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After a yearlong court battle, a federal judge on Friday ordered NASA officials to hand over the bag. The exchange took place Monday at the space center in Houston, and Carlson hired a security firm to take charge of the bag, rather than keeping it in her house.
Noting the "amazing technical achievements, skill and courage" that NASA workers showed in obtaining the objects, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten previously had urged Carlson and the government to amicably resolve the dispute to recognize both their legitimate interests.
McHugh said Carlson would consider allowing the bag to be displayed publicly, and she is expected to make an announcement by the end of the week.
It marks the only known case in which a private citizen has won ownership of a lunar object that the government had previously sold, apparently by mistake, attorneys involved said.
But the moon dust bag is just one of at least hundreds of lunar objects that have been become part of a pricey, worldwide black market.
In fact, one of the attorneys on the case, Joseph Gutheinz, is a former special investigator for NASA who, in all other cases, has argued that privately owned lunar objects should be returned to the space agency.
He estimates that over time, the U.S. government has given away about 270 moon rocks to foreign nations and dignitaries as well as about 100 to the states. Many ended up on the black market, and he has helped recover them for the government through an undercover sting and other investigations. But there are still about 158 lunar objects unaccounted for, he said.
The only other legitimate sale of lunar material that Gutheinz knew of was the 1993 sale of moon rocks from an unmanned Russian space mission, for $442,500.
The case of the moon dust bag comes at a time of renewed interest in space exploration. President Donald Trump was expected to announce a return to human space missions Tuesday, and the private company SpaceX announced this week that it hopes to bring tourists to orbit the moon next year.
"Millions of people are intrigued by space around the world," Gutheinz said. "(Carlson) is one of them. She loves space. And she had the gumption not to back down."
Nancy Carlson places the lunar dust bag into a protective container after receiving it from NASA on Feb. 27, 2017.
Nancy Carlson, of Inverness, signs for the lunar dust bag, which was returned to her Feb. 27, 2017, in Houston.
China recently surpassed Europe to become Apple’s second biggest market.
An Apple retail store in Shanghai, China. Image source: Apple.
If you read Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) latest annual report, one thing that will stick out is the increasing importance of China to the iPhone maker's top and bottom lines. As I illustrate in the three charts below, sales growth in region, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, is handily outpacing Apple's other geographic divisions and has transformed the East Asian country into the tech giant's second largest market.
China's contribution to Apple's top line was on display in its latest quarterly results. For the three months ended December 26, 2015, Apple's sales in China increased by 13.8% over the year-ago period. That's less than the 84% growth rate recorded in the region for all of fiscal 2015, but it's still more than the tech company's other reporting segments: Americas, Europe, Japan, and rest of Asia-Pacific.
Sales in the Americas and Japan did particularly poorly throughout Apple's first quarter. They declined by 4.1% in the Americas, which is dominated by the United States, and by 12% in Japan. In fact, were it not for China's contribution, Apple's overall net sales would have fallen last quarter by approximately $1 billion.
Thanks to this rapid growth, China eclipsed Europe last year as Apple's second biggest market. This isn't because sales in Europe contracted in 2015. Just the opposite was in fact the case. Sales grew on the continent by 14% last year compared to 2014.
But even though Europe's 14% increase is nothing to shake a stick at, it paled in comparison to the performance in China. Thanks to the addition of China Mobile in the second quarter of 2014 as well as the rollout of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple's sales in the world's most populated country soared by 84% in fiscal 2015.
As you can see in the chart above, the relative growth rates in China and Europe in 2015 allowed the former to surpass the latter when it comes to the contribution to Apple's top line.
After the region's incredible success in 2015, Greater China now accounts for more than a quarter of Apple's net operating income. That outpaces Europe's contribution by seven percentage points, and trails only the Americas, from which Apple derives 37% of its earnings.
China's importance to Apple's bottom line is bound to grow. Apple's market share in the country is meaningfully less than its share in the United States. Additionally, with the release of the iPhone SE, which is designed specifically to entice buyers in emerging markets, there's every reason to believe that the East Asian region could become Apple's biggest sales source at some point in the next few years.
The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter.
The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation and complicates the Trump administration’s efforts to preserve its relationship with a close ally. A team of 15 Saudi agents flew to Istanbul on government aircraft in October and killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate, where he had gone to pick up documents that he needed for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.
In reaching its conclusions, the CIA examined multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence. Khalid told Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, that he should go to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents and gave him assurances that it would be safe to do so.
It is not clear if Khalid knew that Khashoggi would be killed, but he made the call at his brother’s direction, according to the people familiar with the call, which was intercepted by U.S. intelligence.
The CIA’s conclusion about Mohammed’s role was also based on the agency’s assessment of the prince as the country’s de facto ruler who oversees even minor affairs in the kingdom. “The accepted position is that there is no way this happened without him being aware or involved,” said a U.S. official familiar with the CIA’s conclusions.
A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment.
Over the past several weeks, the Saudis have offered multiple, contradictory explanations for what happened at the consulate. This week, the Saudi public prosecutor blamed the operation on a rogue band of operatives who were sent to Istanbul to return Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia, in an operation that veered off course when the journalist “was forcibly restrained and injected with a large amount of a drug resulting in an overdose that led to his death,” according to a report by the prosecutor.
The prosecutor announced charges against 11 alleged participants and said he would seek the death penalty against five of them.
The assassination of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Mohammed’s policies, has sparked a foreign policy crisis for the White House and raised questions about the administration’s reliance on Saudi Arabia as a key ally in the Middle East and bulwark against Iran.
President Trump has resisted pinning the blame for the killing on Mohammed, who enjoys a close relationship with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Privately, aides said, Trump has been shown evidence of the prince’s involvement but remains skeptical that Mohammed ordered the killing.
The president has also asked CIA and State Department officials where Khashoggi’s body is and has grown frustrated that they have not been able to provide an answer. The CIA does not know the location of Khashoggi’s remains, according to the people familiar with the agency’s assessment.
Among the intelligence assembled by the CIA is an audio recording from a listening device that the Turks placed inside the Saudi Consulate, according to the people familiar with the matter. The Turks gave the CIA a copy of that audio, and the agency’s director, Gina Haspel, has listened to it.
The audio shows that Khashoggi was killed within moments of entering the consulate, according to officials in multiple countries who have listened to it or been briefed on its contents. Khashoggi died in the office of the Saudi consul general, who can be heard expressing his displeasure that Khashoggi’s body now needed to be disposed of and the facility cleaned of any evidence, according to people familiar with the audio recording.
The CIA also examined a call placed from inside the consulate after the killing by an alleged member of the Saudi hit team, Maher Mutreb, a security official who has often been seen at the crown prince’s side and who was photographed entering and leaving the consulate on the day of the killing.
Mutreb called Saud al-Qahtani, then one of the top aides to Mohammed, and informed him that the operation had been completed, according to people familiar with the call.
This week, the Treasury Department sanctioned 17 individuals it said were involved in Khashoggi’s death, including Qahtani, Mutreb and the Saudi consul general in Turkey, Mohammad al-Otaibi.
The CIA’s assessment of Mohammed’s role in the assassination also tracks with information developed by foreign governments, according to officials in several European capitals who have concluded that the operation was too brazen to have taken place without Mohammed’s direction.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his government has shared the audio with Germany, France, Britain and Saudi Arabia.
In addition to calls and audio recordings, CIA analysts also linked some members of the Saudi hit team directly to Mohammed himself. Some of the 15 members have served on his security team and traveled in the United States during visits by senior Saudi officials, including the crown prince, according to passport records reviewed by The Post.
The United States had also obtained intelligence before Khashoggi’s death that indicated he might be in danger. But it wasn’t until after he disappeared on Oct. 2 that U.S. intelligence agencies began searching archives of intercepted communications and discovered material indicating that the Saudi royal family had been seeking to lure Khashoggi back to Riyadh.
Two U.S. officials said there has been no indication that officials were aware of this intelligence in advance of Khashoggi’s disappearance or had missed any chance to warn him.
Khashoggi “was not a person of interest” before his disappearance, and the fact that he was residing in Virginia meant that he was regarded as a U.S. person and therefore shielded from U.S. intelligence gathering, one of the officials said.
Trump has told senior White House officials that he wants Mohammed to remain in power because Saudi Arabia helps to check Iran, which the administration considers its top security challenge in the Middle East. He has said that he does not want the controversy over Khashoggi’s death to impede oil production by the kingdom.
One lingering question is why Mohammed might have decided to kill Khashoggi, who was not agitating for the crown prince’s removal.
A theory the CIA has developed is that Mohammed believed Khashoggi was a dangerous Islamist who was too sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to people familiar with the assessment. Days after Khashoggi disappeared, Mohammed relayed that view in a phone call with Kushner and John Bolton, the national security adviser, who has long opposed the Brotherhood and seen it as a regional security threat.
U.S. officials are unclear on when or whether the Saudi government will follow through with its threatened executions of the individuals blamed for Khashoggi’s killing. “It could happen overnight or take 20 years,” the U.S. official said, adding that the treatment of subordinates could erode Mohammed’s standing going forward.
In killing those who followed his orders, “it’s hard to get the next set [of subordinates] to help,” the official said.
John Hudson and Missy Ryan in Washington, Souad Mekhennet in Frankfurt, and Loveday Morris and Kareem Fahim in Istanbul contributed to this report.
The apocalypse depicted in Revolution corrects a myriad of modern injustices, from laziness to sloppy living to overindulgence; it's soon clear that for all the heroes' battles with evil soldiers and bandits patrolling the land, it's the pre-blackout fast-paced, materialistic, digitally fixated society that represents the real dystopia. Thanks to worldwide catastrophe, TV- and iPhone-hypnotized children morph into capable, imaginative teenagers hunting and gathering to their hearts' contents, echoing the pastoral reveries of The Hunger Games. Millionaire Google executives are reduced to awkward, cowardly geeks who stoop over to catch their breath every few minutes. The injustice of high-tech, remote-control weaponry is supplanted by the much more egalitarian rigors of hand-to-hand combat. Best of all, the handsome, well-muscled teenager started out as our damsel in distress, thanks to his dependence on asthma inhalers. As he sighed and pouted in captivity for the first few episodes, his more able-bodied older sister colluded with a loosely knit band of rebel forces to overthrow the local militia. Throw in some fancy braids and fruity cocktails and you've got an apocalypse worth daydreaming about.
It's hard not to feel a rush of yearning for this simple if violent existence. The characters' goals are concrete and simple: hit the road in search of help or information; subvert your malevolent overlords - local, observable foes, as opposed to the faceless, splintered, omnipresent enemies we increasingly protest; hide your firearms and your American flags from evil outside forces. Even romance is more straightforward. Instead of texting with our heroine, a handsome cross-bow-wielding stranger saves her life by sticking an arrow in her assailant's chest - a move that's not only more direct than a winking emoticon, but also reflects favorably on his adaptive traits at a time when these things clearly matter.
Be sure to read the whole essay at Vulture.
Image taken from the videogame The Last of Us, from Naughtydog.
Given nuclear fusion powers the sun, which powers solar energy, why not cut out the need for harnessing the sun and just harness the process by using nuclear power plants? No need for any storage systems that you need for any viable solar system, less land use needed and considerably cheaper.
When we compare the costs of renewable energy generation versus status quo we have to take into consideration that the status quo is finite and the costs of both are heading in opposite directions.
Conservative estimates say all oil reserves on the planet will be used up by 2060 with the cost of attaining these reserves going up each year. Conversely the cost of generating energy from renewable sources has been decreasing each year.
Delaying the conversion won't stave off the inevitable. The only way to decrease long term costs is to start the process as soon as possible and that includes changing consumer's dependence on gasoline vehicles by offering attractive and affordable alternatives. I'm glad companies like Tesla, who have no stake in the status quo are doing just this.
The US will have spent 7.7 trillion in 40 years on their war in Iraq.
Lots of political will to drop that coin there.
and with that you lose the argument, not that you were coming close to winning at all anyway. Just invoke Hitler now to really finish yourself off.
Apparently spending 7.7 trillion on a war to obtain a right-of-way to the raw product .
except that this wasn't the amount spent. And no matter what was spent, it is completely irrelevant to the argument. Hey, the US spent a whole bunch of money on a really bad idea (Iraq invasion) so that means that all really bad ideas should get a lot of money too! Yeah, that's great logic all right.
Poindexter wrote: Conservative estimates say all oil reserves on the planet will be used up by 2060 with the cost of attaining these reserves going up each year. Conversely the cost of generating energy from renewable sources has been decreasing each year.
The reserves in Northern Alberta alone will go into the next century.
The Green Barbarian wrote: except that this wasn't the amount spent.
1.7 trillion to date, with a additional 6 trillion spent 40 years from now.
And no matter what was spent, it is completely irrelevant to the argument.
That's interesting considering that you were not part of the argument. Humanity spending 19 trillion over 60 years to power the world or one country spending 7.7 trillion over 40 years to have access to some oil (let alone being able to use the oil) and the associated costs of the aftermath of burning all that oil.
The debate, if you'd like to be a part of it, was whether we had 19 trillion dollar to do something big that would benefit the entire globe. I pointed out that a single country will drop almost half that amount in less time in order to kill people and put a bunch of CO2 in the air. The Iraq War cost humanity energy, resources and produced a lot of C02 without producing a single watt of power for anyone.
It's only a bad idea to you because of your financial investments and old world politics. Somehow oil is a conservative value to you. If you owned stock in solar companies I'm sure you'd love to get behind a 19 trillion dollar project. If the environmental lobby was opposed to it you would be sitting there criticizing the "can't do it" attitude of the left, just as you have all over this forum on subjects such as mining, pipelines and LNG.
The oil addiction has brought our species to the point we are at now. Have we not embraced the benefits of oil in our society, your dream of "clean" energy would be even farther off than it is now.
I don't agree with you on that one.
i disagree . human sense of adventure and the ability to understand how our universe workes is what got us here . oil is a tool . tool become obsolet or improved upon . oil wont be improved upon so that just leaves left to history .
it isnt even a left right issue anymore . it just is .
Last edited by oneh2obabe on Jun 28th, 2016, 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Except that your link doesn't say that. This is just babbling nonsense. But who cares. It's irrelevant to this discussion. Completely and totally irrelevant.
And on another hand, no it's not.
Tribal commander orders halt to attacks after government initiates peace talks.
A government official confirmed the leaflets were genuine and were issued by Mehsud's group.
"It's a confidence-building measure, part of the peace process that has begun with local militants," the Reuters news agency reported a government official as saying.
Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban is an umbrella organisation, formed last year, of various groups based in Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun border lands.
Pakistan's new coalition government, led by Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, has started negotiations in a bid to break with the policies of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president whose policies to tackle the armed groups ranged from military action to appeasement.
In recent years, Pakistani authorities have struck a number of pacts with groups in both South and North Waziristan but the deals, intended to stop attacks into Afghanistan, have so far been temporary.
But critics, including US commanders in Afghanistan, said the deals let the armed groups entrench themselves on the Pakistani side of the border and intensify their attacks across it into Afghanistan.
The new government's policy has also come under fire from the US and EU.
Washington expressed concern on Wednesday about the purported peace deal and urged Pakistan to continue to fight armed groups as part of Washington's so-called war on terror.
But Mohammed Sadiq, Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman, defended the use of negotiations with armed groups to curb a wave of suicide bombings.
"We believe that military action alone will not be effective in permanently ending the phenomenon of terrorism," Sadiq said.
Earlier, Mehsud's spokesman, Maulvi Omar, said the talks with the government were making progress.
"Talks are going well and the two sides have fulfiled their promises. We're very hopeful," Omar said.
The government had started withdrawing troops from different areas in South Waziristan and released some fighters, he said.
A military spokesman denied the army had pulled any troops out of the region but on Monday the authorities did release Sufi Mohammed, a senior Taliban leader accused of sending thousands of fighters across the border to battle US-led forces in Afghanistan.
Sacramento, CA, Letter Carrier Esmeralda Carrillo was delivering mail when she smelled smoke coming from a house on the route. Carrillo quickly ran to the house to alert the residents. When she did not receive a response, she took it upon herself to call for help by dialing 911.
The Fresno Fire Department was on the scene in a matter of minutes. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the residents and the Fire Department confirmed that it was the carrier’s actions which saved the residence form total loss due to the fire. The investigation later revealed that someone in the home had left food cooking on the stove which led to the fire.
Had it not been for Carrillo’s heroic actions, the damage would have been much worse.
Russian businessman-turned politician Mikhail Prokhorov is planning to create a new party based on “non-political principles” and uniting people of different political views.
“It’ll be an absolutely new party… Perhaps, no one in the world has created such a party. And we would like to be first in order to be ahead of time and establish a party that’d unite our civil society,” presidential candidate Prokhorov told a media-conference on Tuesday.
He said that his party would be different to the existing political structures, becoming what he called “a civil superstructure” above other political forces. Activists from different walks of life and, perhaps, with different political stances would work in it on a voluntary basis, Prokhorov said.
The party will have no leaders, since those responsible for various areas of the party’s work would be chosen by the people, Prokhorov told journalists.

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