Europe, Japan send spacecraft on 7-year journey to Mercury

October 20, 2018

TOKYO (AP) — European and Japanese space agencies said an Ariane 5 rocket successfully lifted a spacecraft carrying two probes into orbit Saturday for a joint mission to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

The European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the unmanned BepiColombo spacecraft successfully separated and was sent into orbit from French Guiana as planned to begin a seven-year journey to Mercury.

They said the spacecraft, named after Italian scientist Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo, was in the right orbit and has sent the first signal after the liftoff. ESA says the 1.3 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) mission is one of the most challenging in its history. Mercury's extreme temperatures, the intense gravity pull of the sun and blistering solar radiation make for hellish conditions.

The BepiColombo spacecraft will have to follow an elliptical path that involves a fly-by of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury itself so it can slow down before arriving at its destination in December 2025.

When it arrives, BepiColombo will release two probes — Bepi and Mio — that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of Mercury. The probes are designed to cope with temperatures varying from 430 degrees Celsius (806 F) on the side facing the sun, and -180 degrees Celsius (-292 F) in Mercury's shadow.

The ESA-developed Bepi will operate in Mercury's inner orbit, and JAXA's Mio will be in the outer orbit to gather data that would reveal the internal structure of the planet, its surface and geological evolution.

Scientists hope to build on the insights gained by NASA's Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after a four-year orbit of Mercury. The only other spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's Mariner 10 that flew past the planet in the mid-1970s.

Mercury, which is only slightly larger than Earth's moon, has a massive iron core about which little is known. Researchers are also hoping to learn more about the formation of the solar system from the data gathered by the BepiColombo mission.

"Beyond completing the challenging journey, this mission will return a huge bounty of science," said Jan Wörner, ESA Director General, in a statement. JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa, who earlier managed the project, said, "We have high expectations that the ensuing detailed observations of Mercury will help us better understand the environment of the planet, and ultimately, the origin of the Solar System including that of Earth."

It is the second recent cooperation between the Europeans and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. JAXA's Hayabusa2 probe dropped a German-French rover on the asteroid Ryugu earlier this month.

Jordans reported from Berlin.

Flash floods kill 6 in southern Russia; 1 person missing

October 26, 2018

MOSCOW (AP) — At least six people died as flash floods hit southern Russia, paralyzing road and train traffic across the Black Sea region and forcing hundreds to evacuate their homes, rescue officials said Friday.

The region, which hosted many events for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, saw a huge amount of rain on a single day — Wednesday — that equaled the region's average rainfall for two months. The deluge caused rivers to overflow and roar down the mountainous area.

Weather forecasters predicted torrential rain Friday evening in Sochi, the Winter Olympics city on the Black Sea where Russian President Vladimir Putin often welcomes foreign dignitaries. Russia's Investigative Committee said Friday that six people died in several locations near the town of Tuapse when torrential rains and flash floods hit. An elderly woman also went missing after she was swept away by rushing water in Tuapse.

Footage on state television showed people being evacuated from villages in inflatable boats and emergency crews repairing a section of a collapsed bridge. The floods have damaged roads and railroad bridges, paralyzing traffic. More than 20 trains running along the Black Sea coast have been delayed after a section of a railroad bridge collapsed, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at nearby stations. Emergency officials offered temporary accommodations and food to the passengers.

Russian Railways said Friday that they have repaired one of the tracks, allowing a train to travel between two major Black Sea coastal towns for the first time since Wednesday. Power cuts have affected nearly 2,000 residents, and water supply has been cut through the region, even in Sochi, where flooding was not anywhere near as disastrous as in Tuapse.

New blow to GRU: More Russian military spies exposed

October 26, 2018

PARIS (AP) — It seems like open season on the GRU. The Russian military agency had its inner workings exposed again Friday as determined journalists and Kremlin critics remain focused on uncovering its secrets. A new report details the alleged misbehavior and bizarre bureaucratic decisions that allowed a Russian journalist to identify people he says are GRU officers.

Journalist Sergei Kanev said he wants to call attention to problems within an organization he thinks has moved from traditional spying into unchecked violence and foreign interference. But his story portrays the agency as more sloppy than scary: one finding was that suspected GRU agents appeared to blow their own covers.

None of the few dozen agents he wrote about is suspected of grave wrongdoing. However, governments in multiple countries have implicated GRU agents in the March nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy in Britain, hacking the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, involvement in downing a Malaysian plane and disrupting anti-doping efforts.

Russian authorities deny the accusations, calling them part of a global smear campaign. Kanev said he identified three agents after they filed police reports for stolen goods, by cross-checking names with databases showing addresses or other information on GRU employees. Another was identified after being arrested over a cafe shootout.

The report also says the Russian Defense Ministry sought to conceal the identities of dozens of children of alleged GRU officers living in a Moscow housing complex by adding 100 years to their ages in administrative registries. GRU agents jokingly called it the "old folks' home," Kanev said.

However, pension authorities raised alarm upon discovering the freak concentration of very elderly residents, suspecting some kind of pension fraud. Kanev, who lives in self-imposed exile in Europe, told The Associated Press he uncovered the identities by using databases purchased on the black market from Moscow police, traffic police or security agents. He said he cross-checked them with open sources and discussions with security sources. Other Russian journalists have described using similar methods.

Kanev's reporting was funded and published by Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Dossier Project, and also released by Russian independent broadcaster Dozhd TV. The details of the report couldn't be immediately verified. But it fits in a pattern of embarrassing exposures that has caused some to question the GRU's professionalism - and highlighted corruption that has allowed leaks to occur.

Last month, British intelligence released surveillance images of GRU agents accused of the March attack in Salisbury. Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian site The Insider quickly exposed the agents' real names. The Associated Press and others revealed details about their backgrounds. And Dutch authorities recently identified four alleged GRU agents who tried to hack the Wi-Fi of the world's chemical weapons watchdog from a hotel parking lot.

All this makes it look like GRU officers "can't tie their own shoelaces," said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. In an interview with the AP, Kanev said he also identified 16 GRU officers who once lived in the same Moscow dormitory as Anatoly Chepiga, one of the Russian officers suspected of poisoning turncoat GRU agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. Kanev did not publish their names.

Kanev said that he could identify so many officers was a sign that "Russia is eroding." The agency, which is still widely known as the GRU despite a recent name change, did not respond Friday to requests for comment.

Keir Giles, the director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, warned that unmasking Russian spies who aren't accused of serious wrongdoing exposed Kanev and his backer, oligarch-turned-dissident Khodorkovsky, "to charges that instead of reforming Russia, they just want to harm it."

Giles said the revelations highlight a sense among Russian intelligence agencies that they are "above the law" and could reinforce their view that "mass connectivity, unhindered communications, and widespread access to information" is a threat to national security.

Meanwhile, the drip-drip of revelations will continue to dent the image of the GRU, but not deter it from unsavory actions, experts said. Kofman said it's not unheard of for one agent after another to get burned publicly, and noted that agents like Chepiga and his colleagues could be replaced.

"They will likely write this off as a consequence of carrying out a lot of operations," he said.

Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed.

Putin says Russia will target nations hosting US missiles

October 24, 2018

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday that if the United States deploys intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will have to target the nations that would host them. The stern statement follows U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement over the weekend that he intends to opt out of a 1987 nuclear arms control pact over alleged Russian violations.

Putin said he hoped the United States wouldn't follow up by positioning intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Such a move would be a repeat of a Cold War showdown in the 1980s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent, the Russian leader said.

"If they are deployed in Europe, we will naturally have to respond in kind," Putin said at a news conference after talks with visiting Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. "The European nations that would agree to that should understand that they would expose their territory to the threat of a possible retaliatory strike. These are obvious things."

He continued: "I don't understand why we should put Europe in such a grave danger." "I see no reason for that," Putin said. "I would like to repeat that it's not our choice. We don't want it." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the Western military alliance's members blame Russia for developing a new missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, but he doesn't expect them to beef up nuclear arsenals in Europe in response.

"I don't foresee that allies will deploy more nuclear weapons in Europe as a response to the new Russian missile," Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Putin rejected Trump's claim that Russia has breached the INF treaty, alleging it was the United States that violated the pact.

He charged that U.S. missile defense facilities in Romania hold intermediate-range cruise missiles with just a quick tweak in computer software. The Russian leader added that he hoped to discuss the issue with Trump in Paris when they both attend Nov. 11 events marking 100 years since Armistice Day.

"We are ready to work together with our American partners without any hysteria," he said. "The important thing is what decisions will come next." The INF treaty signed in 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev prohibited the U.S. and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying ground-launched nuclear cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles.)

The pact was lauded as a major safeguard for global security since they eliminated shorter-range missiles that take only a few minutes to reach their targets. Trump said he planned to pull the U.S. out of the treaty due to the alleged Russia violations and also because China, which wasn't part of the pact, has intermediate-range missile capability.

Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, spent two days in Moscow this week to discuss the move with Putin and his top lieutenants. Bolton said Washington hasn't served a formal withdrawal notice, but he voiced strong skepticism the treaty could be salvaged.

Kremlin calls treaty exit without new deal offer 'dangerous'

October 23, 2018

MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin said Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump took "a dangerous position" by deciding to abandon an existing nuclear weapons treaty with Russia without offering anything to replace it.

As Trump's national security adviser prepared to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Putin's spokesman acknowledged the 1987 arms control deal had "weak spots." But Dmitry Peskov warned Washington against withdrawing from the agreement without proposing improvements or a substitute treaty.

"Right now, we don't have any prospects whatsoever for a new deal," Peskov said. "It's important to figure out if it's possible or not." Trump on Monday restated his threat to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty because of alleged Russia violations. He said the United States would start developing the type of ground-launched nuclear cruise and ballistic missiles the treaty banned until "people come to their senses" and then "we'll all stop."

In Moscow, Peskov said that sacrificing the landmark pact for a hypothetical better deal was "a dangerous position." The treaty was signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, prohibiting the U.S. and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying ground-launched nuclear cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles.)

China was not a party to the original agreement, and Trump said Monday it should be included in the treaty. U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton is scheduled to meet with Putin in Moscow on Tuesday. Bolton struck a conciliatory note in his talks with senior Russian officials earlier in the day.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu lauded Bolton for making a two-day visit and said that "even small steps will benefit our relations and help restore trust" between the two countries. He also said that Russia and the U.S. should build up their cooperation in Syria that helped to prevent major incidents in the sky or on the ground.

Bolton told Shoigu he was in Moscow to work on Trump's commitment to improve security cooperation with Russia. "We certainly share your view that the U.S.-Russian discussions with respect to Syria have been useful, productive and professional, and we hope we can extend those conversations through a number of other ways that you mentioned, and even more," he said.

In televised comments, neither Bolton nor Shoigu mentioned Trump's announcement on the INF treaty. In an interview with Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy on Monday, Bolton made it clear the Trump administration had its mind made up about leaving the treaty.

"If Russia says it's not violating the INF treaty, what are they going to do to change their behavior to comply?" he said. When signed in 1987, the treaty was lauded as a major safeguard for global security since with no shorter-range missiles in use, the nuclear superpowers would in theory have more time for decision-making if faced with a nuclear attack.

The European Union warned Trump of a potential impact on European security if he decided to go ahead and leave the INF treaty. An EU statement on Monday described the pact as an essential cornerstone of Europe's security structure, adding, "the world doesn't need a new arms race that would benefit no one and on the contrary, would bring even more instability."

Separately, Bolton told Ekho Moskvy that he raised the issue of Russian meddling in the U.S. elections in talks with Security Council chairman Nikolai Patrushev on Monday. He said that he did not believe the meddling had any effect in the U.S. 2016 election, though the accusations created "enormous distrust of Russia."

NATO chief calls arms buildup unlikely, Putin warns Europe

October 24, 2018

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that allies blame Russia for violating an important Cold War-era missile treaty but he does not expect them to deploy more nuclear warheads in Europe in response.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up on U.S. President Donald Trump's declared intention to pull out of the 1987 arms control pact by warning that if the U.S. deploys the now-banned missiles in Europe, Russia would target the nations hosting them.

The European Union has described the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty as a cornerstone of European security and urged Russia and the United States to uphold it. But Stoltenberg did not encourage the U.S., the biggest and most influential member of NATO, to stay in the treaty.

"I don't foresee that allies will deploy more nuclear weapons in Europe as a response to the new Russian missile," Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels. However, he noted that the 29 allies were assessing "the implications of the new Russian missile for our security."

Putin said he hoped the United States did not plan to put the kind of missiles the treaty banned in Europe, if it does withdraw from the pact. "If they are deployed in Europe, we will naturally have to respond in kind," Putin said at a news conference after talks with visiting Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. "The European nations that would agree to that should understand that they would expose their territory to the threat of a possible retaliatory strike."

The Russian leader strongly rejected U.S. and NATO allegations that Moscow has violated the treaty. He charged it was the U.S. that violated pact with missile defense facilities in Romania that could be used to hold cruise missiles in violation of the INF.

With tensions over the treaty's possible unraveling mounting, NATO on Thursday officially launches its Trident Juncture war games in Norway, its biggest maneuvers since the Cold War. Russia, which shares a border with Norway, has been briefed by NATO on the exercises and invited to monitor them, but the move has still angered Moscow. Russia's defense minister warned that Moscow could be forced to respond to increased NATO military activities near its western border.

"NATO's military activities near our borders have reached the highest level since the Cold War times," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, noting that the war games will be "simulating offensive military action."

Speaking on a trip to Belarus, Shoigu also warned that Poland's plan to permanently host a U.S. army division would affect regional stability and trigger a Russian response. He said Moscow would have to "take retaliatory measures to neutralize possible military threats."

The NATO maneuvers in Norway will involve around 50,000 personnel, 65 ships, 250 aircraft and 10,000 vehicles in a hypothetical scenario that involves restoring Norway's sovereignty after an attack by a "fictitious aggressor."

The United States insists that a new Russian missile system — known as the 9M729 — contravenes the 1987 INF treaty. NATO allies agree that is probably the case. The pact between Moscow and Washington bans an entire class of weapons — all land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range from 500-5,500 kilometers (310-3,410 miles.)

Experts say the Russian system would operate at lower altitudes, making it tough to detect and bring down. It could also reach targets across Europe and even the U.S. west coast if stationed in Siberia.

Stoltenberg said he was concerned about the weapons, but did not expect a repeat of the so-called "Euromissiles crisis" in the 1980s. Back then, the United States deployed cruise missiles in Europe to counterbalance a perceived threat from Russia's SS-20 nuclear warheads.

"The INF is a landmark treaty, but the problem is that no treaty can be effective, can work, if it's only respected by one" side, Stoltenberg said, adding that the "U.S. is in full compliance." He said, based on U.S. intelligence and Russia's reluctance to discuss the missile system with NATO, "the most plausible explanation is that Russia is in violation of the treaty."

Asked whether he thought the United States should stick with it, Stoltenberg said: "The challenge, the problem, is the Russian behavior which we have seen over many years." In Berlin, Germany's foreign minister urged his Russian counterpart to do everything possible to preserve the treaty. The German Foreign Ministry said Heiko Maas told Russia's Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday that includes clearing up the allegations that Moscow has violated the pact.

Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

UN investigator: Genocide still taking place in Myanmar

October 25, 2018

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Genocide is still taking place against Rohingya Muslims remaining in Myanmar and the government is increasingly demonstrating it has no interest in establishing a fully functioning democracy, U.N. investigators said Wednesday.

Marzuki Darusman, chair of the U.N. fact-finding mission on Myanmar, said thousands of Rohingya are still fleeing to Bangladesh, and the estimated 250,000 to 400,000 who have stayed following last year's brutal military campaign in the Buddhist-majority country "continue to suffer the most severe" restrictions and repression.

"It is an ongoing genocide that is taking place at the moment," he told a news conference Wednesday. Darusman said the requirements for genocide, except perhaps for killings, "continue to hold" for Rohingya still in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state. These include causing serious bodily harm, inflicting conditions designed to destroy the Rohingya, and imposing measures to prevent births, he said.

Myanmar's U.N. ambassador, Hau Do Suan, called the fact-finding mission "flawed, biased and politically motivated" and said the government "categorically rejects" its inference of "genocidal intent." Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special investigator on human rights in Myanmar, said she and many others in the international community hoped the situation under Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi "would be vastly different from the past — but it is really not that much different from the past."

Lee added later that she thinks Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former political prisoner who now leads Myanmar's civilian government, "is in total denial" about accusations that the military in Buddhist-majority Myanmar raped, murdered and tortured Rohingya and burned their villages, sending over 700,000 fleeing to Bangladesh since August 2017.

"The government is increasingly demonstrating that it has no interest and capacity in establishing a fully functioning democracy where all its people equally enjoy all their rights and freedoms," Lee said. "It is not upholding justice and rule of law" that Suu Kyi "repeatedly says is the standard to which all in Myanmar are held."

If this were the case, she said, fair laws would be applied impartially to all people, impunity would not rein, "and the law would not be wielded as a weapon of oppression." Suu Kyi's government has rejected independent international investigations into the alleged abuses of Rohingya and has commissioned its own probe. The government has also rejected the report by the fact-finding mission, which said some top military leaders should be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Rohingya.

"The Myanmar government's hardened positions are by far the greatest obstacle," Darusman told reporters. "Its continued denials, its attempts to shield itself under the cover of national sovereignty and its dismissal of 444 pages of details about the facts and circumstances of recent human rights violations that point to the most serious crimes under international law" strengthens the need for international action because "accountability cannot be expected from the national processes," he said.

Darusman and Lee spoke ahead of a Security Council meeting that began with a vote on whether Darusman should be allowed to brief members. He was given a green light with the minimum nine "yes" votes from the U.S., Britain, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Ivory Coast, Kuwait, Peru and Poland. China, which is Myanmar's neighbor and ally, Russia and Bolivia voted "no" and Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan abstained.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused supporters of the briefing of "torpedoing consensus" in the council and forcing council members "to engage in loud-speaker diplomacy." He said the fact-finding mission didn't go to Rakhine state, called its report "too biased," and said the international community should help Myanmar and Bangladesh resolve the Rohingya refugee problem.

Chinese Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu later echoed Nebenzia, calling the report's conclusions "lopsided" and "not credible" and saying the international community should work on returning the refugees. Lee stressed that their "repatriation is not possible now."

"I will not encourage any repatriation," the U.N. envoy said. "Conducive conditions means they should not go back to ... the oppressive laws, the discrimination. The minimum they need is freedom of movement, access to basic health services."

Lee said "there's been a lot of progress in terms of economic development and infrastructure, but in the area of 'democratic space' and people's right to claim back their land ... there is no progress."

"Right now, it's like an apartheid situation where Rohingyas still living in Myanmar ... have no freedom of movement," Lee said. "The camps, the shelters, the model villages that are being built, it's more of a cementing of total segregation or separation from the Rakhine ethnic community."

At the council meeting, Darusman said the fact-finding mission concluded that last year's events were "a human rights catastrophe that was foreseeable and planned," and it conservatively estimates there were "10,000 Rohingya deaths."

"Remaining Rohingya in Rakhine state are at grave risk," he said, and returning Rohingya from Bangladesh would be "tantamount to condemning them to life as sub-humans and further mass killing." Darusman said the Security Council should the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court or another international tribunal and also impose an arms embargo on Myanmar, a ban on transactions with all military-related enterprises and sanctions against those alleged to be most responsible for atrocities against the Rohingya.

"There can be no 'moving on' from this crisis without addressing its root causes — all of which continue to exist today, primarily the presence of an unaccountable military that acts with complete impunity," he said.

The Netherlands' deputy U.N. ambassador, Lise Gregoire Van Haaren, said her government will push quickly for a Security Council resolution that would refer Myanmar to the ICC. But council action appeared highly unlikely because of its deep divisions and almost certain opposition from China and Russia, both veto-wielding council members.

"I'm very aware that there might be pushback, but having pushback is never a reason not to try," Van Haaren said. "So we are going to have a really ambitious aim for the negotiations" on a possible resolution "and let's see where we get."

Myanmar's Suan said the Independent Commission of Inquiry established by the government will investigate alleged human rights violations, and "we will never accept any calls for referral of Myanmar to the ICC."