Lab leak of COVID-19 'extremely unlikely' according to draft of WHO report

IGNORE AMERICAN IMPERIALIST PAPER TIGER ACCUSATIONS AGAINST CHINA

By KEN MORITSUGU, Associated Press

Monday, March 29, 2021 

BEIJING (AP) -- A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is "extremely unlikely," according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press.

The findings were largely as expected and left many questions unanswered, but the report provided in-depth detail on the reasoning behind the team's conclusions. The researchers proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis.

The report's release has been repeatedly delayed, raising questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew the conclusions to prevent blame for the pandemic falling on China. A World Health Organization official said late last week that he expected it would be ready for release "in the next few days."

The AP received what appeared to be a near-final version on Monday from a Geneva-based diplomat from a WHO-member country. It wasn't clear whether the report might still be changed prior to its release. The diplomat did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to release it ahead of publication.

WATCH: Duke University experts talk about origins of COVID-19 virus

The researchers listed four scenarios in order of likelihood for the emergence of the virus named SARS-CoV-2. Topping the list was transmission through a second animal, which they said was likely to very likely. They evaluated direct spread from bats to humans as likely, and said that spread through "cold-chain" food products was possible but not likely.

The closest relative of the virus that causes COVID-19 has been found in bats, which are known to carry coronaviruses. However, the report says that "the evolutionary distance between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated to be several decades, suggesting a missing link."


It said highly similar viruses have been found in pangolins, but also noted that mink and cats are susceptible to the COVID virus, which suggests they could be carriers.

The report is based largely on a visit by a WHO team of international experts to Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected, from mid-January to mid-February.

Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO expert who led the Wuhan mission, said Friday that the report had been finalized and was being fact-checked and translated.

"I expect that in the next few days, that whole process will be completed and we will be able to release it publicly," he said.

The draft report is inconclusive on whether the outbreak started at a Wuhan seafood market that had one of the earliest clusters of cases in December 2019.


The discovery of other cases before the Huanan market outbreak suggests it may have started elsewhere. But the report notes there could have been milder cases that went undetected and that could be a link between the market and earlier cases.

"No firm conclusion therefore about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak, or how the infection was introduced into the market, can currently be drawn," the report says.

As the pandemic spread globally, China found samples of the virus on the packaging of frozen food coming into the country and, in some cases, have tracked localized outbreaks to them.

The report said that the cold chain, as it is known, can be a driver of long-distance virus spread but was skeptical it could have triggered the outbreak. The report says the risk is lower than through human-to-human respiratory infection, and most experts agree.

"While there is some evidence for possible reintroduction of SARS-CoV-2 through handling of imported contaminated frozen products in China since the initial pandemic wave, this would be extraordinary in 2019 where the virus was not widely circulating," the study said.

 In Photos: ‘Super Worm Moon,’ 2021’s First Of Four Supermoons, Dazzles Sky-Watchers Across The World 

What is a supermoon? It’s a full Moon that coincides (or thereabouts) with the Moon’s perigee—the closest point in the Moon’s monthly orbit of Earth. It’s a result of the Moon’s orbit being slightly elliptical, which make the full Moon sometimes looks slightly larger. 

There is no official definition of what a supermoon technically is, and is not, but astronomer Fred Espenak defines a supermoon as a full Moon at perigee occurring “within 90% of its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit.” Since it was 362,170 km from Earth, that makes the “Worm Moon” a supermoon. However, other definitions preclude it from being called a supermoon. 

Either way, there are three more superman’s coming up—April 27’s “Super Pink Moon”, May 26’s “Super Flower Moon” (the closest and largest full Moon of 2021) and June 24’s “Super Strawberry Moon.”

FOR MORE PHOTOS CLICK ON HEADLINE

International investigation discovers bald eagles' killer

Invasive water plant becomes breeding ground for a lethal cyanobacteria

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Research News

 

IMAGE: A BALD EAGLE'S DROOPED WINGS SHOW SIGNS OF BRAIN INFECTION CAUSED BY THE BACTERIA AETOKTHONOS HYDRILLICOLA, WHICH GROWS ON THE LEAVES OF THE INVASIVE HYDRILLA PLANT IN HUMAN-MADE LAKES.... view more 

CREDIT: UGA

The alarm bells began ringing when dozens of eagles were found dead near an Arkansas lake.

Their deaths--and, later, the deaths of other waterfowl, amphibians and fish--were the result of a neurological disease that caused holes to form in the white matter of their brains. Field and laboratory research over nearly three decades has established the primary clues needed to solve this wildlife mystery: Eagle and waterfowl deaths occur in late fall and winter within reservoirs with excess invasive aquatic weeds, and birds can die within five days after arrival.

But until recently, the toxin that caused the disease, vacuolar myelinopathy, was unknown.

Now, after years spent identifying a new toxic blue-green algal (cyanobacteria) species and isolating the toxic compound, an interdisciplinary research group from the University of Georgia and international collaborators have confirmed the structure of this toxin. The results were recently published in the journal Science.

The cyanobacteria grows on the leaves of an invasive water plant, Hydrilla verticillata, under specific conditions: in manmade lakes when bromide is present.

The bacteria--and animal deaths from the disease it causes--has been documented in watersheds across the southeastern United States. This is why it's important for anyone in the outdoors--anglers, hunters, birdwatchers and more--to be aware of the signs of this neurological infection and avoid consuming infected animals.

"We want people to recognize it before taking birds or fish from these lakes," said Susan Wilde, an associate professor of aquatic science at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources who first discovered the cyanobacteria. In some animals, such as birds, turtles, salamanders and even a beaver, the disease manifests as erratic movements or convulsions. Anglers must be even more cautious, though, as it's impossible to detect toxin in fish without obvious symptoms.

"For fish, it's tough. I would avoid eating fish with lesions or some sort of deformities; we do see affected fish with slow swimming speeds, but anglers won't be able to see that," added Wilde. "We want people to know the lakes where this disease has been documented and to use caution in consuming birds and fish from these lakes."

Wilde and Warnell graduate students studying the cyanobacteria have compiled maps and a list of affected watersheds.

The most recent study details new mapping of the bacteria's genome, a final piece in the puzzle to understand how it develops and survives. Wilde and others have been studying the cyanobacteria since 2001, when bald eagles began dying in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The following decades saw the discovery of the cyanobacteria itself, Aetokthonos hydrillicola (Latin for "eagle killer that grows on Hydrilla"), and connections made between the invasive aquatic plant and the animals that eat it.

But until recently, said professor Timo Niedermeyer of the Institute of Pharmacy at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany, the origin of the brain-decimating disease was a mystery.

Niedermeyer, who has worked with cyanobacteria natural products for years, wanted to help put the pieces together. He contacted Wilde and offered to collaborate. Samples of Hydrilla collected in the field were sent to him, and his lab cultivated the cyanobacteria in the laboratory and sent them back to UGA for further testing. But the tests came back negative: The cyanobacteria from the lab did not induce the disease.

"It's not just the birds that were going crazy, we were too. We wanted to figure this out," said Niedermeyer. Once again, he had colonized leaves sent to him from UGA.

Steffen Breinlinger, a doctoral student in his research group, then used a new imaging mass spectrometer to investigate the composition on the surface of the plant's leaf, molecule by molecule. He discovered a new substance that only occurs on the leaves where the cyanobacteria grows but is not produced in the cyanobacteria cultures. His investigations into the chemical structure of the isolated molecule revealed five bromine atoms.

"The structure is really spectacular," said Breinlinger. The properties are unusual for a molecule formed by cyanobacteria, and they provide an explanation for why the toxin did not form under laboratory conditions, where bromide isn't present. "We then added bromide to our lab cultures, and the cyanobacteria started producing the toxin."

After almost a decade of testing the isolated molecule and collaboration between the labs in Germany and Georgia, they had their proof: the molecule does trigger vacuolar myelinopathy. The researchers call their discovery aetokthonotoxin, "poison that kills the eagle."

"Finally, we did not only catch the murderer, but we also identified the weapon the cyanobacteria used to kill those eagles," said Wilde.

The neurological disease has not yet occurred in Europe, and no instance of the toxin-forming cyanobacterium has been reported. Humans are not yet known to be affected by vacuolar myelinopathy, although the study did successfully affect chickens with the toxin, and Wilde continues to test fish and waterfowl such as ducks and coots for the disease.

CENOBITES NOT CYANOBACTERIA

\

#ECOCIDE

Indonesia Pertamina Aims to Restart Refinery in Days After Blaze



BY BERNADETTE CHRISTINA and Fransiska Nangoy

 By Reuters, Wire Service Content March 28, 2021

JAKARTA (Reuters) -Indonesian state oil company Pertamina said on Monday it hoped to restore operations at its Balongan oil refinery in West Java in four or five days, as firefighters worked to extinguish a massive blaze that broke out overnight, injuring six people.

Pertamina shut the plant and evacuated about 950 nearby residents, with videos shared on social media showing huge flames engulfing the 125,000 barrels per day facility, while a large explosion could be heard.

Pertamina chief executive Nicke Widyawati told reporters the fire was concentrated in the refinery's storage tanks and there had been no impact on the processing plant.

"The main equipment at the refinery is not affected," she said. "We hope the plant can be operational again soon after we put out the fire so there are no disruptions to supply."

Separately, Nicke told local media that only four storage tanks were affected, out of the total 72 tanks in Balongan with total capacity of 1.35 million kilo litres.

Efforts to estinguish the blaze were continuing, she said, adding that the fire had been contained to a small area and she's optimistic it will be put out soon.

Pertamina expects operations can be restored in four to five days, Pertamina director Mulyono said.

The fire started just after midnight during bad weather, Pertamina said, although the cause was currently unknown.

Six people were being treated in hospital for burns, a company statement said. No Pertamina staff were hurt.



FUEL STOCK "SECURE"

Pertamina's Mulyono said the company had "secure" levels of fuels stocks to supply Indonesia, including for the upcoming Islamic holidays of Eid Al-Fitr.

"There is no need for panic because stock is abundant. This is of course because demand conditions are not fully normal yet, so the stock is still very high," Mulyono said.

Balongan, one of Pertamina's biggest refineries, supplies fuel to Jakarta and the western regions of Java island.

Pertamina will use fuel from its refineries in Cilacap and Tuban to help provide supplies to Jakarta while Balongan is shut, Mulyono added.

Television footage earlier showed a massive column of black smoke rising from the site, which is about 225 km (140 miles) east of the capital Jakarta.

Ahmad Dofiri, West Java police chief told local media that police suspected there was a leak at the site prior to the fire.

"Initial information we received is that there was a leak at the plant. While the leak was being handled, the lightning struck," Dofiri said, adding that police are looking into what ignited the fire.

Nicke said investigation is still ongoing.

A nearby resident told Metro TV she was awoken by a pungent smell of oil fumes and saw lightning strikes in the sky.

"We smelled a strong fuel scent first, so strong that my nose hurt, while we heard lightning strikes," said Susi, who gave only one name

"Suddenly the sky was orange," she said.

The refinery is expected to receive about 600,000 barrels of Rabi crude from Gabon onboard tanker Aristodimos on April 10, shipping data on Refinitiv Eikon showed.


(Additional reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Florence Tan; Editing by Ed Davies, Lincoln Feast, Richard Pullin and Louise Heavens)

Forests on caffeine: coffee waste can boost forest recovery

BRITISH ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Research News

 

IMAGE: COFFEE PULP DELIVERY (DAY 1) view more 

CREDIT: REBECCA COLE

A new study finds that coffee pulp, a waste product of coffee production, can be used to speed up tropical forest recovery on post agricultural land. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence.

In the study, researchers from ETH-Zurich and the University of Hawai`i spread 30 dump truck loads of coffee pulp on a 35 × 40m area of degraded land in Costa Rica and marked out a similar sized area without coffee pulp as a control.

"The results were dramatic" said Dr Rebecca Cole, lead author of the study. "The area treated with a thick layer of coffee pulp turned into a small forest in only two years while the control plot remained dominated by non-native pasture grasses."

After only two years the coffee pulp treated area had 80% canopy cover compared to 20% in the control area. The canopy in the coffee pulp area was also four times taller than that of the control area.

The addition of the half metre thick layer of coffee pulp eliminated the invasive pasture grasses which dominated the land. These grasses are often a barrier to forest succession and their removal allowed native, pioneer tree species, that arrived as seeds through wind and animal dispersal, to recolonise the area quickly.

The researchers also found that after two years, nutrients including carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous were significantly elevated in the coffee pulp treated area compared to the control. This is a promising finding given former tropical agricultural land is often highly degraded and poor soil quality can delay forest succession for decades.

Dr Cole said: "This case study suggests that agricultural by-products can be used to speed up forest recovery on degraded tropical lands. In situations where processing these by-products incurs a cost to agricultural industries, using them for restoration to meet global reforestation objectives can represent a 'win-win' scenario."

As a widely available waste product that's high in nutrients, coffee pulp can be a cost-effective forest restoration strategy. Such strategies will be important if we are to achieve ambitious global objectives to restore large areas of forest, such as those agreed in the 2015 Paris Accords.

The study was conducted in Coto Brus county in southern Costa Rica on a former coffee farm that is being restored to forest for conservation. In the 1950's the region underwent rapid deforestation and land conversion to coffee agriculture and pasture with forest cover reduced to 25% by 2014.

In 2018, the researchers set out two areas of roughly 35 × 40m, spreading coffee pulp into a half meter-thick layer on one area and leaving the other as a control.

The researchers analysed soil samples for nutrients immediately prior to the application of the coffee pulp and again two years later. They also recorded the species present, the size of woody stems, percentage of forest ground cover and used drones to record canopy cover.

Dr Cole warns that as a case study with two years of data, further research is needed to test the use of coffee pulp to aid forest restoration. "This study was done at only one large site so more testing is needed to see if this strategy works across a broader range of conditions. The measurements we share are only from the first two years. Longer-term monitoring would show how the coffee pulp affected soil and vegetation over time. Additional testing can also assess whether there are any undesirable effects from the coffee pulp application."

A limitation of using coffee pulp or other agricultural by-products is that its use is mostly limited to relatively flat and accessible areas where the material can be delivered and the risk of the added nutrients being washed into nearby watersheds can be managed.

On further research into the use of coffee pulp, Dr Cole said: "We would like to scale up the study by testing this method across a variety of degraded sites in the landscape. Also, this concept could be tested with other types of agricultural non-market products like orange husks.

"We hope our study is a jumping off point for other researchers and industries to take a look at how they might make their production more efficient by creating links to the global restoration movement."

CAPTION

Year 1: Edge between coffee pulp and control plot.

CREDIT

Rebecca Cole.

CAPTION

Year 3 Coffee pulp plot.

CREDIT

Rebecca Cole.

RIP

George Segal, Oscar-nominated actor from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, passes away aged 87

George Segal's wife said in a statement that the actor passed away 'due to complications from bypass surgery'

The Associated Press March 24, 2021 

George Segal, the banjo player turned actor who was nominated for an Oscar for 1966′s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and worked into his late 80s on the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs, died Tuesday in Santa Rosa, California, his wife said.

“The family is devastated to announce that this morning George Segal passed away due to complications from bypass surgery,” Sonia Segal said in a statement. He was 87.

George Segal was always best known as a comic actor, becoming one of the screen’s biggest stars in the 1970s when lighthearted adult comedies thrived.

But his most famous role was in a harrowing drama, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, based on Edward Albee’s acclaimed play.

He was the last surviving credited member of the tiny cast, all four of whom were nominated for Academy Awards: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for starring roles, Sandy Dennis and Segal for supporting performances. The women won Oscars, the men did not.

To younger audiences, he was better known for playing magazine publisher Jack Gallo on the long-running NBC series Just Shoot Me from 1997 to 2003, and as grandfather Albert “Pops” Solomon on the The Goldbergs since 2013.

“Today we lost a legend. It was a true honour being a small part of George Segal’s amazing legacy,” said Goldbergs creator Adam Goldberg, who based the show on his 1980s childhood. “By pure fate, I ended up casting the perfect person to play Pops. Just like my grandfather, George was a kid at heart with a magical spark.”

In his Hollywood prime, he played a stuffy intellectual opposite Barbra Streisand’s freewheeling prostitute in 1970′s The Owl and the Pussycat; a cheating husband opposite Glenda Jackson in 1973′s A Touch of Class; a hopeless gambler opposite Elliot Gould in director Robert Altman’s 1974 California Split; and a bank-robbing suburbanite opposite Jane Fonda in 1977′s Fun with Dick and Jane.

Groomed to be a handsome leading man, Segal’s profile had been rising steadily since his first movie, 1961′s The Young Doctors in which he had ninth billing. His first starring performance came in King Rat as a nefarious inmate at a Japanese prison camp during World War II.

In Virginia Woolf, he played Nick, one half of a young couple invited over for drinks and to witness the bitterness and frustration of a middle-aged couple.

Director Mike Nichols needed someone who would get the approval of star Elizabeth Taylor, and turned to Segal when Robert Redford turned him down.

According to Nichols’ biographer Mark Harris, the director said Segal was “close enough to the young god he needed to be for Elizabeth, and witty enough and funny enough to deal with all that humiliation.”

He rode the film to a long run of stardom. Then in the late 1970s, Jaws and other action films changed the nature of Hollywood movies, and the light comedies that Segal excelled in became passe.

“Then I got a little older,” he said in a 1998 interview. “I started playing urban father roles. And that guy sort of turned into Chevy Chase, and after that there was really no place to go.”

Except for the 1989 hit Look Who’s Talking, Segal’s films in the 1980s and 1990s were lacklustre. He turned to television and starred in two failed series, Take Five and Murphy’s Law.

Then he found success in 1997 with the David Spade sitcom Just Shoot Me in which he played Gallo, who despite his gruff manner hires his daughter (Laura San Giacomo) and keeps Spade’s worthless office boy character on his payroll simply out of a sense of affection for both.

Series co-star Brian Posehn was one of many paying Segal tribute Tuesday night.

“I grew up watching him, total old school charm, effortless comedic timing,” Segal’s Just Shoot Me Posehn said. “Doing scenes with him was one of the highlights of my life, but getting to know him a little and making the legend laugh was even cooler.”

Throughout his long acting career, Segal played the banjo for fun, becoming quite accomplished on the instrument he had first picked up as a boy. He performed with his own Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band.

Born in 1934 in Great Neck, New York, the third son of a malt and hops dealer, Segal began entertaining at the age of 8, performing magic tricks for neighbourhood children.

He attended a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania and as an undergraduate at Columbia University organised “Bruno Linch and His Imperial Band,” for which he also played banjo.

After graduating Segal worked non-salary at the New York theatre Circle in the Square, doing everything from ticket taking to understudy acting. He studied drama with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen, and made his first professional acting appearance off-Broadway in Moliere’s Don Juan. It lasted one night.

After a stint on Broadway in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, he was drafted into the Army. Discharged in 1957, he returned to the stage and would begin getting small film roles.

In 1956 Segal married television story editor Marion Sobel and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Polly, before divorcing in 1981.

He married his second wife, Linda Rogoff, in London in 1982 and was devastated when she died of a stomach disease 14 years later.

“It was a time when I said, `It’s not adding up; I don’t get it anymore,” he recalled to an interviewer in 1999. “With Linda dying, I lost interest in everything. I worked just to make a living. Acting, like life, became a joyless job.”

Eventually, he reconnected with Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, who had been his girlfriend in high school some 45 years earlier. They talked on the telephone, sometimes as long as six hours, and were married just a few months after reuniting.

“She helped me through the worst days of my life just listening to me unload,” Seagal said in 1999. “It was magic.”

Updated Date: March 24, 2021 10:06:38 IST

And the brand played on: Bob Dylan at 80


Bob Dylan outside his Byrdcliffe home in Woodstock, New York, 1968. Photograph: ©Elliott Landy / Magnum Photos

With a slew of books to mark the songwriter’s birthday due, we look at the industry that has grown up around the man who forced academia to take pop seriously
Scroll down for Q&As with the authors of four new Dylan books

by Neil Spencer 

THE GUARDIAN

3/29/2021

LONG READ  FEATURE

And the brand played on: Bob Dylan at 80 | Bob Dylan | The Guardian

 

\

Academy Awards 2021: Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania hails first-ever 'historic' Oscar nomination

Kaouther Ben Hania's film The Man Who Sold His Skin was nominated in the Best International Feature category.

Agence France-Presse March 16, 2021 

The director of the first-ever Tunisian film to be tipped for an Oscar has hailed the "historical" nomination and urged the North African country's authorities to support homegrown cinema.

Kaouther Ben Hania's film The Man Who Sold His Skin was put forward for best foreign-language film ahead of the 25 April Oscars ceremony in Hollywood.

"It's a historic event, a first for Tunisia," said Ben Hania via phone from France.

"It's a dream come true."

The film, starring Italian actress Monica Bellucci alongside Syrian Yahya Mahyani and Belgian Koen De Bouw, tells the story of a Syrian refugee who allows a tattoo artist to use his back as a canvas in order to get to Europe.

Ben Hania said she hoped the Oscar nomination would lead to more support for cinema and filmmakers in Tunisia.

The French-Tunisian director, 43, was born in the marginalised rural town of Sidi Bouzid which in late 2010 was the site of the events that sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.

She won plaudits at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017 for her feature-length film Beauty and the Dogs, the story of a Tunisian woman who pushes for justice after being raped.

Tunisian cinema, in the doldrums in the early years of the century, was given a boost by the country's 2011 revolution and new-found freedom of speech.

A new generation of screenwriters and directors have since focused their efforts on social and political topics that were long taboo under the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Updated Date: March 16, 2021 10:57:14 IST

 LANGUAGE OF SPACE EXPLORATION RHETORIC CAN AFFECT PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF SPACE ACTIVITIES

Would we want futuristic Mars settlements to operate like modern-day Earth towns, or could we do better?

UNDARKMAR 29, 2021 11:05:13 IST

By Joelle Renstrom

Last month, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars to much fanfare, just days after probes from the UAE and China entered orbit around the Red Planet. The surge in Martian traffic symbolizes major advancements in space exploration. It also presents an opportune moment to step back and consider not only what humans do in space, but how we do it — including the words we use to describe human activities in space.

The conversation around the language of space exploration has already begun. NASA, for instance, has been rooting out the gendered language that has plagued America’s space program for decades. Instead of using “manned” to describe human space missions, it has shifted to using gender-neutral terms like “piloted” or “crewed.” But our scrutiny of language shouldn’t stop there. Other words and phrases, particularly those that invoke capitalism or colonialism, should receive the same treatment.

To some extent, language influences the way we think and understand the world around us. A dramatic example comes from the Pirahã tribe of the Brazilian Amazon, whose language contains very few terms for describing numbers or time. A capitalist culture in which time equals money likely wouldn’t make sense to them. Similarly, language likely affects humans’ thoughts and beliefs about outer space. The words scientists and writers use to describe space exploration may influence who feels included in these endeavors — both as direct participants and as benefactors — and alter the way people interact with the cosmos.

Take, for example, John F. Kennedy’s 1962 Moon Speech, in which he three times used the words “conquer” and “conquest.” While Kennedy’s rhetoric was intended to bolster U.S. morale in the space race against the USSR, the view of outer space as a venue for conquest evokes subjugation and exploitation and exemplifies an attitude that has resulted in much destruction on Earth. By definition, conquering involves an assertion of power and mastery, often through violence. Similarly, former President Donald Trump is the most recent American president to use the term “Manifest Destiny” to describe his motives for exploring space, tapping into a philosophy that suggests humanity’s grand purpose is to expand and conquer, regardless of who or what stands in the way.

In a recent white paper, a group comprising subject-matter experts at NASA and other institutions warned of the hazards of invoking colonial language and practice in space exploration. “The language we use around exploration can really lead or detract from who gets involved and why they get involved,” Natalie B. Treviño, one of the paper’s coauthors, told me.

Treviño, who researched decolonial theory and space exploration for her Ph.D. at Western University in Canada, is a member of an equity, diversity, and inclusion working group that makes equity-related recommendations in the planetary science research community. She notes that certain words and phrases can be particularly alienating for Indigenous people. “How is an Indigenous child on a reserve in North America supposed to connect with space exploration if the language is the same language that led to the genocide of his people?”

Perseverance rover's MASTCAM-Z has captured its first high-resolution panorama of its landing site in the Jezero Crater on Mars. The image will help the mission team narrow down rocks of interest to return to Earth for study. Image: NASA

In a 2020 perspective for Nature Astronomy, Aparna Venkatesan of the University of San Francisco, also a coauthor of the recent white paper, wrote with colleagues that in the dialects of the Indigenous Lakota and Dakota, the concept of thought being rooted in language, space, and place “is epitomized by the often used phrase mitakuye oyasin, explained by Lakota elders as a philosophy that reminds everyone that we all come from one source and so need to respect each other to maintain wolakota or peace.” It’s difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the ideas of wolakota and conquest, especially given the increasing weaponization of space.

Treviño argues that the word “frontier,” the guiding metaphor for American space exploration, is also problematic. The crossing of new frontiers — because frontiers always must be pushed or crossed — is inevitably “tied to nationalism, and nationalism is tied to conquest, and conquest is tied to death,” she says. When humans push frontiers, they often do so with the belief that it is their right as individuals or as representatives of a country or state. Throughout history, this sense of entitlement has been taken as license to wipe out Indigenous people and fauna, pollute rivers, and otherwise demonstrate ownership and mastery.

Foundational concepts such as “conquest,” “frontier,” and “Manifest Destiny,” can affect not only how people think about space but also how they act toward it. In their Nature Astronomy paper, Venkatesan and her colleagues argue that in addition to promoting colonialist ideals, such concepts promote space capitalism and a lack of regulation. Potent symbols of this trend are the more than 3,000 operational satellites currently orbiting Earth, many of them privately owned. For people who use the stars to navigate, or who incorporate celestial bodies into cultural, spiritual, and religious practices, this intrusion into the skies threatens to compromise a way of life. And it is a sobering reminder that space and the sky don’t really belong to everyone after all. The lack of protections and regulations for the night sky — as well as monetary incentives for commercial satellites, which make up almost 80 percent of U.S. satellites — make it vulnerable to the highest bidder.

“Treating space as the ‘Wild West’ frontier that requires conquering continues to incentivize claiming by those who are well-resourced,” writes Venkatesan and her colleagues. In fact, the staking of claims in space has already begun, with space tourism predicted to develop into a lucrative industry, and with the U.S. government opening the doors to commercial endeavors such as the mining of asteroids and the colonization of Mars.

While scientists often devote themselves to questions of feasibility, scalability, and affordability, they rarely give as much thought and effort to questions of inclusivity and morality. “In the space community, when ethics or values or planetary protection come up, they’re immediately coded as feminine and they’re immediately coded as not as important,” Treviño told me. For many scientists, she says, “thinking about ethics isn’t nearly as important as building the rovers that are going to go to the moon.”

The “act first, ask questions later” approach typifies the mindset that has led some to argue that humans need to colonize space to survive. But attitudes and ethics cannot be applied retroactively. Science might get people to Mars, but without ethics, what are the chances of survival?

In Kennedy’s words, space exploration is our species’ most “dangerous and greatest adventure.” It makes sense to address factors that influence human behavior in space — and that will ultimately determine our odds of success there — sooner rather than later. That includes asking everyone, not just NASA or Elon Musk, what we want an interplanetary future of humanity to look like. Would we want futuristic Mars settlements to operate like modern-day Earth towns, or could we do better?

Crafting a code of ethics for space exploration may seem daunting, but our words offer a potential starting point. Space is one of few places humans have gone that thus far remains peaceful. Why, then, use the language of war, imperialism, or colonialism to describe human actions there? Eliminating the language of genocide and subordination from the space discourse is one easy step anyone can take to encourage the great leaps for humankind that we dream of for the future, on Earth and beyond.

Joelle Renstrom is a science writer who focuses on robots, AI, and space exploration. She teaches at Boston University.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

MICROSOFT EXCHANGE VULNERABILITIES AFFECTED BANKING, FINANCE SECTORS THE MOST: REPORT

The Check Point Research report revealed that 32 firms globally were targeted via these vulnerabilities.


TECH2 NEWS STAFF

MAR 29, 2021 

Microsoft recently announced there were some vulnerabilities in the Exchange software that were being exploited by cybercriminals. Soon after, the company released emergency patches for Exchange Server 2019, Server 2016 and Server 2013. In addition to this, Microsoft rolled out a handful of mitigation tools and updated Microsoft Defender Antivirus to combat such vulnerabilities. The Check Point Research report revealed 32 firms worldwide were targeted via these vulnerabilities.

Microsoft has acknowledged that patching a system does not necessarily cut off an attacker's access to any particular account.

Further, researchers revealed the banking and finance sectors were the worst hit, with 28 percent of the total hacks directed at them. Following these are the government and military sector with 16 percent, manufacturing with 12.5 percent and the insurance and legal sector with 9.5 percent.

Microsoft has acknowledged that patching a system does not necessarily cut off an attacker's access to any particular account. In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "The Exchange security update is still the most comprehensive way to protect your servers from these attacks and others fixed in earlier releases. This interim mitigation is designed to help protect customers while they take the time to implement the latest Exchange Cumulative Update for their version of Exchange."

According to the Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team, "Many of the compromised systems have not yet received a secondary action, such as human-operated ransomware attacks or data exfiltration, indicating attackers could be establishing and keeping their access for potential later actions."