US government spaceplane contract awarded to Boeing
The XS-1 spaceplane could "revolutionise" the ability to recover from a catastrophic loss of military or commercial satellites.
Designs for an unmanned, reusable spaceplane have been commissioned by America's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Boeing will be completing the advanced design work for the Experimental Spaceplane XS-1 programme run by the agency, which is part of the US Department of Defense.
The programme aims to create a new class of hypersonic aircraft that would bolster national security by providing short-notice, low-cost access to space.
XS-1 will allow launches to low-Earth orbit in a matter of days, compared with the months or even years of preparation currently needed to get a single satellite into orbit. Its recurring costs could be as low as $5m per launch.
Currently, the cheapest low-Earth orbit launches are provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX and can cost around $60m, depending on the mission.
The project is ambitious and requires "significant advances in both technical capabilities and ground operations," according to DARPA.
If it is successful it would "revolutionise" the US' "ability to recover from a catastrophic loss of military or commercial satellites, upon which the nation today is critically dependent."
It aims to build a fully reusable unmanned vehicle, roughly the size of a business jet, which would take off vertically like a rocket and fly to hypersonic speeds.
The vehicle would be launched with no external boosters, powered solely by self-contained cryogenic propellants.
Upon reaching a high suborbital altitude, the booster would release an expendable upper stage which could deploy a 1,360kg satellite to polar orbit - an orbit in which the satellite passes above both of the Earth's poles.
After deploying the satellite, the reusable first stage of the spaceplane would then bank and return to Earth, landing horizontally like an aircraft, and be prepared for the next flight, potentially within hours.
To test the spaceplane, DARPA and Boeing are planning to conduct a demonstration of XS-1 technology, flying 10 times in 10 days, with an additional final flight carrying the upper-stage payload delivery system.
"We're delighted to see this truly futuristic capability coming closer to reality," said Brad Tousley, director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, which oversees XS-1.
"Demonstration of aircraft-like, on-demand, and routine access to space is important for meeting critical Defense Department needs and could help open the door to a range of next-generation commercial opportunities."
BBC
UK weather: The latest Sky News forecast
Another hot sunny day today but thunderstorms are expected through tonight and tomorrow.
Another bright morning for the majority of the UK and Ireland today, and mild once again.
It'll be mainly dry too, except for the risk of some showers across the far west of Ireland.
It'll be virtually cloudless this afternoon as we continue with blue skies and sunshine for most places.
However, the far west of Ireland will likely have cloudier skies with the chance of some showers there later.
With light winds it'll feel very hot once again and temperatures could be slightly higher than yesterday, with highs ranging from 25-30C, that's 77-86F.
Tonight most places will have a mild and muggy night again.
It'll be mainly dry and clear for Scotland, northern and eastern England.
Elsewhere will likely see heavy and thundery showers move across Northern Ireland, the Republic, Wales, central and southwest parts of England.
Tomorrow will be hot again in the east, but the thundery showers will move northeastwards through the day.
FBI investigates Donald Trump's son-in-law over Russia links
The FBI is looking into meetings between Donald Trump's son-in-law, the Russian ambassador and a Moscow banker.
Donald Trump's son-in- law is under investigation over the "extent and nature" of his dealings with Russian officials, US media is reporting.
The Washington Post says the investigation centres around meetings Mr Kushner had with the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Moscow banker Sergei Gorkov.
Mr Gorkov is the chairman of VneshEconomBank - a state bank which has been under US sanctions since 2014.
In a statement provided to Sky News, Mr Kushner's attorney Jamie Gorelick said: "Mr Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings. He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry."
The husband of Mr Trump's daughter Ivanka, as well as Mr Trump's senior aide, Mr Kushner is the only current White House official understood to be involved in the probe.
While he is being questioned as part of the inquiry, there has been no suggestion that he is a target of the investigation itself, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and sacked national security adviser Michael Flynn are both considered to be subjects of the probe.
President Trump shoved the Montenegro prime minister at NATO
President Donald Trump appeared to push himself past the prime minister of Montenegro during a tour of NATO's new headquarters. (May 25) AP
During his first joint meeting with North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders, President Trump on Thursday appeared to push aside the prime minister of Montenegro.
In a video of the interaction, the president comes up from behind and then shoves Montenegro's Dusko Markovic to get to the front of the group of world leaders. Trump then adjusts his jacket.
Markovic appears to be taken aback at first, but after seeing that it was Trump, he smiles and pats Trump on the back.
When asked about the incident, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said, "I have not seen the video."
He also noted that the standing order for the photo op was pre-determined, as usual.
Disney's Bob Iger says the film hack threat was a hoax
You may remember Disney's boss revealing that hackers had threatened to leak one of the studio's new films unless it paid a ransom.
Bob Iger didn't name the film, but it was thought to be Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
But now Iger has told Yahoo Finance: "To our knowledge we were not hacked."
"We decided to take [the threat] seriously but not react in the manner in which the person who was threatening us had required."
But, he added: "We don't believe that it was real and nothing has happened."
Iger had told employees earlier this month that the hackers had demanded the ransom in bitcoin and that they would release the film online in a series of 20-minute chunks unless it was paid.
The Disney boss was keen to stress how technology has benefitted Disney but also said it also presented significant challenges to the film industry.
"In today's world, cyber security is a front burner issue," he said.
"We like to view technology more friend than foe... [but] it is also a disruptor."
Two men dead after light aircraft crash off Kintyre
Two men have been killed in a light aircraft crash off the Scottish coast.
The alarm was raised after the aircraft, which took off from Oban Airport at 11:30 on Thursday, failed to arrive at Carlisle Airport.
Police Scotland said the aircraft had crashed about two miles off the coast of Skipness.
The bodies of two men and wreckage from the aircraft were recovered from the sea following an extensive search.
BBC
Schapelle Corby: The drugs, the circusand a long-awaited return
Australian drug trafficker Schapelle Corby, almost 40, is heading home from Indonesia for the first time in more than 12 years.
She lost her freedom, much of her youth and, it was feared, her sanity after she was caught carrying 4.2kg (9.3lb) of marijuana in her boogie board bag into Bali through Denpasar airport on 8 October 2004.
To the horror of many Australians, the former beauty school student who worked in her parents' fish and chip shop was sentenced to 20 years' jail in Bali's Kerobokan prison.
On Saturday, 12 years to the day after she was sentenced, Corby will be deported from Bali to start a new life at home on Queensland's Gold Coast.
Her sentence was televised live. Australians watched as Corby slapped her forehead repeatedly with her palm and dissolved into tears, while her supporters in the Denpasar Local Court erupted in anger.
But an Australian-based Indonesian law expert says the price could have been so much higher.
Many Australians reacted badly to the sight of the small, bronzed Queenslander with big, green eyes locked in a foreign jail for carrying "a bit of dope".
But Tim Lindsey, a professor in Asian law and director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the University of Melbourne's Melbourne Law School, says Corby's crime is among the most serious in Indonesian law.
He says in the 1970s the West, led by then US President Richard Nixon and his war on drugs, demanded South East Asian nations with more relaxed drug laws adopt a similar hard-line approach.
Australia, Canada and many EU nations have now backed away from that hard line, but Prof Lindsey says many countries maintain a punitive approach.
"In Indonesia in particular, they take the view that there is no distinction between marijuana and heroin and cocaine. All of those drugs are in category one, the most serious forms of drugs," he says.
"In Indonesia, the death sentence is available for dozens of offences, but is usually only applied to three - particularly serious, premeditated murders get death, terrorism gets death and drugs offences get death.
"Like other countries in South East Asia, in Indonesia trafficking drugs is seen as a form of mass murder [because of the deaths caused by drugs]."
Prof Lindsey says Corby's life was on the line when her trial began in the Denpasar Local Court in January 2005.
"She was certainly facing death. There are three penalties that could be imposed upon her: death, life in prison or up to 20 years in prison," he says.
In Australia, anti-Indonesian sentiment soared.
Sister Mercedes Corby and mother Rosleigh Rose held emotionally-charged media conferences in Bali, proclaiming Schapelle's innocence, demanding the Australian government bring Schapelle home, and floating theories about how the drugs came to be in her bag.
One theory suggested a corrupt baggage handler in Brisbane sent the shipment in Corby's bag, intending it to be intercepted in Sydney before the flight then headed for Denpasar.
But a former member of Corby's defence, Robin Tampoe, later declared that he had made up the theory himself.
Philip Ruddock, who was Australia's attorney-general when Corby was arrested, has said claims of a set-up lack evidence.
"You know, these were claims. It's never been proven that drugs were planted on her," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp this week.
"I'm sure every endeavour was taken to establish the truth," he said, adding that "some parties might not like the truth".
At the time, Sydney radio shock jock Malcolm T. Elliott described the judges in Corby's case and then-Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as "monkeys". His inflammatory comments referred to the judges as "straight out of the trees".
Some questioned why Australia handed Indonesia a A$1bn (£577m; $750m) relief package following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami if this how a "young, innocent" Aussie girl was treated.
Actor Russell Crowe stepped into Corby's corner. "When there is such doubt, how can we, as a country, stand by and let a young lady, as an Australian, rot away in a foreign prison? That is ridiculous," he said in April 2005.
That same month, Indonesia's consulate-general in Perth received an envelope containing two bullets and a letter that read, in part: "If Schapelle Corby is not released immediately you will all receive one of these bullets through the brain."
Protests both for and against Corby raged in Australia and Indonesia.
Media circus
Prof Lindsey says the unprecedented saga did Corby no favours.
"A circus was whipped up around the case, with crowds of people pushing into proceedings, people yelling and screaming at judges, people abusing judges, people giving press conferences in which judges and the system were abused and attacked," he says.
Her defence team made little effort to displace the prosecution's case, Prof Lindsey says. "It was always very likely that she was going to be convicted," he says.
The behaviour of Corby and her supporters was also a major issue.
"She never admitted guilt - and maybe she didn't do it, I don't know - but she never acknowledged guilt. She never seemed remorseful in court, and she behaved in a highly emotional and sometimes offensive way to the court," Prof Lindsey says.
This counts for much in the Indonesian system come sentencing, he says.
Many Australians were angry at Corby's 20-year jail term, comparing it to the much lighter terms given to some of the minor players in the deadly 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people including 88 Australians.
But Prof Lindsey says despite Indonesia's notoriously clunky legal system, Corby was treated fairly.
He says the judges knew the world was watching and "seemed to manage this case pretty much straight down the line".
"They were provoked sufficiently that they could have given her a very severe sentence," he says. "She got the maximum term of imprisonment below life. It's not life. It's not easy, but it could have been worse."
Appeals and sideshows
A series of appeals between July 2005 and March 2008 ultimately failed to improve Corby's situation.
Her sentence was cut by five years in an October 2005 appeal, but the defence and prosecution appealed that, and the 20-year sentence was reinstated.
One appeal opened in August 2006, with Corby's defence saying CCTV footage from Sydney Airport the day she travelled to Bali would clear her. They were given 10 days to produce it but did not.
If the Corby circus wasn't enough, the sideshows were spectacular and damaged Corby's credibility with her Australian supporters.
In 2005, before her sentence, Queensland businessman Ron Bakir announced he would fund Corby's defence and had retained a law firm to investigate the source of the marijuana in Corby's bag.
He cut ties with the Corby team after alleging a prosecutor had asked for a bribe to reduce the sentence his team would request for Corby. It incensed Corby's legal team, most of whom were later sacked in dramatic and public fashion anyway.
Her half-brother James Kisina, who was with her when she was arrested, was revealed to have criminal convictions, while Mercedes Corby won a defamation case after a television network aired an interview with a family friend.
Other claims surfaced that Corby's father, Michael, had alleged dealings with the drugs trade. He died of bowel cancer in 2008. That year, Corby was admitted to hospital twice suffering from depression.
In 2010, Corby appealed to President Yudhoyono for clemency and her release on humanitarian grounds because of her mental health. He cut her term by five years and, Prof Lindsey says, endured great public criticism and failed legal moves to reverse his decision.
Corby was released on parole in February 2014, nine years and four months after her arrest thanks to Mr Yudhoyono's clemency and regular sentence discounts for Christmas and Indonesian Independence Day.
Mr Lindsey says she was "treated in a reasonable fashion as a drug trafficker in the context of the Indonesian legal system".
Corby has kept a low profile since she was paroled. For now, she lives in a modern villa in Kuta.
Celebrity PR agent Max Markson says Corby could cash in once she comes home, although it is not clear what role Australia's Proceeds of Crime laws might play.
"Schapelle Corby's name has been famous for 12 or 13 years, she's a brand, there's no doubt about it," he said last week. Reality TV and invitations to big events like the Melbourne Cup beckon, he says.
There are reports Corby wants to stay in Bali with her local boyfriend Ben Panangian and her dogs. If she's deported, it's likely she'll be barred from returning for six months.
Prof Lindsey says it's unlikely she'll get to stay. "But nothing has been normal in this case," he says.
