Story highlights Africa will launch its first private satellite into space It’s been built by schoolgirls CNN — They may be teenagers, but 17-year-old Brittany Bull and 16-year-old Sesam Mngqengqiswa have grand
Xochitl Galvez, Mexico’s presidential candidate for the opposition coalition PRI-PAN-PRD, defines herself as “the bravest woman who will face crime,” according to posts on X.
As part of her agenda leading up to Mexico’s 2024 presidential elections, she has reiterated her commitment to security, saying “We will act with all the force and capacity of the State so you can live in a #MxSinMiedo” (Mexico without fear).
Gálvez says on her website that she is “a woman of liberties, who respects institutions, and who will be brave to confront organized crime.” For her supporters, her candidacy represents a committed alternative to citizen protection. She proposes implementing security strategies in Mexico to “modernize the police forces in Puebla and all of Mexico so they can protect the population and send criminals to jail.”
Gálvez promises to end fuel theft and advocates for a salary increase of 20,000 pesos (about US $1,200), housing credits, and scholarships for municipal police officers, emphasizing the importance of “taking care of those who take care of us.”
Committed to providing universal access to medical care and medications through the “My Health” Card, Gálvez aims to strengthen the healthcare system and ensure the well-being of all families, as stated in posts on X.
Her path to the candidacy: Gálvez was born on February 22, 1963, in Tepatepec, Hidalgo, into a low-income family, with a mestiza mother and an indigenous father. Her personal story has led her to be an advocate for indigenous rights and gender equality.
Despite economic challenges, Gálvez accessed university education through a scholarship, studying at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she met her current partner, Rubén Sánchez, a Mexican businessman who could become the first gentleman of Mexico if Gálvez wins.
She carved her path in the business world starting in 1992 when she established High Tech Services Consulting, a pioneering company in the fields of smart buildings, energy efficiency, process automation and telecommunications. By 2000, she had become the first Mexican woman included in the list of 100 Global Leaders for the Future at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
She served as the head and general director of the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples from 2003 to 2006. In the 2015 local elections in Mexico City, Gálvez ran as a candidate for the head of the Miguel Hidalgo borough for the National Action Party (PAN), winning with 32% of the vote and serving until March 15, 2018. In 2018, she ran for the Senate representing Mexico City for the “Por México al Frente” coalition (PAN, MC and PRD) and was also a candidate on the proportional representation list of the PRD, securing a Senate seat.
Translated by Karol Suarez. CNN’s Rey Rodríguez, Krupskaia Alís, and Aitana Ocaña contributed reporting to this post.
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Chris Kirk speaks to CNN after first PGA Tour win in 8 years
American golfer Chris Kirk had won four times on the PGA Tour, but in 2019, he stepped away to deal with his crippling depression and alcohol abuse issues. Last Sunday, he won a playoff at the Honda Classic in Florida and told CNN about his extraordinary journey.
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CNN
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Lionel Messi celebrated his return to Paris Saint-Germain with a goal in his first game back since lifting the World Cup.
The 35-year-old only returned to training in the new year after taking some time off to celebrate and recuperate after Qatar 2022, where he finally won the trophy that had always eluded him in one of the greatest finals ever.
But the forward didn’t look to be suffering any hangover as he returned to action with a goal from close range in PSG’s 2-0 win against Angers on Wednesday.
Messi also paid tribute to Pelé before the match, joining his teammates in wearing a t-shirt with the Brazilian’s face on it during the warmup.
PSG sits comfortably top of the league despite Christophe Galtier having to switch up his team as he eases players back in after the World Cup.
Kylian Mbappé, a beaten finalist in Qatar, was rested for Wednesday’s match, allowing the likes of youngster Hugo Ekitiké to get some game time.
The 20-year-old forward has impressed when given the chance this season and opened the scoring with a sweeping finish in the first half.
Messi, who dovetailed the attack alongside Neymar Jr., then doubled the lead in the 72nd minute after a well timed run and right foot finish.
The linesman had initially flagged for offside, but the Virtual Assistant Referee (VAR) overruled the call and the goal was given.
The win on Messi’s return is some welcome good news for PSG, who lost in the league for the first time this season last week, 3-1 away to Lens.
“Yes, it was very important to get back to winning ways. We have rivals who are pushing hard,” Galtier told PSGTV after the game.
“We knew that we were going to have a difficult match because Angers is a team that plays good football and poses big problems on a tactical level.
“I also insist on the fact that the situation – post-World Cup – means that we have had a lot of players absent, that the group was very scattered and that, little by little, everyone is coming back and reconnecting.”
PSG, which is six points clear atop the table, plays Rennes in its next game on Sunday.
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The Boston Celtics became the first team in the NBA this season to reach 30 wins after beating the New Orleans Pelicans 125-114 at TD Garden in Boston on Wednesday night, largely behind a combined 72 points from the team’s stars, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
Brown scored season-high 41 points and had 12 rebounds while Tatum had 31 points and 10 rebounds as the Celtics won their fourth straight game.
Brown specifically attacked the Pelicans from the mid range, crediting extra muscle added in the offseason for allowing him to handle contact with bigger opponents, as he makes a concerted effort to not settle for attempts from deep.
“I think I can get to the rim at a good rate this year,” Brown told reporters afterwards, per the Celtics website. “I definitely want to keep that up.
“I don’t want to let the defense off the hook, but I feel good about a lot of the shots I took from three. Some of them went down, some of them haven’t. But I definitely still think I’m going to look to get to the basket a lot more for sure just for the remainder of the year.”
Celtics forward Al Horford reiterated the point: “When (Brown) drives, I feel like people feel it.
“When he’s hitting you when he’s driving, that’s real. So it’s good to see him play at that level and have his mind made up that he’s going to attack the paint.”
It was Brown’s sixth 40-point game of his career, moving him past Sam Jones and Isaiah Thomas for the sixth-most in Celtics history.
Together with Tatum, the two wing players have become the driving force behind Boston’s recent success.
The team reached the NBA Finals last season, eventually losing to the Golden State Warriors, and is again one of the best in the league this year.
In both scoring at least 30 points and 10 rebounds in the same game, Brown and Tatum became the first Celtics players to achieve that stat line since Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker in 2001.
Drafted a year after one another – Brown was drafted with the No. 3 pick in the 2016 draft and Tatum was selected with the No. 3 pick in 2017 – they have built up an understanding together about dissecting defenses.
“They continue to grow in front of our eyes,” Horford said of the star duo after the victory. “They feed off each other, and that’s what really drives our team.”
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Story highlights
Africa will launch its first private satellite into space
It’s been built by schoolgirls
CNN
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They may be teenagers, but 17-year-old Brittany Bull and 16-year-old Sesam Mngqengqiswa have grand ambitions – to launch Africa’s first private satellite into space in 2019.
They are part of a team of high school girls from Cape Town, South Africa, who have designed and built payloads for a satellite that will orbit over the earth’s poles scanning Africa’s surface.
Once in space, the satellite will collect information on agriculture, and food security within the continent.
Using the data transmitted, “we can try to determine and predict the problems Africa will be facing in the future”, explains Bull, a student at Pelican Park High School.
“Where our food is growing, where we can plant more trees and vegetation and also how we can monitor remote areas,” she says. “We have a lot of forest fires and floods but we don’t always get out there in time.”
Information received twice a day will go towards disaster prevention.
It’s part of a project by South Africa’s Meta Economic Development Organization (MEDO) working with Morehead State University in the US.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
Courtesy SKA
Africa has been slow to embark on space travel. But new projects on the continent look promising. South Africa’s ambitious Square Kilometer Array project aims to build the world’s biggest radio telescope that will help scientists paint a detailed picture of some of the deepest reaches of outer space.
Pictured here: a composite image of the MeerKAT and Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) satellites.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
Courtesy of SPDO/Swinburne Astronomy Productions
South Africa’s Karoo desert will be home to the Square Kilometer Array, a cluster of 3,000 satellite dishes working in tandem over a square kilometer area.
Africa’s participation in the project will be ramped up by distant stations situated in Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img” height=”1536″/>
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
Courtesy SKA
The SKA is an international affair. Its headquartered in the UK while the telescope itself has a “dual site” location in Australia and South Africa.
Africa’s participation in the project will be ramped up by distant stations situated in Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
Courtesy of SPDO/Swinburne Astronomy Productions
Scientists hope the project will shed further light on the mysteries posed by the likes of quasars, dark matter and black holes.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
SKA Africa
Pictured here: the first light images from the MeerKAT. The telescope array currently comprises of 16 dishes that will eventually become a part of the Square Kilometre Array.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
SKA Africa
MeerKAT’s First Light image. Each white dot represents the intensity of radio waves recorded with 16 dishes of the MeerKAT telescope in the Karoo desert.
More than 1,300 individual objects – galaxies in the distant universe – are seen in this image.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
Ronald Martinez/Getty Images North America/Getty Images
The Nigerian government has announced its plans to launch an astronaut into space by 2030, as part of an ambitious space program.
Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
SSTL
Nigeria has already launched five satellites into space. The first – NigeriaSat-1 – was launched on a Kosmos-3M rocket from Russia’s Plesetsk spaceport in 2003.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
SSTL
The Nigerian space agency claims to have trained 300 staff to PhD or BsC level, and has ambitious plans to expand the industry, and encourage space programs across the continent.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
GSSTC
Ghana has established a new space center as part of the country’s embrace of advanced technology industries.
Photos: Africa’s journey to space
AFP/Getty Images
Egypt has one of the continent’s oldest space programs, having launched several satellites aboard Russian rockets.
The girls (14 in total) are being trained by satellite engineers from Cape Peninsula University of Technology, in a bid to encourage more African women into STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).
If the launch is successful, it will make MEDO the first private company in Africa to build a satellite and send it into orbit.
“We expect to receive a good signal, which will allow us to receive reliable data,” declares an enthusiastic Mngqengqiswa, of Philippi High School. “In South Africa we have experienced some of the worst floods and droughts and it has really affected the farmers very badly.”
Drought and environmental effects from climate change have continued to plague the country in recent years. An El Niño induced drought led to a shortfall of 9.3 million tons in southern Africa’s April 2016 maize production, according to a UN report.
“It has caused our economy to drop … This is a way of looking at how we can boost our economy,” says the young Mngqengqiswa.
Initial trials involved the girls programming and launching small CricketSat satellites using high-altitude weather balloons, before eventually helping to configure the satellite payloads.
Small format satellites are low cost ways of gathering data on the planet quickly. Tests so far have involved collecting thermal imaging data which is then interpreted for early flood or drought detection.
“It’s a new field for us [in Africa] but I think with it we would be able to make positive changes to our economy,” says Mngqengqiswa.
Ultimately, it is hoped the project will include girls from Namibia, Malawi, Kenya, and Rwanda.
Mngqengqiswa comes from a single parent household. Her mother is a domestic worker. By becoming a space engineer or astronaut, the teenager hopes to make her mother proud.
“Discovering space and seeing the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s not something many black Africans have been able to do, or do not get the opportunity to look at,” says Mngqengqiswa.
The schoolgirl is right; in half a century of space travel, no black African has journeyed to outer space. “I want to see these things for myself,” says Mngqengqiswa, “I want to be able to experience these things.”
Her team mate, Bull agrees: “I want to show to fellow girls that we don’t need to sit around or limit ourselves. Any career is possible – even aerospace.”
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America is great because of its willingness to accept talented immigrants.
That’s what Nandan Nilekani, the billionaire co-founder of Infosys Technologies, would tell President Trump if he had the opportunity.
“If you really want to keep the U.S. … globally competitive, you should be open to overseas talent,” Nilekani said on the sidelines of CNN’s Asia Business Forum in Bangalore.
Infosys (INFY) is India’s second-largest outsourcing firm, and a major recipient of U.S. H-1B visas. The documents allow the tech firm to employ a huge number of Indians in U.S. jobs.
The Trump administration is now considering significant changes to the visa program. Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in January that Trump will continue to talk about reforming the H-1B program, among others, as part of a larger push for immigration reform.
Curbs on the visas could hit Indian workers hardest.
India is the top source of high-skilled labor for the U.S. tech industry. According to U.S. government data, 70% of the hugely popular H-1B visas go to Indians.
Shares in several Indian tech companies — including Infosys — plunged spectacularly two weeks ago amid reports of an impending work visa crackdown.
Related: Tech industry braces for Trump’s visa reform
Nilekani said it would be a mistake for the administration to follow through.
“Indian companies have done a great deal to help U.S. companies become more competitive, and I think that should continue,” Nilekani said. “If you look at the Silicon Valley … most of the companies have an immigrant founder.”
India’s contribution to the industry — especially at top levels — has been outsized. The current CEOs of Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT), for example, were both born in India.
Related: India freaks out over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas
But Nilekani, who is also the architect of India’s ambitious biometric ID program, suggested that India would ultimately benefit from any new restrictions put in place under Trump’s “America First” plan. If talented engineers can’t go to the U.S., they will stay in India.
“This issue of visas has always come up in the U.S. every few years, especially during election season,” he said. “It’s actually accelerated the development work [in India], because … people are investing more to do the work here.”
Nilekani cited his own projects for the Indian government as an example.
The Bangalore-born entrepreneur left Infosys in 2009 to run India’s massive social security program, which is known as Aadhaar. As a result of the initiative, the vast majority of India’s 1.3 billion citizens now have a biometric ID number that allows them to receive government services, execute bank transactions and even make biometric payments.
“It was built by extremely talented and committed Indians,” Nilekani said. “Many of them had global experience, but they brought that talent and experience to solve India’s problems.”
Nilekani said the country’s massive youth population is increasingly choosing to stay home and pitch in.
“It’s India first,” he said.
CNNMoney (Bangalore, India) First published February 13, 2017: 2:19 PM ET
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