Denmark’s air force showed off its brand-new electric-powered planes on Thursday, saying its test flights have so far proven that the cheaper-to-run, more eco-friendly technology has potential.
It had obtained the two Velis Electro jets from Slovenian manufacturer Pipistrel, becoming the first military in the world to operate this type of hardware.
“The aircraft are 100% emission-free, very quiet, and otherwise cheap to operate,” Lieutenant Colonel Casper Børge Nielsen of the Defense Ministry’s material and procurement agency said. Initial tests indicate “there may be perspectives in using electric aircraft when the technology becomes mature,” he added.
Denmark has leased the planes for two years, rather than buying it, to avoid the “risk of ending up with equipment that we can’t really use,” Børge Nielsen said. During the lease period, the Danish Air Force hopes to gain an insight into the benefits and disadvantages of the jets’ technology to decide how it can be applied in the future.
The pilots described flying the one-man light electric planes, which are powered by two lithium batteries, as “exciting,” saying they were “built well and fly well.”
Last year, the United States military said it had been keeping an eye on the development of electric-powered planes, describing their ability to approach targets silently as “tremendous.” However, their battery capacity isn’t currently sufficient to meet the US Air Force’s needs.
Work on electric aircraft has been underway since the 1970s, but the battery issue has been a stumbling block in the way of wider adoption of the technology. Global military interest could change all that, stimulating research and investment.
The switch to electric power is likely to be a win-win across the board, as it will drastically reduce CO2 emissions and also make flying much cheaper for commercial carriers and their passengers.
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Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar is set to challenge Gaddafi’s son for the top job, announcing his presidential bid. The election will take place on December 24.
“I declare my candidacy for the presidential election, not because I am chasing power but because I want to lead our people towards glory, progress and prosperity,” the de facto leader of Eastern Libya said in a televised speech.
Haftar added that the election is the only way out of the severe crisis the country has been plunged into.
The announcement was expected; in September, Haftar announced that he was temporarily stepping down as head of the force known as the Libyan National Army, fulfilling the requirement for presidential hopefuls to suspend public work three months before an election.
Haftar will run against the son of former leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who represents the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya.
Haftar’s presidential bid is likely to anger many who consider him a war criminal responsible for the indiscriminate killing of civilians during his military campaign. A number of civil lawsuits have been filed against him in a US federal court for alleged war crimes. Haftar has both US and Libyan citizenship, and owns property in Virginia.
Following years of civil war and political chaos after the NATO-backed intervention that saw Muammar Gaddafi deposed and brutally murdered, the upcoming election is widely viewed as an opportunity for political settlement and the long-awaited unification of the country, divided now between Haftar’s forces and the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. However, there is still no consensus on the legal grounds for the election, which could become an obstacle for the peace process.
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has acted to proscribe the Palestinian group Hamas “in its entirety,” stating that it has significant capacity to carry out terrorist acts and has facilities to train attackers.
In a tweet on Friday, Patel stated that she had banned the Palestinian group Hamas and designated it a terrorist organization, as she reiterated the British government’s commitment to “tackling extremism and terrorism wherever it occurs.”
“Hamas has significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities,” she wrote.
The home secretary’s tweet came during her visit to Washington and followed speculation on Friday morning that she was soon to outlaw the group.
Pre-empting Patel’s announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett welcomed Britain’s “intention” on Twitter.
“Hamas is a radical Islamic group that targets innocent Israelis & seeks Israel’s destruction. I welcome the UK’s intention to declare Hamas a terrorist organization in its entirety – because that’s exactly what it is,” Bennett wrote, thanking the leadership of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, also hailed the expected move against Hamas, saying it was “part of strengthening ties with Britain.”
Until now, only Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, had been outlawed by the British government. The EU and the US have already proscribed all of Hamas.
Hamas political official Sami Abu Zuhri rejected Britain’s move, claiming it showed “absolute bias toward the Israeli occupation and is a submission to Israeli blackmail and dictations.”
In a separate statement, the group claimed it had a right to resist occupation by all available means, “including armed resistance.”
Hamas seized total control of Gaza in 2007, on the back of an election victory in 2006.
Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb has described an anti-lockdown protest in his city as an “orgy of violence.” The Dutch demonstration devolved into a violent riot that saw police open fire on protesters.
Aboutaleb described the events of Friday night as an “orgy of violence,” after protesters packed Rotterdam’s central Coolsingel shopping street to voice their opposition to an ongoing partial lockdown, a ban on New Year’s Eve fireworks displays, and the possibility of a two-tiered system of freedom in the Netherlands, one of liberty for the vaccinated and restrictions for those without the jab.
The protest soon got out of hand, and police said on Saturday that 57 people were arrested. Protesters were seen torching police vehicles and launching fireworks at police, who shot at them in response.
Aboutaleb said that the cops had been “forced” to use their weapons. “On a number of occasions the police felt it necessary to draw their weapons to defend themselves,” he told reporters. “They shot at protesters, people were injured.”
Police say at least seven people were injured. Two of these injuries were caused by police bullets, and the victims are still in hospital. One officer was hospitalized, while several others were treated at the scene for minor injuries.
The annual migration of red crabs has brought traffic to a standstill on an Australian island. Apart from the epic journey, the species is also notorious for eating its own young.
Tens of millions of crustaceans are swarming Canberra-governed Christmas Island, which is almost a thousand miles northwest of the Australian mainland. Parks Australia, a government body in charge of wildlife conservation on the island, has deployed its staff to manage traffic, rake crabs off roads and provide advisories to local residents regarding road closures. Authorities are well-prepared to deal with the epic crab march as it repeats every year, usually in October and November. There are even special bridges and tunnels in place, built over and under busy roads so as to minimize the number of crabs crushed by cars. The sight of millions of these creatures making their perilous trek has become one of Christmas Island’s main tourist attractions.
The exact timing of the red crabs’ journey from forest to ocean is defined by rainfall and lunar phases. The march is led by male crabs, which are later joined by females. On reaching the ocean, they mate and spawn, with each female capable of producing as many as 100,000 eggs. However, most of the young crabs never make it back to the forest as they end up being eaten by fish and whale sharks for whom this is a veritable feast. To make matters worse, the crab larvae that do make it to the beach are often devoured by returning adult crabs of the very same species, hence one of their names – the cannibal crab.
The city council in Austria’s second-largest city, Graz, has elected a new mayor. Communist Party member Elke Kahr has become the first Communist leader of a major city in the country.
The 60-year-old politician, who has been working in the municipal government for more than 15 years and previously served as vice mayor of Graz, was elected as the new city leader on Wednesday. A member of the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ, Kommunistische Partei Österreichs) for almost 30 years, she won the election with 28 of 46 votes. Kahr succeeded the previous long-standing mayor Siegfried Nagl of the center-right, liberal-conservative People’s Party.
“Who would have thought that the daughter of a locksmith, a Communist, would become mayor,” she said in her first speech following the vote.
Having acknowledged a number of issues to deal with in the city, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, the new mayor highlighted a housing policy, pledging to put a stop to profit-driven construction in Ganz.
The Communists have also already formed a coalition with the Greens and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), and another precedent in European city governance was made – two women serving as mayor and deputy. Green leader Judith Schwentner was chosen as Graz’s vice mayor, with the new governing coalition saying they would support not only social, but also environmental changes, aiming to improve living standards especially for low-income groups. Providing a bicycle for every child in the city from the municipality is in their program.
However, not everyone in the local government is happy with the new Communist rule. A member of the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Alexis Pascuttini, described the choice as “unpleasant,” having accused the Graz Communists of empty catchphrases in their program and refusing to participate in what he described as “left-wing nonsense.” Kahr herself has been exposed to strong pressure to justify her party, being repeatedly asked about her position on “the crimes of communist parties around the world since 1917,” according to Austrian media.
All cities and towns in China, as well as “most” villages, will be covered by 5G networks by 2025, the Ministry of Industry in Beijing has announced in a new infrastructure development plan.
Under the plan, the number of 5G base stations per 10,000 people will be increased to 26, and gigabit optical fiber networks will be extended to most urban and rural areas of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced on Tuesday.
Digital infrastructure has been defined as a “strategic, basic and pioneering industry to help build a new type of digital infrastructure and support economic and social development,” according to MIIT official Xie Cun.
Information technology will be “deeply integrated” with the economy and society, with the goal of spurring internet innovation and creating a business boom, the ministry added. Meanwhile, the authorities are working on “a new type of supervision system” as well as measures to protect users’ personal information and data.
At least two people were wounded by police gunfire in the Dutch city of Rotterdam after a protest over renewed Covid-19 restrictions spiraled into a violent riot, seeing demonstrators torch a squad car and clash with officers.
A large crowd of protesters showed up at Rotterdam’s iconic Coolsingel street on Friday evening to denounce a new round of pandemic measures, including an ongoing partial lockdown, a ban on New Year’s Eve fireworks displays, as well as fears the government will impose a ‘2G’ pass system allowing only the vaccinated and those who’ve recently recovered from the virus to enter a long list of public places.
At least two people were wounded during the demonstration, a local police spokesperson told Reuters, adding the injuries were “probably” due to officers’ “warning shots” but also noting that “direct shots were fired because the situation was life-threatening” to law enforcement.
Footage of the heated protest circulated online, some clips showing a police squad car fully engulfed in flames after it was apparently torched by rioters.
🇳🇱 Pays-Bas : Des émeutes sont en cours à #Rotterdam en marge d’une manifestation contre les restrictions sanitaires.
Demonstrators were also seen launching fireworks at police, who appeared to respond with large quantities of tear gas, which at one point blanketed the area.
Local law enforcement said that officers deployed a mobile riot control unit to Coolsingel and unleashed water cannon on protesters who refused to clear the streets, also noting that some arrests were made after an emergency order was imposed to cordon off the area.
The Dutch government announced the fireworks ban earlier on Friday, saying it is meant to “prevent, as much as possible, extra strain on healthcare, law enforcement and first responders.” However, while private displays are prohibited, officials said that local governments may still put on fireworks shows so long as their Covid-19 restrictions allow it.
The Netherlands currently has a ‘3G’ rule in place, allowing the vaccinated, the recently recovered, as well as those who test negative for the virus to enter most public spaces. But as the country remains under a partial three-week lockdown to rein in growing infections, officials are now mulling the stricter ‘2G’ scheme, prompting the intense demonstrations seen on Friday night.
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Japan’s fifth wave of Covid-19 has virtually disappeared so dramatically that some scientists are puzzled as to why it happened. One team suggests the highly infectious Delta strain mutated into extinction on the island nation.
In mid-August, Japan experienced a peak in Covid-19 infections, recording over 23,000 new cases per day. Now the metric is just around 170, with deaths attributed to the disease mostly remaining in single digits this month.
The decline has been attributed by many to high vaccination rates, public acceptance of masks, and other factors, but some researchers say the drop was uniquely significant, compared to other nations with similar conditions.
Ituro Inoue, a geneticist at the National Institute of Genetics, believes that Japan had the good fortune of witnessing the Delta strain mostly rooting out other variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus before then eradicating itself. He explained his team’s theory to the Japan Times newspaper this week.
For some time now, Inoue and his fellow scientists were researching mutations of SARS-CoV-2 and how they are affected by the protein nsp14, which is crucial for the reproduction of the virus.
RNA viruses, like the one causing Covid-19, tend to have a very high mutation rate, which helps them quickly adapt to changes in the environment. However, this opens the door for a so-called “error catastrophe,” when bad mutations pile up and finally cause the full extinction of a strain. The protein nsp14 appears to offer a form of error proofreading that helps the virus genome to stay below the threshold of the “error catastrophe.”
In the case of Japan’s fifth wave of Covid-19, the Delta variant’s nsp14 failed at this job, Inoue believes, based on the genetic study of specimens collected from June to October. Contrary to his team’s expectations, there was a lack of genetic diversity, while many samples had many genetic changes in the site called A394V, which is linked to the error-fixing protein.
“We were literally shocked to see the findings,” the researcher told the Japan Times. “The Delta variant in Japan was highly transmissible and [was] keeping other variants out. But as the mutations piled up, we believe it eventually became a faulty virus and it was unable to make copies of itself.”
The theory could be relevant to the previous SARS strain, which was identified in 2003, explaining why it didn’t cause a pandemic. But that would be hard to confirm, since the outbreak ended relatively quickly and didn’t result in the massive collection of genetic data necessary to test the hypothesis.
It’s not clear why Japan had this lucky turn of events, but nothing comparable happened in other East Asian countries like South Korea, where populations are genetically close to that of Japan. Virus mutations similar to those flagged by the scientists have been discovered in at least 24 countries, Inoue said. He and his team plan to publish a paper detailing their findings by the end of November.
Even if the natural extinction theory is confirmed, it is at best a temporary reprieve for the Japanese people. New, more successful strains are likely to eventually find their way into the country, though quarantine measures and immigration control could delay the emergence of new variants in Japan, Inoue believes.
Meanwhile, Tokyo is bracing for a new wave of Covid-19 this winter and is preparing to live with the virus. The government reportedly plans to ease travel restrictions by increasing the number of people it allows to enter the country per day from 3,500 to 5,000.
Greece will soon prohibit unvaccinated residents from entering a litany of public spaces, the country’s prime minister has announced, claiming its current Covid outbreak is largely fueled by those who haven’t received the jab.
Starting next week, the unvaccinated will be barred from entry to restaurants, cafes, theaters, bars, gyms and museums, among other indoor public places, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday, noting that a negative Covid-19 test will no longer be accepted as an alternative to proof of vaccination.
“This is indeed a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” he said as he announced the move in a televised address, adding “Greece is mourning unnecessary losses because it simply does not have the vaccination rates of other European countries.”
The new rules are set to take effect on Monday, and will require Greeks to present vaccine certificates to businesses and other indoor establishments to be allowed inside. Those attending religious services mark a rare exception, however, as they will only be asked to present a negative test in order to enter a church or other place of worship.
In a bid to encourage booster vaccinations among the elderly – a population much more vulnerable to Covid-19 – citizens over the age of 60 will be made to renew their certificate after a period of seven months.
While officials had hoped to hit a full vaccination figure of 70% for Greece’s population of 11 million by autumn, the number currently stands at about 62%, according to Reuters. As its weekly case counts continue to soar to record highs, the country reported 7,317 new Covid-19 infections and 63 deaths on Thursday, bringing the totals to more than 860,000 cases and some 17,000 fatalities since the pandemic kicked off in late 2019.
The new restrictions in Greece mirror similar policies implemented elsewhere in Europe, with Austria, Germany, Italy, France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia each imposing limits on public life for the unvaccinated. Though the Austrian government recently imposed a full lockdown for millions of residents who have not received the shot, some officials in that country are pushing for even harsher policies, including a national stay-at-home order on the jabbed and non-jabbed alike.
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