Latest news with #wartime
Reuters
7 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Who are the key ministers in Ukraine's new government?
KYIV, July 17 (Reuters) - Parliament approved Yulia Svyrydenko as Ukraine's new prime minister on Thursday and backed her plan to cut the number of ministries, merging some of the main portfolios, to save funds in wartime. With the new government, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is trying to wrestle wartime defence spending into shape and win over both U.S. President Donald Trump and a war-weary public with fresh-faced leadership. Here are some key members of the new government, in which Andrii Sybiha remains foreign minister and Serhii Marchenko stays on as finance minister. Svyrydenko, 39, an economist by education, has worked in the government since 2019, rising through the ranks after being a deputy minister to become economy minister and first deputy prime minister. She is tasked with unlocking Ukraine's economic potential during the war raging since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 and increasing domestic weapon production as much as possible. Svyrydenko played an important role in recent negotiations on an agreement with the United States giving the U.S. preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals deals and funding investment in Ukraine's reconstruction. Fedorov, 34, was first appointed a deputy prime minister in 2019. In 2023, his remit grew to include innovation, science and technology, in addition to digital affairs. He played a prominent role in driving development of military technology through a government-backed platform to nurture private-sector innovation. Shmyhal, 49, became Ukraine's longest-serving prime minister after being appointed to the role in 2020 and held the role throughout the war until this week's government overhaul. Parliament has passed a decision to merge the defence ministry and the ministry for strategic industries. Shmyhal will oversee the defence sector, domestic weapon production and international cooperation in weapons and defence. Shmyhal will also be in charge of the bulk of state spending. Ukraine spends about 36% of gross domestic product on its defence efforts. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the defence minister will have more resources at his disposal than other ministers but also greater responsibility. Kachka, 45, has previously served as Ukraine's trade representative and deputy economy minister, with responsibility for state foreign economic policy and export strategy. He was also involved in negotiations with the U.S. on the minerals deal and with European Union officials on agricultural trade. Sobolev, 42, will head the new giant ministry for economy, environment and agriculture. Ukraine previously had three separate ministries to cover these portfolios. Prior to this appointment, he served as first deputy economy minister responsible for state investment policy, managing state property policy and economic development. Ukraine is a top global producer and exporter of grains and other agricultural products. Agribusiness is a driving force for the war-ravaged economy and the new minister will look at prospects for opening new markets and try to unlock other economic opportunities to help Ukraine's recovery. Hrynchuk, 39, was appointed ecology minister in a government reshuffle in September 2024. Prior to that, she was a deputy energy minister for a year. She also had various other government positions focusing on the energy sector and climate change issues.
Telegraph
15-07-2025
- Science
- Telegraph
Why it's really the British we have to thank for the atom bomb
Manhattan, Mayson, Maud. One of these is synonymous with the race to build an atomic bomb during the first half of the 1940s. But we ought to have heard of all three, argues Gareth Williams in his book The Impossible Bomb – a pacy and potent mix of wartime politics and high technology. Williams sets out to recover the role of British scientists in building the bomb, but there's no triumphalism here. Pinned to a noticeboard in his study, Williams tells us, is a black lapel badge bearing the logo of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Now an emeritus professor at the University of Bristol, Williams grew up in the post-war years fearing that he might see a 'mushroom cloud boiling up into the sky above the rooftops'. Williams was motivated to write this book after discovering some declassified government papers pertaining to a secretive 'Maud Committee'. He later heard a scientist who'd worked on the British hydrogen bomb make a striking claim: that without Britain's help, the United States wouldn't have been able to create a working atomic bomb until after the Second World War ended. This isn't, it must be said, a new idea. As Williams accepts, it was put forward by a war correspondent named Ronald Clark back in 1961. But myth-making in America about the birth of the nuclear age has long sidelined British figures, and still does. American Prometheus (2005), the Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin biography on which the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer (2023) was based, all but reduces the British contribution to a man hosting a dinner party at Los Alamos. After some helpful preliminaries on the history of atomic physics, The Impossible Bomb begins in the 1930s, as trepidation among scientists is growing. The destructive potential of splitting the atom is dawning on them, just as Europe appears once again to be moving towards war. The Hungarian-born physicist Leo Szilard begs colleagues to stop publishing their ideas on nuclear fission, and asks the editor of Physical Review to record the date of manuscript submissions on the subject – thereby preserving claims to originality – then lock them away in a drawer. When these efforts meet with mixed results, Szilard helps to compose a letter to US president Franklin D Roosevelt in 1939 – co-signed by Albert Einstein – urging that America try to beat Nazi Germany to the bomb. This moment is often treated as the origin of the Manhattan Project. But Williams argues that most scientists in the United States were, at this point, unconvinced that an atomic weapon was feasible in the near-term. They were more interested in developing radar, and were confident that if America were drawn into the war, their conventional forces would see them through. In the early years of the conflict, the most promising work on a bomb was happening in Britain. Enter Maud, a committee formed in Britain in the spring of 1940. (Though its name was written in capitals as MAUD, and thus was usually taken to be an acronym, the letters didn't stand for anything.) It came about in response to a document created by two expatriate German physicists working at the University of Birmingham: Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls. The Frisch-Peierls memorandum sketched out the theory behind a 'super-bomb', to be created using uranium-235. By the summer, Williams tells us, Maud involved four universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Liverpool, Birmingham) and boasted five Nobel laureates, including James Chadwick and John Cockcroft. In its final report, in 1941, the committee concluded that a super-bomb could be made in two years: great excitement followed, and an organisation was formed to work on the project, with the usefully abstract name of the 'Tube Alloys Directorate'. Williams excels at interweaving the technical challenges of the subsequent months with the vicissitudes of politics. We find Churchill and Roosevelt wary of one another, at first, on the question of atomic co-operation. 'Mayson' was Roosevelt's proposal for Anglo-American partnership; but for a time, at least, Churchill wanted a British bomb, independent of the Americans. It wasn't to be. American help turned out to be indispensable in building a 'super-bomb'. In the end, British scientists had to set aside their own work on Tube Alloys and travel to the USA – to Los Alamos, Berkeley and Oak Ridge – to help on what became the Manhattan Project. Chadwick was among around 84 British scientists making the journey, and neither of the bombs detonated over Japan in August 1945, concludes Williams, would have been possible without them. Through Frisch and Peierls, we experience the profound anxiety of Jewish refugees living in Britain during these years; they were only too aware of how they would likely fare if the Nazis won the race to build a bomb. Across the water in Germany, great minds such as Werner Heisenberg were hard at work trying to make that happen. We encounter British and American spies working around the clock to ascertain the state of the Nazi effort, and to thwart it wherever they could. The Americans considered abducting Heisenberg during one of his research trips to Switzerland. Williams's labours in the archive have been considerable, but the result is a significant contribution to our understanding of 'the most significant international collaboration of the 20th century'. It's eminently readable, too: to follow the development of nuclear weapons requires the explanation of plenty of science, but Williams succeeds, deploying vivid analogies and simple sketches. A spherical aluminium container for a globe of uranium oxide, constantly turning in order to keep heavy water circulating, is an especially memorable one. Williams compares it to 'an oversized glitterball that someone had forgotten to switch off after the last dance'. ★★★★★
The Independent
09-06-2025
- The Independent
Japanese soldiers injured in Okinawa US military base explosion
Four Japanese soldiers sustained finger injuries in an explosion at a storage site for unexploded wartime ordnance at a US military base in Okinawa. The soldiers were working at an Okinawa prefecture facility storing unexploded ordnance found on the island, a site of intense fighting during World War II. The Self Defence Force (SDF) is investigating reports of the explosion, which occurred at or near Kadena Air Base, involving a team specialising in handling unexploded ordnance. Authorities are working to determine the cause and exact location of the accident. Unexploded wartime bombs remain a hazard in Japan, with a similar incident occurring in October when a US bomb exploded at a commercial airport, disrupting flights.
NHK
13-05-2025
- General
- NHK
Possible wartime bomb found on Hiroshima university campus
Police in Japan are examining what appears to be an unexploded bomb found on a university campus in the western city of Hiroshima. Police say the object is about 90 centimeters long and about 25 centimeters in diameter. They believe it to be a wartime bomb. Police received a call around 10:20 a.m. on Tuesday. Workers found it in the ground at the site of a demolished building. Police have restricted access to the area due to the risk of an explosion. Ground Self-Defense Force personnel have also been called in. The construction site is on Hiroshima University's Kasumi campus, which is about 2 kilometers south of Hiroshima Station. During World War Two, there were military armories at the site of the campus. The university has cancelled all afternoon classes at the Kasumi campus. Hiroshima University Hospital, which is located there, is accepting patients for treatment as usual.
The Independent
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Collection of rare photos of wartime film-making released for VE Day
More than 150 rare photographs showing behind-the-scenes wartime film-making have been released to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day. The images, released by Historic England, also highlight the pioneering role of women in wartime photography. The collection was put together by Dorothy 'Knicky' Chapman, one of the first women trained in military photography during the Second World War. Ms Chapman was part of the first intake of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) at the No 2 School of Photography in Blackpool. She was later posted to the famous Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, the central hub for military film-making, known as RAF Iver Heath. Film and photography units for the RAF were based at Pinewood and produced films that shaped public perception, as well as time-critical newsreels and coverage of major events including the D-Day Landings. Ms Chapman worked in the stills department and the collection features images from a number of the RAF's film sets and productions. She assisted in the production of military films including The Big Pack and Operational Height, which provided a rare insight into the RAF's operations. She also collaborated with future industry figures, including a young Richard Attenborough. The image collection also sheds light on how the training of WAAF photographers aided the war effort, with recruits schooled in the use of air photography to help support the RAF's use of photographic reconnaissance. The images show women learning how to process films in mobile darkrooms, plotting aerial photographs, and simulating work under active service conditions. As well as the training and the work of the WAAF, the collection also captures the social side of wartime life, including sports, theatre productions and events with RAF officers. Historic England chief executive Duncan Wilson said: 'As we mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, this remarkable collection commemorates the unsung heroes of the Second World War and sheds light on the history of wartime film-making. 'The photographs provide rare insight into a lesser-known aspect of our wartime heritage, from the crucial role of Pinewood Studios as the centre of military film-making to the pioneering women of the WAAF. 'By sharing this collection, we hope to honour the contributions of these women photographers and film-makers to the war effort, preserving their stories as an important part of our national heritage.' Heritage Minister Baroness Twycross said: 'This remarkable collection reveals the vital role Pinewood Studios played during the war and shines a light on the hidden contribution of women like Knicky Chapman, who broke barriers in military photography. 'As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, this collection honours their contribution to our national story. Their legacy will continue to inspire future generations.' Ms Chapman continued with photography after the war, but little is known about the lives of other women who served in the Royal Air Force Film Production Unit. Historic England is inviting the public to share stories about women in the unit by emailing communications@ before Sunday May 25.
