EINDHOVEN, Netherlands, Aug 20 (Reuters) - The Netherlands and Denmark have said they will definitely give F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine once conditions for the transfer have been met, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Sunday as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited his country.
“Today we can announce that the Netherlands and Denmark commit to the transfer of F-16 Aircraft to Ukraine and the Ukrainian Air Force, including cooperation with the United States and other partners once the conditions for such a transfer have been met,” he said in a joint press conference with Zelenskiy at a military air base in Eindhoven.
Zelenskiy who called the deal a “breakthrough agreement” said the exact number of aircraft will be discussed “a little later”.
The pledge is the first real promise of F-16’s for Ukraine’s armed forces and comes a few days after the United States approved the possible delivery of the fighter jets by the Netherlands and Denmark.
Zelenskiy arrived in the Netherlands on Sunday as part of an ongoing push to boost Ukraine’s air defences, and is expected to continue to Denmark later in the day.
The Netherlands, together with Denmark, has in recent months led international efforts to train Ukrainian pilots for F-16’s and to ultimately deliver the jets to help counter the air superiority of Russia, whose forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
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So many corporate cock gobblers commenting on this topic.
Parasites like Meta infiltrated our society, did their damn best to become a monopoly, currently steal from smaller businesses, lost personal data from shitloads of people, makes you their product, and even fueled instability in entire countries. Then people wonder why a government wants to use it to perhaps save a few more lives. It’s not like Meta is a company deserving of goodwill, so are you people getting a cent for this PR work or are you just suckers?
This is a government mandate for one corporation to pay another corporation to share it’s product. This isn’t ‘helping the little guy’ or anything.
People still have the ability to just go directly to the news site. Or Google. Or the government’s Facebook page. Or the national alert system. And probably lots of other options I don’t know about.
The law (“you must pay for the news you show unless otherwise agreed”) seems reasonable. As does the response of “well it isn’t worth enough to pay for”.
I wonder who should take the blame for being greedy though. The Canadian Bill C-19 was heavily influenced by lobbying from the Canadian news lobby group who even suggested the link charge.
Canadian news outlets suggest the link fee and then complain about the consequences.
“In fact, not content with obtaining payments for reproduction of news content, it lobbied for a far broader approach that even includes payment for links or merely “facilitating access” to news content.”
It was never going to make the landing. The landing camera (ESA's PILOT-D) was pulled (along w Sweden's LINA-XSAN science mission) due to Russia's war on Ukraine. This satellite was always going to be DOA.
They just launched it for political points, so it's likely that blaming failure on a micro-meteorite en route is a ploy to save face.
The wikipedia page on the Luna-25 mission has sources referenced on the removed parts under the "science payload" section here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_25
There were some articles discussing it and Russia's thinking prior to launch in going ahead without them. They said they'd count just getting to the moon as a success even if the landing failed, but you kind of had to read between the lines a little bit. Not having a landing camera was a big give away. They'd essentially decided they weren't going to get that back due to the whole situation they put themselves in.
I'd have to try a bit more to find one of those articles from a few weeks ago. They're buried under more current references to the mission at this point.
ESA’s PILOT-D navigation demonstration camera was planned to be flown on this mission, but is already being procured from a commercial service provider and will fly along with them on their mission,[27] due to continued international collaboration having been thrown into doubt by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and related sanctions on Russia.[28][29] The demonstrative instrument was supposed to collect data for the landing of other missions and was therefore not part of the probe’s operating system.[30]
Doesn’t sound like it was a critical part of the mission.
Hopefully they can land without it, provided they can recover from this current mishap. Any success in space is good for science.
Supposedly they have another landing instrument, though I suspect the camera was somewhat important for selecting a landing site. The Doppler speed and range meter is discussed briefly here:
According to the original plan, Luna 25 was supposed to be launched in 2014. However, various reasons provoked delays one after another. The last big postponement (from 2021 to 2023) was caused by the malfunction detected in the Doppler speed and range meter (DISD-LR) during the tests. Being an important part of the soft landing system, this device couldn’t be ignored, and its insufficient accuracy may cost a mission. The repeated tests of DISD-LR and subsequent changes of the lander’s software caused a delay for almost two years.
Exactly. Would be a shame if it goes to waste. But it sure seems pretty doomed.
“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the manoeuvre to be performed with the specified parameters,” Roskosmos said in a short statement.
Here's a couple articles and quotes (guess they were from only a week ago):
Simply reaching the moon without incident will be considered a success.
...
Sanctions since 2014 and 2022 have hobbled the Russian space programme, cutting it off from western technology and funding. The launch in 2019 was delayed because a landing radar that Roscosmos planned to import from the west was no longer available after 2014, Egorov said. After attempting to manufacture the radar domestically, Roscosmos determined that it was unnecessary for the mission.
Tougher sanctions since 2022 will likely increase shortages for years to come, meaning that even if Russia is successful this time, it may not be able to repeat that mission or launch further probes without manufacturing its own alternatives.
“Study of the moon is not the goal,” Egorov said. “The goal is political competition between two superpowers – China and the USA – and a number of other countries which also want to claim the title of space superpower.”
A long road to the launch pad
It took longer than expected for Luna-25 to get off the ground; its liftoff was delayed for nearly two years.
One major countdown-delaying issue was sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022. The European Space Agency (ESA) had been set to provide the Pilot-D navigation camera, built specifically to help Luna-25 make a precision landing on the moon. Due to the invasion, however, ESA canceled the camera cooperation, along with a number of other collaborative space projects.
But getting Luna-25 on its way to the moon remained a priority, one highlighted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In an April 2022 visit to the Vostochny Cosmodrome, he said the sanctions placed on Russia by the U.S., the European Union and others would not deter the nation from carrying out space exploration.
"Despite all the difficulties and attempts to interfere from the outside, we're definitely going to implement all our plans with consistency and persistence," Putin said.
My point is: yes, they shot an old go-pro tied to a dreidel up there to prove they could shoot something, but we screw up space more often, this is one specific and limited area where we really shouldn’t throw too many stones.
But, if you want to make fun of their shitty ISS modules, go have fun with that!
I expected Russia’s to blow up on launch, so bully for them for getting it to the moon, but India was scheduled to launch one yesterday too, and I’m far more intrigued about how they faired.
This is stupid. I don't use Facebook and I'm certainly no fan of Meta, but they didn't ban news links for the fun of it - they did it in response to the Canadian government making them pay news agencies for news links that gets shared on their services.
I think that's a stupid law, but the Canadians are entitled to do that if they want to. But that means they've intentionally increased the cost to Meta of permitting news links, and Meta has made a commercial decision based on this, which it's also entitled to do. Meta isn't a charity or a public sector agency and to expect this company (of all!) to behave like one is ludicrous.
BAMAKO, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Gunmen killed at least 21 civilians in an attack on a village in central Mali’s insurgency-hit Mopti region on Friday, two local sources said on Saturday.
The unidentified assailants struck in the afternoon, targeting the village of Yarou near the town of Bandiagara, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The West African nation is battling a violent insurgency with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State that took root in its arid north following a Tuareg separatist rebellion in 2012.
Militants have since spread to other countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara, seizing territory, killing thousands and uprooting millions of people in the process.
The junta has burnt bridges with traditional Western allies and turned to Russian mercenaries for help.
Its unexpected demand in June for the departure of U.N. peacekeepers has raised fears the country could slide deeper into chaos.
The original article contains 234 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 35%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The West African nation is battling a violent insurgency with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State that took root in its arid north following a Tuareg separatist rebellion in 2012.
The article doesn’t say whether the Canadian government has offered to not tax Facebook for carrying the links to news articles that the law now requires be taxed.
Sure, and they chose the option of not imposing any costs on those news sites by linking to them; thus making sure that there’s nothing to compensate them for.
It’s more the idea of FB not generating ad revenue of their news content and thus not having to compensate them (rather than about adding cost burdens to the outlets). No specific taxes involved though. It’s similar to the Australian model.
Why does the responsibility fall on news organizations? The government pages are not banned on Facebook. Use those to disseminate important information. If Facebook is really the best way reach your citizens then pay them a fee to pin a post at the top of everybody’s feed. Or mandate that they do it as part of the emergency services act.
The cbc might be government funded, but the rest of the news media are not. Their job is to hold politicians accountable, not organize evacuation efforts.
reuters.com
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