AFP

Having branded Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the murder of a dissident, US President Joe Biden is now readying to meet the country’s leaders on a delicate visit to the Middle East. 

Biden begins his tour in Israel on Wednesday, but all eyes are on his trip to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia on Friday. 

Air Force One will make an unprecedented direct flight between the Jewish state and the conservative Gulf kingdom that does not recognize its existence. Donald Trump had made a historic trip, in 2017, in the other direction.

As a presidential candidate, Biden said the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi — a Saudi-born US resident known for writing critical articles about the kingdom’s rulers for The Washington Post — had made the country a “pariah.”

After winning the election, the Biden administration released US intelligence findings that identified the kingdom’s de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, often referred to as MBS, as the mastermind of the operation. 

– ‘Blank check’ –

But now Biden appears ready to re-engage with a country that has been a key strategic ally of the United States for decades, a major supplier of oil and an avid buyer of weapons.

“In Saudi Arabia, we reversed the blank-check policy we inherited” from former president Donald Trump, Biden wrote in an op-ed published Saturday in the Washington Post. 

“From the start, my aim was to reorient — but not rupture — relations,” he added.

“I know that there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia,” the 79-year-old Democrat went on, promising “fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda” when he makes foreign visits.

Jon Alterman, senior vice president at the Center for strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, said the Biden administration “discovered what US administrations have discovered for decades: that doing a lot of things in the Middle East and around the world are much easier if the Saudis are trying to help you and much harder if they aren’t.”

In his op-ed, Biden said Saudi Arabia was “working with (his) experts to help stabilize oil markets.” 

Washington wants the world’s largest exporter of crude to open the floodgates to bring down soaring gasoline prices, which threaten Democratic chances in November elections. 

– Strategic interests over values –

“Strategic interests and the well-being of someone driving around in a Ford Expedition have always come first at the expense of brave activists in the region who want to live in more open and democratic systems,” said Steven Cook, Middle East and Africa expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to gas-guzzling SUVs popular with Americans. 

Saudi Arabia is also key to Washington’s efforts to contain Iran.

Beyond possible announcements, the White House knows the stakes of Biden’s trip are also about the optics of meeting with MBS, who will be part of the delegation when Biden sits down with King Salman. 

Marti Flacks, human rights expert at CSIS, said the White House would have put a lot of time into orchestrating “how that interaction is staged” — whether it’s public or behind closed doors, a handshake or an exchange of pleasantries.

“The X factor is, of course, the other party can always disrupt those plans if they’re determined to,” Flacks added.

Biden doesn’t want to appear as a cynic who reneges on principles for a few barrels of oil, but MBS may be tempted to turn the spotlight on his interaction with the “leader of the free world.”

To counter accusations of horse-trading, the US president is trying to give himself an above-the-fray role, as he has so far been much less concerned with the Middle East than with Russia or China. 

He presents himself as a facilitator of “promising trends” in the region and as a strategist in the face of challenges, such as Iran’s nuclear program, the war in Yemen and upheavals in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon.

– Journalist’s death –

Biden aims in particular to “deepen and expand” the process of normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states, initiated under Trump.

Aside from the symbolic Air Force One flight, analysts anticipate announcements on Saudi-Israeli relations.

The Jewish state is keen to receive Biden with great pomp, even in the midst of political turmoil as Israel prepares to hold its fifth election in less than four years in November.

Biden is due to meet Prime Minister Yair Lapid, but his advisers insist he also meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, as Trump had more or less ignored the Palestinians during his term.

The recent death of another journalist will also cast a shadow over the visit: that of the American-Palestinian Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, killed in May in an Israeli raid. 

Her family has asked to meet Biden. The White House has so far declined to comment on this request.

The most powerful space telescope ever built, James Webb is set to deliver its first full-color scientific images to the world Tuesday. 

Here is an overview of this feat of human ingenuity, in five key figures.

– More than 21 feet –

The centerpiece of the observatory is its huge main mirror, measuring more than 21 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter and made up of 18 smaller, hexagonal-shaped mirrors.

The observatory also has four scientific instruments: cameras to take pictures of the cosmos, and spectrographs, which break down light to study which elements and molecules make up objects.

The mirror and the instruments are protected from the light of our Sun by a tennis-court sized thermal shield, made up of five superimposed layers.

Each layer is hair thin, and together they ensure the telescope operates in the darkness needed to capture faint glimmers from the far reaches of the Universe.

– Million miles away –

Unlike the Hubble telescope which revolves around the Earth, Webb orbits around the Sun, nearly a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from us, or four times the distance from our planet to the Moon. 

It took the spacecraft almost a month to reach this region, called Lagrange Point two, where it remains in a fixed position behind the Earth and Sun to give it a clear view of the cosmos.

Here, the gravity from the sun and Earth balance the centrifugal motion of a satellite, meaning it needs minimal fuel for course correction.

– 13.8 billion years –

In astronomy, the farther out you see, the deeper back in time you’re looking.

Webb’s infrared capabilities are what make it uniquely powerful — allowing it to detect light from the earliest stars, which has been stretched into infrared wavelengths as the Universe expanded.

This lets it peer further back in time than any previous telescope, to within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

– Three-decade wait –

The project was first conceived in the 1990s, but construction did not begin until 2004. 

Then Webb’s launch date was repeatedly postponed. Initially set for 2007, it finally took place on December 25, 2021, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, from French Guiana.

– $10 billion –

Webb is an international collaboration between US space agency NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), involving more than 10,000 people.

The lifetime cost to NASA alone will be approximately $9.7 billion, according to an analysis by the Planetary Society, or $10.8 billion adjusted for inflation to 2020 dollars.

A leaked cache of confidential files from ride-sharing company Uber illustrates ethically dubious and potentially illegal tactics it used to fuel its frenetic global expansion beginning nearly a decade ago, a joint media investigation showed Sunday.

Dubbed the “Uber Files,” the investigation involving dozens of news organizations found that company officials leveraged the sometimes violent backlash from the taxi industry against drivers to garner support and evaded regulatory authorities as it looked to conquer new markets early in its history.

Culled from 124,000 documents from 2013-2017 initially obtained by British daily the Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the revelations are the latest hit for a company dogged by controversy as it exploded into a disruptive force in local transportation. 

The cache includes unvarnished text and email exchanges between executives, with standouts from co-founder and former chief executive Travis Kalanick, who was forced to resign in 2017 following accusations of brutal management practices and multiple episodes of sexual and psychological harassment at the company.

“Violence guarantee(s) success,” Kalanick messaged other company leaders as he pushed for a counter protest amid sometimes heated demonstrations in Paris in 2016 against Uber’s arrival in the market.

Uber’s rapid expansion leaned on subsidized drivers and discounted fares that undercut the taxi industry, and “often without seeking licenses to operate as a taxi and livery service,” reported The Washington Post, one of the media outlets involved in the probe.

Drivers across Europe had faced violent retaliation as taxi drivers felt their livelihoods threatened. The investigation found that “in some instances, when drivers were attacked, Uber executives pivoted quickly to capitalize” to seek public and regulatory support, the Post said.

According to the Guardian, Uber has adopted similar tactics in European countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, mobilizing drivers and encouraging them to complain to the police when they were victims of violence, in order to use media coverage to obtain concessions from the authorities.

A spokesperson for Kalanick strongly denied the findings as a “false agenda,” saying he “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety.”

Uber, however, placed the blame Sunday on previously publicized “mistakes” made by leadership under Kalanick. 

“We’ve moved from an era of confrontation to one of collaboration, demonstrating a willingness to come to the table and find common ground with former opponents, including labor unions and taxi companies,” it said, noting that his replacement, Dara Khosrowshahi, “was tasked with transforming every aspect of how Uber operates.”

– ‘Kill switch’ –

The investigation also found that Uber worked to evade regulatory probes by leveraging a technological edge, the Post wrote.

It described an instance when Kalanick implemented a “kill switch” to remotely cut off access of devices in an Amsterdam office to Uber’s internal systems during a raid by authorities. 

“Please hit the kill switch ASAP,” he wrote in an email to an employee. “Access must be shut down in AMS (Amsterdam).”

Kalanick spokesperson Devon Spurgeon said the former chief executive “never authorized any actions or programs that would obstruct justice in any country.”

Kalanick “did not create, direct or oversee these systems set up by legal and compliance departments and has never been charged in any jurisdiction for obstruction of justice or any related offense,” she said.

But the investigation charged that Uber’s actions flouted laws and that executives were aware, citing one joking that they had become “pirates.”

The reports say the files reveal Uber also lobbied governments to aid its expansion, finding in particular an ally in France’s Emmanuel Macron, who was economy minister from 2014 to 2016 and is now the country’s president.  

The company believed Macron would encourage regulators “to be ‘less conservative’ in their interpretation of rules limiting the company’s operations,” the Post said.

Macron was an open supporter of Uber and the idea of turning France into a “start-up nation” in general, but the leaked documents suggest that the minister’s support even sometimes clashed with the leftist government’s policies. 

The revelations sparked indignation among leftist politicians, who denounced the Uber-Macron links as against “all our rules, all our social rights and against workers’ rights,” and condemned the “pillage of the country.” 

A Russian missile struck an apartment building in eastern Ukraine Sunday, killing at least 15 people as Moscow’s forces sought to consolidate their control over the Donbas region. 

“During the rescue operation, 15 bodies were found at the scene and five people were pulled out of the rubble” alive in the town of Chasiv Yar, the local emergency service said on Facebook.

“At least 30 others are under the rubble” of the four-storey building after it was hit by a Russian Uragan missile, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said earlier on Telegram.

The building was partially destroyed in the strike, AFP correspondents saw at the scene where dozens of rescuers were sifting through the rubble with a mechanical digger.

Rescuers had so far been able to establish contact with three people under the rubble, emergency services said.

Having fought long battles to capture the last areas of the neighbouring region of Lugansk, Russian troops are now turning their focus to Donetsk as they look to take control of the whole Donbas region.

One Chasiv Yar resident, who did not give her name, showed AFP journalists around the wreckage of her apartment.

“Yesterday, 11 or 10 o’clock in the evening, I was in the bedroom, and when I was leaving, everything started thundering and cracking…,” she said.

“The only thing that saved me was when I ran here, because immediately afterwards all of this crashed down.”

Another woman who had ventured inside to see what she could salvage from her apartment retrieved a blue bird, still perched in its cage.

Looking down from her balcony, where her pet had escaped the blast, she lifted up the cage with a brief, triumphant flourish.

Hours earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had condemned what he said was Russia’s deliberate shelling of civilian targets.

– ‘Absolutely deliberately’ –

The Donetsk region was under persistent shelling, while Russian ground attacks were all but paused, the Ukrainian army general staff said Sunday.

Ukraine’s forces had hit a Russian base in the occupied southern region of Kherson, they added, without elaborating.

On Saturday, three people were killed and 23 wounded by shelling in Donetsk, governor Kyrylenko said. 

Strikes were also reported in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city in the northeast, where a “teaching establishment” and a house were hit, wounding one, according to regional governor Oleg Sinegubov.

Zelensky condemned the widespread Russian bombardments in an address Saturday night.

“In just one day, Russia hit Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kryvyi Rih, the communities of the Zaporizhzhia region,” Zelensky said. 

Russian strikes “absolutely deliberately” and “purposefully” targeted the residential sector, hitting “ordinary houses, civilian objects, people”, he said.

“Such terrorist actions can really only be stopped with weapons, modern and powerful,” Zelensky added, thanking the United States for its latest military aid package.

Washington has signed off on a $400-million package, including four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems to add to eight already in place and high-precision artillery ammunition not previously sent to Ukraine. 

“It’s a further evolution in our support for Ukraine in this battle in the Donbas,” a senior defence official was quoted by the US Department of Defense as saying.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russia’s restriction on Ukrainian grain exports may have contributed to turmoil in Sri Lanka triggered by severe shortages of food and fuel.

“We’re seeing the impact of this Russian aggression playing out everywhere,” Blinken told reporters in Bangkok.

Renewing a demand that he has made repeatedly, Blinken called on Russia to let an estimated 20 million tonnes of grain leave Ukraine, which Moscow invaded in February.

Russian officials in the eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv meanwhile announced the start of the harvest “in the liberated territories of the region”, Russian news agency RIA Novosti announced Sunday.

Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of having stolen its wheat harvest in the occupied eastern regions, to illegally sell it on the international market.

– Turbine return –

Russia continued its crackdown on news coverage critical of its conduct in the war, blocking the website of the German daily Die Welt Sunday, the latest in a growing list.

Since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, the German newspaper has published content in Russian.

Canada agreed Saturday to deliver to Germany turbines needed to maintain the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, despite sanctions in place against Russia and appeals from Ukraine.

The turbines were undergoing maintenance at a Canadian site owned by German industrial giant Siemens, and Gazprom blamed its absence for cuts to deliveries via the pipeline, raising fears of a gas shortage in Germany.

Canada also announced on Saturday its intention to extend economic sanctions against Russia to industrial manufacturing. 

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Marvel’s latest superhero installment “Thor: Love and Thunder” enjoyed a summer blockbuster debut, hammering competition to top this weekend’s North American box office with an estimated $143 million haul, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported Sunday.

“This is another excellent Marvel opening for a series that started in 2011 and has grown with each episode,” said analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research, adding that the film nearly doubled the average take for a 4th episode superhero movie.

The comedic follow-up to 2017’s “Thor: Ragnarok” stars a muscle-clad, self-parodying Chris Hemsworth as the space viking who wields the mallet Mjolnir, but also finds himself pining for his ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), whose help he enlists to battle god butcher Gorr (Christian Bale).

Thor easily beat out “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” which slipped to second spot after a phenomenal opening weekend over the July 4th holiday. 

The latest goofy installment in Universal’s animated “Despicable Me” franchise about the reformed super-villain Gru and his yellow Minions took in $45.5 million in the Friday-to-Sunday period.

Holding steady in third was Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” the crowd-pleasing sequel to the original 1986 film that once again features Tom Cruise as cocky US Navy test pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.

The fighter ace feature, in its seventh week in theaters, has now grossed more than $597 million worldwide.

Baz Luhrmann’s music biopic “Elvis” — starring Austin Butler as the King alongside Tom Hanks as his exploitative manager, Colonel Tom Parker — slipped one spot to fourth in the Warner Bros film’s third weekend of release, at $11 million.

Rounding out the top five was “Jurassic World: Dominion,” Universal’s sixth installment in the “Jurassic Park” franchise, at $8.4 million.

The latest dinosaur frightfest stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard alongside franchise originals Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum.

Completing the top 10 were:

“The Black Phone” ($7.6 million)

“Lightyear” ($2.9 million)

“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” ($340,000)

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ($262,000)

“Mr Malcolm’s List” ($245,000)