Cop who shot Blake named; vigilante shooter arrested
KENOSHA: The Wisconsin policeman who shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back has been identified as a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha police department, the US state department of justice has said.
Rusten Sheskey shot Blake, 29, while holding onto his shirt after policemen first unsuccessfully used a taser and as Blake leaned into his vehicle during an incident on Sunday.
State agents said they later recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of the vehicle. A search of the vehicle found no additional weapons.
No charges were announced and the state’s department of investigation was continuing to probe. The shooting set off three nights of unrest in the city.
A white, 17-year-old police admirer was arrested and charged with homicide after he shot to death two people during a third night of protests in Kenosha over the police shooting of Blake, who has been left paralysed. Kyle Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, was arrested in Illinois for firstdegree intentional homicide.
Calls for armed vigilantes to travel to Kenosha to protect businesses spread across social media in hours before two people were shot to death. Threads on Facebook and Reddit urged militias to head to protests, researchers at Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Lab said. Facebook said it removed the accounts of suspect, along with pages of a local militia, Kenosha Guard.
Tokyo:scientists have found a radiation-resistant bacteria that can survive at least three years exposed in orbit, suggesting simple life forms could manage the long journey between Earth and Mars unprotected.
The Japanese scientists behind the research said on Wednesday the finding lends credence to so-called “panspermia theory”, which posits that microbes can travel from one planet to another, seeding life on arrival.
To test the theory, the researchers deposited a bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans outside the International Space Station at an altitude of 400km from the Earth.
Despite enduring the harsh environment of outer space and exposure to strong UV and large temperature changes, the bacteria was still alive in parts after three years.
“I knew it would survive after carrying out various experiments in the lab, but when it came back alive, I was relieved,” Akihiko Yamagishi, study author and emeritus professor at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, told AFP.
The results show that the bacteria could weather a journey between Mars and Earth.
“Everyone thinks the origin of life started on Earth, but the new findings indicate that other planets could also be where life began.” Yamagishi and his team hope to carry out similar experiments outside the Van Allen radiation belt, which would expose the bacteria to even more radiation.
The discovery, published Wednesday in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, comes with Mars back in the headlines as three missions head for the Red Planet.