SpaceX and T-Mobile unveil satellite plan to end cellphone ‘dead zones’

SpaceX and T-Mobile unveil satellite plan to end cellphone ‘dead zones’
Musk said we will no longer read about tragedies of people getting lost in the wilderness and unable to call for help. (Shutterstock)
Short Url
Updated 26 August 2022

SpaceX and T-Mobile unveil satellite plan to end cellphone ‘dead zones’

SpaceX and T-Mobile unveil satellite plan to end cellphone ‘dead zones’

LOS ANGELES: Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellites will connect directly to T-Mobile cellphones to provide service access even in the most remote places beyond the reach of cell towers from next year, the two companies announced Thursday.

The new service, which will work on existing cellphones and utilize SpaceX’s network of thousands of Starlink satellites in Earth’s orbit, will begin offering text messaging services from late 2023, with voice calls and data services expected to follow later.

“The important thing about this is that it means there’s no dead zones anywhere in the world for your cell phone,” said Musk, in an announcement event held at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas.

Musk said the service will save lives, giving the example of hikers who get lost and are currently unable to call for help.

“We will no longer read about these tragedies that happened where people get lost and if only they could have called for help they would be OK.”

Though satellite Internet has existed for years, users currently require specialized hardware, such as Starlink terminals.

“This won’t have the kind of bandwidth that a Starlink terminal would have, but it will enable texting, it will enable images, and — if there aren’t too many people in the cell zone — you can even potentially have a little bit of video,” said Musk.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said he expects the new service to be free of charge on most cellphone plans, although there could be a fee for users on low-cost packages.

“It’s a lot like putting a cellular tower in the sky. Just a lot harder,” he said.

Competition in the satellite Internet market is rapidly intensifying.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently announced he intended to launch some 3,200 satellites.

Public institutions are also looking to get in on the act.

China has a plan to launch a constellation of 13,000 satellites called Guowang and the European Union wants to deploy roughly 250 by 2024.

While next year’s beta test launch will be restricted to the United States, Sievert said his company expects to expand to overseas markets with reciprocal roaming deals.


Australia plans to ban swastikas and other Nazi symbols in legislation coming next week

Australia plans to ban swastikas and other Nazi symbols in legislation coming next week
Updated 11 sec ago

Australia plans to ban swastikas and other Nazi symbols in legislation coming next week

Australia plans to ban swastikas and other Nazi symbols in legislation coming next week
  • Law would include a penalty for people displaying Nazi symbols of up to a year in prison
  • Displaying symbols for religious, educational or artistic purposes would be among a range of exclusions from the ban
CANBERRA: Australia’s government plans legislation to ban swastikas and other Nazi symbols nationwide due to an increase in far-right activity, attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said Thursday.
While most Australian states already ban such Nazi symbols, the federal law would go further by also banning the trade in such material, Dreyfus said.
“There’s been a rise in this kind of violent far right activity. We think it’s time for there to be a federal law which I’ll be bringing to the Parliament next week,” Dreyfus told Nine Network television.
We’ve got responsibility for import and export. We want to see an end to trading in this kind of memorabilia or any items which bear those Nazi symbols,” Dreyfus said. “There’s no place in Australia for spreading of hatred and violence.”
The Labour Party government controls the House of Representatives but not the Senate, and it’s unclear when a ban might pass or take effect. The law would include a penalty for people displaying Nazi symbols of up to a year in prison.
Displaying symbols for religious, educational or artistic purposes would be among a range of exclusions from the ban. It will not affect the use of the swastika for people observing Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
Dreyfus, who is Jewish, said the number of neo-Nazis was small, but the main domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, had raised concerns about their activity in the past three years.
“This is a very small number of people. I’m hoping it’s getting small and it will eventually disappear,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Mike Pence bids to topple Trump as Republican 2024 frontrunner

Mike Pence bids to topple Trump as Republican 2024 frontrunner
Updated 08 June 2023

Mike Pence bids to topple Trump as Republican 2024 frontrunner

Mike Pence bids to topple Trump as Republican 2024 frontrunner
  • Former VP attacks Trump for backing off conservative policies and accuses him of breaking a promise “on day one” to govern with “decency and civility”

WASHINGTON: Former US vice president Mike Pence launched his presidential campaign Wednesday by framing the Republican nomination as a choice between “reckless” Donald Trump and the Constitution — arguing that his old boss’s bid to overturn the last election should bar him from returning in 2024.

Offering a spirited defense of the Trump White House’s policies, the deeply religious former radio talk show host and Indiana governor said he was proud to stand with his running mate “every single day” during the 2017-21 administration.
But he drew the line at the then-president’s incitement of a crowd to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Pence was inside, overseeing the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.
“As I’ve said many times, on that fateful day, president Trump’s words were reckless and endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol,” Pence told supporters in Ankeny, Iowa.
“The American people deserve to know that on that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution and I always will.”
Pence honed a reputation as an unstintingly loyal vice president who stuck with Trump throughout a scandal-plagued four years in the White House, and brought the religious right into the tent.
But the evangelical Christian’s refusal to follow Trump’s urging and use his role as president of the Senate to sabotage the 2020 election made him a pariah with Trump’s fanatical base — and the populist firebrand himself.
Pence was forced to flee for his life when a mob directed by Trump to march on the Capitol broke through barricades and called for the vice president’s execution.

Pence, who in a launch video earlier Wednesday insisted that “God is not done with America yet,” is the first modern vice president to challenge his old running mate for his party’s nomination.
His announcement underscored the tightrope that he will have to walk on the campaign trail as he attempts to distance himself from the chaos of the Trump years while taking credit for the gains he believes the country made.
Pence attacked Trump for backing off conservative policies such as tough abortion curbs and fiscal responsibility, and accused him of breaking a promise “on day one” to govern with “decency and civility.”
When asked about media reports that Trump’s lawyers had been informed their client was the target of an investigation into the mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House, Pence told a CNN town hall audience that “no one’s above the law.”
“I would just hope there would be a way for them to move forward without the dramatic and drastic and divisive step of indicting a former president of the United States,” he added.
Pence, who was celebrating his 64th birthday, announced his presidential run a day after former New Jersey governor Chris Christie joined the contest, promising to be the only candidate who would not pull his punches against Trump — still the dominant Republican figure for much of the country.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis and two former governors, Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson, are also in the race.
Polls show Trump as the overwhelming early frontrunner, regularly posting leads on second-placed DeSantis in excess of 30 points. None of the other candidates — Pence included — is achieving double figures.
DeSantis traveled to southern Arizona Wednesday, where he touted his tough stance on immigration and defended his state’s decision to send dozens of mainly Venezuelan migrants to California on charter flights from Texas in recent days.
California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom threatened DeSantis with kidnapping charges — calling him a “small, pathetic man” — over the taxpayer-funded operation, after officials said the migrants had been misled into boarding the planes with false promises of jobs.
DeSantis responded by criticizing “sanctuary” cities and states, like California, and called for the border to be “shut down” at a round-table discussion in Sierra Vista with law enforcement officials from Florida, Arizona and Texas.
“That’s the policies that they’ve (staked) out,” DeSantis said, criticizing California’s more relaxed approach to immigration control.
“And then what? When they have to deal with some of the fruits of that, they all of a sudden become very, very upset about that.”
 


Myanmar lawyers face harassment, intimidation in junta courts: HRW

Myanmar lawyers face harassment, intimidation in junta courts: HRW
Updated 08 June 2023

Myanmar lawyers face harassment, intimidation in junta courts: HRW

Myanmar lawyers face harassment, intimidation in junta courts: HRW
  • Since it seized power more than two years ago, Myanmar's junta has arrested tens of thousands in a sweeping and bloody crackdown on dissent

BANGKOK: Myanmar lawyers defending political detainees in junta-run courts are being harassed and even jailed by military authorities, Human Rights Watch said Thursday, warning that intimidation was forcing many to stop taking cases.

Since it seized power more than two years ago and plunged the country into turmoil, the junta has arrested tens of thousands in a sweeping and bloody crackdown on dissent.
Rights groups say the military has used the courts to throttle opponents including democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi and former president Win Myint, who were jailed for lengthy terms by closed-door courts.
Defense lawyers working in “special courts” set up by the junta to try political crimes face harassment, intimidation and threats from authorities, HRW said in a report based on interviews with 19 lawyers.
“In the courtroom, I now have to worry about not getting myself detained rather than speaking the truth,” one Yangon-based lawyer told the watchdog.
“Everyone at the court knows who I am... The junta can detain me at any time, and they can and will make up any reasons they want.”
HRW cited the case of attorney Ywet Nu Aung, who was reportedly detained as she left a hearing where she was representing a former chief minister and member of Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).
She was accused of helping to provide financial support to anti-junta militias and later sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor.
Lawyers are regularly barred from communicating privately with clients ahead of hearings, HRW said, and in an overcrowded legal system, some had taken on hundreds of cases.
“Sometimes cross-examination doesn’t even happen,” another lawyer told HRW.
“It’s near impossible to challenge what they (the prosecution) present as evidence, and we never get to have a defendant released on bail.”
All 19 lawyers told HRW they had experienced “intimidation and surveillance by junta authorities.”
“Few have been willing to put themselves at risk of further surveillance and intimidation and many have stopped taking cases,” HRW said.
More than 23,000 people have been arrested by the junta since the coup in February 2021, according to a local monitoring group.
Last year, a junta-controlled court ordered the execution of a former NLD lawmaker along with a prominent activist over allegations of “terrorism” — Myanmar’s first use of capital punishment in decades.
 


Air India plane flying to San Francisco lands in Russia’s Siberia after engine problem

Air India plane flying to San Francisco lands in Russia’s Siberia after engine problem
Updated 08 June 2023

Air India plane flying to San Francisco lands in Russia’s Siberia after engine problem

Air India plane flying to San Francisco lands in Russia’s Siberia after engine problem
  • The airline said later Wednesday that a replacement plane was flying from Mumbai to Magadan to take the stranded passengers to San Francisco on Thursday

NEW DELHI: An Air India plane flying from New Delhi to San Francisco was diverted to Russia after it developed an engine problem, the airline said Wednesday.
The plane, a Boeing 777 carrying 216 passengers and 16 crew members, landed safely at Magadan airport in Siberia in Russia’s far east on Tuesday, Air India said in a statement.
The flight “developed a technical issue with one of its engines,” it said, adding that the aircraft was undergoing safety checks and the passengers were being provided support.
The airline said later Wednesday that a replacement plane was flying from Mumbai to Magadan to take the stranded passengers to San Francisco on Thursday.
In Washington, US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that fewer than 50 American citizens were on the plane and the department was not aware of any of them reaching out to the US Embassy in Russia or other diplomatic posts.
Girvaan Singh Kahma, 16, was traveling on the flight with his uncle and brother. He said they were barred from leaving the hostel where they were staying in Magadan and were unable to use their credit cards because of sanctions over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“The first day and a half was really hard for all of us,” he said. “The weather went to 3 to 4 degrees (Celsius) in the morning, and in the night it was bitter cold,” he said, adding that it was getting better with food and a place to sleep.
“The Russian soldiers, the Russian police, the authorities, everyone working in the hostel has been treating us extremely well,” he said.


Bangladesh shuts schools, cuts power in longest heat wave in decades

Bangladesh shuts schools, cuts power  in longest heat wave in decades
Updated 07 June 2023

Bangladesh shuts schools, cuts power in longest heat wave in decades

Bangladesh shuts schools, cuts power  in longest heat wave in decades
  • Temperatures in the South Asian nation’s capital of Dhaka have surged to around 40 degrees Celsius

DHAKA: Bangladesh has shut thousands of schools as it struggles through its lengthiest heat wave in half a century, with widespread power cuts only compounding locals’ misery.

Temperatures in the South Asian nation’s capital of Dhaka have surged to around 40 degrees Celsius, with the poor bearing the brunt of the blazing sun.

“We have never seen such a prolonged heat wave since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971,” said Bazlur Rashid, a senior official at the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

Tens of thousands of primary schools were shut down by the government, and electricity production has been drastically cut, even as demand for air conditioners and fans has surged.

On Monday, the country was forced to suspend operations at its biggest power plant because the government was unable to afford the coal to fuel it.

The Bangladeshi taka depreciated about 25 percent against the US dollar last year, driving up the cost of fuel imports and power utilities.

Other plants have fallen well short of meeting demand, leading to hours-long blackouts.

Housewife Tania Akhter said that her youngest child was resting at home with classes canceled, but her 12-year-old daughter was still going to school.

“Those classes should also be shut down because the students are suffering a lot in this heat — they are falling sick,” Akhter said.

The heat wave began in April and ran into early May before easing, then resumed late last month, with forecasters predicting the mercury will remain high until the end of the week.

“Every summer Bangladesh witnesses heat waves, but this year’s heat wave is unusual,” Rashid told AFP. “In the past, heat waves would only continue for a few days or a week, but this year it has continued for two weeks and more.”

A study last month by the World Weather Attribution group found that climate change had made record-breaking deadly heat waves in Bangladesh — as well as India, Laos and Thailand — at least 30 times more likely.