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SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2017

Opinion

Adelle Chua, Editor mst.daydesk@gmail.com

EDITORIAL VERA RUBIN, DARK MATTER, AND THE HOPES OF A WOMAN PHYSICS LAUREATE

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By Pecier Decierdo FOR years, many have remarked upon the fact that astrophysicist Vera Rubin, whose work convinced the world that dark matter existed, has yet to win a Nobel Prize in physics. So far, only two women have received the prize: Marie Curie, famous for her work on radioactivity, and Maria GoeppertMayer, who was awarded for her work on atomic nuclear structure. After Goeppert-Mayer received the Nobel Prize in physics 54 years ago, it never went to another woman ever since.

Over the years, many have speculated that Rubin would finally win the Nobel for her groundbreaking work.

Others have even demanded it. Some, like cosmologist Chanda PrescodWeinstein, have called for men to not accept the prize until Rubin receives it. Given the prestige and prize money involved, it was hard to convince male winners to get behind this call.

Vera Rubin died on Christmas Day of last year. Because the Nobel Prize is awarded only to living scientists, Rubin would never be a Nobel Prize winner.

The hope of adding another woman to the list of laureates will have to wait at least another year.

Given that about half of people are females, that a rising number of scientists are women, and that so many breakthroughs in recent decades benefited from the work of female scientists, the shortage of women on the list of Nobel Prize winners in physics is a blemish to the prestigious award and can even be seen as an indictment on the scientific community.

The opinion I gave above raises several important questions. First, what were Rubin’s accomplishments anyway? Second, does the Nobel Prize matter at all? Let me address these questions one at a time.

First, Rubin’s work is rightly considered to be a pivotal achievement.

Rubin, together with colleague Kent Ford, found the evidence that convinced the scientific community that dark matter existed.

Dark matter is so named because it does not interact with light and is therefore invisible. Because of this, our existing instruments cannot detect it directly. However, its gravitational effects can be measured. Based on these measurements we now know that more than 85 percent of the matter in the universe is in the form of dark matter. The rest, the matter composed of atoms that make up stars, planets, and gas clouds, accounted for around 15 percent.

As with many discoveries in astronomy, Rubin and Ford did not seek out to discover dark matter when they did. Instead, they were measuring how the stars in a galaxy moved to see if the known laws of gravity and motion applied there.

What they found was that the motion of galaxies can only be explained if most of its mass is in the form of invisible dark matter.

In a way, Rubin and Ford lead us to the path to discover 85 percent of the stuff in the universe. All this time we have been studying just the 15 percent. We are still on that path; we are yet to fully understand what dark matter really is.

BIG DAY A

S THEY did last year and for many years before that, devotees of the Black Nazarene will gather anew Monday to wear their faith on their shoulders.

Millions of Filipinos will clog the streets of the city of Manila, following the image of Jesus Christ carrying the cross that symbolized His suffering. They will attempt to touch it, or at least have their article touch the miraculous piece of wood.

As has always been the case, the event is a logistical and security nightmare. The sheer number of attendees is enough to bring traffic to a standstill.

The devotees themselves, belonging to a rather wide age range, will have specific needs, especially medical assistance.

Some will think that they can bear the heat and the crowd— they will be mistaken. Some may find themselves lost, or drowning, in the sea of bodies.

There will be petty crime, notwithstanding the fact that this is a religious event.

And because we live in precarious times, there will always be the threat of terror especially given the number of innocent civilians who would be at the event. The Philippine National Po l i ce wo u l d

have to take a break from its war against drugs and focus, for a day, on a war against terror from faceless enemies who may just attempt to blend with the crowd before bringing damage. They will likely sow terror, or spite the President— actually, both.

Despite all these, millions will still turn out, mostly in their maroon shirts. Their faith, or whatever else it is that drives them, will not allow them to cower before these threats.

And so tomorrow promises to be like all the other Black Nazarene feasts in history, an event that showcases the best and the worst among devotees, the government, and bystanders and armchair commenters.

The faith and the persistence are fascinating, but we hope people turn up for all the right reasons instead of a blind desire to touch a piece of wood at all costs, flaunt one’s religiosity or take advantage of the mayhem for one’s agenda.

Guidance from the Church, and thorough management by the national and local government, will be key. These will showcase how well or how poorly we have mastered making it through this day in one piece.

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BARISTA BLUES POP GOES THE WORLD JENNY ORTUOSTE

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA—Here in the US, as in the Philippines, cafés hire young people still in college to work as baristas. This allows teenagers to earn money to support themselves and pay for tuition and other expenses.

“Rosie,” 18, Makati City-born and bred, had completed a year of college in De La Salle University before migrating to the US with her mother last September. She had not worked in the Philippines prior to coming over.

What she found here was a cultural

and economic environment she was unused to.

“It’s kind of expected for teenagers here to work,” she said. “I have partners [fellow employees] as young as 16 and still in high school. The money is for our personal spending so don’t have

to ask an allowance from our parents.

Some of us are paying their own tuition or saving up for a car.”

“Many of us teens are in retail, because that kind of work doesn’t take that much experience or skills.” She Turn to B2

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2017 mst.daydesk@gmail.com

TO DEAL WITH PUTIN, FIRST KNOW HIS GOALS

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF SMART-HOME SILLY SEASON

By Leonid Bershidsky RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin is on a roll. The catalog of his alarming moves is well-known: Aggression in Ukraine, interference in Syria on the side of President Bashar al-Assad, stepped-up intelligence efforts that may include a hybrid operation to discredit Hillary Clinton, a slick, prolific propaganda machine, support for nationalist and populist movements in Europe. But why is Putin doing all this?

The common explanation is that Putin and his circle see Russia’s relationship with the West as a zero-sum game. Molly McKew, a former adviser to anti-Russian leaders of Georgia and Moldova, recently wrote a much-shared article expounding the view that this is a war and urging the West to act to defeat the aggressive Russian leader.

A sideline of this school of thought focuses on Putin’s sheer bloody-mindedness and self-interest. Gary Kasparov, the chess champion and long-time Putin opponent, argues that Putin has “no consideration of what is or is not good for Russia, or for Russians, only what is best for him and his close circle of oligarch elites.”

Both perspectives have merit: Putin’s view of the West, or at least of its centrist elite, is unflinchingly adversarial and revanchist. The perpetuation of his own power is clearly a goal, evidenced by his efforts to flatten domestic opposition by whatever means, from election rigging to stifling the media. But these clichés also oversimplify things. In the rush to frame the terms of what is in all-but-name a renewed Cold War, Western policy-makers risk missing the forest for the trees. To better assess what actions are worth countering, they should first try to understand Putin’s strategic objectives.

Rather than a crude us-versus-them mindset, a cocktail of mysticism and capitalist instincts seems to animate Putin and his close friends and aides. Anton Vaino, appointed Putin’s chief of staff last year, co-wrote a book, called “The Image of Victory,” about the global politics as a game. It’s an esoteric treatise known for its discussion of the nooscope—a strange device to “detect and register changes in the biosphere and in human activity.” It does, however, offer plenty of clues to current Kremlin thinking.

For example, it makes this distinction between a war and a game: In war, there is us and them, friends and enemies, front and rear. A war has an end and a beginning. Victory and Defeat. In a game, everything is different. A game is a system of chess, card or checkers moves made in a different space than that of war, with a different degree of foresight of the convergent processes of interaction between adversaries. In a game, time flows differently and interaction, too is different. One of us can be theirs, and one of them can be ours.

Putin has been declared a thug; He, however, still sees himself as a chess grandmaster playing a complicated game with elements of violence and subterfuge. In “The Image of Victory,” the goal is economic: A massive increase in the value of Russian assets, which would make Russia an equal in determining “the rules of the Global Game.”

Since 2012, when the book was published, Putin has made policy choices that prioritized geopolitics over economics. That doesn’t mean, however, that the long-term goal has changed.

Putin himself has repeatedly mentioned a trade zone from Lissabon to Vladivostok, though not extending it as far as the US. The Kremlin is looking for channels to communicate its ideas in the West and European nationalists like Petry are probably one of the best sources on Putin’s agenda today.

Elsewhere, as with Ukraine, Russia may only want relatively modest economic advantages and a seat at the table. In pushing for better trade terms and more security, Putin is more predictable than the mercurial Donald Trump. It needn’t be zero sum.

A genuine attempt by Western leaders to find common ground would, of course, be labeled appeasement. Rather, it would be a powerful move to undermine Putin’s long-term ascendancy. Even the botched “reset” of US-Russian relations during Barack Obama’s first term nearly had a disastrous effect on his rule: Russia’s increasing inclusion in the Western world’s economy under that policy enriched and emboldened Moscow’s middle class, and by 2011, it was ready to protest electoral fraud and search for new leaders.

The current hostilities, by contrast, are only strengthening Putin’s hold on power and weakening his pro-Western opponents, who barely register on most Russians’ radars anymore. Paradoxically, the achievement of Putin’s ultimate strategic goals could lead to change that would eventually destroy what is seen as the Russian threat today. Bloomberg

By Leonid Bershidsky THE Internet of Things is one of the gadget industry’s brightest hopes in a world that’s saturated with smartphones. Sensors are cheap, and digital giants such as Amazon and Google are aggressively pushing their voicecommand technology. The resulting hype, however, spawns inventions that should only exist in the corny worlds of science fiction.

At this point, the IoT market isn’t well-quantified. Intel says there were 15 billion connected IoT devices in the world in 2015—a number the chipmaker predicts will increase to 200 billion by 2020. Gartner, the tech consultancy, counted fewer than 5 billion devices in 2015 and predicted fewer than 21 billion by 2020.

There’s a good reason for the gap: No one can predict which objects consumers and businesses will want to connect to the internet.

So businesses are trying nearly everything, and showing it off this week at The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: • GeniCan: scans empty cereal boxes, reorders them through an app.

• FridgeCam: sends photos to your phone, helps write grocery lists.

• Catspad: dispenses food and water for a full month through an app, tracks kitty caloric intake.

• Sleep Number 360: a bed that tracks your sleep and, of course, sends the data to an app.

• U: a shower that, you guessed it, is controlled with an app.

• A line of “smart” home appliances

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Think about that for a moment. All the matter we can see in all the stars, planets, and gas clouds in the entire universe, all of that is just 15 percent of the matter in the universe. The rest of it is this dark matter. I hope you agree with me that finding evidence for 85 percent of the matter in the universe is a groundbreaking discovery worthy of a prize meant for such work.

Now we go to the second question—does the Nobel Prize matter at all? Isn’t it just a piece of metal, some prestige, and more than a million dollars? Isn’t achievement and recognition by one’s community more important?

Yes, receiving a prize awarded by one committee is not the most important thing, and not receiving it does not negate real scientific achievement.

However, the Nobel Prize counts for something. If it were awarded to a woman, it would count for a lot.

Many scientists who are celebrities in their professional circles remain largely unknown to the broader public until they are recognized with a Nobel Prize. Because of the prestige of the prize, recipients can potentially gain influence beyond the few experts who already know and recognize their achievements.

Throughout her life, Vera Rubin had a powerful impact on women who dreamt of pursuing a career in cosmology and astrophysics. If she received the prize, that impact would have been multiplied, magnified, and expanded beyond her professional circle.

The Nobel Prize is important to the sociology surrounding science. And so we rightly mourn the fact that Rubin died without receiving it. For the sake of the health of the scientific community, let us hope a deserving woman receives the prize sooner rather than later. I’m sure Rubin would be happy for that woman and entire generation of women she will inspire.

Pecier Decierdo is resident physicist and astronomer of The Mind Museum.

from Samsung, including a touchscreen fridge that responds to voice commands and app-governed cooktops, washer-dryers and vacuum cleaners.

• A connected lawnmower (the app is for maintenance purposes and for ordering parts) and a tool chest you can lock and unlock with an app.

• A hairbrush from L’Oreal that measures “hair health” and reports it to an app that will recommend treatments.

• A kind of Amazon Echo for kids, from toymaker Mattel, that can read your kid bedtime stories.

That’s 10 new apps for your smartphone right there, for objects you never imagined could—or indeed should—be connected to the internet.

These things are supposed to improve how you brush your hair and shop for groceries. But aren’t these solemn chores what helps keep us human? Besides: will your cat’s welcome be as warm after it realizes a robot—not you—feeds it three times a day? Will you miss your child’s call in the middle of the night when she opts for a plastic gadget to read her a fairy tale?

This is how capitalism works, of course.

People will offer things for sale in the hope other people will buy them, and if there’s no market, these objects will just disappear. On the other hand, as major companies adopt some of these offerings, they will soon become mainstream just because they will be pushed on consumers with the help of billion-dollar marketing budgets. Then, expect botnets of smart fridges and hacked smart showers

BARISTA...

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that scald you just for fun. One of the devices presented at CES this year is a special router that monitors the security of every connected device in the home, which seems wise after a hack brought the internet to a standstill for millions in October.

It is only a matter of time before these gadgets must also defend against waves of “targeted” ads based on your ketchup consumption and the little one’s zeal for Maurice Sendak.

That will be a dystopian world. I, for one, will steer clear of all these “smart” objects while “dumb” ones are still sold. An internetconnected device that solves a real problem is the rarest of rarities at this point.

But I won’t deny that it’s also heartwarming that people are designing some of these things, and adventurous consumers are trying them out. That’s mostly because of the voice features, based in many cases on Amazon’s Alexa. Amazon has put the voice assistant in the cloud, allowing manufacturers to keep devices simple and cheap: all they need to do is record voice commands, send them off, and receive responses. The more Alexa is used in the weirdest contexts, the better it recognizes complex or badly formulated commands and the more it learns of the endless diversity of human life.

It’s good for the technology—which has many legitimate uses, from making driving safer to increasing the accessibility of services to disabled people—that some of us are willing to have regular conversations about with their fridge. Bloomberg

Some customers are downright con artists. “We’ve had people come in or through our drive-through who order a hot water. Then they ask for a milk and sugar. They think they can get a free drink that way, but we tell them that’s not allowed.”

Over the four months that she’s been working as a barista, Rosie says the weirdest drink she’s had to make was an extra-large coffee with eight pumps of syrup. “That’s already very sweet! Then the customer asked for ‘extra extra caramel drizzle on top. Some more.’ It’s not my place to tell her that’s a lot of sugar.”

Her favorite position is at the drive-through, where she acts as cashier and hands the drink to the customers in their cars. “I like seeing a lot of people.

Over sixty percent of our store’s business comes from drive, so when I’m there, it’s fast and brisk and I feel I’m really working, sharing our coffee with people who love it.”

Another advantage of being on drive-through, Rosie says, is that she gets to see the dogs who accompany their humans out on a coffee run. “I see quite a few every day, and they’ve all been well-behaved, from pitbulls to Chihuahuas to Labradors. Sometimes their owners ask for a ‘puppucino’ for them—that’s a little water in a cup with some whipped cream. That’s free, we don’t charge for that.”

Rosie said her work as a barista has taught her a lot of valuable skills. Aside from knowing coffee shop operations and recipes, she is learning work cleanliness and safety, resourcefulness, conflict resolution, problem solving, accountability, attention to detail, and professionalism, among other things.

Working helps young people realize that to have money, one must earn it. Working builds character and teaches life skills. Working prepares them for the future, one that looks increasingly challenging, and armed with the experience they gain from their employment, the better they will be able to face the real world.

applied for a barista role in a chain coffee company before the holiday (busy) season, and was immediately hired.

With the brisk sales of this brand of coffee in the chilly Bay Area, especially now that it’s winter, their particular store is bustling and she was assigned to cashiering and making drinks right after their weeklong hands-on training.

An avid coffee shop fan back in Manila, Rosie says it’s a different feeling being behind the counter.

“We’re often short-handed so we work at a fast pace,” she said. “There’s hardly time for a breath.

When a guest comes into the lobby [restaurant area], I take his order, ring it up, and make the drink, unless someone else is ‘on bar’, then they make the drinks and hand them off. But usually it’s just me.

That means the next customer in line will have to wait before they get what they need.”

What’s with the misspelling of names on the cups? My sister Aileen says baristas usually spell her name an E—“Eileen”—but the one time she spelled it out for the barista, the cup came back with “Alien” written on it.

“It hardly happens in the Philippines,” said Rosie, “but it’s common here. We don’t have time to agonize about it, unfortunately. I also don’t want to bother the customer about it—‘Can you spell it for me?’—when all they want is their coffee. The name is just so we can hand it to them.”

“My manager told me what’s more important is to make the drink right, and to make the whipped topping look really nice, because a lot of customers Instagram their drink.”

Rosie is learning to deal with irate customers.

“Some get angry and they yell. They say things like ‘you’re idiots,’ ‘you must be hung over,’ ‘this is the worst store in the world!’When that happens we offer to make their drink over, and we hand them ‘recovery Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow cards’—sort of like free drink cards for the next time her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jenthey come. Most of them appreciate it.” nyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember

World US MARINES TO RETURN TO AFGHANISTAN’S HELMAND REGION WASHINGTON—Some 300 US Marines will head to Helmand province in Afghanistan this spring to help a NATOled mission to train Afghan forces.

The move puts Marines back in Helmand, who left in 2014 as NATO withdrew its forces and let Afghan troops lead the fight against the Taliban.

They were among the first US forces sent to Afghanistan after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States. Several thousand were deployed in Helmand, an opium-producing region, where they engaged in bitter combat with the Taliban insurgency.

The administration of outgoing President Barack Obama had hoped to withdraw most US military forces from Afghanistan by now, leaving behind just a small force.

But the United States still has some 8,400 military personnel in the country, and is now returning the Marines to Helmand.

At the request of US Central Command and the US forces in Afghanistan, “approximately 300 Marines will deploy to Helmand Province Afghanistan in Spring 2017 in support of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission,” a statement from the Marine Corps said. AFP

THOUSANDS FIRED IN NEW WAVE OF TURKEY COUP PURGES

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stanbul, Turkey—Turkey has dismissed over 6,000 people and ordered the closure of dozens of associations under the state of emergency imposed after the July failed coup, in a purge that shows no sign of slowing.

CHINA FOREX RESERVES FALL BY $320B IN 2016 BEIJING—China’s foreign exchange reserves fell by $320 billion last year, Beijing announced Saturday, as authorities sought to support the yuan against a soaring dollar which is encouraging capital outflows.

The country’s vast foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world, slipped to $3.011 trillion at the end of December, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said on its website.

In December the forex reserves dropped by $41 billion from the previous month, SAFE said, which would make it their sixth consecutive monthly decline according to figures from the central People’s Bank of China.

Reserves had slipped by $46 billion in October and nearly $70 billion in November, falling to levels last seen more than five years ago.

“The central bank’s efforts to stabilize the yuan are the main reason why the reserves have fallen,” last year, said an official of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

The yuan is now trading at its lowest level in eight years against the dollar after dropping about seven percent in the space of a year, as Beijing sells greenbacks to support its currency.

Aware of the danger, China has tightened its measures to stop the outflow of capital, in particular by restricting many investments abroad considered doubtful. AFP

AKUFO-ADDO SWORN IN AS GHANA’S NEW PRESIDENT ACCRA, Ghana—Nana Akufo-Addo is sworn in as Ghana’s new president on Saturday after beating incumbent leader John Dramani Mahama in elections last month.

The 72-year-old former human rights lawyer will take the oath of office at a ceremony in Independence Square in central Accra before more than 6,000 guests and members of the public.

Some 11 heads of state from across Africa are expected to attend, as well as the outgoing president, and former leaders John Rawlings and John Kufuor.

Police in the capital have vowed to enforce tight security during the inauguration, with major roads in and around the venue cordoned off.

Traders have already set up their stalls nearby hoping to cash in on the ceremony by selling Ghana flags and paraphernalia from Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party.

Akufo-Addo’s electoral victory – and the peaceful transition of power – underlined Ghana’s position as a beacon of stability in an often turbulent region.

One international observer described the West African country as a “gold standard for democracy in Africa.” AFP

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2017 mst.daydesk@gmail.com

HIGH-TECH. Mayfield Robotics CEO Michael Beebe poses with his Kuri robot, launched at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 6, 2017. AFP

More than 100,000 people have already been suspended or sacked so far in a crackdown on those alleged to have links to coup-plotters while dozens of media outlets have been shut down.

In the latest government decrees published late Friday, 2,687 police officers were dismissed.

Meanwhile, 1,699 civil servants were removed from the ministry of justice, plus 838 health officials and hundreds of employees from other ministries.

Another 631 academics and eight members of the Council of State were also dismissed.

The dismissals are permitted under the state of emergency, which was extended by another three months in October, and was originally imposed in the wake of the coup.

But its scope has been vehemently criticised by the European Union and human rights activists.

The three decrees also ordered the closure of more than 80 associations accused of “activities affecting the security of the state.”

Critics have claimed that the crackdown goes well beyond the suspected coup plotters and targets anyone who has dared show opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Ankara blames the coup plot on USbased Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen and says an unrelenting campaign is needed to root out his influence from public life. Gulen denies the allegations.

Turkey also argues the exceptional security measures are necessary in the face of rising threats from the Islamic State group and the Kurdistan Workers Party.

AFP

NEW GRISLY BRAZIL PRISON MASSACRE KILLS 31 INMATES BOA VISTA, Brazil—Brazil was hit Friday by its second grisly prison massacre in a week, as inmates beheaded and mutilated fellow prisoners at a northern jail, leaving 31 dead.

Pictures taken by a police officer at the scene showed bloodied, mangled bodies piled in a concrete hallway at the Monte Cristo Farm Penitentiary (PAMC) in Roraima state.

Many of the victims were beheaded, disemboweled or dismembered, officials said.

The state government said the situation was now “under control.” They lowered an earlier death toll of 33 to 31 late Friday.

“No shots were fired. The victims were killed with sharp objects and home-made weapons,” said state justice secretary Uziel Castro.

The latest unrest came days after jailed gang members killed 56 rivals in a 17-hour bloodbath Sunday and Monday at a prison in Manaus, the capital of the neighboring state of Amazonas.

Unlike that incident, Friday’s violence did not appear to be an all-out riot but rather a rapid, early morning attack by one group of inmates against another, lasting less than an hour, a local government spokeswoman told AFP. Most of the killings were carried out with knives, she said.

Deadly prison riots have intensified in Brazil since a truce broke down in July between the country’s two largest drug gangs, the First Capital Command and the Red Command.

PAMC, the largest prison in the state, was also hit by deadly violence in October, when fighting between rival gangs killed 10 inmates. AFP

GRIEF. The brother of Mohamed al-Rajabi, who was killed after reportedly carrying out a stabbing attack on a soldier near the Jewish settler enclave of Tal Rumeda, mourns before the funeral on January 7 in the West Bank town of Hebron. AFP

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2017 Cesar Barrioquinto, Editor

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World

Joyce Pangco-Pañares, Issue Editor

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FIVE DEAD IN FLORIDA AIRPORT SHOOTING

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IAMI, United States—An Iraq war veteran opened fire Friday at Fort Lauderdale’s main airport, a major tourist hub in Florida, killing five people and injuring eight, as panicked travelers fled for safety.

The suspect, identified by police as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, was in custody and being questioned by the FBI over the shooting that shut down the international airport that is a gateway to the Caribbean.

The incident occurred in the baggage claim area of Terminal

2, as passengers collecting their luggage were interrupted by the alleged gunman, who withdrew a semi-automatic handgun before mowing down his victims.

Witness John Schlicher told Fox News that he was picking up his first bag as he “heard the first shot.

As I did, the person right next to

me fell to the ground... It was very surreal.”

The shooter “was holding a handgun. He was firing into the crowd. Everyone was standing there waiting for the luggage,” he said.

Video showed passengers running for safety.

There was no immediate indication of a motive for the assault, in a country where gun violence is widespread due to the ready availability of firearms.

Santiago had traveled from Alaska to Fort Lauderdale, with a stopover in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the special agent in

charge of Miami’s FBI field office, George Piro, told reporters late Friday.

The suspect checked a gun inside his luggage, after declaring the weapon with airport authorities, then used it to take down his victims, CNN reported, citing law enforcement sources.

He was detained without law enforcement firing any shots, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters.

Piro said authorities were “looking at every angle, including the terrorism angle,” but that it would take time to determine the nature of the attack. AFP

TAIWAN PREZ HEADS TO US AS BEIJING WATCHES TAIPEI—Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen left for the United States Saturday on her way to Central America, a trip that will be scrutinized by China, incensed by her congratulatory call to Donald Trump.

While the focus of the nineday trip is to bolster relations with Taiwan’s Central American allies, Tsai’s US stopovers will be closely watched amid speculation she may make contact with the president-elect and his team.

She is to transit in Houston this weekend and return to Taipei via San Francisco next weekend.

The call with Trump in December after he won the presidency upended decades of diplomatic precedent in which Washington has effectively ignored Taipei in favour of Beijing, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province to be brought back within its fold.

Since then, China has stepped up military drills near Taiwan, with speculation its sole aircraft carrier may pass through the Taiwan Strait during or shortly after Tsai’s trip. AFP

12 DEAD AS HEAVY RAINS SUBMERGE THAI SOUTH

ORTHODOX CHRISTMAS. Russian President Vladimir Putin helps a child light a candle during a Christmas service at the Saint George’s Monastery in Novgorod Region on January 7. Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7 in the Middle East, Russia and other Orthodox churches that use the old Julian calendar. AFP

TRUMP SAYS HACKING HAD ‘NO EFFECT’ ON HIS ELECTION WHILE the president-elect held fast to his rejection of the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election, he accepted the possibility that Moscow was involved in hacking US targets including the Democratic National Committee.

After meeting four top intelligence

chiefs, Trump acknowledged that cyber attacks by Russia, China and other countries threaten US institutions, political parties and businesses.

But he offered no direct acceptance of the intelligence chiefs’ conclusion that Moscow staged an unprecedented attempt to influence the 2016 White

RELIEF. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak smiles as he gives a relief bag to evacuees at a school used as a relief center in Tumpat on Saturday.

Serious flooding in Malaysia’s northeast states for almost a week is showing some respite but has damaged homes, caused loss of income and disrupted schooling. AFP

House race by hacking and leaking documents that, they said in a new report, also aimed to boost Trump’s campaign.

“While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election,” Trump said in a statement.

Trump met the heads of the Directorate of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency in New York on their report into Moscow’s alleged interference.

A declassified version of the report – released to the public by the Director of National Intelligence – said Putin personally ordered a campaign of hacking and media manipulation to undermine the Democrat’s candidate, Clinton, who had widely been expected to win the November 8 election.

“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” they said.

The report offered little new evidence on how US intelligence agencies reached their conclusion, and Russia

has denied any election meddling.

President Barack Obama had already taken retaliatory action on December 29, expelling 35 Russians he said were intelligence operatives, and placing sanctions on a number of other Russian officials and entities.

“I think that what is true, is that the Russians intended to meddle and they meddled,” Obama said in excerpts of an interview set to air Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“One of the things I am concerned about is the degree to which we’ve seen a lot of commentary lately where there are Republicans or pundits or cable commentators who seem to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans are Democrats. That cannot be,” Obama said.

Trump’s meeting with intelligence chiefs, which the Republican called “constructive,” may have smoothed over ruffled feelings between the intelligence bureaucracy and the incoming president.

Just before the meeting, Trump branded the focus on Russia a “political witch hunt” in an interview with the New York Times.

But Trump subsequently said that as soon as he takes office on January 20 he will give a team 90 days to come up with a plan to halt cyber attacks.

“Whether it is our government, organizations, associations or businesses we need to aggressively combat and stop cyber attacks,” Trump said. AFP

BANGKOK—Heavy rains continued to batter Thailand’s floodravaged south on Saturday, bringing the death toll up to 12 and leaving thousands of villages partially submerged, authorities said.

The flooding, which is roofhigh in some areas, has affected more than 700,000 people since it started a week ago, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

At least 12 people have died, according to counts from the ministry and local officials, as waters turn roads into rivers and rip away stretches of rail track.

The floods have also damaged more than 1,500 schools in the region, according to officials.

The downpour is expected to persist for at least two more days, according to the Meteorological Department, which warned of flash floods in eight of the hardest-hit provinces.

“The situation is very bad today and tomorrow. It’s still raining heavily,” Junjuda Pornsri, a metrological official, told AFP. AFP

SPACEX SET TO LAUNCH AGAIN MONDAY WASHINGTON—SpaceX plans to resume flights of its Falcon 9 rocket on Monday, after pinning down the cause of a launchpad explosion that destroyed a satellite in September, a spokesman said.

The California-based private space firm is expected to launch 10 Iridium NEXT communications satellites from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Iridium said on its website that a static test fire of the Falcon 9 had been completed and the rocket would be ready for next week’s launch scheduled for 1822 GMT, weather permitting.

An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded September 1 in Cape Canaveral, destroying a satellite that Facebook planned to use to beam high-speed internet to Africa.

That marked a setback for the company and its founder Elon Musk, who wants to revolutionize the launch industry by making rocket components reusable. AFP