After numerous defeats in their war of aggression, Russian troops in Ukraine now have a new commander.

Army General Sergei Surovikin, 55, was sent by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to lead the “special military operation” – as Russia calls the war against Ukraine – ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov in Moscow said on Tuesday. Saturday.

According to commentators, Shoigu is accommodating his critics, who in view of the defeats have called for the regrouping of troops in Ukraine. The situation was recently described as chaotic and catastrophic by military bloggers close to the Kremlin. According to the media, war reporters, field commanders and Wagner’s private combat troops reacted enthusiastically to the appointment of the “responsible” soldier.

More on the war in Ukraine:

Experience from Syria and Chechnya

Surovikin is considered an officer with extensive experience in warfare, including in the past in Syria and before that in the Russian republic of Chechnya in the North Caucasus. The “Hero of Russia” was appointed commander of the space forces in 2017. In view of the many successes of the Ukrainian army in its defensive offensive and the reconquest of many cities, Surovikin faces great challenges.

The Russian army had recently withdrawn from the Kharkiv region and also had to give up the strategically important city of Lyman in the Donetsk region. This once again sharpened criticism of the Russian military leadership.

300,000 reservists must be recruited

Faced with this, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin ordered partial mobilization in September, which, in addition to new commanders, is expected to bring about a turnaround for Russia in Ukraine. About 300,000 reservists are to be called in to hold the occupied parts of the Kherson, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Donetsk regions and recapture the lost regions.

Russia annexed the largely occupied areas after false referendums on accession to its territory under international protest. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that all occupied territories will be liberated, including the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

Space hotels, locations from scifi books and movies, may soon become a reality albeit for a few. Hilton, one of the largest hotel chains in the world, has formalized a partnership to form Starlab, the space station expected to be operational by 2027.

The agreement signed with Voyager and Lockheed Martin, the companies responsible for the project, stipulates that Hilton will also take care of the common areas of the space station. The idea is that it will be used in research by scientists and astronauts as well as research Exploration of space tourism.

The station was intended to accommodate up to four astronauts and house the George Washington Carver Science Park, now located on the International Space Station.

• What it’s like to see Earth from space: SpaceX tourists post orbit travel photos
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“Hilton will have the opportunity to leverage this unique environment to enhance the guest experience wherever they travel,” Chris Nassetta, president of the hotel chain, told Travel + Leisure magazine.

In 2021, Starlab received a $160 million donation from NASA, the United States space agency. The amount was intended for Nanoracks, a sort of “parent company” of Voyager, and was to be used to begin development of the station.

There are no details on Hilton’s project for Starlab just yet, but there are other initiatives signaling what space hotels should look like.

The US space agency NASA has signed contracts for three more stations with three other companies Axiom Space, Blue Origin and Northropp Grumman. They are part of the “Destination Program” and are intended to combine scientific research and space tourism.

NASA’s goal is to replace the International Space Station, which is being built and managed by the United States, Russia, the European Union, Japan and Canada. The construction has been in orbit since 1998 and is expected to be out of service in 2030. Learn more about the three projects.

The Axiom Station, scheduled to be operational in 2024, already has a set price: eight days in the module will cost US$55 million, about R$281 million.

The French architect Philippe Starck is responsible for the appearance of the station. The idea is to offer an experience close to that of a hotel on Earth in the decoration there are large rooms, televisions, computers and a kind of space deck to observe the planet.

2 of 8 space observatory planned for Axiom Station — Photo: Disclosure/Axiom Space

Space observatory planned for Axiom Station — Photo: Disclosure/Axiom Space

3 of 8 Axiom Space Station Concept — Photo: Handout/Axiom Space

Axiom Space Station Concept — Photo: Handout/Axiom Space

4 of 8 interior concept of the Axiom space station — Photo: Publicity/Axiom Space

Concept of the interior of the Axiom space station — Photo: Disclosure / Axiom Space

The Orbital Reef space station is a project by Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The project was announced in 2021 and is expected to be operational in 2027. The module is said to be 830 cubic meters in size and offer space for 10 people.

To promote the project, the film “Helios”, due to start filming in 2023, will show a group of astronauts protecting the station from a solar flare. The action takes place in the year 2030.

5 of 8 Orbital Reef, a project Blue Origin plans to deliver in 2027 — Photo: Disclosure/Blue Origin

Orbital Reef, a project Blue Origin plans to deliver in 2027 — Photo: Disclosure/Blue Origin

6 of 8 Interior of Orbital Reef, Blue Origin space station project — Photo: Disclosure/Blue Origin

Interior of Orbital Reef, Blue Origin space station project — Photo: Disclosure/Blue Origin

7 of 8 Interior of Orbital Reef, Blue Origin Space Station Project — Photo: Disclosure/Blue Origin

Interior of Orbital Reef, Blue Origin space station project — Photo: Disclosure/Blue Origin

The Northropp Grumann station has already received $125.6 million from NASA.

Its main difference will be its positioning in space the construct, designed for eight people, will be in a lower Earth orbit.

8 of 8 Northropp Grumann Station will be closer to Earth — Photo: Disclosure/Northrop Grumann

The Northropp Grumann station will be closer to Earth — Photo: Disclosure/Northrop Grumann

The return of commercial supersonic flight

Meet Optimus, a humanoid robot from Elon Musk’s company

Meet Optimus, a robot being developed by Elon Musk’s company

Will the Wetlands and Water Conservation Act achieve the goal of zero net loss? To date, only 2.6% of Quebec’s raised funding has been spent on restoration projects. Experts offer solutions to a problem that is all too often overlooked.

Posted at 12:00 p.m

Eric Pierre Champagne The press

Meals are expensive

One of the rare wetland restoration or creation projects approved by the Department of Environment and Climate Change Mitigation (MELCC) is underway in Montreal at a cost of $1 million. This should make it possible to restore an area of ​​22,000 m⁠2 in the wooded area of ​​the Marcel Laurin Park in the Saint-Laurent district. Last July, the city hired a research officer specializing in ecological remediation for a three-year term. According to Marc-Olivier Fritsch of Montreal’s communications department, the city is currently preparing a tender to select a specialist firm to carry out the work by 2025. It should be noted that to date only 2.6% of the $92.5 million raised by the Quebec government has been allocated to wetland restoration or creation projects.

PHOTO HUGO-SEBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS

Boisé du Parc Marcel-Laurin, in the Saint-Laurent district

stop the destruction

According to lawyer Jean-François Girard, who specializes in environmental law, “the real approach would be to stop the destruction of wetlands”. According to him, Quebec risks finding itself in a situation “where things will get worse” in a few years’ time. An opinion shared by biologist Kim Marineau with more than 30 years of experience. “Before you create new wetlands, you have to protect the existing ones,” she says. The situation in Montérégie is particularly critical, she specifies. Wetlands, especially bogs, are also carbon and methane sinks. Greenhouse gases are released when these environments are destroyed or disturbed. A 2021 study published in the journal Science Advances calculated that destroying Canada’s remaining intact wetlands could release 15 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

It takes a plan

“You have to have an overview of this subject,” says André Bélanger, Executive Director of the Rivières Foundation. You cannot simply give future generations problems to solve. He suggests that Quebec take inspiration from the federal Species at Risk Act, which provides for a classification of endangered species. In this way, the MELCC could identify those wetlands that absolutely must be protected and for which there are no compensation options. According to him, the destruction of wetlands for compensation is a kind of “bottomless hole” that will not achieve the goal of no net losses. “The government should also set binding targets. For example, the Ontario government has set a goal of halting net wetland loss in areas with the greatest losses by 2025. Ontario’s strategy also calls for gains by 2030, again in the hardest-hit regions.

A ball carrier

Biologist Kim Marineau believes a board should be set up that will be responsible for setting goals and measuring progress. “It will also require long-term monitoring [des nouveaux milieux humides] and an interview, otherwise all these efforts would have been in vain. In her opinion, the only thing the government can do is wait for organizations or municipalities to show interest in creating new wetlands. Especially since the costs are likely to be significantly higher than the sums that are taken as financial compensation, she believes. She specifies that the new law and its compensation scheme have not really stopped the destruction of these natural habitats. “In the minds of the organizers, nothing has really changed. The only difference is that now they ask how much it will cost [pour détruire des milieux humides]. »

Amendment of the Agricultural Land Protection Act

“It’s a matter of land use planning,” says Sébastien Rioux, director of Ducks Unlimited in Quebec, an organization that specializes in wetland conservation and restoration. In his opinion, we also need to think about expanding the “playing field” to create new wetlands. “We are ripe for an update of the Agricultural Land and Agricultural Activities Protection Act in 2022 in the context of the climate and biodiversity crisis. He considers it necessary to provide for the possibility of developing wetlands on agricultural land “at the right time and in the right place”, without having to systematically request derogations. “These are green infrastructures from which both farmers and the population benefit. »

The Rano Raraku volcanic crater quarry, where ancient Rapa Nui created the majestic Moai on Easter Island, is off-limits to fire engines. For this reason, when the National Forestry Corporation (Conaf) received reports of a fire in the area last Tuesday, they had to send firefighters to put out the flames on foot. The complexity of the task, combined with the high winds, allowed the blaze to burn through 104 hectares of grassland and damage about 80 moai. Of the 416 stone statues erected in the area, 20% have suffered some damage as a result of the fire, which is already under control, according to preliminary figures released by Easter Island Mayor Pedro Edmunds at a breakfast with journalists in Santiago this Friday.

There are “completely charred” moais and others whose effects of fire are still unknown, speeding the transformation from rock to sand. “A lot of them look good on the outside, but the crack is on the inside,” explains Edmunds. The fire occurred in a particularly sensitive heritage area of ​​the tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and part of Chile’s Valparaíso region 3,600 kilometers away. As a quarry of mysterious statues, one can still see some unfinished ones embedded in the volcanic rock, like the Te Tokanga, 22 meters long and weighing about 200 tons.

“The burning of the Moais is death in life. The Moais are our ancestors, it’s not the monument in Plaza Baquedano. It is the image, the soul, of the people of Rapa Nui. Having these monuments there is a teaching of humanity in the sense of the scientific, practical, logistic, mystical, planning and in the sense of the deities,” said the mayor, who has served five periods of itinerant service since 1994.

In previous fires that have also affected some moai, Japanese and Chilean scientists from the National Monuments Council have applied chemical solutions to the stone to create a protective layer. Before deciding what action to take, they must assess the damage in collaboration with UNESCO, which declared the island a World Heritage Site in 1986.

Edmunds traced the origin of the flames to the burning of pastures “which some horse and cow breeders do on the island. It’s something historical, there’s always someone who burns it.” Agriculture Minister Esteban Valenzuela announced this Friday that the cause of the fire is being investigated and that Conaf will have a permanent forest brigade in Easter Island year-round.

The minister also asked the mayor for “shared responsibility”. “You have to understand that autonomy is not self-isolation. There has to be a technical surveillance work that they do with Conaf and also share responsibility because illegal land has been confiscated here, including areas of the national park,” said Valenzuela.

Ninoska Huki, provincial chief of Conaf on Easter Island, told La Tercera that the company “hires brigades during the wildfire season, and that starts in the second half of October through April,” so the brigade was not active. Chile is also the only country in the world where its firefighters are volunteers, and attracting new young people to the fire service is becoming increasingly difficult. From July 1, 2020 to April 21 this year, 60 forest or vegetation fires occurred on the island, 13% fewer than in the same period last year.

During his visit to Santiago, just after the island reopened to tourism after nearly two and a half years of being closed due to the pandemic, the mayor met with President Gabriel Boric and some of his ministers to call for a budget adjustment for Easter Island. Because Rapa Nui thrived on tourism, the isolation “bankrupted” the community, according to the municipality. Of the 800 park rangers hired to prevent fires, clean up, stop tourists from scratching the statues, etc., there are now only 120 in the 16,000-acre park. The island receives just three weekly flights — 750 passengers – compared to the 14 that arrived before the closure – 8,000 passengers. “Who will come to you to help put out fires if you don’t pay them? It’s that simple,” said the mayor, who didn’t get the readjustment for the 2023 budget.

PAUL FAITH v AFP Police forensic officers investigate the area around a sealed off petrol station in north Belfast January 23, 2017 after a police officer was shot dead on January 22. – A man has been arrested after a Belfast police officer was arrested and injured in an alleged drive-by shooting on Sunday in what the Police Federation of Northern Ireland has said amounted to a “terrorist gun attack”. The police officer was hit in the arm after several shots and the officer was taken to hospital for surgery. (Photo by Paul FAITH / AFP)

PAUL GLAUBE / AFP

An explosion at a petrol station in north-west Ireland killed seven people on Friday evening October 7th. (illustratively, police officers survey the area around a closed off petrol station in north Belfast on 23 January 2017)

IRELAND – The sound of a bomb. At least nine people have been killed in an explosion at a petrol station in northwest Ireland, police said on Saturday October 8. In addition, eight people have been hospitalized while the search for possible other victims continues.

However, police have given no explanation as to the origin of this explosion, which occurred in the village of Creeslough, some fifty kilometers from the Northern Ireland border, this Friday afternoon.

Relief at war

An aerial view taken after the explosion shows the destroyed gas station building. Two two-story apartment buildings behind it collapsed. Local resident Kieran Gallagher, whose home is about 150 meters from the scene, said the detonation made him think of a “bomb”: “I was at home when I heard an explosion. (…) It was like a bomb,” he told the BBC.

𝗜𝗥𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗘 Seven people have died after the explosion at a petrol station in County Donegal, Republic of… https://t.co/lXwBSLAtYd

— The News (@TNews_24)

See the tweet

The emergency services worked all night. Irish Police, Fire Brigade, Ambulance and Coastguard, the Northern Ireland Air Ambulance Service and a team of British provincial specialists were again on the scene this morning. Letterkenny University Hospital, 15 miles from the gas station, was placed on an emergency basis and said it was attending to “multiple injuries”.

Damage reminiscent of the “Troubles”.

In a statement, Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said his “thoughts and prayers (are) today with those who lost their lives and were injured in this devastating blast”. “People across the island are being struck by this tragic loss of life with the same sense of shock and utter devastation as are the people of Creeslough,” he said, thanking members of the emergency services “who spent the night in extremely traumatic circumstances “ had worked.

Agriculture Secretary Charlie McConalogue, an elected official from the blast-hit region, compared the scenes of the devastation to those of the Northern Ireland conflict in the second half of the 20th century. “The scenes of the event are reminiscent of images from The Troubles years ago in terms of damage and debris.”

For three decades, the conflict in Northern Ireland pitted itself against nationalists, mainly Catholics, who favored the reunification of the island of Ireland, and loyalists, mainly Protestants, who clung to keeping the province under the British Crown. This conflict claimed around 3,500 lives.

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