The Webb Space Telescope has captured the rare and fleeting phase of a star on the cusp of death.

NASA released the picture Tuesday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

The observation was among the first made by Webb following its launch in late 2021. Its infrared eyes observed all the gas and dust flung into space by a huge, hot star 15,000 light years away. A light year is about 5.8 trillion miles.

Shimmering in purple like a cherry blossom, the cast-off material once comprised the star’s outer layer. The Hubble Space Telescope snapped a shot of the same transitioning star a few decades ago, but it appeared more like a fireball without the delicate details.

Such a transformation occurs only with some stars and normally is the last step before they explode, going supernova, according to scientists.

“We’ve never seen it like that before. It’s really exciting,” said Macarena Garcia Marin, a European Space Agency scientist who is part of the project.

This star in the constellation Sagittarius, officially known as WR 124, is 30 times as massive as our sun and already has shed enough material to account for 10 suns, according to NASA.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting Ethiopia and Niger this week as the Biden administration accelerates a push to engage with Africa to counter China’s growing influence on the continent, the State Department said. 

Blinken is visiting Addis Ababa and will travel to Niamey later in the week to discuss the peace deal that ended hostilities in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and counterterrorism efforts aimed at Islamic extremists in Niger and the Sahel more broadly. 

His trip will be the fourth high-profile visit to Africa this year by top members of the Biden administration. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and first lady Jill Biden have already gone there. 

Blinken plans to meet with both Ethiopian and Tigrayan officials in Addis Ababa and will be the first secretary of state ever to visit Niger, which has hosted U.S. military operations targeting Islamic State affiliates in the area. 

In discussions with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Tigrayan officials, the State Department said Blinken would focus on “implementation of the cessation of hostilities agreement to advance peace and promote transitional justice in northern Ethiopia.” 

The Tigray conflict led the U.S. to suspend some preferential trade agreements with Ethiopia, which the country is eager to have restored. But the top U.S. diplomat for Africa said Friday that a full normalization of relations will depend on more action from Addis Ababa, particularly after the “earth-shattering” Tigray conflict. 

“What we’re looking to do is refashion our engagement with Ethiopia,” said Molly Phee, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs. “We would like to be able to have a partnership that is commensurate with their size and influence and with our interest and commitment to Africa.” 

“But to put that relationship in a forward trajectory we will continue to need steps by Ethiopia to help break the cycle of ethnic/political violence that has set the country back for so many decades,” she said. 

The conflict in Tigray erupted a year after Abiy received the Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with longtime rival Eritrea. The Ethiopian and Eritrean governments saw the Tigray regional leaders, who had long dominated Ethiopia’s government before Abiy took office, as a common threat. 

An estimated 500,000 civilians were killed in the two-year conflict that ended with a peace agreement signed in South Africa in November. U.S. officials mediated in that deal. 

The conflict cut off the Tigray region of more than 5 million people, with humanitarian aid often blocked and basic services severed while health workers pleaded for the simplest of medical supplies.

In a meeting with the Addis Ababa-based African Union Commission chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, Blinken will also try to blunt both Chinese and Russian attempts to win support from African nations over Russia’s war with Ukraine; a topic that has raised considerable concerns amongst formerly colonized states. 
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The U.S. military says a Russian fighter jet collided Tuesday with a U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drone operating within international airspace over the Black Sea, causing the drone to crash.
A U.S. military official told VOA the unmanned U.S. MQ-9 has not yet been recovered.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the United States is summoning the Russian ambassador over the incident.

“We are engaging directly with the Russians, again at senior levels, to convey our strong objections to this unsafe, unprofessional intercept, which caused the downing of the unmanned U.S. aircraft.”

He added that U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy “has conveyed a strong message to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

U.S. President Joe Biden was briefed about the incident, according to White House spokesman John Kirby.

“If the message [from Russia] is that they want to deter or dissuade us from flying and operating in international airspace over the Black Sea then that message will fail because that is not going to happen,” Kirby told VOA. 

“We are going to continue to fly and operate in international airspace over international waters. The Black Sea belongs to no one nation and we’re going to continue to do what we need to do for our own national security interests in that part of the world.”

According to U.S. European Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in Europe, two Russian Su-27 aircraft “dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner.”

“One of the Russian Su-27 aircraft struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters. … This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional,” EUCOM added.

U.S. Air Force Gen. James B. Hecker, commander, U.S. Air Forces Europe and Air Forces Africa, said in a press release that the collision had “nearly caused both aircraft to crash.”

EUCOM called on Russian forces to act “professionally and safely,” while warning that these types of acts are “dangerous and could lead to miscalculation and unintended escalation.”

Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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Facebook-parent Meta Platforms said on Tuesday it would cut 10,000 jobs, just four months after it let go 11,000 employees, the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs. 

“We expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to staff.  

The layoffs are part of a wider restructuring at Meta that will see the company flatten its organizational structure, cancel lower priority projects and reduce its hiring rates as part of the move. The news sent Meta’s shares up 2% in premarket trading. 

The move underscores Zuckerberg’s push to turn 2023 into the “Year of Efficiency” with promised cost cuts of $5 billion in expenses to between $89 billion and $95 billion. 

A deteriorating economy has brought about a series of mass job cuts across corporate America: from Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to Big Tech firms including Amazon.com  and Microsoft.  

The tech industry has laid off more than 280,000 workers since the start of 2022, with about 40% of them coming this year, according to layoffs tracking site layoffs.fyi.  

Meta, which is pouring billions of dollars to build the futuristic metaverse, has struggled with a post-pandemic slump in advertising spending from companies facing high inflation and rising interest rates.  

Meta’s move in November to slash headcount by 13% marked the first mass layoffs in its 18-year history. Its headcount stood at 86,482 at 2022-end, up 20% from a year ago. 
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Australia will buy three nuclear-powered attack submarines from the United States as part of a three-nation, multi-decade deal with Great Britain that is aimed at strengthening the allies’ presence in the Asia-Pacific region as China grows bolder militarily.

President Joe Biden says the decision to share sensitive U.S. nuclear technology with Australia is a big deal — and a necessary one. He spoke Monday in San Diego, California.

“As we stand at the inflection point in history where the hard work of enhancing deterrence and promoting stability is going to affect the prospects of peace for decades to come, the United States can ask for no better partners in the Indo-Pacific, where so much of our shared future will be rooted,” Biden said at Naval Base San Diego, flanked by both countries’ leaders. “Forging this new partnership, we’re showing again how democracies can deliver our own security and prosperity, and not just for us, but for the entire world.”

The multi-decade deal will see American and British nuclear-powered submarines rotating into Australian waters as soon as 2027. By the early 2030s, Australia will buy at least three — and as many as five — American nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines designed to hunt and attack other subs. And the three nations will work together to develop a new nuclear attack submarine — a project that could take two decades.

Biden stressed that the deal concerns nuclear propulsion, not arms, and the leaders pledged to adhere to their nuclear non-proliferation agreements.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the deal, which could cost nearly $150 billion (as much as $200 billion Australian dollars) will create jobs and boost innovation and research.

“The AUKUS agreement we confirm here in San Diego represents the biggest single investment in Australia’s defense capability in all of our history, strengthening Australia’s national security and stability in our region,” he said.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also announced that his nation would increase military spending to 2.5% of their GDP, to meet growing threats worldwide.

“The last 18 months, the challenges we face have only grown: Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,” he said. “China’s growing assertiveness, the destabilizing behavior of Iran and North Korea. All threaten to create a world defined by danger, disorder and division. Faced with this new reality it is more important than ever that we strengthen the resilience of our own countries.”

Beijing has criticized the partnership and accuses Washington of “provoking rivalry and confrontation.”

“This trilateral cooperation constitutes serious nuclear proliferation risks, undermines the international non-proliferation system, exacerbates arms race and hurts peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific,” said Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry. “It has been widely questioned and opposed by regional countries and the wider international community. We urge the US, the UK and Australia to abandon the Cold War mentality and zero-sum games, honor international obligations in good faith and do more things that are conducive to regional peace and stability.”

But analysts say China’s aggression in the Pacific region prompted this decision.

“This is really more a response to the very aggressive military buildup that China has had, as opposed to anything we’re doing that would be provoking to China,” Mark Kennedy, director of the Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition at the Wilson Center, told VOA.

Because the three countries are democracies and have free-speech protections, there are vocal critics — and analysts expect legislators in all three nations to probe the terms of the deal as it evolves and question its impact on sovereignty issues and government spending.

“There’s criticism, as well there should be, of this deal everywhere because that’s how democracies do policy, right?” Charles Edel, the inaugural Australia Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA. “The ambitions are really, really large, but they’re also very large bets that are being placed.”

And, he said, it’s a sign that Australia’s ties with the U.S. are stronger than ever.

“The real importance here is that nuclear propulsion technology is truly the crown jewel of America’s technological strength,” he said. “We’ve only shared it once in all of American history, and that was almost four decades ago with the British, despite being asked by multiple countries. I think it’s the closeness of the U.S.-Australian relationship, which makes this possible… That can only happen with countries where there is a very deep reservoir of trust.”
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Sayfullo Saipov, the man convicted of killing eight people in an attack on a Manhattan bike path in 2017, was spared the death penalty after a federal jury deadlocked on how he should be punished. 

The deadlock means Saipov will be sentenced to life in prison without parole, because a unanimous decision is required to impose the death penalty. He will spend his sentence at Colorado’s Supermax facility, the most secure U.S. federal prison. 

Saipov, a 35-year-old Uzbek national, was convicted in January by a federal jury of committing murder with a goal of joining Islamic State, or ISIS, a group the United States has designated a “terrorist” organization. The same jury has been reconvened to consider Saipov’s punishment. 

Saipov’s case is the first federal death penalty trial since President Joe Biden, a Democrat, took office in 2021 after pledging to abolish capital punishment during his campaign. 

In its verdict form, read aloud by U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick in federal court in Manhattan, the jury indicated that it did not unanimously agree that Saipov was likely to commit criminal acts of violence in prison in the future. 

The 12 jurors agreed on a number of other aggravating factors weighing in favor of the death penalty, including that Saipov planned the attack in advance and that he carried it out in support of Islamic State. 

But they also agreed on several mitigating factors, including that many of Saipov’s family members still love him despite what he had done and that a sentence of life imprisonment provides hope that he would one day realize that what he did was wrong. 

During the penalty phase of the trial, jurors heard from survivors of the attack who testified about their ongoing suffering, and jail officers who described Saipov’s outbursts and threats since his arrest. 

“The defendant is still committed to jihad and ISIS and violence,” prosecutor Amanda Houle said in her closing argument on March 7. 

Saipov’s defense lawyer, David Patton, said in his closing argument that the death penalty was “not necessary to do justice.” He said Saipov would spend 22 or 23 hours a day alone in a cell with a concrete bed if sentenced to life in prison. 
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