Aug 19 (Reuters) – The Russian spacecraft on a mission to the moon’s south pole has produced its first results and they are being analysed, Russia’s national space agency Roskosmos said on Saturday. The presence of water has implications for major space powers, potentially allowing longer human sojourns on the moon that would enable the mining of lunar resources. It added that its equipment had registered “the event of a micrometeorite impact”. The agency also posted images of the moon’s Zeeman crater taken from the Luna-25 spacecraft, which is scheduled to make a landing on the south pole on Monday after circling the Earth’s only natural satellite for five days. The Luna-25 entered the moon’s orbit on Wednesday, the first Russian spacecraft to do so since 1976. Roughly the size of a small car, it will aim to operate for a year on the south pole, where scientists at NASA and other space agencies in recent years have detected traces of frozen water in the craters. The Zeeman crater is the third deepest in the moon’s southern hemisphere, the agency said, measuring 190 km in diameter and eight km in depth. Roskosmos said data it had received so far had provided information about the chemical elements in the lunar soil and would also facilitate the operation of devices designed to study the near-surface of the moon. Writing by Gareth Jones.

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Workers at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are said to be completely ‘paralyzed’ in the middle of tax season as chaos reigns supreme following the arrival of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It all began quietly on a gray morning in mid-February when Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old tech wiz who was seemingly plucked straight from a Silicon Valley coding bootcamp. The 20% to 25% target includes the roughly 5,000 IRS employees who took a buyout last month and potentially 7,000 probationary workers who were fired, though court rulings could lead to the reinstatement of probationary staff, the person said. The agency has been thrown into turmoil with inside sources saying the future of America’s tax collection itself is teetering on the edge of collapse. The tax-collecting agency that has long been a target for Republicans, is planning to eliminate 20% to 25% of its workforce by May 15, according to a person briefed on the agency’s plans. They just randomly drop by people’s offices, demanding access to systems; they’re bullying us and there’s no discipline in what they are doing, which really worries me,’ one IRS employee said during a hushed phone call with CNN. Kliger marched into the IRS headquarters in Washington DC without so much as a security escort. Stunned staffers say his mission was to seize control of the IRS’s tax administration systems. The IRS had about 100,000 workers when Trump took office, meaning up to 25,000 are set to lose their jobs. Within minutes, Kliger was reportedly demanding access to databases holding the sensitive financial data of millions of American taxpayers.

As the DOGE operatives dug in, the casualties began to mount.

That data is protected under some of the strictest confidentiality laws in the federal government. Did Treasury give them that authority? Staffers say he looked to terminate almost all IRS programs funded for the current fiscal year – programs specifically designed to modernize the tax filing process and improve customer service for millions of Americans. An atmosphere of despair has now taken hold within the walls of IRS offices. Kliger was soon joined by Sam Corcos, a 36-year-old entrepreneur whose past achievements include designing diet apps. Corcos was there to trim the fat off the IRS with ‘delete’ quickly becoming his favorite word. By March, thousands of IRS employees had already been fired – everyone from from auditors to customer service reps – as DOGE pushed a sweeping plan to eliminate nearly 20% of the workforce before the May 15 deadline. He just walked in like he owned the place as if decades of taxpayer trust, laws, and protections didn’t matter,’ a veteran IRS manager recalled. Does Gavin have that authority? As the DOGE operatives dug in, the casualties began to mount. More than 110 taxpayer assistance offices are set to close, leaving vast swaths of the country without in-person help during the busiest tax season of the year. They’ll come in and say we’re going to delete that initiative – ‘delete’ is one of their favorite terms,’ an IRS employee said. So, we are scrambling to figure out: Does Sam have that authority?

The IRS leadership is itself in also in freefall.

It’s now routine to see people crying in the office,’ said one union leader outside Washington. Elon Musk and his son son X follow President Trump and board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base on Friday in Maryland. After Biden-appointed commissioner Danny Werfel resigned on Inauguration Day, without waiting for the end of his five-year term, chaos reigned. You’ve got a lot of new blood getting fired, that’s supposed to be the future of the workforce,’ Olson said to CNN. The IRS leadership is itself in also in freefall. Veteran tax experts are sounding the alarm about what they see as a deliberate gutting of the IRS, with profound consequences for the entire US government. His acting successor retired mere weeks later, and Trump’s nominee, former GOP Congressman Billy Long, still awaits Senate confirmation. Melanie Krause, now acting head of the agency, has only three-and-a-half years of IRS experience under her belt. Then you’ve got the most skilled people, at the height of their institutional knowledge, leaving through retirement. In many cases, those long wait times ended with a courtesy disconnect,’ an IRS employee lamented. The IRS’s once-improving customer service stats are set to reverse as a result of the cut. The average phone wait time, which had been brought down from 28 minutes in 2022 to just three minutes last year, will likely spiral back to pre-reform chaos. With processing returns and issuing refunds continuing on autopilot for now the real danger lies just beyond in the near future with crippling delays, skyrocketing customer service wait times, and a tax system more vulnerable to fraud and abuse.

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So far, Elon Musk, has stayed quiet. Most chilling of all are allegations that DOGE’s true mission may extend far beyond slashing budgets – toward weaponizing tax data against undocumented immigrants. According to sources, DHS has circulated a memo asking the IRS for sweeping amounts of data on immigrants who used individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITINs) to pay taxes. These include home addresses and employment information – data strictly protected under federal law. GOP Rep. Pete Sessions brushed off Musk’s role, saying Musk is ‘trying to get the astronauts back from space’ and is more interested in White House ‘photo opportunities’ than running the IRS – but the fingerprints of Musk’s budget-busting ideology are everywhere. As Americans rush to file taxes, most remain unaware that behind the scenes, the very agency responsible for funding the government is being dismantled before their eyes. Two IRS insiders say DOGE operatives are already searching for ways to facilitate these handovers – a move immigrant-rights advocates warn would lead to mass arrests and deportations, in violation of decades-old taxpayer privacy protections.