AFP UK

The whale was be transported by refrigerated truck to a seawater basin for observation

A beluga whale stranded in the Seine river in northern France for more than a week was removed from the water early Wednesday in a risky rescue operation, but officials warned it was in poor health.

After nearly six hours of work by dozens of divers and rescuers, the 800-kilogram (1,800-pound) cetacean was lifted from the river by a net and crane at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) and placed on a barge under the immediate care of a dozen veterinarians.

The beluga, a protected species usually found in cold Arctic waters, was then given a health check and driven in a refrigerated truck toward the coastal town of Ouistreham.

Upon arrival, the beluga will be installed in a seawater lock where it will be held for observation for several days before being released into the open sea.

But officials in Eure, where the beluga was stranded, said the whale was worryingly thin.

“It bodes, according to veterinarians, for a poor vital prognosis,” the Eure prefecture said in a statement after the rescue operation, which it said was “particularly complex”. 

The four-metre (13-foot) whale was spotted more than a week ago heading towards Paris and was stranded about 130 kilometres (81 miles) inland from the Channel at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne in Normandy.

Since Friday, the animal’s movement inland had been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne, 70 kilometres (44 miles) northwest of Paris, and its health deteriorated after it refused to eat.

Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary general of the Eure prefecture, said earlier that medical tests would be carried out before transporting the whale. 

“He is a male, that he is very underweight and that he has a few sores,” she said. 

– ‘A great day’ –

The animal’s rescue was hailed online after a nail-biting few days.  

“Today is a great day for this beluga whale and for everyone involved in its rescue,” conservation group Sea Shepherd said on its website.

But the operation to return it to the sea is not without risk, said Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France, part of a Marineland team sent to assist with the rescue.

“It could be that he dies now, during the handling, during the journey or at point B,” in Ouistreham, she told AFP Tuesday.

The 24 divers involved in the operation and the rescuers handling the ropes had to try several times between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am to lure the animal into the nets to be lifted out of the water.

As preparations for the operation got under way, people gathered along the banks of the river to observe.

“I’m hopeful that he will reach the sea and that he will not end up like the orca,” said Isabelle Rainsart, referring to a killer whale that was spotted in the Seine in May but later died. 

“We will wait to see how the transport goes, but we may have already succeeded in the hard part,” added Rainsart, who first filmed the beluga on August 2 from her garden overlooking the river.

Interest in the beluga’s fate has spread far beyond France, generating a large influx of financial donations and other aid from conservation groups as well as individuals, officials said.

While belugas migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms in their native Arctic waters, they rarely venture so far.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, which specialises in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

The trapped whale is only the second beluga ever sighted in France. The first was pulled out of the Loire estuary in a fisherman’s net in 1948.

The whale will be transported by refrigerated truck to a seawater basin in a Channel port for observation and treatment

A beluga whale stranded in the river Seine in northern France for more than a week was removed from the water early Wednesday in the first stage of an ambitious rescue operation to return it to the sea.

After nearly six hours of work by dozens of divers and rescuers, the 800-kilogram (1,800-pound) cetacean was lifted from the river by a net and crane at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) and placed on a barge under the immediate care of a dozen veterinarians, AFP journalists said.

The beluga, a protected species usually found in cold Arctic waters, will be placed in a refrigerated truck and transported to the coast if tests show it is fit enough, said Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary general of the Eure prefecture.

“We are awaiting the results of the blood test and the ultrasounds and, depending on the results, a decision will be made whether or not he should take the road to the sea,” she told a press conference by the river just an hour after the whale was pulled out.

“As I speak to you, he is alive, he is on the barge, he survived. He is being treated,” Dorliat-Pouzet said.

“We could see that he is a male, that he is very underweight and that he has a few sores,” she added.

The four-metre (13-foot) whale was spotted more than a week ago heading towards Paris and was stranded about 130 kilometres (81 miles) inland from the Channel at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne in Normandy.

Since Friday, the animal’s movement inland had been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne, 70 kilometres northwest of Paris, and its health deteriorated after it refused to eat.

But its condition was “satisfactory”, Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France told AFP on Tuesday.

A seawater basin at a lock in the Channel port of Ouistreham has been readied for the animal, which will spend three days there under observation and treatment in preparation for its release into the open sea.

“There it will, we hope, have a better chance of survival,” said conservation group Sea Shepherd France, which is assisting the operation.

The beluga will be taken onto the high seas and released “far enough away from the coast” to regain its rightful place in nature, Dorliat-Pouzet said earlier.

– ‘A great day’ –

“Today is a great day for this beluga whale and for everyone involved in its rescue,” Sea Shepherd said on its website.

The “exceptional” operation to return it to the sea is not without risk for the whale, which is already weakened and stressed, said Brasseur, part of a Marineland team sent to assist with the rescue.

“It could be that he dies now, during the handling, during the journey or at point B,” in Ouistreham, she said.

The 24 divers involved in the operation and the rescuers handling the ropes had to try several times between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am to lure the animal into the nets to be lifted out of the water.

As preparations for the operation got under way, people gathered along the banks of the river to observe.

“I’m hopeful that he will reach the sea and that he will not end up like the orca,” said Isabelle Rainsart, referencing a killer whale that was spotted in the Seine in May but later died. 

“We will wait to see how the transport goes, but we may have already succeeded in the hard part,” added Rainsart, who first filmed the beluga on August 2 from her garden overlooking the river.

Interest in the beluga’s fate has spread far beyond France, generating a large influx of financial donations and other aid from conservation groups as well as individuals, officials said.

While belugas migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms in their native Arctic waters, they rarely venture so far.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, which specialises in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

The trapped whale is only the second beluga ever sighted in France. The first was pulled out of the Loire estuary in a fisherman’s net in 1948.

Blockchain-based play-to-earn games have proved hugely popular in parts of Asia and Latin America

When video game designer Mark Venturelli was asked to speak at Brazil’s biggest gaming festival, he submitted a generic-sounding title for his presentation — “The Future of Game Design” — but that was not the talk he gave.

Instead, he launched into a 30-minute diatribe against the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies and the games it has spawned, mostly very basic smartphone apps that lure players with the promise of earning money.

“Everything that is done in this space right now is just bad — actually it’s terrible,” he told AFP.

He is genuinely worried for the industry he loves, particularly because big gaming studios are also sniffing around the technology.

To crypto enthusiasts, blockchain will allow players to grab back some of the money they spend on games and make for higher-stakes enjoyment.

Critics say the opposite is true — game makers will capture more profits while sidestepping laws on gambling and trading, and the profit motive will kill all enjoyment.

The battle lines are drawn for what could be a long confrontation over an industry worth some $300 billion a year, according to Accenture.

– ‘Ecologically mortifying’ –

Gamers like Venturelli might feel that they have triumphed in the early sorties.

Cryptocurrencies have crashed recently and dragged down the in-game tokens that had initially attracted players.

“Nobody is playing blockchain games right now,” Mihai Vicol of Newzoo told AFP, saying between 90 and 95 percent of games had been affected by the crash. 

Ubisoft, one of the world’s biggest gaming firms, last year tried to introduce a marketplace to one of its hit games for trading NFTs, the digital tokens that act as receipts for anything from art to video game avatars. 

But gamers’ forums, many already scattered with anti-crypto sentiment, lit up in opposition.

Even French trade union IT Solidarity got involved, labelling blockchain “useless, costly, ecologically mortifying tech” — a reference to the long-held criticism that blockchain networks are hugely power hungry.

Ubisoft quickly ditched the NFT marketplace in Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

Last month, Minecraft, a world-building game hugely popular with children and teenagers, announced it would not allow blockchain technology. 

The firm criticised the “speculative pricing and investment mentality” around NFTs and said introducing them would be “inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players”.

The wider sector also has a serious image problem after a spectacular theft earlier this year of almost $600 million from Axie Infinity, a blockchain game popular in the Philippines. 

Analyst firm NonFungible last week revealed that the NFT gaming sector crashed in the second quarter of this year with the number of sales plunging 22 percent.

All of this points to a bleak time for crypto enthusiasts, but blockchain entrepreneurs are not giving up. 

– ‘Revolutionise’ gaming –

Sekip Can Gokalp, whose firms Infinite Arcade and Coda help developers introduce blockchain to their games, argues it is still “very early days”.

He told AFP some of the attention-grabbing play-to-earn games had been “misguided” and he was convinced the technology still had the potential to “revolutionise” gaming.

Reports of a culture clash between gamers and crypto fans, he said, were overplayed and his research suggested there was substantial overlap between the two communities.

Gokalp can take heart from recent announcements by gaming giants such as Sega and Roblox, a popular platform mostly used by children, indicating they are still exploring blockchain. 

And Ubisoft, despite abandoning its most high-profile blockchain effort, still has several crypto-related projects on the go. 

Among the many benefits trumpeted by crypto enthusiasts are that the blockchain allows players to take items from one game to another, gives them ownership of those items and stores their progress across platforms. 

Vicol, though, reckons blockchain gaming needs to find other selling points to succeed.

“It could be the future,” he said, “but it’s going to be different to how people envisage it today”. 

Brazilian Venturelli, whose games include the award-winning Relic Hunters, used his talk at the BIG Festival in Sao Paulo to dismiss all the benefits trumpeted by crypto fans as either unworkable, undesirable or already available. 

And he told AFP that play-to-earn games risked real-world damage in Latin America — a particular target for the industry — by enticing young people away from occupations that bring benefits to society.

He said many people he knows, including venture capitalists and the heads of billion-dollar corporations, shared his point of view.

“They came to congratulate me on my talk,” he said. 

But with new blockchain games emerging every day, he accepts that the battle is far from over.

The whale will be transported by refrigerated truck to a seawater basin in a Channel port for observation and treatment

A beluga whale stranded in the river Seine in northern France for more than a week was removed from the water early Wednesday in the first stage of an ambitious rescue operation to return it to the sea.

After nearly six hours of work by divers and rescuers, the 800-kilogram (1,800-pound) cetacean was lifted from the river by a net and crane at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) and placed on a barge under the immediate care of a dozen veterinarians, AFP journalists said.

The beluga, a protected species usually found in cold Arctic waters, will next be placed in a refrigerated truck and transported to the coast, Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary general of the Eure prefecture, said ahead of the rescue operation.

“The truck will be refrigerated, at a temperature suited for the animal, humidity, a certain type of comfort, so there is no risk of asphyxiation,” Dorliat-Pouzet said.

The four-metre (13-foot) whale was spotted more than a week ago heading towards Paris and was stranded some 130 kilometres (80 miles) inland from the Channel at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne in Normandy.

Since Friday, the animal’s movement inland had been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne, 70 kilometres northwest of Paris, and its health had deteriorated after it refused to eat.

But its condition was “satisfactory”, Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France, Europe’s biggest, told AFP earlier on Tuesday.

A seawater basin at a lock in the Channel port of Ouistreham has been readied for the animal, which will spend three days there under observation and treatment in preparation for its release into the open sea.

“There it will, we hope, have a better chance of survival,” NGO Sea Shepherd France, which is assisting the operation, said.

The beluga will be taken onto the high seas and released “far enough away from the coast” to regain its rightful place in nature, Dorliat-Pouzet said earlier.

– ‘A great day’ –

“Today is a great day for this beluga whale and for everyone involved in its rescue,” Sea Shepherd said on its website.

The “exceptional” operation to return it to the sea is not without risk for the whale, which is already weakened and stressed, said Brasseur, part of a Marineland team sent to assist with the rescue.

“It could be that he dies now, during the handling, during the journey or at point B,” in Ouistreham, she said.

The 24 divers involved in the operation and the rescuers handling the ropes had to try several times between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am to lure the animal into the nets to be lifted out of the water.

As preparations for the operation got under way, people gathered along the banks of the river to observe their progress.

“I’m hopeful that he will reach the sea and that he will not end up like the orca,” said Isabelle Rainsart, referencing a killer whale that was spotted in the Seine in May but later died. 

“We will wait to see how the transport goes, but we may have already succeeded in the hard part,” added Rainsart, who first filmed the beluga on August 2 from her garden overlooking the river.

Interest in the beluga’s fate has spread far beyond France, generating a large influx of financial donations and other aid from conservation groups as well as individuals, officials said.

While belugas migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms in their native Arctic waters, they rarely venture so far.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, which specialises in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.

The trapped whale is only the second beluga ever sighted in France. The first was pulled out of the Loire estuary in a fisherman’s net in 1948.

The downpour is the heaviest since South Korea's weather observations began 115 years ago

At least nine people were killed and seven others missing in South Korea after record downpours flooded major roads, metro stations and homes, officials said Wednesday.

The rain that began Monday is the heaviest since South Korea’s weather observations began 115 years ago, according to President Yoon Suk-yeol, who apologised for the “inconveniences”. 

Images shared on social media earlier this week showed people wading through waist-deep water and overflowing metro stations. 

Seoul’s posh Gangnam district was particularly hard hit, with cars left half submerged.

“There are a total of 16 casualties, including nine deaths and seven missing,” an official at the Interior Ministry told AFP.

In all, around 600 people have been affected, he said, with many forced to leave their homes.

Among the nine victims, three died while trapped in their flooded semi-basement apartment, known as a banjiha, according to the ministry.

Local reports say the victims were a teenager, her mother and her aunt.

Another victim died while removing a tree that had fallen onto a sidewalk, and is believed to have been electrocuted.

Another died after a landslide buried his home in the mountainous Gangwon Province. 

President Yoon, who on Tuesday visited the banjiha apartment, acknowledged South Koreans have “suffered a lot of damage”.

At a separate government meeting, he told officials to pay special attention to the most vulnerable. 

“Those who struggle financially or with physical difficulties are bound to be more vulnerable to natural disasters,” he said.

Yoon’s approval rating has plummeted to just 24 percent since he took office in May, according to the latest Gallup Korea poll. He is facing criticism for not going to the government’s emergency control centre when the downpour started.

Local media reported his absence was due to flooding around his house, but his office denied the claim, saying he decided to stay home as his team already had the response in hand.

Switching to a plant-based diet is one of the most effective ways for an individual to reduce their carbon footprint, experts from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say

The menu at The Canteen in southwest England doesn’t just let diners know how much a dish costs. They can also check its carbon footprint.

The carrot and beetroot pakora with yoghurt sauce is responsible for just 16 grams of CO2 emissions. The aubergines with a miso and harissa sauce with tabbouleh and Zaatar toast caused 675 grams of carbon dioxide.

As customers weigh their options, the menu at the vegetarian restaurant in Bristol includes a comparison with a dish that it does not serve: the emissions from a UK-produced hamburger.

“Three kilos for a burger, wow! I can’t believe it,” exclaimed Enyioma Anomelechi, a 37-year-old diner sipping a beer outside in the sunshine.

The menu notes that a real beef burger’s emissions is “10 times the amount of its vegan alternative”.

The carbon footprints of businesses and consumers have come under growing scrutiny as countries scramble to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius and to achieve net-zero emission by 2050.

The Canteen became in July the first restaurant to agree to put its carbon footprint on the menu under a campaign spearheaded by UK vegan campaigning charity Viva!

The restaurant’s manager, Liam Stock, called the move a way to “see what we are doing; to understand and improve ourselves”.

The average British person has an annual carbon footprint of more than 10 tonnes, according to UK government figures.

Britain has set the ambitious goal of reducing harmful emissions by 78 percent by 2035, compared with 1990 figures, in order to meet its international climate change commitments.

– ‘Climate emergency’ –

Switching to a plant-based diet is one of the most effective ways for an individual to reduce their carbon footprint, experts from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in April.

The livestock industry replaces CO2-absorbing forests with land for grazing and soy crops for cattle feed. The animals also belch huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Whether diners will let carbon footprints influence their order choices remains to be seen, but Stock said the menu innovation has stoked interest and support.

“In England if you’re a big chain restaurant, it’s the law that you have to have calories on (the menu),” he said. 

“But a lot of people are saying… they’re more interested in carbon.”

While Anomelechi noted the “huge” difference in emissions between a hamburger and other dishes, he said he did not necessarily want to be burdened with knowing his order’s calorie count or carbon footprint.

“When I go out to eat I just want to enjoy,” he added, noting he would be more inclined to change his ways when grocery shopping.

Laura Hellwig, campaigns manager at Viva!, said the carbon footprint figure should become compulsory.

“We are in a climate emergency and consumers have to be able to make informed choices,” said the activist. 

In her view, “most people would actually choose for the planet” if confronted with a comparison between the carbon footprint of a meat-based meal and a vegan dish.

– ‘Cradle to store’ –

Stock said he knew his restaurant’s dishes would score low carbon footprints, as most of his ingredients are sourced regionally.

“We didn’t have to change anything,” he said, while admitting some surprises, such as learning that imported spices drive up emissions.

To calculate the dishes’ footprints, The Canteen sent its recipes and the source of the ingredients to a specialised company called MyEmissions.

It is able to calculate the carbon impact from “cradle to store”, taking into account farming, processing, transport and packaging.

“If I was choosing between two dishes, maybe depending on how hungry I was, I might choose the one with a lower footprint,” said Nathan Johnson, a 43-year-old diner at the restaurant. 

That day, he opted for the chef’s salad, which racks up 162 grams of carbon.

Another diner, 29-year-old Emma Harvey, also backed the idea of increased awareness of carbon footprints “and the ethical effects of the food that we’re eating”. 

“We have to incorporate things (like) that into everyday life,” she said.

Blockchain-based play-to-earn games have proved hugely popular in parts of Asia and Latin America

When video game designer Mark Venturelli was asked to speak at Brazil’s biggest gaming festival, he submitted a generic-sounding title for his presentation — “The Future of Game Design” — but that was not the talk he gave.

Instead, he launched into a 30-minute diatribe against the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies and the games it has spawned, mostly very basic smartphone apps that lure players with the promise of earning money.

“Everything that is done in this space right now is just bad — actually it’s terrible,” he told AFP.

He is genuinely worried for the industry he loves, particularly because big gaming studios are also sniffing around the technology.

To crypto enthusiasts, blockchain will allow players to grab back some of the money they spend on games and make for higher-stakes enjoyment.

Critics say the opposite is true — game makers will capture more profits while sidestepping laws on gambling and trading, and the profit motive will kill all enjoyment.

The battle lines are drawn for what could be a long confrontation over an industry worth some $300 billion a year, according to Accenture.

– ‘Ecologically mortifying’ –

Gamers like Venturelli might feel that they have triumphed in the early sorties.

Cryptocurrencies have crashed recently and dragged down the in-game tokens that had initially attracted players.

“Nobody is playing blockchain games right now,” Mihai Vicol of Newzoo told AFP, saying between 90 and 95 percent of games had been affected by the crash. 

Ubisoft, one of the world’s biggest gaming firms, last year tried to introduce a marketplace to one of its hit games for trading NFTs, the digital tokens that act as receipts for anything from art to video game avatars. 

But gamers’ forums, many already scattered with anti-crypto sentiment, lit up in opposition.

Even French trade union IT Solidarity got involved, labelling blockchain “useless, costly, ecologically mortifying tech” — a reference to the long-held criticism that blockchain networks are hugely power hungry.

Ubisoft quickly ditched the NFT marketplace in Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

Last month, Minecraft, a world-building game hugely popular with children and teenagers, announced it would not allow blockchain technology. 

The firm criticised the “speculative pricing and investment mentality” around NFTs and said introducing them would be “inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players”.

The wider sector also has a serious image problem after a spectacular theft earlier this year of almost $600 million from Axie Infinity, a blockchain game popular in the Philippines. 

Analyst firm NonFungible last week revealed that the NFT gaming sector crashed in the second quarter of this year with the number of sales plunging 22 percent.

All of this points to a bleak time for crypto enthusiasts, but blockchain entrepreneurs are not giving up. 

– ‘Revolutionise’ gaming –

Sekip Can Gokalp, whose firms Infinite Arcade and Coda help developers introduce blockchain to their games, argues it is still “very early days”.

He told AFP some of the attention-grabbing play-to-earn games had been “misguided” and he was convinced the technology still had the potential to “revolutionise” gaming.

Reports of a culture clash between gamers and crypto fans, he said, were overplayed and his research suggested there was substantial overlap between the two communities.

Gokalp can take heart from recent announcements by gaming giants such as Sega and Roblox, a popular platform mostly used by children, indicating they are still exploring blockchain. 

And Ubisoft, despite abandoning its most high-profile blockchain effort, still has several crypto-related projects on the go. 

Among the many benefits trumpeted by crypto enthusiasts are that the blockchain allows players to take items from one game to another, gives them ownership of those items and stores their progress across platforms. 

Vicol, though, reckons blockchain gaming needs to find other selling points to succeed.

“It could be the future,” he said, “but it’s going to be different to how people envisage it today”. 

Brazilian Venturelli, whose games include the award-winning Relic Hunters, used his talk at the BIG Festival in Sao Paulo to dismiss all the benefits trumpeted by crypto fans as either unworkable, undesirable or already available. 

And he told AFP that play-to-earn games risked real-world damage in Latin America — a particular target for the industry — by enticing young people away from occupations that bring benefits to society.

He said many people he knows, including venture capitalists and the heads of billion-dollar corporations, shared his point of view.

“They came to congratulate me on my talk,” he said. 

But with new blockchain games emerging every day, he accepts that the battle is far from over.

The beluga was removed from the Seine after being stranded for more than a week in the river some 130 kilometres inland

The beluga whale stranded in the river Seine in northern France was removed from the water early Wednesday in the first stage of an ambitious rescue operation, an AFP journalist said.

After nearly six hours of work, the 800-kilogram (1,800-pound) cetacean was lifted from the river by a net and crane at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) and placed on a barge under the immediate care of a dozen veterinarians.

The beluga, a protected species usually found in cold Arctic waters, will next be placed in a refrigerated truck and transported to the coast, Isabelle Dorliat-Pouzet, secretary general of the Eure prefecture, said ahead of the rescue operation.

The four-metre (13-foot) whale was spotted more than a week ago heading towards Paris and was stranded some 130 kilometres (80 miles) inland from the Channel at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne in Normandy.

Since Friday, the animal’s movement inland has been blocked by a lock at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne, 70 kilometres northwest of Paris, and its health had deteriorated after it refused to eat.

But its condition was “satisfactory”, Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France, Europe’s biggest, told AFP earlier on Tuesday.

A seawater basin at a lock in the Channel port of Ouistreham has been readied for the animal, which will spend three days there under observation in preparation for its release.

The “exceptional” operation to return it to the sea is not without risk for the whale, which is already weakened and stressed, said Brasseur, part of a Marineland team sent to assist with the rescue, alongside the NGO Sea Shepherd France.

“It could be that he dies now, during the handling, during the journey or at point B,” in Ouistreham, she said.

The 24 divers involved in the operation and the rescuers handling the ropes had to try several times between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am to lure the animal into the nets to be lifted out of the water.

A handful of curious people remained on the bank all night to observe the operation.

Iran says the satellite will monitor borders, enhance agricultural productivity and monitor water resources and natural disasters

An Iranian satellite launched by Russia blasted off from Kazakhstan Tuesday and reached orbit amid controversy that Moscow might use it to boost its surveillance of military targets in Ukraine.

As Russia’s international isolation grows following Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is seeking to pivot towards the Middle East, Asia and Africa and find new clients for its embattled space programme.

Speaking at the Moscow-controlled Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe, Russian space chief Yury Borisov hailed “an important milestone in Russian-Iranian bilateral cooperation, opening the way to the implementation of new and even larger projects”.

Iran’s Telecommunications Minister Issa Zarepour, who also attended the launch of the Khayyam satellite, called the event “historic” and “a turning point for the start of a new interaction in the field of space between our two countries”.

Nasser Kanani, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said on Twitter that “the brilliant path of scientific and technological progress of the Islamic republic of Iran continues despite sanctions and the enemies’ maximum pressure”.

Iran, which has maintained ties with Moscow and refrained from criticism of the Ukraine invasion, has sought to deflect suspicions that Moscow could use Khayyam to spy on Ukraine.

Responding to the launch, Washington said Russia’s growing cooperation with Iran should be viewed as a “profound threat”.

“We are aware of reports that Russia launched a satellite with significant spying capabilities on Iran’s behalf,” a US State Department spokesperson said.

“Russia deepening an alliance with Iran is something that the whole world should look at and see as a profound threat.”

Last week, The Washington Post quoted anonymous Western intelligence officials as saying that Russia “plans to use the satellite for several months or longer” to assist its war efforts before allowing Iran to take control.

Less than two hours after the satellite was launched on a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, the Iran Space Agency (ISA) said “ground stations of the Iran Space Agency” had already received “first telemetric data”. 

The space agency stressed on Sunday that the Islamic republic would control the satellite “from day one” in an apparent reaction to the Post’s report.

“No third country is able to access the information” sent by the satellite due to its “encrypted algorithm”, it said.

The purpose of Khayyam is to “monitor the country’s borders”, enhance agricultural productivity and monitor water resources and natural disasters, according to the space agency.

– ‘Long-term cooperation’ –

Khayyam, apparently named after the 11th-century Persian polymath Omar Khayyam, will not be the first Iranian satellite that Russia has put into space. 

In 2005, Iran’s Sina-1 satellite was deployed from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

Iran is currently negotiating with world powers, including Moscow, to salvage a 2015 deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The United States — which quit the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump — has accused Iran of effectively supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine while adopting a “veil of neutrality”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran last month — one of his few trips abroad since Moscow’s February 24 invasion. 

Iran’s Khamenei called for “long-term cooperation” with Russia during their meeting, and Tehran has refused to join international condemnation of Moscow’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbour.

Iran insists its space programme is for civilian and defence purposes only, and does not breach the 2015 nuclear deal, or any other international agreement. 

Western governments worry that satellite launch systems incorporate technologies interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, something Iran has always denied wanting to build.

Iran successfully put its first military satellite into orbit in April 2020, drawing a sharp rebuke from the United States.

Borisov, who last month replaced bombastic nationalist Dmitry Rogozin as head of the Russian space agency, had acknowledged that the national space industry is in a “difficult situation” amid tensions with the West.

Russia will continue its space programme but end activities at the International Space Station — an outlier of cooperation between Moscow and the West — after 2024, he said.

Easter Island's giant human moai statues were carved by the indigneous Rapa Nui people some time between 1200 and 1500 AD

During more than two years of the coronavirus pandemic, Easter Island was closed to tourism — forcing inhabitants to turn to a more sustainable way of life and relearn forgotten skills.

Now that the island’s borders are open once again, local people, including the Rapa Nui indigenous population, want to resist the temptation to return to their pre-pandemic lifestyle.

“The time has come that the ancients predicted,” Julio Hotus, a member of the Easter Island council of elders, told AFP.

Hotus said the Rapa Nui people’s ancestors had warned about the importance of maintaining food independence because of the risk the island faced of one day becoming isolated, but that recent generations had ignored the warnings.

Before the pandemic, the island’s food supply was almost exclusively provided by Chile.

Easter Island lies 3,500 kilometers (2,100 miles) off the west coast of Chile and is world renown for its monumental statues of human figures with giant heads, called moai.

With a population of just 8,000, it used to attract 160,000 tourists a year — “an avalanche” according to Hotus — but in March 2020 Easter Island closed its borders over Covid.

– No tourists, no income –

Olga Ickapakarati used to sell small stone moai figurines to tourists but once she was left without an income, she turned to agriculture and fishing to survive, just as her ancestors had lived before contact with European explorers.

“We were all left with nothing, we were left in the wind …. but we began planting,” Ickapakarati told AFP.

She took advantage of a program that delivered seeds before the island was shut off from the outside world.

Ickapakarati planted spinach, beets, cilantro, chard, celery, basil, pineapple, oregano and tomatoes.

What she didn’t eat, she shared with neighbors, just as many families did in creating an island-wide support network.

“All the islanders are like this. They have good hearts. If I see that I have a surplus of something, I give it to another family,” said Ickapakarati, who lives with her children and grandchildren.

This new focus on sustainable living does not mean an end to tourism on Easter Island.

Last week, the first airplane of tourists for 28 months landed on the island, to much excitement from the locals desperate to see new faces.

But there will be no immediate return to the two flights a day of yesteryear. There will be just two a week for now, although the number will gradually increase.

Large hotel chains have decided to stay closed.

“We will continue with tourists, but I hope that the pandemic has taught a lesson that we can apply for the future,” said Hotus.

– ‘Archeological heritage at risk’ –

Another thing the pandemic did was to create awareness of the necessity to look after natural resources affected by climate change, such as water and energy. And also the emblematic moais.

Carved from volcanic rock by the Polynesian Rapa Nui people between 1200 and 1500, there are more than 900 on the island, which measures 24 kilometers by 12 kilometers.

The statues can measure up to 20 meters in height and weigh more than 80 tons.

Most remain at the quarry where they were originally carved but many others were carted to coastal areas to look inland, presumably for ceremonial purposes.

The moais have been damaged by heavy rainfall, strong winds and the ocean waves crashing against the statues and their bases, leading to fears for their future.

“Climate change, with its extreme events, is putting our archeological heritage at risk,” said Vairoa Ika, the local environment director.

“The stone is degrading” and needs to be protected.

“The problem with the moais is that they are very fragile,” added Pedro Edmunds Paoa, the island’s mayor, who says the statues’ worth is “incalculable.”

He said that authorities need to “forget about the tourist” vision and take protective measures, even if that means covering the statues “with glass domes”, which would ruin not just the authentic view but also tourists’ photographs.

He also wants inhabitants to make maximum use of natural resources and to prioritize locals in employment, while resurrecting the ancestral practise of fostering community solidarity.

“From now on the tourist must become a friend of the place, whereas before they were visiting foreigners,” said Edmunds Paoa.