The climber ascended from the observation point

"We don’t know whether she had this planned before she ever got to Liberty Island or whether it was a spur-of-the-moment decision," Walker said.Willis said federal regulations prohibit hanging banners from the monument.Last February, someone hung a banner reading "Refugees Welcome" from the observation deck. "People have the right to speak out.A year earlier, a West Virginia man was sentenced to time served after calling in a bomb threat that forced the evacuation of Liberty Island, sending 3,200 people on boats back to lower Manhattan and New Jersey.Earlier and farther below, at least six people were taken into custody after unfurling a banner that read "Abolish ICE," referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose officers arrest and deport immigrants who are in the US illegally, among other duties. It also has been a setting for protests and other actions that forced evacuations."I feel really sorry for those visitors today" who had to leave or couldn’t come, spokesman Jerry Willis said.

A protest against US immigration policy forced the evacuation of the Statue of Liberty on, Wednesday, the Fourth of July, with a group unfurling a banner from the pedestal and a woman holding police at bay for hours after she climbed the base and sat by the statue’s robes.About 100 feet (30 meters) aboveground, the woman engaged in a four-hour standoff with police before two officers climbed up to the base and went over to her.The woman and at least a half-dozen demonstrators who displayed the banner were arrested, while the climb forced thousands of visitors to leave the iconic American symbol on the nation’s birthday. That resulted in more than 2,000 children Wholesale Torsion spring machine Manufacturers being separated from their parents within six weeks this spring. With the dramatic scene unfolding on live television, she and the officers edged carefully around the statue toward a ladder, and she climbed down about 25 feet (8 meters) to the monument’s observation point and was taken into custody.In 2000, 12 people protesting the Navy’s use of the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques for bombing exercises were arrested after a man climbed out on the spires of the statue’s crown and attached flags and banners to it. Visitors were forced to leave Liberty Island hours before its normal 6:15 pm closing time, he said. But Trump, a Republican, said on Twitter last week that abolishing ICE will "never happen!"The Statue of Liberty has long been a welcoming symbol for immigrants and refugees coming to the US.A spokesman for the National Park Service, which runs the monument, saw it differently. I don’t think they have the right to co-opt the Statue of Liberty to do it."

The climber ascended from the observation point, Willis said.Under Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, the government has begun requiring border agents to arrest and prosecute anyone caught entering the country illegally."Abolish ICE" has become a rallying cry at protests around the country and for some Democratic officeholders seeking to boost their progressive credentials. The sign was taken down about an hour after being discovered.The climber was among about 40 demonstrators who earlier unfurled a banner calling for abolishing the federal government’s chief immigration enforcement agency, said Jay W Walker, an organizer with Rise and Resist, which arranged the demonstration..US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said the president’s immigration policy is a step forward for public safety.The woman, Therese Okoumou, told police she was protesting the separation of immigrant children from parents who cross the US-Mexico border illegally, according to a federal official who was briefed on what happened but wasn’t authorized to discuss it and spoke on the condition of anonymity.Walker said the other demonstrators had no idea the woman would make the ascent, which wasn’t part of the planned protest. A message left at a possible phone number for Okoumou wasn’t immediately returned.Regardless, he said he felt the publicity would help the group’s cause. A federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration late last month to reunite the more than 2,000 children with their parents in 30 days.Under public pressure, Trump later halted his policy of taking children from their detained parents.

The largest impact is to the rovers cameras

The Martian dust storm has grown in size and is now officially a planet-encircling (or global) dust event.Curiosity, he pointed out, plus a fleet of spacecraft in the orbit of Mars will allow scientists for the first time to collect a wealth of dust information both from the surface and from space.While Opportunity is powered by sunlight, which is blotted out by dust at its current location, Curiosity has a nuclear-powered battery that runs day and night. The atmospheric haze blocking sunlight, called tau, is now above 8.6 miles (30 kilometres) away from where it stands inside the crater. Daily photos captured by its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, showed the sky getting hazier.But conditions here prevent them from spreading globally, said Ralph A. The weather conditions have prompted NASAs Opportunity rover to suspend science operations.Tau was last measured near 11 over Opportunity, thick enough that accurate measurements are no longer possible for Mars oldest active rover. In some cases, the dust clouds reach up to 40 miles (60 kilometres) or more in elevation. This spring in machine sun-obstructing wall of haze was about six to eight times thicker than normal for this time of the season. But across the planet, NASAs Curiosity rover, which has been studying Martian soil at Gale Crater, is expected to remain largely unaffected by the dust.Though Curiosity is on the other side of Mars from Opportunity, the dust has steadily increased over it, more than doubling over the weekend. For NASAs human scientists watching from the ground, Curiosity offers an unprecedented window to answer some questions.A storm of tiny dust particles has engulfed much of Mars over the last two weeks.

The largest impact is to the rovers cameras, which require extra exposure time due to the low lighting. Earth has dust storms, too, in desert regions such as North Africa, the Middle East, and the southwest United States. By contrast, the current storm, if it were happening on Earth, would cover the area of North America and Russia combined, said Guzewich. Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, leading Curiositys dust storm investigation.. The last storm of global magnitude that enveloped Mars was in 2007, five years before Curiosity landed there.Curiositys engineers at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have studied the potential for the growing dust storm to affect the rovers instruments, and say it poses little risk.Though they are common, Martian dust storms typically stay contained within a local area. The rover already routinely points its Mastcam down at the ground after each use to reduce the amount of dust blowing at its optics. The dust storm may seem exotic to some Earthlings, but its not unique to Mars. This enhances the process by helping suspend the dust particles in the air. Earth also has vegetation cover on land that binds the soil with its roots and helps block the wind and rain that wash the particles out of the atmosphere.0 at Gale Crater - the highest tau the mission has ever recorded.In the animation, Curiosity was facing the crater rim, about 18. One of the biggest: Why do some Martian dust storms last for months and grow massive, while others stay small and last only a week.Carbon dioxide frozen on the winter polar cap evaporates, thickening the atmosphere and increasing the surface pressure."We dont have any good idea," said Scott D. Kahn, a Goddard senior research scientist who studies the atmospheres of Earth and Mars. The findings are made by NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center research. These include the structure of our thicker atmosphere and stronger gravity that helps settle the dust. As the atmosphere warms, winds generated by larger contrasts in surface temperature at different locations mobilize dust particles the size of individual talcum powder grains.Martian dust storms are common, especially during southern hemisphere spring and summer, when the planet is closest to the Sun.