Author: Mike Nova

Meadows Pleads Not Guilty and the Latest on Trump’s 18 Co-Defendants  Yahoo News

Ex-FBI counterintelligence official pleads guilty to conspiracy charge for helping Russian oligarch  KMOV4

Study characterizes SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2.86: New variant …  News-Medical.Net

A cold or COVID? How do you know? Doctors give advice  KELOLAND.com

With leaders of the far-right groups that helped drive the attack on the Capitol sentenced to long prison terms, attention is shifting to the fraught process of prosecuting Donald Trump.

With leaders of the far-right groups that helped drive the attack on the Capitol sentenced to long prison terms, attention is shifting to the fraught process of prosecuting Donald Trump.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken makes a surprise visit to Ukraine as Washington announces more than $1 billion in new aid. Plus, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris attends the ASEAN Summit in Jakarta. And the first foreign delegation arrives in Gabon following the coup.

World leaders were on Thursday set for a series of meetings on security and trade against a backdrop of simmering tensions and open conflicts in parts of the world, as an ASEAN-hosted summit in Indonesia entered its final day.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are attending the summit led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along with leaders of partner countries Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and others.

An undercurrent of tension has accompanied the talks on issues from trade and technology to China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea, the Myanmar junta’s refusal to cooperate with ASEAN on a peace plan, and suspicion North Korea plans to supply weapons to Russia.

On Wednesday, China’s Li warned against starting a “new Cold War” and warned countries against taking sides in any conflict.

Harris, attending the meetings instead of President Joe Biden, reiterated a U.S. commitment to the region.

“The United States has an enduring commitment to Southeast Asia and more broadly to the Indo-Pacific,” she said.

A White House official said earlier the U.S. shared interests with ASEAN in “upholding the rules-based international order, including in the South China Sea, in the face of China’s unlawful maritime claims and provocative actions”.

The Chinese premier and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met briefly on the sidelines of the summit on Wednesday and discussed Japan’s release into the sea of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

An infuriated China has banned on all aquatic imports from Japan in response. It was not clear if the two would hold a bilateral meeting on Thursday.

Indonesia, chair of the 10-member ASEAN, is expected to symbolically hand over the chair to Laos on Thursday, though it will maintain the role until the end of the year.

A Japanese rocket bound for the moon took off early Thursday, offering relief to a battered national space program following a string of weather delays, major setbacks and high-profile failures.

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s H2-A rocket lifted off around 8:42 a.m. local time from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan. It was originally scheduled to launch in August but was delayed three times on concerns over bad weather.

The heavy payload rocket was launched carrying an advanced imaging satellite and a lightweight lander that was scheduled to reach the moon as early as January.

Around 9:30 a.m., the lander separated from the rocket and successfully began its journey to the lunar surface. 

Developed and built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., the H2-A is the agency’s most reliable rocket with just one failure out of 42 launches since 2001.

On Thursday it was carrying the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, among other things. Standing less than 3 meters (9.8 feet) tall, the lander could pave the way for other probes with high navigational accuracy.

The rocket is also carrying the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, a satellite that will help scientists observe plasma in stars and galaxies.

The H2-A’s successor, the H3, was supposed to inherit the mantle earlier this year. Instead it failed twice to launch — the first time refusing to budge from its launch pad and the second time in more dramatic fashion, when a system malfunction forced operators to transmit a self-destruct code, rendering it inert before it fell carrying a satellite into the Philippine Sea.

The space race is heating up after India on Aug. 24 became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole. A Russian attempt at a lunar touch down in the same area a few days before ended in failure following an engine malfunction.

The U.S. plans to send the first humans to explore the area near the south pole later this decade, in a mission called Artemis III. China is also seeking to build a research station near the region and place astronauts on the moon by 2030.

A record number of children from Latin America and the Caribbean are leaving their homes in search of a better life, risking disease, injury and abuse, a United Nations children’s agency report said Wednesday, urging a stronger humanitarian response.

Driven by violence, destitution and severe weather, at least 40,000 children crossed the perilous Darien jungle separating Central and South America last year, compared with 29,000 in 2021 and several times more than in previous years.

In just the first six months of 2023, more than 40,000 children made the dangerous journey, indicating the total number is likely to be much higher at the end of the year.

Six hundred of the children were unaccompanied.

“Gang violence, instability, poverty and climate-related events are, alarmingly, gripping the region and pushing more children from their homes,” UNICEF regional director Garry Conille said in a statement.

“When they cross several countries and sometimes the entire region, disease and injury, family separation and abuse may plague their journeys and, even if they make it to their destination, their futures often remain at risk,” Conille added.

According to UNICEF, children represent 25% of migrants in the region, a proportion now as high as in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with about 13% worldwide.

And children under 11 make up nearly 91% of the displaced children in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Conille urged the international community to commit to a “stronger humanitarian response as well as the expansion of safe and regular migration pathways for children and families to help protect their rights and their futures, no matter where they are from.”

Whether they come from South America, Africa or Asia, a large number of these migrants seek to reach Mexico, the United States and Canada.

The number of children intercepted by the authorities at the southern border of the United States is also on the rise, UNICEF said.