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Source:- ISRO-NASA collaboration could check China on the border, Indian Ocean region Lt. General Larry James, the deputy director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, speaking at a discussion on India-US space cooperation on Thursday, while the upcoming NISAR project jointly developed by NASA and ISRO would focus mainly on geological processes and climate change. It would also send raw data from the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean China’s dam-building spree on the Brahmaputra river and its growing assertiveness in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) could be checked by increasing cooperation between American and Indian space agencies, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The two civilian space agencies are developing an earth monitoring satellite, NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), which would be the first-ever radar imaging satellite to use dual frequency. The $950-million NISAR Project Agreement aims to launch a satell

The DoD Inspector General (IG) revealed in a report last week that military authorities could not confirm whether the $3.1 billion in funding for the Afghan government fulfilled its intended purposes. According to the report, insufficient US oversight and Afghan capability led to mismanagement and an overall lack of assurance as to exactly where DoD funds ended up. The funding provided by Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A) to the Afghan Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Ministry of Interior (MoI) from 2014 through 2017 was meant to “increase ANDSF effectiveness and capabilities so the ANDSF can become more professional and increasingly self-sustaining.” Specifically, the $3.1 billion supported improvement of Afghan ministerial capacities. This includes training for Afghan personnel to better track budgeting and allocation for supplies like ammunition, vehicles, and fuel needed to support ANDSF combat efforts around the country. The goal of the CSTC-A funds was to

Peter "Israel Lobby" Oborne . “I’m now convinced that there is something detestable about Corbyn’s politics which make it impossible to defend him any more. changed my mind Unbef***inglievable. Moving on, I certainly don’t think the socialist Portuguese political pundit with a secret message in her actual name “Eu-nice-Goes” ….should be no-platformed. No, certainly not. I don’t think silencing people you disagree with is the way to go. If I did I might not have to be blogging about BBC bias, know what I mean? Eunice was given quite a platform on Dateline London, and she used it to unleash a no-holds-barred diatribe against Israel. Shaun Ley brought up the topic of the “March for (the Right of) Return”, a Hamas orchestrated stunt to propel as many of Gaza’s martyrs to paradise as possible in order to gain a propaganda advantage over Israel. Which, judging by the tweets below this IDF video captioned: “Hamas has everything to gain and Palestinian civilians

  🇬🇾 Who knows how the telling of history will be distorted over the next 500 years. Who can tell how many fine points about historical events will be lost. 2018 will be as remote to historians in a half millenium's time as 1518 is to us. Actually 1518 may be more familiar to us due to the keeping of paper records than 2018 will be in 2518 as the keeping of digital records seems altogether much more precarious than the methods tried and tested by the passage of time.   A wise historian in 2518 may well decide to see if she can track down the unlikely continuing existence of a stamp collection for the wise historian might well appreciate the amount of contemporary 21st and 20th century information that could be contained in such a collection. She might discover the names of territories of which she was previously unaware, of events previously unknown and of political leaders and rulers long forgotten. Of course, she would need to be discerning about the information she extracts

Source:- HAL LUH:- India’s Multirole Lightweight Single-Engine Utility Helicopter HAL LUH (Light Utility Helicopter) is a single engine helicopter, designed by HAL. LUH is under construction, LUH take its first flight in Dec 2016. Airforce and Army both need a new utility helicopter because of their ageing fleet of cheetah and chetak, in respond to this HAL came up its LUH plan, first HAL that they take help from foreign partners for its assistance but later on HAL decide that he will develop a new generation LUH with its own. It is also known as LOH (light observation helicopter). The Indian military have a requirement for 384 helicopters of which 187 helicopters will be built by HAL. Production is planned to begin in 2018 at 10 per year, later on going up to 36 per year and delivery of 187 HAL’s LUHs is to be completed by 2022. The HAL Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) is a 3-tonne light helicopter. According to HAL, it possesses a cruise speed of 235kmh, maximum speed of 260kmh, se

Ah! Israel was the second story on this evening's main BBC One bulletin , and it was classic BBC stuff. I watched it with rolling eyes. I drafted a post giving it a long-winded fisking but then decided against it. Something shorter will do it justice. Yes, it began with the usual ' people are being killed by Israel' angle:   The Health Ministry in Gaza says that at least 13 people have been killed by Israeli security forces along the Israel-Gaza border. and cited as its source "the  Health Ministry in Gaza" - which is, of course, Hamas-controlled ( not mentioned by the BBC here). Did the BBC fact-check their claims? And, yes, Y olande Knell did much of the familiar BBC stuff in her commentary, with talk of "family entertainment" from those protesting Palestinians and cryptic language about "a call for peaceful marches" (somehow) turning to violence, accompanied by such turns of phrase as " A chaotic rush to the hospital, with

Okay, so I was wrong when I predicted that the BBC would tire of this antisemitism in the Labour Party malarky. The BBC hasn’t managed (yet) to move on because the ‘revelations’ about Christine Shawcroft have reignited the dying embers of the story.  The scare marks around the word ‘revelations’ are there for a very good reason, which is that the pro-Israel blogosphere was well aware of the darkly comical fact that when they appointed Shawcroft as chair of their disputes panel, (created to tackle ‘alleged’ antisemitism in the Labour Party) the far left NEC ousted from the post the reputedly efficient and popular Ann Black. This is genuine ‘you couldn’t make it up’ territory; pure farce. Even the Guardian reported :  “another figure on the NEC said they believed the motivation for Tuesday’s vote had been to limit the number of Labour members kicked out of the party for antisemitic behaviour.”  Hired to limit the number of Labour members kicked out? Hired to eliminate them, I t

[unable to retrieve full-text content] from https://ift.tt/1nxxwxd via Defense News

Cloud Advocacy group warns Trump about JEDI contract with tabloid ad By Troy K. Schneider Mar 29, 2018 The Department of Defense's planned cloud procurement landed in the New York tabloids this week, as an advocacy group ran a full-page advertisement alerting President Donald Trump that Amazon Web Services could win the multibillion-dollar contract. The New York Post ad was placed by Less Government, a non-profit devoted to reducing the size and influence of government.  Addressed directly to the president, it warns, "Your Defense Department is set to award a no-bid, ten-year contract for all its IT infrastructure to Administration-enemy Jeff Bezos' Amazon." DOD released a draft solicitation for its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud acquisition in early March, and it hopes to make an award by September.  It is not in fact a no-bid contract, and DOD officials have stressed that there will be a full and open competition.  But there have bee

Source:- Why India is walking away from its tit-for-tat China policy After relations between China and India reached a new low during last year’s Doklam stand-off, New Delhi’s China policy has taken a sharp turn this year, in what could be interpreted as a reversal of its previous stance. In recent months, India has not only supported China’s vice-presidency in the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental agency combating money laundering, but Delhi also withdrew its support from a commemorative event marking the 59th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising. And, in a bid to stabilise ties, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to visit China next month. The change in India’s approach has triggered a backlash in academic and strategic circles at home, with China sceptics expressing concern that Delhi was “surrendering” to Beijing. Such an observation isn’t entirely accurate. First, it’s important to understand the factors driving this change. Last year, besides the t

Christie’s is honored to present for sale Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Portrait of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, called John Frederick the Magnanimous, once part of Fritz Gutmann’s renowned art collection in the pre-war Netherlands. Missing for nearly 80 years before its recent rediscovery in America, Christie’s is privileged to have facilitated the return of this important work to the Gutmann family. Cranach’s Portrait of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony will be presented in public exhibitions in Hong Kong (March 30 – April 4) and New York leading up to the Old Masters auction on April 19, 2018 in Christie’s Rockefeller Galleries with an estimate of $1,000,000-2,000,000. ABOUT THE GUTMANN COLLECTION    PROPERTY RETURNED TO THE HEIRS OF FRITZ GUTMANN Lucas Cranach I (Kronach 1472-1553 Weimar) Portrait of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony (1503-1554), half-length , oil on panel, 24.3/4 x 15.5/8 in. (62.8 x 39.7 cm.) Estimate: $1,000,000-2,000,000 Cranach’s Po

AI & Analytics Needed: U.S. machine intelligence strategy By George Leopold Mar 30, 2018 The rise of machine intelligence, variously referred to as AI and deep learning, and the accompanying angst over its future applications are prompting calls for a national strategy for simultaneously advancing and harnessing the technology. A report released earlier this month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and underwritten by Booz Allen Hamilton makes the case for a comprehensive U.S. framework for maintaining leadership while ensuring “responsible development” of machine intelligence. CSIS also stresses the “hard power” implications of robotics and other forms of automation, particularly as the Defense Department and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army recognize that “the next generation of military technologies will be driven” by machine intelligence. One of the report’s authors said the U.S. roadmap is needed because the most recent AI R&D strategy has

Cyber Special forces shape plans for new cyber career path By Lauren C. Williams Mar 29, 2018 Cyber as a warfighting domain requires more than modern technological capabilities. Department of Defense leaders say it needs its own career field in the services. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said the old manpower model of switching service members' occupation every few years doesn't work for cyber. "We realized that the same manpower model that we used for other MOSs was not going to work because in order to be qualified to do this you have to go through a certain level of training," Neller said during an Atlantic Council event March 29. "It took time and it wasn't something that a very junior 18- or 19-year-old right out of high school was going to be able to do." After about a year of deliberation, the Marine Corps announced March 1 the creation of new cyber military occupational codes (MOS), including enlisted positions, offensive

After nearly 17 years with boots on the ground, Resolute Support apparently still does not understand the Taliban’s strategy in Afghanistan. Or, if NATO’s mission does, its leaders are being intentionally obtuse in public statements in order to pump its public relations campaign in support of the Afghan military and government. Just this week, Resolute Support spokesman Captain Tom Gresback claimed that Taliban operations in remote district centers “represent a significant lowering of ambition.” Below is the full quote, from a Reuters report that discusses the fighting in the southern provinces of Helmand and Farah, where the Taliban have recently made significant gains: “Taliban offensives in these remote areas represent a significant lowering of ambition after their failure to take any provincial capitals in 2017,” U.S. Navy Captain Tom Gresback, spokesman for the NATO-led Resolute Support coalition, said in an emailed statement. Gresback is parroting the line given by his boss

  In the late 1960s and early 70s the issue of Easter stamps became popular in a number of Commonwealth territories following the success of Christmas stamps which had been issued increasingly from the early to mid 1960s. Coupled with the then popularity of 'art on stamps', many of the stamps featured designs which used 'Old Master'paintings. The issue of Easter stamps had a transient popularity with client territories of the Crown Agents and, when their money-making potential was recognised, with IGPC.   In keeping with it being Good Friday, depicted here are a number of stamps issued from 1968 to 1982 by Commonwealth postal entities on the subject of the Crucifixion.   🇮🇳 India Post issued a miniature sheet containing 8 different stamps on the subject of 'The Solar System' on 20 March 2018. This item, printed by Security Press Hyderabad, and for which no reason is given for its release at this time, is certainly very colourful but

JBW 2018 - Melanie Phillips and Maureen Lipman in conversation from Jewish Book Week on Vimeo . I don't intend to resort to posting videos in this blog, but this I couldn't resist. If you are interested in the topic, please watch it on Vimeo.  If not, scroll past.

By Julian E. Barnes BRUSSELS --- If Europe came into conflict with Russia, only several thousand of the more than one million troops in its armies would be ready for rapid deployment, military planners fear. The U.S. now wants to step up readiness and ensure that at least 30,000 troops, plus additional aircraft and naval ships, can reach a trouble spot within 30 days of NATO commanders putting forces on alert, current and former allied officials say. (.../…) Ready, Set, Go! European allies maintain more than 1 million people in their armies, but few of their combat formations can deploy within 30 days. The U.S. is pushing Europe to have more army battalions ready to move quickly. Russia denies any role in the nerve-agent attack or election meddling. The Kremlin has painted the moves as a concerted campaign against the country as it reclaims its place among the world’s great powers, and has vowed to respond forcefully. Boosting allied readiness in the face of resurgent threats from