200-foot (366-meter) descent that lasted nearly a minute, investigators said Tuesday. It slammed into a fog-shrouded hillside, scattering debris more than 500 feet (150 meters).

    Bill English, investigator in charge of the NTSB’s Major Investigations Division, said it was not clear yet whether “TAWS and this scenario are related to each other.”

    Pilot Bernard Raysor said the systems have improved over the years so that they don’t go off all the time, and one of them may have saved him from a crash as he and another pilot were trying to land on a hospital helipad in Little Rock, Arkansas, over a decade ago.

    “The TAWS alert went off: ‘Obstacle! Pull up! Obstacle! Pull up!’” he recalled. “We looked at each other like `What is this got to be?’” Then he looked around and saw it: a radio tower whose lights had gone out.

    “I can’t say we would have hit it, but it was closer than comfortable,” he said.

    Mike Sagely, a former military pilot with 35 years of helicopter flying experience who uses TAWS in his current work in the Los Angeles area, said that while he likes having the system, he agreed that the frequency of audible warnings can make some pilots tune out.

    “People, they get complacent with it because they hear it all the time,” Sagely said. “They get so used to hearing it that when they do hear it, and they might even be in a dangerous profile, they may not react to it.”

    He described it as helpful to have, but not something to rely on too heavily. “It is another tool, another piece of equipment that should assist you.”

    The audible warning can be muted or dialed down to be less frequent, he said. This would leave the display screen, which depicts terrain or objects in coded colors. A mountain or radio tower is shown in red if the helicopter is dangerously close.

    As for the NTSB’s recommendations that TAWS be mandatory, Sagely said: “It absolutely has a role. To make it mandatory with the idea that somehow it’s going to stop some of these accidents, I would hesitate to say that, I would call that wishful thinking. Will it stop some accidents, especially in younger pilots? I think that’s probably a reasonable statement.”

    ___

    Condon reported from New York.    Kobe Bryant’s helicopter not equipped with vital warning system

    January 29, 2020 By Agence France-Presse

    The helicopter that crashed into a Los Angeles hillside killing NBA legend Kobe Bryant and eight others, was not equipped with vital software that alerts pilots when aircraft are too close to the ground, officials said.

    The terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS), which is designed to send a warning when a collision appears imminent, had not been installed on Bryant’s Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, the National Transport Safety Board’s (NTSB) Jennifer Homendy said.

    “Certainly, TAWS could have helped,” NBC News reported Homendy as saying, adding that she could not conclude that its use would have prevented the crash.

    The warning system is not mandatory on helicopters under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, despite the NTSB recommending that it be made so on all helicopters with six or more passenger seats, following a 2004 crash    .


    Medical examiners identified the body of Lakers star Bryant after recovering the remains of all nine of those who died in the crash near LA, officials said Tuesday.

    Bryant’s body was officially identified along with three others using fingerprints, two days after their helicopter crashed into a rugged hillside northwest of the city.

    Meanwhile federal investigators finished their inspection of the crash site, handing it over to local authorities.

    Images showed investigators flying drones over the accident site and manually combing through twisted, charred wreckage, which was scattered over a wide area.

    Officials also used drones to replicate the helicopter’s final, fateful flight path, Homendy said.

    Earlier Tuesday, the coroner’s office confirmed all nine bodies have been retrieved from the site and “transported to the department’s forensic science center” for examination.


    The bodies of pilot Ara Zobayan, baseball coach John Altobelli and Sarah Chester have also been identified.

    The remaining five — including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna — have not yet been officially identified.

    The death of Bryant — a five-time NBA champion for the LA Lakers and double Olympic gold medalist — has shocked the world, with tributes continuing to pour in Tuesday.

    – ‘Pretty devastating’ –

    Bryant, 41, was traveling with daughter Gianna and seven other passengers and crew when the Sikorsky S-76 slammed into a hillside in thick fog.

    The helicopter was headed to Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, where his daughter was set to play.

    Homendy described the accident as a “high energy impact crash”.

    Investigators have now airlifted the helicopter’s wreckage onto trucks, which then transported it to a secure location for further examination.

    An iPad, cellphone and maintenance records were found among the wreckage, along with “everything we would expect would be on the aircraft,” said Homendy.

    She told journalists that the probable cause for the accident may not be confirmed for 12-18 months, when a final report will be issued.

    A preliminary, fact-based report is expected in 10 days.

    – ‘Heartbroken and devastated’ –

    The other passengers on the flight — who have not yet been officially identified — have been named as Altobelli’s wife Keri, and their daughter Alyssa, who played basketball at the same club as Gianna.

    Christina Mauser, an assistant coach of the Mamba girls’ basketball team, was also killed along with Payton Chester, Sarah’s daughter.

    Mourning fans Tuesday placed bouquets of flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the gated community in Newport Beach, south of Los Angeles, where the late NBA great lived.

    The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said a tribute to Bryant would be included in next month’s Oscars ceremony.

    The star, who won an Academy Award in 2018 for animated short film “Dear Basketball,” had been honored with a moment’s silence at the Oscars nominees’ luncheon on Monday.

    A petition for the NBA logo to be redesigned with Bryant’s likeness had reached two million signatures by Tuesday afternoon.

    Basketball superstar LeBron James said he was “heartbroken and devastated” over Bryant’s death in an emotional Instagram post, while also vowing to continue his friend’s championship legacy with the Lakers.

    Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic donned a jersey bearing Bryant’s initials and shirt numbers at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne.

    With the crash site becoming a pilgrimage point for fans, police on horseback and all-terrain vehicles have been brought in to secure the area.

    © 2020 AFP


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    Syrian forces recapture key opposition stronghold near Idlib

    THANK YOU TRUMP, SAYS BASHIR AL ASSAD 

    By Clyde Hughes

    A bulldozer removes debris from a bombed hospital near Maaret al-Numan, 
    Syria. Government troops have recaptured the city, which had been a key 
    opposition stronghold, officials said Wednesday. 
    File Photo by Omar Haj Kadour/ UPI | License Photo

    Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Syrian government forces captured the key opposition stronghold of Maaret al-Numan near Idlib Wednesday, giving President Bashar al-Assad's troops an important passage from Damascus to Aleppo.

    Thousands had left the city after months of bombings, and Maaret al-Numan was seen as a breeding ground for anti-government protests before the attacks.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian forces attacked Maaret al-Numan on three sides under the protection of intensive aerial bombardment. The organization said its activists documented 137 opposition fighters dead since the offensive started last week. 

    The fighting also killed more than 100 regime soldiers and supporters.Syria's General Command of the Army and Armed Forces said it had liberated the city and numerous other small villages and towns along the Idlib countryside "from terrorism."

     Officials said Syria's Army "continues to carry out its constitutional, national and ethical duties in pursuing what is left of armed terrorist organizations till clearing all the Syrian territories from terrorism."

    RELATED Trump, Erdogan talk Libya cease-fire, Syria fighting in phone call

    "There is no going back to Maarat al-Numan this time," city council head Bilal Zikra said. "The regime fully besieged the city after I left. There are no people left in the city at all; the regime has spared no shells, rockets or any kind of weapon in targeting it."

    Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country has taken in scores of Syrian refugees, said Wednesday the battles violate agreements it negotiated with Russia and warned that Turkey's military may now get involved.

    "Unfortunately, Russia hasn't abided by either the Astana or Sochi agreements," Erdogan said. "We have waited until now, but from this point, we are going to take our own actions. This is not at threat, but our expectation is that Russia will give the regime the necessary warning."

    ---30---
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    Lev Parnas directly implicates Lindsey Graham in Ukraine plot: ‘He was in the loop’

    INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW
    WHO WAS GRAHAM MEETING IN THE MEN'S ROOM

    January 30, 2020 By Travis Gettys


    An indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani says Sen. Lindsey Graham was “in the loop” in the scheme to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden.

    Lev Parnas, a Ukraine-born businessman charged with campaign finance violations, told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°” that Graham has a personal interest in keeping witness testimony out of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

    “Sen. Lindsey Graham I haven’t had any contact with, but because of my relationship with Rudy Giuliani, I have a lot of information about his dealings,” Parnas said. “It was, like, surreal to watch Lindsey Graham up there, sit there — he’s out there talking about all the stuff, that this is a sham, that this should go away.”

    “At the end of the day,” Parnas added, “he was in the loop just like everybody else. He (had) a very good relationship with Rudy Giuliani, he was aware of what was going on going back to at least 2018, maybe even earlier. If you recall, he was the one Rudy Giuliani was supposed to bring Viktor Shokin to when the visa got denied, and I think he was even, if you check the records, involved in getting the request for the visa somehow.”

    Parnas’ attorney Joseph Bondy released letters Wednesday signed by a Ukraine-born U.S. citizen Michael Guralnik to both Graham and Sigal Mandelker, then a top official at the U.S. Treasury Department pushing for sanctions against various Ukrainian political and business leaders.

    A month or so later Giuliani tried to help Shokin, a former top prosecutor in Ukraine regarded as corrupt by the previous administration and U.S. allies, obtain a visa to meet with Graham in the U.S.

    “Sen. Graham was involved even before I got involved with Mayor Giuliani, so he had to have been in the loop and had to have known what was going on,” Parnas said. “I was with Giuliani every day, that was what was happening.”

    Parnas told CNN he was “1 million percent” sure that Graham was aware of his and Giuliani’s efforts to press Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden.

    “Rudy told me not once but on several occasions that he spoke to Lindsey Graham about the situation, that Lindsey was always aware,” he said. “I don’t know how deeply aware, I didn’t speak to Lindsey Graham, I don’t have text messages with him, we didn’t interact, so I can only speak from what Rudy told me.”

    Parnas claims he donated to Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who recently cut an ad against Trump’s impeachment, and various super PACs associated with GOP senators, as well as campaigning with Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN).


    Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, claims GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham "was in the loop" about their efforts in Ukraine to uncover dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. https://t.co/rBb1nC4vRG pic.twitter.com/lEgPB8gUQ7

    — Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) January 30, 2020


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