Category: Silicon Valley

Law enforcement officials and financial services regulators have filed a raft of criminal and civil charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange company FTX, alleging wide-ranging fraud that eventually brought down the company, which was valued at $32 billion earlier this year.

The Department of Justice on Tuesday morning unsealed an indictment charging Bankman-Fried with eight criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, actual wire fraud, money laundering, and violation of laws governing donations to politicians and political parties.

At the request of U.S. prosecutors, Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested on Monday evening at his home in the Bahamas, where the headquarters of FTX is located. The U.S. and the Bahamas have an extradition treaty, and Bankman-Fried is expected to be transferred to U.S. custody in the near future.

‘House of cards’

Earlier Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued its own set of civil charges, also accusing Bankman-Fried of “years-long fraud” that included hiding information from investors, diverting customer funds to a hedge fund he owned, using other customer funds to make political donations, and to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate.

“We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws.”

Also on Tuesday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit against Bankman-Fried.

Rapid rise, rapid fall

In the short time since its founding in 2019, FTX grew to be one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, and Sam Bankman-Fried — often referred to as “SBF” — became one of the industry’s most recognizable figures. He was a regular speaker at business conferences, gave testimony before Congress, and was seen by many as a model cryptocurrency executive.

The list of investors who plowed billions of dollars into FTX is long and distinguished, including Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Group, Tiger Global Management, and Third Point Ventures.

Earlier this year, Bankman-Fried positioned his company as a savior for the broader crypto industry when a broad selloff of cryptocurrencies left many firms in the space reeling. FTX extended lines of credit to crypto lender BlockFi and crypto broker Voyager Digital in an effort to help them weather the storm. Both BlockFi and Voyager eventually filed for bankruptcy protection.

Signs of trouble

In September, news reports began raising questions about the relationship between FTX and Alameda Research, a hedge fund owned by Bankman-Fried which was supposed to be a completely separate corporate entity from FTX.

However, it gradually became clear that the two companies were actually closely connected. Media reports began to reveal that a large share of Alameda’s assets was tied up in an illiquid crypto token called FTT, which was issued by FTX. Over several days in early November, customers rushed to pull their money from accounts with FTX, sending the company into a massive liquidity crisis and forcing it to stop processing customer withdrawals.

After several days of attempts to arrange a rescue package, including a briefly considered sale of FTX to Binance, its largest competitor, FTX, Alameda, and more than 100 affiliated companies filed for bankruptcy.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department and the SEC alleged that Alameda actually had “virtually unlimited” access to funds held by FTX on behalf of its customers.

The charges against Bankman-Fried claim that Alameda illegally used those funds to invest in highly illiquid cryptocurrency tokens, as well as to make “undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.”

Before its collapse, cryptocurrency investors around the world had placed billions of dollars in their accounts with FTX. In large part because of transfers to Alameda, FTX is facing an estimated shortfall of $8 billion.

‘I made a lot of mistakes’

Against the advice of his attorneys, Bankman-Fried has given a number of interviews to news organizations since his company declared bankruptcy. His contention has been that, while he may have made mistakes, he never intended to defraud anyone.

In early December, Bankman-Fried told The Wall Street Journal that he could not account for money that FTX customers transferred to Alameda Research.

In an appearance at a conference sponsored by The New York Times, he said, “Clearly I made a lot of mistakes. There are things I would give anything to be able to do over again. I did not ever try to commit fraud on anyone. I was excited about the prospects of FTX a month ago. I saw it as a thriving, growing business. I was shocked by what happened [in November.]”

His claims contradict the allegations leveled by prosecutors in the indictment unsealed Tuesday, which accuse Bankman-Fried of “willfully and knowingly” defrauding investors and customers.

‘Utter failure’ of controls

Last month, control of FTX and its constituent companies was turned over to John Ray III, an attorney and corporate insolvency specialist who has been brought on to manage multiple companies facing bankruptcy, including the failed energy giant Enron in the early 2000s. His primary task will be to assemble all the remaining assets of FTX in an effort to recover some of the money its customers lost in the exchange’s collapse.

Ray appeared at a hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, during which he described a company that lacked even the most basic corporate governance structures and was run by a small cabal ill-equipped for the job of running a multi-billion dollar corporation.

In prepared testimony, Ray said, “[N]ever in my career have I seen such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization, from the lack of financial statements to a complete failure of any internal controls or governance whatsoever.”

In the broadest sense, Ray said, the company’s failure was the result of the “absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals who failed to implement virtually any of the systems or controls that are necessary for a company that is entrusted with other people’s money or assets.”

Under questioning, Ray said that the asset recovery process will take months to complete, and will not make FTX customers whole. “At the end of the day, we’re not going to be able to recover all the losses here,” he said.

The committee had also expected to hear from Bankman-Fried on Tuesday, but the FTX founder’s arrest on Monday made that impossible.

Lawmakers angry

The allegations of fraud and mismanagement at FTX have raised calls in Washington for action by Congress to rein in the cryptocurrency industry, which operates under a poorly defined set of regulatory rules.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters on Tuesday said that she was “deeply troubled” by the revelations coming out about FTX. At the same hearing, U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry, who will take over the chairmanship when Republicans assume control of the House next month, criticized Bankman-Fried but said that he still sees “promise” in digital assets.

Others were less tolerant of the industry, with Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat, calling the entire industry “a garden of snakes.”

Industry representatives urged lawmakers to tread carefully when it comes to establishing new rules for cryptocurrencies.

“Following the failure of FTX International, it’s understandable that lawmakers want to do something, but they should be wary of passing legislation in haste that would do more harm than good,” Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association, wrote on Monday. “Instead, Congress should take its time to investigate the issues we’ve seen and work closely with the crypto industry to find solutions that benefit everyone.”
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A South African researcher has developed a way to remove contaminants from water used in mining that could help clean up the dirty industry. The award-winning ion exchange method not only cleans the water but captures polluting metals that can then be re-purposed.

At a Johannesburg laboratory, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand have developed a way to clean acid mine drainage (AMD).

AMD is the runoff of pollutants like sulfuric acid and heavy metals that secrete into waterways, affecting wildlife and rural mining communities.

AMD is often found at gold and coal mines, which are plentiful in South Africa.

Tamlyn Naidu is a post-doctoral research fellow involved in the project.

“What we wanted to do is minimize environmental impact for a lot of these communities that are afflicted by AMD. They have been born into mining communities, they work in mining communities, they’re either scared to report it or to complain about it, because this is their livelihood,” she said.

The ion exchange filtration system that Naidu and her colleagues have developed uses countless polystyrene beads, each the size of a pinhead, which the water passes through.

Unlike a coffee filter, which physically blocks coffee grounds from passing through with water, the beads grab the contaminants in the water chemically.

The passing water, which can be scaled up to clean 1,000 liters an hour, then comes out clear.

“This project though, does something extra. It also wants to extract from the water valuable materials. So what has been identified in some of these streams, especially coal mining streams, is that the acid that’s produced from the mine waters actually dissolves out some rare earth metals,” says Ed Hardwick, the owner of Cwenga Technologies, which is a partner in the research.

Rare earth metals are in huge demand globally because they can be used in new technology like electric vehicles. Being able to extract them adds a financial incentive to cleaning up AMD.

Naidu said she hopes this can empower communities by monetizing the extracted materials from the AMD.

“Ultimately, from this project, we want community members to be involved in something that’s easy for them to operate, that they can extract value from and start, you know, seeing the value that companies have been taking onto the land and taken away from them. And yeah, I guess adding to their quality of life,” she says.

A method to clean up AMD that can be monetized would be good news for the government and communities that are now burdened with the costly task.

“If this was going to be an incentive, it should be on the incentive of the state and that any monies that are obtained from the separation of those minerals that can be repurposed, that can be used, is then fed back into one rehabilitation, but also two, into creating sustainable economies for the communities that are impacted,” says Tarisai Mugunyani, an attorney with the Center for Environmental Rights in Johannesburg.

Researchers say they are hopeful their filtration system, which can be adapted to clean the unique chemistry of AMD at any site, will soon be adopted widely.

It has already gained international attention with Naidu taking the first prize for emerging talents breakthroughs at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin last month.

Naidu said several companies in mining and technology sectors have contacted her about becoming involved.
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Fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo’s military and rebels has since March displaced nearly 400,000 people, with most IDP camps in Nyiragongo territory, where health centers are struggling to cope. Ruth Omar Esther visited a medical center in Nyiragongo and has this report.
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New Zealand on Tuesday passed into law a unique plan to phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes.

The law states that tobacco can’t ever be sold to anybody born on or after January 1, 2009.

It means the minimum age for buying cigarettes will keep going up and up. In theory, somebody trying to buy a pack of cigarettes 50 years from now would need ID to show they were at least 63 years old.

But health authorities hope smoking will fade away well before then. They have a stated goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025.

The new law also reduces the number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco from about 6,000 to 600 and decreases the amount of nicotine allowed in tobacco that is smoked.

“There is no good reason to allow a product to be sold that kills half the people that use it,” Associate Minister of Health Dr. Ayesha Verrall told lawmakers in Parliament. “And I can tell you that we will end this in the future, as we pass this legislation.”

She said the health system would save billions of dollars from not needing to treat illnesses caused by smoking, such as cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and amputations. She said the bill would create generational change and leave a legacy of better health for youth.

Lawmakers voted along party lines in passing the legislation 76 to 43.

The libertarian ACT party, which opposed the bill, said many small corner stores, known in New Zealand as dairies, would go out of business because they would no longer be able to sell cigarettes.

“We stand opposed to this bill because it’s a bad bill and its bad policy, it’s that straightforward and simple,” said Brooke van Velden, ACT’s deputy leader. “There won’t be better outcomes for New Zealanders.”

She said the gradual ban amounted to “nanny-state prohibition” that would end up creating a large black market. She said prohibition never worked and always ended with unintended consequences.

The law does not affect vaping, which has already become more popular than smoking in New Zealand.

Statistics New Zealand reported last month that 8% of New Zealand adults smoked daily, down from 16% ten years ago. Meanwhile, 8.3% of adults vaped daily, up from less than 1% six years ago.

Smoking rates remain higher among Indigenous Māori, with about 20% reporting they smoked.

New Zealand already restricts cigarette sales to those aged 18 and over, requires tobacco packs to come with graphic health warnings and cigarettes to be sold in standardized packs.

New Zealand in recent years also imposed a series of hefty tax hikes on cigarettes.

The law change was welcomed by several health agencies. Health Coalition Aotearoa said the new law represented the culmination of decades of hard-fought advocacy by health and community organizations.
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The Department of Energy planned an announcement Tuesday on a “major scientific breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of several sites worldwide where researchers have been trying to develop the possibility of harnessing energy from nuclear fusion. 

It’s a technology that has the potential to one day accelerate the planet’s shift away from fossil fuels, which are the major contributors to climate change. The technology has long struggled with daunting challenges. 

Here’s a look at exactly what nuclear fusion is, and some of the difficulties in turning it into the cheap and carbon-free energy source that scientists believe it can be. 

What is nuclear fusion? 

Look up, and it’s happening right above you — nuclear fusion reactions power the sun and other stars. 

The reaction happens when two light nuclei merge to form a single heavier nucleus. Because the total mass of that single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei, the leftover mass is energy that is released in the process, according to the Department of Energy. 

In the case of the sun, its intense heat — millions of degrees Celsius — and the pressure exerted by its gravity allow atoms that would otherwise repel each other to fuse. 

Scientists have long understood how nuclear fusion has worked and have been trying to duplicate the process on Earth as far back as the 1930s. Current efforts focus on fusing a pair of hydrogen isotopes — deuterium and tritium — according to the Department of Energy, which says that particular combination releases “much more energy than most fusion reactions” and requires less heat to do so. 

How valuable would this be?

Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy and society at the University of California at Berkeley, said nuclear fusion offers the possibility of “basically unlimited” fuel if the technology can be made commercially viable. The elements needed are available in seawater. 

It’s also a process that doesn’t produce the radioactive waste of nuclear fission, Kammen said. 

How are scientists trying to do this? 

One way scientists have tried to recreate nuclear fusion involves what’s called a tokamak — a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber that uses powerful magnets to turn fuel into a superheated plasma (between 150 million and 300 million degrees Celsius) where fusion may occur. 

The Livermore lab uses a different technique, with researchers firing a 192-beam laser at a small capsule filled with deuterium-tritium fuel. The lab reported that an August 2021 test produced 1.35 megajoules of fusion energy — about 70% of the energy fired at the target. The lab said several subsequent experiments showed declining results, but researchers believed they had identified ways to improve the quality of the fuel capsule and the lasers’ symmetry. 

“The most critical feature of moving fusion from theory to commercial reality is getting more energy out than in,” Kammen said. 
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A Franco-U.S. satellite is due for launch this week on a mission to survey with unprecedented accuracy nearly all water on Earth’s surface for the first time and help scientists investigate its impact on Earth’s climate.

For NASA and France’s space agency CNES, which have worked together in the field for 30 years, it’s a landmark scientific mission with a billion-dollar budget.

French President Emmanuel Macron went to NASA’s Washington headquarters at the end of November alongside U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

He highlighted the liftoff — scheduled for early Thursday on the U.S. West Coast — of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission to monitor the levels of oceans, lakes and rivers, including in remote locations.

Its predecessor, TOPEX/Poseidon, launched in 1992, was also a Franco-U.S. joint venture that measured ocean surface to an accuracy of 4.2 centimeters (1.7 inches).

It aided the forecast of the 1997-1998 El Nino weather phenomenon and improved understanding of ocean circulation and its effect on global climate.

The 2.2-metric ton SWOT mission will be put into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The satellite’s primary payload is an innovative instrument to measure the height of water called KaRin, or Ka-band radar interferometer. Its two antennas, separated by a big boom, create parallel swaths of data.

“We’re going to get 10 times better resolution than with current technologies to measure sea-surface height and understand the ocean fronts and eddies that help shape climate,” said NASA Earth Science Division Director Karen St. Germain.

“It’s like looking at a car number plate from space when before we could only see a street,” added Thierry Lafon, SWOT project leader at the CNES.

The stakes are high. While the impact of major ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream is known, more local flows and eddies covering dozens of kilometers remain more of a mystery.

But they too affect sea water surface temperatures and heat transfer as well as the absorption by the oceans of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

SWOT will improve weather and climate modeling, the observation of coastal erosion and help track how fresh and saltwater bodies change over time.

With an “optimal” orbit of 890 kilometers (about 550 miles) above Earth, Lafon said SWOT will “take in all the components that affect water levels such as tides and the sun.”

NASA said SWOT will survey nearly all water on Earth’s surface for the first time.

It will monitor water levels, surface areas and quantities at more than 20 million lakes with shores of more than 250 meters. The entire length of rivers more than 100 meters wide will also be observed.

Water management, flood and drought prevention will be improved, said Lafon.

Flying the satellite to Vandenberg from the Thales Alenia Space (TAS) site in Cannes, southern France, proved a headache.

“Due to the conflict in Ukraine, there were no more Antonov 124s available, and the 747 cargo is too small,” said TAS project leader Christophe Duplay. “We decided to ask the [U.S. Air Force] to provide one of its C-5 Galaxies.”

And that meant counting on NASA to have the air force supply one of its rare giant aircraft to ship the huge payload.

SWOT has an estimated three-year lifetime — although Lafon said “nothing precludes the mission to last five to eight years” — and is set to become the first satellite to make a controlled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, reducing the amount of space debris, in line with the French space operations act.

Nearly 80% of the 400 kilos (880 pounds) of onboard fuel will be used to that end.
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On the 50th anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission – the last to land astronauts to the lunar surface – the agency’s Artemis 1 Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, ending a 26-day test flight of NASA’s next generation system designed to take people back to the moon. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more. Videographer: Kane Farabaugh, Adam Greenbaum Produced by: Kane Farabaugh
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French President Emmanuel Macron says free condoms will be available in pharmacies for any adult up to the age of 25 starting next year.

The new measure comes as the rate of sexually transmitted diseases and inflation are both on the rise in France.

Originally, Macron announced that the condoms would be available to people between the ages of 18 to 25, but he was challenged on social media about not making the condoms available to minors and he decided to expand the program to anyone up to the age of 25. 

Girls and women already receive free birth control in France. 

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
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Industry executives have joined activists and negotiators from nearly 200 countries at this month’s U.N. nature summit in Montreal, where negotiations on a global pact to protect nature could lead to tougher disclosure requirements for businesses.

Sectors such as mining, agriculture, oil and fashion are under scrutiny at the COP15 talks, due to their heavy impact on nature with activities that can contaminate soil, foul waterways or pollute the air.

As negotiators work to agree on conservation targets by the summit’s scheduled end on December 19, momentum is building for a measure to require businesses to disclose their harm to the environment.

The measure, as currently drafted, would also ask companies to halve those negative impacts by 2030, which could mean additional costs for businesses, said Franck Gbaguidi, senior analyst for energy, climate and resources at the Eurasia Group risk advisory.

But a weak deal without global agreement on how businesses should behave could also raise company costs — by opening the door to a global patchwork of different biodiversity regulations and requirements that makes compliance more difficult, Eurasia Group said in a policy statement.

Here is a look at how key sectors could be affected by the COP15 talks:

Fashion/Retail

Fashion and retail are facing pressure from consumers and governments to reduce waste and emissions throughout their operations.

For them, a strong deal that forces all companies to report any harm would work toward assuaging some consumer concerns.

In a letter to world governments in October, more than 330 companies including Swedish fashion giant H&M Group, furniture maker IKEA, British pharmaceutical and biotech company GSK and Switzerland’s Nestle came out in support of a COP15 deal that includes mandatory disclosure of companies’ environmental impacts by 2030.

Smaller companies with limited resources for monitoring and accounting could find a disclosure requirement more challenging.

Mining

For companies mining metals and coal, an environmental disclosure requirement could force companies to reveal the impacts not just from the blasting and drilling they do on site, but also from the logging and deforestation carried out in creating access roads.

Mining companies are also concerned about the central goal of the COP15 talks — to set aside 30% of Earth’s land and ocean areas for conservation by 2030. That could cut into areas rich with resources for extraction.

“There are going to be some places which are just going to be ‘no go areas’, and that can be hard for the mining sector,” said Aimee Boulanger, executive director of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance.

The International Council on Mining and Metals, which represents 26 of the world’s largest mining companies, would back a deal that sets “a level playing field” with uniform rules in all regions, said the group’s chief executive, Rohitesh Dhawan.

Agriculture

With new disclosure rules, the farming sector would face an increased burden of reporting on activities like land clearing and pesticide use.

Hefty reporting obligations could burden smaller farms and ranches, some industry groups warned.

“A lot of our producers are family businesses,” said Larry Thomas, manager environment and sustainability with the Canadian Cattle Association.

The agriculture sector will likely escape a separate proposed goal to slash pesticide in half, said the Eurasia Group analyst Gbaguidi, following opposition from developing countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay due to food shortages and higher prices.

“Because of the food crisis, a lot of emerging markets are just not as open as they would have been on setting bold targets related to the agricultural sector,” Gbaguidi said.

Oil

Following COP15, oil companies are expected to ramp up their internal resources for reporting on and disclosing how oil drilling and exploration activities impact nature as well, Gbaguidi said.

The American Petroleum Institute did not respond to a request for comment on the COP15 talks.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said the country’s oil and natural gas industry wants to minimize marine and land disturbances, while also quickly restoring lands degraded by their operations to natural landscapes, CAPP spokesperson Jay Averill said.
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The U.S. Department of Energy said Sunday it would announce a “major scientific breakthrough” this week, after media reported a federal laboratory had recently achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion research.

The Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists in the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved a “net energy gain” from an experimental fusion reactor.

That would represent the first time that researchers have successfully produced more energy in a fusion reaction — the same type that powers the Sun — than was consumed during the process, a potentially major step in the pursuit of zero-carbon power.

Energy Department and LLNL spokespeople told AFP they could not comment or provide confirmation regarding the FT report, but said US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm would “announce a major scientific breakthrough” on Tuesday.

The LLNL spokesperson added that their “analysis is still ongoing.”

“We look forward to sharing more on Tuesday when that process is complete,” she said.

The fusion reaction that produced a 120 percent net energy gain occurred in the past two weeks, the FT said, citing three people with knowledge of the preliminary results.

The Washington Post later reported two people familiar with the research confirmed the development, with a senior fusion scientist telling the newspaper, “To most of us, this was only a matter of time.”

Nuclear fusion is considered by some scientists to be a potential energy of the future, particularly as it produces little waste and no greenhouse gases.

“If this fusion energy breakthrough is true, it could be a game changer for the world,” tweeted Ted Lieu, a member of Congress from California.

Fusion differs from fission, the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.

The LLNL fusion facility consists of almost 200 lasers the size of three football fields, which bombard a tiny spot with high levels of energy to initiate a fusion reaction.
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One of the challenges of fighting climate change is balancing the need to shift to cleaner sources of energy in the future with the need to keep the lights on in the here and now. It’s no different for Indonesia, with its rapidly growing economy, as VOA’s Yuni Salim explains in this report narrated by Nova Poerwadi.
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NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby.

The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) before splashing down west of Baja California near Guadalupe Island. A Navy ship quickly moved in to recover the spacecraft and its silent occupants — three test dummies rigged with vibration sensors and radiation monitors.

NASA needed a successful splashdown to stay on track for the next Orion flight around the moon, currently targeted for 2024. Four astronauts will make the trip. That will be followed by a two-person lunar landing as early as 2025.

Astronauts last landed on the moon 50 years ago Sunday. After touching down on Dec. 11, 1972, Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent three days exploring the lunar surface, the longest stay of the Apollo era. They were the last of the 12 moonwalkers.
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One of China’s top health experts has warned of a surge in COVID-19 cases, state media said Sunday, in the wake of the government’s decision to abandon its hardline coronavirus strategy.

Shops and restaurants in Beijing are deserted as the country awaits a spike in infections following the decision to reduce the scope of mandatory testing, allow some positive cases to quarantine at home and end large-scale lockdowns.

Top epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan told state media in an interview published Sunday that the Omicron strain of the virus prevalent in China was highly transmissible and could lead to a surge in cases.

“The [current] Omicron mutation… is very contagious… one person can transmit to 22 people,” said Zhong, a leading advisor to the government throughout the pandemic.

“Currently, the epidemic in China is… spreading rapidly, and under such circumstances, no matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain.”

The easing of China’s so-called “zero-COVID” policy followed nationwide protests against harsh virus rules that had battered the economy and confined millions to their homes.

But the country is now facing a surge of cases it is ill-prepared to handle, with millions of elderly still not fully vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lacking the capacity to take on huge numbers of patients.

The country has one intensive care unit bed for 10,000 people, Jiao Yahui, director of the Department of Medical Affairs at the National Health Commission, warned Friday.

She said 106,000 doctors and 177,700 nurses will be redirected to intensive care units to cope with the spike in coronavirus patients but did not offer details on how this would affect the health system’s ability to treat other diseases.

‘I’m afraid to step out’

Long lines sprung up outside pharmacies in Beijing on Sunday as residents rushed to stockpile cold and fever medicines and antigen test kits.

Some told AFP they were ordering drugs from pharmacies in nearby cities.

“I’ve asked my family in Shijiazhuang to courier fever medicine because nearby pharmacies don’t have stocks,” said Julie Jiang, a Beijing resident.

Dozens of restaurants and small businesses in Beijing put up signs saying they were “temporarily closed”, without offering details.

Several major online grocery and food delivery platforms including Meituan, Fresh Hippo and Ding Dong were struggling to operate in Beijing without enough delivery drivers.

“I’m afraid to step out,” said Liu Cheng, a mother of two young children living in central Beijing’s Jianguomen area.

“Many of my friends with COVID symptoms have tested positive when self-testing, but they haven’t reported this to the authorities or gone to the hospital.”

Official caseloads in China have dropped sharply in the wake of the government’s decision to scrap routine mass testing, with only special groups including healthcare workers and delivery drivers exempt from the rules.
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After making a close pass at the moon and venturing further into space than any previous habitable spacecraft, NASA’s Orion capsule is due to splash down Sunday in the final test of a high-stakes mission called Artemis.

As it hurtles into Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 kph, the gumdrop-shaped traveler will have to withstand a temperature of 2,800 degrees Celsius — about half that of the surface of the sun.

Splashdown in the Pacific off the Mexican island of Guadalupe is scheduled for 1739 GMT (9:39 am local time).

Achieving success in this mission of just over 25 days is key for NASA, which has invested tens of billions of dollars in the Artemis program due to take people back to the moon and prepare for an onward trip, someday, to Mars.

So far, the first test of this uncrewed spacecraft has gone very well.

But it is only in the final minutes of this voyage that the true challenge comes: seeing if Orion’s heat shield, the biggest ever built, actually holds up.

“It is a safety-critical piece of equipment. It is designed to protect the spacecraft and the passengers, the astronauts on board. So the heat shield needs to work,” said Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin.

A first test of the capsule was carried out in 2014 but that time the capsule stayed in Earth’s orbit, so it came back into the atmosphere at a slower speed of around 32,000 kph.

Choppers, divers and boats

A U.S. Navy ship, the USS Portland, has been positioned in the Pacific to recover the Orion capsule in an exercise that NASA has been rehearsing for years. Helicopters and inflatable boats will also be deployed for this task.

The falling spacecraft will be slowed first by the Earth’s atmosphere and then a web of 11 parachutes until it eases to a speed of 30 kph when it finally hits the Pacific.

Once it is there, NASA will let Orion float for two hours — a lot longer than if astronauts were inside — to collect data.

“We’ll see how the heat soaks back into the crew module and how that affects the temperature inside,” said Jim Geffre, NASA’s Orion vehicle integration manager.

Divers will then attach cables to Orion to hoist it onto the USS Portland, which is an amphibious transport dock vessel, the rear of which will be partly submerged. This water will be pumped out slowly so the spacecraft can rest on a platform designed to hold it.

This should all take about four to six hours from the time the vessel first splashes down.

The Navy ship will then head for San Diego, California, where the spacecraft will be unloaded a few days later.

When it returns to Earth, the spacecraft will have traveled more than 2 million kilometers since it took off Nov. 16 with the help of a monstrous rocket called SLS.

At its nearest point to the moon, it flew less than 130 kilometers from the surface. And it broke the distance record for a habitable capsule, venturing 432,000 kilometers from our planet.

Artemis 2 and 3

Recovering the spacecraft will allow NASA to gather data that is crucial for future missions.

This includes information on the condition of the vessel after its flight, data from monitors that measure acceleration and vibration, and the performance of a special vest put on a mannequin in the capsule to test how to protect people from radiation while flying through space.

Some components of the capsule should be good for reuse in the Artemis 2 mission, which is already in advanced stages of planning.

This next mission planned for 2024 will take a crew toward the moon but still without landing on it. NASA is expected to name the astronauts selected for this trip soon.

Artemis 3, scheduled for 2025, will see a spacecraft land for the first time on the south pole of the moon, which features water in the form of ice.

Only 12 people — all of them white men — have set foot on the moon. They did this during the Apollo missions, the last of which was in 1972.

Artemis is scheduled to send a woman and a person of color to the moon for the first time.

NASA’s goal is to establish a lasting human presence on the moon, through a base on its surface and a space station circling around it. Having people learn to live on the moon should help engineers develop technologies for a years-long trip to Mars, maybe in the late 2030s.
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A Japanese space startup launched a spacecraft to the moon Sunday after several delays, a step toward what would be a first for the nation and for a private company.

Ispace Inc’s HAKUTO-R mission took off without incident from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after two postponements caused by inspections of its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

More than a hundred people at a viewing party in Tokyo roared in applause when the rocket fired and lifted into the dark skies.

“I’m so happy. After repeated delays, it’s good that we had a proper launch today,” said Yuriko Takeda, a 28-year-old worker at an electronics company who joined the gathering.

“I have this image of the American flag from the Apollo landing, so while this is just the launch, the fact that it’s a private company going there with a rover is a really meaningful step.”

The national space agencies of the United States, Russia and China have achieved soft landings on Earth’s nearest neighbor in the past half century, but no companies have.

Mission success would also be a milestone in space cooperation between Japan and the United States at a time when China is becoming increasingly competitive and rides on Russian rockets are no longer available in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It would also cap a space-filled few days for Japan, after billionaire Yusaku Maezawa revealed on Friday the eight crew members he hopes to take on a SpaceX flyby of the moon as soon as next year.

The name HAKUTO refers to the white rabbit that lives on the moon in Japanese folklore, in contrast to the Western idea of a man in the moon. The project was a finalist in the Google Lunar XPRIZE before being revived as a commercial venture.

Next year is the Year of the Rabbit in the Asian calendar.

The craft, assembled in Germany, is expected to land on the moon in late April.

The company hopes this will be the first of many deliveries of government and commercial payloads. The ispace craft aims to put a small NASA satellite into lunar orbit to search for water deposits before touching down in the Atlas Crater.

The M1 lander will deploy two robotic rovers, a two-wheeled, baseball-sized device from Japan’s JAXA space agency and the four-wheeled Rashid explorer made by the United Arab Emirates.

It will also be carrying an experimental solid-state battery made by NGK Spark Plug Co.

“The Rashid rover is part of the United Arab Emirates ambitious space program,” said Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also vice president of the United Arab Emirates and who watched the launch at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre.

“Our aim is knowledge transfer and developing our capabilities and to add a scientific imprint in the history of humanity,” he tweeted.

Privately funded ispace has a contract with NASA to ferry payloads to the moon from 2025 and is aiming to build a permanently staffed lunar colony by 2040.
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The U.S. is closely monitoring Chinese activities that potentially threaten American assets in space as debris rapidly accumulates in low Earth orbit, the head of United States military operations in space said Friday.

Commander of U.S. Space Command Army Gen. James Dickinson also cheered the overwhelming passage in the United Nations of a resolution that countries not conduct direct-ascent antisatellite tests that create vast fields of space debris, which endanger satellites and space stations.

Of the four countries that have conducted such ASAT tests, the United States was the only one that voted in favor, while China and Russia voted no and India abstained.

“We can’t continue to contribute to the debris that we find in the space domain,” Dickinson said in a telephone news conference with reporters in Asia. Most of that debris lies in crucial low Earth orbit, which has become “congested, competitive and contested,” he said.

Even tiny shards of metal can pose a danger and the number of objects is growing rampantly. Space Command is now tracking more than 48,000 in near Earth orbit, including satellites, telescopes, space stations and pieces of debris of all sizes, up from 25,000 just three years ago, Dickinson said.

China in 2003 became the third government to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the former Soviet Union and the United States. Its program has advanced steadily since.

The Chinese space program drew rare international criticism after it conducted an unannounced test in 2007 in which it used a missile to blow up a defunct Chinese satellite, creating debris that continues to pose a hazard.

Beijing believes that “space is a very important piece to not only their economic or the global economic environment, but also the military environment, so we continue to watch that very closely as they continue to increase capabilities,” Dickinson said.

The secretive Chinese program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, precluding it from participating in the International Space Station or engaging in most forms of cooperation with NASA.

Proceeding with little outside help, China last month launched the last of three modules for its own space station, which briefly hosted six Chinese astronauts in space during a turnover of the three-person crew. It also has rovers on the moon and Mars and is planning a crewed lunar mission sometime in the future.

With U.S.-China tensions high over Taiwan, the South China Sea, trade and technology, space is increasingly becoming a potential flash point. In addition, the Pentagon last week released an annual China security report that warned Beijing would likely have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, and that it has provided no clarity on how it plans to use them.

China continues to “build capabilities that, really quite frankly, hold most of our assets at risk in the space domain,” Dickinson said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further showed space to be a “contested domain that must be protected. It’s a role that we at U.S. Space Command take very seriously,” he said.

“I’m seriously focused on our pacing challenge, China,” Dickinson said, using a description of Beijing that has become standard in the Pentagon. “The unified stance of our allies and partners is critical in countering the coercion and subversion that threatens the international rules-based order here in the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” Dickinson said.
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A winter storm packing high winds and potentially several feet of snow blew into the Sierra Nevada on Saturday, triggering thousands of power outages in California, closing a mountain highway at Lake Tahoe, and prompting an avalanche warning in the backcountry.

The storm is expected to bring as much as 1.2 meters of snow to the upper elevations around Lake Tahoe by Monday morning, the National Weather Service said.

A 400-kilometer stretch of the Sierra from north of Reno to south of Yosemite National Park was under a winter storm warning at least until Sunday.

“Travel will be very difficult to impossible with whiteout conditions,” the weather service said in Reno, where rain started falling Saturday.

A flood advisory was in effect from Sacramento to the California coast near San Francisco.

The U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for the backcountry in the mountains west of Lake Tahoe where it said “several feet of new snow and strong winds will result in dangerous avalanche conditions.”

A stretch of California Highway 89 was closed because of heavy snow between Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe, California, the highway patrol said. Interstate 80 between Reno and Sacramento remained open, but chains were required on tires for most vehicles.

More than 30,000 customers were without power in the Sacramento area at one point Saturday morning. It had been restored to all but about 3,300 by midday. But forecasters warned winds gusting up to 80 kph could bring down tree branches and power lines later in the day.

About 25 centimeters of snow already had fallen at Mammoth Mountain ski resort south of Yosemite where more than 3 meters of snow has been recorded since early November.

“It just seems like every week or so, another major storm rolls in,” resort spokeswoman Lauren Burke said.

The storm warning stretches into Sunday for most of the Sierra and doesn’t expire until Monday around Tahoe.

As much as 45 to 71 centimeters of snow was forecast through the weekend at lake level, and up to 1.2 meters at elevations above 2,133 meters with 80 kph winds and gusts up to 160 kph.

On the Sierra’s eastern slope, a winter weather advisory runs from 10 p.m. Saturday to 10 a.m. for Reno, Sparks and Carson City, with snow accumulations of 2.5-7.5 cm on valley floors and up to 20 cm above 1,524 meters.
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The World Health Organization says the arrival of one of three trial Ebola vaccines in Uganda Thursday “marks a historical milestone in the global capacity to respond to outbreaks.”

The 1,200 doses of the Sudan ebolavirus vaccine arrived “just 79 days after the outbreak was declared on 20 September,” the WHO said.

“Uganda is showing that life-saving research can be promptly organized in the midst of an outbreak,” said Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng Acero, Uganda’s minister of health.

In contrast, WHO said that “To start Phase 3 trials in Guinea during the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2015, it was 7 months from declaration to arrival of vaccines. This was a great achievement and set historical records at the time.”

The vaccine for the Sudan ebolavirus is one of the three candidates recommended for the trial by an independent WHO expert panel. The other two will be added to the trial when the doses arrive.
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