Latest news with #Korolev
Daily Maverick
15-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Maverick
Rocket Man meet Drone Man – the future of combat
The tradition of Ukrainian aerospace continues. Driven today less by prestige than necessity, it has become a global leader in 'kopters' – as drones are locally known. It's a longstanding tradition. On this highway to Kyiv is a Soviet-era missile, a memorial to Sergei Korolev, born in nearby Zhytomyr more than 118 years ago, considered the father of the USSR's rocket and space programme. Korolev oversaw the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects, including the first human Earth orbit mission by Yuri Gagarin in April 1961. His was, however, not an easy ride. An apparently difficult child from a broken family and having failed to be accepted to the prestigious Zhukovsky Academy in Moscow on account of his poor marks (a lesson in not peaking too soon), he attended the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute to train as an aircraft designer. Arrested on a trumped-up charge during Stalin's 'Red Terror' (as a result of which at least 800,000 died between 1936-38) as a 'member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organisation', he was imprisoned for nearly six years, some of which was spent in a Siberian Gulag. Rehabilitated through his work in a penal design bureau producing aircraft under Tupolev and Petlyakov during World War 2, he was officially rehabilitated only in 1957. Korolev's greatest skill was to be in strategic planning and organisation, especially necessary when, after the war, the Soviets integrated about 2,000 German aerospace and rocket scientists. This jump-started the Soviet programme, just as the Americans had done with Werner von Braun and his group, who moved to America under Operation Paperclip. Despite his achievements being appropriated after his death in 1966 in the Soviet name, Korolev is today celebrated in his home town, with a small museum displaying the various achievements in the eponymous museum. Visitors to the museum on a cold May day include wounded Ukrainian soldiers recovering from the bruising front line at a local hospital. Aviation ingenuity The country's aviation sector continues to boom, this time out of necessity in Ukraine's struggle against its nemesis, Russia. The most famous name, Antonov, continues to produce, despite frequent missile interruptions, while its university centres of excellence churn out quality graduates in design and engineering. Sasha, 35, is also a graduate of Kyiv Polytechnic, a head of R&D with SkyRiper, one of the leading drone manufacturers in Ukraine. Driven by a shortage of artillery ammunition, Ukraine's survival instinct and 'horizontal interaction' between frontline units and the engineers back in Kyiv and other cities, Ukrainian production is now around 100,000 drones a month. About 10,000 are used by frontline forces each day, and seven of 10 battlefield Russian casualties are caused by drones, a shift in technology which helps to offset Russia's numerical population advantage. 'We all have friends and relatives at the frontline,' says Sasha, the leader of a youthful team (average age 22) of engineers. 'They tell us all the time what works and what they need.' Drones are now the great equaliser in Ukraine's defence, a cost-effective way of making up the deficit in manpower, materiel and financing compared with their Russian foe. Whereas 155mm artillery rounds cost between $2,000-$7,000 each, depending on their spec, and a Javelin anti-tank missile $250,000, Ukrainian FPV (first person view) kamikaze drones are less than $500 apiece. With a range of the smaller carbon and alloy drone of up to 30km with a 4kg payload, this has effectively shrunk the 1,200km frontline. Handled by a team of just three soldiers, and with mission times of around 15 minutes, drones can be continuously cycled. 'The frontline is now a 10km 'grey zone',' says the partner at SkyRiper, Anton, his 70-strong workforce delivering 10,000 drones a month from several sites around Kyiv. 'It's a no-go area over which drones dominate.' Most armoured vehicles – sometimes requiring as many as 10 drone hits – are knocked out usually on the way to this no-man's land. While it makes great headlines, there is less technological focus on drone 'swarming' than last-mile targeting, avoiding Russian efforts to jam signals (in part by increasingly employing fibre-optic technology), and focusing on improved lethality and manoeuvrability. 'The drones have to be capable of going into the forests, ducking under netting, looking for the weak spots in armoured vehicles,' he says. Anton cites Marx in keeping an eye on sophistication and cost: 'In drone warfare, quantity has a quality. It's better to have 100 drones than 10, which can swarm.' At a general aviation airfield 45 minutes outside Kyiv, Ivan talks enthusiastically about his Buntar B3 drone, designed at the National Aviation University at Kharkiv and built at an underground site in the capital. Battery powered, the Very Short Take Off and Landing (VTOL) multicopter is capable of 3.5 hours' endurance, with one operator capable of simultaneously controlling multiple reconnaissance drones using the Buntar Copilot system, operating safely from a position far behind the frontline. Drone capabilities have undergone a revolution since 2022, not least in terms of range, accuracy, cost, the networking of multiple feeds and survivability. 'There are hundreds of drone manufacturers in Ukraine now,' says Ivan, CEO of Buntar Aerospace and a serial entrepreneur, who joined the infantry after the 2022 Russian invasion and was wounded in the east. 'Most of them are assembling small drones from imported parts.' The B3 is a carbon fibre machine designed for ease of operation and survivability, including a minimal radar signature. They believe that eventually, with the pace of technological change, the drone industry will shake out to 'no more' than a dozen major manufacturers. 'We don't have the luxury of time,' says Sasha, who also serves as an officer in the Ukrainian reserves. 'We have 15,000 to 20,000 drones on the frontline at any time. But the Russians have perhaps three times this number, even though their effectiveness is about 40% of each mission, half as good as we manage.' Buffer for Europe The survival instinct of Ukraine has not only helped to change the current circumstances, but may also change the future of war and defence. It seems likely that international investment in Ukraine will be driven less by acts of charity in future and the defence of democracy, than self-interest, in particular in its role as what former president Viktor Yushchenko, who led the Orange Revolution in 2004, describes as 'Europe's body armour'. While it undergoes its own domestic arms revolution, Ukraine will simultaneously have to learn to splice itself into the practical defence of Europe: air and maritime, especially, as these domains disdain borders. Ukraine will need to get itself on to the accounting book, even if it isn't formally part of Nato, as Finland and Sweden did well in the 1980s. In the process, Ukraine has the opportunity to become a source of capability, not a market for it, to develop the most potent defence sector in Europe, fuelling its own coffers, providing deterrence capability and buttressing European combat power. If it can manage this transition, to become not just one of the world's leading developers and manufacturers, but also exporters, Ukraine will become tougher as a target while boosting its economy. This would demand more international capital investment, which means releasing the fetters on various controls. While there is a risk of acquisitions and compromise of intellectual property, the exchange would translate into another Ukrainian tether to the Western system. 'This war has changed,' says Captain Viacheslav Shutenko, Commander of the Unmanned Systems Battalion in Ukraine's 44th Mechanised Brigade. 'In 2022, this war was … more or less classical. But, in three and a plus years,' he observed in May 2025, 'this war is about technology, this war is about precision, and this war is about speed. Unmanned systems are no longer an auxiliary. They are decisive on the battlefield. This is why to win, Ukraine needs more drones, more unmanned systems – we need scalable production of drones and uninterrupted supply of drones.' Setting up a defence sector for mass production of the tech that's been fundamental to their success, for their own use and for that of allies, lies at the centre of this approach. Without Europe and Ukraine working more closely together, the end of the war is likely, in the words of another rocket man, to 'be a long, long time'. DM
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Exiled Russian Journalists Face Growing Threats in Europe
PARIS—Maya Korolev is bustling around Reforum Space Paris, one of several professional video studios run by the Free Russia Foundation throughout Europe. As the studio supervisor, she's preparing to record a program for Doxa, an independent Russian media outlet in exile. Cables snake around tripods, and the spotlights suspended from the ceiling flood the set with bright light. 'Some of the media in exile couldn't survive without our support,' says Korolev (a pseudonym), noting that the Free Russia Foundation provides not only studio space but video equipment and staff to operate it. 'Every day, videos shot here accumulate hundreds of thousands of views in Russia, bypassing censorship thanks to VPNs. It's easier to work here without censorship.' Le Monde estimates that there are at least 1,500 Russian journalists working in exile, many of whom left their home country after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Russia, which Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks 162nd out of 180 countries for press freedom, has banned almost all free press and all journalists are subject to censorship. According to RSF, the media 'must follow orders issued by the president's office regarding subjects to be avoided, and must censor themselves closely.' A law enacted on March 4, 2022 spells out a 15-year prison sentence for anyone spreading false information about operations in Ukraine—and false information means any information that does not fit in with the Kremlin's official narrative. While Russian journalists can work more freely outside of their home country, they face a different set of challenges while in exile. Some have been subject to international arrest warrants or convicted in absentia of being 'foreign agents.' A bigger concern at the moment, though, is funding. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on March 10 that his department was canceling 83 percent of U.S. Agency for International Development contracts—and RSF has noted the cancellation affected $268 million that had been allocated by Congress to support independent media. 'Our biggest problem today is the Trump administration,' says Korolev. 'It has created a terrible situation and caused us major financial difficulties for the future.' The consequences of the freeze are immediate: 'Many independent newsrooms have had to lay off almost 15 percent of their staff,' explains Jeanne Cavelier, Russia manager at RSF. More bad news came just five days later, on March 15: The Trump administration announced the end of funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 'Radio Liberty was an essential source for us,' laments Olga Kokorina, co-founder of the Russie-Liberté association, which supports Russian journalists in Paris. 'They were doing an incredible job,' she says. RFE/RL are still broadcasting, albeit in a diminished capacity as legal challenges work their way through the courts. Most recently, an appeals court ruled that the administration had to release $12 million in funding for RFE/RL that had been frozen, but there could be further appeals. The administration's efforts to freeze funding are part of a wider retreat by the West in the international battle for information, as the Russians and Chinese go on the offensive. Eight Western nations—the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Switzerland—have significant government-backed international media operations. As with RFE/RL and Voice of America, these outlets have a mission of providing balanced and verified information to combat misinformation. Denis Kataev But against a backdrop of growing budget deficits and deliberate funding cuts, most are suffering financially. The BBC World Service, the largest operation besides Voice of America, has cut hundreds of jobs since 2022. France Médias Monde, which operates France 24, Radio France Internationale, and Monte Carlo Doualiya, has reduced its workforce by 20 percent in the last 16 years, with major layoffs in 2009, 2012, and 2021. Budget cuts continue to affect France's public broadcasting system. In total, eight main Western international media, based on their latest annual reports, have a collective budget of $2.1 billion. The budgets of the Russian and Chinese media are particularly opaque, as the figures are not public, but the Public Media Alliance, an association for the defense of public media, estimates their combined expenditures to be between $6 billion and $8 billion. When the BBC shut down its Arabic-language radio service in Lebanon in 2023, its frequencies were swiftly taken over by Russian state media—RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik, the latter banned in Europe since the launch of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Far from hiding its intentions, Moscow seems to relish the provocation, as Arab News noted at the time: 'Back in 1938, when the BBC first launched its radio (service) in Lebanon, it chose the slogan 'This is London' as its opening line. Now the news bulletin starts with 'This is Moscow,'' said Dmitry Tarasov, the chairman of Sputnik Radio in Lebanon. This information war translates into a relentless struggle for Russian journalists in exile, hampering their ability to reach their audience and making it difficult to overcome censorship and to counter propaganda. In her cramped office, where the shelves are lined with Chekhov's works and the writings of the late Russian dissident leader Alexei Navalny, Kokorina tries to shed light on the daily struggle of the independent media. 'These media did incredible work, and they are the first to be targeted by the Russian regime,' she says, her voice grave. Added to these financial difficulties is the Kremlin's growing transnational repression. Exile guarantees neither security nor anonymity. 'There are open prosecutions against some of us,' says Inna Denisova of the Russian newspaper Republic. She has lived in exile in France since 2022. 'We're systematically targeted by international arrest warrants. … I can't go home now, my articles have been passed on to the FSB.' Jeanne Cavelier of RSF told me that two exiled journalists believe they were poisoned and that others are under surveillance. Denis Kataev, a presenter for TV Rain, one of the main opposition TV channels in exile, has lived in France since March 2022. He says that he senses the presence of informers on the Kremlin's payroll in France. 'I know that some people around me write reports for Moscow about my activities here,' he says calmly. While the fear of being hounded never quite disappears, Kataev refuses to be paralyzed. 'You can't work if you're paranoid,' he says. 'So we carry on. Discreetly, but we carry on.' Behind his clubmaster glasses, his eyes sparkle with optimism. 'Russian society needs a paradigm shift. And to do that, it's essential to provide it with true, reliable and independent information.'
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk's Most Alarming Power Grab
When Elon Musk's engineers bundled a batch of prototype satellites into a rocket's nose cone six years ago, there were fewer than 2,000 functional satellites in Earth's orbit. Many more would soon be on the way: All through the pandemic, and the years that followed, Musk's company, SpaceX, kept launching them. More than 7,000 of his satellites now surround Earth like a cloud of gnats. This fleet, which works to provide space-based internet service to the ground, dwarfs those of all other private companies and nation-states put together. And almost every week, Musk adds to it, flinging dozens more satellites into the sky. I recently asked the space historian Jonathan McDowell, who keeps an online registry of Earth's satellites, if any one person had ever achieved such dominance over the orbital realm, and so quickly. 'This is unique,' he said. Then, after considering the question further, McDowell realized there was a precedent, but only one: Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the Soviet engineer who developed Sputnik and its launch vehicle. 'From 1958 to 1959, when no one else had any satellites in orbit, Korolev was the only guy in town.' Musk is not the only guy in town circa 2025, but the rapid growth of his space-based network may represent a Sputnik moment of its own. Musk first announced his intention to build a space-based internet, which he would eventually call Starlink, in January 2015. He had plans to settle Mars, then the moons of Jupiter, and maybe asteroids too. All those space colonies would have to be connected via satellite-based communication; Starlink itself might one day be adapted for this use. Indeed, Starlink's terms of service ask customers to affirm that they 'recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.' Musk is clearly imagining a future in which neither his network nor his will can be restrained by the people of this world. But even now, here on Earth, space internet is a big business. Fiber networks cannot extend to every bit of dry land on the planet, and they certainly can't reach airborne or seaborne vessels. More than 5 million people have already signed up for Starlink, and it is growing rapidly. (You may end up using Starlink when you fly United, for example.) In the not-too-distant future, an expanded version of this system—or one very much like it—could overtake broadband as the internet's backbone. A decade or two from now, it could be among our most crucial information infrastructure. The majority of our communications, our entertainment, our global commerce, might be beamed back and forth between satellites and the Earth. If Musk continues to dominate the launches that take satellites to space, and the internet services that operate there, he could end up with more power over the human exchange of information than any previous person has ever enjoyed. Musk recognized that Starlink's early adopters would be in remote and rural areas, where cables may not reach, and there are few, if any, cell towers. The U.S. is, for now, his biggest market, and the U.S. government may soon become a major customer: President Donald Trump has just delayed a $42 billion federal effort to expand broadband services, especially in rural areas. His administration has decided to make that project 'tech-neutral,' such that cable hookups aren't necessarily preferred over satellite—which means that Starlink can compete for the money. In the meantime, Starlink's internet service is now also in planes, in ships at sea, in deep jungles, tundras, and deserts. In Gaza, medics have used Starlink while healing the wounded. At times when the people of Myanmar and Sudan learned that the internet had been shut off by their autocratic governments, they turned to Starlink. Ukraine's soldiers use it to communicate on the front lines. Musk's ability to deliver this crucial service—the ability to coordinate action in conflict zones—has given him unprecedented geopolitical leverage for a private citizen. Reportedly, Pentagon officials have already had to go hat in hand to Musk after he threatened to restrict Starlink's service to Ukraine's troops, who were using it to launch attacks inside Russia. 'He is not merely a mogul,' Kimberly Siversen Burke, a director at Quilty Space, an aerospace-research firm, told me. 'This is someone who can flip a switch and decide the outcome of a war.' (Neither Musk nor Starlink responded to requests for comment.) [Read: When a telescope is a national-security risk] Political leaders all over the world have come to understand that Starlink's dominance will be hard to dislodge, because SpaceX is so good at making satellites and getting them to space. The company makes its satellites in a factory outside of Seattle. Even in their bundled-up, larval form, they are enormous. The newest ones weigh more than half a ton, and once their solar-panel wings unfurl, they measure about 100 feet across. The company can reportedly manufacture at least four of these behemoths a day, and SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket can hold more than 25 of them at once, all folded up inside its nose cone. Musk is able to launch these bundles of satellites at a Gatling-gun pace, while his competitors operate at musket speed with rockets that must be rebuilt from scratch each time. Last year, SpaceX successfully lofted 133 rockets into orbit, and more than 60 percent of them were carrying Starlink satellites. Every one of Musk's commercial competitors, and also every nation's military combined, launched fewer rockets than he did. Before the rise of SpaceX, the French company Arianespace had dominated the global satellite-launch market. But its newest rocket, the Ariane 6, has so far been a boondoggle, with development delays and a costly one-and-done design. (The company expects to launch only 10 of them a year.) This is one reason that Europe has had a hard time fielding a serious competitor to Starlink, despite a desire to reduce Musk's influence on future conflicts on the continent. Europe is home to Starlink's largest commercial competitor, at least to this point, in OneWeb, a subsidiary of the French company Eutelsat. OneWeb has more than 600 satellites, compared with Musk's more than 7,000, and its hardware is less advanced. As a result, the internet service it provides is slower than Starlink's. Separately, European Union nations have spent years planning the construction of a dedicated network of satellites for military and civilian use. But this project was recently dealt a blow when Giorgia Meloni, Italy's prime minister—a friend of Musk's—announced that she now prefers a deal with Starlink. The governments of Germany and Norway are each working on their own sovereign fleets, but they're nowhere near having them up and running. [Read: The military is about to launch a constellation] The U.S. government, too, would have good reasons to avoid full dependence on Musk's company for access to the space-based internet. The American military has an orbital network of military-grade satellites that allows for secure government communications and reconnaissance. But this too is a Musk product: SpaceX builds the satellites and ferries them to orbit. The Pentagon's leaders know this is a problem, or at least they once did. During the end of the Biden administration, the U.S. Space Force published a new strategy that ordered policy makers to avoid overreliance on any single company. But that was before the Defense Department came under the control of Trump, whose victorious campaign received more than $250 million in support from Musk. When I wrote to the Pentagon to ask whether avoiding overreliance on one provider was still a priority, I did not hear back. Even if the agency does end up diversifying its vendors, that process will take years, Masao Dahlgren, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who specializes in space and defense, told me. 'You can look at the launch schedule, and look at how many you need up there, and tell that it's going to be a while.' China's People's Liberation Army reportedly has its own concerns about Musk's dominance over the potential future of communication in space. Several Chinese companies are currently building satellite-internet services; the largest one has roughly 90 satellites in orbit at the moment, and provides service only in the city of Shanghai. If that pilot project works, the network's operator intends to expand across the country and beyond. China's total number of satellites could tick up fast, because unlike Europe, the country is actually capable of launching a lot of rockets. But of all of the aspiring competitors to Starlink, the most formidable is based in the U.S. Although Amazon has only just started launching satellites for its Project Kuiper, the company is looking to manufacture several thousand more in the coming years. It has also done the hard work of designing small, inexpensive terminals for users on the ground, which can compete with Starlink's sleek, iPad-size consumer equipment. If Jeff Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, can make its own reusable rocket fully operational, Amazon will start flinging satellites up into the sky in big batches as SpaceX does. Of course, Musk is not going to sit still while the rest of the space industry catches up. Starlink is already available in more than 100 countries, and in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, it will soon be the largest internet provider of any kind. Other developing countries will likely want to make that same leapfrog bet that they can skip an expensive broadband build-out and go straight to satellite. And not just for the internet: Musk recently secured permission from the FCC to offer cellphone service via Starlink too. And he's doing all this with his current technology. If SpaceX can finish testing its much bigger, next-generation Starship rocket within a year or two, as analysts expect, Musk will be able to expand his orbital fleets dramatically. SpaceX has previously said that the Starship will be able to carry up to 100 satellites in a single launch. 'In five years, we've gone from around 1,000 functional satellites to around 10,000,' McDowell told me. 'I would not be surprised if in another 10 years, we get to 100,000 satellites.' They will beam more information down to the Earth than those that whirl around it today. They will offer an unprecedented degree of connectivity to people and devices, no matter where they are on the planet's surface. The space internet of the future may become the central way that we communicate with one another, as human beings. Information of every kind, including the most sensitive kinds, will flow through it. Whoever controls it will have a great deal of power over us all. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Matter Labs, ZKsync Developer, Sued for Alleged Intellectual Property Theft
Matter Labs, the company behind layer-2 blockchain ZKSync, has been sued by BANKEX, a defunct digital asset banking platform, for intellectual property theft. According to a complaint filed Mar. 19 with the New York State Supreme Court, former BANKEX employees Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev allegedly stole the company's technology to start Matter Labs, which received over $450 million in venture capital funding and has become a major player in the blockchain industry. The complaint, which names BANKEX CEO Igor Khmel and the BANKEX Foundation as plaintiffs, alleged BANKEX was approached by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 2017 to build operational software for "Plasma," a technology that was seen at the time as a way to make Ethereum cheaper to use. According to the complaint, Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev were BANKEX employees at the time and were tasked by BANKEX CEO Igor Khemel with completing the Plasma project. The complaint alleged that Vlasov and Korolev instead secretly developed 'a competing company, Matter Labs, through which they intended to appropriate the blockchain technology of BANKEX for their own use and benefit and to compete with BANKEX.' In addition, the complaint claimed that the two developers were secretly transferring 'BANKEX's technology to Matter Labs and covertly developed and stored operational code bases' using the company's resources and funding. Vlasov is currently the head of R&D at Matter Labs, and Korolev is the founder of blockchain security firm OXORIO, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Matter Labs co-founder Alex Gluchowski, crypto-native investment fund Dragonfly, and Chris Burniske, a partner at Placeholder Capital and a former co-director at Matter Labs, are also being sued for their alleged involvement and knowledge of the theft. 'We believe these claims are entirely without merit," a spokesperson at Matter Labs told CoinDesk in an emailed statement. "The thrust of the complaint is that Matter Labs built ZKsync on top of code that was originally developed at Bankex. This is categorically false. ZKsync is original technology that is not based on or derived from any code developed by Bankex. We stand by the integrity of our work and look forward to addressing these baseless allegations in court once we are served." Dragonfly, Burniske and Korolev did not respond to multiple requests for comment. BANKEX lawyer Clayton Mahaffey told CoinDesk in a statement that the firm "prefers not to comment further on the case at this time, other than to reiterate its belief that the allegations in the complaint are well founded and that it looks forward to its day in court."
BBC News
18-04-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Renovations begin on Priory Centre in St Neots
Construction work has started to renovate a building that was losing £300,000 Priory Centre is being renovated as part of a £15m investment to revamp the centre of St Neots, Cambridgeshire's largest market community space, built on a former brewery site in the 1980s, had been running at a commercial loss, said owners St Neots Town with Huntingdonshire District Council, it has led the project, which the authorities said "will give this much-loved venue a bold new future at the heart of the town." A "comprehensive refurbishment" of the centre was proposed at a district council committee meeting in was to be delivered alongside the regeneration of the town's Market Square, funded by bodies including Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, Huntingdonshire District Council, Cambridgeshire County Council and National plans for the Priory Centre aim to enhance community use, and encourage increased private hire, with facilities including a bar and cafe bistro and new town council space was previously used by community groups and could be hired for conferences or Korolev, project delivery manager with the town council, said the renovated centre could have its name changed and would likely be open for early autumn 2026."We believe the new Priory Centre will provide everything anyone in the town might need and we do hope people will spend a lot of time there," he said. Liz Owen, founder of Access in St Neots, spent three years campaigning for a Changing Places accessible facility in the town. She celebrated the installation of the accessible unisex toilet at Riverside Park car park last year and said it was "exciting" to hear a similar facility would be built into the new Priory facility is larger than a regular toilet and has equipment, including a changing bench and hoist, designed to support disabled people who need Owen said the town council had supported her cause to make the area more accessible and believed the new centre would be "absolutely amazing". Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
