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Kilauea Volcano Erupts, Spewing Lava and Gases Near Homes in Hawaii
There are approximately 1,500 homes in the area, the spokesman said. The Red Cross reported 66 people in two shelters overnight, he added.
“I never thought I’d ever be faced with this, I’m just shellshocked,” said Carl Yoshimoto, 69. He was sheltering at Pahoa Community Center with his two dogs, Sako and Suki, and his partner since Thursday afternoon. Their house is in Leilani Estates.
“As soon as I heard the order to evacuate, I grabbed important paperwork, medications, my wallet — we were out of the house within a half an hour.”
Maddy Welch, 19, who works at Kalapana Bike rentals and lives in Leilani Estates with her mother, had set up a tent and a space at Pahoa Community Center with her two dogs, a goose and her friend, Taylor. “I woke up around 1:30 in the morning to earthquakes,” she said. “My mom didn’t want to leave. I told her there are two vehicles leaving this driveway — I hope you’ll be in one of them because we can’t come back.”
“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” she went on. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
On Thursday evening lava spilled from the crack in the volcano for about an hour and a half, leaving a large smear in a residential area of bushes and trees. Photos and drone footage showed a line of glowing orange slicing through green yards and white vapor and fumes rising above the trees. Gov. David Ige issued an emergency proclamation that made state funding faster to access, and he called up the National Guard to help emergency workers with evacuation efforts.
Kilauea is the youngest of five volcanoes that make up the island of Hawaii, and lies on the island’s south. Dr. Mandeville said the signal that there might be more activity was the little earthquakes, which happen when magma moves against rock, in this case, two miles under the earth’s surface. “That’s where the plumbing system is,” he said.
It remained to be seen how much damage the structures in the evacuation areas have sustained from the eruptions and the earthquakes.
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Dan Jacobs, 47, who has spent the last six months building his house in Leilani Estates, was standing behind Pahoa Village Museum, a downtown hangout. “I invested all my money here, and I probably won’t have anything to show for it in about a month’s time,” he said. “You should see the floors I built, they’re so beautiful, it’s about halfway done.”
Past volcanic eruptions, some that occurred decades ago, have caused lasting damage to parts of the region.
An eruption from the Pu’u ’O’o cone of Kilauea in 1983 has continued to flow, destroying houses in the Royal Gardens subdivision. In 1990 more than 100 homes in the Kalapana community were destroyed by lava flow.
An eruption from Kilauea in 2014 flowed down the surface of the volcano and burned a house in Pahoa. Now residents worry that more structures could be threatened in the area, which is one of the fastest-growing in the state.
“Living on a volcano, everybody has got pretty thick skin. They know the risk,” said Ryan Finlay, who lives in Pahoa and runs an online trade school. “Lava for the most part has flown to the ocean the last 30 years. Everybody gets in a comfort zone. The last couple weeks, everything changed.”
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Berkshire’s Annual Meeting: Buffett Approves of Apple’s Buyback Plan
So what does Warren Buffett think about Apple’s announcement that it plans to buy back $100 billion of its shares?
“I’m delighted to see them repurchasing shares,” Mr. Buffett said. “We own five percent of it. With the passage of a little time, we may own 6 or 7 percent because they repurchase shares.”
Charles Munger added that he and Mr. Buffett don’t approve of every buyback plan, but he doubted Apple would find an acquisition target at a good price.
“The reason companies are buying their stocks is that they are smart enough to know it’s better for them than anything else,” Mr. Munger said.
What about Microsoft?
Given Berkshire’s investment in Apple, one shareholder wants to know why Berkshire never invested in Microsoft. The question comes with Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder and a director at Berkshire, sitting in the audience.
“In the earlier years, the answer is stupidity,” Mr. Buffett replies. But then Mr. Buffett adds that his friendship with Mr. Gates has grown over the years, and he has stayed away from investing “because of the inference” that could be drawn.
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Mr. Buffett isn’t backing off his comments about guns
In February, Warren Buffett was asked on CNBC about some chief executives distancing their businesses from the National Rifle Association. Mr. Buffett responded: “I don’t think that Berkshire should say we’re not going to do business with people who own guns. I think that would be ridiculous.”
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That comment came up at Saturday’s meeting, and one shareholder wanted to know if Mr. Buffett had misspoken.
Mr. Buffett answered by largely repeating what he had said earlier this year.
“I do not believe on imposing my political opinions on the activities of our businesses.”
“If you get into which of our companies are pure and which ones aren’t pure, I think it will be very difficult. I don’t think that we should question on the Geico policy form: Are you an NRA member? And if you are, you just aren’t good enough for us.”
Mr. Munger then added:
”Certainly we’re not going to ban all guns surrounded by wild turkeys in Omaha.”
Warren Buffett is sticking by Wells Fargo
Over the past two years, regulators and whistle-blowers have revealed Wells Fargo employees were creating fake accounts using customers’ identities, forcing borrowers to buy unnecessary auto insurance, and overcharging on mortgage fees.
The Federal Reserve earlier this year restricted its growth until it demonstrates it is complying with bank regulations.
Berkshire first invested in Wells Fargo nearly three decades ago and is currently the bank’s biggest holder with a nearly 10 percent stake.
In response to a question about whether it was time to abandon the bank, which has already seen turnover in its executive suite and boardroom, Mr. Buffett said he thought Wells Fargo’s problems would only make it stronger in the long run.
“All the big banks have had troubles of one sort or another and I see no reason why Wells Fargo as a company, from both an investment standpoint and a moral standpoint going forward, is in any way inferior to the other big banks with which it competes,” he said.
He specifically praised the bank’s chief executive, Tim Sloan, a longtime Wells Fargo executive who took over when his predecessor John Stumpf resigned at the height of the fake account scandal. Criticism from Mr. Buffett could have increased pressure on Mr. Sloan. But the 87-year-old praised him.
“I like Tim Sloan as a manager,” Mr. Buffett said. “He is correcting mistakes made by other people.”
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Mr. Buffett went further: What happened at Wells Fargo could’ve happened anywhere, he said.
“We know people are doing something wrong as we sit here at Berkshire. You can’t have 370,000 employees and expect that everyone is behaving like Ben Franklin.” On the fake account scandal specifically, which the bank has said resulted from intense pressure on its branch managers to increase sales, Buffett said: “Wells Fargo is a company that proved the efficacy of incentives and it’s just that they had the wrong incentives.”
— Emily Flitter
Is Mr. Buffett semi-retired?
The question of who will succeed Warren Buffett has been a thread through many of the exchanges with shareholders.
Carol Loomis, a former Fortune writer, kicked off the question and answer session by reading a question from an investor, asking if Mr. Buffett is semi-retired now. In recent years, Mr. Buffett has handed off some of his investing duties to Ted Weschler and Todd Combs, Berkshire’s two portfolios managers, and in January, Mr. Buffett promoted longtime Berkshire executives, Gregory E. Abel and Ajit Jain, to oversee Berkshire’s businesses.
“I’ve been semi-retired for decades,” Mr. Buffett replied with a chuckle, but then he got serious.
“Ted and Todd each manage about 12 or 13 billion,” he said. “Together that’s $25 billion. They’re managing $25 billion and doing a very good job.”
He then quickly reminded the questioner of the size of the company’s assets: “I still have the responsibility for the other $300 billion.”
Charles T. Munger, Berkshire’s vice chairman, added: “I watch Warren. He spends most of his time reading and thinking and occasionally he’ll make a phone call or talk to somebody. Not much has changed.”
Another shareholder asked whether Berkshire will have trouble doing deals once Mr. Buffett is no longer with the company. Companies have famously approached Berkshire over the years about being bought. That has allowed Berkshire to largely avoid bidding wars and to make acquisitions at a discount.
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The shareholder wanted to know if Mr. Buffett’s successor would continue to have access to those deals and whether Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger should aggressively publicize the work of their successors to help pass on their “hometown advantage.”
“I think the reputation of Berkshire as being a very good home for companies, particularly a very good private home for a company, I don’t think that reputation is dependent on me or Charlie,” Mr. Buffett said. “It may take a little—there may be a little testing period for whoever takes over.”
”The truth is that I think some of the other executives are getting better known,” he added.
— Emily Flitter and Stephen Grocer
Where does Berkshire’s health care venture with JPMorgan and Amazon stand?
A lot remains unknown about Berkshire’s health care partnership with Amazon and JPMorgan Chase more than three months after the companies announced the venture.
The three firms said in January that they were teaming up to try to find a better, cheaper way to provide health care to their own workers, a combined one million people. And they said if their idea worked, they would seek to share it with other companies.
Warren Buffett on Saturday again called the cost of health care “a tapeworm in terms of American business.” He lamented the success other countries—he did not name any—have had keeping their own health care costs at a lower proportion of their gross domestic product.
But just how Berkshire’s partnership will address the problem remains a big question.
Mr. Buffett had no more details to offer on Saturday. He said the people leading the effort a are still searching for a chief executive. They could announce a hire “within a couple of months,” he added.
“Whether we can bring the resources, bring the person, that C.E.O., is terribly important. Bring the person, support that person and somehow figure out a better way for people to continue to receive better medical care in the United States,” he mused “We’ll see if that will happen.”
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But Mr. Buffett seemed uncertain, though hopeful, about the effort as a whole.
“We are attacking an industry moat,” Mr. Buffett said. “That’s a huge moat. We’ll do our best. If we fail, I hope somebody else succeeds.”
Charles Munger, Berkshire’s vice chairman, weighed in: “I suspect that eventually when the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House, I suspect that we will get a single payer system, and I suspect it won’t be very friendly to the existing” pharmacy benefit managers.
— Emily Flitter
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Rick Wilking/Reuters
Trade ‘is a win-win situation’
The Trump administration has taken a more combative stance on trade, particularly with China.
So it comes as little surprise then that one of the first questions put to Warren Buffett and Charles Munger was about trade. Here’s Mr. Buffett’s response:
“The United States and China are going to be the two superpowers of the world, economically and in other ways, for a long, long, long, long time. We have a lot of common interests, and like any two big economic entities, there are times when there will be tensions. But it is a win-win situation when the world trades, and China and the United States are the two big factors in that.”
“It is a win-win situation. The only problem is when one side or the other wants to win a little bit too much.”
About those accounting changes…
Warren Buffett warned in his annual letter that a new accounting rule would “severely distort Berkshire’s net income figures and very often mislead commentators and investors.”
Saturday morning Berkshire reported a net loss for the first quarter because of those accounting changes. The new rules require Berkshire to include in its earnings the gains and losses on the stocks it holds but has not sold.
In the first quarter, Berkshire’s net loss was $1.14 billion, compared with net income of $4.06 billion a year earlier.
Given the new accounting rule, Mr. Buffett suggested Saturday that shareholders should look at Berkshire’s operating income, which excludes gains and losses for Berkshire’s investments, for a more accurate picture of the company’s performance.
Berkshire reported its operating income rose 49 percent to $5.29 billion from a year ago.
— Stephen Grocer
Credit
Rick Wilking/Reuters
Questions for Mr. Buffett
The main event every year at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting is the question and answer session. Elisa Mala, a reporter working for The New York Times asked those attending Berkshire events on Friday what they would ask Mr. Buffett. Here is a sampling:
• What is the single greatest important investment in your lifetime? Is it a company? Is it a relationship? — Conner Van Fossen, Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Mass.
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• What are your thoughts about the future/sustainability of health care and Medicare, and how is Berkshire Hathaway’s joint venture with JPMorgan Chase and Amazon going to address this? —Timothy Liu, San Francisco Bay Area.
• What does he see in the cryptocurrency market? Is it going to be the future? Is it going to replace the way we exchange value? Is it worth the hype? — Jason Lu, Shanghai
• Where do you see the job market going, given the rise of Artificial Intelligence? — Ralph Humphrey, Hillside, N.J.
• He’s been technology averse in the past. What makes him so bullish on Apple? — Brian Hanks, Salt Lake City, Utah
• How long he plans on doing this. —Bill Skidmore, Omaha, Neb.
— Elisa Mala
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Nati Harnik/Associated Press
Scenes from Omaha: shopping day
(As Berkshire’s annual meeting has grown over the years, it has become a three-day event. Friday is Berkshire Hathaway’s shopping day, where shareholders can buy products from many Berkshire-owned companies.)
Shareholders moseyed around CenturyLink Center, where the annual meeting takes place, perusing dozens of booths displaying goods — many created specifically for the event — from brands like Geico, NetJets and Coca-Cola.
What was really on sale? All things Warren Buffett.
Investors could snack on a Dilly Bar, the long-favored Popsicle of the Oracle of Omaha, for $1 or snag “Warren and Charlie” rubber ducks ($5 for the pair at the Oriental Trading Company booth). There were Justin cowboy boots embroidered with the words “Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Shareholders Meeting” and guests had the option to “Put yourself in Warren Buffett’s boots,” as the marketing materials suggest, and purchase a style that had been owned by the man himself.
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Jim Van Fossen, a retired financial planner, bought matching Berkshire Hathaway boxers for himself and his son, Conner Van Fossen. In town from Missoula, Mont., he said he wanted a memento of their first trip to the shareholders’ meeting.
Of course, shoppers and vendors were hoping for a sighting and interaction with the man himself. Failing that, they settled for selfies with his many likenesses. See’s Candies displayed Scotch Kiss confections “made by Warren,” and one staff member’s uniform bore Mr. Buffett’s autograph.
The most photographed autograph was at the Benjamin Moore paint booth, where Mr. Buffett had signed his name in permanent marker next to a wall-size mural of his face. All day long, revelers followed suit, decorating the wall with their own signatures in dry-erase ink, and snapping selfies to preserve the memory.
— Elisa Mala
health care
priceyear end
Welcome to ‘the Woodstock for Capitalists’
Omaha, Neb., is not typically the center of the financial world. But once a year, that is what it becomes, attracting hedge-fund managers, business executives and mom-and-pop investors to the annual meeting of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
Over the past five decades, the meeting has transformed from a small gathering of shareholders in the cafeteria of National Indemnity into “Woodstock for Capitalists.”
Tens of thousands of shareholders fill the CenturyLink Center in Omaha each year to ask Mr. Buffett and Charles T. Munger, Berkshire’s vice chairman, questions about the conglomerate, investing, the economy and politics. And between bites of See’s toffees and sips of Cherry Coke, the pair dole out their brand of folksy wisdom and corny jokes.
DealBook will be here through it all providing analysis.
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Giuliani media blitz, legal team’s reshuffle hint at new Trump strategy
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In Hawaii, Kilauea Volcano Erupts, Spewing Lava and Gases Near Homes
There are approximately 1,500 homes in the area, the spokesman said. The Red Cross reported 66 people in two shelters overnight, he added.
“I never thought I’d ever be faced with this, I’m just shellshocked,” said Carl Yoshimoto, 69. He was sheltering at Pahoa Community Center with his two dogs, Sako and Suki, and his partner since Thursday afternoon. Their house is in Leilani Estates.
“As soon as I heard the order to evacuate, I grabbed important paperwork, medications, my wallet — we were out of the house within a half an hour.”
Maddy Welch, 19, who works at Kalapana Bike rentals and lives in Leilani Estates with her mother, had set up a tent and a space at Pahoa Community Center with her two dogs, a goose and her friend, Taylor. “I woke up around 1:30 in the morning to earthquakes,” she said. “My mom didn’t want to leave. I told her there are two vehicles leaving this driveway — I hope you’ll be in one of them because we can’t come back.”
“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” she went on. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
On Thursday evening lava spilled from the crack in the volcano for about an hour and a half, leaving a large smear in a residential area of bushes and trees. Photos and drone footage showed a line of glowing orange slicing through green yards and white vapor and fumes rising above the trees. Gov. David Ige issued an emergency proclamation that made state funding faster to access, and he called up the National Guard to help emergency workers with evacuation efforts.
Kilauea is the youngest of five volcanoes that make up the island of Hawaii, and lies on the island’s south. Dr. Mandeville said the signal that there might be more activity was the little earthquakes, which happen when magma moves against rock, in this case, two miles under the earth’s surface. “That’s where the plumbing system is,” he said.
It remained to be seen how much damage the structures in the evacuation areas have sustained from the eruptions and the earthquakes.
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Dan Jacobs, 47, who has spent the last six months building his house in Leilani Estates, was standing behind Pahoa Village Museum, a downtown hangout. “I invested all my money here, and I probably won’t have anything to show for it in about a month’s time,” he said. “You should see the floors I built, they’re so beautiful, it’s about halfway done.”
Past volcanic eruptions, some that occurred decades ago, have caused lasting damage to parts of the region.
An eruption from the Pu’u ’O’o cone of Kilauea in 1983 has continued to flow, destroying houses in the Royal Gardens subdivision. In 1990 more than 100 homes in the Kalapana community were destroyed by lava flow.
An eruption from Kilauea in 2014 flowed down the surface of the volcano and burned a house in Pahoa. Now residents worry that more structures could be threatened in the area, which is one of the fastest-growing in the state.
“Living on a volcano, everybody has got pretty thick skin. They know the risk,” said Ryan Finlay, who lives in Pahoa and runs an online trade school. “Lava for the most part has flown to the ocean the last 30 years. Everybody gets in a comfort zone. The last couple weeks, everything changed.”
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NASA’s InSight Mars Lander Launches to Probe Red Planet’s Deep Interior
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — NASA’s latest Mars explorer is on its way to the Red Planet.
The agency’s InSight Mars lander lifted off today (May 5) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, rising off a pad here at 7:05 a.m. EDT (1105 GMT, 4:05 a.m. local California time) and disappearing into the thick predawn fog moments later.
“This is a big day. We’re going back to Mars,” NASA’s new administrator Jim Bridenstine, who took charge of the agency last month, said in a congratulatory call to the InSight team after launch. “This is an extraordinary mission with a whole host of firsts.” [Launch Photos: See NASA’s InSight Soar Toward Mars]
InSight is the first interplanetary mission ever to launch from the West Coast and NASA’s first Mars surface craft to lift off since the Curiosity rover started its deep-space journey in November 2011.
If everything goes according to plan, InSight will reach its destination in a little less than seven months, touching down Nov. 26 on a nice, flat plain just north of the Martian equator. After a series of checkouts, the stationary lander will then begin a mission unlike any ever undertaken in the annals of planetary exploration.
InSight “will probe the interior of another terrestrial planet, giving us an idea of the size of the core, the mantle, the crust — and our ability then to compare that with the Earth,” NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green said during a prelaunch news conference on Thursday (May 3). “This is of fundamental importance for us to understand the origin of our solar system and how it became the way it is today.”
Two briefcase-size satellites also hitched a ride on this morning’s launch and will make their own way to Mars, in an attempt to become the first-ever interplanetary “cubesats.” The probe is also carrying a chip with 2.4 million names from space fans, including “Star Trek’s” Captain Kirk William Shatner, who signed up to send their names to Mars.
Taking Mars’ vital signs
NASA officials have compared InSight — whose name is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — to a doctor performing a long-overdue checkup. [NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: 10 Wild Facts]
For example, the solar-powered lander will take Mars’ temperature using a heat probe that will hammer itself about 16 feet (4.9 meters) beneath the red dirt. And InSight will monitor the planet’s pulse, detecting vibrations caused by “marsquakes,” meteorite strikes and other events, all using an ultraprecise seismometer called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS).
“Ultraprecise” is no exaggeration: SEIS will be capable of spotting vibrations smaller than a hydrogen atom, mission team members have said. The instrument must therefore be encased in a vacuum chamber, so its observations aren’t swamped by environmental noise.
InSight will place SEIS directly on the ground using the lander’s robotic arm, and then place a shield over SEIS to block wind and dampen temperature variations. That’s another first that this mission will achieve: Other Mars robots have generally kept their scientific gear close, and none have deployed an instrument using their arms in this way.
“It’s a first-time event, so we’re always concerned about that,” Chuck Scott, InSight flight system manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, told Space.com.
But the InSight team has done “an extreme amount of testing” here on Earth to prepare for the milestone deployment, Scott added, so the team isn’t unduly worried.
SEIS and the heat probe — which is known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) — are InSight’s main scientific instruments. But the mission will perform another experiment using the lander’s communications gear.
During this investigation, known as the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), scientists will track InSight’s location precisely — to within 1 foot (0.3 m). This work will allow team members to detect tiny wobbles in Mars’ axis of rotation, which should reveal key insights about the planet’s core, including its size.
Analysis of the HP3 and SEIS data will also shed light on Mars’ interior, including the thickness of the planet’s crust and the structure and dynamics of Mars’ mantle. Taken together, this information will help researchers better understand how rocky planets form and evolve, mission team members have said.
We can’t look to our own planet for such information, because Earth’s roiling insides have erased the evidence of what happened long ago. The long-dead moon does preserve such evidence, but our natural satellite is so much smaller than Earth that the processes that occurred inside each world in the ancient past are very different, said InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt, of JPL. [InSight in Pictures: NASA’s Mission to Probe Mars’s Core]
“So, Mars is kind of a unique opportunity. We call it the Goldilocks planet — it’s not too big, it’s not too small, it’s just right,” Banerdt said during Thursday’s news conference.
“It’s actually undergone the processes of planetary differentiation that the Earth did,” he added. “But about maybe 20 [million] to 50 million years after it was formed, it just kind of stopped. We have lots of geology going on on the surface, but all those fingerprints of those early processes are still retained in the deep interior. And so, that’s why we want to go measure the fundamental parameters of the deep interior.”
The mission’s data could also be a boon to future human exploration on Mars, Green said. “How quake-prone is Mars? That’s fundamental information that we need to know as humans then explore Mars,” he said. [How Will a Human Mars Base Work? NASA’s Vision in Images]
The HP3 data may also reveal temperature differentials that humans could harness to heat habitats, Green added.
“This mission does so many fundamental things, not only in planetary science but in human exploration,” he said.
A two-year delay
InSight was originally supposed to launch in March 2016. In advance of that date, NASA and the mission team decided to launch from here, on the central California coast, rather than the usual site for interplanetary missions, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Launching from the East Coast offers a distinct advantage for such missions: Rockets get an extra push from Earth’s rotation, which is going in the “right” direction. But Cape Canaveral was forecast to be pretty busy in early 2016, and the InSight team wanted to avoid congestion. So, they picked Vandenberg. And InSight is light enough, and the Atlas V powerful enough, to overcome the Earth-rotation issue, mission team members said.
The launch-site decision held even after InSight failed to hit the original window. In late 2015, the mission team detected a tiny leak in SEIS’ vacuum chamber — so tiny that it would take 50 years to lower the pressure by 1 lb. per square inch in a car tire, Banerdt said.
But SEIS’ need for precision is so great that the team had to fix the leak. And they couldn’t do so properly before the 2016 launch window ended, so InSight’s liftoff was pushed back more than two years. (Mars and Earth align favorably for interplanetary missions just once every 26 months.)
The fix and the delay added $154 million to the mission’s price tag, NASA officials said in 2016. U.S. investment in the mission is now $814 million, with about $163 million of that total going to launch services, according to NASA officials.
France and Germany have contributed an additional $180 million, mostly to develop SEIS and HP3. The French space agency, CNES, provided SEIS for the mission, and the German space agency, DLR, built HP3.
NASA and JPL ponied up another $18.5 million for those two cubesats. The duo are officially known as MarCO-A and MarCO-B (“MarCO” being short for “Mars Cube One”), but their developers have dubbed them Wall-E and Eva. That’s because the cubesats’ propulsion system uses compressed R236FA gas, which is the propellant in many fire extinguishers — and in the 2008 movie “Wall-E,” the eponymous, trash-compacting robot famously used a fire extinguisher to zoom around space. (Eva was Wall-E’s friend in the film.)
Wall-E and Eva (the cubesats) are tasked with a demonstration mission: to show that cubesats, which to date have stuck close to Earth, can journey to other planets. The plan calls for the two tiny satellites to fly by Mars as InSight arrives for its crucial entry, descent and landing (EDL) sequence. Wall-E and Eva will attempt to beam EDL data from the lander back to controllers here on Earth, but it won’t be a disaster for InSight if the cubesats fail to pull it off. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will perform the relay work regardless. [Latest Photos from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]
MarCO team members will assess the health of Wall-E and Eva within a few weeks of the Mars flyby, and that will be the end of the cubesats’ mission.
InSight, of course, will just be getting started at that point; the lander’s prime science mission is designed to last until Nov. 24, 2020.
Mars is still hard
The main body of the 790-lb. (358 kilograms) InSight is based heavily off NASA’s Phoenix lander, which landed near the Martian north pole in May 2008 (and found water ice just beneath the surface shortly thereafter). InSight will also employ Phoenix’s landing technique, relying on parachutes and engine firings to slow itself enough for a soft and safe touchdown on the Red Planet (as opposed to the much heavier Curiosity, which also used parachutes but was lowered to the surface on cables by a rocket-powered “sky crane”).
And InSight’s avionics and other electronics borrow from the agency’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter, which has been circling the Red Planet since September 2014.
Leveraging such heritage hardware is a way to save money and reduce risk. And Mars missions are still risky, despite the lengthy run of success that NASA has enjoyed at the Red Planet recently. That active six-mission streak of safe arrivals runs from the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which reached the Red Planet in October 2001, through MAVEN’s orbital insertion.
“Mars is hard,” said Tim Linn, InSight deputy program manager and EDL manager at aerospace company Lockheed Martin, which built the spacecraft for NASA.
“It’s one of the neatest things we do, but it’s still really hard,” Linn told Space.com.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
As a willing warrior for Trump, Sarah Sanders struggles to maintain credibility
The West Wing shouting match was so loud that more than a dozen staffers heard it.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders cursed and yelled at White House Counsel Donald McGahn during the February confrontation, according to two people familiar with the episode. Misleading statements about the domestic abuse scandal that felled staff secretary Rob Porter had dragged the administration into a maelstrom of chaos and contradictory public statements.
Exasperated, Sanders told McGahn she would not continue to speak for the administration unless she was provided more information about Porter’s situation.
The dispute, which erupted in a hallway outside Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin’s office, was resolved after Sanders received the clarity she sought, the people familiar with the argument said. Hours later, Sanders returned to her lectern to field queries from a skeptical press corps, though her answers left reporters with more questions.
The moment illustrates the precarious role Sanders has chosen to fill as the public face of the Trump administration — and the doubts about her credibility in representing a president who traffics in mistruths and obfuscations.
Sanders was thrust into an especially harsh limelight over the past week. She was the subject of an acerbic broadside about her “bunch of lies” by comedian Michelle Wolf at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Then she was forced to explain the inconsistent accounts from her, President Trump and his new personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, about the hush money paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. The week was punctuated by an onslaught of commentary about Sanders’s character.
By virtue of her position, Sanders is inextricably bound in the mistruths of the Trump administration. She is a willing warrior for Trump, and her critics say she should be held accountable for his utterances — from the untruthful to the racist to the sexist. Since taking office, Trump has made more than 3,000 false or misleading claims, according to an analysis by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker.
[Trump and his attorney didn’t tell the truth, if Giuliani is right. Will that change anything?]
“When the president blithely admits to lying, it makes all those who are paid to repeat and defend his stories liars, as well,” said David Axelrod, who was a senior White House adviser under President Barack Obama. “Their credibility is tied to his. It’s a high price to pay for a job, even in the White House.”
Sanders, 35, is no political ingenue. She was raised in the wild-and-woolly politics of Arkansas, the only daughter of former governor Mike Huckabee, and grew up to work on his two unsuccessful presidential campaigns.
By the time she took over as White House press secretary from Sean Spicer in July, the administration’s penchant for misleading the public at the president’s direction was well established. At his first press briefing, Spicer vigorously misrepresented the size of Trump’s inaugural crowds, soaring to national fame for the wrong reasons.
Those in Trump’s orbit argue that the attacks on Sanders have been more sustained and personally vicious than those faced by press secretaries in previous administrations. They argue that in a hyper-polarized nation — and amid the frenzied environment nurtured by a president who is at war with what he calls the “Fake News” media — Sanders has become an unwitting Rorschach test for Trump’s critics.
Allies of Sanders say that she often pushes back on Trump, who wants her to attack the media even harder and more frequently, and that other administrations have also faced credibility problems, such as the mistruths on the Monica Lewinsky affair under President Bill Clinton and the false information on weapons of mass destruction under President George W. Bush.
“It doesn’t matter who holds this job for President Trump, they’re going to be unfairly attacked and ridiculed,” said Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign adviser. “Since Sarah Huckabee Sanders works for President Trump, it seems to be open season on her professionally and personally.”
Sanders declined to be interviewed for this article.
Fresh trouble for Sanders arose Wednesday night, when Giuliani, in a freewheeling interview with Sean Hannity, told the friendly Fox News host that Trump had reimbursed his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for the $130,000 in hush money he paid to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. The payment helped secure her silence shortly before the 2016 election about an alleged sexual affair with Trump a decade earlier, which the president has denied.
Giuliani’s disclosure appeared to be at odds with Sanders’s repeated insistence that Trump was not aware of Cohen’s payment to Daniels. The interview, which Sanders did not coordinate, left her in an untenable position, she told colleagues.
So did Giuliani’s proclamation that three American prisoners soon would be released from North Korea, a development the White House had not confirmed.
Reporters pressed Sanders on Thursday: Was she a liar or simply in the dark? And why was the president’s personal attorney authorized to announce news about sensitive hostage negotiations?
“I’ve given the best information I had at the time,” Sanders said, a line she repeated in general six times. “Some information I am aware of, and some I’m not.”
[The Fix: Sarah Huckabee Sanders basically just blamed Trump for misleading her]
Sanders said she first learned that Trump had reimbursed Cohen by watching Giuliani’s interview with Hannity. At another point in her briefing, she repeated her assertion that she does not intentionally mislead the public, but acknowledged that she is not always provided the most accurate or complete information about her boss.
Sanders also offered a general criticism of peddling untruths — or, as White House counselor Kellyanne Conway once memorably dubbed them, “alternative facts.”
“I would always advise against giving false information,” Sanders said. “As a person of human decency, I do my best to give the right information.”
Sanders’s defenders say she spends considerable time crafting talking points that convey the president’s wishes but also are technically truthful. If she is guilty of anything, they say, it is providing incomplete information.
In the Daniels episode, for instance, Sanders has largely cited the president’s own statements and referred questions to his outside attorneys.
Before most briefings, she meets with Trump in the Oval Office to discuss how he would like her to answer news-of-the-day questions, White House officials said. The president sometimes dictates lines for her to read or orders her to use precise words on particularly sensitive matters.
Sanders routinely dodges questions on hot topics by telling reporters she has not asked the president about it — a deliberate strategy to avoid having to wade into delicate issues, according to a Sanders confidant.
She deflects nearly every question about the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the election unless she has a prepared statement from the president to read — a protective move against creating legal exposure for herself with extemporaneous answers.
“Sarah has done a fantastic job of keeping in line with understanding how to effectively communicate what the president’s thoughts are at any given time, recognizing that it is a very dynamic and fluid situation in many cases,” Spicer said. “What she has done is, she has realized, you can’t get in trouble for what you don’t say.”
Behind the scenes, Sanders has joked with colleagues that she has no idea whom the president will fire, what he will tweet or when he might change his mind. Unlike the more pugilistic Spicer, Sanders has privately displayed a gallows humor.
Sanders sometimes finds herself out of the loop and is not the ubiquitous presence that former communications director Hope Hicks was in the president’s daily life.
When Trump offered John Bolton the job as national security adviser, the president had already begun configuring his own press strategy before Sanders was alerted, according to White House officials, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment. Sanders was soon hustled into the Oval Office shortly before Trump tweeted about the hiring.
After Trump revealed that he was urging states to send troops to the U.S.-Mexican border, Sanders scurried to figure out why he had said that and how it would work, only to learn he had been briefed on a proposal the week before, officials said.
In a West Wing riven by infighting and a revolving door, Sanders is one of the only senior officials who does not generally draw arrows. She has lasted longer than some of her colleagues expected.
During the Porter saga, colleagues say, they frequently saw Sanders upset as she managed the fallout. She helped craft a statement that defended Porter and that later became an embarrassment to the administration. But, officials said, she was careful not to betray the administration’s missteps publicly, as her deputy Raj Shah had when he said that “we all could have done better” — which attracted criticism from the president.
Although combative with reporters on camera, Sanders is largely regarded as more pleasant and helpful behind the scenes. She works to provide reporters answers to their questions, including hunting down colleagues for help.
Sanders often mentions her three small children during her briefings, reminding the millions of viewers tuning in on television that she is a mother. She sometimes makes hokey jokes to leaven the mood in the briefing room and is known to wish some reporters a happy birthday from the lectern.
“Sarah has always been coolheaded and professional and always gives our arguments for greater transparency and openness a respectful hearing,” said Olivier Knox, the chief Washington correspondent for SiriusXM, who will assume the presidency of the White House Correspondents’ Association this summer.
Last Saturday night, Sanders sat next to Knox at the head table for the correspondents’ dinner. She did not stand up to congratulate the journalists who were presented awards — including a team from CNN, which Trump has assailed as “fake.” And as Wolf mocked her, joking that she “burns facts and then uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye,” Sanders sat stoically.
Later that evening, Sanders and her husband, Bryan, were spotted at the invite-only MSNBC after-party, greeting friends and reporters well after midnight.
President Trump speaks at NRA convention
Speaking about gun laws, President Trump satirized gun control, noting that Chicago has tough gun laws but a problem with gun violence.
He added that “we are going to have to outlaw” trucks and vans.
“We all know what’s going on in Chicago but Chicago has the toughest gun laws – they’re so tough, but you know what’s happening. It seems that if we’re going to outlaw guns like so many people want to do – Democrats – you better get out and vote, then we will… We are going to have to outlaw immediately all vans and all trucks, which are now the new form of death,” he said.
Citing recent knife attacks in London, Trump said, “They don’t have guns. They have knives and instead there’s blood all over the floors of this hospital.”
“They say it’s as bad as a military war zone hospital … knives, knives, knives. London hasn’t been used to that. They’re getting used to that. It’s pretty tough,” Trump said.
Federal judge says special counsel wants Manafort to ‘sing’ about Trump
A federal judge in Virginia on Friday accused the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of pursuing a fraud case against President Trump’s former campaign manager to pressure him to “sing” and provide evidence against the president.
The comments from Judge T.S. Ellis III came during a hearing in Alexandria federal court, where attorneys for Paul Manafort argued that bank- and tax-fraud charges against him are outside the scope of the special counsel’s authority.
“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Ellis told prosecutors at the morning hearing. “You really care about getting information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”
Ellis said the government wanted Manafort, “the vernacular is, to sing.” The judge put it another way, saying the special counsel set out to “turn the screws and get the information you really want.”
Manafort, 69, is accused in federal court in both Alexandria and the District of Columbia of crimes related to his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Manafort served as Trump’s campaign chief for five months before resigning amid news reports that he had received secret cash payments for his Ukraine consulting.
Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, leaves the federal courthouse in Washington in November. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Michael Dreeben, a prosecutor with the special counsel’s office, did not respond specifically to the judge’s assertions. But he said the investigation fit naturally into a probe of Trump campaign ties to Russia: “In trying to understand the actions of Mr. Manafort in Ukraine and the association he had with Russian individuals and the depths of those financial relationships, we had to follow the money where it led.”
Manafort’s attorneys contend that their client’s alleged crimes in Virginia have nothing to do with the election or with Trump.
Ellis agreed, emphasizing that some of the charges involve purported conduct that occurred over a decade ago. But he made no immediate decision on the defense motion to dismiss. The judge said that even without such a connection, the special counsel, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, may well still have the authority to bring the charges.
“I’m not saying it’s illegitimate,” Ellis said.
But the judge did question why an investigation into Trump attorney Michael Cohen was handed over to federal prosecutors in New York while the Manafort case was kept with the special counsel.
Ellis suggested that if he ruled in Manafort’s favor, the case could simply be returned to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
It is precisely because the probe into Manafort’s financial dealings began years ago with federal prosecutors in that office, Manafort’s defense attorneys argued, that the special counsel should not be involved.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” defense attorney Kevin Downing said in court. “It’s so unrelated,” he said, “as to be in violation” of the special counsel’s mandate.
Dreeben responded in court that the Manafort investigation has expanded significantly since it was taken over by Mueller. “Our investigation has considerably advanced and deepened our understanding” of Manafort’s actions, he said.
The reason the specific parameters of the special counsel’s investigation have not been publicly revealed, Dreeben said, is that to do so would jeopardize ongoing probes and sensitive national security information.
“It would make no sense for the facts to be conveyed publicly,” he argued. Instead, he said, the scope has been defined in “ongoing discussions” with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation.
Dreeben also referred to an August memorandum from Rosenstein authorizing Mueller to investigate whether Manafort illegally coordinated with Russia in 2016.
Ellis asked for an unredacted version of that memo. Dreeben told the judge that all sections of the memo related to Manafort have been publicly revealed. Significant sections remain classified.
Downing said he would also like a copy of any written records justifying Mueller’s appointment as special counsel. Downing noted he had worked under the deputy attorney general for five years and knows that “Mr. Rosenstein is a stickler for memos being written.”
Manafort has argued that Rosenstein improperly gave Mueller a “blank check” to investigate the Trump campaign.
Ellis appeared somewhat sympathetic to this argument as well, comparing Mueller to independent counsels criticized in the past for overreach.
“The American people feel pretty strongly about no one having unfettered power,” he said.
Dreeben countered that the special counsel is part of the Justice Department and thus subject to oversight that addresses such concerns. The tax division and national security division signed off on the Manafort indictment, he said.
“We are not operating with unfettered power,” he said. “We are not separate from the Justice Department.”
Ellis is known to be tough on attorneys in court, but those who have appeared before him often say that pressure offers little insight into his ultimate ruling.
“Judge Ellis has high expectations from counsel on both sides of any issue,” said Timothy Belevetz, a former prosecutor in the Eastern District now with the firm Holland Knight. “His interactions with counsel in the courtroom do not necessarily reflect where he’ll end up coming out, because he’s a thoughtful judge who takes into account and carefully analyzes what’s presented to him. But in the meantime, he probes counsel and does so thoroughly.”
Manafort has made similar arguments in D.C. federal court, where he faces charges of money laundering, making false statements, failing to follow lobbying disclosure laws and working as an unregistered foreign agent. He is set to go to trial there Sept. 17.
Earlier this week, Manafort’s attorneys accused government officials of falsely telling reporters that conversations between their client and Russian officials were intercepted.
Mueller’s attorneys have no evidence of any such conversations to turn over, the defense said.
Manafort also is arguing that one of the charges against him, failing to register as a foreign agent in 2011, is too old to be prosecuted and that the searches of his home and storage unit were unconstitutional.
Manafort’s attorneys requested that the judge address the motion alleging leaks and other issues at a hearing set for May 25.
Mueller has requested 70 blank subpoenas in preparation for Manafort’s July 10 Virginia trial. He also has added an attorney from the office of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia to his legal team for the case: Uzo Asonye, who in 2016 prosecuted Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot for corruption.
Ellis expressed satisfaction with Asonye’s involvement, having pushed Mueller at an earlier hearing to add local counsel to his team.
The judge noted with pleasure that the fraud prosecutor has appeared before him several times.
“He may tell you some interesting things,” Ellis said.
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Giuliani tries to clarify comments on Trump’s reimbursement of payment to porn star Stormy Daniels
President Trump’s new lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani sought Friday to clean up a series of comments made during a whirlwind media tour meant to bolster the president’s standing regarding a payment to a porn star but that instead created new problems for his client.
In a statement issued hours after Trump told reporters Giuliani was still getting up to speed on the facts, the former New York mayor said that a $130,000 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels by longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen would have happened regardless of whether Trump was on the presidential ballot the following month.
“The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the President’s family,” Giuliani said in the statement. “It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.”
On Wednesday, Giuliani revealed that the president had reimbursed Cohen for the settlement Cohen paid in October 2016 to keep Daniels from disclosing details of a sexual encounter she alleged she had with Trump a decade earlier.
Giuliani has said that the details of the reimbursement showed that Trump paid back Cohen because it was a personal, not a campaign expense. But campaign finance law experts said Giuliani’s remarks did not rule out violations of campaign finance laws, and some of his statements may have actually provided new evidence for investigators.
[Analysts: Giuliani’s media blitz gives investigators new leads, new evidence]
Appearing Thursday on the Fox News Channel, for instance, Giuliani asked viewers to imagine if Daniels had aired her allegations “on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”
“Cohen didn’t even ask,” Giuliani told viewers. “Cohen made it go away. He did his job.”
In his statement, Giuliani also sought to make clear that he speaking in television interviews about his understanding of events in which Trump had been involved and not about what the president knew at the time. The distinction is important because if Giuliani publicly described a private conversation with the president, he might have inadvertently waived attorney-client privilege on that conversation, potentially opening the door for prosecutors to probe further into what was said.
One close Trump adviser said Giuliani had “waived the privilege big time” with his appearance on “Fox Friends” and description of his conversations with his client, the president.
This adviser, who requested anonymnity to speak more candidly, said Giuliani’s misstatement came because he relied on Trump’s description of what happened, without independently researching the nature of the payments.
“Rudy followed the client’s wishes without knowing all the facts,” the person said.
Giuliani also stated that it was “undisputed” that Trump had the constitutional power to fire former FBI director James B. Comey, which he did last year. Trump’s action is among those under scrutiny by special counsel Robert S. Muller III as part of his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“Recent revelations about former Director Comey further confirm the wisdom of the President’s decision, which was plainly in the best interests of our nation,” Giuliani said.
In saying that Trump had the power to Comey, Giuliani appeared to be backing away from an assertion he made earlier this week that the president acted out of frustration that Comey wouldn’t publicly state that the president was not under investigation by the FBI.
That earlier statement raised concerns among some legal experts who said Giuliani seemed to say Comey was fired over the Russia investigation – and such an admission could further an obstruction of justice probe involving the president.
Cohen is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York for possible bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations, according to people familiar with the matter. FBI agents searched Cohen’s house, office, and hotel room.
In early April, after Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he was unaware of the settlement that Cohen had paid to Daniels.
Since Giuliani began discussing these matters publicly two days ago, the White House has been besieged with questions about their past denials of the president’s knowledge, and on Friday morning, Trump suggested Giuliani had misspoken.
“Rudy is a great guy, but he just started a day ago, but he really has his heart into it, he’s working hard, he’s learning the subject matter,” Trump told reporters as he prepared to leave the White House.
“He knows it’s a witch hunt,” Trump continued. “He’ll get his facts straight.”
[Kellyanne Conway says she didn’t know about payment to porn star while she ran Trump’s campaign]
Trump talked to reporters again Friday after taking a helicopter from the White House to Joint Base Andrews and before departing to Dallas, where he is addressing a gathering of the National Rifle Association Friday afternoon.
“Rudy’s great,” Trump said there. adding: “He wasn’t totally familiar with everything.”
On Thursday morning, Trump issued a trio of carefully worded tweets, largely echoing the points Giuliani had made in his Wednesday night interview.
In a brief telephone interview later Friday, Giuliani said the episode has not hurt his standing with Trump.
“He says he loves me,” Giuliani said, calling the issue a matter of “interpretation.”
On the campaign trail, Trump saw Giuliani as a loyal surrogate – and the two men even watched sports together riding back from events.
But Giuliani and Trump have never been close friends, associates say, and Giuliani was upset by his treatment during the transition – when he was passed over for secretary of state by Trump’s eventual choice of businessman Rex Tillerson.
Over recent months, Giuliani has occasionally spoken to the president but has not been in his coterie of close advisers.
Trump also said Friday that if he could be treated fairly he would “love to speak” to federal prosecutors investigating ties between his campaign and Russia. He said he would do so even over the objections of his lawyers — if he could be convinced the Russia probe is not a “witch hunt.”
“I would love to speak. I would love to go,” Trump said. “Nothing I want to do more, because we did nothing wrong.”
But, he added, “I have to find that we’re going to be treated fairly. … Right now, it’s a pure witch hunt.”
Those comments come as Trump’s lawyers are continuing to negotiate with special Muller about the conditions of a possible interview.
Trump and his lawyers have said in recent days that they fear Mueller is trying to trap Trump into committing perjury during an extended interview. Mueller has suggested Trump could be subpoenaed if he doesn’t voluntarily talk.
Trump also complained that there are too many “angry Democrats” on Mueller’s team. He did not mention that Mueller himself is a Republican.
“Why aren’t we having Republican people doing what these Democratic people are doing?” Trump asked.
Senior White House staffer were caught off guard Wednesday by Giuliani’s first appearance on Fox News when he disclosed that Trump had repaid Daniels. White House press secretary told reporters on Thursday that she had not learned about the repayment until seeing Giuliani on television that night.
On Friday, a person close to the White House said Giuliani was still not consulting with White House counsel Donald McGahn nor Emmet Flood, the White House attorney recently hired to handle the Russia investigation.
The person, who requested anonymity to speak more candidly, said it is possible that Giuliani had a strategy in mind but that it wasn’t clear.
On Friday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who ran President Trump’s campaign in its closing months, said that she was not aware at the time that Cohen made the $130,000 payment.
“I had never heard about that during the campaign,” Conway told reporters at the White House. “I was the campaign manager. A lot crossed my desk.”
Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.