Month: June 2022

The sub-orbital rocket blasted off from the tiny site early on Monday local time.

It will enable astrophysics studies that can only be undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere, Nasa says.

The launch was also the first in Australia in more than 25 years.

The rocket is Nasa’s first of three to blast off from the newly constructed Arnhem Space Centre on the edge of the Northern Territory.

Scientists hope it will help them study the impact of a star’s light on the habitability of nearby planets.

Onlookers who travelled to the remote site glimpsed the rocket for only about 10 seconds before it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

“It was in the blink of an eye, but to me, it was like it was in slow motion because the whole area just lit up,” Yirrkala School co-principal Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

“It went up, and then the sound, it was just like a rumbling boom, like nothing I’ve ever heard. And I just shook with amazement.”

But the data gathered in that time will help illuminate the secrets of star constellations 430 million light years away, says the chief executive of Equatorial Launch Australia, which runs the space centre.

“Without getting too deep into the science, it was effectively a large X-ray camera looking at various astrological phenomenon and trying to capture parts of boulders in the Milky Way and particularly the star cluster of Alpha Centauri,” Michael Jones told the local network Nine.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles hailed the launch as an “extremely proud” moment for Australia, adding it was conducted with the blessing of the region’s Aboriginal traditional owners.

“Here on Yolngu land, young Territorians can look up at the sky and know what can be done,” Ms Fyles said.

“When we see the oldest living culture combining with the science of space, as we have here, it’s something we can all reflect on and be very proud.”

Australia has stepped up its space efforts in recent times, unveiling a defence agency focused on countering Russia and China’s ambitions in space.

The Arnhem Space Centre is the first and only commercially owned and run equatorial launch site in the world.

“We have achieved a remarkable feat and made a huge mark in the history of Australia’s journey in space,” Mr Jones said in a statement.

“[It] confirms that we and Australia can provide access to space and this is just the beginning for us.”

The next launch is expected to take place on 4 July.

Nasa has pledged to collect all material and debris and return them to the US.

The Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) relaunches a scheme unveiled at last year’s G7 talks in England.

US President Joe Biden said the plan would deliver returns for everyone.

China’s multi-trillion dollar infrastructure initiative is criticised for hitting nations with too much debt.

“I want to be clear. This isn’t aid or charity,” Mr Biden said of the G7’s PGII scheme. “It’s an investment that will deliver returns for everyone.”

The scheme would allow countries to “see the concrete benefits of partnering with democracies,” the US president added.

The plan calls on G7 leaders to raise $600bn over five years to fund the launch of infrastructure projects in middle and low-income countries.

The US has promised to raise $200bn (£162bn) of the total through grants, federal funds and private investment, while the EU has announced a further 300bn euros (£257bn).

The initiative will be geared towards tackling climate change, improving global health, achieving gender equity and building digital infrastructure.

Some of the highlighted initiatives include a solar-powered project in Angola, a vaccine manufacturing facility in Senegal, and a 1,609 km submarine telecommunications cable connecting Singapore to France via Egypt and the Horn of Africa.

The plan has been pitched as a way to counter China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Launched by Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2013, the BRI provides financing for emerging countries to build infrastructure like ports, roads and bridges.

While it has developed trade links, it has also been criticised as a means of providing “predatory loans”, forcing debt-saddled countries to cede key assets if they fail to meet their debt repayments.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the aim of the latest project was to present a “positive powerful investment impulse to the world to show our partners in the developing world that they have a choice”.

The infrastructure plan was first unveiled at the 2021 G7 summit in Britain. Called the Build Back Better World at the time, the US-driven plan faltered from a lack of progress, and the project was renamed to PGII before being resuscitated at the 2022 summit.

It imposes tougher checks on young buyers and encourages states to remove guns from people considered a threat.

Congress approved the legislation with bipartisan support this week, following a spate of mass shootings.

“While this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives,” Mr Biden admitted.

In May shootings at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and a primary school in Uvalde, Texas, left a total of 31 people dead.

As he signed the legislation on Saturday, Mr Biden said relatives of the victims expected the US government to do something. “Well today, we did,” he added.

The reforms include:

President Biden, as well as gun safety groups, had pushed for bigger reforms – including banning assault weapons, which were used in the Texas and Buffalo shootings – or at least an increase in the age at which they can be purchased.

The gunman in the Texas shooting is believed to have bought two semi-automatic rifles days after turning 18.

The new legislation is also significant because it is the first time in decades that the reforms have received support from both Democrats and Republicans.

Historically, efforts to strengthen US gun laws have been blocked by the Republican party.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) opposed the bill, arguing that it would not stop the violence.

There are an estimated 393 million firearms currently in the US.

It has the highest rate of firearms deaths among the world’s wealthy nations – more than 20,900 people have been killed in gun violence in the US this year, according to Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit research group.

But it is also a country where many cherish gun rights that are protected by the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

The last significant federal gun control legislation was passed in 1994, banning the manufacture for civilian use of assault rifles and large capacity magazines – but it expired a decade later.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court struck down a New York law restricting who can legally carry a gun – effectively expanding gun rights.

Although polls indicate that most Americans support gun control efforts, many Republican senators represent states with large pro-gun communities.

And Republican voters whose support they need to win primary elections – the selection process within each party – are even more opposed to reform.

He said Iskander-M systems “can fire ballistic and cruise missiles, both conventional and nuclear types”.

The systems have a range of up to 500km (310 miles).

Tensions between Russia and the West have escalated, following President Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine on 24 February.

Mr Putin has made several references to nuclear weapons since then, which some have interpreted as a warning to Western countries not to intervene.

Speaking in St Petersburg, Mr Putin also said Russia would help to modify Belarusian SU-25 warplanes so that they could carry nuclear weapons, in response to a query from Mr Lukashenko.

In a separate development on Saturday, Ukraine said Russian forces “have fully occupied” the key eastern city of Severodonetsk, following weeks of fierce fighting.

Taking the city means Russia now controls nearly all of Luhansk region and much of neighbouring Donetsk – the two regions that form the vast industrial Donbas.

In his video address late on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged to take back “all our cities” occupied by Russia.

But he said the war with Russia had entered an emotionally difficult stage and he did not know how many more blows and losses there would be.

On Friday night Russia launched a barrage of missiles at targets in the north and west of Ukraine. At least three people were killed and more may be buried under rubble in the town of Sarny west of Kyiv, a local official said.

Some of the rockets were fired from Belarus, Ukraine said. Belarus has provided logistical support to Russia but its army is not officially taking part in the conflict.

Ukraine’s intelligence service said the missile strikes were part of Kremlin efforts to draw Belarus into the war.

Several explosions were reported in Kyiv on Sunday morning, the city’s mayor said.

Russia’s capture of Severodonetsk comes ahead of a week of Western diplomacy, with US President Joe Biden flying to Germany for a G7 summit followed by Nato talks.

In recent months, the Western alliance has shown signs of strain and fatigue but on Saturday UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Ukraine could win its battle with Russia.

“Now is not the time to give up on Ukraine,” he said.

On Sunday Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who is due to attend the G7, said he would urge the Ukrainian and Russian leaders to restart dialogue.

“War has to stop and global food chains need to be reactivated,” he said.

At Saturday’s televised meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in St Petersburg, Mr Putin said: “We have made a decision: within the next few months we will hand over to Belarus the Iskander-M tactical missile systems.”

He said all the details of the transfer would be worked out by the ministries of defence of the two countries.

Iskander missiles have already been deployed in Kaliningrad, a small Russian Baltic exclave between Nato members Lithuania and Poland.

The two presidents also discussed Lithuania’s decision to prevent some goods being transported to and from Kaliningrad – a move that has angered Moscow.

The Belarusian leader said Lithuania’s move was “a sort of declaration of war” and “unacceptable”.

Steel and some other Russian goods come under the EU sanctions imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Lithuania says its measures affect only 1% of the normal Russian goods transit on the route, dismissing Russian talk of a “blockade” of Kaliningrad.

And the leaders of the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan face a difficult challenge.

They are aiming to put on a show of unity and resolve over the war. In recent months, the Western alliance has shown signs of strain and fatigue.

Some voices – particularly in France, Germany and Italy – have asked if it might not be better for the war to end, even if it came at the cost of Ukraine having to cede territory. A recent cross-Europe opinion poll suggested some voters put solving the cost-of-living crisis ahead of punishing Russia.

Others argue about the need to salvage some kind of relationship with Russia in the future.

Countries like the UK, Poland and the three Baltic States have been resisting these arguments, saying that any peace deal with Moscow that is not on Ukraine’s terms would lead to further Russian aggression in the future. President Zelensky is likely to reinforce this argument when he addresses the summit virtually on Monday.

So the G7 leaders are expected to try to use the summit to clear these muddy waters, promising more weapons to Ukraine and more sanctions against Russia. The idea will be to send a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the West has the strategic patience to maintain its support for Ukraine, even if it faces domestic political pressure at home from voters concerned about rising prices.

The problem for G7 leaders is they also face growing pressure to show they are tackling the global economic crisis. The soaring price of fuel and food is causing hunger and unrest across the world. And some countries are pointing the finger at the West.

Many countries in the global south do not share Western concerns about Russian aggression. They see the conflict as a European war and seem unmoved by Western arguments that Vladimir Putin is acting as a colonial aggressor. And they blame Western sanctions – as much as Russia’s invasion – for the rising costs of gas and oil, and the massive shortage of wheat and fertiliser.

To try to resist this narrative, G7 countries are expected to use the summit to show they are acting to help countries round the world – with development aid, debt restructuring, climate finance, help finding alternative sources of energy and, of course, fresh efforts to get grain out of Ukraine’s ports. That is why German has invited the leaders of India, Indonesia, Senegal, Argentina and South Africa to the summit, to hear their perspective and show the rest of the world the G7 is listening.

So on the one hand, these Western leaders must show resolve to keep backing Ukraine, and on the other, they must show a readiness to fix the global economic shocks that some blame, in part, on the war.

One senior US official described the dilemma thus: “How do we maximise pain on Putin’s regime? How do we minimise spillbacks back to the rest of the world?”

The prime minister was asked if he would like to serve a full second term in office – to 2028 or 2029.

“At the moment I’m thinking actively about the third term and what could happen then, but I will review that when I get to it,” he told reporters.

One Tory MP has said he wants the rules changed so Mr Johnson could face another confidence vote.

Speaking to reporters in Kigali, Rwanda, where he has been at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, the prime minister was asked to elaborate on his comment, replying that he was thinking “about a third term – mid 2030s”.

No 10 later suggested he was joking, but it points to Boris Johnson’s bullish mood despite two bruising by-election defeats in the past week in Wakefield, and Tiverton and Honiton.

Following the results, party co-chairman Oliver Dowden resigned, saying “someone must take responsibility”.

The Lib Dems overturned a huge Tory majority in Tiverton and Honiton – their third by-election victory over Boris Johnson’s party in a year.

And Labour retook the seat of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, which it lost at the 2019 general election.

Former Conservative leader Michael Howard called on Mr Johnson to resign following the by-elections, adding “members of the cabinet should very carefully consider their positions”.

Mr Johnson insisted he would lead his party into the next election, and said he wanted to keep driving forward his plan to reduce inequality across the country – what his government calls “levelling-up”.

While acknowledging it would take time, he added that a “huge amount of progress” could be made in two parliaments.

He told reporters: “Forget about me, think about what this country, the UK could do and where it’s gone.

“We’ve embarked on a massive project to change the government, the constitution of the country and the way we run our legal system, the way we manage borders, our economy, all sorts of things we’re doing differently.

“Also at the same time we are embarked on a colossal project to unite and level up. I happen to believe in that incredibly strongly.

“Levelling-up is a great, great mission and it won’t be easily accomplished and people will say it hasn’t worked, it’s not working yet, people in this constituency aren’t feeling the benefits – it’s going to take time and I want to keep driving it forward.”

But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused the prime minister of “taking voters for granted with impunity”, saying “those days are over”.

“They now face a credible Labour Party: a government-in-waiting with a plan to deliver on the country’s demands,” Sir Keir wrote in the Observer.

“For months, Johnson has been privately claiming that he will hold an early election. My message to him is simple: bring it on,” he added.

During his trip to Rwanda to meet Commonwealth leaders, Mr Johnson showed little sign of the pressure he’s faced from critics in his own party who’ve called on him to quit.

And Mr Johnson refused to comment on a report in the Times that he planned to build a £150,000 treehouse for his son Wilf in the grounds of Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence, with possible funding from a Tory donor.

On Saturday he said the question of his leadership was “settled” after he won a confidence vote among his own MPs.

But Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen confirmed he wanted the party’s rules changed so that Mr Johnson could face another vote of confidence before 12 months are up.

Under the current rules, Mr Johnson is technically safe from a challenge until next June.

Mr Bridgen told the BBC: “Boris Johnson is actually galvanising an anti-Boris Johnson vote.

“The leader of the party should normally be more popular than the party itself, but what we’re seeing with Johnson is he’s a huge drag on the ticket.”

He will urge allies to continue backing Kyiv against Moscow’s “barbarism,” saying now is not the time to give up on Ukraine.

The prime minister will pledge £429m in guarantees for World Bank lending.

He will attend the G7 summit in Germany and Nato’s meeting in Madrid on Sunday as his leadership is being questioned.

Mr Johnson is due back in the UK on Thursday.

By-election defeats in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton on Friday have led to calls for a change in leadership, with Conservative Party co-chairman Oliver Dowden quitting his post, saying it could not be “business as usual”.

But in an interview on Saturday with BBC’s Radio 4’s Today programme, the prime minister said that while he “humbly and sincerely” accepted criticism, he also had to distinguish between “criticism that really matters and criticism that doesn’t”.

Voters were “fed up with hearing conversation about me,” he said, and wanted to focus instead on the cost of living, the economy and “standing up to violence and aggression” in Ukraine.

Ahead of the G7 summit, held in the Bavarian Alps, Mr Johnson said: ” Future generations will be awed and inspired by the truly heroic Ukrainian resistance in the face of Putin’s barbarism.

“Ukraine can win and it will win. But they need our backing to do so. Now is not the time to give up on Ukraine.”

He warned that Ukrainians should not be encouraged to “settle for a bad peace” where they were “invited to give up chunks of their territory in return for a ceasefire” in the war against Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is also due to address the G7 countries – the UK, US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy – via videolink on Sunday.

Ukraine is urgently asking for more financial help due to fears it could run out of funding by the autumn without further support.

The loan guarantees provided by the UK will take its package of economic and humanitarian support for Ukraine to £1.5bn.

Boris Johnson will also urge Western allies to increase sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies.

At the Nato summit the prime minister will also push for increased defence spending across the alliance and support Sweden and Finland’s bids to join the organisation.