DAILY NEWS AND UPDATES

Breathtaking Image Reveals The Colossal Magnetic Field of a Distant Spiral Galaxy  Spiral galaxies look nice and tidy, with most of their stars and gas confined to a disc neatly arranged in swirling spiral arms. But there's a lot more to a galaxy than what we can see, as a new image of invisible phenomena adroitly demonstrates. The image shows a galaxy called NGC 4217, around 67 million light-years from the Milky Way, viewed edge-on - and pictured amidst a mapped visualisation of the galaxy's vast, complex magnetic field, sprawling out some 22,500 light-years into the space around NGC 4217. Since we don't know much about how galactic magnetic fields are generated and maintained, astronomers are hoping lessons learnt from this new map could be applied to our home galaxy, the Milky Way. "Galaxy NGC 4217 is of particular interest to us," said astronomer and physicist Yelena Stein, formerly of Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany, and now at the Centre de Données as...

States sue Trump over order to exclude undocumented immigrants from U.S. House seat counts NEW YORK (Reuters) - A coalition of 35 U.S. states, cities and counties sued President Donald Trump on Friday over his directive not to count undocumented immigrants when apportioning seats for the House of Representatives, a move that critics have said is designed to help Republicans. Trump's plan, announced on Tuesday, could exclude several million people when determining how to apportion the 435 House seats, starting with the 2022 midterm elections. It could cause a few House seats to shift from Democratic-leaning states with large immigrant populations to Republican-leaning states. The apportionment is also a basis for determining electoral votes for the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections. Among the mostly Democratic-leaning plaintiffs are New York state, the most populous plaintiff, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Sa...

 China, Russia and Iran are looking to disrupt the U.S. electoral process before November’s vote, including attempts at compromising the private communications of political campaigns and candidates, a top U.S. intelligence official warned.                                                     William Evanina  director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said on Friday that federal officials continue to monitor hackers trying to gain access to state and federal networks, including those responsible for managing elections. Foreign adversaries are using traditional news outlets as well as social media sites as a way to “sway U.S. voters’ preferences and perspectives, to shift U.S. policies, to increase discord and to undermine confidence in our democratic process,” he said.                ...

Britney Spears' conservator ship hearing was postponed after hackers  accessed the court's video link system.                                                    The 38-year-old pop star's latest court date was scheduled for Wednesday, but four individuals "illegally accessed" the online proceedings and “refused to leave” when ordered to by the judge, according to The Blast sources.The hackers were not authorised to listen to the private hearing, so the "frustrated" judge was forced to stop proceedings and postpone them until August. "LA Court Connect is not authorised for use by anyone other than litigants and attorneys and others involved in a case. It is not authorised for media use," a spokesperson for the Los Angeles courts told The Blast.                               ...

P utin   and  T rump   Discuss   Arms   control   issue   in   phone   Call   MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed arms control and cooperation in fighting the coronavirus during a phone call between the two leaders Thursday, the Kremlin and White House said. The presidents “thoroughly considered” various arms control issues “given the special responsibility of Russia and the U.S. for maintaining international peace and security,” the Kremlin said. According to the White House, Trump reiterated his hope of avoiding an expensive three-way arms race between China, Russia, and the United States and “looked forward to progress on upcoming arms control negotiations in Vienna.”   The Kremlin's readout of the call said the parties reaffirmed “the timeliness of bilateral consultations" on arms control issues, including the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The only remaining U.S.-...

'Untrue and unacceptable': WHO chief slams US accusation of bias  The head of the World Health Organization has called "untrue and unacceptable" allegations by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who reportedly said the health official had struck a deal with China that has influenced the body's decisions. The response comes after months of criticism from the administration of US President Donald Trump, who has paused funding and began to withdraw the US from the UN agency, while calling WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus a "puppet of China".  "The comments are untrue and unacceptable and without any foundation, for that matter," WHO chief Tedros said on Thursday in response to a question at a Geneva briefing about the reported remarks by Pompeo According to the Times and the Daily Telegraph newspapers, Pompeo told a private meeting of MPs in London on Tuesday that the WHO had become a "political" body, alleging that its decisions wer...

Trump scraps Republican convention, US virus cases top four million President Donald Trump announced Thursday he was scrapping the Republican nominating convention in Florida as the number of coronavirus cases in the United States topped four million. Trump said he was cancelling next month's event in Jacksonville because it was not the right time to do a "big, crowded convention." "The timing for this event is not right, it's just not right with what's happened recently," he said at a White House news conference. Trump was speaking just hours after Johns Hopkins University reported that there were now more than four million COVID-19 cases in the United States. With a total of 4,028,741 cases and more than 144,000 deaths, the United States is by far the hardest-hit country in the world, with Brazil and India trailing in second and third place for infection numbers. The country has seen a coronavirus surge, particularly in southern and western states, and...

China orders U.S. to shut Chengdu consulate, retaliating for Houston BEIJING (Reuters) - China ordered the United States to close its consulate in the city of Chengdu on Friday, in a tit-for-tat response to being told to shut its consulate in Houston earlier this week, as relations between the two world powers deteriorated further. China had warned it would retaliate after it was unexpectedly given 72 hours - until Friday - to vacate its Houston consulate, and had urged Washington to reconsider.   "The U.S. move seriously breached international law, the basic norms of international relations, and the terms of the China-U.S. Consular Convention. It gravely harmed China-U.S. relations," China's foreign ministry said in a statement. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China informed the U.S. Embassy in China of its decision to withdraw its consent for the establishment and operation of the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu," it said. The U.S. Department of State an...

China launches Mars probe in space race with US                        China launched a rover to Mars on Thursday, a journey coinciding with a similar US mission as the powers take their rivalry into deep space. The two countries are taking advantage of a period when Earth and Mars are favourably aligned for a short journey, with the US spacecraft due to lift off on July 30. It is a crowded field. The United Arab Emirates launched a probe on Monday that will orbit Mars once it reaches the Red Planet.   But the race to watch is between the United States and China, which has worked furiously to try and match Washington's supremacy in space. The Chinese mission is named Tianwen-1 ("Questions to Heaven") in a nod to a classical poem that has verses about the cosmos. It launched on a Long March 5 -- China's biggest space rocket -- from the southern island of Hainan. Chinese authorities have yet to confirm the success of the lau...

Why did the UK ban Huawei 5G and what will it cost? The British government has banned Chinese telecom giant Huawei from its 5G network. Culture secretary Oliver Dowden told the House of Commons that UK mobile providers will be prevented from buying Huawei 5G equipment after December 31 under a revised telecommunications bill that the government will table for a vote in the fall. Dowden also announced that providers with Huawei kit in their networks must remove it by 2027. This decision has been weeks in the making, and will likely further damage the relationship between London and Beijing, although Washington is likely celebrating it. Acknowledging the geopolitical nature of this decision, Dowden said that the UK wants “a modern and mature relationship with China based on mutual respect.” (The UK also seeks a post-Brexit trade deal with the US.) Initial responses from anti-Huawei British lawmakers have been critical, and Beijing is likely to retaliate. Why did the UK ban Huawei? Huawei...

Johnson says Britain was not influenced by Russia in Brexit vote LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson rejected on Wednesday any suggestion that Britain's vote to leave the European Union had been influenced by Russian interference. A day after a report by parliament's intelligence and security committee said the government had failed to try to find out whether Russia had meddled in the Brexit vote, Johnson's government doubled down on its refusal to launch a review. Instead, the government said it had taken measures since the review, which was completed in March last year, and would bring forward legislation to counter "hostile state activity" to deal more effectively with the espionage threat. "The people of this country didn't vote to leave the EU because of pressure from Russia or Russian interference - they voted because they wanted to take back control," Johnson told parliament, describing the criticism as being led by those lawmakers...