It Can Happen to Anyone: Obama's Credit Card Declined

Washington:  Apparently, even the president of the United States can have trouble with his credit card.

Barack Obama on Friday said his card was declined at a New York restaurant he went to while visiting the United Nations.

"I was there during the General Assembly, and my credit card was rejected," Obama said at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he unveiled new measures to stem credit card fraud and identity theft.

"It turned out, I guess I don't use it enough. So they thought there was some fraud going on," he said to laughter, adding "fortunately, Michelle had hers."

The president signed an executive order which adds "chip-and-pin" protection for US government cards and payment terminals, at a time when the financial industry is moving in the same direction.

"I was trying to explain to the waitress, no, I really think that I've been paying my bills," Obama said.

"Even I'm affected by this."

Story First Published: October 18, 2014 02:52 IST    

US's fight against ISIS finally gets a name: 'Inherent Resolve'

WASHINGTON: It may be less punchy than previous nicknames for US conflicts in the Middle East; remember Operation Desert Storm andits thunderous attacks on Saddam Hussein's occupation army; but the Pentagon has finally named its fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria: Operation Inherent Resolve. 

The naming process, which took weeks of quiet deliberation behind closed doors at US Central Command and at the Pentagon, is part of a package of administrative moves under way to organize a long-term military campaign. 

But that name, Inherent Resolve.  It sounds, well, inherently bland. 

It's less awe-inspiring than any of the names chosen for US military operations in Iraq over the past two decades such as Desert Shield, Desert Storm or Desert Fox, for example. It appears to convey the no-drama approach that marks President Barack Obama's style. 

The staff of Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the final decision on the name, said Dempsey spokesman, Col. Ed Thomas. Thomas offered no details about the process. 

Central Command, which is executing the campaign, took a stab at explaining the choice. 

"Inherent Resolve is intended to reflect the unwavering resolve and deep commitment of the U.S. and partner nations in the region and around the globe to eliminate the terrorist group ISIL and the threat they pose to Iraq, the region and the wider international community," it said, using a common acronym for the Islamic State group. 

Military operations are routinely given official names, in part for administrative reasons. 

But they are meant also to bolster public support and international credibility. The US-led effort to protect Kurds who fled their homes in northern Iraq in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, for example, was called Operation Provide Comfort. A US military disaster relief mission in Bangladesh that same year was Operation Sea Angel. 

The US military's effort against Ebola in West Africa is called Operation United Assistance. The name for the US role in an international air campaign in Libya in 2011 was Odyssey Dawn. 

The naming of the current air campaign in Iraq and Syria comes as Obama and his military advisers wrestle with directing a coalition of partner nations toward a common goal: destroying the Islamic State group. It has been slow going thus far, with officials cautioning that it could drag on for months or years. 

The US has more than 1,400 military personnel in Iraq, mostly in Baghdad, but Obama has ruled out sending combat troops. The US says it has no troops in Syria. 

The US has a long and difficult history of military involvement in Iraq, beginning with the George H W Bush administration's initial response to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. 

That effort was dubbed Operation Desert Shield to deter Saddam from invading Saudi Arabia; in early 1991 that transitioned to a US-led air and ground campaign, Operation Desert Storm, which successfully expelled Iraqi troops from Kuwait but left Saddam in power in Baghdad. 

In December 1998, in response to Saddam's refusal to comply with U.N. weapons inspectors, President Bill Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox — four days of airstrikes against weapons installations and command headquarters in Baghdad. 

Promising to "shock and awe" Saddam's forces, President George W Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, an air-and-ground campaign that quickly toppled Saddam's regime but opened the door to a homegrown Sunni insurgency that turned the war into an eight-year struggle. 

The practice of naming military operations goes back at least to World War II, when code names were assigned mainly to preserve security. The code names were classified, unlike the nicknames of modern operations. 

In a 1995 article in Parameters, a US Army War College academic journal, Gregory C Sieminski wrote that the Pentagon's Vietnam-era guidelines for naming military operations cautioned against counterproductive name choices, specifying that they must not express "a degree of bellicosity inconsistent with traditional American ideals or current foreign policy" or convey "connotations offensive to good taste or derogatory to a particular group, sect or creed." 

There should be no fear that Operation Inherent Resolve is too bellicose. 

Sieminski argued that careful naming of military operations can provide a public relations boost and help shape what he called a war of images. "In that war, the operation name is the first — and quite possibly the decisive — bullet to be fired," he wrote. 

Rare Comet Fly-By of Mars on Sunday

Washington:  A fast-moving comet is about to fly by Mars for a one-in-a-million-year encounter with the Red Planet, photographed and documented by a flurry of spacecraft, NASA said.

The comet, known as Siding Spring (C/2013 A1), has a core about a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide in diameter, but is only as solid as a pile of talcum powder.

Siding Spring is set to hurtle past Mars at a close distance of about 88,000 miles (139,500 kilometers).

If the comet were passing by our planet, that would be about a third of the way between the Earth and the Moon.

Siding Spring will come closest to Mars at 2:27 pm (1827 GMT) on Sunday, October 19, NASA said.

Flying through space at a breakneck speed of 122,400 miles per hour (202,000 km per hour), the small comet faces little risk of colliding with the Red Planet.

But scientists are keen to study its trajectory and trail.

"Are we going to see meteors in the Mars atmosphere? Comets are very unpredictable," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington.

"I think it is unlikely that it will be destroyed," Green told reporters. "But whether it retains its structure or not is of interest."

 

NASA has maneuvered its Mars orbiters to the far side of the planet so they won't be damaged by the comet's high-speed debris.

Even as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey and MAVEN have been repositioned to avoid hazardous dust, scientists hope they will be able to capture a trove of data about the flyby for Earthlings to study.

NASA's two rovers -- Curiosity and Opportunity -- will turn their cameras skyward and send back pictures of the comet's pass in the coming days, weeks and months, the US space agency said.

Billions of years old

The comet was discovered by Robert McNaught at Australia's Siding Spring Observatory in January 2013.

It is believed to have originated billions of years ago in the Oort Cloud, a distant region of space that is a source of comets that are "largely unchanged since the early days of the solar system," NASA said.

Carey Lisse, senior astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said scientists are intrigued by comets for many reasons.

"It is amazing that they are still around after four and a half billion years, but most of the reason for that is they have been living very, very far from the Sun and are in a deep freeze," he said.

This particular comet is about the size of a small mountain, but is probably the consistency of powder, or a meringue that would melt in your mouth, he explained.

"It should have more of the really volatile ices -- methane, carbon monoxide -- things that boil off very easily. It has never been heat treated very strongly before."

Scientists say they are curious to learn if the comet may have already broken up some on its approach to Mars.

"There is a possibility that Mars may drive some more activity, that is why we are looking," Lisse said.

The comet has traveled more than one million years to make its first pass by Mars, and will not return for another million years, after it completes its next long loop around the Sun. 

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 07:10 IST    

US to be 'More Aggressive' in Monitoring Ebola Response: Barack Obama

Washington, United States:  US President Barack Obama on Wednesday pledged a "much more aggressive" response at home to the Ebola threat, and insisted that the risk of a serious outbreak on US soil was low.

After a crisis meeting with top aides at the White House, Obama underlined the importance of helping African countries stem the spread of the virus, calling such aid "an investment in our own public health."

"If we are not responding internationally in an effective way... then we could have problems," Obama said in comments aired on US television.

The meeting -- attended by Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, among others -- came after a second US Ebola infection was diagnosed at a Texas hospital where a Liberian man died a week ago.

Obama said meeting participants discussed "monitoring, supervising, overseeing in a much more aggressive way exactly what's taking place in Dallas" to ensure those lessons are "transmitted to hospitals and clinics all across the country."

"This is not a situation in which, like a flu, the risks of a rapid spread of the disease are imminent," Obama said, adding he "shook hands with, hugged and kissed" nurses who had treated an Ebola patient at Emory University hospital in Atlanta.

"They followed the protocols. They knew what they were doing and I felt perfectly safe doing so," he said.

"I am absolutely confident that we can prevent a serious outbreak of the disease here in the United States... The key thing to understand about this disease is that these protocols work."

The White House said Obama had canceled plans to visit Rhode Island and New York on Thursday so he could follow up on the Ebola meeting.

So far, Ebola has killed nearly 4,500 people, the vast majority of them in West Africa, where the outbreak began early this year.

Since the announcement last month that the United States would send at least 3,000 troops to West Africa to help fight the outbreak, Obama has repeatedly criticized the international response to the health crisis as insufficient.

Story First Published: October 16, 2014 08:09 IST    

US Air War Has A Name: 'Operation Inherent Resolve'

Washington:  After more than two months of air strikes, American commanders have finally decided on a name for the US-led war on Islamic State jihadists - "Operation Inherent Resolve."

The decision was taken "a few days ago" by the chiefs of all the armed services, said Colonel Ed Thomas, spokesman for the US military's top officer, General Martin Dempsey.

"The operation is called 'Operation Inherent Resolve,'" Thomas told reporters Wednesday.

He offered no explanation as to why the Pentagon chose the name, which had already been cited in media reports as a possible choice that was rejected by some officers.

The US military usually announces the name of a military operation from the start.

The named operations also offer a way of organizing medals for service and valor, and that requirement might have provided the top brass an extra incentive to arrive at a decision.

The 2003 American invasion of Iraq was known as Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the war in Afghanistan is still known as Operation Enduring Freedom.

During the US occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011, there were more than 500 named operations, including Operation Airborne Dragon, Operation Soda Mountain and Operation Tapeworm.

Shortly after troops began arriving in Liberia last month to help in the effort against the Ebola outbreak, the Pentagon unveiled the name of that mission: Operation United Assistance.

But there had been no official moniker until now since US warplanes started bombing the IS group in Iraq in early August, prompting a spate of speculation and sarcasm.

Some commentators alleged that the lack of a name reflected the White House's lack of enthusiasm for intervening in Iraq and Syria. But US officials dismissed the idea as ridiculous.

Some reporters tweeted suggestions for possible names, including one favorite that referred to the American-made Humvee vehicles seized by IS militants - "Operation Hey That's My Humvee."

Story First Published: October 15, 2014 23:03 IST    

Humans May Only Survive 68 Days on Mars: Study

Washington:  Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based non-profit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the Red Planet starting in 2024.

A shortlist of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission -- an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the endeavor.

But conditions on Mars -- and the limits of human technology -- could make the mission impossible, for now at least.

"The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission," according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce "unsafe" amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

"Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight," the study concluded.

Shipping in replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion.

Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem.

"The major challenge of Mars One is keeping everything up and running," he told Popular Science magazine.

But he claimed the researchers used incomplete data, adding that technology for Mars colonization was nearly ready.

"While oxygen removal has never been done in space, I disagree that the technology is not mostly ready to go to Mars," Lansdorp told AFP.

"Of course, the actual apparatus that we will take to Mars still needs to be designed and tested extensively, but the technology is already there."

Many people have voiced doubts about the mission, though the project has won support from Gerard 't Hooft, the Dutch 1999 Nobel Physics prize winner.

The Red Planet lies at least 55 million kilometers (34 million miles) from Earth and it would take a minimum of seven months to get there.

Last June, the entertainment company Endemol, a major reality television producer, agreed to film the participants as they prepared for the move to Mars.