It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, September 30, 2022
Climate change: Not a leap of faith but fact
Kerry Kastler Burt Fri, September 30, 2022 Kerry Kastler Burt
If you don’t believe in climate change, know now that it is not a leap of faith but clearly a leap of fact. Truly the time has come to jump on board.
Our globe is warming in palpable ways. Our wonderful southwest homeland, once summered in thermometer readings rarely above 105 degrees, now regularly sees heat upward of 110, 112 and 117. Our capitol city baked to 107degrees in what we often consider a fall month, September. In climate related disasters, cars are turned away from the road home, cars are melted in fires that currently rage in our near neighbor state of California and are drowned in floods in the South. And of course, more disturbing, and much sadder, it’s not just cars, people too are meeting their fates in the ravages of climate change both nearby, such as the recent death in our beloved Zion National Park and around the world.
Looking a bit further away, yet still here in the southwest, a drying up Lake Mead, the world’s largest reservoir, and a less than a 90-minute drive from St. George, has grimly revealed the human remains of individuals who have lost their lives recreating in this popular recreation site. Climate change and our historic drought have also impacted Lake Powell. Spanning areas in both Utah and Arizona, it has touched the lives of so many in southwest Utah. Now having reached its lowest level since its initial filling, it’s receding to reveal buried arches and the full magnitude of the iconic Lone Rock. Many who fondly remember boating and fishing around this iconic landmark will now find it’s open again to hikers.
While the damning of the Colorado River remains controversial, a significant takeaway from its receding shorelines must be its very real and serious signal of climate change in our own backyard. And if you’re wondering about climate change beyond our area, simple attention to national and world news communicating such noteworthy physical and biological identifiers as the rate of retreat in glaciers, timing of the leafing out of plants and the arrival of spring migrant birds will bring you up to speed.
With the leap of factual climate change must come human change. We must begin learning and practicing new everyday habits, implementing modifications, and acknowledging limitations to demonstrate a new understanding and alertness to our climate. Furthermore, we must begin advocating for these modifications.
So, what can we do? The ideas and steps are not new. Humanity must work toward the reduction of climate warming gases, like carbon dioxide and at the same time remove excess carbon from our atmosphere. We must commit to the reality that water in the southwest and elsewhere is a resource to be protected and stewarded in a manner that preserves it for clearly necessary use and the preservation of all life. Unwarranted, recreational, and ornamental uses must be carefully weighed against the heavy risks and toll they may very well inflict upon the dangerously uncertain supply.
Of course, it’s not just large-scale runaway residential or commercial developments that threaten our water resources here in Washington County, it’s also small-scale individual disregard for or disengagement from simple conservation measures. Utah has the highest per-capital water usage in the country, a distinction in which none of us can take pride. Here in our area, we use more than 285 gallons of water per person each day, an amount twice that of those in Las Vegas. Really? Surely we can’t be that much more thirsty!! Surely we can do better. Decisions such as landscaping with grass, overfilling tubs, driving to a nearby neighborhood home or store when walking or biking is possible, printing double sided to save paper, turning off lights, and adjusting thermostats are actions that all of us can implement.
Let’s acknowledge the leap of facts and make conservation a priority.
Kerry Kastler Burt is a long time St. George resident. She is the Retired Chief Development Officer of Intermountain Healthcare Southwest Region, Current Development Coordinator of Conserve Southwest Utah. Previous member of “The Spectrum Writers Group, and former chairman of the St. George Area Chamber of Commerce and St. George City Planning Commission.
It seems like just yesterday that Elon Musk ushered a gig worker in a spandex suit onto the Tesla AI Day 2021 stage and told us it was an robot — or at least probably would be one eventually. In the intervening 13 months, the company has apparently been hard at work, replacing the squishy bits from what crowd saw on stage with proper electronics and mechanizations. At this year's AI Day on Friday, Tesla unveiled the next iteration of its Optimus robotics platform and, well, at least there isn't still a person on the inside? tesla bot
Tesla CEO Elon Musk debuted the "first" Optimus (again, skinny guy in a leotard, not an actual machine) in August of last year and, true to his nature, and proceeded to set out a series of increasingly incredible claims about the platform's future capabilities — just like how the Cybertruck will have unbreakable windows. As Musk explained at the time, the Optimus will operate an AI similar to the company's Autopilot system (the one that keeps chasing stationary ambulances) and be capable of working safely around humans without extensive prior training.
Additionally, the Tesla Bot would understand complex verbal commands, Musk assured the assembled crowd, it would have "human-level hands," be able to both move at 5 MPH and carry up to 45 pounds despite standing under 6-feet tall and weighing 125 pounds. And, most incredibly, Tesla would have a working prototype for all of that by 2022, which brings us to today.
production tesla bot
Kicking off the event, CEO Elon Musk was joined almost immediately on stage by an early development platform prototype of the robot — the very first time one of the test units had walked unassisted by an umbilical tether. Lacking any exterior panelling to reveal the Tesla-designed actuators inside, the robot moved at a halting and ponderous pace, not unlike early Asimos and certainly a far cry from the deft acrobatics that Boston Robotics' Atlas exhibits.
Tesla Bot
The Tesla team also rolled out a further developed, but still tethered iteration as well, pictured above. "it wasn't quite ready to walk," Musk said, "but I think we'll walk in a few weeks. We wanted to show you the robot that's actually really close to what is going to production." Tesla Bot
"Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible," Musk said. "And we've also designed it using the same discipline that we use in designing the car, which is to say... to make the robot at an high volume at low cost with higher reliability." He estimates that they could cost under $20,000 when built at volume.
The Optimus will be equipped with a 2.3 kWh battery pack which integrates the various power control systems into a single PCB. That should be sufficient to get the robot through a full day of work, per Tesla's engineering team which joined Musk on stage during the event. Tesla Bot
"Humans are also pretty efficient at somethings but not so efficient at other times," Lizzie Miskovetz, a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer at Tesla, and a member of the engineering team explained. While humans can sustain themselves on small amounts of food, we cannot halt our metabolisms when not working.
"On the robot platform, what we're going to do is we're going to minimize that. Idle power consumption, drop it as low as possible," she continued. The team also plans to strip as much complexity and mass as possible from the robot's arms and legs. "We're going to reduce our part count and our power consumption of every element possible. We're going to do things like reduce the sensing and the wiring at our extremities," Miskovetz said. Tesla Bot
What's more, expensive and heavy materials will be swapped out with plastics that trade slight losses in stiffness with larger savings in weight. "We are carrying over most of our designing experience from the car to the robot,” Milan Kovac, Tesla's Director of Autopilot Software Engineering said.
To enable the Optimus to move about in real world situations, "We want to leverage both the autopilot hardware and the software for the humanoid platform, but because it's different in requirements and inform factor," Miskovetz said. "It's going to do everything that a human brain does: processing vision data , making split-second decisions based on multiple sensory inputs and also communications," thanks to integrated Wi-Fi and cellular radios.
"The human hand has the ability to move at 300 degrees per second, as tens of thousands of tactile sensors. It has the ability to grasp and manipulate almost every object in our daily lives," Kovac said. "We were inspired by biology. [Optimus hands] have five fingers and opposable thumb. Our fingers are driven by metallic tendons that are both flexible and strong because the ability to complete wide aperture power grasps while also being optimized for precision, gripping of small, thin and delicate objects." Tesla Bot
Each hand will offer 11 degrees of freedom derived from its six dedicated actuators, as well as "complex mechanisms that allow the hand to adapt to the objects being grasped." Kovac said. "We [also] have a non-backdrivable finger drive. This clutching mechanism allows us to hold and transport objects without having to turn on the hand motors."
"We're starting out having something that's usable," Kovac concluded, "but it's far from being useful. It's still a long and exciting road ahead of us." Tesla engineering plans to get the enclosed, production iteration up and walking around without a tether in the next few weeks, then begin exploring more real-world applications and tangible use cases the Optimus might wind up in.
"After seeing what we've shown tonight," Kovac said. "I'm pretty sure we can get this done within the next few months or years and maybe make this product a reality and change the entire economy."
Tesla just gave us a fresh glimpse of its humanoid robot ahead of its big AI Day event. What we know so far about the Optimus project.
Tesla showed off a teaser of its future humanoid robot on Friday.
The company is hosting an AI Day event, where it will unveil a prototype of the robot.
The Tesla Bot, also named Optimus, will take over dangerous and repetitive manual labor from humans.
Tesla is expected to unveil a prototype of its long-awaited humanoid robot on Friday night, and investors are surely hoping it will be more than the flailing dancer in a robot suit we saw last summer.
The company is hosting an AI Day event where it'll provide updates on all sorts of advanced tech, including the Optimus robot (named after the Transformer). In teasing the event, Tesla tweeted out a video of robot hands moving into the shape of a heart. It's the most detailed depiction of the Tesla Bot yet.
Many specifics about Optimus remain a mystery, but Musk has laid out some details about the robot's design, capabilities, and importance to Tesla's business.
It's designed for manual labor
When announcing the Tesla Bot at the last AI Day, Musk said the robot will take over dangerous, boring, and repetitive tasks from humans. In the future, "physical work will be a choice," Musk said.
The bot will be 5-foot-8, weigh 125 pounds, and walk 5 mph. A face-mounted screen will display "useful information," and its "human-level hands" will be able to deadlift 150 pounds, Tesla said. One of the first applications for Tesla Bots will be in the company's car factories.
It will be 'friendly' and definitely not dystopian
Musk insists that the Tesla Bot will be smart and strong, but not smart or strong enough rise up against its human overlords. "You can run away from it and most likely overpower it," Musk said at AI Day 2021. "Hopefully that doesn't happen, but you never know,"
During an interview in April, Musk said Tesla will include safety features that ensure "this doesn't become a dystopian situation."
It will use Tesla's automated driving tech
Given that Tesla is already developing neural networks and hardware for self-driving technology, it "kind of makes sense to put that onto a humanoid form," Musk said.
Optimus will "see" the environment around it using Autopilot cameras in its head and "think" using the computer found in Tesla's cars.
Musk sees it as Tesla's most important work
Musk has touted the robot project as "the most important product development we're doing this year." He's also predicted that it could eclipse Tesla's car business and change the nature of the US economy.
"What is the economy? It is, at the foundation it is labor. So what happens when there is no shortage of labor?," he said at the last AI Day.
Consumers will be able to buy one someday
In April, Musk predicted the Tesla Bot will be available to consumers in less than 10 years. It will be able to do household tasks like tidy up, make dinner, mow the lawn, shop for groceries, and take care of elderly family members, Musk said. By the time it's widely available, it will cost "less than a car," according to Musk.
A grain of salt
Musk is adding the Tesla bot to a plate already piled high with projects that haven't seen the light of day.
There's the new Roadster, a $200,000 sports car that was supposed to launch in 2020 with acceleration-boosting rocket thrusters. Then there's the Cybertruck, a pickup truck that wowed onlookers with its stainless-steel body and doorstop shape when it debuted in 2019 but also hasn't materialized. For years, Musk has vowed that Teslas would soon be able to drive themselves.
Against this backdrop, it's difficult to know when to take Musk's pronouncements and timelines seriously. We'll all learn more about his robotic ambitions soon enough.
Delta pilots open voting for strike authorization as contract negotiations falter
FILE PHOTO: Delta Air Lines planes are seen at John F. Kennedy International Airport on the July 4th weekend in Queens, New York City
Fri, September 30, 2022 By David Shepardson and Aishwarya Nair
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pilots at Delta Air Lines Inc on Friday opened voting for authorizing a strike, saying negotiations with the U.S. airline for a new contract had failed to produce an "industry-leading" agreement.
The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), representing about 14,600 pilots at Delta, and the airline have been in mediated talks since February 2020. Talks paused during the pandemic and resumed in January.
The strike authorization ballot closes on October 31. ALPA noted "approval of the ballot does not mean" a strike is inevitable. Before that could happen, the National Mediation Board must first decide that additional mediation efforts would not be productive and offer the parties an opportunity to arbitrate. If either side declines, both parties enter a 30-day “cooling off” period.
Delta noted that no strike has been called, "so this authorization vote will not affect our operation for our customers. ALPA's stated purpose for the vote is simply to gain leverage in our pilot contract negotiations, which continue to progress under the normal process."
The airline added that "Delta and ALPA have made significant progress in our negotiations and have resolved more than the majority of contract sections. We are confident that the parties will reach a consensual deal that is fair and equitable, as we always have in past negotiations."
ALPA said "thousands of Delta pilots have shown solidarity on informational picket lines across the country over the last six months... This strike authorization ballot allows our members to tell management in no uncertain terms that it’s time to invest in the Delta pilots."
(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Nick Zieminski)
Biden administration scales back student debt relief for millions amid legal concerns
Seth Wenig/AP Photo
Michael Stratford Thu, September 29, 2022
The Biden administration is scaling back its debt relief program for millions of Americans over concerns about legal challenges from the student loan industry as well as a new lawsuit from Republican-led states.
In a reversal, the Education Department said on Thursday it would no longer allow borrowers who have federal student loans that are owned by private entities to qualify for the relief program. The administration had previously said those borrowers would have a path to receive up to $10,000 or $20,000 of loan forgiveness.
The policy change comes as the Biden administration this week faces its first major legal challenges to the loan forgiveness program, which Republicans have railed against as an illegal use of executive power that is too costly for taxpayers.
On Thursday, a group of six GOP attorneys general sued to block loan forgiveness. The states of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina asked a federal judge to strike down the debt cancellation program, arguing that it’s illegal and unconstitutional.
The student loans that are guaranteed by the federal government but held by private entities account for a relatively small, and shrinking, subset of all outstanding federal student debt. They comprise just several million of the roughly 45 million Americans with federal student loans.
But there are significant business interests that depend on the federally guaranteed loan program — a wide range of private lenders, banks, guaranty agencies, loan servicers and investors. That industry is widely seen, both inside and outside the administration, as presenting the greatest legal risk to the debt relief program.
Many of those companies face economic losses when they lose borrowers who convert their federally guaranteed loans into new loans that are made directly by the Education Department through a process known as consolidation.
Administration officials said when they announced the debt relief program in August that borrowers with federally guaranteed loans should consolidate their loans in order to receive loan forgiveness.
The Education Department said Thursday that borrowers who already took those steps to receive loan forgiveness would still receive it. The agency said it would still provide debt relief to borrowers “who have applied to consolidate into the Direct Loan program prior to Sept. 29, 2022.” But the department said that path is no longer available to borrowers after the new guidance.
“Our goal is to provide relief to as many eligible borrowers as quickly and easily as possible, and this will allow us to achieve that goal while we continue to explore additional legally available options to provide relief to borrowers with privately owned FFEL loans and Perkins loans, including whether FFEL borrowers could receive one-time debt relief without needing to consolidate,” an Education Department spokesperson said in a statement.
The privately held federal student loans featured prominently in the new lawsuit filed by GOP attorneys general on Thursday.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Missouri, is based, in part, on the theory that the states are harmed directly by the Biden administration taking steps to forgive federal student loans held by private entities.
For example, in the lawsuit, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt argues that the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, a quasi-state entity, which owns and services federally guaranteed student loans, faces economic harm from the debt relief program.
Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson argues in the lawsuit that some of his state’s pension fund is invested in securities that are backed by federally guaranteed loans. The lawsuit says the Biden relief program could cut in half the size of that market and hurt the state’s investments in it.
Some of the other states, however, argue that the entire student debt relief program — not just the federally guaranteed part — will cause them economic injury. They argue they’ll face lost tax revenue as a result of Biden’s student debt relief program for all types of federal student loans.
The Education Department spokesperson said the policy change would affect "only a small percentage of borrowers.” The most recent federal data, as of June 30, shows there were 4.1 million federal borrowers with $108.8 billion of loans held by private lenders.
Administration officials argued that the policy change would directly affect far fewer than millions of borrowers because a large share of the borrowers were never set to receive the relief in the first place or have other avenues to obtain relief.
Some 1.6 million borrowers with privately held federal student loans also have a direct loan, according to an administration official. Those borrowers will still be able to obtain debt relief on their direct loan, the official said, though it is possible that they will receive less overall relief.
Another 1.5 million borrowers have a certain type of privately held federal loan — an FFEL consolidation loan — would have faced a complex process for making their loans eligible for relief, according to an administration official.
Combined with some additional drop-off for borrowers who exceed the income limits of the program, administration officials argue that only about 770,000 borrowers would be directly affected by the policy change.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration released data estimating that 42.4 million borrowers across the country would be eligible for its debt relief program.
It’s not clear why the Biden administration decided on Thursday to pull the plug on allowing the subset of federal student loan borrowers to participate in the program. Industry officials and a wide range of policy experts had long warned — even before the administration’s August announcement — about the legal complexities associated with the federal government forgiving federally guaranteed student loans.
Top Education Department officials and industry groups had for weeks been negotiating a compromise deal in which the companies were compensated for their losses and would avoid suing the administration over the issue.
Those discussions have not yet produced a deal, but the administration signaled on Thursday they would continue negotiating.
The Education Department said on its website Thursday it “is assessing whether there are alternative pathways to provide relief to borrowers with federal student loans not held by [the Education Department], including FFEL Program loans and Perkins Loans, and is discussing this with private lenders.”
Ukraine announces fast-track NATO membership bid, rules out Putin talks
FILE PHOTO: Banners displaying the NATO logo are placed at the entrance of new NATO headquarters during the move to the new building
Fri, September 30, 2022
KYIV (Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday Ukraine was formally applying for fast-track membership of the NATO military alliance and that Kyiv was ready for talks with Moscow, but not with President Vladimir Putin.
The Ukrainian leader made his comments in a video which appeared intended as a forceful rebuttal to the Kremlin after Putin held a ceremony in Moscow to proclaim four partially occupied Ukrainian regions as annexed Russian land.
"We are taking our decisive step by signing Ukraine's application for accelerated accession to NATO," Zelenskiy said in a video on Telegram.
The video showed Zelenskiy announcing the membership bid and then signing a document flanked by his prime minister and the speaker of parliament.
The announcement was likely to touch a nerve in Moscow which casts the NATO bloc at home as a hostile military alliance bent on encroaching in Moscow sphere of influence and destroying it.
In his video speech, Zelenskiy accused Russia of brazenly rewriting history and redrawing borders "using murder, blackmail, mistreatment and lies," something he said Kyiv would not allow.
He said however that Kyiv remained committed to the idea of co-existence with Russia "on equal, honest, dignified and fair conditions".
"Clearly, with this Russian president it is impossible. He does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia," Zelenskiy said.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Timothy Heritage)
Putin illegally annexes Ukraine land; Kyiv seeks NATO entry
JON GAMBRELL and HANNA ARHIROVA Fri, September 30, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties Friday to illegally annex more occupied Ukrainian territory in a sharp escalation of his war. Ukraine's president countered with a surprise application to join the NATO military alliance.
Putin’s land-grab and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s signing of what he said is an “accelerated” NATO membership application sent the two leaders speeding faster on a collision course that is cranking up fears of a full-blown conflict between Russia and the West.
Putin vowed to protect newly annexed regions of Ukraine by “all available means," a renewed nuclear-backed threat he made at a Kremlin signing ceremony where he also railed furiously against the West, accusing the United States and its allies of seeking Russia's destruction.
Zelenskyy then held his own signing ceremony in Kyiv, releasing video of him putting pen to papers he said were a formal NATO membership request.
Putin has repeatedly made clear that any prospect of Ukraine joining the military alliance is one of his red lines and cited it as a justification for his invasion, now in its eighth month, in Europe's biggest land war since World War II.
In his speech, Putin urged Ukraine to sit down for peace talks but insisted he won’t discuss handing back occupied regions. Zelenskyy said there'd be no negotiations with Putin.
“We are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but … with another president of Russia," the Ukrainian leader said.
At his signing ceremony in the Kremlin's ornate St. George's Hall, Putin accused the West of fueling the hostilities to turn Russia into a “colony” and a “crowd of soulless slaves.” The hardening of his position, in the conflict that has killed and wounded tens of thousands of people, further raised tensions already at levels unseen since the Cold War.
Global leaders, including those from the Group of Seven leading economies, responded with an avalanche of condemnation. The U.S. and the U.K. announced more sanctions.
U.S. President Joe Biden said of Putin's annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions: “Make no mistake: These actions have no legitimacy.”
“America and its allies are not going to be intimidated by Putin and his reckless words and threats,” Biden added, noting that the Russian leader “can’t seize his neighbor’s territory and get away with it.”
The European Union said its 27 member states will never recognize the illegal referendums that Russia organized “as a pretext for this further violation of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Friday that would have condemned the referendums, declared that they have no validity and urged all countries not to recognize the annexation. China, India, Brazil and Gabon abstained on the vote in the 15-member council.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called it “the largest attempted annexation of European territory by force since the Second World War.”
The war is at “a pivotal moment,” he said, and Putin’s decision to annex more territory – Russia now claims sovereignty over 15% of Ukraine – marks “the most serious escalation since the start of the war.” Stoltenberg was noncommittal on Zelenskyy’s fast-track NATO application, saying alliance leaders “support Ukraine’s right to choose its own path, to decide what kind of security arrangements it wants to be part of.”
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said Zelenskyy’s move toward the military alliance amounts to “begging NATO to accelerate the start of World War III.”
Zelenskyy vowed to keep fighting, defying Putin's warnings that Kyiv shouldn't try to recapture what it has lost.
“The entire territory of our country will be liberated from this enemy," he said. “Russia already knows this. It feels our power."
The immediate ramifications of the “accelerated” NATO application weren't clear, since approval requires members' unanimous support. The supply of Western weapons to Ukraine has, however, already put it closer to the alliance's orbit.
“De facto, we have already proven compatibility with alliance standards," Zelenskyy said. “We trust each other, we help each other, and we protect each other.”
The Kremlin ceremony came three days after the completion in the occupied regions of Moscow-orchestrated “referendums” on joining Russia that Kyiv and the West dismissed as a blatant land grab held at gunpoint and based on lies. In his fiery speech, Putin insisted Ukraine treat the votes “with respect.”
As the ceremony concluded, the Moscow-installed leaders of the occupied regions gathered around Putin, linked hands and chanted “Russia! Russia!” with the audience.
Putin cut an angry figure as he accused the United States and its allies of seeking to destroy Russia. He said the West acted “as a parasite” and used its financial and technological strength “to rob the entire world.”
He portrayed Russia as pursuing a historical mission to reclaim its post-Soviet great power status and counter Western domination he said is collapsing.
“History has called us to a battlefield to fight for our people, for the grand historic Russia, for future generations,” he said.
Moscow has backed eastern Ukraine's separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions since they declared independence in 2014, weeks after Russia's annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Russia captured the southern Kherson region and part of neighboring Zaporizhzhia soon after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The Kremlin-controlled Russian parliament will meet next week to rubber-stamp the annexation treaties, sending them to Putin for final approval.
The orchestrated process went into a celebratory phase Friday night, with thousands gathered in Red Square for a concert and rally that Putin joined. Many waved Russian flags as entertainers from Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine performed patriotic songs. Russian media reported employees of state-run companies and institutions were told to attend, and students were allowed to skip classes.
Putin's land grab and a partial troop mobilization were attempts to avoid more battlefield defeats that could threaten his 22-year rule. By formalizing Russia’s gains, he seemingly hopes to scare Ukraine and its Western backers by threatening to escalate the conflict unless they back down — which they show no signs of doing.
Russia controls most of the Luhansk and Kherson regions, about 60% of the Donetsk region and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region, where it seized Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
But the Kremlin is on the verge of another stinging military loss, with reports of the imminent Ukrainian encirclement of the eastern city of Lyman. Retaking it could open the path for Ukraine to push deep into Luhansk, one of the annexed regions.
“It looks quite pathetic. Ukrainians are doing something, taking steps in the real material world, while the Kremlin is building some kind of a virtual reality, incapable of responding in the real world,” former Kremlin speechwriter-turned-analyst Abbas Gallyamov said, adding that "the Kremlin cannot offer anything сomforting to the Russians.”
Russia pounded Ukrainian cities with missiles, rockets and suicide drones in Moscow’s heaviest barrage in weeks, with one strike in the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital killing 30 and wounding 88.
In the Zaporizhzhia attack, anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has repurposed as ground-attack weapons rained down on people waiting in cars to cross into Russian-occupied territory so they could bring family members back across front lines, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office.
Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia blamed Ukrainian forces, but gave no evidence.
The strike left deep craters and sent shrapnel tearing into the humanitarian convoy, killing passengers. Nearby buildings were demolished. Bodies were later covered with trash bags, blankets and, for one victim, a blood-soaked towel.
A Ukrainian counteroffensive has deprived Moscow of battlefield mastery. Its hold on the Luhansk region appears increasingly shaky, as Ukrainian forces make inroads with the pincer assault on Lyman, a key node for Russian military operations in the Donbas and a sought-after prize. The Russian-backed separatist leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said Ukrainian forces have “half-encircled” Lyman. Ukraine maintains a large foothold in the neighboring Donetsk region.
Russian strikes were also reported in the city of Dnipro. Regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said at least three people were killed and five were wounded.
Ukraine’s air force said the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa were targeted with Iranian-supplied suicide drones that Russia has increasingly deployed.
Extracts from Putin's speech at annexation ceremony
Ceremony to declare Russia's annexation of four Ukrainian territories held in Moscow
Fri, September 30, 2022
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday presided over a ceremony at the Kremlin to annex four Ukrainian regions partly occupied by his forces. Following are extracts from his speech, translated by Reuters:
MESSAGE TO KYIV
"I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me, so that they remember this. People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens. Forever.
"We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately end hostilities, end the war that they unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table.
"We are ready for this ... But we will not discuss the choice of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. That has been made. Russia will not betray them."
DEFENDING 'OUR LAND'
"We will defend our land with all the powers and means at our disposal."
'NATION DISMEMBERED'
"In 1991, at Belovezh Forest, without asking the will of ordinary citizens, representatives of the then-party elites decided to destroy the USSR, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their motherland. This tore apart and dismembered our nation, becoming a national catastrophe ...
"I admit that they did not fully understand what they were doing, and what consequences this would inevitably lead to in the end. But this is no longer important. There is no Soviet Union, the past cannot be brought back. And Russia today does not need it anymore. We are not striving for this."
'GREAT, HISTORICAL RUSSIA'
"The battlefield to which fate and history have called us is the battlefield for our people, for great historical Russia, for future generations, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
NORD STREAM 'SABOTAGE'
"Sanctions were not enough for the Anglo-Saxons: they moved on to sabotage. It is hard to believe but it is a fact that they organised the blasts on the Nord Stream international gas pipelines, which run along the bottom of the Baltic Sea ... It is clear to everyone who benefits from this." 'NUCLEAR PRECEDENT'
"The United States is the only country in the world that has twice used nuclear weapons, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and setting a precedent."
"Even today, they actually occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and other countries, and at the same time cynically call them allies of equal standing."
WESTERN 'SATANISM'
"Now they have moved on entirely, to a radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family ...
"The dictatorship of the Western elites is directed against all societies, including the peoples of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This is a complete denial of humanity, the overthrow of faith and traditional values. Indeed, the suppression of freedom itself has taken on the features of a religion: outright Satanism." COLONIALISM
"The West ... began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages, and then followed the slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India, of Africa, the wars of England and France against China ...
"What they did was hooking entire nations on drugs, deliberately exterminate entire ethnic groups. For the sake of land and resources they hunted people like animals. This is contrary to the very nature of man, truth, freedom and justice."
EDUCATION AND GENDER
"Do we really want, here, in our country, in Russia, instead of 'mum' and 'dad', to have 'parent No. 1', 'parent No. 2', 'No. 3'? Have they gone completely insane? Do we really want ... it drilled into children in our schools ... that there are supposedly genders besides women and men, and [children to be] offered the chance to undergo sex change operations? ... We have a different future, our own future."
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Putin's 'annexation' announcement changes little on the ground in Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine — Even by his own fire-and-brimstone standards, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed angry on Friday as he addressed hundreds of Russian parliamentarians and governors in St. George Hall in the Kremlin.
The event had been called so that Putin could triumphantly announce his latest gambit in Ukraine, the annexation of four regions of that country into the Russian Federation. But as he rattled off a litany of reasons as to why this land grab was necessary, the mood was more apocalyptic than jubilant.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on Friday the annexation of four Russian-controlled territories in Ukraine: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/Kremlin via Reuters)
The rules-based international order was a sinister Western design, he told his audience, one that was rooted in Russophobia. The West itself has “embraced Satanism,” forced drug addiction, gender ambiguity and “the organized hunts of people as if they’re animals” — the latter either a strange reference to American mass shootings or the popularity of Netflix’s “Squid Game.” Nevertheless, such a fallen civilization still had the wherewithal to try and colonize Russia and steal its precious natural resources, he continued before comparing the United States to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, accusing it of setting a “precedent” in being the only nation to use nuclear weapons. Then he quoted from his favorite Russian fascist philosopher, Ivan Ilyin: “I believe in the spiritual forces of the Russian people, their spirit — my spirit, its fate is my fate, its suffering is my grief, its flowering is my joy.”
A crowd in Red Square had gathered to watch the widely anticipated news broadcast on a Jumbotron, wave the Russian tricolor and herald the invasion as a new “holy war.” “We won’t care about the price,” they chanted in a tacit admission that the war in Ukraine was, in fact, costing Russia a great deal.
Putin addresses a rally on Friday marking the annexation of four Ukrainian regions. (AlexanderNemenov/AFP via Getty Images)
“Make no mistake,” President Biden said in a White House statement released Friday, “these actions have no legitimacy. The United States will always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.”
Following Putin’s theatrics, Ukraine announced it was applying for fast-track membership to NATO — exactly the contingency the Russian government has for years claimed it sought to avoid. However symbolic this declaration is (Ukraine’s accession is still a distant prospect), it deftly stole the international spotlight away from Putin.
Given his years as a comedic actor, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky no doubt understands that timing is everything. He previously undercut Putin’s recent declaration of a “partial mobilization” of 300,000 reservists (in fact, many more Russians have been called up, including non-reservists) with his own announcement that 215 Ukrainian fighters who had courageously held out for months at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol had been released in a prisoner swap. In Ukraine, those soldiers have been venerated as national heroes for their Alamo-like defense of the factory.
Mykhailo Dianov, Ukrainian defender of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol, on Sept. 22 after his release from Russian captivity. (Press Service of the State Security Service of Ukraine/Handout via Reuters)
The “price” for that trade was, as far as has been made public, a mere handful of Russian prisoners of war and Viktor Medvedchuk, a disgraced Ukrainian oligarch long rumored to be a bagman or “wallet” for Putin’s stolen billions. (Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter, Daria.) Russian ultranationalists were outraged, characterizing the swap of such high-value enemies for a Medvedchuk as treasonous; they had demanded a public show trial and state execution of all the Azovstal holdouts.
Putin’s attempts to consolidate minimal Russian gains stand in marked contrast to the fact that his war of conquest is faltering, something even he subtly recognizes. Following his decree to gobble up four of Ukraine’s oblasts, he immediately suggested a “ceasefire” with Kyiv, which for weeks has been pressing the fight to the invaders.
Ukraine has continued its incredibly successful Kharkiv offensive by pushing across the Oskil River in an attempt to liberate the entirety of the oblast. Social media accounts have been overflowing with videos and pictures showing jubilant Ukrainian soldiers hoisting their flag’s blue-and-gold colors over recently liberated settlements. On Thursday, Ukrainian forces were said to have encircled the strategic city of Lyman in Donetsk, one of the oblasts Putin thinks is now going to be part of Russia. A few thousand Russian forces there have been cut off from the north, west and south, with only a narrow means of escaping eastward from advancing Ukrainian columns, according to pro-Russian military bloggers, whose pessimistic assessments are always more fact-based than anything emanating from the Russian Ministry of Defense. There are further indications that Lyman may be completely surrounded by Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian soldiers press forward in recently retaken Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, on Friday. (Kostiantyn Liberov/AP)
For the Ukrainians, taking Lyman would not only secure the northern approach to the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, both also in Kyiv’s hands, but it would also enable them to push toward retaking Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, the twin cities Russia captured in June after months of grueling attritional warfare.
Recapturing Lyman would also allow the Ukrainians to potentially outflank the Russian soldiers who have been attempting to sack the city of Bakhmut for several weeks. The U.S.- and EU-sanctioned Igor Girkin, a former FSB officer implicated in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014, has been complaining loudly to anyone who will listen that Russian forces near Bakhmut are in danger of being outflanked by the most recent Ukrainian advances. “If the enemy manages to take Lyman, if the enemy manages to reach Svatove, then even if in the meantime our forces take Bakhmut, this will have no benefit for our forces.”
Pro-Russian observers have long been warning of the risk to Lyman, which the Russian army is seemingly determined to hold even though it's in their strategic interest to withdraw, given the outsize cost of trying to hold it. Many analysts have speculated that Putin has given his own version of Stalin’s “not one step back” order, forcing the Russian army to defend an increasingly untenable position for political reasons against all strategic sense. If and when the Ukrainian army takes Lyman, it will likely capture a significant number of Russian POWs and another treasure trove of abandoned Russian war matériel, a welcome boon to the Ukrainian war effort, and a virtual repeat of scenes earlier in the Kharkiv offensive when the Ukrainian military overran Izium.
A Ukrainian national guard serviceman stands atop a destroyed Russian tank near Kharkiv. (Leo Correa/AP)
As the situation on the ground currently stands, Kyiv has a better chance of eventually acceding to NATO than Putin has of ever getting his forcible seizure of sovereign soil, the largest since World War II, legitimized even by many of his allies, who have bridled at Russian losses in recent weeks and demonstrably distanced themselves from him. These include China and the Central Asian republics. When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister praised Wang’s reaffirmation of China’s “respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Kazakhstan, a once stalwart ally of Russia, has absorbed thousands of Russians fleeing Putin’s disastrously implemented “partial mobilization” and affirmed its willingness to grant them asylum.
Nor is anyone much fooled by Russia’s transparently rigged plebiscites for “independence” in the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, all conducted at gunpoint, in territories largely depopulated by war. In a nod to Soviet-era totalitarianism, the voting “results” saw nearly 100% of all participants choosing to join Russia, while numerous figures not eligible to vote even under Moscow’s shambolic rules, including pro-Russian foreign fighters and Russian journalists, were also videotaped casting ballots. The Russian annexation plans were especially farcical in Zaporizhzhia, considering that Ukrainian forces currently control the regional capital there.
Putin with the Russian-installed leaders in Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. (Dmitry Astakhov/PoolSputnik/via Reuters)
One senior Ukrainian military intelligence officer told Yahoo News that Putin’s stage-managed “Anschluss” changes nothing. “We have had Crimea occupied since 2014, but this fact has not altered our strategy,” the officer said. “We are fighting for our existence, for our victory over the enemy regardless of whether or not they call occupied territories Russia or Timbuktu.”
Whatever imaginary lines Vladimir Putin may draw on a map of Ukraine, the official said, the force of Ukrainian arms will decide the outcome of this war. And Washington is signaling that, if anything, it is only investing more in Ukraine’s longevity and cohesion as an independent state.
On Wednesday the U.S. announced a new $1.1 billion aid package for Ukraine, which includes the delivery of 18 new High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to be delivered over the course of the next two years. Apart from the material difference these platforms have made and will continue to make on the battlefield, the Pentagon would not be sending more of them if it thought they were in imminent danger of being captured or destroyed by the Russian occupiers.
“Russia’s propaganda stunts in Ukraine do not change U.S. policy one iota,” said a senior U.S. diplomat. “The provision of additional U.S. security assistance, not just now but for the foreseeable future, is a powerful message that the U.S. will continue to stand with Ukraine.”
Indian opposition party seeks to shed dynastic rule image 1 / 8 India Congress Dynasty
Senior Congress party leader Shashi Tharoor files his nomination papers for the position of Congress party president, at the party's headquarter in New Delhi, India, Friday, Sept. 30, 2022. India’s main opposition Congress party, long led by the politically powerful Nehru-Gandhi family, is set to choose a non-family member as its next president after a gap of more than two decades.
(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
ASHOK SHARMA Fri, September 30, 2022
NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s main opposition party Indian National Congress is set to choose a non-family member as its next president as it struggles to recover before key upcoming elections.
While it's historically been led by the powerful Nehru-Gandhi family, Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi decided to bring in a new face during a challenging time for the party, which has been beset with crushing defeats in national and state elections since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party came to power in 2014.
Their choice fell on a trusted party leader: 80-year-old Mallikarjun Kharge from southern Karnataka state.
Kharge, a member of Parliament and a former Railways, Labour and Employment minister, filed his nomination Friday at the party headquarters in New Delhi. He will be challenged by Shashi Tharoor, 66, who spent nearly 30 years rising in rank at the United Nations before joining the Congress party in 2009.
If both Kharge and Tharoor stay in the race after the Oct. 8 deadline to withdrawal nominations, 9,000 party delegates will vote on Oct. 17 and the result will be announced Oct. 19.
“I tried to convince Rahul Gandhi to accept the party members’ wish to assume the post of president, but he is sticking to his stand that no one from the Gandhi family will be in the race this time,” said Ashok Gehlot, top party leader.
Rahul’s family has produced three of India's 15 prime ministers since independence, starting with his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru who served as the country's first. Two of them — his grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi — were assassinated. The party ruled India for more than 60 years after India gained independence from British colonialists in 1947.
Modi, the current prime minister, has denounced Congress' dynastic politics. The party has been led by non-family members in the past, but Sonia and Rahul have been at the helm of party affairs since 1998.
"The party president is a key post, but never more than now after two general election losses and a vote base at 18% — half that of the ruling Hindu nationalist party," said Mahesh Rangarajan, a professor of History and Environmental Studies at Ashoka University. “Yet this is the single largest opposition party by far with a history of comebacks as in 1980, 1991 and 2004."
“The focus is on who, but the crisis is as much of ideas. It is about how to combine bread-butter politics with facing up to the new nationalism of the ruling party,” Rangarajan said.
Critics describe key leaders leaving the Congress party — including veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad, who announced his own political party in September — as a revolt against the Nehru-Gandhi family’s domination.
In his resignation letter to Sonia, who has been serving as interim party president, Azad said that "the entire consultative mechanism was demolished by Rahul Gandhi when he took over as Congress vice president in 2013."
He lamented that "all senior and experienced leaders were sidelined, and a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party."
Rahul is on a 3,500-kilometer (2,185-mile) walking tour of Indian cities, towns and villages over the next five months as he attempts to rejuvenate the party and win the people’s support ahead of two key state legislature elections in Himachal Pradesh state and Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The results are likely to impact the country’s next national elections due in 2024.
Gandhi loyalist, ex-UN diplomat in race to lead India's opposition Congress party
Tharoor, a member of parliament from India's main opposition Congress party, speaks during an interview with Thomson Reuters Foundation at his office in New Delhi, India
Fri, September 30, 2022 at 6:21 AM·2 min read
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An ex-United Nations diplomat and a veteran politician emerged on Friday as contenders to lead India's main opposition Congress party as it prepares to elect a new president from outside the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty for the first time in nearly 25 years.
Shashi Tharoor, a three-term federal lawmaker who previously served as a U.N. Under-Secretary General, said he had submitted nomination papers to lead the 137-year-old party.
The Congress, which helped lead India's struggle for independence from Britain that was achieved in 1947 and dominated Indian politics for decades afterwards, has mostly been led by a member of the Gandhi family.
Sonia Gandhi is currently the party's interim president after her son, Rahul, resigned from the position in July 2019.
The party has seen its fortunes slide, losing two successive general elections since 2014 at the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has also wrested control of some states from the Congress.
The BJP has long advocated a hard right nationalist posture and an end to what it is says is appeasement of minority groups in a pre-dominantly Hindu India. The Congress has typically promoted a secular polity.
Tharoor's candidacy will be challenged by veteran Congressman Mallikarjun Kharge, currently the leader of the opposition in India's upper house of parliament, who is also seen as a Gandhi family loyalist.
A former state lawmaker from eastern Jharkhand state has also filed nomination papers.
Madhusudan Mistry, the Congress official in charge of running the party election, said the Gandhis would remain neutral. "The Gandhi family has not endorsed anybody's nomination," Mistry told reporters.
Around 9,000 party delegates across the country will vote for a new Congress president on Oct. 17, with results likely to be declared two days later.
(Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
India’s opposition Congress party likely to elect first non-Gandhi president in 25 years
Alisha Rahaman Sarkar Fri, September 30, 2022 at 6:03 AM·3 min read
India's opposition Congress party is likely to elect a new president outside the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in nearly 25 years in an effort to revive its electoral fortune and revamp the outfit ahead of the 2024 general polls.
The Indian National Congress (INC), which was formed 137 years ago during India's struggle for independence from British colonial rule, has been in power in the country for the most number of years since 1947.
However, the “grand old party” suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of prime minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the past two consecutive general elections.
Since the last defeat in 2019, several senior leaders have quit Congress citing a "leadership crisis". The call for a fresh election was made after Rahul Gandhi, the son of interim president Sonia Gandhi, stepped down after the poll debacle.
Ms Gandhi, the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, led the party for nearly two decades until 2017. The members of the Gandhi family have refused to stand in the party election.
Shashi Tharoor, a former UN diplomat and lawmaker from the southern state of Kerala, was the first person to file the nomination for the party's top post on Friday.
Mr Tharoor, 66, who has been a dissenter and vocal against the concentration of power with just the Gandhi family, said it was a "friendly contest" between colleagues.
He added: "Those who would like to continue the status quo would not be inclined to vote for me because I represent change, a different approach, and a vision to take the party forward in a different way as for some years we've been suffering setbacks."
Challenging him is a veteran politician and leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of parliament), Mallikarjun Kharge.
The 80-year-old lawmaker from Karnataka state and a staunch Gandhi family loyalist filed his nomination supported by some of the top members of the party.
"All leaders, workers, delegates and ministers who came in support of me today, encouraged me, I thank them. We'll see what the results are... hopeful that I win," he said.
Sources in the party told The Independent that Mr Kharge's name was proposed by a group of top party men for his years-long association with the Gandhi family. Cut outs of Sonia Gandhi (L), her son Rahul Gandhi (C) and daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra at a Congress rally (EPA)
"He is a grassroot leader and a Dalit. Mr Kharge has done way more in keeping the party together during times of crisis than others who just cry foul. State leaders have been asked to ensure that he becomes the next party president," said a member of the Congress, who did not want to be named as he is not officially authorised to talk to the media.
India’s 200 million Dalits, formerly untouchables, are placed on the lowest rung of an ancient caste hierarchy.
The third candidate in the fray is former Jharkhand minister JKN Tripathi.
While the election is touted to be a positive effort to unite the party after a series of defections, analysts fear that it is too late with the next general election less than two years away.
“The outcome of the election will have an impact on the next Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) elections. Once the Gandhi family steps down from the top role, the Congress party may not have an important place in the opposition alliance,” said Ramu Manivannan, professor and head of the department of politics at the University of Madras.
He added: “It is unlikely that anyone aside from the Gandhi family can inspire the opposition. Although the previous leadership was weak, no one can fill the vacuum and rebuild the party.”
“The current crisis within the Congress favours the BJP.”
The election will be held on 17 October and the counting of votes will be taken up a day later. Over 9,000 Congress party members are expected to cast their votes in the poll.
Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi has embarked on a five-month-long Unity March across the country to connect with locals and expand the party’s bases ahead of the general elections.
