Hello from The National and welcome to the View from London – your weekly guide to the big stories from our London bureau
Sudanese atrocities
Leading experts have issued a call for an international investigation into alleged chlorine attacks in Sudan, including an incident at an oil refinery north of Khartoum.
Mark Albon, former head of the UN Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' investigation unit in Syria, told the Geneva Press Club an independent investigation should examine media coverage and video material, and interview people allegedly exposed to the attacks.
“It’s clear to us, as investigators who have looked at this, that there is every reason to believe that a chemical weapons attack, at least one, has taken place,” Mr Albon told a panel titled Accusations about the Use of Chemical Weapons in Sudan.
Robert Fairweather, a former chief of cabinet at the OPCW, backed up the call by reminding the panel of the importance of upholding the Chemical Weapons Convention, which both Syria and Sudan have signed.
The intervention marks an important new stage in the emerging revelations around the Sudanese Armed Forces' alleged decision to turn materials into chemical weapons as the country descended into civil war.
For those who fear the impunity of the battlefield, or fog of war, could impede further action it does not have to be an impossible challenge. We talked to one former British military specialist who accompanied television crews to Syria's atrocity sites, saw the horrors of the chemical attacks and realised that he had to get verifiable samples to hold Assad’s regime to account.
“I was exasperated. Assad was using chemical weapons and I thought that we’ve got to do something about it,” Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told The National.
“The thing about collecting evidence is that it is only valuable if it has a complete chain behind it and if there are any breaks in the chain, then it's not admissible."
They needed to reach evidential standards for the International Criminal Court if the regime was to face prosecution.
It is estimated that 50 per cent of the evidence of chemical war crimes that the UN and OPCW received came from the CBRN Task Force, some of which is being used today by the French government to indict former Syrian president Bashar Al Assad as a war criminal.
Earth to space
Largely unseen, a vast investment boom is pushing to make the undersea cable obsolete, or at least an optional extra. Satellite roaming for mobile phones is soon to become ubiquitous.
The latest entrant moving up to the launch pad is Equatys, backed by space technology company Space42 of the UAE and its satellites partner, Viasat based in California.
It's an ambitious and fast-developing space programme that boasts resilience from geopolitical shocks at a time when the Iran-US war has deeply disrupted critical infrastructure in the Arabian Gulf.
Satellite systems covering Earth from low orbit have tremendous advantages.
"You are deploying these systems at a low orbit, the satellites are rotating much faster than Earth, which means that they are only covering your area of interest, your national territory, for a fraction of the time," said Karim Sabbagh, managing director of Space42, who wants shared infrastructure between operators to ensure seamless coverage.
"For the rest of the time, they're flying over Earth. And if you're not using these satellites, then commercially you don't have an economically sustainable business model."
The race to space starts with the phone in your pocket.
Olympia standard
Regeneration is the name of the game in the London property market in recent years.
Three key sites covering 25 hectares are being redesigned to provide £11.8 billion ($15.9 billion) of new development, creating homes, offices, retail and leisure opportunities.
The scale and value of the unused or derelict land being brought back to life is on a par with the tech company-led hub at King’s Cross (27 hectares, £3 billion) and outstrips Battersea Power Station (17 hectares, £9 billion) and Queensway (two hectares, £23 billion) .
Earl’s Court and Olympia each sprang up during the late 1880s during London’s railway-inspired building boom, when grand exhibition centres were all the rage, before falling into decline in recent decades.
The third site, West Cromwell Road, was part of a suburb of Italianate villas that eventually became a car park and industrial site when it lost its appeal due to the heaving traffic on the main road into central London.
Now analysts are predicting each are the top hotspots in the otherwise struggling property market.
The National was given a tour of the redeveloped Olympia, which includes suites that are home to the Premier League and its studios; a "street in the sky" above the original exhibition halls; and terraces with views across London.
Trevor Morris, of SPPARC Architects, said the original Olympia was intended as a "People's Palace" to educate the masses, and had now been given a new lease of life to last another 120 years.
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