Americans should learn Russian to             influence Trump, Kerry says

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionRussia had difficult relations with John Kerry and the Obama team

Americans who want to influence the new US government should learn Russian, US ex-Secretary of State John Kerry says.

He was speaking at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

He strongly criticised President Donald Trump and his team, who are being investigated over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Russia's Foreign Ministry responded by saying the former US administration should have read the poems of Soviet propagandist Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova singled out a Mayakovsky poem which glorified Russian as the language of VI Lenin, who led the communist revolution in 1917.

Russia is marking the centenary of the revolution, which resulted in Cold War rivalry between the USSR and the US.

"I'm often asked what the secret is to have a real impact on government. Well, it's recently changed. I used to say, either run for office or get a degree from Harvard Kennedy School. With this White House I'd say, buy Rosetta Stone and learn Russian," Mr Kerry said on Wednesday.

Rosetta Stone is an online language-learning resource.

Russia: The scandal Trump can't shake

Putin wades into Trump-Russia row

Russian official says Jews backed Trump

In a Facebook post, Ms Zakharova said it was a mistake that Russia had not given the US state department under ex-President Barack Obama a collection of Mayakovsky poems.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionMaria Zakharova admires a poet and artist who pioneered Socialist realism

She quoted a verse from Mayakovsky's long poem from 1927 called To Our Youth, which translates as:

"Even if I were an elderly black man I would learn Russian, without being despondent or lazy, just because Russian was Lenin's language."

The poem suggests that Russian can serve as a lingua franca binding the diverse nations of the Soviet Union in a new communist order.

Image copyrightALAMY

Image captionVladimir Mayakovsky (pictured) promoted the Soviet revolution of Bolshevik leader VI Lenin

Mayakovsky is still much-admired in Russia for his poetry and avant-garde Socialist realist posters.

He made searing criticisms of the US after touring North America in 1925, comparing its cultural diversity to the Tower of Babel.

"I don't know which Russian language textbooks should be bought for 'this' US administration, but for the 'last one' it would be best to get a little volume of Vladimir Vladimirovich [Mayakovsky], on the eve of the 1917 centenary," Ms Zakharova wrote.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has revived some elements of Soviet life, including pro-Kremlin youth movements and displays of military hardware.

In 2005 he called the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th Century.

SOURCE :- BBC

  Manchester attack: Police not sharing         information with US

Image copyrightNEW YORK TIMES

Image captionThe New York Times says this evidence was gathered at the scene of the attack

Police investigating the Manchester Arena bomb attack have stopped sharing information with the US after leaks to the media.

UK officials were outraged when photos appearing to show debris from the attack appeared in the New York Times.It came after the name of bomber Salman Abedi was leaked to US media just hours after the attack, which left 22 dead.Theresa May said she would tell Donald Trump at a Nato meeting that shared intelligence "must remain secure".Meanwhile, the Queen has been to the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital visiting some of the injured as well as members of the emergency services.While there she paid tribute to Manchester and the "extraordinary" way the city had responded to Monday's attack at an Ariana Grande concert, in which 116 people were also injured.Families' distress
In total eight men are now in custody following the bombing carried out by Manchester-born Abedi, a 22-year-old from a family of Libyan origin.The arrests have been "significant" while searches of premises have also yielded items "important to the investigation", Greater Manchester Police said.It has also emerged two people who had known Abedi at college made separate calls to a hotline to warn the police about his extremist views.A Whitehall source said Abedi was one of a "pool" of former subjects of interest whose risk remained "subject to review" by the security service and its partners.In other developments:

• A minute's silence was held at 11:00 BST in remembrance of those who lost their lives or were affected by the attack

• Two men were arrested following a search of an address in the Withington area of Greater Manchester on Thursday morning, taking the number of people held to eight

• Manchester City and Manchester United have jointly pledged £1m to an emergency fund set up to support the victims

• A possible suspicious package was declared safe after army bomb disposal experts were called to a street in Hulme, near Manchester city centre

• The Conservatives and Labour are to resume general election campaigning on Friday

Greater Manchester Police hope to resume normal intelligence relationships - a two-way flow of information - soon but is currently "furious", the BBC understands.Its chief constable Ian Hopkins said the recent leak had caused "much distress for families that are already suffering terribly with their loss.".The force - which is leading the investigation on the ground - gives its information to National Counter-Terrorism, which then shares it across government and - because of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement - with the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

  The DNA detective helping to reunite           families

Image copyrightMARTIN SPAVEN

Image captionJulia Bell has no genetics background but has an extensive knowledge of how to analyse data

A man left abandoned as a baby in a cinema toilet 61 years ago has tracked down his siblings with the help of a so-called "DNA detective". But what do they do?

"There's an analogy I like to use: I can crack any safe, some will just take longer than others," Julia Bell tells the Victoria Derbyshire programme.

She helps people - many of whom have no knowledge of who their parents or siblings are - track down their long-lost relatives.

Julia recently helped Robert Weston, who was found in a ladies toilet in an Odeon cinema in Birmingham in 1956, find his half-brothers and sister for the first time.

Many of her cases involve American soldiers, or GIs, who were stationed in the UK during World War Two, she says.

Indeed, Julia says she is approached by someone who has discovered their father was in fact an American GI about once a month.

"More children were fathered by American servicemen than many people imagine," she says.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Julia is also currently helping a woman who, as a baby, was left in a box at London's Kings Cross railway station, while another case involves a baby left on a train in 1928.

So how does it work?

'Searching for 44 years'

"It starts with a spit test, a DNA test, which I get people to do," Julia says. "That's sent away for testing."

She then uses uses three direct-to-consumer DNA databases to cross-reference the data and then the detective work begins.

Julia - who currently is not charging clients - says she begins looking at patterns within the database to try and establish matches.

She then uses contacts around the world to try to identify relatives - however distant they may be.

Image copyrightTOMMY CHALMERS

Image captionTommy Chalmers (left), Pat McBain (centre) and Robert Weston (right) outside the house where their father lived

When Robert Weston contacted her - 61 years after being abandoned in a cinema - he said he "had been searching for a long, long time - 44 years or so" without success.

Julia asked him to provide a DNA saliva test and searched on the database in the hope of finding a distant relative.

"There will be somebody on there - fourth cousins or something - for nearly everyone out there," she explains.

Initially there were more distant matches, but Julia was able to find and test a second cousin.

"I asked her if she had any male cousins and she said 'Tommy'," Robert explains. "He agreed to be tested and he turned out to be my half-brother."

But he says: "You need a huge dollop of luck with all this."

Image copyrightROBERT WESTON

Image captionThe Birmingham Evening Despatch carried the story of Robert being found on its front page in 1956

On occasion, it is possible to trace relatives even further back.

The Salvation Army's family tracing service has reunited relatives who have been out of touch for more than 80 years.

It says it reunites 10 people every single working day, with an 89% success rate.

It also protects the privacy of the person being sought by promising it will not pass on personal details unless permission is granted.

Julia says while most cases can eventually be solved, a small number will permanently draw a blank.

Even then, she says a person can get some information, including an estimate about their ethnicity. But she says as DNA databases increase in size, the odds of closer matches get better all the time.

'Very sensitive cases'

Julia has no genetics background, saying you instead need to be "smart and logical" and know how to work with data.

"I have a knowledge of science but my background was in teaching in Singapore," she says.

"My mother didn't know who her father was and that's how I got into this, helping to look for her dad."

She adds: "I found someone in the states [US] who works in ancestry who helped show me how to do this.

"She helped me with seeing the patterns and using my intuition. She put the pieces together and I realised I was good at this.

"[My mum] found her father had died four years earlier. But she had a sister and now she's in touch with her family in the south of the US."

Image copyrightREUTERS

Where there is a success, she says third parties are "generally" positive when they find out they have relatives they never knew - although cases of abandoned babies can be "very sensitive".

"I might not always be the one to break the news, sometimes it could be a social worker."

A running theme, however, is that many long-lost relatives - despite their different upbringings - often share habits or interests.

"One set of people I matched turned out to both be astrophysicists," she says.

Robert Weston and his half-bother Tommy share the same sense of humour, she adds.

"It's like they've known each other their whole life."

BBC

 New Zealand space launch is first from a  private site

An American company has launched a rocket into space from New Zealand, the first from a private launch facility.

Rocket Lab's 17m-long (56ft) Electron lifted off from the Mahia Peninsula, in the North Island, the firm said.

The test flight was the first launch from New Zealand and is a major first step in an emerging market: launching cheap disposable rockets to carry small satellites and other payloads.

The company plans to start frequent commercial launches later this year.

The launch was conducted with no media or spectators permitted, but the company released a video of the lift-off on its Twitter page.

"It was a great flight," chief executive Peter Beck said in a statement after the launch, adding though that the rocket did not quite reach orbit, the path on which its future cargo would embark on its revolution of the Earth.

"We'll be investigating why, however reaching space in our first test puts us in an incredibly strong position to accelerate the commercial phase of our programme, deliver our customers to orbit and make space open for business."

The test launch, one of three planned, did not carry a payload as such, although it was packed with sensor equipment to help engineers understand how the flight performed.

Eventually, Rocket Lab says it will be lofting payloads up to 150kg (331lbs) into a 500km-high orbits that go from pole to pole.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionThere was no public or media access to Mahia Peninsula to witness the launch

---

Analysis: Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News

We're on the cusp of something quite exciting. Innovative companies are packaging really capable technologies into very small, low-cost satellites.

Their data will drive myriad new services - from helping city officials keep track of urban development to giving farmers information about the performance of their crops. But if this new wave is to succeed it needs cheaper access to space.

At the moment, the economics and flight schedules of these small satellites are still being defined by the availability and price of a ride on a big rocket.

Rocket Lab aims to change that. And there others, such as Richard Branson's LauncherOne project. Rocket Lab's second vehicle is already built and set to fly in the next couple months.

Keep an eye on the end of the year too because this US/NZ outfit even has a contract to send a small lander to the Moon.

---

Why New Zealand?

Rocket Lab's founder and chief executive Peter Beck is from New Zealand and the firm has a New Zealand subsidiary.

The country has less air traffic, compared to say the US, so there is less need for flights to be rerouted every time a rocket is sent to space.

Image copyrightDIGITAL GLOBE

Image captionThe launch site is located on North Island's Mahia peninsula

New Zealand is also positioned well to get satellites into a north-to-south orbit around Earth.

The trajectory takes the rocket out over open water, far from from people and property.

The country hopes these favourable factors will help it become a low-cost space hub.

Nice touch: The Electron has nine engines on its first stage and one engine on its second stage. They are called Rutherford engines - after the great New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), who famously split the atom in 1917.

Why is the launch significant?

Private and commercial rocket launches are becoming more and more common - the most famous example being Elon Musk and his SpaceX Falcon rockets.

But the SpaceX vehicles are huge and are aimed at following in the footsteps of Nasa missions, delivering cargo to the international space station and eventually sending people to Mars.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionThe rockets SpaceX sends into orbit are a different league from the Electron

Rocket Lab's goal is to launch what, by comparison, is a tiny rocket for a fraction of the price, but with much more frequency.

The Electron is a mere 17m long and 1.2m in diameter. Each launch only costs about $5m. Rocket Lab wants to conduct 50 or more a year.

Just to put this all into perspective: SpaceX's current Falcon rocket is a towering 70m and can carry 22,800kg into low-Earth orbit for a standard price of $62m.

Rocket Lab's website already allows you to book a slot for your satellite. The cheapest deal is a small cubesat on a rideshare option - prices start at $77,000 (£59,280).

Image copyrightROCKET LAB