U.S. future funding for Ukraine was up in the air Thursday, as the Biden administration discussed how best to support Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders without a House speaker to bring Ukraine aid packages to a vote. VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb reports.
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Almost 50 European leaders used a summit in the southern Spanish city of Granada on Thursday to stress that they stand by Ukraine at a time when Western resolve appears weakened. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that besides maintaining such unity, more military aid to get through the winter was essential. 

Despite the political, economic and military support, the desperate struggle to rid Ukraine territory of invading Russian forces has ground to a stalemate, and Zelenskyy insisted that it was no time for wavering in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin – especially now that questions about continued support are growing in the United States, too. 

“Europe must be strong” despite what happens in other places like the United States, Zelenskyy said, calling on the leaders to provide for more air defense systems, artillery shells, long-range missiles and drones. 

He said that victory or defeat in Ukraine would determine the fate of all of Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron seized upon the view and insisted that even if U.S. President Joe Biden had this week reassured everyone that Washington’s commitment remained strong, it was first and foremost for Europe to act. 

“Even if we are lucky to have such a committed American partner, we ourselves have to be totally committed, because this is in our immediate neighborhood,” Macron said. 

Yet, even if the European Union promised Thursday to continue its support for Kyiv, it could never replace Washington’s contribution if funds were to dry up there, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said. “Certainly we can do more. But the U.S. is something irreplaceable for the support of Ukraine.” 

That was a worry lingering over the third meeting of the European Political Community forum, which was formed in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that drastically reset the continent’s political agenda and fundamentally undermined long-held beliefs on peace and stability on the continent. 

Support from Europe has become all the more important after the U.S. Congress hastily sent Biden legislation over the weekend that kept the federal government funded, but left off billions in funding for Ukraine’s war effort that the White House had vigorously backed. 

Biden called other world powers on Tuesday to coordinate on Ukraine in a deliberate show of U.S. support at a time when the future of its aid is questioned by an important faction of Republicans who want to cut off money to Kyiv. 

“Everybody is looking at the situation with obviously a lot of vigilance,” said Macron. 

Europe, too, has to deal with its doubters. 

Last weekend’s election in Slovakia, where pro-Russia candidate Robert Fico was the big winner, and Hungary’s continued recalcitrance to fully back Ukraine have cast increasing shadows on Europe’s commitment. That counts especially for the European Union, where many decisions on Ukraine need unanimity among the bloc’s 27 members. 

In Slovakia early this week, the president refused a plan by her country’s caretaker government to send further military aid to Ukraine, saying it doesn’t have the authority and parties that oppose such support are in talks to form a government following last week’s election. 

“The main challenge that we have,” Zelenskyy said, “is to save unity in Europe.” 

On Thursday, though, the overall mood was supportive. Like most leaders, summit host and Spanish caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stood firmly behind Ukraine and offered Zelenskyy a new package of anti-aircraft and anti-drone systems and training for Ukrainian soldiers to use them. 

And Zelenskyy said after meeting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that Berlin “is working on” providing Ukraine with another Patriot air defense system, to be operational within months. 

Zelenskyy insisted that Putin’s attempts to divide the West would not cease. 

“Russia will attack by information, disinformation, by fakes, et cetera,” he said. 

Talks were held just as news came in of a Russian rocket striking a village cafe and store in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 51 civilians, in one of the deadliest attacks in the war in months. 

The contrast could hardly be greater when the leaders attended a royal dinner hosted by Spain’s King Felipe VI at Granada’s famed Moorish Alhambra Palace, with its refined halls and gardens known for their fountains and decorative pools.
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The first shipment of Russian uranium was officially delivered Thursday to Bangladesh to fuel the nation’s only nuclear power plant, currently under construction.

The uranium has been in Bangladesh since late last month but was officially handed over to Bangladesh authorities in a ceremony attended via video link by Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Construction of the plant, called Rooppur, has been carried out by Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation, and funded by Moscow. Bangladesh received an $11.38 billion loan from Russia for the project, to be paid back over two decades beginning in 2027. The loan financed 90% of the construction.

Rooppur is the first of two plants set to be constructed in Bangladesh with the help of Rosatom.

Once completed, Bangladesh will become the 33rd country in the world to produce nuclear power.

Upon completion, Rooppur is set to produce 2,400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 15 million homes, and according to Putin, it will be responsible for 10% of Bangladesh’s energy consumption.

Russia is currently facing sanctions and other obstacles because of its invasion of Ukraine.

However, Sergey Lavrov, who became the first Russian foreign minister to visit Bangladesh since its 1971 independence, assured the South Asian nation that the project would be completed on time.

The traditionally good relationship between Bangladesh and Russia has not been weakened since the invasion of Ukraine, and the two countries have signed several agreements to work together to establish a nuclear power industry in Bangladesh.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The Belarus Red Cross says it is examining a call by the international Red Cross to fire its chief, who made headlines earlier this year for bragging that his organization was ferrying children from Russian-occupied Ukraine to Belarus.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva said Wednesday it wants Dzmitry Shautsou ousted for violating its rules on neutrality and integrity. He was seen in occupied cities of the Donbas region in a military uniform with the “Z” insignia of Russian forces and said he favored deployment of nuclear arms in Belarus.

Yulia Sytenkova, a spokeswoman for the Belarus Red Cross, said Shautsou was re-elected as its head September 7 at a special congress where “the majority of members of the Belarusian organization expressed confidence in him.”

Belarusian TV on Thursday aired images of authorities in the Belarusian city of Novopolotsk showing a recently arrived group of Ukrainian children to foreign diplomats. Ukrainian officials and human rights groups have decried the transfers as illegal removals, and it is not clear whether they were carried out with the consent of the children’s parents or legal guardians.

The children arrived in Belarus on September 19, and included 44 from the eastern Ukrainian cities of Lysychansk and Sevierodonetsk. The cities have been occupied since July 2022 and sit near the current front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine over 19 months ago.

The head of the government of Novopolotsk, Dzmitry Dziamidau, said another group of children had previously arrived in the city — and both were brought in “to tear children away from the horrors of war.”

One girl, identified as 11-year-old Polina Snihurska, said she was enrolled at a Belarusian school. Belarusian authorities did not specify whether the children were orphans or had guardians in Ukraine.

The two-day visit by diplomats included envoys from former Soviet republics plus China, India, Syria and Mozambique, Belarusian officials said. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry urged diplomats not to take part in the “propaganda trip.”

Both the Belarus Red Cross and international Red Cross in recent days have said the Belarus chapter wasn’t involved in the transfers of children from Ukraine. The Red Cross and local officials said a charity founded by Belarusian Paralympic athlete Alexei Talai, which has government support, conducted the transfers.

But a report aired in July by state Belarus 1 TV channel showed Shautsou visiting Lysychansk and saying the Belarus Red Cross was taking “an active part” in the transfers, which he said were designed for “health improvement” purposes.

The international Red Cross said Wednesday its board has given the Belarus chapter until November 30 to dismiss Shautsou or else it will suspend the branch and recommend that all affiliates halt new partnerships and funding for it.

Sytenkova, the Belarus Red Cross spokeswoman, said it was studying the decision “and a reaction will soon follow.”

The Belarusian opposition has called for President Alexander Lukashenko and all others involved in the removal of children from Ukraine to be brought to justice over the transfers.

Opposition leader Pavel Latushka, a former government minister, has said he has handed over to the International Criminal Court documents proving that there have been illegal transfers of Ukrainian children to Belarus.

“Alexander Lukashenko, members of his family, as well as people close to him organized a system of removing children — in particular, orphans — from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Belarus,” Latushka told The Associated Press.

“The main purpose of sending these children to Belarus is their ideological indoctrination in accordance with the narratives of the ‘Russian world,'” he said.

Latushka said at least 2,100 Ukrainian children aged 6 to 15 years were transferred from over a dozen Ukrainian cities to Belarus between September 2022 and May of this year.

Belarus has been Moscow’s closest ally since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Lukashenko allowed the Kremlin to use Belarusian territory to send troops and weapons into Ukraine.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Thursday that the detonation of hand grenades inside the aircraft, not a missile attack, caused the August plane crash that killed Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“Fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of those killed in the crash,” Putin told a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The Russian leader said the head of Russia’s crash investigative committee reported to him a few days ago on its findings.

“There was no external impact on the plane — this is already an established fact,” Putin said, seemingly rejecting assertions by unidentified U.S. officials who said shortly after the crash that they believed it had been shot down.

Some Western officials have suggested that Putin ordered the killing of Prigozhin, whose mercenaries fought alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, after the Wagner Group leader led a short-lived mutiny against the Kremlin in late June.

Thousands of Prigozhin’s troops subsequently settled in Belarus, although more recently several hundred have returned to the front lines in Ukraine to resume fighting for Russia.

Prigozhin traveled freely in Russia before the August 23 crash that killed him, two other top Wagner figures, four bodyguards and a crew of three.

Putin gave no details on how a grenade or grenades could have been detonated on the plane. He faulted investigators for not having carried out alcohol and drug tests on the crash victims given that quantities of cocaine had been found in the past in Wagner’s office in St. Petersburg.

Some material in this report came from Reuters.
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More than 100-thousand Russian citizens – many of them young people – have gone to Armenia to flee President Vladimir Putin’s repression or avoid being sent to fight in Ukraine, an exile that many of them believed was temporary but is starting to look permanent. Ricardo Marquina has this report from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, narrated by Elizabeth Cherneff.
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As is the case in Italy, Greece is facing new wave of illegal immigration, and as it boosts measures to contain the influx, the government is now pressing its European Union partners to join forces in deporting migrants back to their countries. Greece is expected to raise the proposal at a meeting of national leaders in Spain this week but mustering an agreement among the EU’s 27 members may be difficult.

Greek migration minister Dimitris Keridis revealed the proposal as the government in Athens grows “wary and concerned,” as he put it, of a new migration crisis. 

Concerns have mounted as the number of illegal immigrants arriving in Greece has risen to 31,000 this year, up from 18,000 for all of 2022.

This comes nearly a decade after Europe’s poorest state saw more than a million, mainly Syrian, refugees stream through its frontiers and into the heart of Europe, in the biggest migratory push to the West since World War II.

While nearly 680,000 migrants have been legalized since 2021, Keridis said about 60,000 migrants remain in the country illegally. He said their numbers continue to grow because countries such as Pakistan and Iran refuse to accept their nationals back in forced deportations.

He said the EU as a whole has to demand that these countries take back these illegal migrants, or else face sanctions.

Keridis did not say what such punitive measures may include, but he said it was imperative for what he called an EU deportation mechanism to be set up. Failure to do so, he said, would effectively allow human traffickers already pushing countless droves of illegal migrants to the West to take the EU and its migration policies “hostage,” as he put it.

It would also endanger Europe’s bid to help and safeguard refugees in need, Keridis said.

It is imperative, the minister said, for refugees to be distinguished from illegal migrants because if all of them end up staying, it will create such a crisis that it could ultimately lead to Europe’s closure of all its borders, thus failing to protect true refugees escape wars and persecution.

Like Greece, Italy and Spain have been facing rising illegal migration in recent months. And while Europe’s already restrictive approach to immigration has come under human rights groups’ fire, the EU agreed Wednesday to adopt a new list of what it called “crisis regulations measures,” to deal with periods of exceptionally high migrant arrivals.

Immigration, though, has Europe largely divided, and ahead of EU elections next year many right-wing parties in countries such as Italy, Hungary, Poland and Germany have made the issue central to their polices, demanding more restrictions. 

Whether the EU will adopt Greece’s call for sanctions remains unclear.

Until then, Keridis said, the Greek government will not remain idle.

A recent thawing of tense relations between long-time foes Greece and Turkey has both sides now working together on a deal that would revive and revise a landmark agreement hatched at the height of Europe’s 2016 migration crisis. The deal aims to crack down on human smugglers and contain illegal flows of migration from Turkey’s massive pool of 4 million refugees and migrants.

He said, the bigger issue at stake for Greece is not to lose this momentum and drive for concrete results, but also not to allow Italy to monopolize all the focus on illegal migration. A decade after two shipwrecks off Italy’s Lapendusa took the lives of hundreds of migrants, similar tragedies have followed, with the region once again at the center of a new European refugee crisis. If Italy manages to its block paths of migrant entries to Europe, he said, we will see an explosion of entries to Greece.

Greece and Turkey are aiming to have a separate migration deal ready by early December.
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Ukraine’s military said Thursday it destroyed 24 drones launched by Russian forces overnight.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia sent a total of 29 drones in attacks directed at the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kirohovrad regions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to attend a meeting of European leaders in Spain on Thursday as he seeks more support for his military, including air defense systems.

Zelenskyy said ahead of the meeting that Ukraine is doing its best to boost its air defenses ahead of the coming winter season.

“We are expecting certain decisions from our partners,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

U.S. President Joe Biden called key Western allies on Tuesday to reassure them of continued American military support for Ukraine after a group of congressional Republicans forced the exclusion of immediate new funding for Kyiv.

The White House said Biden spoke with the leaders of Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania, Britain, and of the European Union and NATO, along with the foreign minister of France.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Biden reaffirmed the strong commitment of the United States to supporting Ukraine as it defends itself “for as long as it takes, as did every other leader on the call.”

Kirby said the leaders discussed efforts to continue providing Ukraine with the ammunition and the weapons systems that it needs to defend itself and to continue strengthening Ukrainian air defenses as they prepare for more attacks on critical infrastructure. “Now, certainly, but also certainly in the winter months ahead,” Kirby said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military command said that it has sent about 1.1 million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine that American naval forces seized from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps last year as Tehran tried to transfer the ammunition to Houthi fighters in Yemen in violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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NATO’s most senior military official has warned that European ammunition stocks are running short – as the West continues to send large amounts of military aid to Ukraine to fend off invading Russian forces. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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NATO’s most senior military official has warned that European ammunition stocks are running short as the West continues to send large amounts of military aid to Ukraine to fend off invading Russian forces.  

Admiral Rob Bauer, who chairs the NATO Military Committee, said Europe needed to ramp up production as the war enters its 20th month.   

“We now give away weapons systems to Ukraine, which is great, and ammunition — but not from full warehouses. We started to give away from half full or lower warehouses in Europe. And therefore, the bottom of the barrel is now visible, and we need the industry to ramp up production in a much higher tempo. We need large volumes,” Bauer told delegates Wednesday at the Warsaw Security Forum, adding that political leaders needed to act faster.   

“We need the continued support from the political level because it’s not only the money, it is also the actions in the nations that lead to more readier forces and the capabilities we need,” Bauer said. “And if you actually see that in the seven years before the war, the [defense] budgets went up already, but the industry did not increase the production capacity. And that has led to higher prices already before the war.”

Forces fire thousands daily 

Ukrainian forces are firing several thousand artillery shells every day at invading Russian forces, with much of the ammunition supplied by Kyiv’s Western allies. NATO member states also have given Kyiv tanks, armored vehicles, missile and air defense systems and an array of other military hardware. 

The European Union, Britain and the United States have outlined plans to ramp up weapons production. The EU earlier this year allocated $2.2 billion for the joint procurement and delivery of up to an additional 1 million rounds of artillery ammunition to Ukraine by early 2024, and an additional $550 million to urgently boost EU defense industry capacities in ammunition production. 

Simultaneously replenishing stockpiles — and supplying Ukraine — will require clearer signals from Western political leaders, said analyst Simona Soare of Britain’s Lancaster University, a former EU defense adviser. 

“Efforts from a budgetary point of view, from a procurement point of view, that allies have made individually and jointly, are still not on par with the level of the demand,” Soare told VOA. “It all starts with that absolutely clear demand signal that comes from our political and military leadership towards our industry to engage in this effort jointly. And I believe that there is a lot more that can be done from that level to communicate that this effort is not a temporary surge, but rather it’s a sustained, potentially longer-term effort.”  

Pentagon warns US leaders

In a letter to congressional leaders this week, the Pentagon warned it is running low on money to replace weapons the U.S. has sent to Ukraine. 

According to The Associated Press, Pentagon comptroller Michael McCord told House and Senate leaders there is $1.6 billion left of the $25.9 billion Congress provided to replenish U.S. military stocks that have been flowing to Kyiv and urged them to replenish funding. 

The United States has given an estimated $46.6 billion in military aid to Kyiv since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. The U.S. Congress passed a last-minute stopgap funding bill September 30 to avert a government shutdown, but it did not include any new aid for Ukraine. President Joe Biden has vowed to continue American support for Kyiv. 

Meanwhile, the EU has given almost $27 billion, and Britain an estimated $7 billion in military aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. 

Boosting weapons production takes time, Soare said. 

“It takes on average between two and four years to set up a new production line for high-intensity military equipment that you need in Ukraine,” Soare told VOA. “Same thing goes for munitions. We’re talking about hundreds, potentially thousands of people who need to have very, very niche skill sets to be employed in this undertaking.”

Soare added that Europe must diversify its supply chains for the crucial raw materials needed to produce modern weapons. 

“There are significant and long-standing dependencies on single providers for some of these absolutely critical rare earths, for instance, which now go at astronomical prices,” she said. “And that impacts on the affordability side of the war effort.”
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Pope Francis has opened a synod – or meeting of Roman Catholic bishops from all over the world – that, this time, includes lay people and women. A number of thorny issues are on the agenda over the next few weeks – all behind closed doors.

With a solemn Mass in Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, Pope Francis formally opened a four-week meeting that gathers 365 select members with voting rights, including lay people and not just bishops. It will also see women voting for the first time.

No binding decisions will be made, but controversial topics are up for discussion at the closed-door meeting, held in Vatican City’s Paul the Sixth Hall. They include the role of ordinary Catholics – including women – in decision-making processes; whether priests should be allowed to marry; and the church’s teachings on divorce and LGBTQ issues.

The theme of the meeting is “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission.”

Commentators say it is likely to expose deep divisions between liberals and conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church.

In his homily at Wednesday’s Mass, Pope Francis said church leaders at the gathering “do not need a purely natural vision, made up of human strategies, political calculations or ideological battles.”

The pope added: “We are not here to carry out a parliamentary meeting or a plan of reformation. The synod, he said, is not a parliament.”

Before the start of discussions, five conservative cardinals called on Pope Francis to reaffirm the church’s doctrine on same-sex couples and the ordination of women. In a letter, they presented five questions and expressed their concern that some in church leadership are no longer proposing sound doctrine but “teachings according to their own likings.”

In a written response, the pontiff steered away from providing the yes-no answers the cardinals requested and observers say he appeared to be open to the possibility of blessing same-sex couples.

The 86-year-old pontiff said that “we cannot be judges who only deny, reject and exclude.” He wrote, “Pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of blessing, requested by one or more persons, that do not convey a mistaken concept of marriage.”

At Wednesday’s Mass, Pope Francis said the synod aims to reaffirm “a church that looks mercifully at humanity,” and is “united and fraternal, that listens and dialogues; a church that blesses and encourages.”

Ahead of the meeting, Vatican officials said no media would be allowed and attendees were instructed to not speak to reporters about the discussions.
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When members of a tourist group did not like the food in the only restaurant in Turkey’s ancient city of Mardin in 2000, their tour guide, Ebru Baybara Demir, invited them to her home for dinner. That decision created a whole new life and career for Demir. VOA’s Mahmut Bozarslan has this report from Mardin, narrated by Begum Donmez Ersoz.
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A bus carrying dozens of people plummeted 15 meters (50 feet) from an elevated road in Venice, causing a fiery crash that killed 21 people and injured at least 15, mostly foreign tourists returning to a nearby campsite.

Those who died in the Tuesday night crash included at least five Ukrainians, one German citizen and the man who was driving the bus, according to the Venice prefecture.

At least two of the dead were children, Venice prefect Michele Di Bari said, adding that many of the people involved in the accident were “young.” Nine people were in critical condition, hospital officials said Wednesday morning, including a 3-year-old girl from Ukraine.

Firefighters worked until dawn Wednesday to clear the wreckage. Later in the morning, traffic was slowly passing the spot where the bus burst through a guardrail and a rusted fence.

The accident scene drew the attention of passersby. A couple of locals said that the overpass was more than 60 years old and that nothing similar had ever happened there, while a man wearing a biker jacket stopped his motorcycle to tie a bouquet of plastic flowers to a post.

The bus was carrying foreign tourists from Venice’s Piazzale Roma to the Hu campground on Tuesday evening when it fell from an elevated street next to railway tracks in the borough of Mestre, catching fire. Tourists frequently stay in boroughs across the lagoon from the canals of Venice’s famous historic center to find cheaper accommodations.

The injured included French, Spanish, Austrian and Croatian nationals, local officials said. The Spanish Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that two people from Spain were injured in the accident, and both were hospitalized and in good condition.

The French Foreign Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that there was a French national among the injured. Hospital psychologists were working to help the victims deal with the trauma.

The Italian driver, Alberto Rizzotto, was killed in the crash. Venice city councilor Renato Boraso said that Rizzotto was an experienced driver, and that local prosecutors are investigating if he felt ill.

Veneto region’s governor Luca Zaia said on Wednesday that the dynamic of the accident remained hard to decipher. “Everything makes one think of an illness,” Zaia said. “The driver was an expert, a good person, very well referenced.”

Rescuers noted that the fact that the bus was electric contributed to the massive fire and made rescue operations more difficult.

Godstime Erheneden was in his apartment near the site when he heard the crash. He rushed outside and was among the first to enter the bus.

“When we went in, we saw the driver right away. He was dead. I carried a woman out on my shoulders, then a man,” Erheneden told the local newspaper il Gazzettino.

“The woman was screaming, ‘my daughter, my daughter,’ and I went back in. I saw this girl who must have been 2 years old. I have a son who is a year and 10 months old, and they are the same size. I felt like I was holding my son in my arms. It was terrible. I don’t know if she survived. I thought she was alive but when the rescuers arrived, they took her away immediately,” Erheneden said.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the scene was “apocalyptic” and declared a state of mourning.

In 2017, 16 people on a bus carrying Hungarian students died in an accident near the northern city of Verona. And in 2013, 40 people were killed in one of Italy’s worst vehicle accidents when a bus plunged off a viaduct close to the southern city of Avellino.
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Emergency services on the Spanish Canary Islands said Wednesday that more than 500 migrants have reached there in four large wooden boats this week.

One of the boats was carrying 280 migrants, the islands’ emergency service said on X, formerly known as Twitter. The state news agency EFE says it was the largest number in a single boat since human traffickers began to regularly use the Canary Island route in 1994.

Spanish Red Cross coordinator José Antonio Rodríguez Verona told The Associated Press he had not seen so many people in one boat since 2008, when 234 arrived in a single vessel.

Only five of the migrants needed medical treatment on arrival at the small port of La Restinga on the southern tip of Hierro Island.

Hundreds of other migrants were intercepted trying to reach other islands in the archipelago, located off the northwest coast of Africa, and elsewhere on mainland Spain in recent days.

Spain’s Interior Ministry says nearly 15,000 migrants reached the Canary Islands by boat from Jan 1 to Sept 30, 2023. That’s a 20% increase from the same period last year. Most departed from Senegal.
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This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced Wednesday in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. 

The announcement will be made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the Physics prize Tuesday to three nuclear scientists for their individual experiments in “exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules.”

The academy said Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier “have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.”

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal of Denmark for their work in advancing the field of so-called click chemistry, described by the academy as a functional and simple form of chemistry “in which molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently.”

The Nobel announcements began Monday with the prize in Medicine going to Hungary’s Kataline Kariko and Drew Weissman of the United States for their joint research that led to the rapid development of the mRNA COVID vaccines.

The recipients of the literature and peace prizes will be announced Thursday and Friday, respectively, with the final prize for economic sciences to be announced next Monday.

All the categories except economics were established in the will of 19th century Swedish businessman Alfred Nobel, who made a fortune with his invention of dynamite.

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after his death.

The economics prize was established in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank Sveriges Riksbank in Nobel’s memory, with the first laureates, Norway’s Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen of the Netherlands, announced the next year.
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The White House says a recent high-level call “reaffirmed the strong partnership between South Africa and the United States” — a move that analysts said Tuesday improves what has long been a tense relationship, marred by a public diplomatic spat and Pretoria’s reluctance to disengage from Russia.

In a readout issued late Monday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he spoke by phone to his South African counterpart, Sydney Mufamadi, and that the two “recommitted to advance shared priorities including trade and investment, infrastructure, health, and climate.”

Sullivan also thanked South Africa for hosting an upcoming high-level meeting on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which allows duty-free U.S. market access and expires in 2025. South Africa is one of the program’s top beneficiaries, and congressional Democrats and Republicans had suggested that South Africa be excluded from this year’s forum over the diplomatic dust-up.

Four different analysts told VOA that Monday’s call between the two national security advisers makes clear that the diplomatic disagreement has been laid to rest and that the two are redefining their relationship.

“Overall,” said Ebenezer Obadare, a Nigerian American academic who follows the continent at the Council on Foreign Relations, “Pretoria seems to have emerged from this a little bit stronger and Washington with some egg on its face.”

The tale of Lady R

The two nations have been on the outs since May, when the U.S. ambassador publicly accused South Africa of secretly supplying arms and ammunition to Russia, in violation of U.S. sanctions.

That prompted Pretoria to call him in for a dressing-down, and for President Cyril Ramaphosa to launch an investigation into the saga behind the Russian cargo ship Lady R, which docked near Cape Town in late 2022 and was unloaded in the dead of night. The vessel was under U.S. sanctions and had been turned away for that reason when it attempted to dock at another port.

In May, U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Reuben Brigety described the situation as “fundamentally unacceptable” and said, “We are confident that weapons were loaded onto that vessel, and I would bet my life on the accuracy of that assertion.”

South Africa’s investigation into the matter wrapped up last month. The government’s summary of the classified report said the ship was carrying unspecified equipment meant for South Africa’s military and that “despite some rumors that some equipment or arms were loaded on the ship, the panel found no evidence to substantiate those claims.”

The incident deepened a divide between the two: South Africa was among the 35 countries that abstained from a United Nations vote to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

The Moscow-Pretoria friendship traces back decades, because the Soviet Union supported the then-banned African National Congress (ANC), which has led the nation since it abandoned racist minority rule and became a democracy in 1994. The two are among the five BRICS nations — the bloc that also includes Brazil, India and China.

What now?

Obadare said South Africa’s status — the democratic stalwart is also a continental mining, banking and telecoms leader — means Washington feels “it has no choice but to commit to the relationship for the long term. Washington no doubt resents Pretoria’s continued dealings with Russia, but it is significant that it cannot afford to walk away. The South African leadership also knows this.”

Joshua Meservey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Washington comes out “looking confused and probably timid.”

“South Africa escapes with its AGOA access intact, and the ANC doesn’t now face the prospect of yet another economic blow before elections next year,” he said, adding: “It appears that Washington has meekly accepted the findings of South Africa’s Lady R investigation that exonerated itself.

“That means that either the intelligence that Brigety cited was bad, or that he was freelancing — neither of which is likely, given how publicly and forcefully he made the claims. So, it seems that the U.S. is merely rolling over on an egregious provocation.”

But will any of this make South Africa sway from its nonaligned stance on Ukraine? From Johannesburg, governance and diplomacy researcher Isabel Bosman told VOA that seems unlikely and that Ramaphosa will continue to push for an African-brokered peace plan.

“Nonalignment is a vital component of South Africa’s foreign policy, and its importance in the context of the African Peace Initiative on the Ukraine-Russia war should not be overlooked,” Bosman said.

“The patching up of South Africa’s relationship with the U.S. will not go unnoticed in Moscow. It will be interesting to see if any counterproposals to any U.S. offers on the indicated shared objectives between the U.S. and South Africa come from Russia.”

Meservey predicted that the relationship will remain trade- and investment-focused “because there is little prospect of convergence on foreign policy issues. The ANC’s ideals and values are fundamentally misaligned with the U.S.’s on foreign policy, and until that changes, or until the ANC no longer sets the foreign policy direction for South Africa, the U.S. and South Africa won’t be close diplomatic partners.”

But the diplomatic dust-up, said Michael Walsh, a senior fellow who researches South Africa at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, made an important point: “It did make people in the U.S. realize that South Africa is a country that matters, and we need to pay attention to it.”

VOA also reached out to South African Foreign Ministry spokesperson Clayson Monyela seeking comment, but he did not reply. 
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Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster could signal a shift in the U.S. House of Representatives on aid to Ukraine, with some of his possible successors strongly in favor of assisting Kyiv, but others staunchly opposed. 

The House voted for the first time on Tuesday to remove its leader, as eight of McCarthy’s fellow Republicans voted with 208 Democrats against him. There was no immediate indication of who might succeed McCarthy, but the next speaker could quash more Ukraine aid before a proposal reaches the House floor if that person opposes the idea. 

The vote to oust McCarthy came just three days after he led the House to pass a stopgap spending bill to prevent a government shutdown that included no new money for Ukraine, highlighting the reluctance of some members of his caucus to back Ukraine funds. 

A Ukraine “report card” by Defending Democracy Together’s “Republicans for Ukraine” campaign rated the leading candidates on the strength of their support for past Ukraine aid. Republican opponents of the aid view it as excessive spending and a misplaced U.S. policy priority. 

Those ratings ranging from A to F — signifying support or opposition to prior bills — could indicate how likely each would be to bring Ukraine aid to a vote if he becomes speaker. 

Representative Tom Emmer, the House Republican whip, got the highest rating, an A. Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, has long been favored to take over as speaker after McCarthy and received one notch lower, a B.   

Representative Matt Gaetz, who led the push to oust McCarthy, has said he would support Scalise. 

Gaetz himself, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan and hardline rising star Representative Byron Donalds all received Fs. 

The White House said on Tuesday it was confident that the United States would ultimately provide more assistance for Ukraine, no matter the fate of McCarthy’s speakership. 

McCarthy, who got a B-minus grade, early this week denied accusations by Gaetz that he had cut “a secret deal” with Biden to allow the House to vote on Ukraine aid. McCarthy said then he wanted more information from the Biden administration. 

President Joe Biden asked Congress in July to approve another $24 billion related to Ukraine, which Ukraine supporters — Republicans as well as Democrats — had hoped could become law as part of a spending bill. 
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Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania have agreed on a plan they hope will help expedite Ukrainian grain exports, officials said Tuesday, with needy countries beyond Europe potentially benefiting from speedier procedures.

The deal means that grain inspections will shift from the Ukraine-Poland border to a Lithuanian port on the Baltic Sea, according to a statement from the Ukrainian farm ministry.

The move seeks to facilitate the transit of Ukrainian exports through Polish territory, the statement said, without providing further details.

From the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, where the inspections for pests and plant diseases will take place from Wednesday, the grain can be exported by sea around the world.

While the stated goal is to hasten Ukrainian grain exports, the agreement may also help defuse tensions over grain prices between Ukraine and Poland a time when some international support for Kyiv’s efforts to throw back Russia’s invasion may be fraying.

Agricultural exports have brought one of the biggest threats to European unity for Ukraine since Russia invaded.

Russia dealt a huge blow by withdrawing in July from a wartime agreement that ensured safe passage for Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea. That has left more expensive overland routes through Europe as the main path for Ukraine’s exports.

Farmers in nearby countries have been upset that Ukraine’s food products have flooded their local markets, pushing prices down and hurting their livelihoods. Sealed freight has helped combat that problem, and sending Ukrainian grain straight to the Lithuanian port may also be an answer.

Poland, Hungary and Slovakia announced bans on local imports of Ukrainian food after a European Union embargo ended in mid-September. Ukraine filed a complaint soon afterward with the World Trade Organization as the spat worsened.

The EU countries said they would keep allowing those products to move through their borders to parts of the world where people are going hungry.

Ukraine is a major global supplier of wheat, barley, corn and vegetable oil and has struggled since Russia’s invasion to get its food products to parts of the world in need.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 29 out of 31 Shahed drones and one Iskander-K cruise missile launched over Ukraine early Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s air force reported.

The attack was targeted at Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region and the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine, it said. No injuries were reported but an industrial facility was damaged.

Ukraine’s presidential office said Tuesday that at least two civilians were killed and 14 were wounded over the previous 24 hours.

The greatest number of casualties occurred in the south, where the Russian army shelled the regional capital Kherson nine times, it said.
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Russian prosecutors are seeking a 9½-year sentence for a fugitive former state TV journalist who famously stormed a live news broadcast in protest a few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Marina Ovsyannikova, who formerly worked as an editor at state-controlled Channel One in Russia, now lives in exile in France after escaping house arrest and fleeing Russia with her daughter last year.

Now, prosecutors are demanding the nearly decadelong sentence at Ovsyannikova’s trial in absentia for distributing “fake news.”

This news comes a few days after American journalist Evan Gershkovich marked six months in a Russian jail over espionage charges that he and the U.S. government vehemently deny.

Ovsyannikova’s first protest took place less than three weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. She stormed a studio of Channel One during a live broadcast holding a placard that read, “Stop the war” and “They’re lying to you.”

The “fake news” charge relates to a protest in July 2022 when she stood on a river embankment across from the Kremlin with a poster calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a murderer.

Since the war in Ukraine began, Moscow has targeted several Russian dissident journalists through trials in absentia over their criticism related to the war in Ukraine. Such criticism is effectively illegal in Russia.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.
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U.S. President Joe Biden called key Western allies on Tuesday to reassure them of continued American military support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia after hardline right-wing congressional Republicans over the weekend forced the exclusion of immediate new funding for Kyiv.

The White House said Biden spoke with the leaders of Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Romania, Britain, and of the European Union and NATO, along with the foreign minister of France.

“President Biden convened a call this morning with allies and partners to coordinate our ongoing support for Ukraine,” the White House said in a statement. 

Later, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Biden reaffirmed the strong commitment of the United States to supporting Ukraine as it defends itself “for as long as it takes, as did every other leader on the call.”

Kirby said the leaders discussed efforts to continue providing Ukraine with the ammunition and the weapons systems that it needs to defend itself and to continue strengthening Ukrainian air defenses as they prepare for more attacks on critical infrastructure. “Now, certainly, but also certainly in the winter months ahead,” Kirby said.

Biden had sought more Ukraine aid as Congress engaged in an 11th-hour debate Saturday to avert a partial government shutdown at midnight, just ahead of the start of the government’s new fiscal year Sunday morning. Congress approved government funding through mid-November but no new Ukraine aid.

Some right-wing Republicans have balked at new funding for Kyiv, contending that Ukraine’s fight against Russia is not a strategic U.S. national security interest, although the large majority of U.S. lawmakers still appear to support more aid. 

Democrat Biden has called for Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to rush through new aid over the objection of some Republicans, saying that U.S. support for Kyiv as it battles Russia’s invasion could not be interrupted “under any circumstances.” The Democratic-controlled Senate already appears set to approve further assistance.

“Speaker McCarthy and the majority of House Republicans must keep their word and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine as it defends itself,” Biden said earlier Tuesday on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“We are the indispensable nation in the world — let’s act like it,” Biden said. The president has also warned that not much time remains before existing funding runs out.

Russia on Monday called the political chaos in Washington a sign that Western war fatigue would grow amid the uncertainty over U.S. assistance for Ukraine.

McCarthy’s fate as the leader of the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives is also in question, with the hardline bloc of his caucus moving Tuesday to oust him from his leadership position for cooperating with Democrats to approve the short-term funding bill to keep the government open for the next seven weeks.

Ukraine downs Russian drones

Ukraine’s air force said Tuesday it destroyed 29 drones and a cruise missile that Russia used to attack Ukrainian regions overnight.

The Ukrainian military said most of the drones targeted the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine and the Dnipropetrovsk region in the central part of the country. 

Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk, said falling debris from the intercepts damaged an industrial site in the city of Pavlohrad and caused a fire at a private firm in Dnipro.

The attacks followed renewed pledges of support from the European Union, as EU foreign ministers met Monday in Kyiv.

Western aid for Ukraine has come under political pressure after a pro-Russian candidate won an election in Slovakia, an EU and NATO member. The Ukrainian military counter-offensive has also been slower than Western leaders had hoped before autumn mud clogs the treads of their donated tanks.

“Our victory explicitly depends on our cooperation — the more powerful and principled steps we take together, the sooner this war will end,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the EU foreign ministers during the meeting. 

Zelenskyy noted that Ukraine continues to protect its people and its economy from continuous Russian attacks, that its counteroffensive aimed at liberating its occupied territories is progressing steadily and reminded the EU leadership that Ukraine needs more money, more weapons and more military training to achieve its goals. He also asked them to intensify sanctions against Russia.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called for efforts to prepare Ukraine for the coming winter, including through air defense and guaranteed energy supplies, after Russia bombed Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last year.

“Last winter, we saw the brutal way in which the Russian president is waging this war,” said Baerbock. “We must prevent this together with everything we have, as far as possible.”

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said holding the meeting in Ukraine’s capital was a show of “resolute and lasting support for Ukraine.”

“It is also a message to Russia that it should not count on our weariness. We will be there for a long time to come,” Colonna told reporters.

Dutch Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot said Russia must be held accountable for its aggression in Ukraine and that it is important to pressure Russia with sanctions.

“We have to do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, for the freedom of the people of Ukraine,” she said.

Russia Shelling

At least two people were killed and 10 injured, including children, by Russian shelling of Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson on Tuesday. Regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on the Telegram messaging app that Russian forces pounded residential areas, shops, medical facilities and other infrastructure overnight. 

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, which is located near the Russian border, officials announced plans to build a school entirely underground in response to frequent Russian bomb and missile attacks.

Students have used online courses and met in Kharkiv’s metro stations to avoid the dangers.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that the new underground school “will enable thousands of Kharkiv children to continue their safe face-to-face education even during missile threats.”

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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A court in Spain’s southeastern city of Murcia opened an investigation into a fire that tore through two adjoining discos, killing 13 people. It is the country’s deadliest nightclub fire in more than 30 years.

The discos, Teatre and Fondo Milagros, were popular dance spots, located on the outskirts of town. In January 2022, city officials ordered the venues closed after Teatre’s owner divided the building it was in to establish Fondo Milagros.

The order was disregarded.

The fire erupted just before sunrise Sunday. Authorities said the inferno probably spread quickly through air vents.

A firefighter said that six of the bodies were found clustered in restrooms, perhaps because people were hiding from the smoke, while the other seven bodies were scattered across a mezzanine above the entrance. In the restroom, a wall gave way and covered two of the dead in rubble.

The goal of the probe is to determine whether the fire broke out because of negligence, the city’s top prosecutor Jose Luis Diaz Manzanera said in an interview with La Opinion de Murcia, the local newspaper.

If the tragedy arose from recklessness, he said, those responsible for the deaths could face a maximum of nine years in prison. Diaz Manzanera promised an “exhaustive” search to uncover the truth of what happened.

“We must go centimeter by centimeter, checking everything,” he said. “Let’s see how it ends up. There may have been a short circuit that was not caused by negligence.”

Law enforcement and a team of forensic investigators scoured the site on Monday to gather evidence.

By Monday night, police said that they had identified six victims using fingerprints but that naming the remaining seven would prove “very difficult.”

The victims’ family members have turned in toothbrushes, combs and other toiletries to law enforcement hoping DNA samples can aid in the identification process.

“No father or mother can, or should, have to go through a tragedy like this,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday. He called the eyewitness testimony “heartbreaking.”
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The Armenian parliament on Tuesday voted to join the International Criminal Court, which earlier this year indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes connected to the deportation of children from Ukraine.  

The move is likely to further strain Armenia’s deteriorating relation with its ally Russia, which last month called Yerevan’s push to join the ICC an “unfriendly step.”  

Countries that have signed and ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC are bound to arrest Putin if he sets foot on their soil.  

Armenian officials say the effort to join ICC has nothing to do with Russia and was prompted by Azerbaijan’s aggression against the country. 

 
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The annual Nobel Prize announcements continue Tuesday in the Swedish capital Stockholm when the winner – or winners – of the physics prize will be revealed. 

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared by Alain Aspect of France, John Clauser of the United States and Anton Zeilinger of Austria. 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize, cited the three scientists for “pioneering quantum information science.”

The committee said each man carried out “groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated.”

The Nobel announcements began Monday with the prize in Medicine going to Hungary’s Kataline Kariko and Drew Weissman of the United States for their joint research that led to the rapid development of the mRNA COVID vaccines. 

The Nobel laureates for chemistry, literature and peace will be announced Wednesday through Friday, while economics will be announced Monday. 

All the categories except economics were established in the will of 19th century Swedish businessman Alfred Nobel, who made a fortune with his invention of dynamite.  The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after his death. 

The economics prize was established in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank Sveriges Riksbank in Nobel’s memory, with the first laureates, Norway’s Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen of the Netherlands, announced the next year. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse.
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Pope Francis has suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, responding to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm church teaching on homosexuality ahead of a big meeting where LGBTQ+ Catholics are on the agenda.

The Vatican published a letter Monday that Francis wrote to the cardinals on July 11 after receiving a list of five questions, or “dubia,” from them a day earlier. In it, Francis suggests that such blessings could be studied if they didn’t confuse the blessing with sacramental marriage.

New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the letter “significantly advances” efforts to make LGBTQ+ Catholics welcomed in the church and is “one big straw toward breaking the camel’s back” in their marginalization.

The Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman. As a result, it has long opposed gay marriage. But even Francis has voiced support for civil laws extending legal benefits to same-sex spouses, and Catholic priests in parts of Europe have been blessing same-sex unions without Vatican censure.

Francis’ response to the cardinals, however, marks a reversal from the Vatican’s current official position. In an explanatory note in 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said flat-out that the church couldn’t bless gay unions because “God cannot bless sin.”

In his new letter, Francis reiterated that matrimony is a union between a man and a woman. But responding to the cardinals’ question about homosexual unions and blessings, he said “pastoral charity” requires patience and understanding and that regardless, priests cannot become judges “who only deny, reject and exclude.”

“For this reason, pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of benediction, requested by one or more persons, that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage,” he wrote. “Because when a benediction is requested, it is expressing a request for help from God, a plea to be able to live better, a trust in a father who can help us to live better.”

He noted that there are situations that are objectively “not morally acceptable.” But he said the same “pastoral charity” requires that people be treated as sinners who might not be fully at fault for their situations.

Francis added that there is no need for dioceses or bishops’ conferences to turn such pastoral charity into fixed norms or protocols, saying the issue could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis “because the life of the church runs on channels beyond norms.”

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, welcomed the pope’s openness.

“The allowance for pastoral ministers to bless same-gender couples implies that the church does indeed recognize that holy love can exist between same-gender couples, and the love of these couples mirrors the love of God,” he said in a statement. “Those recognitions, while not completely what LGBTQ+ Catholics would want, are an enormous advance towards fuller and more comprehensive equality.”

The five cardinals, all of them conservative prelates from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, had challenged Francis to affirm church teaching on gays, women’s ordination, the authority of the pope and other issues in their letter.

They published the material two days before the start of a major three-week synod, or meeting, at the Vatican at which LGBTQ+ Catholics and their place in the church are on the agenda.

The signatories were some of Francis’ most vocal critics, all of them retired and of the more doctrinaire generation of cardinals appointed by St. John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI.

They were Cardinals Walter Brandmueller of Germany, a former Vatican historian; Raymond Burke of the United States, whom Francis axed as head of the Vatican supreme court; Juan Sandoval of Mexico, the retired archbishop of Guadalajara; Robert Sarah of Guinea, the retired head of the Vatican’s liturgy office; and Joseph Zen, the retired archbishop of Hong Kong.

Brandmueller and Burke were among four signatories of a previous round of “dubia” to Francis in 2016 following his controversial opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried couples receive Communion. Then, the cardinals were concerned that Francis’ position violated church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Francis never responded to their questions, and two of their co-signatories subsequently died.

Francis did respond this time around. The cardinals didn’t publish his reply, but they apparently found it so unsatisfactory that they reformulated their five questions, submitted them to him again and asked him to simply respond with a yes or no. When he didn’t, the cardinals decided to make the texts public and issue a “notification” warning to the faithful.

The Vatican’s doctrine office published his reply to them a few hours later, though it did so without his introduction in which he urged the cardinals to not be afraid of the synod.
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