World

A Franco-US satellite is due for launch this week on a mission to survey with unprecedented accuracy nearly all water on Earth’s surface for the first time and help scientists investigate its impact on Earth’s climate.

For NASA and France’s space agency CNES, which have worked together in the field for 30 years, it’s a landmark scientific mission with a billion dollar budget.

French President Emmanuel Macron went to NASA’s Washington headquarters at the end of November alongside US Vice President Kamala Harris.

He highlighted the liftoff — scheduled for early Thursday on the US west coast — of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission to monitor the levels of oceans, lakes and rivers, including in remote locations.

Its predecessor, TOPEX/Poseidon, launched in 1992, was also a Franco-US joint venture that measured ocean surface to an accuracy of 4.2 centimeters (1.7 inches).

It aided the forecast of the 1997-1998 El Nino weather phenomenon and improved understanding of ocean circulation and its effect on global climate.

The 2.2-tonne SWOT mission will be put into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The satellite’s primary payload is an innovative instrument to measure the height of water called KaRin, or Ka-band radar interferometer. Its two antennas, separated by a big boom, create paralleled swaths of data.

“We’re going to get ten times better resolution than with current technologies to measure sea-surface height and understand the ocean fronts and eddies that help shape climate,” said NASA Earth Science Division Director Karen St. Germain.

“It’s like looking at a car number plate from space when before we could only see a street,” added Thierry Lafon, SWOT project leader at the CNES.

The stakes are high. While the impact of major ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream is known, more local flows and eddies covering dozens of kilometres remain more of a mystery.

But they too affect sea water surface temperatures and heat transfer as well as the absorption by the oceans of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

SWOT will improve weather and climate modelling, the observation of coastal erosion and help track how fresh and saltwater bodies change over time.

– Debris-free end of life –

With an “optimal” orbit of 890 kilometers (about 550 miles) above Earth, Lafon said SWOT will “take in all the components that affect water levels such as tides and the sun”.

NASA says SWOT will survey nearly all water on Earth’s surface for the first time.

It will monitor water levels, surface areas and quantities at more than 20 million lakes with shores of more than 250 metres. The entire length of rivers more than 100 metres wide will also be observed.

Water management, flood and drought prevention will be improved, said Lafon.

Flying the satellite to Vandenberg from the Thales Alenia Space (TAS) site in Cannes, southern France, proved a headache.

“Due to the conflict in Ukraine, there were no more Antonov 124s available and the 747 cargo is too small,” said TAS project leader Christophe Duplay.

“We decided to ask the USAF to provide one of its C-5 Galaxies.”

And that meant counting on NASA to have the US air force supply one of its rare giant aircraft to ship the huge payload.

SWOT has an estimated three-year lifetime — although Lafon said “nothing precludes the mission to last five to eight years” — and is set to become the first satellite to make a controlled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, reducing the amount of space debris, in line with the French space operations act.

Nearly 80 percent of the 400 kilos (880 pounds) of onboard fuel will be used to that end.

Only 11 months after she became a European Parliament vice president, Greek MEP Eva Kaili is at the heart of an alleged corruption scandal involving Qatar and the EU, a far cry from the days when she presented the news.

Kaili, 44, was the highest-profile target remanded in custody on Sunday over allegations of bribery by World Cup host Qatar, after investigators found “bags of cash” at her home.

The socialist MEP had her powers as a vice president suspended on Saturday over the claims, following her arrest the day before. 

She is one of four suspects to have been charged with participating in a criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption.

Kaili had already raised hackles when she told the parliament in November that Qatar was “a front-runner in labour rights”. This was despite widespread anger over the Gulf nation’s treatment of workers who built stadiums and infrastructure for the international football tournament.

The scandal has rocked the European Union’s legislature.

It also threatens the reputation of Kaili, once hailed as a rising star of Greek socialist party PASOK-Kinal.

Kaili, who hails from Greece’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki, entered politics at a young age.

She joined PASOK’s youth movement in her early teens and in 1998 became a local councillor in Thessaloniki, when she was only 20 and still a student.

After gaining a Bachelor’s degree in architecture, she pursued a career in journalism, while simultaneously studying for a Master’s in international and European affairs.

– Youngest socialist MP –

Most Greeks first discovered Kaili when she presented the news on one of the biggest private television channels, Mega, between 2004 and 2007.

But the lure of politics remained and in 2007, she became the youngest PASOK lawmaker in the Greek parliament when she was elected aged 29.

Setting her sights on a larger stage, she became a member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2014, within its Socialists and Democrats group. She was re-elected in 2019.

In 2018, she figured on Politico Europe’s list of “Women Who Shape Brussels”, who the magazine described as “powerhouses driving debates and influencing policy”.

She was elected as one of the European Parliament’s 14 vice presidents in January 2022.

At the time of her arrest, Kaili was also part of the parliamentary delegation for developing the EU’s relations with the Arab peninsula.

Her partner, Francesco Giorgi, an Italian parliamentary assistant with the Socialists and Democrats group, has also been arrested over the bribery allegations. The couple have a two-year-old daughter.

– ‘Trojan horse’ – 

Shortly before the World Cup began, Kaili visited Qatar.

“Today, the World Cup in Qatar is proof, actually, of how sports diplomacy can achieve a historical transformation of a country, with reforms that inspired the Arab world,” she told the EU assembly on November 22.

In Greece, Kaili’s political positions have differed from the PASOK line several times over the years, much to the party’s chagrin.

In 2018, she criticised an agreement between the left-wing Greek government at the time and the neighbouring former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia that ended a 27-year name dispute.

The country changed its name to “North Macedonia” to distinguish it from the bordering Greek province of Macedonia.

Kaili said she was “ashamed” after the agreement.

PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis has compared her in the past to a “Trojan horse”, acting on behalf of the ruling right-wing party, New Democracy.

He said she would not be the party’s candidate in the next European Parliament elections, due in 2024.

Faced with the graft scandal, PASOK suspended Kaili from the party and several lawmakers have urged her to resign as an MEP.

The European Parliament scrambled Monday to get ahead of the widening scandal of alleged huge cash bribes from figures working on behalf of World Cup host Qatar.

One of the assembly’s vice presidents, Greek socialist Eva Kaili, has been charged with corruption by Belgian prosecutors and her assets have been frozen by her homeland.

Three of Kaili’s associates have also been charged, after bags of cash were found in her home shortly after she returned from an official visit to Qatar, and a second MEP’s house has been searched. 

EU foreign ministers, arriving in Brussels to discuss sanctions against Iran and Russia, warned that the scandal threatens the credibility of European institutions.

“The allegations against the vice president of the European Parliament are of utmost concern, very serious,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

“It is a question of confidence of people into our institutions, and this confidence and trust into our institutions needs higher standards.”

In Strasbourg, the president of the parliament, Maltese conservative Roberta Metsola — who this weekend attended a police search of a Belgian MEP’s home — prepared to address the crisis.

According to parliamentary sources she would meet the leaders of the assembly’s rival political groupings and address the issue from the podium at the opening of the week’s session.

Kaili has been remanded in custody by an investigating magistrate in Belgium and has not travelled down to Strasbourg, the parliament’s official seat, for the plenary session.

She received a new legal blow on Monday, when Greek authorities froze the 44-year-old former television presenter and her relatives’ assets.

Several MEPs as well as transparency campaigners have called for tougher anti-graft rules.

– ‘Insult to democracy’ –

Manon Aubry, head of the Left group, called for Kaili’s resignation and a commission of inquiry into what she called the parliament’s “failures” in the affair.

“This will be a good week to fight corruption!” tweeted German Green MEP Daniel Freund. 

Parliament’s agenda this week will be overshadowed by the scandal, and Wednesday’s debate on “the defence of democracies against foreign interference” now looks timely.

French socialist Aurore Lalucq wrote: “If the evidence is proven, this case is an insult. An insult to citizens, an insult to Europeans. An insult to democracy. An insult to Europe.”

Qatar had been hoping that its diplomatic outreach, and the glow of hosting of the World Cup, would secure EU visa liberalisation for its citizens. 

Doha “categorically” denied involvement in any wrongdoing. 

The European Parliament often votes to criticise corruption abroad and has pushed for action against member states accused of breaking Brussels’ rules, like Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

But EU member state ministers meeting in Brussels, like Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, warned that the scandal was “damaging”.

“This is really an unbelievable incident that must now be cleared up, without ifs and buts, with the full force of the law,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.

“Because this is also and especially about Europe’s credibility and consequences must follow.”

Belgian prosecutors revealed on Sunday that four suspects had been charged “with participation in a criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption”.

The arrests followed raids in Brussels which prosecutors said turned up 600,000 euros ($630,000) in cash. Police also seized computers and mobile phones.

– Caught red-handed –

A judicial source confirmed to AFP that Kaili was one of the four charged, after large sums of cash were found in her home doing a police search.

Separately, police searched the home of Belgian socialist MEP Marc Tarabella, vice-chair of the parliamentary delegation “for relations with the Arab peninsula”. 

He has not been charged. Metsola’s office said she had returned early from Malta to attend the search, as required by Belgium’s constitution. 

Kaili has been stripped of her responsibilities as a vice president of the parliament, notably that of representing Metsola in the Middle East.

But she remains an MEP and would normally enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution, except in cases where a suspect is caught red-handed in the act of committing an alleged crime.

Kaili visited Qatar just ahead of the World Cup and praised the country as a “frontrunner in labour rights”, a sentiment she has repeated on the floor of the parliament.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on Monday set out his long-term vision for UK foreign policy, urging a move towards new partnerships in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Cleverly said British diplomacy had sometimes been slow to capitalise on the shift in the geopolitical centre of gravity “eastwards and southwards”.

But Brexit — the UK’s departure from the European Union — provided opportunities to look beyond its nearest neighbours for new strategic partnerships.

Cleverly said the UK needed to have policy aims for up to 20 years, in areas from trade to climate change, even if there was no immediate visible dividend back home.

Countries such as India, Indonesia and Brazil, with much younger demographics than the UK’s traditional allies that helped set up the post-World War II global institutions, will become increasingly influential, he said.

“I am determined that we will make investments of faith in the countries that will shape the world’s future,” he said.

“We can’t just hang on to the comfort blanket perhaps of our pre-existing friendships and alliances,” he added.

“We need to work, we need to graft, we need to make sure that we’re having conversations with those countries that are also being wooed by other philosophies and we need to sell the benefits.”

– ‘Global Britain’ –

Since the UK left the EU, London has been pushing a policy of “Global Britain”, particularly a “tilt” towards the Asia-Pacific region.

But excerpts of Cleverly’s speech released in advance raised questions about whether he was advocating closer ties with some non-aligned countries that are more prepared to flout the international rules-based system in areas such as human rights.

Convincing future partners about upholding international law, respecting human rights and diversity needed to take place “over decades”, he said, aiming for persuasion over lecturing.

Cleverly hit out at Russia for trying to take the world back to a time when “might was right” and neighbouring states were treated as “prey”.

He noted China’s rise as an economic superpower in the last 50 years yet voiced concern about its rapid military expansion and supposed “no strings attached” partnerships with developing countries.

But his overarching aims come as the UK backslides on one of its main “soft power” weapons by cutting international aid funding and by tightening immigration controls post-Brexit, despite an employment deficit in some sectors for overseas staff.

The ruling Conservative government, in power since 2010, is also well behind in opinion polls and facing defeat at the next general election due in the next two years.

“I’m willing to concede that I am unlikely to be foreign secretary in 25 years’ time,” he added, but said he wanted UK foreign policy to be more long-term.