US defence secretary James Mattis resigns and Brazil’s museum, destroyed in a fire, is now digitised.
Trump administration orders reduction of US forces from Afghanistan
US President Donald Trump Thursday ordered to reduce US forces in Afghanistan, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The order came just after a day Trump made the announcement of moving US military troops out from Syria.
A US official told the newspaper that over 7,000 American troops will begin to return home in the next few weeks. Over 14,000 US troops are currently posted in Afghanistan.
The move will be the first step towards the conclusion of the 17-year war.
The report said that the military withdrawal from war zones of Afghanistan and Syria is seen as a dramatic shift in the approach to military engagement.
“I think it shows how serious the president is about wanting to come out of conflicts,” a senior US official told WSJ.
He added, “I think he wants to see viable options about how to bring conflicts to a close.”
US defence secretary James Mattis resigns
US secretary of defense James Mattis resigned Thursday after President Donald Trump made the announcement of moving the US military out of Syria, reported Quartz.
Mattis wrote a letter to Trump within 48 hours declaring his resignation.
In the letter, Mattis wrote, “We cannot serve our interests or that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies.”
He added that Trump should appoint a defence secretary whose opinions align with his’.
Mattis will be leaving by the end of February.
Brazil gets its National Museum back in digitised form
Brazil’s 200-year-old National Museum, which was destroyed in a fire accident in Rio De Janeiro in September, has been given a new life by Google Arts & Culture, reported Quartz.
Starting this week, tourists can “walk” through the collection via the newly rendered digital museum powered by Museum View.
Over 90 per cent of the museum historical and scientific collection worth 20 million was destroyed in the fire. Using the same interface as Google Street View, Google Arts & Culture has created a digital hallway floor made of parquet, enabling visitors to get an experience of witnessing the oldest human skeleton in the Americas, the Bendegó meteorite, and ancient Brazilian ceramics, said the report.
Google started digitising the museum in 2016. It used high-resolution photography, photogrammetry, 3D laser scanning, and virtual and augmented reality to bring life to the museum, said the report.
Program manager Chance Coughenour wrote in a blog post, “Even though images cannot replace what has been lost, they offer us a way to remember.”
Drones sightings cause chaos at UK’s Gatwick airport
Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded at United Kingdom’s Gatwick airport Thursday after mysterious drones were seen flying near the airport, reported Vox.
The drones started to appear Wednesday around 9 pm local time, said the report. After two drones were spotted, the flights were immediately suspended.
The airport tried to reopen at 3 am, but was again shut down within 45 minutes as another drone was spotted. On Thursday, yet another drone was spotted and the airport has remained closed since, said the report.
According to Aljazeera, police and airport authorities claimed to have spotted drones flying for more than 50 times over a 24-hour period. Some of them also believe that it was a deliberate attempt to disrupt the airport’s functioning.
The army was called in and specialist equipment was also deployed. The Gatwick airport, located in Sussex, is UK’s second busiest airport.