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Tiafoe Ends Nadal’s 22-Match Slam Streak in US Open 4th Round

Frances Tiafoe ended Rafael Nadal’s 22-match winning streak at Grand Slam tournaments by beating the 22-time major champion 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 in the U.S. Open’s fourth round Monday.

Tiafoe is a 24-year-old from Maryland who is seeded 22nd at Flushing Meadows and reached the second major quarterfinal of his career.

He is the youngest American man to get that far at the U.S. Open since Andy Roddick in 2006, but this was not a case of a one-sided crowd backing one of its own. Nadal is about as popular as can be in tennis and heard plenty of support in Arthur Ashe Stadium as the volume rose after the retractable roof was shut during the fourth set.

“I don’t even know what to say right now. I’m beyond happy. I can’t believe it,” said Tiafoe, who faces No. 9 seed Andrey Rublev next. “He’s one of the greatest of all time. I played unbelievable tennis today, but I don’t even know what happened.”

Here’s what happened: Tiafoe served better than No. 2 seed Nadal. More surprisingly, he returned better, too. And he kept his cool, remained in the moment and never let the stakes or the opponent get to him. The 36-year-old from Spain had won both of their previous matches, and every set they played, too.

“Well, the difference is easy: I played a bad match, and he played a good match,” Nadal said. “At the end that’s it.”

This surprise came a day after one of Tiafoe’s pals, Nick Kyrgios, eliminated the No. 1 seed and defending champion Daniil Medvedev. That makes this the first U.S. Open without either of the top two seeded men reaching the quarterfinals since 2000, when No. 1 Andre Agassi exited in the second round and No. 2 Gustavo Kuerten in the first.

That was before Nadal, Novak Djokovic, who has 21 Grand Slam titles, and Roger Federer, who has 20, began dominating men’s tennis. Djokovic, who is 35, did not enter this U.S. Open because is not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was not allowed to enter the United States; Federer, 41, has undergone a series of operations on his right knee and has not played since Wimbledon last year.

Now come the inevitable questions about whether their era of excellence is wrapping up.

“It signifies that the years go on,” Nadal said. “It’s the natural cycle of life.”

Either Tiafoe or Rublev will advance to a first major semifinal. Rublev, who is 0-5 in Slam quarterfinals, beat No. 7 Cam Norrie 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 earlier Monday.

The No. 1 woman, Iga Swiatek, covered her head with a white towel during one changeover after falling behind by a set and a break in her fourth-round match. She kept making mistakes, then rolling her eyes or glaring in the direction of her guest box.

Eventually, Swiatek got her strokes straightened out and moved into her first quarterfinal at Flushing Meadows by coming back to beat Jule Niemeier 2-6, 6-4, 6-0.

“I’m just proud,” Swiatek said, “that I didn’t lose hope.”

The 21-year-old from Poland will face another first-time U.S. Open quarterfinalist next. That’s No. 8 seed Jessica Pegula, the highest-ranked American woman, who advanced with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over two-time Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova.

Nadal won the Australian Open in January and the French Open in June. Then he made it to the semifinals at Wimbledon in July before withdrawing from that tournament because of a torn abdominal muscle; that does not go into the books as a loss, because he pulled out before the match.

Nadal competed only once in the 1½ months between leaving the All England Club and arriving in New York while recovering from that injury. His play has not been up to his usual standards at the U.S. Open, which he has won four times.

The match ended when one last backhand by Nadal found the net. Tiafoe put his hands on his headm then he sat in his sideline chair with his face buried in a towel.

“When I first came on the scene, a lot of people had limitations on what I would do. … I wasn’t ‘ready for it mentally.’ I wasn’t ‘mature,’” Tiafoe said. But these days, he added, “I’m able to just do me and do it my way and enjoy the game I love.”

This represents the latest significant step forward for Tiafoe, whose only previous trip to a Grand Slam quarterfinal came at the 2019 Australian Open — and ended with a loss to Nadal.

Tiafoe thanked a long list of folks who were in the stands, including his parents — they emigrated from Sierra Leone in West Africa and his dad worked as a maintenance man at a tennis facility near the U.S. capital — his girlfriend and Washington Wizards All-Star guard Bradley Beal.

“To have them see what I did today means more than anything,” Tiafoe said. “Today’s an unbelievable day and I’m going to soak this one in, for sure.”

IAEA to Report on Nuclear Situation in Ukraine  

The head of the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog is set to release a report Tuesday about the nuclear safety and security situation in Ukraine after his team’s visit to examine the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. 

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi will also brief the U.N. Security Council on his team’s findings, the IAEA said. 

The IAEA inspectors arrived at the Zaporizhzhia plant Sept. 1 and spent days evaluating damage at the site, how well safety and security systems are working, and conditions for the Ukrainian staff at the plant that has been under Russian control since the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Both Russia and Ukraine have accused the other side of being responsible for shelling in the area of the power plant. The attacks have raised international concern about the prospect of a nuclear disaster. 

The IAEA said two of its experts remain at the power plant to “observe the situation there and provide independent assessments.” 

Ukraine’s state-run nuclear company said Monday the Zaporizhzhia plant was disconnected from the electricity grid due to Russian shelling.    

“Today, as a result of a fire caused by shelling, the (last working) transmission line was disconnected,” Energoatom said in a statement on Telegram.   

Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Facebook that Energoatom was not able to make repairs while fighting raged around the facility.      

The IAEA said Ukraine informed the agency that the backup power line itself was not damaged and that Ukrainian experts plan to reconnect power in the coming days.  

‘A step away from a radiation catastrophe’

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video message Monday that the nuclear plant has again been put in a situation where it is “a step away from a radiation catastrophe.” 

In other developments Monday, Russia blamed Western sanctions on Moscow for its stoppages of natural gas to Europe.        

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Western sanctions were “causing chaos” for maintenance of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which Russian energy giant Gazprom shut down last week after saying it detected an oil leak.    

Western officials and engineers have disputed Russia’s claim of mechanical problems with the pipeline. Europe accuses Russia of using its leverage over gas supplies to retaliate against European sanctions.     

The energy battles between Europe and Russia led European markets to drop sharply Monday while natural gas prices surged.   

Nuclear power on standby

Germany announced Monday that it would keep two of its three remaining nuclear power stations on standby beyond the end of the year as the country suffers a gas crunch.  

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement on Monday that the two nuclear plants would “remain available until mid-April 2023 in case needed.”   

He said the move does not mean that Germany is going back on its long-standing promise to exit nuclear energy and said it remains “extremely unlikely” the country would face an energy crisis in which the power stations would be needed.      

Ukraine advocated Monday for “maximum support” for its efforts to defeat Russia in order to blunt economic effects on European allies.       

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia’s “military aggression against Ukrainians, energy blackmail against EU citizens” were to blame for “rising prices and utility bills in EU countries.”     

“Solution: maximum support to Ukraine so that we defeat Putin sooner and he does not harm Europe anymore,” Kuleba tweeted, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.    

The Group of Seven nations has proposed capping the price on Russian oil exports to limit Russian profits that help fund Moscows war efforts in Ukraine.    

Russia, in turn, said it would not sell oil to any countries that implement such a cap.    

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 

French Trial Opens Over 2016 Nice Massacre

Eight suspects went on trial Monday over the harrowing July 2016 attack in the Mediterranean city of Nice, where an Islamist extremist killed 86 people by driving a truck into thousands of locals and tourists celebrating France’s national day.

The attacker, a 31-year-old Tunisian named Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was shot and killed by police after a four-minute rampage down the seaside embankment of the Promenade des Anglais.

The seven men and one woman standing trial in Paris are accused of crimes ranging from being aware of his intentions to providing logistical support and supplying weapons.

Only one suspect, Ramzi Kevin Arefa, faces the maximum penalty of life imprisonment if convicted as a repeat offender. The others risk between five and 20 years in prison.

The trial, which is set to last until December 16, is the latest legal process over the wave of Islamist attacks that have struck France since 2015.

On June 29, a Paris court convicted all 20 suspects in the trial over the November 2015 attacks in the French capital that left 130 dead.

The Nice trial is taking place at the historic Palais de Justice in Paris, in the same purpose-built courtroom that hosted the November 2015 attacks hearings. A special venue has also been set up in Nice to allow victims to follow proceedings via a live broadcast.

“We’re waited six years for this,” Seloua Mensi, whose sister, aged 42, was killed in the attack, told AFP in Nice. “The trial is going to be very difficult for us, but it’s important to be able to speak about what we went through.

“Confronting the accused, seeing them and understanding what happened, will allow us to rebuild our lives,” she said.

The extremist Islamic State (IS) group rapidly claimed responsibility for the Nice attack, though French investigators ultimately did not find any links between the attacker and the jihadist organization that at the time controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Of the accused, three suspects are charged with association in a terrorist conspiracy and the five others with association in a criminal conspiracy and violating arms laws.

The attack, which saw 15 children and adolescents among the dead and more than 450 wounded, was the second most deadly postwar atrocity on French soil after the November 2015 Paris attacks.

Six years after the attack, “the fact that the sole perpetrator is not there will create frustration. There will be many questions that no one will be able to answer,” said Eric Morain, a lawyer for a victims’ association that is taking part in the trial.

“We are trying to prepare them for the fact that the sentences may not be commensurate with their suffering,” said Antoine Casubolo-Ferro, another lawyer for the victims.

French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti commented: “I understand this frustration, it is human. But there will be a legal response. We respond to this barbarism through the law.”

Of the accused, only seven will appear in court after one suspect, Brahim Tritrou, being tried in absentia, fled judicial supervision to Tunisia where he is now believed to be under arrest.

Just three of the accused are currently under arrest with one held in connection with another case. The defendants are a mix of Tunisians, French Tunisians and Albanians.

Some 30,000 people had gathered on the seafront to watch a fireworks display celebrating France’s annual Bastille Day holiday on July 14 when Lahouaiej-Bouhlel began his rampage.

Nice was struck again in October 2020 when a Tunisian Islamist radical stabbed three people to death at a church.

Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, said, “This wound will never heal, whatever the outcome of the trial. This wound is too deep.”

According to French and Tunisian news reports, the body of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was repatriated to Tunisia in 2017 and buried in his hometown of M’saken, south of Tunis. This has never been confirmed by the Tunisian authorities.

Ex-Reporter Jailed for 22 Years in Russia on Treason Charges

A former journalist was convicted of treason and handed a 22-year prison sentence on Monday after a trial that has been widely seen as politically motivated and marked a new step in a sweeping crackdown on the media and Kremlin critics.

The sentence handed to Ivan Safronov, who worked as a military affairs reporter for leading business daily Kommersant before becoming an adviser to the head of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, has been harshly criticized by his colleagues as utterly unfounded.

A few friends and co-workers of Safronov who attended Monday’s hearing at the Moscow City Court chanted “Freedom!” and clapped after the verdict was read.

“I love you all!” Safronov told those who came to support him.

Safronov was accused of passing military secrets to Czech intelligence and a German national. He strongly insisted on his innocence, arguing that he collected all the information from open sources as part of his journalistic work and did nothing illegal.

In his final statement at the trial last week, Safronov rejected the charges as “absurd,” noting that he published all the information he gathered from his sources in government agencies and military industries.

He emphasized that he never had access to any classified documents and emphasized that investigators have failed to produce any witness testimony to back the espionage charges.

Safronov described the long sentence requested by prosecutors as “monstrous,” saying that it would stain the country’s image by showing that a journalist is sentenced simply for doing his job. His defense quickly appealed the sentence.

Many Russian journalists and human rights activists have pushed for Safronov’s release, maintaining that the authorities may have wanted to take revenge for his reporting that exposed Russian military incidents and shady arms deals.

Hours before the ruling was announced by the Moscow City Court, 15 independent Russian media outlets issued a joint statement demanding Safronov’s release.

“It is obvious to us that the reason for persecuting Ivan Safronov is not ‘treason,’ which hasn’t been substantiated … but his work as a journalist and stories he published without any regard for what the Defense Ministry or Russian authorities think,” the statement read.

Amnesty International denounced Safronov’s conviction and sentencing as a travesty of justice and demanded that Russian authorities quash them.

“The absurdly harsh sentence meted out to Ivan Safronov symbolizes the perilous reality faced by journalists in Russia today,” Natalia Prilutskaya, the group’s Russia researcher, said in a statement. “It also exposes the failings of the Russian justice system and the impunity enjoyed by state agencies, who routinely fabricate cases with little or no evidence to support them.”

She added that Safronov “was tried solely for his journalistic work,” adding that “his only ‘crime’ was collecting information from open sources and being acquainted with and befriending foreigners.”

The European Union on Monday also urged Russian authorities to drop all charges against Safronov and “release him without any conditions,” denouncing “systematic repressions of the regime against independent journalism.”

The Kremlin has remained unperturbed, with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, refusing to comment on the case in a conference call with reporters.

Safronov has been in custody since his July 2020 arrest in Moscow.

Rights activists, journalists, scientists and corporate officials who have faced treason accusations in Russia in recent years have found it difficult to defend themselves because of secrecy surrounding their cases and a lack of public access to information.

Safronov’s father also worked for Kommersant, covering military issues after retiring from the armed forces. In 2007, he died after falling from a window of his apartment building in Moscow.

Investigators concluded that he killed himself, but some Russian media outlets questioned the official version, pointing to his intent to publish a sensitive report about secret arms deliveries to Iran and Syria.

Germany Sticks to Nuclear Power Deadline but Leaves Loophole

Germany is sticking to its long-held plan of shutting down the country’s three remaining nuclear power plants this year but keeping the option of reactivating two of them in case of an energy shortage in the coming months, officials said Monday.

The announcement follows the publication of a much-anticipated stress test that examined how Germany’s power grid will cope with a possible electricity squeeze due to the energy crisis Europe is facing.

Like other European countries, Germany is scrambling to ensure the lights stay on and homes stay warm this winter despite the reduction in natural gas flows from Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

The government has already announced numerous measures including the import of liquefied natural gas from other suppliers, while urging citizens to conserve as much energy as possible.

But there were concerns that Germany’s power grid, which is central to the European network, could be heavily strained if consumers switch to electric heaters in the winter and strong demand from neighboring countries means energy exports rise.

Germany’s opposition parties have called for the country’s nuclear plants to be kept online, with some lawmakers also suggesting shuttered ones be reopened and new reactors built. Some members of a small pro-business party that’s part of the governing coalition have argued in favor of running all three remaining reactors for as long as possible.

Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck, a member of the environmentalist Greens party that has long been opposed to nuclear power, acknowledged that several factors could come together to place a severe strain on the continent’s grid this winter. These include problems with France’s nuclear power plants, drought hampering hydropower generation in the Alps and Norway, and problems shipping coal across Europe due to low water levels in rivers.

“We can’t rely securely on there being enough power plants available to stabilize the electricity network in the short term if there are grid shortages in our neighboring countries,” he said.

Grid operators examined what would occur in a worst-case scenario, where a harsh winter coincides with an unexpected shutdown of French nuclear plants and a sharp rise in electricity demand. The projected result was hours-long blackouts for millions of Germans as transmission lines struggle to cope with required electricity flows.

To help prevent this from happening, Germany will keep two reactors — Isar 2 in Bavaria and Neckarwestheim north of Stuttgart — on standby until mid-April next year, Habeck said. A third plant, Emsland near the Dutch border, will be powered down as planned in December.

Opposition lawmaker Jens Spahn of the center-right Christian Democrats accused Habeck of being driven by anti-nuclear ideology, noting that the Emsland plant is located in a state that’s holding regional elections next month.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, warned the government not to renege on its promise to phase out nuclear power by leaving the door open for an extension of the plants’ operating life.

Habeck insisted there would be no long-term reversal in Germany’s commitment to end nuclear power.

“The nuclear plants won’t be equipped with new fuel rods,” he said. “There will be no decision to build new atomic power plants. That would be absurd because this technology — look to France — is part of the problem.”

Habeck also said Russian gas is no longer a factor in Germany’s energy calculations, and that it was no surprise Russia’s state-controlled energy giant Gazprom didn’t resume supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline after halting them for maintenance last week.

“The only thing one can rely on from Russia is lies,” he said.

Measures taken by the government in recent months, including the painful decision to reactivate some coal-fired power plants, would ensure Germany has enough energy to get through the winter, said Habeck.

“Maybe not all of those in positions of responsibility can do so, but the German population can sleep deeply and easily,” he said.

Exiled Belarusian Opposition Leader Tsikhanouskaya to Attend UNGA in Person

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya plans to attend United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meetings in person for the first time since the disputed Belarusian presidential election in August 2020, according to diplomatic sources close to her.

The sources say Tsikhanouskaya and her delegation will address ongoing political repression by Belarusian authorities under the rule of President Alexander Lukashenko and call for the immediate release of all political prisoners.

They say Lukashenko’s facilitation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would also be discussed during Tsikhanouskaya’s participation in UNGA events from September 18-22.

The Belarusian opposition leader spoke to a virtual informal session of the U.N. Security Council two years ago.

Tsikhanouskaya fled Belarus two days after the August 9, 2020 election, after police detained her for several hours. Lukashenko was declared the winner despite claims by opposition leaders that the vote was rigged.

Security officials cracked down on pro-democracy protests, arresting opposition leaders and journalists. Currently there are more than 1,200 political prisoners in Belarus, according to the State Department.

The United States has imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against Lukashenko’s regime for what U.S. officials call “destabilizing behavior and human rights abuses.” In return, Belarusian authorities requested that Washington reduce its embassy staff in Minsk, denying a visa to the U.S. envoy to Belarus.

U.S. President Joe Biden met with Tsikhanouskaya on July 28, 2021, at the White House, where he expressed support for the Belarusian people’s quest for democracy and universal human rights.

In April of this year, Tsikhanouskaya met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. The top U.S. diplomats said Lukashenka’s regime should be held accountable for its “complicity” in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Britain’s Liz Truss Wins Conservative Party Vote to Become New Prime Minister     

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has won the Conservative Party vote to be its new leader and will become the country’s new prime minister, replacing Boris Johnson at a time of economic upheaval and escalating energy bills.     

The 47-year-old Truss, who will become the third woman to lead the country, defeated former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Britain’s treasury secretary, in a vote of about 140,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party, a mere 0.2% of the United Kingdom’s population of 67 million.   

The intraparty vote, rather than a general election, was held because Conservatives still hold a majority in parliament and could pick the new prime minister of their choosing. Truss will be the 15th leader of the United Kingdom during the long reign of its monarch, Queen Elizabeth. The Conservative Party announced the Truss victory Monday.   

The vote took place over recent weeks after Johnson announced in July he would step down.  The outgoing prime minister was engulfed in a series of scandals, including ignoring the government’s own rules against public gatherings during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.   

Truss is expected to take over the government Tuesday after both she and Johnson visit Queen Elizabeth at her summer home, Balmoral Castle in Scotland, and the queen formally invites her to form a new government.    

Later, Truss is expected to address the country from her new home, the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street in London.   

Truss, once an opponent of pulling Britain from the European Union but now a staunch supporter of Brexit, holds hawkish foreign policy views and is expected, like Johnson, to remain a steadfast link in the Western alliance sending aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s six-month-old invasion.   

She will be Britain’s fourth prime minister in six years and third female leader, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.   

Truss will immediately face severe economic problems, including a recession, labor turmoil, surging energy bills for British households and possible fuel shortages this coming winter.   

After her victory was announced, Truss told a party gathering, “I campaigned as a Conservative, and I will govern as a Conservative.”   

“I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy,” she said. “Dealing with people’s energy bills but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply.”   

Truss served in Johnson’s cabinet but was not part of the Tory attacks on Johnson that led to his eventual ouster as the party’s leader and the end of his three years as prime minister.  

Truss was not the first choice among Conservatives to lead the party but emerged in the intraparty voting in the House of Commons to be one of the two finalists in the vote among party members.   

She defeated Sunak by a final count of 81,326 to 60,399. 

 

Swedish Leader Tackles Crime, Energy Fears on Campaign Trail

Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Sunday was on the campaign trail a week before Sweden’s national election to tackle fears over gang violence and rising electricity bills.

Andersson traveled by bus to communities near Stockholm to try to reassure voters. The election on Sept. 11 comes amid a sense of rising insecurity, with a spate of shootings in Sweden making crime a key campaign issue.

Russia’s war against Ukraine led Sweden, along with Finland, to take the historic step of applying to join NATO. That step has reassured many and is so uncontested it hasn’t been an issue in the campaign before the election.

But Andersson said that Russia’s energy “warfare” against Europe, including a cutoff of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany, has become an issue that voters keep raising with her as she campaigns for her left-wing Swedish Democratic party.

“Many people are concerned with their electricity bills given Putin’s warfare on energy,” the 55-year-old leader said in comments to The Associated Press after a visit at a senior community center in Norrtalje, a town north of Stockholm.

“I mean he has a military invasion in Ukraine, but he also has energy warfare against Europe, so people are very concerned with electricity bills but also with criminality and climate.”

Her government pledged Saturday to provide $23 billion in liquidity guarantees to electricity companies, a step that followed the cutoff to Nord Stream 1, and was meant to prevent a financial crisis.

Another concern for Andersson is the rising popularity of a populist far-right party with its historical roots in the Nazi movement, the Sweden Democrats.

The party, which has worked to mainstream its image, is closer to power than it has ever been, causing many Swedish voters to fear that it could end up with a key position of power in a right-wing coalition. The anti-migrant party has gained in popularity as the country has struggled to integrate large numbers of migrants. Critics fear its roots in the extreme far right make it a threat to the county’s democratic foundations.

Polls show that a right-wing coalition including the Sweden Democrats has a chance at winning power, though the race is expected to be close.

Andersson told the AP she is concerned, noting that an employee of the right-wing party sent out an email last week inviting people to celebrate the Nazi invasion of Poland 83 years ago.

“That kind of invitation would never happen in any other parties in Sweden. Having said that, many of the voters of the Sweden Democratic party, they are decent people that are disappointed with the development,” she said.

Against the backdrop of shootings and the challenge from the right, the Social Democrats have been toughening up their stance in recent years. In this campaign, the party has been promising tougher measures to fight crime along with promises to preserve the Scandinavian country’s famous welfare protections.

Andersson and her party said she believes the problems can be tackled together, and that the welfare system is one of the best weapons for fighting crime.

Andersson told the AP that her solution to crime involves building up the police force and putting more of the criminals behind bars, while also tackling the social roots of the problem.

“We also have to work harder to prevent new generations from choosing a criminal life. And I think the only way to do that is to stop the segregation that we have in Sweden,” she said.

Andersson traveled in a large red bus emblazoned with the words “our Sweden can do better.” After leaving the senior center, she headed to a fair on park grounds in Botkyrka where party campaigners wore T-shirts saying, “I vote for Magdalena” and where families from multicultural immigrant backgrounds lined up for pony rides and other attractions.

Andersson is Sweden’s first-ever female prime minister. She took the job last November after her predecessor, Stefan Lofven, resigned after leading the party and country since 2014.

While she has to fight the perception that her party hasn’t managed to stem the gang violence ailing the country. In her favor is a reputation for being a steady and competent hand who has governed with a thin majority and through a time of geopolitical upheaval.

At the party fair, Annelie Gustafsson, a 45-year-old mother carrying her daughter on her shoulders, wouldn’t say who she was voting for. But she made clear her vote was meant to keep the Sweden Democrats out of power. She opposes their unwelcoming stance toward migrants.

“This year it was about which party I don’t want to see running the country, and that’s really important for me,” she said. “I’m proud of being Swedish, I’m proud of the people here, and that we help other people. … So, closing the country, that’s not for me.”

Tory Front-Runner Truss Vows Fast Action on Cost of Living 

Liz Truss, who is widely expected to become Britain’s new prime minister this week, has pledged to act within a week to tackle a cost-of-living crisis fueled by soaring energy bills linked to the war in Ukraine.

But Truss, speaking to the BBC Sunday, refused to provide any details on the actions she would take, suggesting it would be wrong to discuss specific policies until she takes the top post. She stressed, however, that she understands the magnitude of the problems facing Britain.

The government has been unable to address soaring inflation, labor strife and strains on the nation’s creaking health care system since early July, when Johnson announced his intention to resign and triggered a contest to choose his successor. The ruling Conservative Party will announce the winner Monday.

“I want to reassure people that I am absolutely determined to sort out this issue as well as, within a month, present a full plan for how we are going to reduce taxes, how we’re going to get the British economy going, and how we are going to find our way out of these difficult times,’’ said Truss, who has been foreign secretary for the past year.

Truss is facing Rishi Sunak, the government’s former Treasury chief, in the contest to become Conservative Party leader and so prime minister. Only dues-paying party members were allowed to vote in the election, putting the choice of Britain’s next leader in the hands of about 180,000 party activists.

During the campaign, Truss promised to increase defense spending, cut taxes and boost energy supplies, but she refused to provide specifics on how she would respond to the cost-of-living crisis.

With household energy bills set to increase by 80% next month, charities warn that as many as one in three households will face fuel poverty this winter, leaving millions fearful of how they will pay to heat their homes.

The Bank of England has forecast that inflation will reach a 42-year high of 13.3% in October, threatening to push Britain into a prolonged recession. Goldman Sachs has estimated that inflation could soar to 22% by next year unless something is done to mitigate high energy prices.

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy Warns Europe Faces Difficult Winter with Russian Fuel Cuts

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is warning European countries to expect a difficult winter as Russia cuts its oil and natural gas exports to retaliate for their support of the Kyiv government in its fight against Russia’s invasion. 

“Russia is preparing a decisive energy blow on all Europeans for this winter,” he said in his Saturday night video address after Moscow earlier in the day shut down a main gas pipeline to the continent.  

Moscow has blamed technical issues, along with economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies against Russia, for the energy disruptions. European countries that have sent munitions to the Kyiv government and helped train its fighters have accused Russia of weaponizing energy supplies they have purchased from Moscow. 

Some war analysts say the fuel shortages and rising living costs could stress Western resolve in supporting Ukraine. Moscow says it plans to keep the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, its main gas conduit to Germany, closed and the Group of Seven or G-7 leading democratic economies said they would cap the price on Russian oil exports to limit its profits that help fund the war.  

The Kremlin, in turn, said it would not sell oil to any countries that implemented the cap.  

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised Sunday that Germany would make it through the winter, telling a news conference in Berlin, “Russia is no longer a reliable energy partner.”  

Scholz announced a $65 billion relief plan that includes one-time payments to households, tax breaks for industries that use substantial amounts of fuel and cheaper public transportation options. The Berlin government also plans to guarantee its citizens a certain amount of electricity at a lower cost.  

Zelenskyy’s wife, first lady Olena Zelenska, told the BBC she realized that higher fuel prices are imposing pain on Europeans, but that they come with an additional price for her homeland. 

“I understand the situation is very tough,” she said. “The prices are going up in Ukraine, as well. But in addition, our people get killed. … So, when you start counting pennies on your bank account or in your pocket, we do the same and count our casualties.” 

On Saturday, European Union Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said that Europe is “well prepared to resist Russia’s extreme use of the gas weapon” because of its storage capacity and energy conservation measures, even if Russia decides to stop all natural gas deliveries. 

“We are not afraid of Putin’s decisions; we are asking the Russians to respect contracts, but if they don’t, we are ready to react,” Gentiloni said on the sidelines of an economic forum in Italy. 

Gentiloni said that gas storage in the European Union “is currently at about 80%, thanks to the diversification of supplies,” although the situation varies in each country.    

Russian energy giant Gazprom said it could not resume the supply of natural gas to Germany, just hours before it was set to restart deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Russia blamed a technical fault in the pipeline for the move, which is likely to worsen Europe’s energy crisis. 

European Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer said Friday on Twitter that Gazprom acted under “fallacious pretenses” to shut down the pipeline.  

Turbine-maker Siemens Energy, which supplies and maintains some of the pipeline equipment, said Friday that there was no technical reason to stop shipping natural gas. 

Moscow has blamed Western sanctions that took effect after Russia invaded Ukraine for hindering the maintenance of the gas pipeline. Europe accuses Russia of using its leverage over gas supplies to retaliate against European sanctions. 

The jockeying for control of energy supplies comes as Russian and Ukrainian forces traded more strikes near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. 

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Saturday that the Russian-controlled

plant in Ukraine was disconnected from its last external power line but still able to run electricity through a reserve line amid sustained shelling in the area. 

 

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi said in a statement that agency experts, who arrived at Zaporizhzhia Thursday, were told by senior Ukrainian staff the fourth and last operational line was down. The three others were lost earlier during the conflict. 

The IAEA experts learned that the reserve line linking the facility to a nearby thermal power plant was delivering the electricity the plant generates to the external grid, the statement said. That reserve line can provide backup power to the plant if needed. 

“We already have a better understanding of the functionality of the reserve power line in connecting the facility to the grid,” Grossi said. “This is crucial information in assessing the overall situation there.” 

In addition, the plant’s management informed the IAEA that one reactor was disconnected Saturday afternoon because of grid restrictions. Another reactor is still operating and producing electricity both for cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for households, factories and others through the grid, the statement said.  

Meanwhile, the British defense ministry said Sunday in an intelligence update on Twitter that “Russian forces continue to suffer from morale and discipline issues in Ukraine. In addition to combat fatigue and high casualties, one of the main grievances from deployed Russian soldiers probably continues to be problems with their pay.”  

The ministry’s statement said, “In the Russian military, troops’ income consists of a modest core salary, augmented by a complex variety of bonuses and allowances. In [the conflict with] Ukraine, there has highly likely been significant problems with sizable combat bonuses not being paid. This is probably due to inefficient military bureaucracy, the unusual legal status of the ‘special military operation,’ and at least some outright corruption amongst commanders.”   

“The Russian military has consistently failed to provide basic entitlements to troops deployed in Ukraine, including appropriate uniform, arms and rations, as well as pay,” according to the British ministry. “This has almost certainly contributed to the continued fragile morale of much of the force.”      

(VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.)  Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.    

Emotions Raw Before Nice Bastille Day Attack Trial Begins

A lawyer was strolling with her mother, friends and a colleague along the beachfront boulevard in Nice to celebrate France’s national day. Four young sisters from Poland had spent a day sightseeing. Two Russian students were on a summer break. And a Texas family, on vacation with young children, was taking in some of Europe’s classic sights. The bright lights of the packed boardwalk glittered along the bay like a string of stars.

Those lights would mark a pathway of murder and destruction that night of July 14, 2016. Shortly after the end of a fireworks display, a 19-ton truck careered through the crowds for 2 kilometers like a snowplow, hitting person after person.

The final death toll was 86, including 15 children and adolescents, while 450 others were injured.

Eight people go on trial on Monday in a special French terrorism court accused of helping the attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who left a gruesome trail of crushed and mangled bodies across 15 city blocks. Bouhlel himself was killed by police the same night.

“It was like on a battlefield,” said Jean Claude Hubler, a survivor and an eyewitness to the horrific attack that holiday Thursday. He rushed to the boardwalk to help after hearing the desperate screams of people who had been cheering and laughing and dancing on the beach a minute before.

“There were people lying on the ground everywhere, some of them were still alive, screaming,” Hubler said. As he waited for the ambulances to arrive, he kneeled down beside a man and a woman as they lay dying on the pavement, in a pool of blood and surrounded by crushed and mangled bodies.

“I was holding her hand on her last breath,” Hubler said.

Three suspects have been charged with terrorist conspiracy for alleged links to the attacker. Five others face other criminal charges, including for allegedly providing arms to the assailant. If convicted, they face sentences ranging from 5 years to life in prison. The verdict is expected in December.

Investigators did not find evidence that any of the suspects were directly involved in the murderous rampage on that hot summer night in 2016.

Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian with French residency, was the lone attacker, and is considered solely responsible for the deaths 86 people, including 33 foreigners from Poland, the United States, Russia, Algeria, Tunisia, Switzerland and elsewhere.

Myriam Bellazouz, the lawyer, lived a few blocks from Nice’s boardwalk. She was strolling along it with her mother on the night of the attack and was killed. It took friends and colleagues three days of frantic searching around the traumatized city and pleas on social media to find her remains.

Only two of the four Chrzanowska sisters, on vacation from Poland, returned home alive.

When the truck sped through the crowd, one of the students from Moscow, Viktoria Savachenko, couldn’t get out of the way in time and was killed. American Sean Copeland, the father of the family from a town near Austin, Texas, also died in the attack along with his 11-year-old son, Brodie.

Christophe Lyon is the sole survivor of an extended French family that had gathered in Nice for the Bastille Day celebrations. His parents, Gisele and Germain Lyon, his wife, Veronique, her parents Francois and Christiane Locatelli and their grandson Mickael Pellegrini, all died in the attack. Lyon is listed among dozens of witnesses, survivors and victims’ family members who will later this month testify in the Paris court to the horrific events of that night.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the carnage. However, French prosecutors said that while Bouhlel had been inspired by the extremist group’s propaganda, investigators found no evidence that IS orchestrated the attack.

Eight months before the Nice attack, on Nov. 13, 2015, a 20-member team of battle-hardened Islamic State extremists, spread around Paris to mount coordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, cafes and the national stadium, killing 130 people and injuring hundreds.

After nine months of trial, the lone survivor of the murderous group that had terrorized the French capital, Salah Abdeslam, was in June convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the deadliest peacetime attack in France’s history.

The trial of the eights suspects in the Nice attack will take place in the same Paris courtroom as the proceedings against Abdeslam. French law mandates trials of terrorism are held in the capital.

The proceedings will be broadcast live to the Acropolis Convention Center in Nice for those victims’ family members and general public not traveling to Paris. Audio of the trial will also be available online, with a 30-minute delay.

Many survivors and those mourning loved ones brace themselves for reliving the traumatic events during the trial. For others, the proceedings — although far away from the city that is still reeling from the bloodshed and loss — are an opportunity to recount publicly their personal horrors inflicted that night and to listen to countless acts of bravery, humanity and compassion among strangers.

With the perpetrator dead, few expect to get justice.

Audrey Borla, who lost her twin sister, Laura, will travel to Paris to face the group of eight suspects. She wants to tell them how she’s survived the past six years without the woman she calls her “other half,” and how she plans to live a full life for many years even without her.

“You took my sister away from me, but you are not going to make me stop living,” Borla said in a interview with broadcaster France 3.

“You are not going to make me give up on life.”

John Paul I, ‘Smiling Pope’ for a Month, Moves Towards Sainthood

Pope John Paul I, who died in 1978 after only 33 days as pontiff, moved closer to sainthood on Sunday with the Vatican still having to dismiss lingering conspiracy theories that he was a victim of foul play.

Pope Francis beatified his predecessor at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square before tens of thousands of people. Beatification is the last step before sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

John Paul was known as “The Smiling Pope” because of his meekness and simplicity.

“With a smile, Pope John Paul managed to communicate the goodness of the Lord,” Francis said in his homily, speaking as people huddled under umbrellas in a thunderstorm.

“How beautiful is a Church with a happy, serene and smiling face, that never closes doors, never hardens hearts, never complains or harbors resentment, does not grow angry or impatient, does not look dour or suffer nostalgia for the past”. 

Born Albino Luciani into poverty in a northern Italian mountain village in 1912, he was ordained a priest in 1935, a bishop in 1958 and a cardinal in 1973.

He was elected pope on Aug. 26, 1978, following the death of Pope Paul VI, taking the name John Paul to honor his two immediate predecessors.

Two nuns of the papal household who heard no response to knocks on his door at 5:20 a.m. on Sept. 29 to bring coffee found him dead in his bed. Doctors said he died of a heart attack and aides said he had complained of chest pains the day before but did not take them seriously.

Conflicting versions

At first the Vatican, uneasy saying two women had entered the pope’s bed chambers, said he was found lifeless by a priest.

The Vatican corrected itself, but the misstep sprouted conspiracy theories.

In 1984 “In God’s Name – An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I,” by British author David Yallop that argued the pope was poisoned by a cabal linked to a secret Masonic lodge, spent 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

The New York Times own review of the book, however, ridiculed Yallop’s investigative techniques and in 1987 another Briton, John Cornwell, wrote a book called “A Thief in the Night,” meticulously dismantling conspiracy theories.

Although widely debunked, the idea of a pope being murdered in his bedroom in the 20th century irresistibly entered the collective consciousness and in the film “The Godfather Part III,” a pope named John Paul I was killed with poisoned tea. 

“There is no truth to it at all,” said Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, when asked about the conspiracy theories on Italian television on Friday. 

“It is a shame that this story, this noir novel, goes on. It was a natural death. There is no mystery about it,” Parolin said.

Italian journalist and author Stefania Falasca, who spent 10 years documenting John Paul’s life and viewed his medical history, wrote several books about him. She called the conspiracy theories “publicity-driven garbage.”

Falasca, who was the deputy postulator, or promoter, of the sainthood cause, said John Paul was being beatified not because of what he did as pope but the way he lived his life.

John Paul is attributed with the miracle healing of an 11-year-old Argentine girl who had a severe brain inflammation, epilepsy and suffered septic shock. Her parents prayed to him.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that only God performs miracles, but that saints, who are believed to be with God in heaven, intercede on behalf of people who pray to them.

A second miracle will need to be verified for John Paul to be declared a saint.

Ukraine’s First Lady: Energy Price Hikes Come with Extra Cost for Ukraine

 In an interview with the BBC, airing Sunday, Ukraine’s first lady noted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spiked energy prices across Europe, but has come with an additional price for her homeland.

Olena Zelenskyy told Laura Kuenssberg, “I understand the situation is very tough. . . The prices are going up in Ukraine, as well. But in addition our people get killed. … So when you start counting pennies on your bank account or in your pocket, we do the same and count our casualties.”

The British defense ministry said Sunday in an intelligence update on Twitter that “Russian forces continue to suffer from morale and discipline issues in Ukraine. In addition to combat fatigue and high casualties, one of the main grievances from deployed Russian soldiers probably continues to be problems with their pay.”

The ministry’s statement said that “In the Russian military, troops’ income consists of a modest core salary, augmented by a complex variety of bonuses and allowances. In Ukraine, there has highly likely been significant problems with sizable combat bonuses not being paid. This is probably due to inefficient military bureaucracy, the unusual legal status of the ‘special military operation’, and at least some outright corruption amongst commanders. 

“The Russian military has consistently failed to provide basic entitlements to troops deployed in Ukraine, including appropriate uniform, arms and rations, as well as pay,” according to the British ministry.  “This has almost certainly contributed to the continued fragile morale of much of the force.”

Saturday, a top European Union leader said amid the intensifying energy battle between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine that Europe is “well prepared” — thanks to storage capacity and energy conservation measures — if Russia decides to stop all gas deliveries.

“We are well prepared to resist Russia’s extreme use of the gas weapon,” EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told reporters on the sidelines of an economic forum in Italy. “We are not afraid of Putin’s decisions, we are asking the Russians to respect contracts, but if they don’t, we are ready to react.”

Gentiloni’s remarks come on the heels of Moscow’s decision Friday to delay the reopening of its main gas pipeline to Germany. Russia was reacting to the Group of Seven countries’ agreement to cap the price of Russian oil exports, limiting Moscow’s profits.

Gentiloni said that gas storage in the European Union “is currently at about 80%, thanks to the diversification of supplies,” although the situation varies in each country.

Russian energy giant Gazprom said it could not resume the supply of natural gas to Germany, just hours before it was set to restart deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Russia blamed a technical fault in the pipeline for the move, which is likely to worsen Europe’s energy crisis.

European Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer said Friday on Twitter that Gazprom acted under “fallacious pretenses” to shut down the pipeline.

Turbine-maker Siemens Energy, which supplies and maintains some of the pipeline equipment, said Friday that there was no technical reason to stop shipping natural gas.

Moscow has blamed Western sanctions that took effect after Russia invaded Ukraine for hindering the maintenance of the gas pipeline. Europe accuses Russia of using its leverage over gas supplies to retaliate against European sanctions.

Friday, finance ministers from the G-7 countries said they would work quickly to implement a price cap on Russian oil exports.

The G-7 ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States said the amount of the price cap would be determined later “based on a range of technical inputs.”

“This price cap on Russian oil exports is designed to reduce Putin’s revenues, closing an important source of funding for the war of aggression,” said German Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the decision by G-7 finance ministers.

“When this mechanism is implemented, it will become an important element of protecting civilized countries and energy markets from Russian hybrid aggression,” Zelenskyy said in his Friday evening video address.

The jockeying for control of energy supplies comes as Russian and Ukrainian forces trade strikes near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where U.N. inspectors are seeking to avert a potential disaster.

Ukraine’s military said Friday it had carried out strikes against a Russian base in the southern town of Enerhodar, near the nuclear power plant.

Russia and Ukraine each accuse the other of shelling near the facility. Kyiv also accuses Moscow of storing ammunition around the plant and using the facility as a shield for carrying out attacks, charges Russia denies.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the Zaporizhzhia plant this week, having braved artillery blasts to reach the facility Thursday.

IAEA head Rafael Mariano Grossi said he and his team saw everything they asked to see at the plant, were not surprised by anything, and he will issue a report early next week on his findings.

Grossi, who has left Ukraine, spoke with reporters after arriving at the airport in Vienna on Friday. He said, “My concern would be the physical integrity – would be the power supply and of course the staff” at Zaporizhzhia.

A team of 13 experts accompanied Grossi to Ukraine, and he said six have remained at Zaporizhzhia. Of those six, two will remain until hostilities cease, which Grossi said will make a huge difference.

“If something happens or if any limitation comes, they are going to be reporting it – report it to us,” Grossi said. “It is no longer a matter of ‘A said this, and B said the contrary.’ Now the IAEA is there.”

Friday, Ukraine’s nuclear agency, Energoatom, accused Russia of “making every effort” to prevent the IAEA mission from learning the real situation at the facility.

The Zaporizhzhia plant has been controlled by Russia since the earliest days of its invasion but remains operated by Ukrainian engineers.

With the nuclear plant in a war zone, world leaders have expressed fears it could be damaged and result in a radiation disaster like that at Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant in 1986. 

Grain shipments

Ukrainian grain shipments are continuing. The Joint Coordination Center said Saturday it has cleared two outbound vessels to move Sunday.  The ships are carrying a total of 14,250 metric tons of grain and other food products to Turkey.

Another 10 vessels that had been set to move earlier but were delayed by bad weather are also expected to leave Ukrainian ports Sunday for destinations in Africa, Asia and Europe.

VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 

Survivor of Holocaust, Munich Attack Heads Back to Germany

They call him the ultimate survivor: Shaul Ladany lived through a Nazi concentration camp and escaped the massacre of 11 fellow Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

Decades later the 86-year-old is back in Germany to visit the two places where he narrowly avoided death.

On Saturday, Ladany, who was born in 1936 in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, brought family members to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany to show them the place where he was imprisoned by the Nazis as an 8-year-old.

After that the octogenarian will participate in a joint German-Israeli ceremony in Munich on Monday marking the 50th anniversary of the attack on the Olympians by Palestinian terrorists.

Ladany, who competed in the Munich games as a racewalker, strode briskly in lime-green sneakers and a beige sun hat as he led his granddaughter, his younger sister and her three children in Bergen-Belsen, which has been turned into a memorial site. He pointed at a plot of land, nowadays covered by blueberry and heather shrubs and tall birch and pine trees, where barracks No. 10 used to stand.

He was held there with his parents and two sisters for about six months in 1944 before they were allowed to leave under a deal negotiated by Hungarian and Swiss Jewish foundations, which paid the Nazis ransom to free more than 1,600 Jews deported from Hungary.

“It’s not a pleasant thing to recall the period here,” Ladany said in an interview with The Associated Press at the former concentration camp. But it was important to him to come back and tell relatives about the horrors he endured during the Holocaust, in which 6 million European Jews were killed. It is a pilgrimage he has already made several times before with other family members.

“I always bring here one of my relatives to teach them, to educate them what happened,” Ladany said.

Even though he was a little boy at the time, Ladany still remembers the constant hunger and enduring seemingly endless roll calls in the cold wind outside the barracks when the guards would count the camp inmates.

The Ladanys fled Belgrade in 1941 after their home was bombed by the German Luftwaffe, or air force. They escaped to Budapest, Hungary, but were eventually captured by the Nazis and sent to Bergen-Belsen, where 52,000 prisoners — mostly Jewish — were killed or died shortly after its liberation by British soldiers on April 15, 1945.

After being freed the previous year in the exchange, Ladany and his family traveled to Switzerland and ultimately moved in 1948 to Israel. There he grew up to become a professor of industrial engineering and management and an accomplished racewalker — he still holds the 50-mile world record, set in 1972.

When he came to Munich for the Olympics at 36 years old, he said, he tried to guess the age of every German he met, and “if in my mind he would have been age-wise in the age group that might have participated in the Third Reich’s atrocities, I prevented any contact.”

However, this time it wasn’t the Germans who posed a threat to his life.

Early on the morning of Sept. 5, members of the Palestinian group Black September broke into the Olympic Village, killed two athletes from the Israeli delegation and took nine more hostage, demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel as well as two left-wing extremists in West German jails.

Ladany, again, narrowly escaped. A terrified roommate woke him up to say a fellow athlete was dead, and he quickly put on his sneakers and ran to the door of their apartment.

Just outside he saw an Olympic official pleading with a man in a tracksuit and hat, later identified as the leader of the assailants, to be “humane” and let Red Cross officials into an adjacent apartment. The man, Ladany recalled, responded: “The Jews aren’t humane either.”

Ladany turned around, threw on some clothes over his pajamas and joined other teammates in fleeing. Not everyone was so lucky; all nine hostages and a police officer were killed during a failed rescue attempt by German forces.

Ladany said that while before the attack the Olympics was purely “a sports meeting of joy and competition,” today no such event is held without strict security.

“Since then,” he said, “the world has changed.”

West Germany was criticized not only for botching the rescue but also for withholding historic files on the tragic events for decades, and for not offering enough compensation to victims’ families. Relatives of the 11 slain athletes had threatened to boycott Monday’s anniversary but last week finally reached a deal in which they will receive a total of S28 million in compensation.

Ladany plans to wear his original Israeli team jacket from 1972 when he attends the memorial, and he’s looking forward to showing the world that both he and Israel have endured.

“Those that tried to kill me are not alive anymore,” he said. “We are still here. Not only as individuals, but also as a country.”

Ukraine’s Largest Nuclear Plant Loses Main Power Line

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost connection to its last main external power line Saturday, according to a statement from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, but the plant could still send electricity to the grid via a reserve line.

The plant’s senior Ukrainian staff told the International Atomic Energy Agency experts who stayed behind after their inspection this week that the fourth and last of the plant’s operational lines was down due to shelling Friday night.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said Friday that it appeared the power supply to the plant was being deliberately targeted.

“It is clear that those who have these military aims know very well that the way to cripple or to do more damage is not to look into the reactors, which are enormously sturdy and robust,” he said, according to The New York Times. Instead, the power lines that are essential to run the plant are being targeted.

The plant, which has six reactors, has only one operating. The staff disconnected Unit 5 because of electrical grid restrictions, according to the IAEA statement. The remaining reactor is producing electricity for cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for households, factories and others through the grid.

Russian forces seized the plant soon after the February invasion of Ukraine, but the Ukrainian staff continues to operate it. A team of IAEA inspectors was allowed into the plant this week and maintain a presence there to help secure the site. Grossi said their presence at the site is “a game changer.”

On Saturday, Russia’s defense ministry accused Ukraine of attempting to recapture the plant.

The ministry said a naval force with more than 250 Ukrainian troops tried to land on the bank of the Kakhovka reservoir near the plant Friday night. The attempt was called off after strikes from Russian military helicopters and fighter jets destroyed 20 Ukrainian vessels, the ministry said.

Both Reuters and The Associated Press reported Russia’s claims but said they could not be independently verified.

Also, Kremlin-backed local authorities blamed Ukraine for the shelling Friday night that took down the plant’s last power line and said that was why the plant had stopped supplying electricity to Ukrainian-held areas.

“The provision of electricity to the territories controlled by Ukraine has been suspended due to technical difficulties,” the municipal administration in Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia plant is located, said a post on its official Telegram channel.

Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for shelling at and near the plant.

The British military confirmed in its regular update Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces were conducting “renewed offensive operations” in the south of Ukraine, advancing along a broad front west of the Dnieper and focusing on three areas within the Russian-occupied Kherson region.

“The operation has limited immediate objectives, but Ukraine’s forces have likely achieved a degree of tactical surprise; exploiting poor logistics, administration and leadership in the Russian armed forces,” the ministry tweeted.

Energy battle

As an energy battle between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine intensifies, a top European Union leader said Saturday that Europe is “well prepared” if Russia decides to stop all gas deliveries.

“We are well prepared to resist Russia’s extreme use of the gas weapon,” EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni told reporters on the sidelines of an economic forum in Italy. “We are not afraid of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s decisions, we are asking the Russians to respect contracts, but if they don’t, we are ready to react.”

Gentiloni’s remarks came on the heels of Moscow’s decision Friday to delay the reopening of its main gas pipeline to Germany. Russia apparently was reacting to the Group of Seven countries’ agreement to cap the price of Russian oil exports, limiting Moscow’s profits.

Gentiloni said that gas storage in the EU “is currently at about 80%, thanks to the diversification of supplies,” although the situation varies in each country.

Russian energy giant Gazprom said it could not resume the supply of natural gas to Germany, just hours before it was set to restart deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Russia blamed a technical fault in the pipeline for the move.

Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

Pope Dissolves Knights of Malta Leadership, Issues New Constitution

Pope Francis on Saturday dissolved the leadership of the Knights of Malta, the global Catholic religious order and humanitarian group, and installed a provisional government ahead of the election of a new grand master.

The change, which the pope issued in a decree, came after five years of often acrimonious debate within the order and between some top members of the old guard and the Vatican over a new constitution that some feared would weaken its sovereignty.

The group, whose formal name is Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, was founded in Jerusalem nearly 1,000 years ago to provide medical aid for pilgrims in the Holy Land.

It now has a multimillion-dollar budget, 13,500 members, 95,000 volunteers and 52,000 medical staff running refugee camps, drug treatment centers, disaster relief programs and clinics around the world.

The order has been very active in helping Ukrainian refugees and war victims.

It has no real territory apart from a palace and offices in Rome and a fort in Malta but is recognized as a sovereign entity with its own passports and license plates.

It has diplomatic relations with 110 states and permanent observer status at the United Nations, allowing it to act as a neutral party in relief efforts in war zones.

Cardinal Silvano Tomasi, the pope’s special delegate to the order, told reporters at a briefing along with some members of the provisional government that the order’s new constitution would not weaken its international sovereignty.

But as a religious order, it had to remain under the auspices of the Vatican, said Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a member of the working group that prepared the new constitution approved by the pope Saturday.

Francis convoked an extraordinary general chapter for Jan. 25 to begin the process of electing a new grand master.

The last one, Italian Giacomo Dalla Torre, died in April.

“We hope this will reestablish unity in the order and increase its ability to serve the poor and the sick,” Tomasi said. 

Tomasi and the lieutenant of the grand master, Canadian John Dunlap, will lead the group to the general chapter. A new grand master is expected to be elected by March, officials said.

Under the previous constitution, the top knights and the grand master were required to have noble lineage, something reformers said excluded nearly everyone except Europeans from serving in top roles.

The new constitution eliminates the nobility rule as well as the tradition of grand masters being elected for life.

“It will be more democratic. The question of nobility has now become secondary,” Tomasi said.

Future grand masters will be elected for 10-year terms, renewable only once, and will have to step down at age 85.

Reformers, backed by the Vatican, had called for a more transparent government to bring in fresh blood and allow the order to better respond to the massive growth it has seen in recent years.

Teacher Shortages Grow Worrisome in Poland and Hungary

Ewa Jaworska has been a teacher since 2008 and loves working with young people. But the low pay is leaving her demoralized. She even has to buy her own teaching materials sometimes and is disheartened by the government using schools to promote conservative ideas which she sees as backward.

Like many other Polish teachers, she is considering a career change.

“I keep hoping that the situation might still change,” said the 44-year-old, who teaches in a Warsaw high school. “But unfortunately, it is changing for the worse, so only time will tell if this year will be my last.”

Problems are mounting in schools in Poland, with a teacher shortage growing worse and many educators and parents fearing that the educational system is being used to indoctrinate young people into the ruling party’s conservative and nationalistic vision.

It’s very much the same in Hungary. Black-clad teachers in Budapest carried black umbrellas to protest stagnant wages and heavy workloads on the first day of school Thursday. Teachers’ union PSZ said young teachers earn a “humiliating” monthly after-tax salary of just 500 euros (dollars) that has prompted many to walk away.

Thousands of people marched in solidarity with teachers Friday in Budapest, voicing the view that the teachers’ low compensation is linked to the authoritarian direction of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government.

“Free country, free education!” they shouted.

Teacher shortages could hardly come at a worse time, with both countries trying to integrate Ukrainian refugees. It’s particularly challenging for Poland, where hundreds of thousands of school-aged Ukrainian refugees now live.

Nearly 200,000 Ukrainian students, most of whom do not speak Polish, already entered Polish schools after the war began Feb. 24. The education minister has said the overall number of Ukrainian students could triple this coming school year, depending on how the war unfolds.

Andrzej Wyrozembski, the principal of the high school in Warsaw’s Zoliborz district where Jaworska works, has set up two classes for 50 Ukrainians in his school. He said his Ukrainian students who arrived in the spring are quickly learning Polish, a related Slavic language. The real difficulty is finding teachers, particularly for physics, chemistry, computer science and even for Polish.

Across central Europe, government wages haven’t kept pace with the private sector, leaving teachers, nurses and others with far less purchasing power.

The situation is expected to grow worse as many teachers near retirement and ever fewer young people choose the poorly paid profession, especially when inflation has exploded to 16% in Poland and nearly 14% in Hungary.

According to the Polish teachers’ union, schools in the country are short 20,000 teachers. Hungary, with a much smaller population, has a 16,000-teacher shortage.

“We don’t have young teachers,” said Slawomir Broniarz, the president of the Polish Teachers’ Trade Union, or ZNP, citing the starting salary of 3,400 zlotys ($720) pretax as the key reason.

Polish Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek has disputed the figures, saying teacher vacancies were closer to 13,000, adding it isn’t a huge number in proportion to the 700,000 teachers nationwide. He accuses the union and political opposition of exaggerating the problem.

Many educators strongly oppose the conservative ideology of the nationalist government and Czarnek himself, viewing him as a Catholic fundamentalist. His appointment in 2020 sparked protests because he had said LGBTQ people aren’t equal to “normal people” and that a woman’s main role is to have children.

Criticism has recently focused on a new school textbook on contemporary history. It has a section on ideologies that presents liberalism and feminism alongside Nazism. A section interpreted as denouncing in-vitro fertilization was so controversial that it was removed.

In Hungary, Erzsebet Nagy, a committee member of the Democratic Union of Hungarian Teachers, said teachers have been leaving the profession “in droves.”

“Young people aren’t coming into the profession, and very few of those who earn a teaching certificate from high school or university go on to teach,” said Nagy. “Even if they do, most of them leave within two years.”

Hungarian unions have also complained about the centralization of the country’s education system. Curriculums, textbooks and all decision-making are controlled by a central body formed in 2012 by Hungary’s nationalist government.

“Our professional autonomy is continually being eliminated,” said Nagy. “We have no freedom to choose textbooks. There are only two to choose from in each subject and both are of terrible quality. They’ve blocked the possibility for a free intellectual life.”

Worried about their children’s futures, families are rejecting public schools. New private schools are opening but they still can’t meet the demand.

Polish architect Piotr Polatynski was ready to take a second job just to pay private school tuition for his fourth-grade daughter. But as a new school year began this week, a lack of places in private schools forced him and his wife to send her back to a public neighborhood school, which they feel isn’t providing the kind of education his daughter deserves.

He still hopes a spot might open up somewhere as he fumes over the state of the education system.

“We don’t believe that the current government is capable of making changes that would encourage young people to enter the teaching profession and bring any kind of meaningful energy to this whole system,” he said. 

UK to Begin Rollout of New COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

The U.K. will begin its autumn COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the coming weeks after authorizing booster shots made by Pfizer and Moderna that have been modified to target both the original virus and the widely circulating omicron variant.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said Saturday that it had approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in people aged 12 and older after finding it was both safe and effective. The agency authorized the Moderna vaccine last month.

The government will offer the vaccine to everyone age 50 and over, as well as front-line health care workers and other groups considered to be particularly at risk of serious illness as the National Health Service prepares for a surge in infections this winter.

“These innovative vaccines will broaden immunity and strengthen our defenses against what remains a life-threatening virus,” Health Secretary Steve Barclay said in a statement. “If eligible, please come forward for a booster jab as soon as you are contacted by the NHS.”

Previous COVID-19 vaccines targeted the initial strain, even as mutants emerged. In the new “bivalent” boosters, half of the shot targets the original vaccine and half offers protection against the newest omicron variants.

Swim Cap for Black Swimmers’ Hair Gets Race Approval After Olympic Ban

A cap designed for Black swimmers’ natural hair that was banned from the Tokyo Olympics has been approved for competitive races.

Swimming governing body FINA said on Friday the Soul Cap was on its list of approved equipment.

 

“Promoting diversity and inclusivity is at the heart of FINA’s work,” executive director Brent Nowicki said in a statement, “and it is very important that all aquatic athletes have access to the appropriate swimwear.”

The London-based Soul Cap brand was designed larger than existing styles to contain and protect dreadlocks, weaves, hair extensions, braids, and thick and curly hair.

Last year, British swimmer Alice Dearing was refused permission to wear a Soul Cap in the 10-kilometer marathon swim in Tokyo, with FINA suggesting the size could create an advantage.

The furor at that decision prompted an apology from the governing body and a promise to review the application.

Soul Cap welcomed the approval that has come more than one year later as “a huge step in the right direction” in a sport that historically has had few Black athletes.

“For a long time, conventional swim caps have been an obstacle for swimmers with thick, curly, or volume-blessed hair,” the company said. “They can’t always find a cap that fits their hair type, and that often means that swimmers from some backgrounds end up avoiding competitions or giving up the sport entirely.

“We’re excited to see the future of a sport that’s becoming more inclusive for the next generation of young swimmers.”

Thousands Pay Last Respects to Gorbachev at Funeral Snubbed by Putin

Thousands of people lined up in Moscow Saturday to pay their final respects to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, an architect of drastic reforms that helped end the Cold War.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was notably absent, with the Kremlin saying the president’s busy schedule prevented him from attending the funeral ceremony.

Mourners passed by Gorbachev’s open casket flanked by honor guards under the Russian flag in Moscow’s historic Hall of Columns, which has served as the venue for state funerals since Soviet times. Gorbachev’s daughter, Irina, and his two granddaughters sat beside the coffin.

Gorbachev was to be buried later on September 3 at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife, Raisa.

Gorbachev died on August 30 at the age 91 following a “serious and long illness” the hospital where he was treated said.

Gorbachev took over the Communist Party and Soviet leadership in 1985 and presided over six turbulent years that saw the fall of the Iron Curtain, the reunification of Germany, and ultimately the Soviet demise.

Despite the choice of the prestigious site for the farewell ceremony, the Kremlin stopped short of calling it a state funeral. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the ceremony will have “elements” of a state funeral, such as honor guards, and the government’s assistance in organizing it.

Declaring a state funeral for Gorbachev would have obliged Putin to attend it and would have required Moscow to invite foreign leaders, something that Russia was apparently reluctant to do amid growing tensions with the West over its unprovoked war in Ukraine.

The only senior foreign official to announce he would attend the funeral was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has often been critical of the Western sanctions against Russia.

Before the Ukraine conflict, Orban had a close relationship with Putin, but the Kremlin said there were no talks planned during his visit to Moscow.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council who served as Russia’s president in 2008-2012, attended the farewell ceremony. Medvedev then released a post on social media, referring to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and accusing the United States and its allies of trying to engineer Russia’s breakup, a policy he described as a “chess game with death.”

Flags were also flying at half-mast in Berlin on September 3, to honor the man who held back Soviet troops as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Some informarion for this report came from the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.

IAEA Visit to Ukraine Nuclear Plant Highlights Risks

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are used to risky missions — from the radioactive aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan to the politically charged Iranian nuclear program. But their deployment amid the war in Ukraine to Zaporizhzhia takes the threat to a new level and underscores the lengths to which the organization will go in attempts to avert a potentially catastrophic nuclear disaster.

The 6-month war sparked by Russia’s invasion of its western neighbor is forcing international organizations, not just the IAEA, to deploy teams during active hostilities in their efforts to impose order around Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, pursue accountability for war crimes and identify the dead.

“This is not the first time that an IAEA team has gone into a situation of armed hostilities,” said Tariq Rauf, the organization’s former head of verification and security, noting that the IAEA sent inspectors to Iraq in 2003 and to former Soviet Republic Georgia during fighting. “But this situation in Zaporizhzhia, I think it’s the most serious situation where the IAEA has sent people in ever, so it’s unprecedented.”

The IAEA’s Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi highlighted the risks Thursday when he led a team to the sprawling plant in southern Ukraine.

“There were moments when fire was obvious — heavy machine guns, artillery, mortars at two or three times were really very concerning, I would say, for all of us,” he said of his team’s journey through an active war zone to reach the plant.

Speaking to reporters after leaving colleagues inside, he said the agency was “not moving” from the plant from now on, and vowed a “continued presence” of agency experts.

But it remains to be seen what exactly the organization can accomplish.

“The IAEA cannot force a country to implement or enforce nuclear safety and security standards,” Rauf said in a telephone interview. “They can only advise and then it is up to … the state itself,” specifically the national nuclear regulator. In Ukraine, that is further complicated by the Russian occupation of the power station.

The IAEA is not the only international organization seeking to locate staff permanently in Ukraine amid the ongoing war.

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has visited Ukraine three times, set up an office in the country and sent investigators into a conflict zone to gather evidence amid widespread reports of atrocities. National governments including the Netherlands have sent expert investigators to help the court.

Khan told a United Nations meeting in April: “This is a time when we need to mobilize the law and send it into battle, not on the side of Ukraine against the Russian Federation or on the side of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, but on the side of humanity to protect, to preserve, to shield people … who have certain basic rights.”

The International Commission on Missing Persons, which uses a high-tech laboratory in The Hague to assist countries attempting to identify bodies, has already sent three missions to Ukraine and set up an office there.

Grossi, an Argentine diplomat, was previously a high-ranking official at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an organization that, after he had left, also was forced to send inspectors to conflicts.

In April 2018, an OPCW team sent to collect evidence of a suspected chlorine attack in Douma, Syria, was forced to wait in a hotel for days because of security concerns in the town, which was at the time under the protection of Russian military police.

When a U.N. security team visited Douma, gunmen shot at them and detonated an explosive, further delaying the OPCW’s fact-finding mission.

The IAEA’s biggest operation to monitor any country’s nuclear program is Iran, where it has been the key arbiter in determining the size, scope and aspects of Tehran’s program during the decades of tensions over it. Since Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the IAEA has had surveillance cameras and physical inspections at Iranian sites, even as questions persist over Iran’s military nuclear program, which the agency said ended in 2003.

But that monitoring hasn’t been easy. Since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the deal in 2018, Iran has stopped the IAEA from accessing footage from its surveillance cameras. Other online monitoring devices have been affected as well.

In 2019, Iran alleged an IAEA inspector tested positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates while trying to visit Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear facility. The IAEA strongly disputed Iran’s description of the incident, as did the U.S.

Another risky and challenging mission was in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan. About two weeks after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that caused reactor meltdowns and hydrogen explosions at reactor buildings, IAEA sent experts to monitor radiation, sample soil and check food safety, but they largely stayed outside of the plant. They returned later in full hazmat suits, masks, gloves and helmets to inspect the remains of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The situation in Zaporizhzhia, with Russia and Ukraine trading accusations of shelling the area, has the potential to be just as devastating.

“Any time a nuclear power plant is in the middle of armed hostilities, shelling on its territory and nearby creates unacceptable risks,” Rauf said. “So, you know, any misfired shell could hit one of the reactors or disable some system that can lead to much bigger consequences.”

Taiwan Sends Special Envoy to Former Pope’s Beatification

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has sent a special envoy to attend this weekend’s beatification of former Pope John Paul I, saying it demonstrates the close relations between the island and the Vatican, which has been courting China.

The Vatican is Chinese-claimed Taiwan’s sole European diplomatic ally, and Taipei has watched with concern as Pope Francis has moved to improve relations with China. The democratically governed island has formal ties with only 14 countries, largely due to Chinese pressure.

In a statement late Friday, Taiwan’s presidential office said former Vice President Chen Chien-jen, a devout Catholic, would attend Sunday’s ceremony as part of a nine-day trip.

The visit “demonstrates the close friendship between the two countries,” it said. Chen will also take part in a reception with the pope for members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, it added.

Tsai expressed hope that Chen would “continue to deepen the friendship between Taiwan and the Vatican, and continue to protect the shared belief in universal values between Taiwan and the Vatican.”

He went to the Vatican three times while in office, in 2016, 2018 and 2019, including attending the canonization ceremony of Mother Teresa.

Pope Francis told Reuters in July said that while the Vatican’s secret and contested agreement with China on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops is not ideal, he hoped it could be renewed in October because the Church takes the long view.

The deal, which was struck in 2018 and comes up for renewal every two years, was a bid to ease a longstanding divide across mainland China between an underground flock loyal to the pope and a state-backed official church.

Both sides now recognize the pope as supreme leader of the Catholic Church.

China’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, but in recent years the government has tightened restrictions on religions seen as a challenge to the authority of the ruling Communist Party.

Taiwan puts no restrictions on freedom of faith and has a thriving religious community that includes Christians, Buddhists and Muslims. 

Battle Over Energy Supplies Between Russia, West Heats Up 

An energy battle between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine revved up Friday with Moscow delaying the reopening of its main gas pipeline to Germany and G-7 nations announcing a price cap on Russian oil exports.

Russian energy giant Gazprom said it could not resume the supply of natural gas to Germany, just hours before it was set to restart deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Russia blamed a technical fault in the pipeline for the move, which is likely to worsen Europe’s energy crisis.

European Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer said Friday on Twitter that Gazprom acted under “fallacious pretenses” to shut down the pipeline.

Moscow has blamed Western sanctions that took effect after Russia invaded Ukraine for hindering the maintenance of the gas pipeline. Europe accuses Russia of using its leverage over gas supplies to retaliate against European sanctions.

Also Friday, finance ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies said they would work quickly to implement a price cap on Russian oil exports.

The G-7 ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States said the amount of the price cap would be determined later “based on a range of technical inputs.”

“This price cap on Russian oil exports is designed to reduce [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s revenues, closing an important source of funding for the war of aggression,” said German Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

The jockeying for control of energy supplies comes as Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, where U.N. inspectors are seeking to avert a potential disaster.

Ukraine’s military said Friday that it had carried out strikes against a Russian base in the southern town of Enerhodar, near the nuclear power plant.

Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling near the facility. Kyiv also accuses Moscow of storing ammunition around the plant and using it as a shield for carrying out attacks, charges Russia denies.

Inspectors from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have visited the Zaporizhzhia plant, braving artillery blasts to reach the facility on Thursday.

Ukraine’s nuclear agency, Energoatom, on Friday accused Russia of “making every effort” to prevent the IAEA mission from learning the real situation at the facility.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Thursday, “Ukraine did everything to make this mission happen. But it is bad that the occupiers are trying to turn this IAEA mission — a really necessary one — into a fruitless tour of the plant.”

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, leading the inspection group, told reporters Thursday the agency was “establishing our continued presence” at Europe’s biggest nuclear facility. He said it was obvious that the “physical integrity” of the Zaporizhzhia plant “has been violated several times.”

Grossi said, “I worried, I worry, and I will continue to be worried about the plant.”

The Zaporizhzhia plant has been controlled by Russia since the earliest days of its invasion but is operated by Ukrainian engineers.

With the nuclear plant in a war zone, world leaders have expressed fears it could be damaged and result in a radiation disaster like that at Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant in 1986.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

Treatment Improves Cognition in Down Syndrome Patients

A new hormone treatment improved the cognitive function of six men with Down syndrome by 10% to 30%, scientists said this week, adding the “promising” results may raise hopes of improving patients’ quality of life.

However, the scientists emphasized the small study did not point toward a cure for the cognitive disorders of people with Down syndrome and that far more research is needed.

“The experiment is very satisfactory, even if we remain cautious,” Nelly Pitteloud of Switzerland’s Lausanne University Hospital, co-author of a new study in the journal Science, said Thursday.

Down syndrome is the most common genetic form of intellectual disability, occurring in about one in 1,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.

Yet previous research has failed to significantly improve cognition when applied to people with the condition, which is why the latest findings are “particularly important,” the study said.

Recent discoveries have suggested that how the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) is produced in the brain can affect cognitive functioning such as memory, language and learning.

GnRH hormones regulate how much testosterone and estrogen are produced, and increased levels of it help spur puberty.

“We wondered if this hormone could play any role in establishing the symptoms of people with Down syndrome,” said Vincent Prevot, study co-author and head of neuroscience research at France’s INSERM institute.

Research on mice

The team first established that five strands of microRNA regulating the production of GnRH were dysfunctional in mice specifically engineered for Down syndrome research.

They then demonstrated that cognitive deficiencies — as well as loss of smell, a common symptom of Down syndrome — were linked to dysfunctioning GnRH secretion in the mice.

The team then gave the mice a GnRH medication used to treat low testosterone and delayed puberty in humans, finding that it restored some cognitive function and sense of smell.

A pilot study was conducted in Switzerland involving seven men with Down syndrome aged 20 to 50.

They each received the treatment through their arm every two hours over a period of six months, with the drug delivered in pulses to mimic the hormone’s frequency in people without Down syndrome.

Cognition and smell tests were carried out during the treatment, as were MRI scans.

Six of the seven men showed improvement in cognition with no significant side effects, and none showed a change in sense of smell.

“We have seen an improvement of between 10% to 30% in cognitive functions, in particular with visuospatial function, three-dimensional representation, understanding of instructions as well as attention,” Pitteloud said.

The patients were asked to draw a simple 3D bed at several stages throughout the therapy. Many struggled at the beginning but by the end the efforts were noticeably better.

‘Improve quality of life’

The authors acknowledged some limitations of the study, including its size and that the choice of patients was “pushed by their parents.”

“The clinical trial only focused on seven male patients — we still have a lot of work to do to prove the effectiveness of GnRH treatment for Down syndrome,” Pitteloud said.

A larger study involving a placebo and 50 to 60 patients, a third of them women, is expected to begin in the coming months.

“We are not going to cure the cognitive disorders of people with Down syndrome, but the improvement seen in our results already seems fundamental enough to hope to improve their quality of life,” Pitteloud said.

Fabian Fernandez, an expert in cognition and Down syndrome at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the research, hailed the “tour de force study.”

He told AFP that while it is “difficult to envision” how such an intensive treatment could be used for young people, it might be better suited to delay the Alzheimer’s disease-related dementia suffered by many adults with Down syndrome.

It was also difficult to predict how such an improvement could impact the lives of people with the condition, he said.

“For some, it could be significant, however, as it would enable them to be more independent with daily living activities such as maintaining and enjoying hobbies, finding belongings, using appliances in the home and traveling alone.”