AFP Archives - Page 539 of 1373

60 years after Cuba crisis, nuclear war suddenly thinkable again

20 Oct 2022 20 Oct 2022

For 60 years, the Cuban missile crisis has loomed both as a frightening lesson on how close the world came to nuclear doomsday — and how skillful leadership averted it.

With Russian President Vladimir Putin brandishing the nuclear option in Ukraine, the threat has come roaring back, but this time, experts are less certain of a way to end it.

US President Joe Biden in early October warned bluntly that the world risked nuclear destruction for the first time since 1962, saying that Putin was “not joking” about the use of the ultra-destructive weapons as his military is “significantly underperforming” in its invasion of Ukraine.

Biden said he was looking to provide “off-ramps” to Putin. But there is no sign Putin is eager to take one.

“I think this situation, more than any since 1962, could escalate to the use of nuclear weapons,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“I’ve been working in this field for 40 years and this is the most challenging situation because you have a nuclear-armed state, Russia, whose leader has defined a situation as an existential one.”

Unlike in 1962, the world is now facing a number of nuclear flashpoints with signs North Korea is gearing up for another atomic test, tensions still on low-boil between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and Iran ramping up nuclear work.

But Ukraine poses unique dangers as the conflict pits the world’s two largest nuclear powers against each other. Any Russian strike would be expected to involve tactical nuclear weapons — targeted on the battlefield and not fired between continents — but Biden himself has warned it is difficult not to “end up with Armageddon” once a nuclear weapon is used.

Putin, who has questioned Ukraine’s historical legitimacy, has proclaimed the annexation of four regions and suggested that either an attack on the annexed “Russian” territory or direct Western intervention could lead Russia to use a nuclear weapon.

– Bigger stakes? –

The brutal war that has already gone on for eight months is substantively different than the Cuban crisis, where the question was how to prevent a Cold War confrontation over the discovery of Soviet nuclear weapons on the island from turning hot.

US president John F. Kennedy, in one of his taped deliberations pored over by historians, said that European allies thought Washington was “demented” by its fixation on Cuba, some 90 miles (140 kilometers) from Florida with a long history of US intervention.

“Ukraine is significantly more important to America’s allies than Cuba was,” said Marc Selverstone, a Cold War historian at the University of Virginia.

“Putin seems to be willing to rearrange the borders of Europe, and that’s terrifying to Europeans.”

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s motives, while broad, were less rigid than Putin’s, with Moscow in part seeking to close a missile gap with the United States and gain leverage with the West over divided Berlin.

Political stakes were high for Kennedy, who was embarrassed by the failed CIA Bay of Pigs invasion a year earlier to oust communist revolutionary Fidel Castro and was days away from congressional elections.

But Kennedy rejected advice for air strikes and imposed a naval “quarantine” against further Soviet shipments — avoiding the term blockade, which would have been an act of war.

Moscow withdrew after Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba and, quietly, to pull US nuclear missiles from Turkey.

“For Kennedy, the most important thing was to lessen the chance for a nuclear exchange,” Selverstone said.

“I don’t know if that’s foremost in Vladimir Putin’s mind right now. In fact, he seems to be to be upping the ante.”

– ‘Raising their red lines’ –

Both in 1962 and now, the nuclear powers faced an added layer of uncertainty from allies on the ground.

On October 27, 1962, just as Khrushchev and Kennedy were exchanging messages, a US U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, killing a US pilot.

Kennedy ignored calls to retaliate, surmising — correctly, the historical record proved — that the order to fire came not from the Soviets but from Cuba.

Khrushchev announced a deal the next day, with his son later writing that he feared the situation was spiraling out of control.

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to build on momentum and win back all land occupied by Russia.

The United States has shipped billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine but Biden has stopped short of sending missiles that could strike into Russia, saying he will not risk “World War III.”

“Zelensky and Putin have both taken maximalist positions, raising their red lines, whereas in 1962, Kennedy and Khrushchev were lowering them,” Selverstone said.

Perkovich said that Biden, for whom he worked when he was a senator, was as calm and historically well-versed as any US president in handling a crisis.

But he said that 2022 is also a different era. In 1962, Russia agreed to keep Kennedy’s agreement to pull US missiles from Turkey a secret, mindful of the political risks for the president.

“Many crises in history get resolved through secret diplomacy,” Perkovich said.

“Can you imagine now in this media age, with open-source intelligence and social media, keeping a deal secret like that?”

EU leaders struggle for common ground on energy prices

20 Oct 2022 20 Oct 2022

EU leaders will debate how to handle Europe’s energy shock Thursday, with capitals at loggerheads over imposing a cap on gas prices pushed skywards by the war in Ukraine.

The bloc’s 27 member states have been squabbling for months over measures to lower energy bills, and will arrive at their Brussels summit in a dark mood.

Countries such as Italy are pushing hard for a swift and ambitious cap on prices, in the teeth of opposition from Germany, the EU’s biggest economy.

“Seven months of delay has brought us a recession,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi told his counterparts at a summit earlier this month, according to an official with knowledge of the matter.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has tried to satisfy the diverging views with a series of proposals that it hopes will help Europeans pay for their heating as winter approaches.

The push for a common approach has been further hampered by discord between France and Germany, which burst into the open Wednesday when they delayed a regular meeting between cabinet ministers.

Breakthroughs in the EU are difficult to achieve when the bloc’s biggest powers do not see eye to eye.

“There has been a lot of progress, but no fundamental breakthrough,” a senior EU diplomat involved in the negotiations said ahead of the two-day summit.

“Priorities differ: Germany has chosen security of supply because it can afford the high prices, but many countries cannot keep up with the cost,” the diplomat added.

The Commission’s proposals include an idea to allow joint purchases by the EU energy giants in order to command cheaper prices to replenish reserves.

– ‘Slow and painstaking’ –

Another proposal is to give the Commission the power to establish a pricing “corridor” on Europe’s main gas index to intervene when prices get out of control.

Meeting in Brussels, the EU leaders will haggle over the Commission’s proposals, with some countries seeking something much more far-reaching than what is on offer.

“We should not have to ask the Commission four times for the same thing in order to have a proposal,” Spain’s Ecological Transition Minister Teresa Ribera told AFP ahead of the summit.

“It is frustrating to see how slow and painstaking Europe’s response to the challenge we face is,” Ribera said.

A big problem is the link in Europe between gas and electricity prices. Under EU rules, a gas price index helps set the price of electric power across the continent.

But the index has skyrocketed since Ukraine was invaded by Russia, the country that supplied 40 percent of the EU’s gas imports before the war.

Several countries are calling for an exception to the gas price mechanism.

This was already granted to Spain and Portugal earlier this year, giving them freer rein to keep electricity prices lower despite surging prices.

Germany opposes this idea, arguing that cheaper gas will dissuade users from cutting back on their energy use.

How gaming firm Ubisoft mashed 'Rabbids' into 'Mario' world

20 Oct 2022 21 Oct 2022

It took 300 staff working in five cities about five years, but the second edition of one of the most ambitious mash-ups in video games is set to arrive on Thursday — “Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope”.

The game merges Nintendo’s Mario, the Italian plumber who has given his name to an entire universe of games, with Ubisoft’s Rabbids, a series focused on the adventures of a species of screeching, hyperactive rabbit-like animals.

Nintendo, like other media companies, is highly protective of its creations.

Only fellow Japanese studio Sega has been entrusted with characters from “Mario” before, for special editions games celebrating the Olympic Games where they compete with “Sonic the Hedgehog”.

“Nintendo told us very early on: ‘This is your game, this is your vision, we respect it,'” Ubisoft’s Xavier Manzanares, who is overseeing the new game’s development, told AFP.

“That’s where it’s interesting, so we had real creativity, really interesting room for manoeuvre.”

The first game in the series, “Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle”, has garnered more than 10 million players since its release in 2017, said Manzanares.

“I don’t think we would have bet on that in 2017,” he said.

“It attracted a lot of attention because there are not many brands that do a pair-up with ‘Mario’, that’s for sure.”

– A history of mash-ups –

The idea of fictional universes colliding — characters from one popping up in another — is far more developed in cinema franchises and comic books than in video games.

Superheroes, for example, have a long history of showing up in a rival’s storylines.

In video games, Nintendo has created mash-ups featuring its own characters, like the “Super Smash Bros” series that brought together the likes of Pikachu, Donkey Kong and others.

Occasionally two studios join forces, like in the “Kingdom Hearts” series, which matched up “Final Fantasy” of the Japanese publisher Square Enix with characters owned by Disney.

This is much closer to the idea of Spiderman and Superman walking into each other’s storylines, as happened in 1970s crossover comics and many times since.

Julien Pillot, an economist specialising in cultural industries, told AFP this kind of collaboration in video games was rare and tricky to pull off.

Issues of rights and royalties cause headaches, he said, and the studio loaning its characters is likely to make onerous demands to ensure its brand is protected.

– ‘New universes’ –

Ubisoft, though, said it had been given real leeway, even to create new crossover characters in the form of “Sparks”.

They are star-shaped creatures combining “Rabbids” with “Lumas”, characters from the game “Super Mario Galaxy”.

“For us, it was important not to have ‘Rabbids’ on one side and ‘Mario’ on the other in two separate silos,” said Manzanares.

He said the aim was to “really to create a new universe with both”.

The French firm’s developers have been working across two principal locations in Milan and Paris with support from other studios in China, India and Montpellier in southern France.

Manzanares played down the challenges involved in such a creative endeavour being carried out across so many locations.

“We’ve been working like this for a long time, whether it’s on the games ‘Far Cry’, ‘Assassin’s Creed’ or ‘Just Dance’,” he said.

Analyst Cedric Lagarrigue told AFP video game firms were increasingly working on global lines like this.

North America or Europe often leads on the creative part, he said, then processes like making 3D characters or environments, “can be done anywhere in the world”.

Manzanares said all Ubisoft’s locations had autonomy and each one brought something to the new game.

“We really worked on this merger,” he said.

“It’s been a big eight-year job” bringing the two games to the market.

Robotic suit gives paralyzed children gift of walking

20 Oct 2022 20 Oct 2022

Wearing a robotic exoskeleton designed specially for children, an eight-year-old boy with cerebral palsy walked through a therapy room in Mexico City, smiling triumphantly at the once-unthinkable feat.

David Zabala uses a wheelchair due to his neurological condition, which also left him deaf and reliant on sign language.

But thanks to the Atlas 2030 exoskeleton, which won its creator a European Inventor Award this year, he was able to walk and stand in front of a mirror where he drew smiling faces with colored marker pens.

“He’s taking his first steps. That’s a joy for him,” said the boy’s mother, Guadalupe Cardoso, 41.

“At first it scared him and his hands were very tense, and now I see that he’s already holding the marker pen and starting to draw or (play with) the ball,” Cardoso added.

It makes the exhausting, near two-hour journey from their home in the south of Mexico City to the therapy center totally worth it, she said.

The exoskeleton was designed by Spanish professor Elena Garcia Armada to enable children who use wheelchairs to walk during muscle rehabilitation therapy.

The mechanical joints of the battery-powered titanium suit adapt intelligently to the motion of each child, according to the European Patent Office, which presented Garcia with the European Inventor Award.

Giving paralyzed children the opportunity to walk “not only extends their life expectancy and enhances their physical well-being, but also improves their self-esteem,” it said.

– ‘Changing lives’ –

Mexico is the third country, after Spain and France, where the Atlas 2030 has been used to treat children.

The suit helps “to achieve in record time rehabilitation goals” that would take months to achieve with conventional therapies, said Guadalupe Maldonado, director of Mexico’s Association for People with Cerebral Palsy.

The benefits include muscle strengthening, improvement of the digestive and respiratory systems and — above all — a major mood boost, Maldonado said.

The private organization, founded in 1970, has already seen positive results two weeks after acquiring its first exoskeleton, she said.

A second device, worth around $250,000, is due to arrive in Mexico City next month.

The association’s initial goal is to offer rehabilitation to about 200 children with cerebral palsy.

“We want to continue working and empowering, so that more children in the city and the country have access to this type of rehabilitation… that radically changes their lives,” Maldonado said.

The sessions also give joy to the therapists, who carefully fit the exoskeleton using its special corset, cuff and shoes and celebrate the children’s progress with smiles and applause.

“It motivates us a lot as therapists that we will be able to achieve many things in the future,” said Arturo Palafox, 28.

Polar bear hell: An ice pack that keeps receding

20 Oct 2022 20 Oct 2022

Sprawled on rocky ground far from sea ice, a lone Canadian polar bear sits under a dazzling sun, his white fur useless as camouflage.

It’s midsummer on the shores of the Hudson Bay and life for the enormous male has been moving in slow motion, far from the prey that keeps him alive: seals.

Every year from late June, when the bay ice disappears — shrinking until it dots the blue vastness like scattered confetti — the bears must move onto shore to begin a period of forced fasting.

But that period is lasting longer and longer as temperatures rise.

The whole annual rhythm of the polar bear is in peril, and birth rates are dropping as they scavenge for food.

“There could be a beluga whale carcass they might be able to find, (or a) naive seal near shore, but generally they’re just fasting. They lose nearly a kilogram of body weight every day that they’re on land,” said Geoff York, a biologist for Polar Bears International (PBI). An AFP team joined him on an expedition.

In the Arctic, global warming is occurring three or four times faster than elsewhere in the world, recent studies indicate.

According to a 2020 report published in the journal Nature Climate Change, this means the near-extinction of this iconic animal is approaching: From 1,200 individuals in the 1980s, the polar bear population in western Hudson Bay has dropped to about 800 today.

These days, this super predator of the Arctic sometimes has to feed on seaweed, as a mother and her cub were seen doing not far from the port of Churchill, the Manitoba town and self-declared “polar bear capital.”

They are also moving closer to the cities. In Churchill, the bears a few years ago began frequenting the waste disposal site, a source of easy – but harmful – food for them.

Since then, the town has taken precautions. The dump is now guarded by cameras, fences and patrols. Across Churchill, people leave cars and houses unlocked in case someone needs to take refuge quickly after a bad encounter with this large carnivore.

The emergency number for the wildlife protection unit is posted on many walls.

Some areas, like schoolgrounds, are more closely monitored.

When they get an urgent call, Ian Van Nest, the provincial officer of the unit, and his colleagues jump into their pickup truck armed with a rifle and a spray can of repellent, wearing protective vests.

Sometimes the bears can be scared off with just “the horn on your vehicle,” Van Neste said. Other times the animals need to be sedated, then kept in cages until winter rolls around and they are freed.

The fate of the polar bear should alarm everyone, said Flavio Lehner, a climate scientist at Cornell University, who notes that the Arctic is a good barometer of planetary health.

And since the 1980s, data show, the bay’s summer ice pack has decreased by nearly half.

tib/dp/tjj/dw/bbk

Tesla quarterly profit jumps, but revenues miss estimates

20 Oct 2022 20 Oct 2022

Tesla reported Wednesday another quarter of sparkling earnings growth, but shares fell amid questions over the resilience of electric vehicle demand, CEO Elon Musk’s embattled Twitter transaction and other issues.

The electric vehicle (EV) maker scored a more than doubling of profits in the third-quarter to $3.3 billion on increased auto deliveries

But shares retreated in after-hours trading after the company reported revenues of $21.5 billion, a 56 percent increase over the year-ago period, but about $500 million below analyst forecasts.

The company flagged battery supply chain bottlenecks as a constraint on EV growth and noted that logistics volatility was an “improving” challenge.

“Knock on wood, it looks like we’ll have an epic end-of-year,” Musk said during an earnings call.

“The factories are running at full speed and we’re delivering every call we make.”

The results follow Tesla’s disclosure earlier this month that deliveries and production grew solidly in the third quarter after diving in the prior period due to a coronavirus-related factory closure at the company’s Shanghai plant.

The automaker has avoided setting specific annual delivery targets, but analysts have benchmarked a target of about 1.4 million for all of 2022.

Tesla is on pace for a 50 percent increase in production this year, but could fall shy of that goal when it comes to getting the cars to buyers, chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn said on the call.

Tesla is working on smoothing out a “crazy delivery wave” at the end of each quarter, Musk told analysts.

“There weren’t enough boats; there weren’t enough trains; there weren’t enough car carriers to actually support the wave, because it got too big,” Musk said.

Tesla watchers are expecting a strong fourth quarter with a restored Shanghai factory and the ramp-up of plants in Texas and Germany.

– Immune to inflation? –

But Covid-19 remains a wildcard in light of China’s continued adherence to its zero-tolerance approach to fighting the virus.

Another question concerns whether Musk’s company will continue to remain immune to macroeconomic concerns, especially inflation.

The cheapest version, the Tesla Model 3, currently lists for about $48,500. With US inflation showing no signs of easing, analysts wonder whether demand for the pricey vehicles will remain robust.

Shares of Tesla have dropped more than 16 percent since September 30, shortly before the company released its third-quarter delivery figures and ahead of Musk’s October 4 revival of his bid to acquire Twitter and head off a trial in which he was being sued by the company for breach-of-contract.

In the most recent move in the takeover saga, a Delaware judge suspended litigation between the parties to allow time to finalize the $44 billion transaction.

But the judge has said that if the deal does not close by October 28, the trial could be rescheduled for November.

“I’m excited about the Twitter situation,” Musk said during the earnings call.

“I think it’s an asset that has just sort of languished for a long time but has incredible potential, although obviously myself and the other investors are overpaying for Twitter right now.”

Some analysts see the drop in Tesla shares — during a period that saw the S&P 500 advance — reflects worries that Musk will sell more Tesla shares to finance the purchase of the social media company.

“Despite Elon Musk’s Twitter distractions, Tesla has been fixated on identifying and mitigating disruptive themes in the automotive sector,” said GlobalData analyst Daniel Clarke.

“That’s why its results show it to be one step ahead of competitors.”

The analyst warned, however, that reliance on the China market is potentially a massive “bump in the road” for Tesla as geopolitical rivalry heats with the United States and Chinese electric car maker BYD approaches in its “rear view mirror.”

Tesla shares were down more than six percent to $208.16 in after-hours trading, despite Musk saying there is a potential for the company to buy back billions of dollars’ worth of shares.