- Ukraine war live updates: Russia set to bolster its air defenses near Finland in response to NATO accession; U.S. is investigating intelligence leak CNBC
- Russia-Ukraine war live: Russia ‘to increase air defences to counter Finland’s Nato accession’; US investigates intelligence leak The Guardian
- Russia-Ukraine live: Moscow accused of ‘scorched-earth’ tactics Al Jazeera English
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China’s vast countryside in rush to bolster COVID defences
SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Dec 29 (Reuters) – China’s sprawling and thinly resourced countryside is racing to beef up medical facilities before hundreds of millions of factory workers return to their families for the Lunar New Year holiday next month from cities where COVID-19 is surging.
Having imposed the world’s strictest COVID regime of lockdowns and relentless testing for three years, China reversed course this month towards living with the virus, leaving its fragile health system overwhelmed.
The lifting of restrictions, following widespread protests against them, means COVID is spreading largely unchecked and likely infecting millions of people a day, according to some international health experts.
China officially reported one new COVID death for Wednesday, down from three on Tuesday, but foreign governments and many epidemiologists believe the numbers are much higher, and that more than 1 million people may die next year.
China has said it only counts deaths of COVID patients caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure as COVID-related.
In the southwestern city of Chengdu, funeral parlours were busy after dark on Wednesday, with a steady stream of cars entering one, which was heavily guarded by security personnel.
One van driver working for the parlour said the past few weeks have been particularly busy and that “huge numbers of people” were inside.
Hospitals and funeral homes in major cities have been under intense pressure, but the main concern over the health system’s ability to cope with surging infections is focused on the countryside.
At a Shanghai pharmacy, Wang Kaiyun, 53, a cleaner in the city who comes from the neighbouring Anhui province, said she was buying medicines for her family back home.
“My husband, my son, my grandson, my mother, they are all infected,” she said. “They can’t get any medicine, nothing for fever or cough.”
Each year, hundreds of millions of people, mostly working in factories near the southern and eastern coasts, return to the countryside for the Lunar New Year, due to start on Jan. 22.
The holiday travel rush is expected to last for 40 days, from Jan. 7 to Feb. 15, authorities said.
The state-run China Daily reported on Thursday that rural regions across China were beefing up their medical treatment capacities.
It said a hospital in a rural part of Inner Mongolia where more than 100,000 people live was seeking bidders for a 1.9 million yuan ($272,308) contract to upgrade its wards into intensive care units.
Liancheng County Central Hospital in the eastern Fujian province was seeking tenders for ambulances and medical devices, ranging from breathing machines to electrocardiogram monitors.
In December, tenders put out by hospitals for key medical equipment were two-to-three times higher than in previous months, according to a Reuters review，suggesting hospitals across the country were scrambling to plug shortages.
TESTING REQUIREMENTS
The world’s second-largest economy is expected to suffer a slowdown in factory output and domestic consumption in the near term as workers and shoppers fall ill.
The contact-intensive services sector, which accounts for roughly half of China’s economic output, was hammered by the country’s anti-virus curbs, which shut down many restaurants and restricted travel. As China re-opens, many businesses in the services industry have no money to expand.
The re-opening also raises the prospect of Chinese tourists returning to shopping streets around the world, once a market worth $255 billion a year globally. But some countries have been taken aback by the scale of the outbreak and are sceptical of Beijing’s COVID statistics.
China’s official death toll of 5,246 since the pandemic began compares with more than 1 million deaths in the United States. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong has reported more than 11,000 deaths.
The United States, India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan said they would require COVID tests for travellers from China. Britain was considering a similar move, the Telegraph reported.
The United States issued a travel alert on Wednesday advising Americans to “reconsider travel to China, Hong Kong, and Macau” and citing “reports that the healthcare system is overwhelmed” along with the risk of new variants.
The main airport in the Italian city of Milan started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai on Dec. 26 and found that almost half of them were infected.
China has rejected criticism of its statistics as groundless and politically motivated attempts to smear its policies. It has also played down the risk of new variants, saying it expects mutations to be more virulent but less severe.
Omicron was still the dominant strain in China, Chinese health officials said this week.
Australia, Germany, Thailand and others said they would not impose additional restrictions on travel for now.
For its part, China, whose borders have been all but shut to foreigners since early 2020, will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8.
($1 = 6.9774 yuan)
Additional reporting by Martin Quin Pollard in Chengdu; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel
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Russia is deploying more forces to bolster southern flank, according to Ukraine and geolocated videos
Russia will withdraw from the International Space Station project “after 2024” after fulfilling its obligations, according to the Kremlin readout of a meeting between the newly appointed head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
“You know that we are working within the framework of international cooperation at the International Space Station. Undoubtedly, we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov told Putin in the Kremlin-issued readout.
“I think that by this time, we will begin to form the Russian orbital station,” Borisov said.
Russia’s withdrawal would be a major blow to the ISS, a model of international cooperation for decades. The announcement comes as the war in Ukraine has deeply strained its relations with US and Europe.
Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station for NASA, said that NASA hadn’t received any official word from Russia about the decision to quit the ISS.
“The Russians, just like us, are thinking ahead to what’s next for them. As we are planning transition after 2030 to commercially operated space stations in low-Earth orbit, they have a similar plan. And so they’re thinking about that transition as well. We haven’t received any official word from the partner as to the news today, so we’ll be talking more about their plan going forward, ” Gatens said.
This is not the first time that Russia has threatened to abandon the ISS amid crippling US and European sanctions over the war in Ukraine. Borisov’s predecessor, Dmitry Rogozin, repeatedly threatened to do so before he was ousted earlier this month.
But this most recent threat has more teeth, and the apparent approval of Putin himself. According to the transcript of a meeting posted to the Kremlin’s website, Putin said “good” after Borisov told him that Roscosmos will begin to build its own space station after 2024.
Russia’s withdrawal would be a major blow to the ISS, a model of international cooperation for decades.
The news comes less than two weeks after NASA and Roscosmos announced a crew-exchange deal or “seat swap” that had been under negotiations for more than four years. Starting in September, two Russian cosmonauts will launch on US spacecrafts from Florida while two American astronauts will ride Russian rockets into space. It’s unclear if Russia’s decision to pull out of the ISS after 2024 will impact the crew-exchange agreement.
The ISS, which is a collaboration among the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency, is divided into two sections — the Russian Orbital Segment and the US Orbital Segment. The Biden administration announced in December that it was committed to extending the ISS from 2024 to 2030. But Russia — NASA’s number-one partner at the ISS — never signed onto it.
“The Russian segment can’t function without the electricity on the American side, and the American side can’t function without the propulsion systems that are on the Russian side,” former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman told CNN in February. “So you can’t do an amicable divorce. You can’t do a conscious uncoupling.”
Since then, NASA has been exploring ways of moving the space station without the assistance of the Russian segment. In June, a Cygnus cargo spacecraft demonstrated its ability to raise the station’s orbit. But whether the ISS would be able to survive without the Russians is still an open question.
NASA said in February it intends to keep operating the International Space Station — which was launched in 2000 — until the end of 2030, after which the ISS would be deorbited and crashed into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Commercially operated space platforms would replace the ISS as a venue for collaboration and scientific research, NASA said.
Hear the director general of the European Space Agency here:
Blizzard acquires Spellbreak studio Proletariat to bolster World of Warcraft
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Blizzard Entertainment has acquired Spellbreak maker Proletariat to beef up the staff on its massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft.
Under the deal, Boston-based Proletariat will become part of Blizzard, and its team of 100 people will begin working on World of Warcraft, including the Dragonflight expansion coming later this year. Spellbreak, a battle royale game where wizards and witches cast spells at each other, will be sunset. (The company announced this news yesterday.)
The move is the biggest acquisition that Blizzard has made — at least for the past decade — to expand its studios. In this case, the mission is to beef up the staffing for World of Warcraft so that it can hit quality and timing goals for expansions. Terms of this transaction were not disclosed.
Activision Blizzard, the parent company of Blizzard, also folded Vicarious Visions, a longtime Activision studio, into Blizzard to work on the Diablo franchise in January 2021. But Blizzard hasn’t been particularly acquisitive, as one of the few we can remember was the acquisition of Swinging Ape in 2005. Rather, Blizzard itself got tossed around quite a bit in its early days before landing with Activision Blizzard back in 2008. Proletariat has been working with Blizzard since May.
“We are putting players at the forefront of everything we do, and we are working hard to both meet and
exceed their expectations,” said Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard Entertainment, in a statement. “A big part of caring for our teams is making sure we have the resources to produce experiences our communities will love while giving our teams space to explore even more creative opportunities within their projects. Proletariat is a perfect fit for supporting Blizzard’s mission in bringing high-quality content to our players more often.”
It’s an awkward time for Blizzard to do this, as its parent Activision Blizzard is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for $68.5 billion. And Blizzard Entertainment has been the primary division under investigation by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing in a big sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard.
Dealing with past challenges
John Hight, general manager of World of Warcraft at Blizzard, said in an interview with GamesBeat it was challenging to support Shadowlands last year, and he acknowledged that sizable gaps occurred between WoW content updates. Fans always wanted more, and while the team has continued to increase in size, it has been hard hiring.
I asked Seth Sivak, CEO of Proletariat, if the company hesitated on the deal because of Blizzard’s weakening reputation, which has taken hits in recent years. I mentioned the sexual discrimination investigation, the criticism of the Shadowlands expansion, the departure of numerous well-known developers, and other loss of talent.
“We had a very kind of open and transparent conversation about this,” Sivak said. “And I think the Blizzard team recognized some of the challenges they’ve had. In some of the earliest conversations, we discussed just how they were looking at continuing to improve the culture and continuing to make a great place for developers to work.”
He added, “That was encouraging. Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done to continue to make an awesome place for developers to work. But we were pretty happy and satisfied with the direction that teams are going.”
Hight said it was “devastating” for him to go through the turmoil in the past year and to hear the things that happened. But he noted the company is changing its culture and that’s “not a one and done.”
He said, “You have to change your culture. You have to make sure that it’s now more inclusive in our workplace. You have to make sure that the people who make WoW and the people who play WoW are well supported.”
As for the Microsoft deal, Sivak said he didn’t know what change would come as a result but he is excited about the direction the company is going. Asked if the company would work on new games, Sivak said the focus for now is helping to build WoW. Hight said the goal was to get access not only to the talented team but a senior leadership team with a lot of experience.
How the deal came together
“As you probably are aware, folks in World of Warcraft have a voracious appetite for content,” said Hight. ” And what we’ve seen over the last year is that we need to increase the amount of content that we can create, and the frequency with which we’re putting it in the hands of our players.”
Toward the end of last year, the company started looking for other opportunities besides hiring more people at its internal studio. It searched for external partners and Proletariat was on the short list as it was a well-known game studio.
“My first conversation with Seth was back in December,” Hight said. “I was really impressed with him. And then the team felt like he had a lot of shared values and had a lot of knowledge of World of Warcraft. The team had the ability to do stylized art, which we do, and work within medieval fantasy, which we love. And they had a lot of fans. So from their our discussions ensued.”
Sivak said the company was also looking for what to do next. He said the team saw the opportunity to evolve as a studio and work on World of Warcraft would fulfill the mission of delivering great multiplayer games. They started talking more seriously in the past couple of months.
“The opportunity to expand the world of Azeroth for the players got us really excited,” Sivak said.
Hight said the consolidation in the industry is giving Blizzard some exciting opportunities, as it now has studios working on WoW on both coasts, with the potential to tap into new sources of talent. Of course, the pandemic has made it harder to hire people in some respects, and Proletariat isn’t yet working at the office in Boston. Blizzard itself has options including working in the office sometimes.
Hight noted that the company has shipped multiple expansions with a remote workforce, and the company has options for a hybrid environment.
“That’s one of the things that made this decision easy for us to start working with Proletariat, as they have a large remote work force,” Hight said.
Sivak said, “As we looked at where what the next chapter was going to be for Proletariat, this opportunity just meant that we could accelerate what we wanted to do. Being able to work for the World of Warcraft audiences is really awesome. And the level of ambition on where I think both teams want to take World of Warcraft is incredibly exciting for us.”
Hight said some of Proletariat’s work will appear in the Dragonflight expansion. And Proletariat will be adding to its staff in Boston.
Proletariat was founded in 2012 by industry veterans from Insomniac, Harmonix, and Turbine. The team has experience building MMORPGs and includes, among others, former lead designers of Asheron’s Call, Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online. At Proletariat, the team has operated live games for nearly a decade, having most recently released the cross-platform action-spellcasting battle royale game, Spellbreak, in the fall of 2020.
But Sivak acknowledged that the game, while it got good reviews, never reached “escape velocity” in terms of scaling up the number of users to justify its ongoing existence. The company had done relatively few updates recently for the game.
“Spellbreak was a critical success, and we felt like we really delivered something fresh in the battle royale genre,” Sivak said. “There is a lot of competition in that area, where you are competing with some of the biggest games in the world. We just couldn’t get the escape velocity necessary for us to continue to expand it.”
Proletariat began working with the World of Warcraft development team in May and will be fully
integrated into Blizzard Entertainment over the coming months.
“The really exciting part is what we’re going to build going forward,” Sivak said. “That was the real selling point for us, the level of ambition for what we want to do with World of Warcraft.”
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Putin promises to bolster Russia’s IT security in face of cyber attacks
May 20 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the number of cyber attacks on Russia by foreign “state structures” had increased several times over and that Russia must bolster its cyber defences by reducing the use of foreign software and hardware.
The websites of many state-owned companies and news websites have suffered sporadic hacking attempts since Russia sent its armed forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24, often to show information that is at odds with Moscow’s official line on the conflict.
“Targeted attempts are being made to disable the internet resources of Russia’s critical information infrastructure,” Putin said, adding that media and financial institutions had been targeted.
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“Serious attacks have been launched against the official sites of government agencies. Attempts to illegally penetrate the corporate networks of leading Russian companies are much more frequent as well,” he said.
In a meeting with the Security Council, Putin said that Russia would need to improve information security in key sectors and switch to using domestic technology and equipment.
“Restrictions on foreign IT, software and products have become one of the tools of sanctions pressure on Russia,” Putin said. “A number of Western suppliers have unilaterally stopped technical support of their equipment in Russia.”
He said cases of programmes getting blocked after being updated were becoming more frequent.
DATA LEAKS
State communications regulator Roskomnadzor on Wednesday said it had blocked a website that was hosting the personal data of a number of companies’ clients. It did not name the companies.
Russia’s second-biggest bank VTB (VTBR.MM) was quoted by media as saying some customers’ phone numbers had been leaked but there was no risk to their funds.
E-commerce player Wildberries and online marketplace Avito denied reports in Russian media that their data had been leaked.
A data leak in early March exposed the personal details of more than 58,000 people on tech giant Yandex’s (YNDX.O) food delivery app, Yandex.Eda. read more
Yandex.Eda competitor Delivery Club on Friday apologised to users after it suffered a data leak on orders placed by users.
“The data includes information about orders and does not affect bank details. We are doing our best to prevent the dissemination of the data,” TASS news agency quoted the company as saying.
Hacking attacks this month kept video-hosting site RuTube offline for three days and altered satellite television menus in Moscow on Victory Day, when Russia celebrated the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. read more
Moscow has long sought to improve its domestic internet infrastructure, even disconnecting itself from the global internet during tests last summer.
However, the unprecedented Western barrage of sanctions imposed in response to Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine has increased the pressure to make Russia’s IT systems more resilient.
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Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
New tanks and artillery bolster Ukraine’s hopes of defeating Russia
An inrush of howitzers, artillery shells and drones is heading to Ukraine in a new $800 million package announced Thursday by President Biden. The Pentagon says Ukraine now has more functional tanks on the ground than Russia due to shipments from countries including the Czech Republic.
The big picture: With a potentially decisive battle now underway in the eastern Donbas region, the urgency to get arms to the front lines is ramping up, and concerns about provoking Vladimir Putin are fading — at least in Washington.
- Biden promised to continue sending arms “without interruption” and told Americans they should be proud that U.S. arms and intelligence were helping Ukraine “beat back Putin’s savagery.”
In contrast, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is under pressure from Kyiv, EU allies and his own government for refusing to provide certain heavy weaponry, like tanks or other military vehicles.
- Scholz defended his cautious approach this week in the Bundestag, saying Germany could not “go it alone” and had to consider its own defense needs and the risk of escalation beyond Ukraine’s borders.
There’s also a growing debate about what a realistic outcome in the Donbas might look like.
- A European official briefed reporters Tuesday that the latest assessment is Russia will be able to take the remainder of Luhansk and “a bit” of Donetsk — the two provinces that comprise the Donbas region — as well as a very narrow land corridor to Crimea.
- At that point, within four to six months, there will be a stalemate and the potential for more serious negotiations, the official predicted.
- However, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Parliament this week that he sees no path to a diplomatic solution with Putin, and thus “we must do everything we can to ensure he fails.”
Some experts argue that, with enough Western support, Ukraine could actually defeat Russia, which the Pentagon says has lost 25% of its combat power in eight weeks of war.
- “If we continue this path, accelerating deliveries with broader European production and contribution, in a few weeks Russia will be losing unambiguously,” Eliot Cohen of The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies tweeted Thursday. “Time to double down and aim for Ukrainian victory.”
- A European Council of Foreign Relations analysis contends that if NATO countries commit to a lend-lease program for Ukraine — paired with intensive training for Ukrainian troops on advanced systems like F-15 fighter jets — Ukraine could gain the upper hand.
- If the war does drag on, Russia will be contending with dwindling stockpiles, and sanctions could impact future production of some weapons systems.
- Yes, but: It’s not entirely clear what a military victory for Ukraine would look like, as outright surrender from Putin appears unlikely.
Putin in a televised meeting on Thursday ordered Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to cancel plans to raid the massive steel plant in Mariupol where Ukrainian troops and hundreds of civilians are holding out, and instead seal it off.
- Putin effectively claimed control of the key port city, but he has rebuffed Ukrainian calls for a humanitarian corridor to allow the troops and civilians out.
- Maj. Serhiy Volyna, commander of Ukraine’s 36th Separate Marine Brigade that’s defending the plant, has refused to surrender but said Wednesday that, “We are probably facing our last days, if not hours.”
Go deeper: Satellite images show mass grave in Ukrainian town near Mariupol
Medvedev warns Russia would bolster military over potential Swedish and Finnish NATO membership
Thursday marks 50 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and there has been a marked shift in Moscow’s approach. Ukrainian officials have warned for days they expect a major offensive by Russian forces in the eastern Donbas region.
The US and EU have pledged a combined $1.3 billion more in military aid for Ukraine as Russia prepares to launch an eastern offensive.
Meanwhile, organizations like the United Nations have warned that the prolonged war in Ukraine could lead to more problems in an already struggling global economy with food insecurity as a top concern.
Here are the latest developments:
Casualties of war: As of April 12, the civilian death toll in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24 stood at 1,932, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said Thursday. It warned that “the actual figures are considerably higher.”
Global impact: The United Nations secretary-general has warned that the world is on the brink of a “perfect storm” as the war in Ukraine exacerbates an already struggling global economy. In a news release Wednesday, the UN said the war could lead to a “three-dimensional crisis” of food, energy and finance — areas that have already been hit hard by Covid-19 and climate change. “We are now facing a perfect storm that threatens to devastate the economies of developing countries,” Secretary-General António Guterres said.”The people of Ukraine cannot bear the violence being inflicted on them. And the most vulnerable people around the globe cannot become collateral damage in yet another disaster for which they bear no responsibility,” he said.
Key Russian warship damaged: One of the Russian Navy’s most important warships has been badly damaged in the Black Sea, a massive blow to a military struggling against Ukrainian resistance 50 days into Russia’s invasion of his neighbor. Russian sailors evacuated the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, after a fire that detonated ammunition aboard, Russia’s defense ministry said. Ukraine’s Operational Command South claimed Thursday that the Moskva had begun to sink after it was hit Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles. Russia’s defense ministry said Thursday that the Moskva “remains afloat” and that measures were being taken to tow it to port. The ministry said the crew had been evacuated to other Black Sea Fleet ships in the area. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told CNN’s Brianna Keilar that “there was an explosion” on the Moskva, but said the United States cannot say at this point if the ship was hit by a missile. Whatever the reason for the fire, analysts say it strikes hard at the heart of the Russian Navy as well as national pride, comparable to the US Navy losing a battleship during World War II or an aircraft carrier today.
Ukrainian National Security Advisor Oleksiy Danilov told CNN Thursday that the alleged strike on the cruiser was a very important mission for his country’s military and vowed there would be more such dramatic actions. “It is a very important mission for us. The Moskva was there near the Snake Island and was hit yesterday by two powerful Ukrainian-made missiles,” Danilov told CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen in an interview. “[Putin] came to kill our children, our women, our civilians. That is our gift to him. And this is just the beginning. There will be more than one Moskva.” The Ukrainian national security advisor went on to commend the Ukrainian military for the way they were defending the country but cautioned against underestimating the Russian military. Danilov also reiterated his country’s request for the international community to send more weapons. “We are, first of all, grateful for what we already have been given,” he said “We need helicopters, planes, powerful weapons, howitzers… We need a lot.”
Potential meeting between Zelensky and Putin: Turkey is still working on organizing a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Turkish news channel NTV on Thursday.“We know critical topics will be decided at leader level, so we will try to bring leaders together,” he said. Cavusoglu said that Turkey continues to approach the negotiations with “cautious optimism,” particularly after recent events of alleged war crimes in Bucha and Irpin which “negatively affected the process.”
The condition for a possible meeting between Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky is an agreement document ready for the two leaders to sign, the Kremlin said Thursday. Since the start of Russia’s invasion, Zelensky has repeatedly called for talks with the Russian president, but there have been no talks at the highest level so far.
Russian opposition figure urges the West to wage a social media against Putin regime: Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny has issued a series of tweets urging a new front of “truth and free information” against Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he calls the “war criminal from the Kremlin.”
Navalny, who is serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian penal colony after being convicted of fraud last month, said in his tweets that “truth and free information hit Putin’s insane regime just as hard as Javelins,” the US anti-tank weapons being used by Ukrainian forces against Russian armor.
Increased international defense aid for Ukraine: The Pentagon is working to move the $800 million worth of weapons, ammunition and other security assistance for Ukraine announced by US President Joe Biden yesterday into Ukraine as quickly as possible, a senior defense official said Thursday. “We’re under no illusion of the size and the scale of this thing. But we’re also mindful of the clock. We know time is not our friend. And we’re going to do the best we can to move this, to move these shipments as fast as we can,” the official told reporters during an off-camera briefing.
The European Union has approved an additional 500 million euros ($544 million USD) for military equipment for the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Wednesday, according to a news release from the European Council of the European Union.
“The next weeks will be decisive. As Russia prepares for an offensive on the East of Ukraine, it is crucial that we continue and step up our military support to Ukraine to defend its territory and population and prevent further suffering,” said Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
Jacksonville Jaguars bolster pass rush, sign Arden Key to one-year contract
Defensive end Arden Key, coming off a career-best season, has signed a one-year deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The team announced the signing Wednesday but did not disclose financial terms.
The Jaguars’ biggest issue defensively is their lack of quality pass rush, and adding Key is a solid first step in the process. Key had the best year of his career in 2021 with the San Francisco 49ers (6.5 sacks) while playing only 35% of the defensive snaps. However, he has just 9.5 sacks in 54 career games and had just three sacks in his first 37 games. Key does give the Jaguars an upgrade from K’Lavon Chaisson, the 20th overall pick in 2020 who has just two sacks in 31 career games, at the other outside linebacker spot opposite Josh Allen.
The Jaguars sacked opposing quarterbacks 32 times last season — only eight teams had fewer. Opposing quarterbacks completed a league-high 64.9% of their passes and the Jaguars intercepted just seven passes. Allen led the Jaguars with 7.5 sacks and Dawuane Smoot had six last season.
The Jaguars have the first overall pick in the upcoming NFL draft, and Michigan pass-rusher Aidan Hutchinson is one of the players they’re considering.
After three disappointing seasons with the Raiders, Key finally broke loose last season, his first with the San Francisco 49ers.
Signed as a free agent after the Raiders released him, Key flourished under Niners defensive line coach Kris Kocurek in 2021.
San Francisco moved Key all over the defensive line, and he found success rushing the passer from the interior. Key’s 6.5 sacks were second on the team only to Nick Bosa, who had 15.5.
Key, 25, added 22 tackles, five tackles for loss and 17 quarterback hits. He was originally a third-round pick of the Raiders in 2018.
ESPN’s Michael DiRocco and Nick Wagoner contributed to this report.
Japan adds $6.75 billion to military budget in rush to bolster air and sea defenses
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government on Friday approved the outlay as part of a supplementary budget. While such additions to defense spending are common, the 774 billion yen that lawmakers will be asked to approve is the largest amount ever, according to Japan’s Ministry of Defense.
“As the security environment around Japan worsens at unprecedented speed, our urgent task is to accelerate the implementation of various projects,” the Defense Ministry said in its spending proposal.
The cash injection will let Japan, three months earlier than planned, upgrade surface-to-air missile launchers on islands at the edge of the East China Sea and Patriot PAC-3 missile batteries elsewhere that are the last line of defense against any incoming North Korean warheads.
China’s increasing pressure on Taiwan is causing jitters in Japan because Beijing’s control of the island would bring Chinese forces within around 100 kilometers (62 miles) of its territory and would threaten key maritime trade routes that supply Japan with oil and other goods. It would also provide China with bases for unfettered access to the western Pacific.
The extra spending will also let Japan more quickly acquire anti-submarine missiles, maritime patrol planes and military cargo jets, the Defense Ministry said.
The additional military outlay comes after Kishida’s ruling party in October included a goal of almost doubling defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) in election pledges.
For decades the pacifist nation has stuck to a policy of keeping defense spending within 1% of GDP, easing concern both at home and overseas about any revival of the militarism that led Japan into World War II.
The additional spending plan approved by Kishida’s government on Friday also includes pre-payments to defense contractors for equipment to help them deal with coronavirus pandemic disruptions that have hurt their finances.
The proposed supplemental spending combined with defense outlays approved for the year to March 31 comes to about 1.3% of Japan’s GDP.
Calls grow for US to bolster defense against asteroid threat
Experts are sounding the alarm about the threat of asteroids to life on Earth — and warning that the United States does not have a clear plan to prevent catastrophe.
Though NASA says the odds are literally one in a millennium, no US agency is explicitly responsible if space rocks are headed our way.
“No one is tasked with mitigation,” former Air Force space strategist Peter Garretson, an expert in planetary defense told Politico. “Congress did put in law that the White House identify who should be responsible, but fully four subsequent administrations so far have blown off their request.”
“There are three million asteroids and we have not a freaking clue where they are and they are flying around us,” Danica Remy, president of the B612 Foundation told the website. Remy, whose foundation is working on a database to monitor near-earth objections said the current research has “barely made a dent” in mapping what’s out there.
The issue has resurfaced as NASA plans the first ever mission to test whether it can adjust the trajectory of a potentially devastating asteroid. The agency plans to hurl a rocket traveling at 16,000 miles per hour into the astroid Dimorphos.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test is scheduled for sometime after Nov 24. NASA has stressed that the asteroid system poses no threat to earth, and is being used purely as a testing ground.
“DART’s target asteroid is NOT a threat to Earth. This asteroid system is a perfect testing ground to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future,” read a press release announcing the test.
Chris Mattman, the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told The Post the agency often partnered with Space Force and Air Force on potential mitigation strategies and said any imminent impact scenario would likely involve “a whole of government effort” response.
He added that space issues were likely to get more top of mind for Americans as private industry moved into the area. Billionaire tech entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Sir. Richard Brandon both flew into space this year on their own privately funded vessels — with more civilian-faced flights planned.
“With commercial space[flight] … taking a front seat over the next decade to the traditional long lasting flagship mission, space is going to get really crowded and space traffic management is a big deal,” Mattman said.
US disarray on the issue also has national security implications, with China ramping up investment into planetary defense. In November Chinese scientists published a paper calling for an “assembled kinetic impactor” to address the risk — potentially leapfrogging the US on the issue.
Some China hawks, however, said the planetary defense was moot and China should be free to knock itself out over the issue — if it wanted to.
“I don’t see a threat from that that is any bigger than the threats they already pose,” Jim Hanson, president of the Security Studies Group told The Post. “We’ve all got nukes. What else do you need?”