SPACE/COSMOS

Germany's Isar Aerospace eyes overtaking Elon Musk's SpaceX

Frankfurt (Germany) (AFP) – The head of Germany's Isar Aerospace voiced hope Tuesday that the company could one day overtake Elon Musk's SpaceX to become the world's premier space launch company.

Issued on: 10/11/2026 - FRANCE24

Isar launched a rocket into orbit from Andoya in Norway on September 5, 2026 © Handout / Isar Aerospace/AFP/File


Daniel Metzler, who founded the company with two fellow students in 2018, pointed to a huge backlog of launch orders, helped by European military clients.

"SpaceX was founded in 2002. Back then I was playing with Pokemon cards," he said. "Looking at what could happen in the next 18 years, I wouldn't rule out us being further ahead than SpaceX."

Isar became in September the first privately financed European company to get a rocket into orbit.

Europe is betting that competition between Isar and other players such as Rocket Factory Augsburg will bring down the price of satellite launches.


This would help ensure affordable access to space for sectors ranging from telecommunications to defence, independent of entities such as SpaceX, the sector leader valued at $1.9 trillion (1.7 trillion euros).

Speaking at a conference organised by the SZ newspaper, Metzler said Isar had already come a long way, noting that SpaceX needed four attempts to get into orbit compared to Isar's two.

Capacity rather than demand was now the big bottleneck, Metzler added.

He said the company was 15-times oversubscribed for 2028 launches as European governments now preferred European providers to put their defence satellites up as opposed to firms overseas.

"There's 14 customers for every rocket that we have to disappoint," he said.

"About 18 months ago 85 percent of inquiries were commercial and 15 percent were military, and that ratio has since flipped," he added.

Chief executive Daniel Metzler says 'looking at what could happen in the next 18 years, I wouldn't rule out us being further ahead than SpaceX' © RONNY HARTMANN / AFP/File

Isar is working on developing reusable rockets to boost capacity and bring launch costs down, hoping to catch up with SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket.

"Already with our next launch, for which we are currently finalising the launch vehicle, we will be taking initial measurements to assess the re-entry of the rocket's first stage," he said.

"Over the next three or four flights, we also plan to start flying hardware specifically designed for reusability."

Asked if Isar could one day be valued at 100 billion euros, Metzler said "people massively underestimate the potential of space".

"To be honest, I reckon the figure is much higher, but then people would be even more convinced that I'm completely mad."

pca-vbw/fz/js

Is The Space Economy Driving The Weaponization Of Space? – Analysis

November 11, 2026

Observer Research Foundation

By Chaitanya Giri

Key Takeaways:

The global space economy’s boom in proliferated low-Earth-orbit constellations originated in the 2007–08 Chinese and U.S. anti-satellite tests and is accelerating orbital weaponisation.

Starlink, Chinese mega-constellations and others are creating hyper-redundant architectures that also serve as geopolitical tools, with non-state actors already using commercial satcom for grey-zone operations.

Treating satellite terminals as sensitive dual-use technology and imposing stricter international oversight are required to prevent commercial connectivity from enabling orbital conflict and empowering proxies.

The biggest driver of the global space economy is the bias towards proliferated satellite architectures, which emerged from China’s and the US’s anti-satellite (ASAT) tests in 2007 and 2008, respectively. While the space economy promises services never achieved before, it is also driving the weaponisation of Earth’s orbits, creating the conditions for orbital warfare and, more chronically, turning satellite constellations into geopolitical weapons.

The term ‘space economy’, which now features in a broad range of policy and strategy discussions, is not very old. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) codified it in 2012, defining it as, “The space economy is the full range of activities and the use of resources that create and provide value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, understanding, managing, and utilising space.”


The OECD coined the term ‘space economy’ to draw private capital and commercial capacities into space activities and to boost the national economies of member states. While commerce appears to be the central driver, the rise of the “space economy” was triggered by two anti-satellite (ASAT) kinetic kill weapons tests: China’s test on 12 January 2007 and the US’s response on 21 February 2008. Both tests pitted the US and China against each other in a comprehensive contest across all of Earth’s orbits. This time, it was not merely a space race but one involving the weaponisation of orbit.
The Military Origins of the Space Economy

China’s ASAT test showed the US a stark picture, which it reciprocated: standalone satellites of that era were not only large and expensive, but also sitting ducks and single points of failure that could cripple the whole military architecture, especially for globally expeditionary military activities. It was well known before the term ‘space economy’ was coined that countries intending to maintain dominance in space, or even to be keepers of exclusive capabilities, would need to carry out military activities under the guise of dual-use commercial activities. Commercial players build the assets, militaries are the end users, and the whole orbital architecture gets laid out, with weaponisation occurring smoothly while hiding in plain sight. The US Defence Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) 2026 public release of an image of China’s secretive spaceplane, Shenlong, operating in Earth’s orbit shows that the weaponisation race has been under way for more than a decade but is coming to the fore only now through in-orbit intelligence gathering.

The Race for Orbital Dominance

In August 2013, the US Air Force Space Command released a paper titled “Resiliency and Disaggregated Space Architectures” which advocated for a disaggregation approach by moving from standalone and exquisite satellites to constellations of small satellites. Constellations have been preferred since then as a deterrent to ASAT tests. They introduced hyper-redundancy, removed single points of failure, established a mathematical deterrent by lowering the cost of making and launching satellites, put the onus of orbital destruction entirely on the ASAT attacker, and created a proliferated warfighting architecture.

SpaceX was the first company to file with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for an orbital shell of more than 1,000 satellites, specifically 4,425 satellites, in 2016. China filed for an enormous constellation of 12,992 satellites in September 2020. This was also the period when China began nurturing many quasi-private commercial space players under the watchful eye of its state-controlled industries, under the State Council. While China’s Belt and Road Initiative has always had a space component, the first explicit mention of a satellite constellation as a national priority came in the 14th Five-Year Plan, which was approved in March 2021.


At present (as of October 2026), Starlink has more than 10,783 satellites, followed by OneWeb with 654 satellites, Amazon’s Kuiper with 394 satellites, and Qianfan with 238 satellites. In the next few years, the world could see more than 20,000 satellites hovering around in low Earth orbit, but that is not all: unmitigated numbers are envisaged. E-space, founded by OneWeb founder Greg Wyler, has registered with ITU for a satellite constellation of a whopping 116,640 satellites. China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council has filed for an enormous constellation of more than 200,000 non-geostationary satellites. This raises questions about the limits to the growth of orbital constellations, whether this expansion is a mad rush, a zero-sum game or a race to nowhere, and where this orbital ‘great power’ rivalry for absolute dominance is ultimately headed.

In the past year, several governments have issued strongly worded statements urging states to step back from an escalation ladder that could lead to a space war. In October 2026, Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev warned that if the US blocks Russian satellites, the Ukraine-Russia conflict would escalate into a full-fledged space war, with Russia targeting Starlink.

In September 2026, UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting cautioned that space-based threats are growing at an alarming rate and in sophistication, including lasers, electromagnetic pulses and kinetic ASAT weapons. After US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink made the startling revelation that the US has placed “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, urged the US to stop preparing for war in space and turning the orbits into a battlefield. The US is certain that its space dominance is being challenged by Russia and China through a strategy of deceiving, disrupting, denying, degrading and destroying. In a 2024 statement, the US Space Force’s Space Systems Command argued that proliferated LEO constellations are the way to avert a single point of failure. Moreover, each of them intends to complicate its adversary’s targeting calculus.

From Orbital Warfare to Geopolitical Leverage

The weaponisation of orbits is a great-power game — and a space war is fast becoming a possibility. The more chronic issue, however, is that great powers use the placement of weapons in space to exploit space assets in pursuit of their geopolitical and geoeconomic goals. India should treat proxies, non-state actors, terror groups and criminal organisations with access to the downstream services of satellite constellations not as peripheral, anomalous actors but as strategic force multipliers of space powers.

With access to LEO satellite communications (satcom), these four groups have already shown several signs of engaging in grey-zone operations, in which their backers can claim plausible deniability or exploit the difficulty of attribution. They use LEO satcom in zones with a governance vacuum, where they trample the telecom sovereignty of legitimate but weak governments. In some situations, they could also create front enterprises with a digital backbone provided by LEO satcom, which then fund the larger terror and criminal enterprises


History has shown that proxies are rarely obedient to their benefactor states. At some point, they go rogue, having acquired weapons, wealth, power and self-interest. Their independent actions, which could be reckless given the absence of accountability, can force their sponsors into conflict with a major rival power while further eroding the international order and the institutions that safeguard the sanctity of space law.

Weaponised LEO constellations are becoming a Sword of Damocles over international security. While the space economy drives global digital connectivity, that connectivity transcends jurisdictions and becomes a geopolitical weapon. Commercially, it grants bad-faith actors the status of data subscribers, giving them secure, high-speed communication backbones that outpace the capabilities of traditional national law enforcement. Closing this security gap requires a paradigm shift: satellite terminals must be treated not merely as commercial consumer electronics but as sensitive weaponised technology, demanding strict international regulatory oversight, cooperative corporate governance and constructive international diplomacy.

None of these seems to be working despite the rise of the space economy, since great powers are becoming autarkic and hegemonic, relinquishing their responsibilities towards shared international well-being and being driven more by domination in space. The question is whether the global space economy, beyond the trillions of dollars it aims to generate, will deny bad-faith actors access to space and commit to accountability, impartial justice and the well-being of those in need, a necessity in today’s world, or whether it will continue to abet space weaponisation unchecked.

About the author: Chaitanya Giri is a Fellow at the Centre for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Observer Research Foundation.

Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.

About Observer Research Foundation
ORF was established on 5 September 1990 as a private, not for profit, ’think tank’ to influence public policy formulation. The Foundation brought together, for the first time, leading Indian economists and policymakers to present An Agenda for Economic Reforms in India. The idea was to help develop a consensus in favour of economic reforms.
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The Next Discovery May Be A Rhythm, Not An Image – Analysis

November 12, 2026

By Burak Oktenli

Key Takeaways:

The piece argues that scientific AI should prioritize temporal and frequency patterns in data—such as gravitational-wave chirps and intermittent pulsar signals—rather than relying primarily on image classification.

Recent detections, including additional gravitational waves and a disappearing MeerKAT pulsar, illustrate how changing signals and instrumental rhythms require hybrid approaches that combine physics templates, spectral methods, and machine learning.

Researchers are urged to test time–frequency stages against existing methods on known and injected signals, while remaining alert to the risk of mistaking instrument artifacts for genuine discoveries.

Gravitational waves, disappearing pulsars and automated sky surveys show that nature often reveals itself through patterns in time. Scientific AI should recognize the rhythm without mistaking the instrument for the universe.

The universe does not always announce a discovery by showing astronomers a new shape. Sometimes it sends a faint pulse, a pattern of silence, or a rising note buried in noise. What matters is not what an object looks like, but how a physical signal changes through time.

That distinction feels newly important in 2026. In May, the international LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA collaboration reported 161 additional gravitational-wave detections, bringing its catalog to 390 confirmed signals. In September, radio astronomers working with South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope reported a pulsar that repeatedly disappears from view. Both achievements depended on looking for structure in measurements rather than recognizing an object in a photograph.

Artificial intelligence can help with this work, but it needs the right scientific question. A system trained to classify images and a system designed to find a weak, changing frequency are solving different problems. Neither should be mistaken for a universal way of discovering the unknown.

The black hole was found in a changing frequency

On September 14, 2015, two instruments in the United States registered the first directly detected gravitational wave. The signal called GW150914 swept upward from about 35 to 250 hertz as two black holes approached merger. Its effect on the detector was extraordinarily small, but the changing waveform matched a family of predictions from general relativity. Matched-filter analysis found it with a signal-to-noise ratio of 24.

This was not an algorithm discovering a black hole merely because it had seen pictures of similar ones. Nor was it simply noticing one frequency. The search used an evolving waveform, the instruments’ frequency-dependent noise, and independent observations from two locations. Investigators also tested environmental and instrumental explanations. The recognizable object came later, as a physical interpretation of the measured signal.

The lesson is not that physics has no need of machine learning. Quite the opposite. A January 2026 study in Physical Review Letters combined information from multiple gravitational-wave search pipelines using machine learning and uncertainty calibration. Existing astronomy already mixes physical templates, frequency-domain analysis, anomaly searches and learned methods. The next opportunity is to make those complementary strengths more accessible across instruments and disciplines.
A disappearing pulsar is still a signal

Another example arrived from South Africa. In a September 2026 paper, researchers described a pulsar found in archived MeerKAT observations toward the Small Magellanic Cloud. An image-based search noticed that a radio source appeared and disappeared over roughly minute-long intervals. Follow-up measurements established a rotation period of about 0.55 seconds. The team estimated that its radio emission was absent for roughly one-third of the observed pulses.

This is a particularly revealing case because images and timing were partners, not rivals. Changing images raised the initial question. Precise timing helped establish what kind of astrophysical source the team had found. A still image alone could not describe that behavior. But a narrow search for a perfectly uninterrupted tone could also have missed an object that sometimes falls silent.

China’s FAST radio telescope offers a related lesson on a longer clock. In October, researchers reported a pulsar in an evolving triple-star system whose characterization drew on years of timing measurements and supporting observations. Minute changes in the arrival of pulses carried information about companions that could not be obtained simply by taking a sharper picture.

Periodic signals, drifting frequencies, interrupted bursts and one-time transients demand different tools. Fourier methods can concentrate stable periodic information; folding can reveal weak repeated pulses; time–frequency methods can follow a changing chirp. Learning systems can help combine the evidence. What matters is choosing a representation that fits the physics, rather than expecting every phenomenon to announce itself in the same data format.

Outside astronomy, this way of thinking already supports vibration diagnostics for machinery and the analysis of oscillations in electrical grids. Those fields have used spectral tools for decades. Their lesson for scientific AI is to represent physically meaningful timing and frequency relationships explicitly, rather than assume every useful pattern will emerge from a generic classifier.

The instrument has a rhythm too

There is a less glamorous reason to pay attention to frequencies: detectors generate patterns of their own. Electrical supply harmonics, mechanical resonances, calibration signals and interference can appear in the same observations as the phenomenon being studied. A narrow peak in a spectrum is not automatically a discovery. Sometimes it is the machine measuring itself.

That is why spectral analysis must be accompanied by calibration, comparison between instruments and explicit checks against known noise. A real signal can also be broadband or nonperiodic, so blindly subtracting every unusual frequency would destroy some of the evidence scientists want. The right practice is to model, test and document competing explanations, not to turn a frequency plot into a truth machine.

The scale of incoming data makes that discipline urgent. In February 2026, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory issued roughly 800,000 public alerts in a single night, with a stream expected eventually to approach seven million nightly alerts. Rubin detects changes by comparing images, and its community alert brokers can add light-curve analysis, machine-learning classifications and context. Not every alert contains a periodic signal. The broader lesson is that discovering a change and understanding its temporal behavior are separate tasks that should support each other.

Teach AI to search for physical behavior

A practical next step is not to declare image recognition obsolete or invent a “frequency-only AI.” Researchers should ask how much a physically informed time–frequency stage improves a complete discovery pipeline relative to strong existing alternatives. Test the idea on archival records where the answer is known and on blinded data with injected weak signals, changing frequencies, intermittent emissions and realistic instrumental artifacts.


Compare image-based, raw-time-series, classical signal-processing and hybrid machine-learning approaches on equal terms. Report not just the number of candidates found, but the false-alarm rate, the delay before detection, robustness across instruments and the kinds of real signals each method misses. A system should also say when no proposed interpretation survives the available evidence. Such comparisons would measure an engineering advantage rather than assume one.

There is a limit to every physics-informed search: an unexpected phenomenon may not conform to the models used to find it. Model-free searches and human investigation remain essential. But science can widen the search space by paying attention not only to appearances and labeled categories, but to oscillation, timing, correlation and change.

The next unfamiliar thing discovered in physical data may not look like anything in a training set. Before asking what, it resembles, scientists should ask what it repeats, what changes, and whether that pattern belongs to the universe or to the instrument.


About Burak Oktenli
Burak Oktenli holds an MBA and a Master of Professional Studies in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. His research addresses the governance of authority in autonomous and AI-enabled systems, and his writing has appeared at the Modern War Institute at West Point, RUSI, RealClearDefense, RealClearMarkets, and Geopolitical Monitor. He is the author of Authority Architectures for Autonomous Systems, a ten-volume series on how authority in autonomous systems is delegated, monitored and recovered, at authority-architecture.me
View all posts by Burak Oktenli

On the ground

'We call it war-life balance': Daryna's daily struggle to live, survive in wartime Ukraine

from our special correspondent in Ukraine – Daryna, 25, entered adulthood in a country at war. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, her days have been shaped by air raid alerts, power outages and nights spent sheltering in the subway. Despite the uncertainty that shadows every day, she is determined to preserve a semblance of normal life in Kyiv. FRANCE 24 met a young woman who has become emblematic of a generation learning to live under daily bombardment.


Issued on: 09/11/2026
FRANCE24
By: Assiya HAMZA/Mélina HUET

Daryna has adapted her life to wartime realities since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv on October 26, 2026. © Melina Huet, FRANCE 24

Daryna grew up before her time, far too quickly. War gave her no choice. The Kyiv resident was barely 21 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nearly five years into the conflict, she is clinging, as best she can, to what has become a dystopian version of normal life.

“Some foreigners think tanks are rolling through Kyiv, that the city is an active frontline,” says the striking young woman. “Others look at my life on social media and think I live a perfectly normal life because I go to the gym, read books and go out on weekends. But my life is not normal at all.”

Living in a 19th-century building in the bohemian district of Podil, Daryna has carefully curated her apartment.

“I chose it because it was beautiful, historic and so different from the Soviet-era buildings and apartments I grew up in,” says the Rivne native from northwestern Ukraine. “I wanted to make it as beautiful as possible because it’s important to surround yourself with beauty and things that bring you comfort during wartime.”

In the spacious living room with its green walls, culture is everywhere: art books, novels, copies of the iconic American magazine The New Yorker, and music – lots of music.

An impressive vinyl collection, neatly stacked in a wooden crate, rests on the polished hardwood floor beside an electric piano. A small speaker fills the room with the haunting voice of Radiohead’s singer and songwriter Thom Yorke.

“When I think about all my books, my records, my piano, and the possibility of losing everything in an explosion, it makes me incredibly sad,” says the young woman, whose hazel eyes are tinged with melancholy. “Some people started buying fewer things when the war began. At first, I did the same. But eventually I realised I needed more things around me to make this place feel like home.”

Seated comfortably in an old wooden armchair, Daryna recounts how a friend’s apartment, just a few streets away, was damaged in an explosion a few days earlier.

“It was a street people considered safe. A drone crashed into the garden and then exploded. The blast wave blew out the windows. She’s had everything repaired, but she’s still finding shards of glass everywhere,” she says, before breaking into laughter.

“Honestly, I think being a glazier is probably the most profitable business in Ukraine right now.”

Like all Ukrainians, Daryna spends much of her time checking air raid alerts on her phone and making sure her loved ones are safe in Kyiv, October 26, 2026. © Melina Huet, FRANCE 24

Daryna breaks off mid-sentence. A notification sounds. Her phone emits a shrill alert. “There’s an air raid alert. It’s a yellow alert, which means Kyiv is being targeted by drones. I think we should check where they’re headed,” she says, scrolling through her Telegram messages. “Oh, they’re only heading towards the city centre. It should be fine, I think. It’s not very close.”

Setting her phone aside, the cybersecurity journalist resumes her explanation. “We also have red alerts, which mean there is a risk the city could come under missile attack. When the war began, there were only red alerts. They applied to both drones and missiles. But recently, the authorities changed the system to distinguish between the two. It’s very useful because it gives people a better sense of how concerned they should be and what level of anxiety they need to prepare for.”

Screenshot of Ukraine’s air raid alert app on a mobile phone in Kyiv, November 2, 2026. False alerts were reported across several regions that day. Gleb Garanich, Reuters

These alerts happen at any hour of the day or night, and last between a few minutes and several hours. Their arrival is announced by air raid sirens blaring from loudspeakers across the city. Residents are advised to seek shelter as quickly as possible.

“For a while, I slept in my walk-in closet. I moved my mattress and pillows in there. But one night, during an explosion, part of the ceiling fell on my head. I also tried sleeping in my bathtub, but that proved dangerous too because there’s a mirror in my bathroom. Since then, I’ve mostly slept in the hallway, which is considered the safest place in the apartment.”

It's constant psychological strain, one that grows heavier by the day. Some red alerts are more terrifying than others.

Read more‘Not an isolated incident’: Russian drones stalk Ukraine’s civilians in ‘human safaris’

On October 21, Kyiv residents endured a night of terror. Russia launched three waves of 21 missiles targeting residential buildings, energy infrastructure and shopping centres.

Many residents made their way to shelters, underground parking garages and subway stations. Others remained huddled in their homes, feeling the walls shake, waiting for the shock waves and listening to the explosions.

Kyiv has become nearly as dangerous as cities closer to the front line. It is a deliberate Kremlin strategy aimed at sowing panic and, potentially, triggering a mass exodus from a capital it failed to capture in the early days of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

While fear and exhaustion can sometimes be read on people’s faces, many Ukrainians no longer even react to the piercing sound of air raid alerts. It is an attitude that can surprise outsiders, even unsettle them.

But how can people keep going to shelters when the alerts come one after another? They still have to work, study or simply sleep.

Danger has become woven into the fabric of daily life. This coping mechanism helps mask a threat that remains very real.

Kyiv, partially darkened by power outages, October 24, 2026. © Melina Huet, FRANCE 24

The comfort of carrying a book, even without reading it

Like almost every Ukrainian, Daryna has spent nights in the subway – more than once.

“I keep an emergency bag permanently packed in my wardrobe. It has my ID documents, some cash, snacks and water, a blanket and a small pillow. Most of the time, I also try to bring a book with me, even though I never actually read in the metro because it’s too uncomfortable. But just having it with me makes me feel better. I also have a sleeping bag if I’m planning to spend the night in a shelter, whether during an attack or before one begins.”

Images of Kyiv’s metro, one of the capital’s main refuges, have flooded social media since the start of the war. Mattresses, pillows, sleeping bags and now even tents. Residents often head underground before curfew, but they must wait until metro services have ended before settling in for the night.

“We try to preserve some privacy, but some stations are simply too small. When I arrive late, it’s really difficult to find a place to settle.”

Coexisting in such close quarters, with little personal space, is not always easy.

On busier nights, people must contend with videos playing without headphones, phone calls on speaker, the cacophony of incoming air raid alerts ... and the sound of alarm clocks going off.

“The war has made me realise just how much people can adapt and how quickly those things become part of their routine – like sleeping in the subway or in a shelter,” Daryna says.

“Sleeping in a shelter, or not sleeping at all in your apartment because of the strikes, affects you both physically and mentally,” she adds. “Going back to a normal life afterwards can be difficult, but it’s not as if we have a choice. The attacks happen every day, and we simply have to keep living. It has become part of our routine, part of our reality.”

As the late October afternoon draws on, a chill begins to settle over the Ukrainian capital.

A small electric heater warms the air in the spacious living room. In Kyiv, power cuts are a daily occurrence, with rolling blackouts imposed district by district according to schedules that are, at best, unreliable.

“They’ve just switched the power back on. I have no idea how long it will last. We’ve had outage after outage. The schedules rarely hold. The electricity can go out at any moment or stay on for several hours. A few days ago, I only had power for two hours. The outage lasted 24 hours. It was very hard.”

In Ukraine, cold has become a weapon. The winter of 2025-2026 was the harshest since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Massive Russian strikes on energy infrastructure triggered severe power shortages, depriving Ukrainians of electricity and heating.

Inside homes, radiators connected to Soviet-era heating networks remained desperately cold as temperatures plunged to as low as -27°C in the capital and -30°C in some parts of the country. The conditions were enough to drive many residents out of Kyiv.

“I hope this winter won’t be as cold as the last one. I had no heating in my apartment and the temperature inside dropped to 9°C. I barely survived, even though I wore thermal clothing all the time.

“I genuinely thought I was going to freeze to death. I even promised myself it would be the last winter I spent in Kyiv. Obviously, that hasn’t happened.”

On September 22, following a meeting with US President Donald Trump during the UN General Assembly, President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed an “energy ceasefire” with Russia, contingent on reciprocity.

So far, the proposal has gone nowhere. As a result, a similar scenario appears likely to unfold this winter. The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is nevertheless considered both a war crime and a crime against humanity, according to an independent UN commission.

Daryna shows her portable power station in Kyiv on October 25, 2026. © Melina Huet, FRANCE 24

‘Part of your personality disappears’

Daryna has learned to make the best of a difficult situation. To put on makeup or get dressed, she relies on a headlamp. For light, she uses candles or a rechargeable table lamp. She has also invested in a portable power station.

“It’s very expensive [editor’s note: more than 57,000 hryvnias, or around €1,300 at peak demand, equivalent to more than two months of the average salary in Ukraine or nearly eight times the country’s minimum wage,], but it helps enormously. I think most Ukrainians my age have one.

“You can plug in your router and keep Wi-Fi during power cuts. It’s more than enough to charge a laptop and my phone. I also have several power banks,” says the Kyiv resident, who works from home.

But when she has to choose which devices to charge, it is her electric piano that takes priority. Daryna treasures it above all else.

Daryna beside her electric piano in Kyiv on October 25, 2026. © Melina Huet, FRANCE 24

“I still play during power outages. It helps a lot because it keeps me occupied and allows me to do something purely for myself,” she says. “When you live through a war, you can feel the difference between living and surviving. Sometimes, you have to do both.

“Being without electricity or running water, sleeping in a shelter, not having access to the food you love, or need, or simply crave, that's surviving. But going to a party, going to the gym while drones are exploding outside, choosing to do ordinary things, that's living.

“You have to find the right balance. In Ukraine, we have this expression: war-life balance. It's become a cliché by now, but we still use it because finding that balance between war and life is incredibly important.”

As for the prospect of a ceasefire with Russia, Daryna does not believe in it. Not now, and certainly not while Vladimir Putin remains in power.

“Russian influence is so vast and so deeply entrenched. It’s not something you can simply erase with a ceasefire or any kind of agreement,” she says.

“I don’t think a ceasefire would immediately make our lives easier. It would simply be a pause for everyone. Even when the war ends, regardless of how it ends, there will still be so much to go through before we can return to a life that anyone could call normal. I’m not sure my generation will ever have a normal life.

“War takes so much from you. Everyone will have experienced loss, whether the loss of loved ones or of everything they owned. And even if they haven’t, part of your personality disappears. You become an entirely different person. Rebuilding Ukraine into what it was before the war will be difficult.”

Daryna grew up too fast, long before her time. The Ukrainian woman who survives this war will no longer be the same person. Who was she before the war? She no longer knows. Who will she be afterwards? She does not dare to think about it.

“It scares me. Making major decisions, planning my future, imagining what comes next, all of that is difficult. It seems so easy for someone who isn’t living through a war. A European or an American my age can plan a holiday for next spring or summer.

“I don’t even know how my evening will end. That depends entirely on how effective our air defences are.”

This article has been adapted from the original in French with the help of AI.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

La vie des Noirs compte

'I still have nightmares': victim of police violence seeks justice six years on

Three French police officers are to go on trial on Monday over the brutal beating of black music producer Michel Zecler in Paris in 2020 – a case that sparked nationwide outrage over police violence and racism.


Issued on: 09/11/2026 - RFI

Music producer Michel Zecler poses for a photo session in his offices in Saint-Cloud, western Paris, on 28 October, 2026. AFP - JOEL SAGET

On 21 November 2020, France was under its second Covid-19 lockdown when police stopped Zecler outside his Paris studio, accusing him of failing to wear a mandatory face mask and suspecting him of cannabis use.

The officers pushed him into the entrance of his studio and violently beat him in an assault captured by security cameras.

Over approximately five minutes, Zecler suffered around 30 punches and truncheon blows to the face and body, according to the investigation.

A medical report documented injuries to his head and face, wounds to his lip and scalp, and a ruptured biceps tendon, leaving him unable to work for 45 days.

In their arrest report, the police claimed Zecler had struck them and attempted to seize a truncheon – an account contradicted by security footage released several days later by French media outlet Loopsider.

Footage 'saved my life'

"I don't understand the hatred I saw in their eyes," said Zecler, who has a titanium anchor in his left arm following the assault and says he still suffers nightmares.

"Without this video, I’d be the one in prison. It saved my life," he told RFI.

The case prompted widespread condemnation, with President Emmanuel Macron describing the assault as "unacceptable" and "shameful".

The government subsequently launched a six-month consultation on policing, bringing together police unions to discuss relations with the public, surveillance and training.

France denies police racism is widespread, but evidence tells another story

But Zecler believes little has changed.

"I'm not about to lump all police officers together, but I no longer believe in the idea of just a few 'bad apples'," he told RFI.

"I think there's a problem with this institution, which categorically refuses to acknowledge that some of its members might make mistakes."

Zecler, who says officers subjected him to racist abuse during the attack, maintains that he was targeted because of his skin colour.

However, investigating judges did not retain a racial motivation in the case, citing insufficient evidence.

Confronted with the footage, the three officers eventually acknowledged using excessive force, with one admitting to "unsportsmanlike gestures", another to "unjustified" force and the third to "illegitimate" force.

According to the indictment, they attributed their actions to "panic" during what they described as a particularly difficult intervention.

Podcast: A deeper look at urban and police violence in France's banlieues

They claimed to have felt trapped in the narrow entrance and to have heard threats from young people in the studio's basement who were attempting to help Zecler.

"The police only acknowledged what the footage proved; my cameras should have been equipped with microphones too," Zecler said.

Six years later, the 47-year-old producer says the physical and psychological consequences remain profound.

"I hope this trial will allow me to turn the page. This attack has had serious consequences for me, both personally and professionally, to this day," he said.

"I'm still furious. I'm angry about what these people did to me, I'm angry because they represent an institution they didn't respect. A police officer must be beyond reproach."

Zecler hopes for "a sentence commensurate with the seriousness of the acts", including both the violence and what he describes as lies in the official police report.

The three officers – Aurélien B., 29, Pierre P., 37, and Philippe T. – face charges of intentional violence committed as a group and falsifying an official report to conceal their actions.

They face up to 15 years in prison. Their lawyers declined to comment ahead of the trial which is expected to wrap up on 20 November.
Wider concerns over police discrimination

The Zecler case reignited debate in France over police brutality and racial discrimination – practices that victims and researchers describe as systemic, but which authorities and police unions largely attribute to isolated incidents.

Few allegations of police brutality reach criminal courts, with many cases handled through internal disciplinary procedures. Convictions remain rare.

The controversy comes amid continuing concerns over discriminatory identity checks.

According to a report published last year by France's independent rights watchdog, the Défenseur des droits, young men perceived as Arab, black or North African are four times more likely to be stopped by police than the rest of the population.

They are also 12 times more likely to face more intrusive measures, including searches, according to the report, which surveyed more than 5,000 people.

CUTHULU STUDIES

How octopuses squeeze through too small gaps

The Company of Biologists

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An octopus is emerging through the small aperture in a vessel

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Credit: Michael Kuba

Octopuses are extraordinarily versatile. From walking across the seabed on their eight arms to jetting through the water, manipulating tools and squeezing through unimaginably tight spaces, the flexibility of octopuses almost defies belief. ‘Octopuses can change their body shape to squeeze through tiny holes, almost like water flowing through a gap, so their size doesn’t always limit where they can go’, says Wenci Xin from the National University of Singapore.

But no one knew exactly how octopuses manoeuvre through gaps that are smaller than their bulbous mantles. ‘There is no information about how octopuses squeeze through an opening far smaller than the body diameter’, says Xin.

Michael Kuba (University of Naple Federico II, Italy), Tamar Gunit, Daniel Abed-Navandi (both from Haus des Meeres-Aqua Terra Zoo, Austria) and Xin offered young common octopuses (Octopus vulgaris) and Mayan octopuses (Octopus maya) tight holes to squeeze through and publish their discovery that common octopuses use different strategies depending on the size of the hole in Journal of Experimental Biology.

First, Kuba measured the distance between the animal’s eyes, which ranged from 15 to 35 mm and is a good indicator of the size of the stiff cartilage sheath encasing the octopus’s central nervous system, which could determine the dimensions of the smallest hole that an octopus can negotiate. Then, Xin designed individual Perspex boxes – some with a hole slightly wider than the distance between the octopus’s eyes and others that were 5 mm smaller – for the individuals to extricate themselves through.

Filming the escapologists, the team realised that the octopuses used different strategies depending on whether the hole was small or large.

When the hole was relatively spacious, each octopus first explored the hole with its arms before popping one through – usually one of the two front left arms – and then threaded up to five of the remaining arms through after. Then, the octopuses reached back with two of the arms that had already passed through, adhering to the partition with their suckers before stiffening and extending the arms to push on the partition and pull the remaining arms, head and mantle through in 20 s.

However, when confronted with a smaller hole, there was a limit to how many limbs the common octopuses could thread through. At that point, the octopus broke the final manoeuvre into two stages, pulling the remaining arms through the aperture, before compressing the mantle slightly and dragging it through after.

Xin admits that he was surprised that the common octopuses used the alternative strategy when negotiating the tightest gaps as the team had thought the octopuses would always use the same approach, regardless of gap size.

However, the Mayan octopuses didn’t even try negotiating the tighter hole; they simply sat in the corner of the box and never explored the aperture with their arms. But when they were offered the choice between a small and large hole to escape through, the octopuses initially explored the smaller hole, before abandoning it and emerging through the larger aperture.

Having figured out how octopuses negotiate gaps smaller than their bodies, Xin and Cecilia Laschi (National University of Singapore) are keen take the lessons learned from the octopuses and use them in soft-bodied robots that search ruins in disaster zones and explore the open sea.

‘All existing search-and-rescue and exploration robots have slender snake-like bodies, to help them move through narrow gaps’, Xin explains, which limits the number of sensors and manipulators that can be packed into the robot bodies, restricting their adaptability during challenging search-and-rescue missions.

Xin and Laschi are optimistic that octopus-inspired robots that can manoeuvre through tight spaces in disaster zones could represent a new era in search-and-rescue robot design.

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IF REPORTING THIS STORY, PLEASE MENTION JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY AS THE SOURCE AND, IF REPORTING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A LINK TO: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.252825

REFERENCE: Xin, W., Kuba, M. J., Gutnick, T., Abed-Navandi, D. and Laschi, C. (2026). Overcoming environmental constraints: octopus uses 3-step or 4-step strategies to squeeze through small holes. J. Exp. Biol. 229, jeb252825 doi:10.1242/jeb.252825

 

DOI:10.1242/jeb.252825

This article is posted on this site to give advance access to other authorised media who may wish to report on this story. Full attribution is required and if reporting online a link to https://journals.biologists.com/jeb is also required. The story posted here is COPYRIGHTED. Advance permission is required before any and every reproduction of each article in full from permissions@biologists.com.

 

THIS ARTICLE IS EMBARGOED UNTIL Thursday 5 November 2026 16:00 HRS EDT (21:00 HRS GMT)

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Journal

Journal of Experimental Biology

DOI

10.1242/jeb.252825

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Overcoming environmental constraints: octopus uses 3-step or 4-step strategies to squeeze through small holes

Article Publication Date

5-Nov-2026

ON THE GROUND

U.S. Midterms 2026: 

Georgians on the front lines of the people’s war against data centres

Artificial intelligence emerged as a major issue on the 2026 US midterm campaign trail, with opposition to data centres drawing supporters across partisan divides united over ecological worries, increased utility bills and business interests outweighing citizen concerns. Georgia, the top US market for data centre construction, has been on the front line of the struggle.

Issued on: 02/11/2026
FRANCE24
By: Leela JACINTO

File photo of a Meta data centre near Social Circle, Georgia, USA, taken September 5, 2026. © Mike Stewart, AP


Quilliam Barber surveyed his backyard on a beautiful fall morning – the towering trees shading the southern sun, early autumn leaves dotting the green lawn, a tuneful bird working the quiet of this rural Georgia district to its advantage – and let out a heavy, forlorn sigh.

“I feel terrible. It's right there,” said the 67-year-old retired truck driver, gesturing towards the sprawling open land behind his backyard. “It’s right up under my arm, you know. And I can do nothing about it.”

Quilliam Barber and his wife, Wilhemina Barber, take a break in their backyard in Coweta County in the southern US state of Georgia. © Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24

The Barbers’ property abuts a massive, 800-acre tract earmarked for a hyperscale data centre in Georgia’s Coweta County in the Middle Chattahoochee River Basin, part of the wider Apalachicola Basin in southeastern USA.

His new neighbour, the Project Sail data centre, made headlines in early 2025, when the eye-popping scale of the plan came to light. The $17 billion venture, estimated to require roughly 900 megawatts of electricity and 9 million gallons of water, includes 13 buildings, each covering 378,000 square feet, taking the total land area to more than 4.9 million square feet, according to county filings.


Standing next to her husband, Wilhemina Barber knows that with such a mega project coming up next door, things are about to change – dramatically. “It’s very quiet and peaceful out here. We love it, I love it, he loves it. We’ve got a pretty clear feeling it's going to play an important role if they do put it right in our back door," she said.

Around two miles down the road, Ron Bockrath, picked up a poster from a pile on his kitchen buffet table. “Protect Coweta: No Data Center Here” read the yard sign in bold red.

Ron Bockrath puts up a resistance at home in Newnan, Coweta County, Georgia. © Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24

Bockrath’s opposition to the data centre has kept him busy over the past few months. From organising collectives and filing lawsuits, to collecting petition signatures, his efforts are part of a multi-pronged community campaign to stop the Sail project.

Across the US, in cities and counties rich or poor, rural, urban or semi-urban, citizens are raging against the machine. Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the mega centres required to power it, emerged as one of the major campaign issues ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, popping up in debates and town hall gatherings, leaving many candidates scrambling to articulate a cogent position and their constituents dissatisfied. The public sentiment has been at odds with US President Donald Trump’s promotion of AI as “Superior Intelligence” (SI).

Community-led initiatives have targeted AI-driven surveillance systems, including cameras misused by law enforcement officials.

The backlash has at times been spearheaded by software engineers and geeks capable of hacking systems to identify guardrail weaknesses, and the gap between spin and reality. But with data centres, the mega infrastructure required to power AI, the pushback has been sweeping, drawing together Democrat and Republican supporters in a rare display of bipartisanship in a bitterly divided country.

That’s because they represent a confluence of concerns: from rising electricity bills, to environmental hazards affecting local communities and impacting global warming, to a public dissatisfaction over millionaires, billionaires, tech mandarins and financiers profiting from the new technology amid a cost-of-living crisis.

Georgia, a state that defined itself as a symbol of the “New South” after the American civil war, has kept up with the times. A technological boom, centred around Atlanta – “The capital of the New South” – has seen the area overtake Northern Virginia as the country’s top market for data centre construction.

It has left Georgians on the front lines of pitched, local battles in the people’s war against data centres.
A revamp from ‘rural conservation' to industrial district

At the entrance to the Bockrath property in Newnan, Western Coweta County, another yard sign proclaims the mission that has occupied the 83-year-old retired research scientist for months.

“NO Industrial Zoning. NO Data Center,” reads the sign, referring to a rezoning of this rural area into an industrial zone.

A yard sign outside the Bockrath residence in Newnan protests the rezoning of Coweta County from a rural to industrial area. © Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24

In April, county commissioners in this traditionally Republican stronghold approved a zone code revamp from “rural conservation district” to industrial area by a narrow 3-2 vote.

Bockrath attended the meeting in a room packed with county residents, activists and journalists – and was dismayed by the proceedings.

“People were supposed to be allowed to speak – for or against. That's good if you've got a population that's somewhat equally divided, then it makes sense to give equal time to both sides. However, in this case, the local population, not just the Western Coweta County, but the entire county, wanted nothing to do with these data centers and the way they were being forced upon us. But they gave equal time to each side to speak,” he explained.

Project Sail is just one of at least five planned data centres in the county. Residents and collectives opposed to the various projects come together for countywide decision meetings. They also keep an eye on community initiatives across Coweta County, located around 50 miles southeast of Atlanta and home to around 146,158 people.

“Twenty minutes was allowed for opposition, which isn't really very long, considering the magnitude of this project. That may be legally okay, but morally, it’s not okay. I got there almost two hours before the meeting. The 20 minutes were up before I was allowed to speak. They’re supposed to give great credence to people living in the area, but they were not allowed to express their opinion,” he said.

The 2-3 vote was hailed by the commissioners who approved the rezoning. “This is a no-brainer for the county,” Commissioner Alphonso Smith told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I will stake my political career on it.”

A representative of the project’s developer, Prologis, a Fortune 500 company, said the rezoning would be transformative for the area and would generate tax revenues, the local newspaper reported. “The question isn’t if this site will be developed. It’s just how,” JC Witt, Prologis senior vice president of data centre investments told the commission meeting.

‘Miles of backup traffic’ for a signature drive

The rezoning vote sparked multiple initiatives aimed at reversing the decision.

Bockrath, along with some of his neighbours, including the Barbers, promptly filed two lawsuits in a Coweta County court, challenging the rezoning. The cases, filed in May, are currently making their way through the legal system.

Meanwhile a grassroots collective, Citizens for Rural Coweta, launched a campaign for a “home rule petition”, which under Georgia's Constitution allows residents to petition the county's court to amend or repeal resolutions. In counties with more than 50,000 residents, signatures from at least 10% of registered voters are required.

The signature drive saw Bockrath hit the road, knocking on doors to inform neighbours about the initiative. Local businesses across the county opened their doors for petition signings. Every week, venues and schedules were posted on the group’s social media accounts, followed by weekly updates.

The response was overwhelming, said Bockrath. “There were miles, literally miles of backup traffic to come in and sign these things,” he recounted with a smile.

Finally, on Friday, October 16, Citizens for Rural Coweta volunteers submitted boxes with more than 14,800 signatures to a county court. The 10% mark had been reached. Under Georgia's Constitution, the probate judge has 60 days after a petition is filed to determine whether it’s valid. If it is, the judge must call an election to be held between 60 and 90 days after the filing.
‘We need to speak the truth’

Community-led campaigns against data centres are taking up time and considerable mobilisation effort from citizens across the US.

Bockrath admits it can be discouraging at times but he believes he has no choice. “Somebody has to do it,” he maintained. “We can't just give up. I don't think we want to see our country, or the world for that matter, get that messed up.”

Volunteers have been drawn to the movement for a variety of reasons and causes, from the hyperlocal to global. For Bockrath, the motivation is primarily scientific.

The retired researcher is concerned about the massive amounts of water required to cool systems in mega data centres. In Georgia’s Fayette County, for instance, many households face low water pressure complications, while some Newton County residents have been unable to drink the murky, brown water trickling out of their taps.

Energy consumption and the impact on global warming is an issue that particularly worries Bockrath. “If you keep using more of our electricity, generating more heat, climate change is going to accelerate,” he said urgently before launching into a mini-lecture on global temperature percentages and melting polar ice caps.

Underlying all these issues, Bockrath notes, is the spinning of truth. “In studying science, one of the things you learn is that you don't need to necessarily agree with your advisor, or chairman. What you're trying to do is find the truth,” he explained. “I'm not sure if that's the case always in things like marketing, in sales. There, I think, the idea is to sell your product or your idea, truth may not be as important. But I think it is. And I think we need to speak the truth.”

Finding ‘another place to go’

Georgia’s data centre boom has been driven in large part by tax breaks and low electricity rates granted to many projects under outgoing Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who has held the state’s top post since 2019.

But while companies get cheap rates, the cost of electricity for households has been rising exponentially. New data centres are driving up utility bills in at least 13 states, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. A Bloomberg analysis last year found residents living near data centres were paying as much as 267% more a month for energy than five years ago.

The increase in utility bills is also adding to the cost-of-living crisis fueled by rising gas prices due to the Iran war. Coweta residents such as Bockrath are not persuaded by the arguments made by developers, and accepted by some commissioners, that data centres bring in tax revenues.

“At the state level, we've got Governor Kemp, who's been very, very pro-business. I think he's been so pro-business that he's forgetting about the citizens,” he said. “You can bring in tax revenue from a data center, but if the citizens are being made to bear that cost in terms of their electrical bills, how is that helping them? It's not. It's hurting them.”

It’s also hurting across ideological lines, making the resistance to AI, and data centres in particular, a rare bipartisan issue as the US prepares to vote in the midterms.

While Coweta County, like most rural areas outside Atlanta, has long been a Republican stronghold, Bockrath notes that volunteers never discuss their partisan inclinations. The octogenarian grandfather describes himself as an independent, voting "both ways" in the past, depending on candidate platforms and performance. Although he declines to divulge how he plans to vote on November 3, Bockrath expresses disappointment with Republicans who have failed to challenge some of Trump's policies. "The Republicans didn't say, hey, that's not right, which they should have," is all he's willing to say.

The anti-data centre movement, he explains, straddles partisan divides. Taking the example of the recent signature drive, Bockrath guesses that there had to be a mix of supporters of both parties. “To pick up almost 15,000 registered voters to sign a petition here, many of them had to have been Republican. Also, a number of them, I'm sure, are Democrat. It's not that much of a political issue. It shouldn't be. This is a humanity issue,” he said.

For Barber, it’s also a matter of being forced to lose his past and links to the land.

“I might have to relocate if I can. I feel terrible. I love this area. I grew up in this area. I raised my family here. I had kids, my grandkids, they all played, we played, in the woods out there,” he said. “But if they made me an offer, then yes, I would relocate.”

His wife listens silently, her eyes fixed on the grass. “I'd be sad. I'd be very sad because it's just like starting all over again,” she revealed. “But if push comes to shove, we've discussed it, if they offer us a price and if it's something that we can live with, we'll take it and we'll find another place to go.”