ancient culture rare 600kg haul of ancient coins found

CONSTRUCTION workers have found 600 kilos of ancient Roman coins while carrying out routine work on water pipes in southern Spain.

“It is a unique collection and there are very few similar cases,” Ana Navarro, head of Seville’s Archeology Museum which is looking after the find, told a news conference.

Dating back to the late third and early fourth centuries, the bronze coins were found Wednesday inside 19 Roman amphoras, a type of jar, in the town of Tomares near Seville.

Navarro declined to give a precise estimate for the value of the haul, saying only that the coins were worth “certainly several million euros”.

The coins are stamped with the inscriptions of emperors Maximian and Constantine, and they appeared not to have been in circulation as they show little evidence of wear and tear.

It is thought they were intended pay the army or civil servants.

“The majority were newly minted and some of them probably were bathed in silver, not just bronze,” said Navarro.

“I could not give you an economic value, because the value they really have is historical and you can’t calculate that.”

Local officials have suspended the work on the water pipes and plan to carry out an archaeological excavation on the site.

The Romans conquered the Iberian Peninsula in 218BC, ruling until the early 5th century when they were ousted by the Visigoths.

A cache of coins from the reign of Æthelred the Unready, over a thousand years ago, has been discovered in a farm just northeast of London. It might be one of the biggest such caches ever found.

Aylesbury, a suburb of London that’s received a boom in population overspill from the capital in recent decades, might not be exactly the place you’d expect to find ancient treasures; it’d be like looking for treasure in Weehawken, or Orange County. But a group of “metal detectorists,” as they call themselves, from a larger group called the Weekend Wanderers Detecting Club, stumbled on a massive cache of thousand-year-old coins in a farm there.

The cache itself is enormous, one of the biggest in history, consists of 5,251 silver coins, which were buried in a lead box in a farmer’s field. The coins date from around the year 1000, either during the reign of Æthelred the Unready or possibly Cnut the Great. They appear to have been buried shortly after manufacture, given their near-perfect quality, and have remained undisturbed ever since.

“But how much are they worth???” you ask. The coins would have been worth a crazy amount at the time they were made; even a single coin would have been significant. These days, they’re estimated to be worth about £1 million, which is around $1.5 million in United States dollars. Because the coins are so old, they’ll be auctioned off to a prestigious museum, by law, but the proceeds will be split evenly between the group that discovered them and the farmer who owns the land. That’s one way to make it as a suburban farmer in 2015!

justice for The '96'

The great and the good connected with Liverpool Football Club and the city as a whole soon spoke out in favour of the verdict in a series of emotional and poignant social media messages.

England captain Rooney, a Liverpool native, said: 'At last justice for the 96 and their families. Well done to all who never gave up #jft96'

Liverpool legend and Sportsmail columnist Carragher tweeted simply: 'Justice finally. #JFT96'

Another Reds hero, Steven Gerrard posted a picture of the Liverpool memorial with the accompanying message: 'JFT 96 #YNWA', alluding to the club's anthem, You'll Never Walk Alone. 

Jim Beglin, one of the full backs in Liverpool's squad at the time of the disaster, said: 'Disgraceful for 27 years but finally JUSTICE - unlawful killing. Utmost respect for the families courage and determination. #JFT96'

Roy Evans, who played for the club between 1965 and 1974 and then became manager in the 1990s, said: 'Finally after 27 years what we've known all along has been confirmed. Thoughts with all the families an those affected. Justice for the 96 x'

Three-time European Cup winning midfielder Terry McDermott said: 'At long last we have Justice for those poor 96 souls #ynwa'

Michael Owen said: 'Finally and way, way, way overdue, the truth prevails and justice is served.' 

Another former Liverpool striker, Stan Collymore, tweeted: 'J U S T I C E A T L A S T !!!! #JFT96' 

Chief executive Ian Ayre released a statement later in the day hailing the 'humbling and inspirational' Hillsborough families and their 'tireless campaign'.

'After 27 long years the true verdict has finally been delivered, confirming what the families always believed – their loved ones were unlawfully killed,' he said.

'Liverpool Football Club welcomes the jury’s decision, once and for all, that our supporters were not in any way responsible for what happened at Hillsborough. We will always remember the selfless bravery and heroism of the many fans that helped their fellow supporters in the most harrowing of circumstances that day. We praise those who, since the beginning of the inquest, have had to find the courage and strength to re-live what they went through.

'Since April 15, 1989, the solidarity shown by Liverpool fans towards the families and survivors encapsulates the unique character of both the club and city. We are also hugely thankful for the unwavering support the wider football community has so generously shown these past 27 years.

'It has been a painful journey for the families and survivors, who have endured and sacrificed so much for so long. The resilience and dignity they have shown throughout their tireless campaign has been humbling and inspirational. Their conduct and actions throughout their struggle has brought pride to the city of Liverpool and will serve as a lasting tribute to the victims.

'The 96 men, women and children who were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough will never be forgotten.'

Everton put their rivalry with Liverpool to one side to release a statement showing Merseyside stood as one over Hillsborough.

'Everton Football Club salutes the Hillsborough families and their total vindication as Fighters for Justice.

'Theirs is the greatest victory in the history of football.

'RIP, the 96. Good night, God bless.

'From us across the Park.'

Former manager Rafa Benitez, who is beloved by many Liverpool fans after lending his support to the families campaigning for justice, also released a statement.

Benitez donated £96,000 to the Hillsborough Family Support Group in 2010 a week after his reign as Liverpool manager ended. The Spaniard was also spotted in tears at the Hillsborough memorial in 2011 when thousands turned out at Anfield to pay their respects to those who died in 1989.

The Newcastle United boss said: 'After so many years fighting for justice I am really pleased to see the verdict today, which confirms what we have been saying for a long time.

'I am especially pleased for the families of the 96 who have sought justice for so long and with such dignity, as well as for the people of Liverpool and for football fans in general.

'Hopefully this verdict today will ensure that this kind of tragedy can never happen again.'

The jurors were told they could only reach that determination if they were sure of four 'essential' matters concerning the deaths at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final.

They had to be convinced that overall match commander Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield owed a duty of care to those who died in the disaster, and that he was in breach of that duty of care.

Thirdly, they would need to be satisfied that his breach of duty caused the deaths and, fourthly, that it amounted to 'gross negligence'.

They concluded it was unlawful killing by a 7-2 majority.

The conclusion was greeted with sobbing and cheers at the hearing in Warrington.

The jury also ruled that fan behaviour did not cause or contribute to the tragedy.

The Hillsborough disaster unfolded during Liverpool's cup tie against Nottingham Forest on April 15 as thousands of fans were crushed at Sheffield Wednesday's ground.

Mr Duckenfield gave the order at 2.52pm to open exit Gate C in Leppings Lane, allowing around 2,000 fans to flood into the already packed central pens behind the goal. 

FOR THE families of those who were killed, it has been an interminably long wait. On April 15th 1989, in an overcrowded stand in the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, 96 men, women and children were crushed to death; another 766 were injured. In the aftermath of the event, a police cover-up meant that fans of the visiting team, Liverpool Football Club, were blamed for the disaster. To this day, some survivors struggle to cope with what they saw on that sunny Saturday afternoon.

In the 27 years since then, campaigners have slowly wrung the truth from the institutions at fault. They have pushed for a series of inquiries, inquests and reports. As a result, it has emerged that the police managed the crowd poorly, lied about what happened and erased evidence. The ambulance service failed to spot the signs that something was terribly wrong. In a penny-pinching move, Sheffield Wednesday, the football club that plays at Hillsborough, had decided not to invest in the safety measures its crumbling home needed.

Although it has long been evident that Liverpool fans were not to blame for what happened, justice has so far evaded those who campaigned for it. A measure of justice was provided on April 26th as the result of an inquest held in a makeshift coroner’s court in Warrington, a town 16 miles from Liverpool. The jury declared, after sitting for two years, the longest such case in British legal history, that the 96 fans had been “unlawfully killed” and that Liverpool supporters had played no part in provoking the disaster. Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, the policeman in charge of crowd control, was held responsible for manslaughter by gross negligence.

panam papers leaks

26 words

The security guard handed over a key with a small yellow label. The Guardian’s secure room had housed the team that in 2013 worked through data leaked byEdward Snowden to expose unchecked surveillance by British and American spy agencies.

Now it was to be home to a small group of journalists gathered from all corners of the newsroom to work on a project code-named Prometheus. Our investigation into the murky world of tax havens, underpinned by the biggest leak in history, would eventually surface eight months later with the publication of the Panama Papers.

The story began back in February 2015, with an article in Süddeutsche Zeitung that revealed the German newspaper had a slug of secret files about offshore companies on the books of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Some 80 gigabytes of data about the firm’s customers had been received by the paper’s investigative reporters, Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier.

A source would go on to leak 2.6 terabytes of information, sending the pair as an opening message: “Hello, this is John Doe. Interested in data?” The source demanded absolute anonymity. To this day, his or her identity remains unknown to the Panama Papers reporters. “My life is in danger, we will only chat over encrypted files. No meeting ever.”

The Guardian’s involvement formally began in September 2015, when Katharine Viner, the paper’s editor-in-chief, and Paul Johnson, deputy editor, flew to Munich to secure participation in the consortium of journalists around the world collaborating on the story.

Back in London, the team began poring over the archives of Mossack Fonseca. These were being gradually uploaded to servers managed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington. The database would eventually include 11.5m emails, passport scans, contracts, share registers and even sound recordings.

As a business reporter tasked with unpicking the tax-sheltering schemes used by California technology groups and London property developers, I have followed many trails leading to offshore dead ends. The Panama Papers meant that for the first time I was able to take a good, long look at what lay beyond the wall of secrecy.

It quickly became apparent that offshore agents such as Mossack Fonseca often have no special knowledge about their customers. Tax havens’ lack of transparency may allow the keeping of secrets, but these secrets are often kept elsewhere.

As a result, the database needed to be approached from multiple angles, whacked with many sticks, until it could be cracked.

The Guardian brought together its specialists. Luke Harding, the paper’s foremost Russia expert, took on the huge task of investigating Mossack Fonseca’s many Russian and Ukrainian customers. Simon Bowers, a tax and fraud specialist from the City desk, picked apart the undeclared offshore holdings of Iceland’s prime minister.

Holly Watt, who had previously exposed the MPs’ expenses scandal for the Daily Telegraph, tracked down the files relating to members of parliament, peers andpolitical donors. The Guardian’s chief sports writer, Owen Gibson, delved into the world of sport, while reporters in the paper’s New York and Sydney offices hunted for stories of local interest.

David Pegg, with whom I had worked on the HSBC files, exposing tax evasion at the Swiss branch of Britain’s biggest bank, matched land registry records with lists of Mossack Fonseca companies. He soon realised that the firm was acting for roughly 10% of all offshore companies with land holdings in Britain.

Helena Bengtsson, editor of the data projects team at the Guardian, compiled lists of the names of everyone from members of parliament to those wanted by Interpol or on European or US sanctions orders. She then cross-matched these with the Panama Papers data, checking tens of thousands of names at a time and leaving her computer running all night so she could comb through the results in the morning.

We worked hard to keep the information safe. With investigative reporters looking into a $2bn Russian money-laundering scheme linked to Vladimir Putin, the threat of a hack by the FSB, Russia’s security agency, was very real.

More than 140 high-ranking politicians and heads of state were uncovered in the data, leaving partners in less democratic countries at risk of government retaliation. Since the Panama Papers were published Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, has used Twitter to name and admonish local journalists for not handing over all the data. In Venezuela, the journalist Ahiana Figueroa has been fired from her news organisation for being part of the Panama Papers team. In Tunisia, the website Inkyfada has come under suspected cyber attack after naming a former presidential adviser.

The five reporters in the core team spent long days over the winter interrogating the data, plugged into headphones and staring at screens.

As we worked, more information was being leaked. New data was uploaded at regular intervals, with the last set dating from December 2015. In February, we began to approach those we intended to name, and our research began to collide with events in the outside world. In places far away from Britain, the impact of the Panama Papers was beginning to be felt in local and apparently isolated political scandals.

In late January, two Mossack Fonseca representatives in Brazil were arrested, and later released, by authorities investigating the Petrobras affair. Two others fled the country. A prosecutor in the case described the firm as a “money-washing machine”.

On 4 March, the law firm received a letter from the ICIJ and Süddeutsche Zeitung stating that they had seen information concerning thousands of its companies.

On 11 March, TV crews from the consortium descended on Panama City to film the firm’s offices and ask for interviews. Later that day, founding partner Ramón Fonseca resigned from his position as an official adviser to the Panamanian president, Juan Carlos Varela. In a parting shot, he tweeted: “The pen is a powerful tool. It’s sad when used for evil.”

On the same day, the Icelandic prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, walked out of a television interview with two Panama Papers reporters, the independent documentary maker Jóhannes Kristjánsson and Sven Bergman from Swedish TV. They had, on camera, named Wintris, the undeclared offshore company he had once owned with his wife, and which his wife still owned.

The film would not be released until 7pm GMT on Sunday 3 April, the date that all 110 news outlets brought together by the ICIJ had agreed to release their stories simultaneously.

But by the Monday before publication, the Kremlin was beginning to spin. Putin’s spokesman held a press conference to warn that a number of journalists were planning an “information attack” on the Russian president, led by the ICIJ. Key names, including those of the banker Yuri Kovalchuk and the cellist Sergei Roldugin, were released.

The atmosphere inside the secure room at the Guardian was tense. We had by now been joined by the paper’s investigations head, Nick Hopkins, picture researchers and a crack team of subeditors who moulded a mass of 33 articles into publishable form.

Would the story hold? Should we bring the publication date forward? Requests for information began to flood into the ICIJ. Like a general holding back his troops before the charge, the consortium’s director, Gerard Ryle, hit the phones, talking editors into holding their nerve.

By the Friday, two days before we published, there were calls for a vote of no confidence in the Icelandic parliament. But the key data relating to Gunnlaugsson’s offshore adventure remained unpublished, and so the embargo agreed months beforehand stayed in place.

After months working on our own, on Sunday 3 April, the Panama Papers reporting team emerged from the locked office to gather around a desk in the centre of the newsroom. There were 11 items ready to be published. Viner and Johnson stood ready to give the signal.

At 6.48pm, Edward Snowden sent a Twitter message to his 2 million followers: “The biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it’s about corruption.” His tweet linked to a Süddeutsche Zeitung article headlined A Storm is Coming.

Within minutes, the Panama Papers whirlwind had struck. In 70 countries around the world, the reverberations are still being felt.

WHEN DANIEL ELLSBERG photocopied and leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971, those 7,000 pages of top secret Vietnam War documents represented what was then the biggest whistleblower leak in history—a couple dozen megabytes if it were contained in a modern text file. Almost four decades later, WikiLeaks in 2010 published Cablegate, a world-shaking, 1.73 gigabyte collection of classified State Department communications that was almost a hundred times bigger.

If there’s some Moore’s Law of Leaks, however, it seems to be exponential. Just five years have passed since WikiLeaks’ Cablegate coup, and now the world is grappling with a whistleblower megaleak on a scale never seen before: 2.6 terabytes, well over a thousandfold larger.

On Sunday, more than a hundred media outlets around the world, coordinated by the Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, released stories on the Panama Papers, a gargantuan collection of leaked documents exposing a widespread system of global tax evasion. The leak includes more than 4.8 million emails, 3 million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that, according to analysis of the leaked documents, appears to specialize in creating shell companies that its clients have used to hide their assets.

“This is pretty much every document from this firm over a 40-year period,” ICIJ director Gerard Ryle told WIRED in a phone call, arguing that at “about 2,000 times larger than the WikiLeaks state department cables,” it’s indeed the biggest leak in history.

Neither the ICIJ nor any of the reporters it’s worked with have made the leaked data public. But the scandal resulting from their reporting has already touched celebrities, athletes, business executives and world leaders. The documents trace $2 billion of hidden money tied to Vladimir Putin through accounts held in the names of family members and his celebrated musician friend Sergei Roldugin. Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson is facing demands from the previous Icelandic prime minister that he resign after the Mossack Fonseca documents showed that Gunnlaugsson may have failed to disclose ownership of a stake in certain Icelandic banks under the government’s rules for officials. And the leaks drag FIFA officials back into the news, showing that even an ethics lawyer for the world soccer body hadfinancial ties to another FIFA official already accused of corruption.

But beyond those revelations—and there will likely be more as the reporting around the Panama Papers continues—the leak represents an unprecedented story in itself: How an anonymous whistleblower was able to spirit out and surreptitiously send journalists a gargantuan collection of files, which were then analyzed by more than 400 reporters in secret over more than a year before a coordinated effort to go public.

How You Coordinate History’s Biggest Leak

The Panama Papers leak began, according to ICIJ director Ryle, in late 2014, when an unknown source reached out to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, which had reported previously on a smaller leak of Mossack Fonseca files to German government regulators. A Suddeutsche Zeitung reporter named Bastian Obermayer says that the sourcecontacted him via encrypted chat, offering some sort of data intended “to make these crimes public.” But the source warned that his or her “life is in danger,” was only willing to communicate via encrypted channels, and refused to meet in person.

“How much data are we talking about?” Obermayer asked.

“More than you have ever seen,” the source responded, according to Obermayer.

Obermayer tells WIRED he communicated with his source over a series of encrypted channels that they frequently changed, each time deleting all history from their prior exchange. He alludes to crypto apps like Signal and Threema, as well as PGP-encrypted email but declines to say specifically which methods they used. Each time the reporter and source re-established a connection, they would use a known question and answer to reauthenticate each other. “I’d say ‘is it sunny?’ You’d say ‘the moon is raining’ or whatever nonsense, and then both of us can verify it’s still the other person on the device,” Obermayer says.

After seeing a portion of the documents, Suddeutsche Zeitung contacted the ICIJ, which had helped to coordinate previous tax haven megaleaks including a 2013 analysis of leaked offshore tax haven data and another leak-enabled investigation last year that focused on assets protected by the Swiss bank HSBC. ICIJ staff flew to Munich to coordinate with Suddeutsche Zeitung reporters.

Meanwhile, the shipments of leaked data continued piecemeal. “Over time we got more and more until we had all 11.5 million documents,” Ryle says. Obermayer declined to explain how their leaker sent Suddeutsche Zeitung hundreds of gigabytes or even terabytes of information at a time. That’s far too much to send over email, of course, though that quantity of data could easily be sent anonymously in the form of shipped encrypted hard drives. “I learned a lot about making the safe transfer of big files,” Obermayer says elliptically.

The ICIJ’s developers then built a two-factor-authentication-protected search engine for the leaked documents, the URL for which they shared via encrypted email with scores of news outlets including the BBC, The Guardian, Fusion, and dozens of foreign-language media outlets. The site even featured a real-time chat system, so that reporters could exchange tips and find translation for documents in languages they couldn’t read. “If you wanted to look into the Brazilian documents, you could find a Brazilian reporter,” says Ryle. “You could see who was awake and working and communicate openly. We encouraged everyone to tell everyone what they were doing.” The different media outlets eventually held their own in-person meetings, too, in Washington, Munich, London, Johannesburg and Lillehammer, Ryle says.1

Remarkably, despite all that broad access and openness, the full leaked database has yet to leak to the public—perhaps in part because it’s so large and unwieldy. Obermayer admits that rumors of the massive leak spread, but says that the data itself remained contained. “Last fall I was really nervous, thinking ‘a lot of people know,'” he says. “Word leaked out at places. But it never got further.”

Ryle says that the media organizations have no plans to release the full dataset, WikiLeaks-style, which he argues would expose the sensitive information of innocent private individuals along with the public figures on which the group’s reporting has focused. “We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly,” Ryle says. He says he advised the reporters from all the participating media outlets to “go crazy, but tell us what’s in the public interest for your country.”

Weeks before contacting the subjects of the investigation, including Mossack Fonseca, Obermayer took one final precaution: he destroyed the phone and the hard drive of the laptop he’d used for his conversations with the source. “This may have seemed a little overachieving,” he notes, “But better safe than sorry.”

World's 1st Inflatable Room for Astronauts spaceX

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — SpaceX has made good on a high-priority delivery: the world's first inflatable room for astronauts.

A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, two days after launching from Cape Canaveral. Station astronauts used a robot arm to capture the Dragon, orbiting 250 miles above Earth.

The Dragon holds 7,000 pounds of freight, including the soft-sided compartment built by Bigelow Aerospace. The pioneering pod — packed tightly for launch — should swell to the size of a small bedroom once filled with air next month.

It will be attached to the space station this Saturday, but won't be inflated until the end of May. The technology could change the way astronauts live in space: NASA envisions inflatable habitats in a couple of decades on Mars, while Bigelow Aerospace aims to launch a pair of inflatable space stations in just four years for commercial lease.

For now, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — BEAM for short — will remain mostly off-limits to the six-man station crew. NASA wants to see how the experimental chamber functions, so the hatch will stay sealed except when astronauts enter a few times a year to collect measurements and swap out sensors.

This is SpaceX's first delivery for NASA in a year. A launch accident last June put shipments on hold.

SpaceX flight controllers at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, applauded when the hefty station arm plucked Dragon from orbit.

"It looks like we caught a Dragon," announced British astronaut Timothy Peake, who made the grab. "There are smiles all around here," NASA's Mission Control replied. "Nice job capturing that Dragon."

SpaceX is still reveling in the success of Friday's booster landing at sea.

For the first time, a leftover booster came to a solid vertical touchdown on a floating platform. SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk wants to reuse boosters to save money, a process that he says will open access to space for more people in more places, like Mars. His ambition is to establish a city on Mars.

NASA also has Mars in its sights and looks to send astronauts there in the 2030s. In order to focus on that objective, the space agency has hired U.S. companies like SpaceX to deliver cargo and, as early as next year, astronauts to the space station. U.S. astronauts currently have to hitch rides on Russian rockets.

In a sign of these new commercial space times, a Dragon capsule is sharing the station for the first time with Orbital ATK's supply ship named Cygnus, already parked there for two weeks.

The Dragon will remain at the station for a month before returning to Earth with science samples, many of them from one-year spaceman Scott Kelly. He ended his historic mission last month. Cygnus will stick around a little longer.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX has made good on a high-priority delivery: the world's first inflatable room for astronauts.

A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, two days after launching from Cape Canaveral. Station astronauts used a robot arm to capture the Dragon, orbiting 250 miles above Earth.

The Dragon holds 7,000 pounds of freight, including the soft-sided compartment built by Bigelow Aerospace. The pioneering pod — packed tightly for launch — should swell to the size of a small bedroom once filled with air next month.

It will be attached to the space station this Saturday, but won't be inflated until the end of May. The technology could change the way astronauts live in space: NASA envisions inflatable habitats in a couple decades at Mars, while Bigelow Aerospace aims to launch a pair of inflatable space stations in just four years for commercial lease.

 

For now, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — BEAM for short — will remain mostly off-limits to the six-man station crew. NASA wants to see how the experimental chamber functions, so the hatch will stay sealed except when astronauts enter a few times a year to collect measurements and swap out sensors.

This is SpaceX's first delivery for NASA in a year. A launch accident last June put shipments on hold.

SpaceX flight controllers at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, applauded when the hefty station arm plucked Dragon from orbit. A few hours later, the capsule was bolted securely into place.

"It looks like we caught a Dragon," announced British astronaut Timothy Peake, who made the grab. "There are smiles all around here," NASA's Mission Control replied. "Nice job capturing that Dragon."

SpaceX is still reveling in the success of Friday's booster landing at sea.

For the first time, a leftover booster came to a solid vertical touchdown on a floating platform. SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk wants to reuse boosters to save money, a process that he says will open access to space for more people in more places, like Mars. His ambition is to establish a city on Mars.

NASA also has Mars in its sights and looks to send astronauts there in the 2030s. In order to focus on that objective, the space agency has hired U.S. companies like SpaceX to deliver cargo and, as early as next year, astronauts to the space station. U.S. astronauts currently have to hitch rides on Russian rockets.

In a sign of these new commercial space times, a Dragon capsule is sharing the station for the first time with Orbital ATK's supply ship named Cygnus, already parked there two weeks. This is also the first time in five years that the compound has six docking ports occupied: Dragon, Cygnus, two Russian Progress freighters and two Russian Soyuz crew capsules.

The Dragon will remain at the station for a month before returning to Earth with science samples, many of them from one-year spaceman Scott Kelly. He ended his historic mission last month. Cygnus will stick around a little longer.

Netherlands rejects EU-Ukraine partnership deal

Voters in the Netherlands have rejected in a referendum an EU partnership deal to remove trade barriers with Ukraine.

Turnout was low, 32.2%, but above the 30% threshold for the vote to be valid. The deal was rejected by 61.1% of votes, compared with 38.1% in favour.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the government may have to reconsider the deal, although the vote is not binding.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko insisted his country would "continue our movement towards the EU".

A foreign ministry official in Kiev told the BBC that the result was disappointing, adding that Dutch Eurosceptics could not take Ukraine hostage to express dissatisfaction with the EU.

The vote was widely seen in the Netherlands as a test of public opinion towards the EU.

It was triggered by an internet petition begun by Eurosceptic activists that attracted more than 400,000 signatures.

The result creates a headache for the Dutch government, as the Dutch parliament approved the EU association agreement with Ukraine last year. All the other 27 EU member states have already ratified the deal.

"My view is that if the turnout is more than 30%, with such a victory for the 'No' camp, ratification cannot go ahead without discussion," Mr Rutte said in a televised reaction. It is also an embarrassment for a Dutch government that currently holds the EU presidency.

Geert Wilders, who leads the anti-EU and anti-Islam Freedom Party, said the result was the "beginning of the end for the EU".

Officially the Netherlands has rejected a landmark deal between the EU and Ukraine - in reality the issues that dominated this campaign were much wider.

The referendum was triggered by the Eurosceptic movement, which used a new Dutch law designed to promote democracy to force a vote by gathering enough signatures on a petition.

From the start activists said this was a chance for Dutch voters to express frustration at the EU, in particular what they see as its desire to expand despite democratic shortcomings.

But they were not asked to simply pass judgement on the EU, and throughout the campaign those promoting a Yes vote were frustrated by what they saw as attempts by Eurosceptics to hijack a debate which should have been about relations between Ukraine, Russia and Europe.

Some say the multiple layers to this referendum mean the result cannot seen as a true reflection of the scale of Dutch Euroscepticism.

Nonetheless, the rejection of this deal will rattle the nerves of European leaders, who are already struggling to maintain unity in the face of economic instability and the migrant crisis.

Dutch vote cheers anti-EU camp

---

The vote comes less than three months before British citizens decide in their own referendum whether to leave the EU altogether.

A spokesman for campaign group Leave.EU, Brian Monteith, said: "This humiliating rejection of the Ukraine agreement demonstrates that people don't have to support the EU and its expansionist agenda to feel European."

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also appeared to welcome the result, tweeting that it was an indication of the European attitude to Ukraine's political system.

The Russian government was vehemently opposed to the EU deal with Ukraine and was widely thought to have pressed then-President Viktor Yanukovych to reject it in November 2013. Mr Yanukovych's decision prompted protests in Kiev that ultimately led to his downfall.

Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have widely been blamed for the killing of 298 people, when a Malaysia Airlines flight from Amsterdam was shot down in July 2014. The Netherlands lost 193 of its citizens.

The Ukrainian president stressed the non-binding nature of the vote.

"I am sure that strategically this event is not an obstacle on Ukraine's path towards Europe," Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported Mr Poroshenko as saying.

Dutch Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk accepted the cabinet would need to consider the result but added that the government might need to look again at the 2015 referendum law that triggered Wednesday's vote. The minimum threshold could be based on the number of voters rather than the percentage, he suggested.

One of the Dutch Eurosceptics behind the referendum, Thierry Baudet, said there could be more votes in the future, covering the euro, open borders and any future EU trade deal with the United States.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had described the stakes in the run-up to the vote as being high, warning that a No vote could trigger a wider crisis in the 28-member bloc.

"How will our politicians react if the outcome is a resounding no?" Ukraine's One Plus One TV asked as the polls opened.

In the run-up to the vote, Ukraine's media were abuzz with stories about various Ukrainian initiatives to promote the "Yes" campaign, including what they called an "invasion by propaganda troops" - local politicians and activists travelling to the Netherlands.

Many commentators in Ukraine are now wondering whether Kiev had done enough to counter the No campaign, whose efforts included the distribution of free waffles in wrappers with slogans urging the Dutch to vote against the agreement

Dutch voters have overwhelmingly rejected a Ukraine-European Union treaty on closer political and economic ties, in a rebuke to their government and to the EU establishment.

The broad political, trade and defence treaty – which had already been signed by the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte’s government and approved by all other EU nations, and Ukraine – provisionally took effect in January.

But on Wednesday 64% of Dutch referendum voters rejected it; the turnout was just 32% – barely enough for the result to be valid.

Voters said they were opposing not only the treaty but wider European policymaking on matters ranging from the migrant crisis to economics.

Though the referendum was non-binding, Rutte acknowledged late on Wednesday it was politically impossible for his unpopular government to ratify the treaty in its current form.

However, as the Dutch currently hold the EU’s rotating presidency, he will need time to figure out whether and how he can alter the treaty in a way that could satisfy all parties.

Rutte said the government would consult with parliament and its European partners “step by step. That could take days or weeks.”

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, said on Thursday his country would continue moving towards the EU despite the Dutch vote.

“Under any circumstances we will continue to implement the association agreement with the European Union including a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement,” he told reporters in Tokyo.

Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, said the result was “an indication of European attitudes to the Ukrainian political system”.

Any proposed changes to the treaty will have to pass both houses of the Dutch parliament, including the Senate, where Rutte’s shaky coalition lacks a majority. Some political commentators have predicted a coalition collapse over the issue, though new elections are due to be called by March 2017 anyway.

If a compromise can be found, it must also be palatable to other European countries, as well as the European commission and the Ukrainian government.

Rutte’s main political rival, the anti-EU, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, whose popularity has hit all-time highs amid Europe’s refugee crisis, said the result was “the beginning of the end” for Rutte’s government and the EU in its current form.

“If two-thirds of the voters say no, that is a vote of no confidence by the people against the elite from Brussels and The Hague,” he tweeted.

The European commission has said it will wait for the Dutch government to suggest a way forward.

Options include leaving the Ukraine agreement in force provisionally, or drafting exemption clauses for theNetherlands – as has happened in similar circumstances before.

Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right European People’s party (EPP), the biggest bloc in the European parliament, and an ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel, said the referendum result was a “big defeat” for the Dutch government and should be taken seriously.

“We need to make Europe more democratic and transparent,” Weber told Deutschlandfunk radio, saying there was too much backroom politics going on in Brussels. He added that politicians needed to engage more with citizens, explain things to them and show that they take people’s concerns seriously.

He said that applied particularly to Britain ahead of the June referendum on the country’s membership of the EU..