The Israeli team behind the Beresheet spacecraft’s failed moon landing has explained that a “technical glitch” shut down one of the craft’s engines, which sent it flying to its doom at 500kph.

The craft, launched by Israeli nonprofit space venture SpaceIL and defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries, crashed into the surface of the moon on Thursday, after failing to adequately slow its descent.

The SpaceIL team explained on Friday that the first technical issue occurred 14km above the moon’s surface. By the time the team lost contact with the craft at 150 meters, it was moving at 500kph, “making a collision inevitable.”

“Our engineers think that a technical glitch in one of the components caused the main engine to shut down – making it impossible to slow the spacecraft’s descent,” SpaceIL explained. “By the time the engine was restarted, its velocity was too high to land properly.”

Beresheet, Hebrew for the biblical phrase “in the beginning,” would have been the first Israeli and first private spacecraft to land on the moon. To date, only Russia, the US, and China have managed to perform controlled ‘soft’ landings on the lunar surface.

The SpaceIL team were unperturbed by the loss of the mission, and counted the failed landing as an achievement in itself. The team will also receive a $1 million ‘Moonshot Award’ from California-based XPRIZE foundation, “in honor of their achievements and their milestone as the first privately funded entity to orbit the moon.”

“SpaceIL’s mission not only touched the Moon, it touched the lives and hearts of an entire world that was watching,” said XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watched the landing attempt from the control center, and has already promised that an Israeli craft will return to the moon in the next two or three years.

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It might be hard to believe, but NATO’s bombing campaign to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya eight years ago has not led to a new era of peace and prosperity. In fact, it looks like a new revolution is on the way.

Blowing in from the east is warlord General Khalifa Haftar who used to be a Gaddafi ally, then he wasn’t, then he went to live in the US near CIA HQ, and is now back trying to take power, with the backing of a whole range of allies. His opponent in Tripoli is the UN backed Government of National Accord which isn’t really a government, or national or in accord with anything.

Normally it would just be a case choosing a side, and bombing the other one, but as ICYMI discovers, it’s not that easy in Libya anymore.

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For years, three NATO states have had no trouble using Russian air defense systems, but Turkey’s S-400 deal is a special case as it’s a risk to the US grip on Ankara and inflicts losses on its military industry, analysts told RT.

Not a single month passes without the United States unloading on Turkey, which seems to stay on course buying the top-notch S-400 anti-aircraft systems. Washington has already put on hold F-35 deliveries to the Turkish Air Force and warned that carrying on with the deal could jeopardize Ankara’s ties with the US and NATO.

Following suit, some mainstream media rushed to explain how Turkey’s industry will suffer if the S-400s reach Turkish soil. Others warned that having the F-35 and the S-400 within one military would compromise critical advantages of the fifth-generation fighter jet.

Military analysts who talked to RT said much of the fuss is about Ankara not bowing to Washington and NATO and pursuing its own interests.

The US “is losing the lead and Russia is taking it,” Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine and member of the Defense Ministry’s public board, said. The prospect of a NATO member buying from Russia “damages US reputation … and inflicts losses on the American military industry.”

READ MORE: Turkey must choose between remaining NATO partner or buying Russian S-400 – Pence

The S-400 is a danger to NATO aircraft because “it can spot and engage F-35 and F-22,” he explained.

But it is not uncommon for NATO member states to use high-tech Russian-made weaponry, including the S-400’s predecessor. Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovakia – all US’ NATO allies – have the S-300 in their arsenals.

Greece has installed them on the island of Cyprus, which became a turning point in its national defense strategy. Bulgaria and Slovakia are frequently using the system – designed at the height of the Cold War – during NATO live-fire exercises.

So, why is Turkey – which joined NATO in 1952 on par with Greece – under intense pressure while the other three are not?

“Greece and other members have procured Russian anti-aircraft weapons long before 2014, i.e. before tensions between the US and Russia began to mount,” explained Russian military expert Mikhail Khodarenok.

Khodarenok, a retired Russia’s Air Defense Troops officer, said enhanced firepower, resistance to jamming and extended reach all make the S-400 stand out among other surface-to-air missiles.

But what if the US is so fearful of the S-400 because it is less familiar to the Pentagon than the older-generation S-300? The American military had acquired a pair of S-300P and S-300V variants through Belarus and Ukraine after the USSR’s collapse to study the system’s capabilities – but this knowledge isn’t up-to-date now, Khodarenok said.

“The US has nothing of its [newer variants],” he noted. Even knowing the enemy weapons in detail doesn’t help much in the battlefield as “suppressing anti-aircraft systems is about robust electronic jamming,” not studying any specific type of hardware.

Ankara says the S-400 will help the country to defend itself, as Turkey faces threats coming from the Middle East. But at the same time, it is in talks with the US over the Patriot missiles – a near-peer analog to the S-300 family.

Avoiding “putting all eggs in one basket,” Turkey shows that it doesn’t want to necessarily buy anti-aircraft systems from one vendor, Khodarenok suggested. He believes that the Russian deal will be limited to Turkey buying only a number of S-400 squadrons “to cover only one important facility.”

“There will be no wholesale purchase of anti-aircraft systems to cover all of Turkey,” while the S-400 debacle is far from over. The deal is done only after Turkish crews are trained in Russia, the launchers are tested and sent to Turkey, and, finally, all payments are made, he explained.

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The former chief of Venezuela’s military intelligence – and the highest-ranking military officer to defect to the US-backed opposition – has been nabbed in Spain on a US warrant for allegedly trafficking tons of cocaine.

Hugo Carvajal was arrested by Spanish police in Madrid on Friday and faces extradition to the US, where he was indicted in 2014 for allegedly having “coordinated the transportation of approximately 5,600 kilograms of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico.” He will testify in a Saturday court appearance as to whether he wishes to fight the extradition, an official with Spain’s National Court told the AP. 

The Venezuelan ex-major general, whose nickname “el Pollo” means “the Chicken,” is accused of protecting a Colombian drug kingpin from arrest, allowing him to move about 5,600kg of cocaine in and out of Venezuela, and tipping him off to law enforcement activities. Carvajal allegedly was not only paid off by the kingpin and other members of his organization, but also invested in some of the drug shipments. He is also accused of providing weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

While Carvajal served as chief of military intelligence and counterintelligence under former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, he reportedly began to distance himself from Chavez’s successor President Nicolas Maduro after returning to Venezuela in 2014 from Aruba, where he had been briefly detained on the same US warrant, facing extradition until Maduro threatened retaliation against the island.

Carvajal left Maduro’s government in 2017, ostensibly in protest over the president’s plans to form a constitutional assembly that would reduce the power of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, and declared his allegiance to opposition leader and self-appointed president Juan Guaido in February, blaming Maduro for the “disastrous reality” of Venezuela. Last month, the president expelled Carvajal from the armed forces, accusing him of “acts of treason against the fatherland.”

Since embracing the US-backed Guaido, Carvajal has called on other members of the Venezuelan military to join the opposition, warning them against becoming “collaborators” of a “dictatorial government that has plagued people with misery” and accusing military leaders of being pawns of Cuba. He also gave a juicy interview with the New York Times, denouncing current and former members of Maduro’s government as drug traffickers, FARC and Hezbollah collaborators, and journalist blackmailers while denying his own guilt on the many of the same charges.

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Dramatic videos and reports from conflict zones are being submitted to RT as part of the 2019 Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards. The international contest honors the RT’s stringer who was killed in a terrorist shelling in Syria.

The entries will be accepted till June 10 and the winners will be announced on July 30. On this day in 2017, Alkhateb lost his life in an attack by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), while reporting on the Syrian military advance on militants in Homs. The RT Arabic freelance journalist was just 25 years old.

The competition is in three main categories: best video journalism from a conflict zone in long and short form, as well as best written war reporting.

Entries from more than 20 countries in ten languages were in the running for the inaugural Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards last year. The high-profile jury, led by former CBS correspondent Philip Ittner and Tom Wragg of the Association for International Broadcasting, picked Iraqi journalist Asaad Al-Zalzali and his Irish colleague Jason O’Brien as winners for their reporting on the life in areas liberated from Islamic State.

The prize for the ‘Best Video Journalism from a Conflict Zone: Long Form’ went to Anna Karenina Tolentino of Singapore, who covered the liberation of the Philippines city of Marawi from IS-linked terrorists.

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WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange’s show ‘The World Tomorrow’ covered a number of controversial topics over 12 episodes that aired on RT in 2012. As he faces persecution in the US, RT brings you some of the show’s greatest moments.

From the first episode – in which he interviewed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – to the last, where his guest was Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, Assange raised questions for which WikiLeaks became both famous and notorious in the West.

WATCH ALL EPISODES IN THIS YOUTUBE PLAYLIST:

At one point, Assange pre-empted his detractors by publishing a list of “criticisms” of the show, which ended up neatly matching the media and political outrage that greeted ‘The World Tomorrow’ and him personally.

In one episode, Assange interviewed former Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg.

Assange also touched on the secret US drone war in Pakistan with opposition politician Imran Khan, who would become prime minister in August 2018.

In another episode, Assange sat down with Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador who had granted him asylum.

After his successor Lenin Moreno revoked Assange’s asylum and allowed UK police to arrest the WikiLeaks journalist on April 11, Correa called Moreno “the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history… a corrupt man” whose crime “humanity will never forget.”

WATCH: The World Tomorrow w/ Julian Assange on RT.com

Assange was arrested on an extradition warrant from the US, where he is sought on charges of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” with whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Manning had turned over thousands of US government documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, including the Iraq and Afghanistan “war diaries,” which contained the notorious “collateral murder” video showing US forces killing civilians.

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If you’ve seen the pictures of a frail Julian Assange being carried out of Ecuador’s London embassy like a bearded battering ram by a gaggle of coppers, then you did so courtesy of video agency Ruptly.

Normally the identity of the video agency that provides news footage is not worthy of a story in itself, but Ruptly has one distinctive factor which sets it apart: it’s Russian. Even worse, it’s Russian and it’s a subsidiary of RT.

CNN appears so shocked that the footage of Assange being manhandled “wasn’t captured by leading UK broadcasters like the BBC, Sky News or Independent Television News (ITN)” that it wrote a story headlined “How a Russian-owned media outlet landed the first video of Julian Assange’s arrest.”

CNN explains away the gazumping embarrassment by insinuating that Russia Link + Assange = Conspiracy.  

It uses an irrelevant quote from a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, and asks Ruptly’s deputy head of news if she feels pressured by the Russian government. She says no, although I suspect she does feel pressure to film newsworthy events as they happen.

The adjectives CNN uses to describe Ruptly are worthy of exploration and explanation. In the headline, the agency is described as ‘Russian-owned,’ which is another way of saying evil.

In CNN’s tweet, Ruptly is a ‘niche’ media outlet. ‘Niche’ is a term used to describe something that is a bit forbidden, maybe a bit filthy. If you Google the term ‘niche material’ at work, the IT department will be canceling your credentials within minutes.

CNN’s Hadas Gold wrote: “Ruptly, which has carved out a niche for itself by recording events around the world and selling the footage to other broadcasters, is a subsidiary of Russian state-backed media outlet RT.”  

I mean, if that is a niche, then it’s a pretty big one. I’ve never heard Reuters or AFP or AP described as niche before.

And in CNN’s online write up, Ruptly is described as ‘obscure.’ This put-down suggests Ruptly is not ‘one of us,’ not worthy of attention, not one of the chosen ones.  

Responding to CNN, Ruptly said: “We would like to point out that it is not exactly correct to call us a ‘niche’ or ‘obscure’ video agency. As an award-winning global multimedia agency, we provide news video, live events, and broadcast services to over 1,200 media clients worldwide, including some of the biggest names in news journalism. We have actually provided CNN with a number of materials since our launch.”

So CNN is a fan of obscure, niche material too! Isn’t that always the way?!

Just to clear up exactly how Ruptly got the footage, it stayed outside the Ecuadorian Embassy and filmed the door for days on end, even when all the other outlets went home. That’s it. Ruptly was there because the forthcoming arrest had been rumored for days, which was why the more well-known media outlets had also been there, but ultimately missed the money shot.

The Russian scoop is clearly embarrassing some members of the establishment media, but there’s no need to take the blame anymore, just like with Brexit and Trump, you can just blame Russia.

By Simon Rite

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Indonesia has lifted a tsunami warning that was issued earlier on Friday after a powerful 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sulawesi island.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s Geophysical Agency announced the warning after the quake hit 280 km (174 miles) south of the province of Gorontalo. It was in place for approximately 40 minutes.

It struck at a depth of 43 km (27 miles), according to the United States Geological Survey. The warning was issued for coastal communities in the Morowali district.

There were no reports of damage or casualties but the USGS warned that considerable damage was possible in poorly built or badly designed structures.

Indonesia lies in the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a vast area in the Pacific Ocean where many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. The vast Indonesian archipelago is home to more than 100 volcanoes.

A 7.5-magnitude quake hit the other side of Sulawesi last year, triggering a tsunami which hit the city of Palu and killed more than 4,300 people.

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Facebook has apparently blocked the page of former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, which was used to share WikiLeaks material. The move also comes after he bashed his successor for allowing to arrest Julian Assange.

Correa took to Twitter on Thursday night to decry the block, which he called a “show of desperation” following the publication of the INA papers, a trove of documents leaked last month that show current President Lenin Moreno’s involvement in a corruption investigation. Correa had been publicizing the papers on his Facebook page, which had 1.5 million followers.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the block to El Comercio, telling the paper that Correa’s page was blocked because it breached the company’s policies on “disclosure of personal information, such as phone numbers, addresses, bank account data, cards, or any record or data that could compromise the integrity physical or financial of the people in our community.”

The block also came one day after Correa branded Moreno “the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian history” for allowing British officers to enter London’s Ecuadorian embassy and arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. One week previously, WikiLeaks had suggested that Moreno would move to oust Assange soon, as revenge for WikiLeaks’ reporting on the INA papers.

There is at present nothing to suggest that Facebook blocked Correa on behalf of Moreno. However, the social media giant has been criticized before for deleting left and right-leaning activist and news pages in the US, and leftist news outlets in Latin America.

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Scientists studying the habitability of Earth-like worlds have discovered that the conditions for alien life exist on some of the nearest planets to our solar system.

The researchers found that rocky outliers in the habitable zone of neighboring red dwarf stars could host life despite the planets’ high levels of radiation exposure.

In a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Cornell University scientists found that life here on Earth evolved from creatures that endured even greater UV radiation exposure than nearly a handful of the closest exoplanets, i.e. planets outside our solar system.

By modelling the surface UV environments of our four closest potentially habitable exoplanetary neighbors, the authors found that these exoplanets’ radiation exposure was significantly lower than what Earth received 3.9 billion years ago.  

They concluded that ultraviolet radiation should not be considered a limiting factor in the search for planets that can host life. “Our closest neighboring worlds remain intriguing targets for the search for life beyond our solar system,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

The four planets studied were:

• Proxima-b (4.24 light years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus)

• TRAPPIST-1e (39.6 light years away in the Aquarius constellation)

• Ross-128b (10.89 light years away in the Virgo constellation)

• LHS-1140b (40 light years away in the Cetus constellation)

The closest planet, Proxima-b, receives 250 times more x-ray radiation and potentially hazardous UV radiation exposure than Earth does today. However, life on Earth survived far worse exposure, the authors argue, so why not on our neighboring exoplanets?

In addition, not all wavelengths of UV radiation are equally damaging and the planets’ ozone levels, not just their radiation levels, are important to factor in to any long-term habitability studies.

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