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ByAlanFram The Associated Press WASHINGTON Congress voted Thursday to perma- nently bar state and local governments from taxing access to the Internet, as lawmakers leapt at an elec- tion-year chance to demon- strate their opposition to imposing levies on online service. On a vote of 75-20, the Senate gave final congres- sional approval to the wide- ranging bill, which would also revamp trade laws. President Barack Obama is expected to sign it. "The Internet is a re- source used daily by Amer- icans of all ages," said Sen- ate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who bro- kered an agreement with a Democratic leader ear- lier this week that helped clear the way for passage. "It's important that they be able to do all of this without the worry of their Internet access being taxed." The ban on local Inter- net access taxes had broad support. Even so, some lawmakers remained un- happy over its trade pro- visions and because the measure omitted a sepa- rate, more controversial proposal to let states force online retailers to collect sales taxes for their trans- actions. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the bill was full of "missed op- portunities and half-mea- sures." Since 1998 in the In- ternet's early days, Con- gress has passed a series of bills temporarily prohibit- ing state and local govern- ments from imposing the types of monthly levies for online access that are com- mon for telephone service. Such legislation has been inspired by a popular sen- timent that the Internet should be free, along with Republican opposition to most tax proposals. Until now, states that im- posed Internet access taxes have been allowed to con- tinue. Under the approved bill, those states would have to phase out their taxes by the summer of 2020. LEGISLATION Congress OKs to banning local Internet taxes By Ahn Young-Joon The Associated Press PAJU, SOUTH KOREA North Korea on Thursday or- dered a military takeover of a factory park that had been the last major symbol of cooperation with South Korea, calling Seoul's ear- lier suspension of opera- tions at the jointly run fa- cility as punishment for the North's recent rocket launch a "dangerous dec- laration of war." North Korea said it was responding to Seoul's shutdown order by im- mediately deporting the hundreds of South Kore- ans who work at the com- plex just across the world's most heavily armed bor- der in the city of Kae- song, pulling out the tens of thousands of North Ko- rean employees and freez- ing all South Korean as- sets. The North also said it was shutting down two crucial cross-border com- munication hotlines. Hours after a deadline set by North Korea passed, South Korea's government said all of the 280 South Ko- rean workers who had been at the facility had finally re- turned to the South. Their departure quashed concerns that some might be held hostage, and low- ered the chances that the standoff might lead to vi- olence or miscalculations. Tensions have risen since North Korea's nuclear test last month, followed by its long-range rocket launch on Sunday that outsiders see as a banned test of ballistic missile technology. South Korea responded Thursday by beginning work to sus- pend operations at the fac- tory park, one of its harsh- est possible punishment op- tions. South Korea said it would ban reporters from the bor- der crossing on Friday. TENSIONS NK or ea or de rs ta ke ov er of inter-Korean factories By Seth Borenstein The Associated Press WASHINGTON In an an- nouncement that electri- fied the world of physics, scientists said Thursday that they have finally de- tected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. Astronomers hailed the finding as an achievement of historic proportions, one that opens the door to a new way of observ- ing the universe and the violent collisions that are constantly shaping it. For them, it's like turning a si- lent movie into a talkie be- cause these waves are the soundtrack of the cosmos in action. "Until this moment, we had our eyes on the sky and we couldn't hear the mu- sic," said Columbia Univer- sity astrophysicist Szabolcs Marka, a member of the discovery team. "The skies will never be the same." An all-star international team of astrophysicists used an exquisitely sensi- tive, $1.1 billion set of twin instruments known as the Laser Interferometer Grav- itational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, to detect a gravi- tational wave generated by the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years from Earth. "Einstein would be beaming," said National Science Foundation direc- tor France Cordova. The LIGO control room is set up so that data comes in in audio form and sci- entists can listen by head- phones. In this case, the ev- idence consisted of a single, faint chirp — or perhaps more accurately, a thud — that was picked on Sept. 14. "That's the chirp we've been looking for," said Louisiana State University physicist Gabriela Gonza- lez, scientific spokeswoman for the LIGO team. Scien- tists said they hope to have a greatest hits compilation of the universe in a decade or so. Some physicists said the findingisasbigadealasthe 2012 discovery of the sub- atomic Higgs boson, known as the "God particle." Some said this is bigger. "It's really comparable only to Galileo taking up the telescope and looking at the planets," said Penn State physics theorist Ab- hay Ashtekar, who wasn't part of the discovery team. Physicist Stephen Hawk- ing congratulated the LIGO team, telling the BBC: "Gravitational waves provide a completely new way of looking at the uni- verse. The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionize astronomy." Gravitational waves, first postulated by Albert Ein- stein in 1916 as part of his theory of general relativity, are extraordinarily faint ripples in space-time, the continuum that combines both time and three-di- mensional space. When massive objects like black holes or neutron stars collide, they send gravitational waves across the universe, stretching space-time or causing it to bunch up like a fishing net. Scientists found indi- rect proof of gravitational waves in the 1970s by studying the orbits of two colliding stars, and the work was honored as part of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics. But now scientists can say they have actually detected a gravitational wave. "It's one thing to know soundwaves exist, but it's another to actually hear Beethoven's Fifth Sym- phony," said Marc Kami- onkowski, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University who wasn't part of the dis- covery team. "In this case, we're actually getting to hear black holes merging." In this case, the crash- ing of the two black holes stretched and squished Earth so that it was "jig- gling like Jell-O," but in a tiny, almost imperceptible way, said David Reitze, LI- GO's executive director. The dual LIGO detectors went off just before 5 a.m. in Louisiana and emails started flying. "I went, 'Holy moly,'" Reitze said. But the finding had to be tested and verified, us- ing even conventional tele- scopes, before the scientists could say with confidence that it was a gravitational wave. They concluded there was less than a 1-in-3.5- million chance they were wrong, he said. LIGO technically wasn't even operating in full sci- ence mode; it was still in the testing phase when the signal came through, Rei- tze said. "We were surprised, BOOM, right out of the box, we get one," Reitze said. Detecting gravitational waves is so difficult that when Einstein theorized them, he figured scien- tists would never be able to hear them. In fact, the greatest scientific mind of the 20th century came to doubt himself in the 1930s and questioned whether such waves really do exist. SCIENCE Milestone: Scientists detect Einstein's gravity ripples ANDREWHARNIK—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS A visual of gravitational waves from two converging black holes is depicted on a monitor behind Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory as co-founder Kip Thorne as he speaks at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington Thursday. VOTING IS UNDERWAY! Vote for your favorite Tehama County Businesses before Wednesday, February 24. OnlineBallotsOnlyat www.redbluffdailynews.com Five Lucky Voters will be selected at random from all eligible ballots on March 4. Each will receive a $100 Shopping Spree at the Tehama County business of their choice! Mustvotefor10categoriestoqualify. 4,678fans+20 this week | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2016 6 B