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Arctic
July 28, 2019 Aerosols from Arctic wildfires are a chief suspect. The Arctic Circle is on fire. Right now in Siberia alone more than 2 million hectares are ablaze - making it one of the worst boreal wildfires in 10,000 years. Is it any coincidence that sky watchers around the world are witnessing strange sunsets? (Source: SpaceWeather)
United States
30 July 2019 An attacker could potentially disrupt electronic messages transmitted across a small plane’s network, for example by attaching a small device to its wiring, that would affect aircraft systems. Engine readings, compass data, altitude and other readings “could all be manipulated to provide false measurements to the pilot. The Department of Homeland Security issued a security alert for small planes, warning that modern flight systems are vulnerable to hacking if someone manages to gain physical access to the aircraft. (Source: APNews)
July 27, 2019 The Trump administration signed an agreement with Guatemala that will restrict asylum applications to the U.S. from Central America. The “safe third country” agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the U.S. to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the U.S. border. As part of the agreement, the U.S. would increase access to the H-2A visa program for temporary agricultural workers from Guatemala. The Guatemalan government said that in coming days its Labor Ministry “will start issuing work visas in the agriculture industry, which will allow Guatemalans to travel legally to the United States, to avoid being victims of criminal organizations, to work temporarily and then return to Guatemala, which will strengthen family unity.” Guatemalans accounted for 34% of Border Patrol arrests on the Mexican border from October to June, more than any other nationality. Hondurans were second at 30%, followed by Mexicans at 18% and Salvadorans at 10%. Trump was asked if he expected to reach similar agreements with Honduras and El Salvador. He replied, “I do indeed.” (Source: AP)
July 25, 2019 From October through the end of June, the Border Patrol apprehended more than 688,000 people, over half of them families and unaccompanied children. Although people from all over the world enter the United States via the Mexican border, the vast majority come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. If a migrant does get called to start the process, they face a program known as “remain in Mexico” that forces them to wait south of the border after they’ve asked for asylum. Launched at the end of January in Tijuana, the program has since expanded to three other cities and nearly 20,000 people have been sent back from the U.S. to await their asylum case in Mexico. The latest announcement by the Trump administration disqualifies any asylum seeker who traveled through another country to get to the U.S. The move, which critics say violates U.S. and international law, is being challenged in court. For those who are already in the country and have pending immigration cases, the wait is extremely long - on average nearly two years for a hearing. There are almost 900,000 cases waiting to be heard in immigration court. California, Texas and New York have the most pending immigration court cases. (Source: AP)
Brazil
29 July 2019 At least 52 inmates died, with 16 decapitated, in a prison riot today in the northern Brazilian state of Para. The riot began around 7am in a prison in the city of Altamira, and involved rival criminal gangs who took at least two penitentiary officers hostage as they battled one another. Videos circulating online showed inmates celebrating as they kicked decapitated heads across the floor. Brazil's incarcerated population has surged eight-fold in three decades to around 750,000 inmates, the world's third-highest tally. In the violent northeast, prison gangs have grown powerful moving cocaine from Colombia and Peru along the Amazon's waterways to the Atlantic coast, where it heads to Africa and Europe. Murderous disputes often arise as they clash over territorial control. (Source: Reuters)
Globalization
July 31, 2019 The United States has obtained intelligence that the son and potential successor of al Qaeda leader bin Laden is dead. His last known public statement was released by al Qaeda's media arm in 2018. In that message, he threatened Saudi Arabia and called on the people of the Arabian peninsula to revolt. He is believed to have been born around 1989. His father moved to Afghanistan in 1996 and declared war against the U.S. He went with him and appeared in al Qaeda propaganda videos. In February, the State Department announced it would pay as much as $1 million for information on his whereabouts. (Source: NBCNews)
July 26, 2019 Today, more than 99% of international communications are carried over fiber optic cables, most of them undersea. Today, there are around 380 underwater cables in operation around the world, spanning a length of over 1.2 million kilometers. Imagine a long garden hose, inside of which are very small tubes that house a very, very thin fiber pair. That hose is wrapped in copper, which conducts the direct current that powers the cable and its repeaters, sometimes up to 10,000 volts. The fibers are wrapped in urethane and wrapped in copper and wrapped again in urethane. Cables in less hospitable areas can be far thicker than garden hoses, wrapped in extra plastic, kevlar armor plating, and stainless steel to ensure they can't be broken. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the US East Coast, causing an estimated $71 billion in damage and for a number of hours knocking out several key exchanges where undersea cables linked North America and Europe - that all landed in New York and New Jersey. For its newest cable, Marea, Microsoft chose to base its US operation further down the coast in Virginia. The 6,600 kilometer Marea cable weighs over 4.6 million kilograms. It took more than two years to lay the entire thing. A magnitude-7.0 earthquake off the southwest coast off Taiwan in 2006, along with aftershocks, cut eight submarine cables which caused internet outages and disruption in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. In February 2008, a whole swath of North Africa and the Persian Gulf suddenly went offline, or saw internet speeds slow to a painful crawl. This disruption was eventually traced to damage to three undersea cables off the Egyptian coast. At least one - linking Dubai and Oman - was severed by an abandoned, 5,400 kilogram anchor. Attackers could knock out parts of a network that they can't surveil and force people onto cables they already control. The easiest way of doing so is not by tapping the cable, but the point where it connects to land. This what UK and US spy agencies have been accused of doing in the past, allegedly with the cooperation of the private companies operating the cables. In 2012 British spy agency GCHQ had secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic handling 600 million telephone events every day and had compromised more than 200 fiber optic cables. The NSA allegedly ran a similar operation called Upstream. The US military, the USS Jimmy Carter submarine possesses advanced underwater cable tapping abilities, including a floodable chamber inside the sub so divers and technicians can have easy access to the cable. In 2015, US intelligence officials said underwater sensors had spotted Russian submarines near key communications cables, along with a spy ship believed to carry small underwater vehicles designed to sever or damage cables. China is also ramping up the size of its submarine fleet, as part of a wider expansion of its military under President Xi. Chinese telecoms giant Huawei began moving into the undersea cable market. In 2017, Australia blocked a plan for Huawei to install a 4,000 kilometer undersea cable linking Sydney with the Solomon Islands. In June, Huawei said it would sell its 51% stake in Huawei Marine Systems, its undersea cable arm. (Source: CNN)
(July 2019) Submarine Cable Map (Source: TleGeography): https://tinyurl.com/ycnmfv62
July 25, 2019 What if we’re no longer afraid of Ebola? Struggling states with weak health systems are fertile ground for hard-to-contain disease outbreaks that will be massively expensive to stop if they aren’t addressed quickly and aggressively. Why struggling to stop it are organizations finding fewer donors writing smaller checks? (Source: Stat)
Space
July 29, 2019 Boeing built at least two X-37Bs for the Air Force in the mid-2000s reportedly at a cost of around a billion dollars apiece. While it looks like a miniature version of NASA’s Space Shuttle, which retired from service in 2011, the X-37B essentially is a small, reusable and maneuverable satellite. The Air Force describes the X-37B as an “orbital test vehicle”. It is carrying a so-called Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader built by the Air Force Research Laboratory. According to the Air Force, the spreader will help to “test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment.” The mission will also be launched into, and landed from, a higher inclination orbit than prior missions to further expand the X-37B’s orbital envelope. A spacecraft’s orbital inclination is equal to the highest north-south latitude it passes over. The X-37B previously flew between 37 and 43 degrees. Almost all of Russia lies north of the X-37B’s previous inclination range. (Source: NationalInterest)
July 26, 2019 The new facet identifying space as a critical domain for strategic competition. China's strategy for developing advanced space weapons were disclosed this week in Beijing's first defense white paper issued in years. The defense strategy report produced by the People's Liberation Army drops earlier veiled references by bluntly identifying the United States as Beijing's main adversary that is undermining world peace. The report - part policy statement and part propaganda - also claims the United States seeks "absolute military superiority." The white paper bluntly warned that China is set to use military force against Taiwan if the self-ruled island seeks formal independence. Taiwan is a quasi-U.S. ally and the United States is obligated under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to defend it from mainland attack. Beijing, in another threatening announcement, said the PLA is prepared to dispatch forces to Hong Kong, the former British colony that has been rocked by anti-Beijing protests over a new extradition law seeking to undermine democratic rule. On space warfare, the PLA report states that threats to space "loom large" and as a result space security is now among eight vital Chinese strategic interests. Other key interests include deterring attacks, opposing Taiwan independence, and "safeguarding national political security" - a reference to the PLA's ultimate mission of keeping the ruling Communist Party of China in power. China has developed several types of anti-satellite missiles, including DN-2 and DN-3 missiles capable of attacking orbiting satellites in both high and low orbits. China's other space weapons include ground-based lasers that blind or damage orbiting satellites, and orbiting robot satellites capable of grabbing and crushing satellites. According to the 2019 report, Chinese military writers have stated the goal of PLA space warfare is "destroying, damaging, and interfering with the enemy's reconnaissance … and communications satellites" along with navigation and early warning satellites. The objective is to "blind and deafen the enemy." China also has created a Space Corps within a new service-level Strategic Support Force. The corps is believed to be the key space warfighting unit. China and Russia continue to develop, test, and proliferate sophisticated anti-satellite weapons to hold U.S. and allied space assets at risk." The weapons include kinetic kill interceptors that destroy satellites by slamming into them at high speeds. Other space weapons include satellites armed with radiofrequency jammers, lasers, chemical sprayers, high-power microwaves, and robotic arms. Orbiting satellite maintenance and debris removal systems now in the testing and research phase could be used to damage satellites. A key PLA objective is to use space weapons to cripple operations of the Hawaii-based Indo-Pacific Command during a future conflict by attacking American satellites. (Source: TheWashingtonFreeBeacon)
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