US confirms for first time it has deployed space weapons

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1:09Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. Coming to you live from London, I'm Regine Vaidyan-Arban. America has for the first time publicly confirmed that it sent a weapon into space, something which has long been suspected. We don't have too many details about what exactly was sent into orbit, but we do know it was launched by America's Space Force, the sixth branch of the US military, created in 2019 to protect the country's interests away from Earth. It's time for another giant leap. The United States Space Force is being built from the brightest minds across the space operations of the Air Force, our joint services, and the private sector.

1:50We aren't just getting ready for the near future, we're getting ready for the 22nd century when our enemies ask what if we will have an answer well some of that answer came from the secretary of the u.s air force troy mink who on monday shared more details about the space program and the launch of that weapon into orbit today we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist. This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action. Well, some of the countries that the US considers hostile adversaries in space have been reacting.

2:39China's foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiangun says that it poses turning space into a battlefield. We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space and to take concrete actions to safeguard global strategic stability. Well, Russia's also been reacting, saying that space must be free from any weapon. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was counting on broad international consolidation to continue working towards the complete demilitarization of space. Well, a 1967 treaty banned weapons of mass destruction in orbit, but countries have been exploring other capabilities outside the treaty.

3:25We'll have a look at that in a bit more detail in a moment. But first, let's hear more about that American launch. Bernda Boosman is our reporter in Washington, who's been telling me more about what the US Space Force has said. Well, about the actual weapon, at the moment, we know very little. The comments from the Secretary of the Air Force, Troy Mink, were very carefully worded. He didn't reveal anything about the capabilities of the weapon, how long it's been in orbit, or what exactly it's intended to do. But in the past, senior officials here at the Pentagon had specifically cited Russian and Chinese programs to develop ways to attack and disrupt U.S.

4:03satellites in a potential future conflict. Now, that's hugely important to the U.S. military. It relies on satellites for all sorts of command and control functions, keeping commanders in touch and aware of where units in the field are, whether those be aircraft, ships or units on land. And that would be a huge threat. And he said that such a weapon, without providing any details, would be necessary to kind of counter those threats. This is something that the U.S. government has been concerned about for quite some time. But it is a very kind of rare, the first acknowledgement that such a weapon has already put into orbit.

4:41And the timing of the announcement is quite interesting, given the conflict with Iran still taking place as we speak. Byrne, they say that the capabilities can be used for offensive and defensive purposes. I mean, it begs the question, what exactly do they need to do up in space in that capacity? Well, without knowing what the weapon is, it's hard to say. But some analysts have theorized it could be used to, for example, strike a potential adversary satellite and thereby cut their own command and control functions. And the U.S. has also eyed defensive weapons that would intercept ballistic missiles in outer space outside of orbit.

5:23So this is something that the U.S. has been looking at for quite some time. And we at the moment, we still just don't know whether this is offensive or defensive in nature. That's Bernda Boosman in Washington there. Now, weapons in space have long been the stuff of science fiction on the big screen. You will, of course, remember the Death Star from Star Wars. Look at him. He's heading for that small moon. I think I can get him before he gets there. He's almost in range. That's no moon. It's a space station. It's too big to be a space station. Well, of course, it's all getting a bit more real now.

5:56A US Space Force spokesperson said that space is a domain like any other. And just as we protect ourselves in the air and on the sea, we'll protect ourselves in space. Well, to get more on all of that, I've been speaking to Dr. Cassandra Steer. She's a consultant on space law and she's the founder of the Australian Centre for Space Governance. One thing to make clear is this is not Star Wars. This is definitely not a death star. But it's worrying because of just how critical satellites are to all of us. So as your defence expert said, the militaries use satellites for spying, for gathering intelligence, for navigating, for GPS guided weapons, for communications.

6:36But you and I do as well. In fact, you and I also use those very same satellites. We use GPS on a daily basis. Uber and taxi drivers and truck drivers use it as well. And so if we lose that connection, if those satellites are being attacked, not only does it impact an adversary, it impacts you and I. It impacts us on Earth, which is why it's so worrying. You say it's so worrying. I mean, the question is, and again, caveat again, we don't exactly know what the weapons are. But what do you think the potential threats could be? so it my suspicion is this is a rebranding of what's already in space so for a long time countries have talked about counter space capabilities the ability to interrupt each other's satellites often that will be a cyber attack it could be jamming a signal so if you can jam a communication signal then you can't actually communicate or access internet that's happening all the time to uh spacex's starlink which is used in ukraine and russia is jamming that signal all the time.

7:36It sometimes can be blinding an Earth observation satellite, kind of like having a light shone in your rearview mirror when you're driving. If you blind or dazzle an Earth observation satellite, it can't gather intelligence. It can't do its job. So most of these counterspace capabilities are not physical. They're not kinetic. The concern is if this were to be a physical counterspace capability, China, Russia and the U.S. all have the capability to sidle up to each other's satellites. China has demonstrated the ability to, in fact, grapple a satellite that was no longer functional and remove it from orbit.

8:11And so there's a concern they might be able to do that to an active satellite. So these counter space capabilities have been around for a long time. It's possible that this was a bit of posturing by calling it a weapon and saying what we have on orbit is about space control. It's about the U.S. being a dominant player and calling this capability a weapon for the first time publicly. Yeah, let's talk about that 1967 Space Treaty, because it quite clearly bans weapons of mass destruction in orbit. So how might this potentially, or the other things you've talked about in terms of Russia and China, potentially flout that?

8:46So if it is a weapon of mass destruction, it would be flouting that. I mean, the question is what falls under that definition. So the 1967 Treaty was obviously negotiated in the height of the Cold War. The biggest concern was nuclear weapons. The Soviets and the Americans had both tested nuclear weapons in space and very quickly realised that, in fact, you cannot control the impact and it impacts your own satellites. And so that's why that prohibition was put into the treaty. But anything that falls short of that, unfortunately, is not prohibited by the treaty, which is why we have all of these non-kinetic, non-physical interferences going on all the time.

9:21And the concern would be, I don't suspect this is a weapon of mass destruction. In fact, the US has accused Russia of planning to put a nuclear weapon in space just last year. So it'd be highly unlikely they'd be doing that same themselves. Dr. Cassandra Steer there.

9:41She's Britain's most prolific serial child killer of modern times. In 2023, nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six others. She was later convicted of another attempted murder charge. Well today an inquiry in Liverpool, a city in the northwest of England, has found that the deaths of some of the babies she attacked could have been prevented if safeguarding practices were followed. Lady Justice Thirlwall, who chaired the inquiry, criticised senior staff at the hospital where Let Be worked, the Countess of Chester in the north of England. She said the staff should have acted sooner and blamed dysfunctional management.

10:18Lady Justice Thirlwall gave a statement just before we came on air. There was also complete failure at all levels to invoke safeguarding procedures at any point. Looking for clinical or other explanations for deaths and collapses was not wrong, but once there was suspicion that Letby may be causing harm deliberately, safeguarding steps should have been taken. She should have been removed from the ward as a neutral act and matters could have been investigated without risk to babies. Well, our correspondent Lauren Moffs is at the inquiry for us. Lady Justice Thurwall, very damning in her assessment of what happened at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and 2016 and indeed beyond, she found that there was a complete failure to protect babies on the neonatal unit there, what's described as a profound failure of management, governance and safeguarding.

11:19And she's made more than a dozen recommendations, 17 recommendations, and not just for the Countess of Chester Hospital, but will have implications for the NHS as a whole to prevent anything like this from happening ever again. And the inquiry was established in 2023 after Lucy Letby's first trial, and it started hearing evidence two years ago and it was initially due to publish its findings about a year ago that was pushed to spring of this year and then finally published today and there are three huge volumes of of the reports and a summary booklet as well some amounting to more than a thousand pages and lauren i covered some of that trial i remember how controversial and divisive it was does the inquiry take into account some of the concerns over people who for example contested the verdict?

12:15No that has been treated in complete isolation so Lucy Letby's convictions are a legal certainty as the solicitors for the families have said and her legal team did make an appeal last year along with some former executives of the hospital for the inquiry to be paused because Lucy Letby's team have referred it to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to look at her case, and they wanted that process to be concluded before the inquiry published its findings. A group of medical experts questioned some of the evidence that was used against her in her trials, but Lady Justice Thurwell, the senior judge that's the chair of this inquiry, she denied that request and she said you know it's this inquiry is not looking at Lucy Letby's convictions she is serving 15 whole life sentences but it's actually been looking at how the management at the Countess of Chester Hospital responded to concerns that were made by staff and you mentioned some of the contentious issues you know the divisions between the hospital staff between the consultants and the nurses when concerns were raised.

13:27And Lauren we've only got about 20 seconds but I do want to ask you if the families have reacted at all. Yes we do have a statement from Salata and Gordon solicitors who acts for three of the families. They've said that they've welcomed the report, they've called it an impressive report and the families wanted a clear analysis of what went wrong and strong recommendations to prevent this from happening again and they want that to be implemented without delay. We've just heard from the Countess of Chester Hospital, saying that they recognise the enduring impact on the families and that no apology or action can undo what happened at the hospital.

14:05Coming up on NewsHour. We hear from an American mother who's been convicted of child abuse, having let her five-year-old son walk half a mile alone to a nearby pond. She tells us why she's appealing that conviction. Because we have such an enormous focus on safety. And so rather Rather than people encountering children and being good neighbours and saying, hello, how are you? And having a normal, healthy interaction with that child, they jump straight to the, we need to alert the authorities, there's a child unattended. So we've just gotten so uncomfortable and unfamiliar with children existing that we jumped to a point of alarm rather than comfort.

14:42Another headline we're watching in the newsroom here in the UN says that more than 2 ,000 refugees have now crossed to the Red Sea to Djibouti from Yemen. where fighting between the Houthis and government forces is escalating.

15:03This is Rajini Vaidyanathan with NewsHour, coming to you live from the BBC in London. Now, you might have seen the pictures of the wedding, which happened earlier this year, between President Trump's son, Donald Jr., and his partner, Bettina Anderson. In amongst those wedding snaps from the festivities in the Bahamas, a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin, Umar Kremlev. Well, it's now been confirmed that part of that wedding in May was paid for by Mr. Kremlev, which raises questions. Well, Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, is a private citizen, so it's not illegal for him to accept gifts from a foreign national.

15:42Well, I've been getting more on that story from Brett Murphy, who's from the not-for-profit investigative journalism organisation ProPublica, which broke that story. We've been interested in the economy around the Trump family and Don Jr. for a long time now. So a mix between talking with folks in that world as well as in the international boxing community. This oligarch you just mentioned, Umar Kremlev, is president of the International Boxing Association. So through those circles and then a mix of kind of shoe leather reporting, we were able to piece together this mosaic. And is there any wrongdoing in any of this?

16:22Because, of course, as we mentioned there, he's a private citizen. Yeah, no doubt. So he is a private citizen. He does not have an explicit role in the government. However, he has had quite the say in some government activities, including some of his father's cabinet picks. He's a prominent figure with the MAGA base, quite important to Vice President J.D. Vance as well. And when we consulted with experts about this, about what we had found, that he had received hundreds of thousands of dollars as a wedding gift to cover these huge expenses, they told us from a counterintelligence perspective, this was quite worrisome.

17:04This is the type of thing they might expect from the Kremlin. These oligarchs often coordinate quite closely with the Kremlin. And it's no secret, I think, that Putin has been trying to get closer to U.S. policy, U.S. politics and the Trump family for quite some time. So it raised a lot of alarm bells from that perspective quite a bit. And you mentioned a little bit there about Mr. Kremlev. But how crucial is he to President Putin? How much is he part of his inner circle? Yeah, not a household name, I don't think, but quite an interesting character. He came up through what is known as the Night Wolves.

17:43This is a motorcycle gang that's also affiliated with the Russian government. From there, he grew close ties with Alexei Rubuznoy, who is a member of President Putin's security services. And from there, Kremlin began moving to large nationalized enterprises in Russia. He became the owner of the largest car company, the sports betting enterprises and some others. And he became wealthy through these enterprises. And in doing that, received several honors from Putin. He travels with him. just before this wedding. He was with Putin in China when the official Russian delegation was there. So I think it's safe to say that he's quite close with Putin as well as with members of the Russian Security Service.

18:36That's Brett Murphy from Publica there. We'll read you the statement from Donald Trump Jr. and his wife. It says, our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us after our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.

19:20and features. Visit bbc.com forward slash subscribe to find out more.

19:30Welcome back to NewsHour. The Welsh actor Matthew Rhys has made history at the Emmy Awards, becoming the first person to win two lead acting prizes in one night, one for the thriller The Beast in Me, the other for the horror comedy Widow's Bay. There is something about these seafaring towns, the superstitions, their tall tales. I find it charming myself.

20:04What town doesn't have a checkered past? Was there cannibalism? No. Plenty of other winners as they celebrated the best of TV in the last year. Everything from gripping dramas to standout comedies. David Willis sent us this report from Los Angeles. Emmy winner and Law & Order star Mariska Hargutay got a celebration of the best in television off to a high energy start. And the Emmy goes to Kate O 'Flynn. The first award of the night going to Cato Flynn from Greater Manchester for her role as the awkward assistant Patricia in the quirky new comedy Widow's Bay. Hello, my name is Patricia. It's the treasure!

20:50Thank you, Katie and Hero, for trusting this Lancashire lass to play a sassy broad like Patricia. And the Emmy goes to... Matthew Rhys, the bank beast in me. Matthew Rhys is the star of Widow's Bay, but his history-making moment was still to come. His first award of the night was for his role in the Netflix miniseries The Beast in Me. Don't let me down. Matthew Rhys. His Emmy for Widow's Bay made him the first actor to win two lead acting trophies in a single night. He is also the first performer in history to have won the lead acting award in all three fields, limited series, drama and now comedy.

21:35It's all right, buddy. To the great and good people of Wales who were as much a nurturer as anyone else, we are a small but mighty nation. This is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you in his native Welsh. Matthew Rhys crowned Widow's Bay's rapid transformation from quirky newcomer to mainstream hit. He plays the hapless mayor of a New England town that he refuses to believe is haunted. Apple TV has commissioned a second series. For the fifth year in a row, 75-year-old Jean Smart, the star of Hacks, was named Best Comedy Actress. Jean Smart, Hacks. The hospital drama The Pit went into these awards with 25 Emmy nominations, collecting his Best Dramatic Actor award.

22:22Its star, Noel Wiley, paid tribute to fellow contender Sir Gary Oldman. Mr. Oldman, I have to tell you, I don't know if there's an actor my age that didn't look and prick up your ears and sit and answer and think that's the benchmark that I want to hit one day in my career. The leading award of the night for Best Drama went to The Pit. That's the BBC's David Willis reporting there from Hollywood. And if you go to the BBC News website, you can get the complete list of who won what and who wore what at the Emmys on Monday.

22:58You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service with me, Regine Vaidyanathan. In recent weeks, we've been reporting on a series of attacks across Europe, far from the front lines in Ukraine, but blamed on Russia. Known as hybrid warfare, Moscow's been accused of using a range of different tactics to destabilise nations. There were those drone attacks at an airport in Germany recently, and today, two more incidents which fall into a similar pattern. Denmark's accused Russia of firing two flares from a frigate towards a Danish military helicopter in the Baltic Sea without warning. Moscow says the helicopter performed provocative actions.

23:36And Lithuania's presidents blamed Russian aggression for a drone flying over his country's airspace. NATO's confirmed that jets shot it down. Well, it's unclear where that drone originated. Well, on that Lithuania story, I've been getting the views of Gabriela Slansbergis, who's Lithuania's former foreign minister. Well, it's the first time that we had a clearly armed, what it looks like, an armed drone that entered into Lithuanian airspace. and I was navigating in the territory, at least, of hydroelectrical plants. We're glad that NATO airplanes from the base in Lithuania managed to locate it, managed to take it down.

24:19But on the other hand, we're truly worried because even this week, probably this is the third time we're hearing an air alert in Lithuania. So you feel under threat? Yeah, it's clear that the war that we've been seeing in Ukraine moved much closer to our home. So your sense is that Russia is behind this? Oh, there's no doubt about it. There has never been doubt about it when we've seen similar events happening in Romania, in Poland, even the sabotage events in Germany or Netherlands just recently. It's all connected. It's all part of what we're still, unfortunately, calling a hybrid war for some reason, because, you know, in my sense is that it's very real.

25:08It's the war that Russia dragged us into. And what more do we know about the origins of this particular drone? I'm seeing that it came from Belarus, in fact. Well, you know, so far we are lucky that it's, you know, it's a single drone. that that's you know what i can say about it because you know i've just returned from kiev just last night and during my time there you know in in the conference there were roughly about a thousand drones in the sky almost every night now not just in kiev all over all over ukraine so the main question is you know what would you know a small country likely to do if we would have not one but five ten hundred you know or say more drones flying over over our skies And what if they would have a clearly defined intent, you know, to hit strategic infrastructure, bridges, harm people, something like that?

26:05You know, how would we be dealing with the situation right now? And I think that we're rather slow taking in Ukrainian lessons. You know, they've been doing that for a very long time, paying a very high price for the lessons that they've learned. And still, we are not taking those lessons in. Do you think you are getting enough help from NATO? And more broadly, do you think NATO needs to be more involved in the broader context you just mentioned? I think that the biggest issue here is that NATO is still in denial about the whole situation. And that's why I'm rather critical about the term itself.