India says WTO deal not dead, can sign in September if concerns addressed

India is willing to sign a global trade deal, which it has torpedoed, if other World Trade Organisation members can agree to its parallel demand for concessions on stockpiling food, senior officials in New Delhi said on Friday. The deadline to sign the WTO pact to ease worldwide customs rules lapsed at midnight in Geneva on Thursday after India demanded that the group also finalise an agreement giving it more freedom to subsidise and stockpile food grains than is allowed by WTO rules. It was not immediately clear if the latest comments by Indian officials would open a window for the deal to be resurrected. In Geneva, a trade diplomat from a developing nation said: "The trust that countries have in what India says is going to be significantly diminished." The officials in New Delhi said the deal could be signed as early as September. "It is ridiculous to say the Bali deal is dead," said a senior official at India's trade ministry, referring to the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) pact that was agreed on the Indonesian island of Bali last year. "We are totally committed to the TFA, and only asking for an agreement on food security," said the official, who cannot be identified under briefing rules. Another trade official said: "We expect that the (WTO) director general will call a meeting in September and we are ready to sign the deal in September itself, provided TFA and food security issues are passed together. We are quite hopeful for the deal." Damaging India's image? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was on a visit to India, told Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier on Friday that India's refusal to sign the trade deal had undermined the country's image. "Failure to sign the Trade Facilitation Agreement sent a confusing signal and undermined the very image Prime Minister Modi is trying to send about India," a U.S. State Department official told reporters after Kerry's meeting with Modi. Several WTO member states voiced frustration after India's demands led to the collapse of the first major global trade reform pact in two decades. WTO ministers had already agreed the global reform of customs procedures known as "trade facilitation" in Bali last December, but were unable to overcome last-minute Indian objections and get it into the WTO rule book by a July 31 deadline. India has insisted that, in exchange for signing the trade facilitation agreement, it must see more progress on the parallel pact. India's new nationalist government has insisted that a permanent agreement on its subsidised food stockpiling must be in place at the same time as the trade facilitation deal, well ahead of a 2017 target set in Bali last year. Most diplomats had expected the pact to be rubber-stamped this week, marking a unique success in the WTO's 19-year history which, according to some estimates, would add $1 trillion and 21 million jobs to the world economy. India calls these estimates highly exaggerated. The diplomats were shocked when India revealed its veto and the eleventh-hour failure drew strong criticism, as well as rumblings about the future of the organisation and the multilateral system it underpins. "Australia is deeply disappointed that it has not been possible to meet the deadline. This failure is a great blow to the confidence revived in Bali that the WTO can deliver negotiated outcomes," Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb said. "There are no winners from this outcome - least of all those in developing countries which would see the biggest gains." Move on without India Some countries, including the United States, the European Union, Australia, Japan and Norway, have already discussed a plan to exclude India from the facilitation agreement and push ahead regardless, officials involved in the talks said. An Australian trade official involved in the talks said officials were exhausted with the process and that there was already discussion about major reforms at the WTO and the Doha Round of trade negotiations, which began in 2001. "Some see it as a final trigger for ending Doha and pressing ahead with plurilateral reform, leave behind those that don't want to come along," he said. A Japanese official familiar with the situation said that while Tokyo reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining and strengthening the multilateral trade system, it was frustrated that such a small group of countries had stymied the overwhelming consensus. "The future of the Doha Round including the Bali package is unclear at this stage," he said. New Zealand Minister of Overseas Trade, Tim Groser, told Reuters there had been "too much drama" surrounding the negotiations and added that any talk of excluding India was "naive" and counterproductive. "India is the second biggest country by population, a vital part of the world economy and will become even more important. The idea of excluding India is ridiculous. "I don't want to be too critical of the Indians. We have to try and pull this together and at the end of the day putting India into a box would not be productive," he added. Still, the failure of the agreement should signal a move away from monolithic single undertaking agreements that have defined the body for decades, Peter Gallagher, an expert on free trade and the WTO at the University of Adelaide, told Reuters. "I think it's certainly premature to speak about the death of the WTO. I hope we've got to the point where a little bit more realism is going to enter into the negotiating procedures," he said. "It's 153 countries. We can't all move at the same speed on the same things, and it's time to let those that want to do it, do it."

36-Year-Old 'Retired' Spacecraft to be Jump-Started (Page 2)

Team members want to eventually place ISEE-3 in the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 1 (ES-1), a gravitationally stable spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. Cowing said it might be August or September before that happens, but the timeline isn't firmed up yet.

If all goes to plan, the spacecraft will also head behind the far side of the moon for about 25 minutes, which is somewhat risky given there's no working battery. Cowing pointed out, however, that the spacecraft has done it before, and said they will likely leave the instruments on to give it a bit of extra heat as it passes behind.

Communications Challenges

Keeping track of the spacecraft will be somewhat more difficult as it approaches Earth, because its position changes more rapidly from our viewpoint. Right now the team is remotely using the massive fixed-dish Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

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Within a week, they hope to have supplemental communications at Morehead State University, although the first engine firing at least will likely take place with Arecibo.

Meanwhile, at least a couple of amateurs have been able to track ISEE-3's radio communications using small dishes. As the spacecraft gets closer to Earth, Cowing said he is curious if university optical telescopes will be able to pick out the small craft. (It's about 15 million to 20 million miles away, and moving closer at about a quarter-million miles a day, he said.)

Cowing said that he is amazed at how healthy the spacecraft is. "It's almost like people going to the Antarctic, and discovering something somebody left behind half a century ago, frozen, still works."

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Original article on Space.com. Copyright 2014 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

36-Year-Old 'Retired' Spacecraft to be Jump-Started

A decades-old spacecraft appears to be in great health despite being abandoned in the solar system for the better part of two decades, the private team working to revive the NASA probe says.

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Can You Crowdfund A Satellite Out Of Retirement?

The International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 was launched in 1978 but retired, after distinguished service, in 1997 by NASA. Now private citizens are trying to put the bird back in business with an online campaign to raise enough cash to wake it up.

All instruments are on and NASA's International Sun/Earth Explorer 3spacecraft, or ISEE-3 for short, is responding to hails from its new command team, which hopes to send the probe on new adventures in deep space.

The team, called the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, is working out of a former McDonald's near NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. So far, the team has been gathering information on where the spacecraft is moving, how fast it is spinning and how much power it has. [NASA's ISEE-3 Spacecraft in Photos]

NEWS: Contact Made With 36-Year-Old 'Retired' Satellite

ISEE-3 has ample power (a surplus of 28 watts) and its instruments are all turned on, although how well they are functioning will require further investigation, said team co-leader Keith Cowing.

"We need to understand [the spacecraft] before we fire the engines for the main thrust," he told Space.com. That will likely come on June 17, and it is intended to eventually put ISEE-3 in a stable spot where it can reliably communicate with Earth.

Moving Day

The team made contact with the spacecraft in late May under a Space Act Agreement with NASA. It's the first time any private entity has taken over a spacecraft, leading to careful discussions on both ends about what is allowed. The current communications agreement runs through June 25, but Cowing said it's an incremental date expected to be extended.

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The project's ultimate goal is to make the spacecraft available for more science, although what ISEE-3 will do is still not known. Since being launched in 1978, the spacecraft has been a comet chaser, a solar probe and more. NASA ceased communications with it in 1997.

The spacecraft first, however, needs to be moved. Cowing projects the first firings will need to change ISEE's speed by about 6 meters (20 feet) a second. He said the best "guesstimate" of fuel available shows plenty of margin: there's enough to alter the spacecraft's speed by 150 meters (492 feet) a second.

Moon Eclipses Saturn

While sky-watchers may not get the same clear view of Saturn as this Hubble image, small telescopes can easily reveal its majestic rings. Courtesy: NASA and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)

Talk about hogging the spotlight! Sky-watchers in North America on Sunday night, August 3, will see planet Saturn cozy up to the bright moon. Over a few hours’ time, as seen from the Eastern Hemisphere, stargazers will see the moon dramatically eclipse the planet.

And the best news is that no one has to miss the event, even on the wrong side of the world, thanks to a live webcast of the entire eclipse.

The stunning lineup of the moon sandwiched between Mars and Saturn will be easily visible with the naked eye, even with bright city lights interfering, starting after nightfall on Sunday evening.

This sky chart shows the lunar lineup as it will appear from North America in the southern evening sky on August 3, 2014. Credit: SkySafari

A few hours later, as the moon continues its trek across the background of stars and planets, lucky sky-watchers in the Eastern Hemisphere will see the moon actually hide the ringed planet. While there is no need for telescopes or binoculars to catch the special sky show—Saturn will look like a bright star next to the moon—a small scope will reveal the planet’s majestic rings. (The event will come too near dawn on Monday for folks in the Western Hemisphere, but the eclipse can be watched on the Internet. See below.)

This sky chart shows how Saturn and the moon will look from Australia at 9 p.m. local time on the night of August 4, 2014. Credit: SkySafari

“Such an eclipse is called an occultation, and it’s quite dramatic when it involves a bright photogenic object like Saturn, whose rings are now nearly optimally tilted,” says astronomer Bob Berman of Slooh, which willwebcast the event.

“Slooh’s live feeds from Australia will capture the actual eclipse of Saturn by the moon, with striking detail visible on the foreground moon and the background planet —a true photobomb moment. This is one of those don’t-miss events,” he said.