MY BLOG(18)

       President Barack Obama  landed  in Cuba on Sunday and made history as the first U.S. president to visit the country since 1928, when Calvin Coolidge arrived by battleship. The president’s trip reflects significant changes in U.S.-Cuban relations: In December 2014, Obama announced that he would restart diplomatic ties with Cuba, and in August 2015, the U.S. embassy reopened in Havana.     However, the U.S. embargo on Cuba remains in place after 50 years, and the president’s trip has generated controversy, particularly due to human rights concerns. Thus the issue of U.S. policy in Cuba is a hot topic of the 2016 presidential election. Republican presidential candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is the son of a Cuban immigrant, is a particularly vocal opponent of Obama’s approach toward Cuba and penned a  critical op-ed  Sunday for Politico.     Kenneth Walsh, chief White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report,  says  that Obama’s Cuba visit exemplif

  After suffering its first defeat in the Google DeepMind Challenge Match on Sunday, the Go-playing AI AlphaGo has beaten world-class player Lee Se-dol for a fourth time to win the five-game series 4-1 overall. The final game proved to be a close one, with both sides fighting hard and going deep into overtime. AlphaGo is an AI developed by Google-owned British company DeepMind, and had already wrapped up a historic victory on Saturday by becoming the first ever computer program to beat a top-level Go player.   The win came after a "bad mistake" made early in the game, according to DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, leaving AlphaGo "trying hard to claw it back." By winning the final game despite its blip in the fourth, AlphaGo has demonstrated beyond doubt its superiority over one of the world's best Go players, reaffirming a major milestone for artificial intelligence in the process.   It was "the most mindblowing game experience we've had so f

A clean break with the EU's single market is not inevitable, British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday, seeking to clarify comments that pushed down the pound on the possibility of a hard Brexit from the European Union. She criticised British media for misinterpreting what she described as long-term position on EU talks but the pound failed to recover from a 10-week low and was down more than 1 percent to the dollar and 1.2 percent against the euro on the day. May, under pressure to offer more detail on her strategy before launching divorce talks with the European Union, said on Sunday in her first televised interview of the year that Britain would not be able to keep "bits" of its membership. Some commentators saw that as a sign she was heading for a hard Brexit, which business says would damage the economy by breaking links with the single market of 500 million consumers. May shot back that the media was using terms she did not accept. "I'm tem

“TO BE ABLE  to understand accurately the damage, threat and the devastation of the disaster in Syria, [it is like] we are having a  7.6  earthquake 50 times a day,” writes Ammar al-Salmo, leader of Syrian Civil Defense in Aleppo, on the agency’s website. To operate in the most dangerous of environments, members of the Civil Defense – also known as the White Helmets – have adapted technically and emotionally. “Before the war, I hated funerals and the sight of blood,” says  Ammar al-Salmo , leader of Syria Civil Defense in Aleppo. “But now I feel like I’m drugged, like my heart has become hardened. Killing and massacres have become commonplace, and we’re all now sick and in need of a hospital. When the war ends, I’ll go back home and sleep forever.” The absence of feeling is undoubtedly a sign of shock in response to the sights of war, but it is also what protects the White Helmets from a nervous breakdown, and enables them to work in the worst of conditions. Since they were founded

S paceX is still reeling from its September 1 launch pad explosion, which irretrievably damaged a Falcon 9 rocket and consumed a very important Facebook-sponsored satellite — all because of what was likely an issue in loading cryogenic helium into the booster’s upper stage liquid oxygen tank. The company is determined to launch rockets again before the end of the year, but there hasn’t been much clue as to whether it was making any real progress. Well, we finally have some encouraging news. On Sunday, someone posted to reddit a slew of images and a short video of a Falcon 9 rocket on Interstate 10 in Arizona, presumably en route from SpaceX’s testing grounds in McGregor, Texas, to Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California. This is almost certainly the booster that will be used to launch 10 satellites owned and operated by Virginia-based communications company Iridium. Later that same day, Iridium’s chief executive, Matt Desch, added some confirmation for what was already be

Tensions over how developed countries will help finance the transition to a lower-carbon energy system threaten to undermine implementation      By   BILL SPINDLE  and   AMY HARDER      Nov. 7, 2016 5:30 a.m. ET A year after nearly 200 nations agreed to a  global pact in Paris to combat climate change , a United Nations conference this week ushers in the hard work of turning the plan into action. The conference, known as COP22, which kicks off Monday in Marrakesh, Morocco, benefits from the unexpectedly quick adoption of the Paris agreement. It entered into force Friday after at least 55 signatories representing more than 55% of global emissions previously ratified it, including the U.S., China, the European Union and India. “The politically difficult step was Paris,” said Robert Stavins, an environmental economist at Harvard University. “The technically difficult steps now remain.” The agreement is a collection of self-imposed national plans for holding emission