Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
China ready to launch lunar far side sample return mission
Summary: China’s space agency has prepared a rocket for its Chang'e 6 mission which will attempt to land on the far side of the Moon and collect lunar material, which it will then attempt to return to Earth; the launch is currently expected on May 3.
Context: This mission is the first of its kind, as while China previously landed a lander craft and rover on the far side of the Moon, which is never visible from Earth, and still has a relay satellite that transmits data from over there back to China, no material has been recovered and returned to Earth, thus far; this is a robotic mission, so no humans will be on board, and it will set a lander down on the Moon’s surface, which will collect samples that will then be launched into orbit on a smaller ascent vehicle, that vehicle collected by an in-orbit service module that will haul it back to Earth, which it will deliver to the surface in a reentry capsule, if all goes according to plan.
—Space News
FCC fines big three carriers $196 million for selling users’ real-time location data
Summary: The US Federal Communications Commission has announced a $196 million fine levied against wireless carriers T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon for illegally sharing their customers’ real-time location data without their customers’ informed consent, and without taking measures to ensure that data isn’t used inappropriately.
Context: These carriers have said they will appeal the fines and that they’ve long-since discontinued the programs through which they were collecting and sharing the relevant data, but in essence it looks like these carriers were collecting this information for legit purposes, then selling it, in less legit ways, to data aggregators, which then sold data-packets to a variety of customers, ranging from bail-bond companies to bounty hunters to law enforcement entities, some of which used this data inappropriately, resulting in these fines; these programs were originally reported upon in 2018, after which the companies started to back away from them.
—Ars Technica
Georgia's ruling party stages mass rally to counter anti-government protests
Summary: Following weeks of large and widespread anti-government protests targeting a law that critics say will allow the government to silence dissent, the Georgian government has bussed supporters in from across the country to hold large rallies in an effort to show that this law does have support, despite those protests.
Context: The proposed law in question is directed at so-called “foreign agents” in the country, and protestors have compared it to a Russian law that allows the Russian government to jail or otherwise harass and threaten anyone they like, as long as they can somehow connect them, with real or fabricated evidence, to an anti-Russian scheme supposedly concocted by outsiders intent on harming the Russian state; the governing Georgian Dream party allegedly forced government employees to attend the rally, and has said that this law would help them force transparency upon currently non-transparent, foreign-funded NGOs that operate in the country, but opponents of the law contend it will make their ambitions to join NATO and the EU (bids supported by 80% of the population) all but impossible.
—France 24
As NATO ramps-up its efforts to increase funding levels and deploy more troops along its border with Russia, the alliance is having to tangle with its own internal disputes and ensure they don’t become larger issues that might prevent it from serving as a deterrent in Europe.
—The Wall Street Journal
3.8 million
Number of people who die per year, globally, with invasive fungal infections, about 2.5 million of whom die with the fungus serving as their primary cause of death, according to a new paper published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
That means fungal infections are already responsible for about 5% of all deaths, and experts expect climate change to increase the number of such infections in the coming years; this is also about twice as many deaths as previous estimates suggested.
—Financial Times
One Sentence News / May 1, 2024