Author: AFP
An asteroid that could level a city now has a 3.1 percent chance of striking Earth in 2032, according to NASA data released Tuesday — making it the most threatening space rock ever recorded by modern forecasting. Despite the rising odds, experts say there’s no need for alarm. The global astronomical community is closely monitoring the situation and the James Webb Space Telescope is set to fix its gaze on the object, known as 2024 YR4, next month. “I’m not panicking,” Bruce Betts, chief scientist for the nonprofit Planetary Society told AFP. “Naturally when you see the percentages go up,…
French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday he will host a new meeting on Ukraine after the talks between the new US administration and Russia, adding that Donald Trump “can restart a useful dialogue” with Vladimir Putin. In an interview with French regional newspapers, Macron said Paris was not “preparing to send ground troops, which are belligerent to the conflict, to the front” in Ukraine but was considering, with its ally Britain, sending “experts or even troops in limited terms, outside any conflict zone”. He said the new talks would take place on Wednesday “with several European and non-European states”, after…
Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has said it will lay an undersea cable stretching across five continents to carry data, including for developing artificial intelligence. The cable will run for more than 50,000 kilometres (31,000 miles) between the US, South Africa, India, Brazil and “other regions”, Meta wrote in a blog on Friday. Global digital communication relies on a vast network of undersea conduits, with roughly 1.2 million kilometres of cable already installed, according to a 2024 report by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The links can be short hops between countries or globe-spanning systems…
Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has said it will lay an undersea cable stretching across five continents to carry data, including for developing artificial intelligence. The cable will run for more than 50,000 kilometres (31,000 miles) between the US, South Africa, India, Brazil and “other regions”, Meta wrote in a blog on Friday. Global digital communication relies on a vast network of undersea conduits, with roughly 1.2 million kilometres of cable already installed, according to a 2024 report by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The links can be short hops between countries or globe-spanning systems…
Spain said Monday it was “too soon” to discuss sending its troops to war-torn Ukraine as part of any potential peacekeeping force after Britain declared it was ready for such a move. “It is too early at the moment to talk about deploying troops in Ukraine. There is no peace at the moment, and the effort has to be to achieve it as soon as possible,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told a joint news conference with his visiting Brazilian counterpart Mauro Vieira. “When we have peace, we will have to see what conditions that peace requires. And whenever there…
Argentine ex-president Alberto Fernandez was ordered to stand trial for allegedly beating his ex-girlfriend, according to a court ruling issued Monday. Fabiola Yanez, 43, filed a complaint against Fernandez, 65 — by then her ex-partner — after messages detailing the alleged violence cropped up in a separate fraud investigation against him. The messages, with photographic evidence, were found on the phone of Fernandez’s private secretary, Maria Cantero. The phone was being analyzed as part of a probe into alleged influence peddling during Fernandez’s administration. After initially deciding not to press charges, Yanez later contacted the investigating judge to file a…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Europe’s current military capabilities “weak” in an interview broadcast on Monday, after the continent’s leaders held emergency talks in Paris on defence and Ukraine war. While “readiness has increased” in recent years, “in terms of troop strength, the number of combat troops, the fleet, the air force, the drones… I honestly think that Europe is weak today”, Zelensky said, according to a translation from the ARD broadcaster of an interview recorded on Saturday.
The first anniversary of Alexei Navalny’s death in jail is a stark reminder that Moscow is holding “more than 2,000 political prisoners”, the UN’s expert on rights in Russia said Monday. Their lives remain at grave risk unless they are released immediately, claimed Mariana Katzarova, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia. “These detainees must be freed before another political prisoner loses their life in Russian custody, just like Navalny did a year ago,” she said in a statement. Navalny — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent declared “extremist” by Moscow — died on February…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview broadcast Monday that the United States was trying to “please” Moscow in talks on Ukraine and warned of Europe’s military “weakness”. Reacting to conciliatory comments towards Russia by US officials, Zelensky said: “The US is now saying things that are very favourable to Putin… because they want to please him.” “They want to meet quickly and have a quick win. But what they want — ‘just a ceasefire’ — is not a win,” Zelensky said, according to a translation provided by broadcaster ARD of an interview recorded Saturday in Munich. US President…
Russia is “threatening all Europe now”, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned on Monday after emergency talks in Paris over the US change in policy on the Ukraine war. The war in Ukraine has been about Russia’s “imperial dreams, about building a stronger and a bigger Russia, and I don’t think they’re going to stop in Ukraine”, she told reporters, warning the US against attempts to agree a “fast” ceasefire that would give Russia the chance to “to mobilise again, attack Ukraine or another country in Europe”.