An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts from the International Space Station (ISS) returned to Earth on Thursday, after a six-month mission in space, which began in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
American Chris Cassidy (Nasa) and Russians Anatoly Ivanichine and Ivan Vagner (Roskosmos) landed at 02:54 GMT in the steppes of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia where Russia operates the Baikonur Cosmodrome, according to reports. images broadcast by Roscosmos.
In particular, we see Chris Cassidy nodding his elbow to a member of the staff at the landing site, before the three astronauts are taken to a tent for medical examinations.
The signing of the so-called Artemis Agreement paves the way for its signatories – Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States – to participate in NASA’s Artemis program to transport astronauts to the moon in 2024.
“Artemis will be the largest and most diverse international human space exploration program in history, and the Artemis Agreement is the mechanism that will form this united global coalition,” said NASA Director Jim Braidenstein.
“By signing, we are joining our partners to explore the Moon and set out vital principles that will create a secure, peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy,” said Braidenstain.
Although NASA runs the Artemis program, it has emphasized the need for an international partnership to build a sustainable presence on the moon, which the agency sees as an important element in a possible human mission to Mars.
For example, NASA hopes to dig ice at the Moon’s South Pole to obtain both drinking water and rocket fuel for further flights.
It also plans to create an orbital space station, the Gateway.
NASA stated that the Artemis Agreement reinforces the 1967 Space Treaty and sets out ten principles.
The Contracting Parties undertake to adhere to the peaceful exploration of space in a transparent manner, to establish technical systems with which any other signatory State may work, and to register their space objects.
The principles also set out emergency assistance, the publication of scientific data, the conservation of space heritage and a plan for the safe disposal of space debris.
The agreement was signed the day after Dmitry Rogozin, director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, announced that Moscow was unlikely to participate in the Gateway space station.
The Artemis agreement also excludes China, which has its own lunar program with international partners.
In March last year, the administration of US President Donald Trump instructed NASA to transport people to the moon by 2024, accelerating plans for lunar colonization so that it could be used for missions to Mars.
The last man to walk on the Moon was the American astronaut Eugene Sernan in December 1972 as part of the Apollo 17 mission.
Fauci said he did not consent to the use of his words in Trump’s campaign video. He called the fragment shown in the video taken out of context
Anthony Fauci
(Photo: Al Drago / Pool via AP)
The chief US infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, did not consent to the use of his words in the campaign ads for President Donald Trump. About this he stated CNN.
October 10 Trump campaign headquarters after recovering from COVID-19 and discharging from hospital released a video about the personal experience of the head of state in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic.
A voiceover in the ad says, “President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus, and so is America. Together, we have met this challenge, protecting our seniors by providing essential medicines in record time and without sparing money. ” After that, a fragment of an interview with Fauci appears in the video, where the doctor says: “I can’t imagine anyone could do more.” Thus, it seems that the country’s chief infectious disease specialist approves of Trump’s actions in the fight against the disease.
“For almost 50 years of public service, I have never publicly endorsed a single political candidate. Used without my permission, words in a GOP ad campaign were taken out of context for a statement I made a few months ago about federal efforts to combat the pandemic, ”Fauci said.
Swiss bank Credit Suisse is expanding its Wealth Management services team for Russian clients with BNP Paribas employees. The Russian market is ranked 10-15th in the world in terms of the number of wealthy clients, but in recent years, local players have strengthened their positions in this segment.
Information about the strengthening of the Russian team of the Wealth Management division at Credit Suisse appeared on finews.com, sources of Kommersant confirmed it. In particular, according to one of them, eight former employees of BNP Paribas under the leadership of Nonna Ushenina are transferred to the bank.
The new appointments are in line with Credit Suisse’s focus on UHNWI (Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, wealthy clients with capital exceeding $ 30 million).
The team will work from Geneva. Credit Suisse declined to comment. BNP Paribas did not answer Kommersant. At the end of September, they announced the layoff of about 120 employees in the Geneva office, which was focused on Wealth Management services.
The interest of foreign financial institutions in working with Russian large private capital has noticeably increased in recent years. According to the director of the Swiss FP Wealth Solutions Yuri Yemelin, the main growth and the greatest marginality of the business of private banks is in emerging markets, including the Russian Federation. According to Andrey Babiyan, director of Alfa Capital Wealth, there are about 215 thousand wealthy clients in Russia (including High Net Worth Individuals, HNWI, with a capital of more than $ 1 million), according to this indicator, the country is in the top 15. According to Knight Frank, at the beginning of 2020 the number of UHNWIs was approaching 9 thousand clients (9th in the world).
In 2015–2016, Russia tightened currency and tax legislation, which dampened the interest of global banks in Russian clients. Then, according to Andrei Babiyan, there was an outflow from Western banks. However, Avi Burstin, Chief Executive Officer of Amber Lion (Zuerich), clarifies that since 2017, the rules have gradually become more transparent, and the requirements have become clear.
Bankers associate the desire to work with Russian clients from Switzerland not with the pandemic, but with legal issues.
As Yury Emelin explains, banks avoid a permanent physical presence in Russia “in order not to expose themselves and their employees to the risks of violating Russian laws and licensing requirements.” And in the face of a pandemic in the wealth management industry, many tasks began to be implemented remotely. According to Avi Burstin, this allows banks “to concentrate depository and trading activities in a reliable jurisdiction”, expanding the geography of potential clients.
At the same time, foreign banks will have to withstand intense competition with Russian ones. According to Andrei Babiyan, Russian management companies and investment banks sometimes have a higher expertise than foreign houses. Avi Burstin adds that ecosystem development “allows local players to compete.” At the same time, according to Mikhail Bespalov, an analyst with KSP Capital Asset Management, in terms of the breadth of expertise, “Western managers can surpass Russian competitors due to their global network and access to narrow specialists in local markets in different geographic locations.” As Mr. Emelin admits, in general, “the capabilities of the conditional average Russian bank are significantly inferior to the same conditional average Swiss bank.”
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, both selected for the Nobel Peace Prize, met in 2018. In video, the Russian leader joins the list of the most surprising Nobel Peace Prize nominations.GettyVideo: Atlas
Last Thursday, Russian writer Sergei Komkov reported that Vladimir Putin is now officially a candidate for Nobel Peace Prize 2021. The nomination was sent on September 9 and, just a day later, it had already been accepted by the Nobel Foundation. Putin’s joins the nomination in the same category of Donald Trump, which has been promoted by the Norwegian MP Christian Tybring-Gjedde.
Almost anyone in the world is entitled to propose a Nobel Peace Prize, with the exception of the interested party. That perhaps explains why Benito Mussolini, Stalin and even Adolf Hitler were candidates.
In the case of Putin, the reasons given for deserving this recognition are having sent humanitarian aid to thirty countries, his attachment to humanitarian values and his effort to include the word God in the Russian Constitution. For their part, the defenders of the Donald Trump award highlight their support for the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and the fact that, if things do not go wrong between now and Tuesday, November 3, the date of the US elections , the American will be the first president in almost four decades not to lead the country into an armed confrontation during his government. However, although it is still remarkable, that detail has never been an impediment to winning such an award.
So much Barack Obama like Henry Kissinger, both winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, they had direct responsibilities in armed conflicts or human rights violations. In Kissinger’s case it was Vietnam and its collaboration with the Southern Cone dictatorships and the Condor Plan; in Obama’s, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. In neither case were these events a problem for receiving the award. In fact, at the award ceremony, Barack Obama went so far as to apologize for war conflicts by saying: “The instruments of war have a role to play in maintaining peace. In many countries, military interventions look bad, but someone has to achieve peace.” In other words: war as a way to peace, robbery as a way to prosperity, fire as a means to plant trees.
The speech that Barack Obama gave when collecting his Nobel Peace Prize.
A Nobel available to everyone
Although it may seem to a good part of the world population that these nominations are inexplicable, the truth is that they fully and rigorously comply with the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, which consider valid any nomination that arrives before January 31 and that comes from, namely: members of national assemblies and national governments of sovereign states, as well as current heads of state, members of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
The “members of the the Institute of International Law, members of the international board of the International League of Women for Peace and Freedom, university professors, emeritus professors and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology and religion, university rectors and directors or their equivalents, directors from peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes, other Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and people associated with Nobel Prize winners now or in the past. “
The history of the Nobel Prize is full of scandals and controversies. Its origin was the desire of Alfred Nobel, a prosperous businessman inventor of explosives such as cordite and dynamite, to wash his image after having become a billionaire with death and destruction
In short, almost anyone in the world is entitled to propose a Nobel Peace Prize, with the exception of the interested party. That perhaps explains why Benito Mussolini in 1935, Stalin in 1945 and 1948 and even Adolf Hitler, proposed by the Swedish Social Democratic MP Erik Brandt in 1939. Although Brandt did so with ironic intent, what remains for the story is that, indeed, the Führer was a candidate only a few months before Germany invaded Poland.
However, these unusual nominations don’t just happen in that category. Although there are fewer international organizations that can nominate in Medicine, Chemistry or Literature, the fact that university professors are qualified to do so – only Swedish in the case of Chemistry and Medicine, but without limitations in the case of Literature -, means that anyone can propose and almost anyone can be proposed.
Miguel Oscar Menassa, writer, poet, painter, psychoanalyst, filmmaker, rhapsody, editor and founder of the Grupo Cero School of Psychoanalysis, for example, has been bragging about having been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 for years although, as has happened to Murakami, Javier Marías or Jorge Luis Borges, has not succeeded. The reasons for your nomination? Of course his vast literary work, but also the fact that his followers knew that the nomination is available to anyone, while the rest of the population, not so much.
A controversial award
Portrait of Alfred Nobel in his laboratory.Photo: Getty
The history of the Nobel Prize is full of scandals, controversies and debatable decisions since its inception. Its origin was the desire to Alfred Nobel, prosperous businessman inventor of explosives like cordite and dynamite, to wash his image after having become a billionaire with death and destruction. To do this, he included in his will a legacy so that part of his fortune would be used to organize prizes that recognized the work of those people who had made great benefits for humanity.
However, determining what people or actions have been beneficial to humanity has not been easy either. In 1918, Fritz Haber He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for synthesizing ammonia, a gas that at the same time was being used as a chemical weapon in the First World War. Something similar happened with Otto Hahn who, in 1944, received the award for his research on nuclear fission between uranium and thorium, which allowed the development of the first atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nor was the Nobel Prize in Medicine well received from António Egas Moniz, Portuguese doctor who created the lobotomy, a surgical technique that left irreversible sequelae in countless patients. In fact, associations of relatives affected by this aggressive method have asked the Nobel Foundation to withdraw the award, something that the statutes of the institution do not allow.
Determining what people or actions have been beneficial to humanity has not been easy. For example, Otto Hahn received the award for his research on nuclear fission between uranium and thorium, which allowed the development of the first atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What is contemplated in the statutes of the award is that, if those responsible for awarding it do not consider that that year there is a person who deserves it in any category, the award may be void. This was the case in 1935 with the Literature, from 1915 to 1918 with the Medicine, in 1916, 1917 and 1919 with the Chemistry and in 1948, 1955, 1956, 1966, 1967, 1972 with the Peace.
Therefore, it would not be strange if this year the award was declared void, so that Putin and Trump would be left without it, as it already happened a few years ago. In 2004, the Russian president was nominated for his efforts to dismantle the Syrian chemical arsenal. For his part, the American was a candidate in 2009 for his plan to improve relations between his country and North Korea. On those occasions, the Russian was defeated by Kenyan politics and ecologist. Wangari Muta Maathai and the American, by Barack Obama.
After the ruble loses its power, there comes a period when it restores this power. This was stated by the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the rise in price of the dollar by 3 rubles. during the week.
According to Peskov, volatility is bilateral at present and the ruble will recover soon.
“After a period when the ruble loses its strength, there comes a period when it regains this strength. The timing of this is another matter. This is market volatility, so there is no doubt that the ruble’s position will then recover, ”said Peskov, an RBC correspondent reports.
Over the past week, the dollar exchange rate on the Moscow Exchange increased practically by 3 rubles, and euros – by more than 1 rubles. So, on September 21, the ruble was trading at 75.5 rubles. per dollar, but within a week the rate of the American currency rose sharply. The dollar finished Friday trading at the level of 78.2 rubles.
The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, He put his chest out before the UN on Tuesday for the rapid development in his country of a coronavirus vaccine and offered it free of charge to the organization to protect all its employees.
In his video message to the General Assembly, Putin He pointed out that his Government is ready to offer the United Nations all the necessary assistance, which includes free vaccination for all staff who want it.
He also said thatYour country is open to supply other nations with the so-called “Spútnik V”, which, as he highlighted, has been proven “safe” and “effective.”
Putin insisted that citizens around the world should have free access to a Covid-19 vaccine and He also underlined the Kremlin’s willingness to work with other governments to share diagnostic methods. and treatment of the disease.
In addition, in contrast to the United States, he defended that the World Health Organization (WHO) should have a central role in coordinating the response and said that Russia is working to strengthen the capacity of the Geneva-based entity.
On the other hand, Putin warned of the long-term economic effects that the current crisis will have and defended the need for the entire international community to work board to drive growth.
In this context, he stressed the importance of eliminating barriers, restrictions and, above all, “illegitimate sanctions” in international trade.
In the geopolitical and military sphere, the Russian leader He assured that he wants to cooperate with the United States to extend the strategic arms reduction treaty and hoped that there will be “restraint” when it comes to deploying new missile systems.
Too reiterated interest in a binding treaty to ban weapons in outer space and opted for more cooperation in cybersecurity.
Coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, Putin defended the work of the organization and, although he recognized that it is necessary to adapt it to the reality of the 21st century, he made it clear that his country opposes major changes in the Security Council, where it is one of the five permanent members and has veto power.
According to him, for the Council to continue being the “pillar of global governance” it is essential that these five countries, nuclear powers and victors of World War II, retain the privilege of the veto.
There were two serious incidents at once with the participation of the Russian military. In the Tver region, a Su-35S fighter accidentally shot down a Su-30 fighter with fire from a 30-mm cannon, the crew of which successfully ejected. And in Denmark, the Ice Rose vessel, which was carrying cargo from St. Petersburg, and the small anti-submarine ship Kazanets of the Baltic Fleet almost sank each other. To investigate the incidents, the Ministry of Defense has created commissions, and the military investigating authorities are going to initiate criminal cases.
The Su-30 multipurpose fighter, costing about $ 50 million when sold abroad, was destroyed during a scheduled flight in the Tver region. According to preliminary data, the plane followed in a group of combat vehicles of the same type, after which it suddenly lost control, and its crew of two was successfully ejected. The plane itself crashed 45 km from the Hotilovo airport, where its wreckage was found after about four hours of searching by the military and the rescuers of the Emergencies Ministry who joined them. The fighter was completely destroyed, no one was injured on the ground as a result of its fall.
According to preliminary data, during an administrative investigation into the incident, it turned out that one of the Su-30s, during a training battle, really attacked the next generation Su-35S fighter. Fortunately, there was no rocket armament on it, shots from the GSh-30-1 30-mm aircraft cannon were also not supposed to sound, and the attack itself should only be recorded by photo and video equipment.
However, the cannon, which is usually discharged, put on a safety lock and de-energized, just in case, not only fired, but also hit the target accurately, taking down the plumage of the Su-30, which soon crashed.
Obviously, the Su-35S sniper pilot will have to answer and pay for the hit, against whom, most likely, a criminal case under Art. 347 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (damage or destruction of military property by negligence). Note that the military department usually sues the perpetrators of such incidents to bring them to financial responsibility corresponding to the cost of the destroyed equipment. However, the courts, as a rule, satisfy such statements in part, recovering from the perpetrators only their monthly salary.
Another incident involving the Russian military took place abroad – in the area of the Øresund Bridge in Denmark. There, the cargo ship Ice Rose (equipped with refrigeration units for the transport of perishable goods), which was sailing from St. Petersburg to Gothenburg under the flag of the Marshall Islands, and the small anti-submarine ship Kazanets of the Baltic Fleet collided. According to the press service of the Baltic Fleet, the collision occurred when the ships were sailing through the Danish straits (Baltic straits).
The Baltic Fleet reported that visibility was poor in that area. Kazanets got a hole above the waterline and is returning to Baltiysk, where it is based.
Nobody was hurt in the collision. The cause of the incident has not been established, but it was evidently caused by the actions of the crews of both ships in heavy fog.
The investigation of the incident is being conducted by the fleet commission and the military prosecutor’s office. Then, obviously, a criminal case will be initiated on violation of the rules for driving or operating warships (Article 352 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). If the commander of the Kazanets’ crew is found guilty, he will also have to pay for the ship’s repairs.
Kazanets was built back in 1985 in the GDR by order of the USSR Navy. A year later, it entered the Baltic Fleet. The vessel’s displacement is 935 tons, length – 75.2 meters, width – 9.78 meters, draft – 2.65 meters. Crew – 80 people, including nine officers.
Previously in the ruling bloc of the FRG CDU / CSU stated about the possibility of imposing sanctions against Russia, since the new data leaves no doubt about the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny with Novichok poison. The official representative of the parliamentary group on foreign policy Jurgen Hardt noted that Germany, together with other EU states, needs to formulate a position with respect to Russia, which does not exclude the introduction of limited measures, including against those persons involved in the incident with the politician.
In addition, in Germany resumed discussion of possible sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. For example, the German Union 90 / Greens party demanded that the German government stop the construction of the gas pipeline due to the poisoning of the Russian oppositionist.
Read on RBC Pro
On the eve of the head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell reportedthat the European Union is discussing the “assassination attempt” of Alexei Navalny. She recalled that in addition to the German laboratory, the politician’s poisoning with a substance from the Novichok group was confirmed by laboratories in France and Sweden. However, Russian doctors say they have not found traces of the poison in the politician’s body.
The government is considering the option of encouraging urban residents to give up private cars and switch to public transport. To do this, they will begin to charge a fee for driving their cars on roads of all categories.
Photo: Vladimir Gerdo / TASS
The Russian government is indeed considering a possible transition to free public transport in cities by 2035. This is stated in the comments of the Ministry of Transport received by RBC.
According to the ministry, the “user pays” principle was created as part of the transport strategy back in March 2020. In accordance with this mechanism, from 2025, motorists will start paying for travel on roads of regional importance, and by 2035 – for travel on roads of all categories. After that, the transition to free public transport will begin in urban agglomerations.
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In late March, the government approved the document, making some changes. At the same time, the “user pays” mechanism and provisions on the transition to free travel have been preserved in it.
