World

Vivian Bjorkenstamn brought pink roses and condolence cards for her visit to Windsor Castle, as it reopened to the public on Thursday after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

“I am here specifically today to pay respects and show my gratitude for the queen,” she told AFP. 

“She is part of our DNA. She will be sadly missed… I brought flowers and cards on behalf of many people in Canada because they can’t be here.”

On hearing the news of the queen’s death on September 8, Bjorkenstamn, 65, came straight to Windsor, west of London, from her home in Toronto.

The queen, who was 96 when she passed away, was also queen of Canada and 13 other countries outside Britain.

Others in the queue outside the castle’s stately walls included tourists who simply got lucky by booking tickets in advance.

“She had such a presence. She made you feel like she knew you,” said Julie Davies, 67, who met the queen when she opened the hospital where she worked near Liverpool, northwest England, in 1982.

Davies came with her husband Allan, 62, to pay their respects at the queen’s final resting place in the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor.

– Emotional –

Royal palaces and residences have been closed since the death of the queen, including Windsor, where she spent much of her time.

After a grand state funeral at London’s Westminster Abbey, and a committal service at St George’s Chapel at Windsor, her coffin was transferred to the adjoining King George VI Memorial Chapel.

She now lies there alongside her father, King George VI, and her mother, also called Elizabeth.

The queen’s husband Prince Philip, who died last year, is also interred there, as are the ashes of her younger sister, Princess Margaret.

“It’s just lovely because we watched the funerals on television at home and then suddenly it comes to life when you actually see the castle,” said Davies.

“It’s very emotional. It means a lot,” added her husband.

Elizabeth II was Britain’s longest-serving monarch in history, spending 70 years on the throne.

She often prayed at St George’s Chapel, which dates back more than 500 years.

The memorial chapel, which was completed in 1969, was commissioned by Elizabeth as a permanent resting place for her father.

The king died aged 56 in February 1952 but his death had been unexpected and as a result no specific resting place had been allocated.

For her father, the queen rejected the idea of the traditional marble chest tomb with life-sized effigies favoured by earlier royals.

Instead his grave was marked with a simple black marker stone laid into the floor.

The stone now also records the birth and death dates of Elizabeth and Philip in gold letters.

– Goosebumps –

Inside the castle, there was an hour-long wait to get inside the chapel — nothing compared to the overnight queues and waits of up to 25 hours to see the queen’s coffin lying in state in central London.

For a few seconds, visitors got to see the tomb, looking in silence at a recently turned page in British history.

Tracey Fletcher, who came to Windsor from London with her best friend, said seeing the queen together with Philip and her parents was very moving.

“I cried,” she admitted, calling it a “privilege” to be among the first people to see the new royal tomb and “the best way” to say “a last goodbye”.

“She was all we ever knew. She was always there,” she added, promising to return to the castle, which welcomes some 1.5 million visitors each year.

Terence Tan, a tourist from Singapore, said he just happened to be in the country at the right moment for what he called a “once-in-a-lifetime” event.

But Amy Schrader, 34, and her sister Sarah Exner, 28, from Washington, said they had been determined to secure tickets for the reopening.

“We were affected by the queen’s death. We came to celebrate her life, to see her grave and pay our respects,” Schrader said.

To be among the first to see the grave was unexpected but “definitely something so special”.

“It gives me goosebumps just thinking about that. We feel extremely honoured,” she added.

Polish authorities on Thursday said toxic algae was to blame for mass fish deaths in the Oder river, ruling out industrial pollution as the cause.

The conclusions presented at a press conference by scientists and government officials come from a preliminary report to be released Friday, weeks after the environmental disaster unfolded. 

The authors of the report said nearly 250 tonnes of dead fish were recovered from the Oder river that runs through Poland and Germany. 

Various factors “led us to conclude that the fish deaths were probably caused by the toxic effects of an algal bloom”, said Agnieszka Kolada from the Polish Institute of Environmental Protection.

The micro-algae at issue — known as Prymnesium parvum, or golden alga — are prevalent in estuaries and normally grow in brackish water, mainly near the sea, and “had until now never been detected in Poland”, she told reporters.

She added that the water quality of the Oder has been poor “for years” and was only made worse this summer by high temperatures and very low water levels, which may have fostered the algal bloom.

Some observers, including media outlets and environmental organisations, suspected that a chemical spill was at fault for the disaster, but the Polish side rejected that theory.

“The fish deaths were neither caused by heavy metals, nor pesticides, nor petroleum substances,” according to a presentation on the report. 

According to the analyses to date, “none of the inspected business entities had discharged pollutants above the regulatory limits” into the river, said Andrzej Szweda-Lewandowski, the government’s head of environmental protection.

The amount of industrial discharge had been “the same as in previous years”, he told reporters.

Fishermen in Poland first started reporting dead fish in the Oder in late July and they began washing up in Germany a few days later.

Poland’s government only reacted on August 12, sparking widespread criticism from both local Polish authorities and Germany. 

Russia will annex four regions of Ukraine that its troops occupy at a grand ceremony in the Kremlin on Friday, Moscow said, after President Vladimir Putin threatened he could use nuclear weapons to defend the territories.

The threats have not deterred a sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive, which has been pushing back Russian troops in the east and is on the doorstep of the Donetsk region town of Lyman that Moscow’s forces pummelled for weeks before capturing this summer.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the annexation of these four areas would be formalised at a ceremony in the Kremlin and that Putin would deliver a “major” speech.

The Russian leader himself then blamed the conflict in Ukraine on the West and said simmering conflicts in the ex-USSR were the result of the Soviet collapse.

The rhetoric built on his now famous phrase that the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy and he has recently suggested Moscow should extend again its influence over the former Soviet region.

“It’s enough to look at what’s happening now between Russia and Ukraine and what is happening on the borders of some other CIS countries,” Putin told security chiefs from former Soviet countries.

– ‘Soviet collapse’ –

“All this, of course, is the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he said.

The Kremlin-installed leaders of the four regions that pleaded to Putin for annexation this week were gathered in the Russian capital Thursday ahead of the ceremony.

Their nearly simultaneous requests came after they claimed residents had unanimously backed the move in hastily organised referendums that were dismissed by Kyiv and the West as illegal, fraudulent and void.

Ukraine after the so-called referendums said the only appropriate response from the West was to hit Russia with more sanctions and to supply Ukrainian forces with more weapons to keep reclaiming territory.

“Ukraine cannot and will not tolerate any attempts by Russia to seize any part of our land,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian leader on Thursday called an “urgent” meeting of his national security council on Friday, his spokesman said, after the Kremlin announced the timing of the annexation ceremony.

The four territories — Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south; Donetsk and Lugansk in the east — create a crucial land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Together, all five make up around 20 percent of Ukraine, whose forces in recent weeks have been clawing back ground.

In the south, Ukrainian forces have been wresting back territory near Kherson and residents of recently recaptured villages described to AFP journalists this week months of terror under Russian occupation.

“They robbed and humiliated us,” 72-year-old Maria Syzhuk said in the village of Vysokopillya, echoing with the dull thuds of artillery from both sides — mostly in the distance, but sometimes a little too close.

Kyiv’s army in particular has been progressing in the eastern Kharkiv region and recapturing territory in Donetsk. Military observers say Kyiv’s forces are close to capturing Lyman. 

“At the moment, our units are managing to repel all attacks,” a Russian-backed official in the Donetsk region, Alexei Nikonorov, told state TV on Thursday.

–  ‘I don’t want to kill people’ – 

Moscow’s forces are striking back along the entire frontline and officials in Kyiv said Thursday that Russian bombardment had killed three in the Dnipropetrovsk region, five in Donetsk and wounded seven in the Kharkiv region.

Along with threats to use nuclear weapons, Putin announced a mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of Russian men to bolster Moscow’s army in Ukraine, sparking demonstrations and an exodus of men abroad.

Finland’s Vaalimaa crossing has been flooded with new arrivals recently and has grown more precarious after Helsinki announced it would close its border from midnight to Russians holding European tourism visas for the Schengen zone.

“I just made it through, I don’t know how the others will get through. It’s sad, sad,” Andrei Stepanov, a 49-year-old Russian, told AFP of Finland’s new restrictions.

On a bright morning in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, a young Russian fleeing Moscow’s first military call-up since World War II had a stark answer for why he had left: “I don’t want to kill people.”

“It was very difficult to leave everything behind — home, motherland, my relatives — but it’s better than killing people,” the man in his 20s told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Russia’s move to annex the Ukrainian territories was met with the announcement from the United States of a new package of weapons and supplies worth $1.1 billion, including precision rocket systems, ammunition, armoured vehicles and radars.

And the European Commission proposed fresh sanctions targeting Russian exports worth seven billion euros, an oil price cap, an expanded travel blacklist and asset freezes.

Brazil’s deeply polarized election campaign entered the home stretch Thursday with incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro and leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva squaring off in what could be a bellicose final debate.

The confrontation will happen in a late-night, live broadcast on TV Globo just hours after a fresh opinion poll will signal voter intentions ahead of Sunday’s first election round.

Far-right Bolsonaro, 67, is seeking reelection after a controversial first term, but polls to date have shown him lagging behind ex-president Lula, 76, who left office in 2010 with an unprecedented 87-percent approval rating.

The incumbent is counting on his evangelical and business-centric support base, while Lula — who served two consecutive terms from 2003 — is appealing to poor, minority and anti-Bolsonaro voters.

The TV Globo debate, traditionally the most-watched pre-electoral program in Brazil, will be the last chance for candidates to sway undecided voters, who, polls suggest number just 13 percent of the electorate.

With voting in Brazil compulsory, a Datafolha poll from a week ago showed Lula strengthen his lead with 47 percent of stated voting intentions over 33 percent for Bolsonaro.

– ‘Can change the picture’ –

A winning candidate would need to garner more than 50 percent of valid votes cast — excluding spoiled or blank ballots — to avoid a second, conclusive round of voting on October 30.

Bolsonaro’s camp expect him to adopt an aggressive stance towards Lula in Thursday’s final debate, focusing on the corruption scandals that have damaged the leftist Worker’s Party, and pressing home his conservative values on issues of religion and abortion.

The pair will be joined on stage by five other candidates with no statistical shot at making it to the final two.

“This is the debate that can change the picture,” a Bolsonaro campaign member told AFP on condition of anonymity.

After the first debate, a month ago, Lula was criticized for seemingly evading the corruption question. He was further harmed by not taking part in another debate, last Saturday, between Bolsonaro and other candidates.

Lula has urged Brazilians loyal to any of the minority candidates — all with less than 10 percent of voter intention — to rather cast a “useful” vote for him, and against Bolsonaro.

Thursday’s poll by Datafolha, the lead reference in Brazilian politics, was conducted among 6,800 respondents, a higher number than usual.

It will bring out another, final poll on Saturday, the eve of the first round, that could indicate whether the debate has made any difference.

The broadcast election campaign in Brazil ends at midnight on Thursday, although in-person events and distribution of election material will be allowed until Saturday night.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly hinted that he will challenge any result in which Lula is the winner, saying last weekend: “We are the majority. We will win in the first round.”

The James Webb and Hubble telescopes on Thursday revealed their first images of a spacecraft deliberately smashing into an asteroid, as astronomers indicated that the impact looks to have been much greater than expected.

The world’s telescopes turned their gaze towards the space rock Dimorphos earlier this week for a historic test of Earth’s ability to defend itself against a potential life-threatening asteroid in the future.

Astronomers rejoiced as NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor slammed into its pyramid-sized, rugby ball-shaped target 11 million kilometres (6.8 million miles) from Earth on Monday night.

Images taken by Earth-bound telescopes showed a vast cloud of dust expanding out of Dimorphos — and its big brother Didymos which it orbits — after the spaceship hit.

While those images showed matter spraying out over thousands of kilometres, the James Webb and Hubble images “zoom in much closer”, said Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast involved in observations with the ATLAS project.

James Webb and Hubble can offer a view “within just a few kilometres of the asteroids and you can really clearly see how the material is flying out from that explosive impact by DART”, Fitzsimmons told AFP.

“It really is quite spectacular,” he said.

An image taken by James Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) four hours after impact shows “plumes of material appearing as wisps streaming away from the centre of where the impact took place”, according to a joint statement from the European Space Agency, James Webb and Hubble.

Hubble images from 22 minutes, five hours and eight hours after impact show the expanding spray of matter from where DART hit.

– ‘Worried there was nothing left’ –

Ian Carnelli of the European Space Agency said that the “really impressive” Webb and Hubble images were remarkably similar to those taken by the toaster-sized satellite LICIACube, which was just 50 kilometres from the asteroid after separating from the DART spacecraft a few weeks ago.

The images depict an impact that looks “a lot bigger than we expected,” said Carnelli, the manager of the ESA’s Hera mission which intends to inspect the damage in four years.

“I was really worried there was nothing left of Dimorphos” at first, Carnelli told AFP.

The Hera mission, which is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026, had expected to survey a crater around 10 metres (33 feet) in diameter. 

It now looks like it will be far bigger, Carnelli said, “if there is a crater at all, maybe a piece of Dimorphos was just chunked off.”

The true measure of DART’s success will be exactly how much it diverted the asteroid’s trajectory, so the world can start preparing to defend itself against bigger asteroids that could head our way in the future.

It will likely take Earth-bound telescopes and radars at least a week for a first estimate of how much the asteroid’s orbit has been altered, and three or four weeks before there is a precise measurement, Carnelli said.

– ‘Huge implications’ – 

“I am expecting a much bigger deflection than we had planned,” he said.

That would have “huge implications in planetary defence because it means that this technique could be used for much larger asteroids”, Carnelli added.

“Until today, we thought that the only deflection technique would be to send a nuclear device.”

Fitzsimmons said that even if no material had been “flung off” Dimorphos, DART still would still have slightly affected its orbit. 

“But the more material and the faster it’s moving, the more of a deflection there will have been,” he said.

The observations from James Webb and Hubble will help reveal how much — and how quickly — matter sprayed from the asteroid, as well as the nature of its surface.

The asteroid impact marked the first time the two space telescopes observed the same celestial body.

Since launching in December and releasing its first images in July, James Webb has taken the title of most powerful space telescope from Hubble.

Fitzsimmons said the images were “a beautiful demonstration of the extra science you can get by using more than one telescope simultaneously”.