The pilot of the Mriya cargo plane, the heaviest aircraft in the world, on Saturday (April 2) said there was no hope for its restoration after it was destroyed by a Russian attack on Hostomel Airport.
Russian forces withdrew from the airport near the capital, which has been subject to fighting since the first day of the conflict, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in a regular bulletin on Saturday.
Returning to assess the damage at the airport, pilot Dmytro Antonov walked past the wreckages of several planes before reaching what remained of the Antonov-225 Mriya – which in Ukrainian means “dream”.
“The sadness is so indescribable. I just realised that exactly two months ago I went on my last business trip. I flew on Mriya,” he said.
Ukrainian state arms manufacturer Ukroboronprom reported in February that the Mriya, which can carry up to 250 tonnes, had been set ablaze in a Russian attack and that restoring it would cost more than $3 billion.
Sporting red hair, a striped jumpsuit and eye-catching makeup, a new wax figure of late rock star David Bowie as alter-ego Ziggy Stardust was unveiled at Madame Tussauds in London on Thursday (March 31), completing a music-themed line-up at the museum.
Using measurements and images from a 1983 sitting, Madame Tussauds said it had worked with Bowie’s estate to create the figure, the second to be made in the singer’s likeness at the museum.
The British singer-songwriter died from cancer in 2016, aged 69.
“David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust transcends generations and music genres,” Tim Waters, general manager at Madame Tussauds London, said in a statement.
“We were honoured to work with his estate in what would have been his 75th year and play our small part in keeping his inimitable legacy alive for generations to come.”
The new figure stands in the museum’s revamped Music Festival zone, which also includes replicas of Ariana Grande, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, as well as Beyoncé, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix and Ed Sheeran.
President Joe Biden on Thursday (March 31) launched the largest release ever from the U.S. emergency oil reserve and challenged oil companies to drill more in an attempt to bring down gasoline prices that have soared during Russia’s war with Ukraine.
The announcement comes as part of a broad effort by Biden to tackle raging inflation that has hurt U.S. consumers and threatens Biden’s fellow Democrats as they seek to maintain control of Congress in the November elections.
Starting in May, the United States will release 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil for six months from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), he said.
Analysts Reuters spoke with had mixed reactions to the news.
“Symbolically, good idea, it had some impact on the price of the futures today, and that’s either good or bad, depending on which side of the market you may be speculating on. But in terms of the big supply-demand function? No, it’s not terribly important. Symbolic? Yes. Substantive. Much less so,” said George Ball, Chairman of Sanders Morris Harris. “Although they’re much derided, the state gasoline tax holidays actually do a great deal more for the driver, for the consumer, for the public than what the president announced today.”
“Our belief is that it will be beneficial to consumers because now we will see a reduction in gasoline prices. It should be beneficial to GDP growth because, for every ten dollar increase in oil prices on a prolonged basis, it takes off 20 basis points or one-fifth of one per cent of real GDP. And that works in reverse, too,” said CFRA Research’s Chief Investment Strategist Sam Stovall.
Biden’s 180 million-barrel release is equivalent to about two days of global demand and marks the third time Washington has tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the past six months.
It will more than cover oil exports to the United States from Russia, which Biden banned this month. Russia typically produces about 10% of the world’s crude, but only accounts for 8% of U.S. liquid fuel imports.
But the release will fall short of a loss of about 3 million bpd of Russian oil which the International Energy Agency estimates will be lost to global markets amid Western sanctions and as global buyers avoid the oil.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding foreign buyers pay for Russian gas in roubles from Friday (April 1) or else have their supplies cut, a move European capitals rejected.
Putin’s move, via a decree signed on Thursday (March 31), leaves Europe facing the prospect of losing more than a third of its gas supply. Germany, the most heavily reliant on Russia, has already activated an emergency plan that could lead to rationing in Europe’s biggest economy.
“European countries have a short term problem. They import something like 155 billion cubic feet of gas from Russia every year, and that can’t be made up by liquid national gas or other supplies from the US or elsewhere over the very short term. So they’ve got a big current dependency problem that over the long term is is almost certainly going to cause them to seek alternative sources. The U.S. can supply, for example, much of the LNG needs to go to Europe to substitute for Russia. But it will take us 10 years to build the production and the export capacity to do that. In the short term, a big problem. Longer-term, it may actually end up kicking Russia in its ass by what they’re demanding today,” Ball said.
It was not immediately clear whether in practice there might be a way for foreign firms to continue payment without using roubles, which the European Union and G7 group of states have ruled out.
A source told Reuters that payments for gas delivered in April on some contracts started in the second half of April and May for others, suggesting the taps might not be turned off immediately.
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have discovered the most distant individual star on record, a bright behemoth they nicknamed Earendel – Old English for “morning star” – because it existed during the dawn of the universe.
Researchers said the star, very hot and blue in colour, was estimated at 50 to 100 times the mass of our sun while being millions of times brighter. Its light travelled for 12.9 billion years before reaching Earth, meaning that the star existed when the universe was just 7 per cent of its current age.
Earendel was born roughly 900 million years after the Big Bang event at the outset of the universe. It belonged to among the earliest generations of stars at a time when the universe was quite different than it is today.
“This really opens up a new window into those early days of the universe,” said astronomer Brian Welch of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, lead author of the research published this week in the journal Nature.
“We’re seeing the star in the time period that is often referred to as Cosmic Dawn – when the first light in the universe was starting to turn on with these first stars and when the first galaxies are starting to form,” Welch added.
Explaining its nickname, Welch said the researchers figured that the “morning star” existing during the Cosmic Dawn period was “a good parallel.”
“It’s also for the ‘Lord of the Rings’ nerds out there,” he added, noting that Earendel is the same Old English word that author J.R.R. Tolkien used for inspiration for a character from his work “The Silmarillion” that becomes a star.
In observing objects as distant as Earendel, scientists are peering into the deep past because of the vast distance the light from the star travelled to reach Earth – in a sense, using Hubble as a time machine.
“So normally when we look at very distant objects, what we’re seeing is the light from an entire galaxy – so millions of stars all blended together – and we’ve been able to see those out to even farther distances. But in this case, thanks to a very massive cluster of galaxies in the foreground, the light from this one star has just been very, very highly magnified, so we’re able to see this single star at a much greater distance,” Welch said.
The first Hubble images of Earendel were obtained in 2016, with 2019 follow-up observations. The researchers are hoping to study it further using the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, due to become operational within months after being launched in December.
Welch said the researchers were surprised by the discovery, saying, “Yeah, there was definitely a period of wondering whether this could possibly be real.”
Until now, the most distant single star on record was one nicknamed Icarus which existed 4 billion years after Earendel.
Earendel was probably much different than the stars populating the universe today. Welch said it was likely composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, with perhaps trace amounts of heavier elements including carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.
Welch said the first stars formed roughly 100 million years after the Big Bang explosion and that perhaps one or two generations of stars had preceded Earendel’s formation.
Heavier elements did not exist until they were forged in the fusion caldrons of the cores of the initial generations of stars, then were blasted into space when these earliest stars exploded at the end of their life cycles.
Even though scientists on Earth can now see its light, Earendel itself certainly no longer exists, with such huge stars having relatively short lifespans, Welch said. It existed for perhaps a few hundred million years before dying in a supernova explosion.
“Massive stars tend to live fast and die young,” Welch said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday (March 31) said the situation in the south and the Donbas region remained extremely difficult and reiterated that Russia was building up forces near the besieged city of Mariupol.
And in a rare sign of internal dissent, Zelenskiy also said in a video address that he had sacked two senior members of the national security service on the grounds they were traitors.
Zelenskiy, who often uses colourful imagery, said the Russians were so evil and so keen on destruction that they seemed to be from another world, “monsters who burn and plunder, who attack and are bent on murder.”
Russia says it is carrying out a “special operation” to disarm and “denazify” its neighbour.
Moscow also denies Kyiv’s accusations that Russian forces are targeting civilians.
Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces had pushed back the Russians from Kyiv and Chernihiv – two cities Moscow had announced would no longer be the focus of attacks as they seek to secure the separatist Donbas and Luhansk regions in the south-east.
“There will be battles ahead. We still need to go down a very difficult path to get everything we want,” he said.
“The situation in the south and in the Donbas remains extremely difficult.”
Zelenskiy also said he had fired two top officials at the national security service – the overall head of internal security as well as the head of the agency’s branch in the Kherson region.
“I do not have time to deal with all the traitors, but they will gradually all be punished,” he said, adding that the two men had betrayed their oath to defend Ukraine.
He did not give specific details.
The occasion marked the first time Zelenskiy has announced high-profile sackings of those involved in Ukraine’s defence.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed just how much Germany’s industrial backbone relies on Russian gas, hitting Europe’s top economy where it hurts most and threatening its ability to compete as alternative supplies won’t come cheap and fast.
While supply chain disruptions have been one of the more immediate consequences for German industry, nowhere is the impact of the war more visible than on the gas market, where prices have risen more than five-fold on concerns about oversupply.
That is putting immense pressure on Germany’s “Mittelstand” belt of small and mid-sized firms, ranging from steelmakers to chemicals producers, that are seen as the foundation of the country’s economy and account for more than half of all jobs.
Kelheim Fibres, one of the world’s biggest makers of viscose fibres, is a case in point.
“We are suffering from the very large increase in gas prices and the daily threats that gas could maybe no longer be delivered,” Kelheim Fibres Managing Director Craig Barker told Reuters on Wednesday (March 30).
“Without gas,” Barker added, “we have to shut the plant down. That’s clear.”
The employer of 600, whose fibres end up in everything from tea bags, textiles and banknotes to wipes and tampons, expects its gas bill alone to increase more than five-fold this year to 100 million euros ($110 million).
That eats up more than half of the up to 180 million euros in annual sales it gets from its customers, including global heavyweights Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark.
According to another member of the firm’s management team, if the situation does not change soon Kelheim would have no choice but to ask clients to accept longer production breaks as the first line of defence.
Kelheim Fibres entirely depends on gas for its energy-intense production because it operates a gas-fired power plant onsite and cannot use other, cheaper sources, leaving it with no alternative but to pay up.
Claudia Kemfert, the head of the DIW economic institute’s energy department, said Germany could turn to other countries “should less gas arrive here.”
“The best way is to do everything to get away from natural gas, assist the industry and save energy,” Kemfert told Reuters.
In Frankfurt, shoppers at an outdoor fruit and vegetable market had mixed reactions to a possible disruption of Russian gas supplies.
One expressed concern while another said of rapidly rising prices: “when you think of what is necessary to put this aggressor in his place, then it’s something I believe we can live with” in reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has started to reposition less than 20% of the forces arrayed around Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, the Pentagon said on Wednesday (March 30), but cautioned Russia was expected to refit and resupply them for redeployment, and not bring the forces home.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said at a news briefing that some of the Russian forces may have already moved into Belarus, as opposed to their home garrisons.
“If the Russians are serious about de-escalating, cause that’s their claim here, then they should send them home. But they’re not doing that,” Kirby said.
Military analysts say Russia has reframed its war goals in Ukraine in a way that may make it easier for Moscow to claim a face-saving victory despite a woeful campaign in which his army has suffered humiliating setbacks.
Russian contractor Wagner Group had deployed about 1,000 contractors into Ukraine’s Donbas region, which Moscow has declared a priority, Kirby said.
We have seen indications that the Wagner Group is recruiting in places like Syria in places like northern Africa, Libya,” Kirby said.
Kirby also told reporters that he agreed with reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin was misled by advisers who were too scared to tell him how poorly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging Western sanctions have been.
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of its southern neighbour has been halted on many fronts by stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces who have recaptured territory even as civilians are trapped in besieged cities.
White House and European officials said on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was misled by advisers who were too scared to tell him how poorly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging Western sanctions have been.
“We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,” Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, told reporters during a press briefing.
“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisors are too afraid to tell him the truth,” she said.
The U.S. was putting forward this information now to show “this has been a strategic error for Russia,” she said.
The Kremlin made no immediate comment about the assertions after the end of the working day in Moscow, and the Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Bedingfield also said now is clearly not the time to scheme with Putin, when asked about former President Donald Trump’s calling on Putin to release information about Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.
“What kind of American, let alone an ex-president, thinks that this is the right time to enter into a scheme with Vladimir Putin and brag about his connections to Vladimir Putin? There is only one and it’s Donald Trump,” she told reporters.
In a small corner of southeast England, vast greenhouses stand empty, the soaring cost of energy preventing their owner from using heat to grow cucumbers for the British market.
Three generations of Tony Montalbano’s family have farmed cucumbers at Roydon in the Lea Valley, northeast of London. Montalbano has been growing for the past 24 years; his family for five decades.
While last year it cost about 25 pence to produce a cucumber in Britain, that has now doubled and is set to hit 70 pence when higher energy prices kick in, trade body British Growers say.
“Normally you would see, at this stage, fully grown plants, cucumbers harvesting, we would have staff working away here,” Montalbano told Reuters as he walked around the empty greenhouses.
All 30,000 square metres of the glasshouse at his Green Acre Salads business, which supplies supermarket groups including market leader Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons are currently empty.
Montalbano, whose grandfather emigrated from Sicily in 1968 and started a nursery to provide local stores with fresh cucumbers, decided not to plant the first of the year’s three cycles in January.
He had wanted to plant cucumbers later this year in the hope gas prices would drop, but in March, gas was around five times more than what he was paying in 2021.
Last year he paid 40-50 pence a therm for natural gas. Last week it was 2.25 pounds a therm, having briefly hit a record eight pounds in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
Fertiliser prices have tripled versus last year while the cost of carbon dioxide and hard to attain labour have also shot up.
Montalbano is not the only British producer having problems.
Further afield growers have also failed to plant peppers, aubergines and tomatoes after a surge in natural gas prices at the end of last year were exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, making the crops economically unviable.
The hit to UK farms, which need gas to counter the country’s inclement weather, is one of the myriad ways the energy crisis and invasion has hit food supplies around the world, with global grain production and edible oils also under threat.
In Britain, it is likely to push food prices higher, at a time of historic inflation, and threaten the availability of goods such as the quintessentially British cucumber sandwich served at the Wimbledon tennis tournament and big London hotels.
Jack Ward, the CEO of British Growers, said growers have been feeling the pressure for years.
“These, albeit small businesses are a strategically important part of our food supply because in the season the majority of the products that we buy through retailers will come from UK farms,” Ward told Reuters.
For the industry it means a massive contraction, threatening Britain’s future food security, and further price rises for UK consumers already facing a bigger inflation hit than other countries in Europe.
UK inflation hit a 30-year high of 6.2% in February and is forecast to go close to 9% in late 2022, contributing to the biggest fall in living standards since at least the 1950s.
In winter, the UK has typically imported around 90% of crops like cucumbers and tomatoes but is nearly self-sufficient in the summer.
Growers in the Netherlands, one of Britain’s key salad suppliers, face similar challenges and have cut exports.
Spain and Morocco do not heat their glasshouses to a large extent, but delivery in chilled lorries adds time and cost.
Growers want help from the government. They have lobbied for tax and levies on gas to be removed, but finance minister Rishi Sunak did not mention it in his spring budget last week.
Despite the dismal backdrop and after much soul-searching, Montalbano will plant a crop next month, fearing the loss of future contracts if he does not. He may gamble on the British weather, and grow “cold”, with little or no heat.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday called on the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan to do their best to support the Afghan people to create a brighter future when delivering written remarks at the third Foreign Ministers’ Meeting among the Neighboring Countries of Afghanistan.
Xi pointed out that having gone through so much in the past, Afghanistan is in urgent need of development in many areas. The country has come to a critical point of transition from chaos to order.
“Afghanistan is a common neighbour and partner of all participating countries, and we form a community with a shared future linked by the same mountains and rivers who would rise and fall together,” said Xi.
A peaceful, stable, developing and prosperous Afghanistan is the aspiration of all the Afghan people. It is also in the common interests of regional countries and the international community, Xi said.
Xi underscored that amity and good neighbourliness are invaluable to a country. China has always respected Afghanistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and has been committed to supporting its pursuit of peace, stability and development.
Since its launch last September, the coordination and cooperation mechanism among neighbours of Afghanistan has endeavoured to bring into play the strengths of neighbouring countries, thus playing a constructive role in promoting the smooth transition in Afghanistan, Xi said.
Xi concluded his remarks at the meeting held in east China’s Anhui Province by stressing that the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan should do their best to build consensus and coordinate efforts to support the people of Afghanistan in building a brighter future.
Germany on Wednesday (March 30) an “early warning” that it could be heading for a gas supply emergency and said the measure was designed to prepare for a possible disruption or stoppage of natural gas flows from Russia.
The move comes ahead of Moscow’s plan to present a new mechanism under which gas payments will be switched to roubles, a move that has been rejected by the G7 nations, including Germany, but stoked fears of supply disruptions. Read full story
Under Germany’s existing gas emergency plan, the early warning is the first of three stages and does not yet imply state intervention.
Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement that supplies were safeguarded for the time being and that Germany was closely monitoring supply flows with market operators.
“We are taking this step today because it was announced that tomorrow Russian officials will present legal changes which for us signifies a clear breach of contract, by making payment in roubles the law. We obviously don’t know what will be in the legal changes yet. It likely will come down to the details but we want to be prepared for this,” Habeck told a news conference.
Habeck said that the team, which includes members of his ministry, the German network regulator, and network operators, would closely monitor the situation “so that – if necessary – further measures could be taken to increase supply security.”
The head of German network regulator Bundesnetzagentur, Klaus Mueller, in a tweet said the early warning aimed to avoid a deterioration of supply and urged consumers and industry to prepare for “all scenarios.”
If there is a gas supply disruption and Germany does not secure enough gas, the industry will be hit first. It accounts for a quarter of German gas demand.
Private households will have priority over the industry, while hospitals, care facilities, and other public sector institutions with special needs would be the last to be affected by the disruption.
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