A BBC Channel 4 documentary, “Secrets and Power: China in the UK,” claims the Chinese government is interfering with academic freedom and spying on Hong Kong activists in the United Kingdom.

The 49-minute film released Wednesday alleges that the University of Nottingham used a Beijing-approved curriculum in classes taught on a satellite campus in Ningbo and closed its School of Contemporary Chinese Studies under pressure from Beijing. 

The program also claims a professor at the Imperial College London collaborated with researchers at a Chinese university on the use of artificial intelligence weaponry that could be used to benefit the Chinese military. Both institutions deny the allegations. 

The film also alleges that Chinese government agents pretending to be journalists used fake profiles and avatars to target Hong Kong activists now living in the U.K. 

VOA Mandarin sent an email to the Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom seeking comments on the claims in the documentary but has not received a response.  

Nations track China’s influence

The documentary comes as other nations, including the U.S., are monitoring China’s influence on campuses (( https://www.voanews.com/a/us-officials-warn-of-chinese-influence-in-american-higher-education/4600204.html )) and its so-called “overseas police centers,” purportedly intended to help Chinese diaspora and tourists with everyday problems. 

VOA has previously quoted human rights groups saying the outposts are in fact part of a complex global surveillance and control web that gives Beijing reach far beyond China’s borders. 

The University of Nottingham was approved by the Chinese Ministry of Education to open a campus in Ningbo, China, in 2004. On the China campus, all courses are taught in English and students are awarded the same degrees as on the U.K. campus.  

Professor Stephen Morgan, the former vice provost for planning at the Ningbo campus, said in the documentary that books and articles on campus are censored by local Communist Party officials.  

According to Morgan, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also encouraged students to spy on their teachers. He said he was forced to resign from his management position after writing a blog criticizing constitutional changes that enabled President Xi Jinping to serve a third term. The CCP secretary at the Ningbo campus deemed the blog “totally unacceptable,” he said. 

Steve Tsang is director of the China Institute at SOAS London and a former director of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, which closed in 2016. 

Tsang, an outspoken critic of the CCP, said in the documentary that University of Nottingham administrators told him not to speak with media when Xi visited the U.K. in 2015. Tsang also said the university did not allow him to host a senior Taiwanese politician who planned to deliver a speech in 2014.  

School denies taking political action

The University of Nottingham has denied that the closure of its Institute of Contemporary China was for political reasons and denied Channel 4’s allegations about Nottingham’s Ningbo campus. 

“We do not recognize the description of the University of Nottingham’s Ningbo campus. Any U.K. organization operating overseas … must comply with the laws and customs of the host country.”  

The documentary alleges that Imperial College London’s collaboration with researchers from Shanghai University included the publication of several papers on the military applications of artificial intelligence. The work was overseen by Guo Yike, director of Imperial College’s Institute of Data Science. 

According to a report in the English newspaper The Telegraph, Imperial College said staff have a “clear code of research” and insisted that due diligence and regular reviews of partners have been done. 

The Chinese Embassy in London also denied to The Telegraph in the same article that it had interfered in the running of British universities, saying the allegation was “aimed at discrediting and smearing China.”  

Film alleges China targets activists

A study prepared by the British think tank Civitas and released this month in parliament found that a number of British universities have received significant funding from organizations linked to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) over the past five years. 

The documentary alleges Hong Kong activists who have taken refuge in Britain appear to be the targets of sophisticated Chinese government espionage. 

It follows the case of Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Finn Lau, who said he had been repeatedly approached by fake journalists and feared being followed. In July, Hong Kong offered a bounty equal to $128,000 for Lau’s arrest. Seven others were also targeted.

According to the documentary, an American man who taught English in Shanghai pretended to be a journalist working for a Canadian media outlet and used a false avatar and profile to ask Lau for information about pro-democracy activities. When the American was asked by a Channel 4 reporter for his real name and those of his superiors, he hung up the video call.  
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Hungary will not support any European Union proposal to begin talks on making Ukraine a member of the bloc, a government minister said Thursday. 

Gergely Gulyas, the chief of staff to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said at a news conference in Budapest that it was premature to begin formal talks with Kyiv on the war-ravaged country joining the EU, and that Hungary would not consent to opening the discussions when EU leaders meet in mid-December. 

“We are dealing with a completely premature proposal,” Gulyas said, adding that Hungary “cannot contribute to a common decision” on inviting Ukraine to begin the process of joining the bloc. 

Earlier this month, the EU’s executive arm recommended allowing Ukraine to open membership talks once it addresses governance issues that include corruption, lobbying concerns, and restrictions that might prevent national minorities from studying and reading in their own languages. 

But unanimity among all EU member nations is required on matters involving admission of a new country, giving the nationalist Orban a powerful veto. 

His government has long taken an antagonistic approach to Ukraine, arguing vehemently against EU sanctions on Russia over its invasion and holding up financial aid packages to Kyiv. 

Orban, widely considered one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies in Europe, has argued that accession negotiations should not begin with a country that is at war, and that Ukraine’s membership would reorient the system the 27-nation European Union uses to distribute funds to member countries. 

Earlier this month, Orban said that Ukraine is “light years” from joining the bloc, further signaling that his government would be a major obstacle to Kyiv’s ambitions at next month’s meeting of EU heads of state and government in Brussels. 

On Thursday, Gulyas also said Hungary would not support proposed amendments to the EU’s budget, part of which would provide 50 billion euros ($54.5 billion) in long-term aid to Kyiv. 

He said the EU was “illegally” withholding funds from Hungary, and that the government would consequently decline to support any budget amendment. 

The EU froze billions in funding to Budapest over the alleged failures of Orban’s government to adhere to EU rule-of-law and corruption standards. 

Hungary insists it doesn’t link the frozen EU funds to other issues, but many in Brussels see its veto threats regarding aid and Ukraine’s membership as an attempt to blackmail the bloc into releasing the withheld funds. 
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More than 2,000 of Britain’s churches of several denominations have closed in the last decade. Many have been demolished, but as Umberto Aguiar reports from London, some are finding new life and are being used for purposes other than religion. Marcus Harton narrates. Camera: Umberto Aguiar.
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Shane MacGowan, the boozy, rabble-rousing singer and chief songwriter of The Pogues, who infused traditional Irish music with the energy and spirit of punk, died Thursday, his family said. He was 65.

MacGowan’s songwriting and persona made him an iconic figure in contemporary Irish culture, and some of his compositions have become classics — most notably the bittersweet Christmas ballad “Fairytale of New York,” which Irish President Michael D. Higgins said “will be listened to every Christmas for the next century or more.”

“It is with the deepest sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our most beautiful, darling and dearly beloved Shane MacGowan,” his wife Victoria Clarke, his sister Siobhan and father Maurice said in a statement.

The singer died peacefully with his family by his side, the statement added.

The musician had been hospitalized in Dublin for several months after being diagnosed with viral encephalitis in late 2022. He was discharged last week, ahead of his upcoming birthday on Christmas Day.

The Pogues melded Irish folk and rock ‘n’ roll into a unique, intoxicating blend, though MacGowan became as famous for his sozzled, slurred performances as for his powerful songwriting.

His songs blended the scabrous and the sentimental, ranging from carousing anthems to snapshots of life in the gutter to unexpectedly tender love songs. The Pogues’ most famous song, “Fairytale of New York” is a tale of down-on-their-luck immigrant lovers that opens with the decidedly unfestive words: “It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank.” The duet between the raspy-voiced MacGowan and the velvet tones of the late Kirsty MacColl is by far the most beloved Pogues song in both Ireland and the U.K.

Singer-songwriter Nick Cave called Shane MacGowan “a true friend and the greatest songwriter of his generation.”

Higgins, the Irish president, said “his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams.”

“His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history, encompassing so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways,” Higgins said.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said MacGowan’s songs “beautifully captured the Irish experience, especially the experience of being Irish abroad.”

Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald said: “Nobody told the Irish story like Shane — stories of emigration, heartache, dislocation, redemption, love and joy.”

Born on Christmas Day 1957 in England to Irish parents, MacGowan spent his early years in rural Ireland before the family moved back to London. Ireland remained the lifelong center of his imagination and his yearning. He grew up steeped in Irish music absorbed from family and neighbors, along with the sounds of rock, Motown, reggae and jazz.

He attended the elite Westminster School in London, from which he was expelled, and spent time in a psychiatric hospital after a breakdown in his teens.

MacGowan embraced the punk scene that exploded in Britain in the mid-1970s. He joined a band called the Nipple Erectors, performing under the name Shane O’Hooligan, before forming The Pogues alongside musicians including Jem Finer and Spider Stacey.

The Pogues — shortened from the original name Pogue Mahone, a rude Irish phrase — fused punk’s furious energy with traditional Irish melodies and instruments including banjo, tin whistle and accordion.

“It never occurred to me that you could play Irish music to a rock audience,” MacGowan recalled in “A Drink with Shane MacGowan,” a 2001 memoir co-authored with Clarke. “Then it finally clicked. Start a London Irish band playing Irish music with a rock and roll beat. The original idea was just to rock up old ones but then I started writing.”

The band’s first album, “Red Roses for Me,” was released in 1984 and featured raucous versions of Irish folk songs alongside originals including “Boys from the County Hell,” “Dark Streets of London” and “Streams of Whisky.”

Playing pubs and clubs in London and beyond, the band earned a loyal following and praise from music critics and fellow musicians from Bono to Bob Dylan.

MacGowan wrote many of the songs on the next two albums, “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash” (1985) and “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” (1988), ranging from rollicking rousers like the latter album’s title track to ballads like “A Pair of Brown Eyes” and “The Broad Majestic Shannon.”

The band also released a 1986 EP, “Poguetry in Motion,” which contained two of MacGowan’s finest songs, “A Rainy Night in Soho” and “The Body of an American.” The latter featured prominently in early-2000s TV series “The Wire,” sung at the wakes of Baltimore police officers.

“I wanted to make pure music that could be from any time, to make time irrelevant, to make generations and decades irrelevant,” he recalled in his memoir.

The Pogues were briefly on top of the world, with sold-out tours and appearances on U.S. television, but the band’s output and appearances grew more erratic, due in part to MacGowan’s struggles with alcohol and drugs. He was fired by the other band members in 1991 after they became fed up with a string of no-shows, including when The Pogues were opening for Dylan. The band briefly replaced MacGowan with Clash frontman Joe Strummer before breaking up.

MacGowan performed with a new band, Shane MacGowan and the Popes, with whom he put out two albums: “The Snake” in 1995 and “The Crock Of Gold” in 1997. He reunited with The Pogues in 2001 for a series of concerts and tours, despite his well-documented problems with drinking and performances that regularly included slurred lyrics and at least one fall on stage.

MacGowan had years of health problems and used a wheelchair after breaking his pelvis a decade ago. He was long famous for his broken, rotten teeth until receiving a full set of implants in 2015 from a dental surgeon who described the procedure as “the Everest of dentistry.”

MacGowan received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish president on his 60th birthday. The occasion was marked with a celebratory concert at the National Concert Hall in Dublin with performers including Bono, Nick Cave, Sinead O’Connor and Johnny Depp.

Clarke wrote on Instagram that “there’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world.”

“I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures,” she wrote.
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Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism, in the most drastic step against advocates of gay, lesbian and transgender rights in the increasingly conservative country.

In a statement announcing a lawsuit filed to the court earlier this month, the Justice Ministry argued that authorities had identified “signs and manifestations of an extremist nature” by an LGBTQ+ “movement” operating in Russia, including “incitement of social and religious discord,” although it offered no details or evidence. In its ruling, the court declared the “movement” to be extremist and banned it in Russia.

The hearing took place behind closed doors and with no defendant. Multiple rights activists have pointed out that the lawsuit targeted the “international civic LGBT movement,” which is not an entity but rather a broad and vague definition that would allow Russian authorities to crack down on any individuals or groups deemed to be part of the “movement.”

“Despite the fact that the Justice Ministry demands to label a nonexistent organization — ‘the international civic LGBT movement’ — extremist, in practice it could happen that the Russian authorities, with this court ruling at hand, will enforce it against LGBTQ+ initiatives that work in Russia, considering them a part of this civic movement,” Max Olenichev, a human rights lawyer who works with the Russian LGBTQ+ community, told The Associated Press ahead of the hearing.

Some LGBTQ+ activists have said they sought to become a party to the lawsuit, arguing that it concerns their rights, but were rejected by the court. The Justice Ministry has not responded to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

The Supreme Court ruling is the latest step in a decadelong crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights in Russia begun under President Vladimir Putin, who has put “traditional family values” at the cornerstone of his rule.

In 2013, the Kremlin adopted the first legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights, known as the “gay propaganda” law, banning any public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2020, constitutional reforms pushed through by Putin to extend his rule by two more terms also included a provision to outlaw same-sex marriage.

After sending troops into Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin ramped up its comments about protecting “traditional values” from what it called the West’s “degrading” influence, in what rights advocates saw as an attempt to legitimize the war. That same year, the authorities adopted a law banning propaganda of “nontraditional sexual relations” among adults, also, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ people.

Another law passed earlier this year prohibited gender transitioning procedures and gender-affirming care for transgender people. The legislation prohibited any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records. It also amended Russia’s Family Code by listing gender change as a reason to annul a marriage and adding those “who had changed gender” to a list of people who can’t become foster or adoptive parents.

“Do we really want to have here, in our country, in Russia, ‘Parent No. 1, No. 2, No. 3’ instead of ‘mom’ and ‘dad?'” Putin said in September 2022. “Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed in our schools from the primary grades?”

Authorities have rejected accusations of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. Earlier this month, Russian media quoted Andrei Loginov, a deputy justice minister, as saying that “the rights of LGBT people in Russia are protected” legally. Loginov spoke in Geneva, while presenting a report on human rights in Russia to the U.N. Human Rights Council, and argued that “restraining public demonstration of non-traditional sexual relationships or preferences is not a form of censure for them.” 
…

Member countries are divided over the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s annual foreign ministers’ meeting on Thursday, with Baltic nations and Ukraine refusing to attend over the presence of Russia’s Sergey Lavrov.

The 57-member OSCE is the successor to a Cold War-era organization for Soviet and Western powers to engage but is now largely paralyzed by Russia’s ongoing use of the effective veto each country has.

The U.S. and its allies are seeking simultaneously to keep the OSCE alive and hold Russia to account for its invasion of Ukraine. They are attending while making a point of denouncing Moscow’s actions, a stance that some of Ukraine’s closest allies have little truck with.

“How can you talk with an aggressor who is committing genocide, full aggression against another member state, Ukraine?” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told reporters on Wednesday in Brussels, where he attended a NATO meeting.

Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are siding with Ukraine on the issue. Russia’s Tass news agency reported Lavrov arrived in Skopje on Wednesday after a circuitous five-hour flight that avoided the airspace of countries that have barred Russian aircraft.

Borrell addresses friction

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said he understood unease about Lavrov attending the meeting in Skopje, North Macedonia. But he said it was a chance for Lavrov to hear broad condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“Your decision to allow Lavrov to participate is in line with our common objective to keep multilateralism alive,” Borrell told North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski at a joint press conference in Skopje.

“Lavrov needs to hear again, from everyone, why Russia is being condemned and isolated,” Borrell said. “Then he will be able to come back to the Kremlin and report to the Kremlin master.”

Estonia had been due to take over the annually rotating OSCE chairmanship, but Russia blocked it for months. A last-minute deal for neutral Malta to take over the chairmanship must be formally approved at the meeting on Thursday and Friday.

Concern on support for Ukraine

The OSCE issue reflects broader diplomatic questions about Ukraine. While only Belarus regularly sides with Russia at OSCE meetings, this week’s absentees worry that Western powers’ commitment to Ukraine is wavering.

The United States has been trying to reassure them while arguing that the OSCE, which upholds standards that Russia has agreed to, is the right place to hold Moscow to account.

“First of all … we have no planned interactions with Russia. We will also not accept any return to business as usual in the midst of this aggression, which has resulted in the largest land war on the European continent since World War II,” U.S. Ambassador to the OSCE Michael Carpenter told reporters.

“A lot has been done to expose Russian atrocities, and I expect that that will be the theme, of condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, in all its forms,” he said.

It later became clear, however, that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would attend only meetings with his counterpart from North Macedonia and other like-minded countries on Wednesday. He then left for Israel before the Ministerial Council formally began on Thursday.

The OSCE is not the only international body where the West and Russia meet. Lavrov still attends Group of 20 events around the world and the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

In terms of substance, the stakes in Skopje are low. With the chairmanship settled, the main open issue is whether four top OSCE officials, including Secretary-General Helga Schmid, will have their terms extended.

The absentee countries, however, fear that Lavrov will use the meeting as a platform.

“It just so happens that the aggressor country is having a veto, and in a sense trying to hijack the agenda of the OSCE,” said Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins. “I think that is simply wrong.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads back to Israel on Thursday, where he says he will work to help prolong a cease-fire so more hostages can be released and more humanitarian aid can be delivered to Gaza. At the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Blinken tried to reassure allies of continued U.S. support for Ukraine as Kyiv prepares for another winter of fighting. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, drone production in the country has surged. Ukrainian businesses have shifted from manufacturing products for peacetime to producing equipment for wartime. From Kyiv, Myroslava Gongadze explains how Ukrainian ingenuity is altering the course of the war. Camera: Eugene Shynkar.
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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has accused his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis of public “grandstanding” over the ownership of Parthenon sculptures. 

The two leaders have been at odds with one another after Sunak canceled a scheduled meeting between the two just hours before it was set to take place. 

In a weekly question period with the house of commons, Sunak told parliament that Mitsotakis had broken a promise that he would not publicly bring up the sculptures.

“Specific assurances on that topic were made to this country and then were broken,” Sunak said. “When people make commitments, they should keep them.” 

Greek officials denied that any such promise had been made.

In an interview with British television on Sunday, Mitsotakis called for the return of the sculptures so they could be displayed beside the rest of the sculptures still in Athens. He also said that removing them was like cutting the “Mona Lisa” in half.

Athens has long urged the British Museum to return 2,500-year-old sculptures, known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles. The Marbles were taken from the Parthenon temple by British diplomat Lord Elgin in 1806, when Greece was under Ottoman Turkish rule.

Greek officials have said Mitsotakis only promoted a longstanding position, and he called Sunak’s cancelation of the meeting disrespectful.

Mitsotakis said the cancelation was “an unfortunate event,” but he added that “the move will not hurt relations between Greece and Britain in the longer term.”

The Greek leader also went on to say the cancelation of the meeting had a positive side to it and that his calls for reunification of the sculptures have gained more attention.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday there is “strong bipartisan support” for Ukraine in the United States and sees “no sense of fatigue” among NATO allies continuing their support as the country enters its second winter of war against Russia.

“Some are questioning whether the United States and other NATO allies should continue to stand with Ukraine as we enter the second winter of Putin’s brutality. But the answer here today at NATO is clear, and it is unwavering. We must and we will continue to support Ukraine,” Blinken said during a press conference in Brussels on Wednesday.

Since the war began, the United States has provided about $77 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial and military aid, according to Blinken. He noted that Washington’s European allies have provided more than $110 billion in support of Kyiv.

‘Ultimate membership’

Ukraine’s path to NATO membership was discussed during Wednesday’s first foreign minister-level meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council. Blinken also held separate talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

The top U.S. diplomat said the allies reaffirmed their policy that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO when all allies agree and when conditions are met.”

In a separate press conference, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the member state laid out recommendations to Ukraine’s reforms.

“Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before. We will continue to support them on the path to membership and will continue to support Ukraine’s fight for freedom,” Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters.

The United States is hosting the next NATO summit in Washington from July 9 to 11, 2024. Blinken discussed priorities for the meeting with his counterparts as the alliance celebrates its 75th anniversary next year.

A senior U.S. official told reporters that a significant portion of the discussions leading up to the Washington summit would aim to ensure that Ukraine is making the necessary progress toward “ultimate membership” in NATO “when conditions are right.”

The bloc’s member states have suggested to Ukraine “a set of governance reforms,” including strengthening anti-corruption agencies and authorities.

The NATO-Ukraine Council was inaugurated at the NATO Summit in Vilnius on July 12, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other heads of member governments also in attendance.

It convened for the second time in late July to discuss Black Sea security following Russia’s withdrawal from a deal overseeing grain exports from Ukrainian ports.

The third meeting was held in October to discuss substantial assistance to Ukraine and to ensure Ukraine’s forces are fully interoperable with NATO.

The NATO-Ukraine Council is the joint body where allies and Ukraine sit as equal participants to advance political dialogue.

North Macedonia

Wednesday afternoon, Blinken leads the U.S. delegation to NATO member North Macedonia, which is hosting a meeting of foreign ministers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE, in its capital, Skopje.

Blinken said he is supporting OSCE’s “determination” to “advance European security,” despite “Russia’s flagrant violations.”

Blinken is slated to hold talks with North Macedonia Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani before heading to the Middle East later in the evening.

Bulgaria has given permission for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s plane to cross its airspace enroute to Skopje following North Macedonia’s request, allowing him to attend the OSCE ministerial meetings.

This has sparked an immediate outcry from Ukraine and the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who will boycott the gathering due to Lavrov’s expected attendance.

“We obviously respect every country’s ability to make its decision about whether they should attend or not. We think it’s a useful forum to engage with OSCE members and are going to attend for that reason,” a senior State Department official told reporters on Tuesday.

When asked if Blinken would have any encounter with Lavrov during the OSCE meetings, the official said, “We do not expect one.”

After Skopje, Blinken will make his third trip to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. The U.S. is seeking an extension of the Israel-Hamas truce to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza and getting more hostages released.
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A special tribunal on Wednesday ruled that French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti did not abuse his current position to settle scores with opponents from his career as a top lawyer.

A pugnacious orator, Dupond-Moretti was alleged to have failed to step back sufficiently from a case against a magistrate with whom he had sparred while a lawyer.

The Cour de Justice de la Republique, a special tribunal for government officials, said Dupond-Moretti was in a position of conflict of interest but criminal intent was not established, and it cleared him of the charges.

Dupond-Moretti had remained in office during the investigation and trial but a guilty verdict would have put pressure on President Emmanuel Macron, who swept to power in 2017 promising to clean up politics, to fire his minister.

Dupond-Moretti, who denied any wrongdoing during the trial, left the court without making any comment. His lawyers said the ruling “ends years of [the minister] being falsely accused.”

Other allegations centered on a lawsuit he filed against the office of the financial prosecutor, or PNF, shortly before taking up his ministerial post, accusing the PNF of invading his privacy by obtaining his phone records during a probe into alleged corruption by former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The hard-left political party France Insoumise, France Unbowed, criticized the acquittal, saying it showed that the special tribunal, presided over by judges and lawmakers, should be scrapped.

Jerome Karsenti, a lawyer for the anti-corruption association Anticor, said the special court was too lenient with those in power.

Since its creation in 1993, the Cour de Justice de la Republique has held nine formal trials, including Dupond-Moretti’s.

Past defendants have included former finance minister and current head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde. In 2016, she was found guilty of negligence over a government payout. She escaped punishment and kept her job at the IMF.
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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for Western allies to ramp up defense production in order to ensure that Ukrainian forces have what they need to battle Russia’s invasion.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, Kuleba said there is “no reason to believe the West lacks the political will” to expand production capacity, but that there is a lot of technical work that has to be done to meet that goal.

Kuleba said it is not only Ukraine’s security that is at stake in the war, but also the security and safety of the entire EuroAtlantic region. He also said “nothing will stop us” as Ukraine remains focused on the goal of ensuring its territorial integrity.

“We have to continue. We have to keep fighting,” Kuleba said. “Ukraine is not going to back down.”

Ukraine’s military said Wednesday that Russia launched 21 drones and three missiles during waves of attacks overnight.

Ukraine’s air defenses shot down all 21 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones, which were headed toward the Khmelnitskyi region in western Ukraine, the military said.  

Ukrainian forces also downed two of the three missiles, while the third did not reach its target.

There were no reports of damage or injuries.

Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 

 
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Pope Francis has stripped conservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke of some of his Vatican privileges, including a large, subsidized apartment and his salary, a senior Vatican official said on Tuesday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, participated in a regular Vatican meeting when the pope made the announcement to senior aides last week.

He quoted the pope as saying that Burke, one of his fiercest critics, was “working against the church and against the papacy” and that he had sown “disunity” in the church.

Burke has had no senior Vatican job for years. He is a consultant to one of its tribunals, as are numerous cardinals who live outside Rome, and spends most of his time in his native state of Wisconsin.

The official who was at the meeting denied media reports that Francis had called the 75-year-old Burke “an enemy.”

Burke is a hero to traditionalists in the church, particularly in the United States, where he is often a guest on conservative Catholic media outlets that have made criticism of the pope a mainstay of their operations.

The move by Francis was his second involving a conservative American prelate this month.

On November 11, the pope dismissed Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, a conservative critic, after Strickland refused to step down following a Vatican investigation.

While conservatives are a minority in the church, they have significant clout in advanced countries such as the United States, in part because of their link to conservative politics.

Burke has been opposing the pope’s reforms almost from the start.

In 2014, a year after Francis was chosen, the pope removed Burke as head of a Vatican tribunal and moved him to a largely ceremonial post several days after Burke said the church under Francis was “like a ship without a rudder.”

Most recently, in October, Burke was one of five cardinals who openly challenged a global monthlong Vatican meeting, known as a synod.

Before the meeting began, Burke was the star guest of a gathering of conservatives in a theater just a few blocks from the Vatican.

There, he called for a defense against the “the poison of confusion, error and division” in the church.

A person close to Burke said the cardinal had not yet been officially informed of the pope’s decision, which was first reported by the conservative Italian outlet, La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.
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Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges, was assaulted by a fellow inmate, his family said Tuesday, adding they fear he is a target because of his nationality.  

The 53-year-old has been behind bars since 2018, serving a 16-year sentence that the U.S. government says is without merit. 

On Tuesday afternoon he was “hit in the face” by a new prisoner, breaking his glasses, his brother David Whelan said in a statement.

He said the incident occurred in a clothing workshop in the Mordovia penal colony in central Russia.  

Guards do not enter that part of the prison, and other inmates eventually came to Whelan’s aid, his brother said.

“Paul is a target because he is an American, and anti-American sentiment is not uncommon among the other prisoners,” he added.

“Paul says he believes the prison administration is taking the attack seriously.” 

Whelan worked in security for a U.S. vehicle parts company when he was arrested in Moscow in 2018 and has always asserted that the evidence against him was falsified.

Russia and the United States each accuse the other of detaining each other’s nationals for political purposes.

A Moscow court on Tuesday said it had extended until January the detention of U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in Russia earlier this year on spying charges.

A series of prisoner exchanges have been arranged in recent years.
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The head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is calling on the U.S. government to do more to help secure the release of one of the outlet’s journalists, who is detained in Russia.

Speaking about Alsu Kurmasheva’s case in Washington on Monday, Jeffrey Gedmin, RFE/RL acting president, said the State Department had been “opaque” in how it is responding to the journalist’s detention.

Russian authorities detained Kurmasheva in mid-October on charges of failing to register as a “foreign agent.” She and her employer reject the accusation.

At the top of RFE/RL’s requests is for the State Department to declare Kurmasheva wrongfully detained. The designation would open up additional resources to help secure her release, the network says.

But at a Monday event at the National Press Club in Washington, Gedmin said he doesn’t know the status of that potential determination.

“Up until this point, the U.S. government has been conspicuously impartial, and we’re looking for any kind of support we can get,” Gedmin said. “For us, at this moment, it’s really quite opaque.”

Request for consular access denied

Like VOA, RFE/RL is funded by the U.S. Congress but is editorially independent.

Gedmin said being funded by Congress hasn’t made it any easier to work with Washington on Kurmasheva’s case.

“I haven’t seen the benefit yet,” Gedmin said.

When asked if Kurmasheva will be designated “wrongfully detained,” a State Department spokesperson said that it “continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. nationals overseas, including those in Russia, for indicators that they are wrongful.”

When making those assessments, “the department conducts a legal, fact-based review that looks at the totality of the circumstances for each case individually,” a spokesperson said via email.

The spokesperson added that the request for consular access to Kurmasheva was denied on November 15 and that the State Department is closely monitoring her case.

“We remain deeply concerned about the extension of Kurmasheva’s pre-trial detention,” the spokesperson added.

Passports confiscated

Based in Prague, Kurmasheva is an editor at RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service. The U.S.-Russian national traveled to Russia in May for a family emergency.

Her passports were confiscated when she tried to leave in June, and she was waiting for those documents to be returned when authorities took her into custody in October.

Russia’s Justice Ministry in 2017 declared RFE/RL a foreign agent. More than 30 RFE/RL journalists have since been designated individual foreign agents, but Kurmasheva is not among those.

Kurmasheva’s detention has been particularly hard on her family.

“For me, Alsu is not a news story. It’s much more than that. It’s something that our family lives with every day,” her husband, Pavel Butorin, said at the National Press Club.

Butorin is the director of Current Time TV, a Russian-language TV and digital network led by RFE/RL in partnership with VOA.

“Every day, all day long, morning to evening, when I go to bed, when I get up, I have the same thought: ‘Am I doing enough for her release?'” Butorin said. “The more noise we make about Alsu’s case, the better it is.”

Press freedom groups have also called on the U.S. government to declare Kurmasheva wrongfully detained.

“As an American journalist targeted for her work, Kurmasheva deserves nothing less than the full weight of her government working to secure her release,” Clayton Weimers, executive director of the U.S. bureau of Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement.

Kurmasheva is one of two American journalists currently jailed in Russia. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been jailed since March on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government deny.

The State Department has declared Gershkovich wrongfully detained.

“To me, they’re both journalists who have been grabbed by the Russians for leverage over the United States,” said Paul Beckett, an assistant editor at the Wall Street Journal, who is leading the newspaper’s campaign to secure Gershkovich’s release.

A Russian court on Tuesday extended Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention until January 30, 2024. Originally set to expire in May, Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention has been extended three times.

“Evan has now been unjustly imprisoned for nearly 250 days, and every day is a day too long,” The Wall Street Journal said in a statement about this latest development.

“The accusations against him are categorically false and his continued imprisonment is a brazen and outrageous attack on a free press, which is critical for a free society. We continue to stand with Evan and call for his immediate release,” the statement said.
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The foreign ministers of the three Baltic states and Ukraine said Tuesday they will boycott this week’s meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in North Macedonia to object to the participation of Russia’s foreign minister.

The top diplomats of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania issued a joint statement saying they “deeply regret the decision enabling the personal participation” of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“It will only provide Russia with yet another propaganda opportunity,” they said.

Lavrov said Monday that he planned to travel to North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, for the OSCE foreign ministers’ meeting, which would mark a rare visit to a NATO member country since Russia started its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He also has visited NATO member Turkey, which has no ban on Russian flights. In September, he was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

Ukraine also said it would boycott the meeting because of Lavrov’s participation, with its foreign ministry issuing a statement accusing Russia of “coercing and undermining the OSCE through the abuse of the rule of consensus.”

“By resorting to blackmailing and open threats, the Russian Federation systematically blocked the consensus on key issues,” the statement said, citing the blocking of Estonia’s candidacy for the chairmanship of the organization in 2024.

Alexander Grushko, a Russian deputy foreign minister, told reporters on Tuesday that the Baltic nations’ decision to boycott the meeting “doesn’t mean anything for the future of the OSCE, either way.”

At the meeting, the Russian delegation will “insist … on the return of the OSCE to its origins, original principles, original purpose,” Grushko said.

“Actually, it is called the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but now there is no security or cooperation. If the OSCE wants to play at least some role, then it must return to what it was created for. And if this does not happen, it will not be in demand among the participating states,” he said. He didn’t comment on Ukraine’s announcement that it was also boycotting the meeting.

‘Trying to avoid a candid face-to-face’

With the exception of close Moscow ally Belarus, Lavrov hasn’t visited any European country since the war in Ukraine started.

In March 2022, Lavrov was barred from flying to Geneva for a U.N. conference after European Union members banned Russian planes from their skies as part of sanctions against Moscow. Lavrov denounced the move as “outrageous” in a video address to the session, charging that “the EU countries are trying to avoid a candid face-to-face dialogue or direct contacts designed to help identify political solutions to pressing international issues.”

The 57-nation OSCE was set up during the Cold War to help defuse tension between East and West. North Macedonia holds the organization’s rotating presidency, and its foreign minister invited Lavrov to the two-day meeting starting Thursday.

“For the past two years we have witnessed how one OSCE participating state has actively and brutally tried to annihilate another,” the Baltic foreign ministers said in their statement. “Let us be very clear: Russia’s war of aggression and atrocities against its sovereign and peaceful neighbor Ukraine blatantly violate international law.”

They also accused Russia of “obstructive behavior within the OSCE itself,” citing Russia’s prevention of an OSCE presence in Ukraine and the blocking of Estonia’s chairmanship of the organization in 2024. Lavrov’s attendance at the Skopje meeting “risks legitimizing aggressor Russia as a rightful member of our community of free nations, trivializing the atrocious crimes Russia has been committing,” they added.

‘We have condemned the aggressor’

Speaking to reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, North Macedonia’s foreign minister, Bujar Osmani, said he believed that he would be meeting Lavrov in Skopje.

“Lavrov is not coming to Skopje, in a way. Lavrov is coming to the OSCE just as he went to [the] U.N. in New York a few months ago,” Osmani said. “I won’t be meeting him as the foreign minister of North Macedonia, but as the OSCE chairman in office.”

Asked what he would say to Lavrov, Osmani said: “I think the Russian Federation has violated [the] commitments of OSCE principles that we have voluntarily subscribed to 50 years ago.”

He added: “We have condemned the aggressor throughout our chairpersonship. And also we have turned [the] OSCE into a platform for political and legal accountability of the Russian Federation for its deeds in Ukraine, and we will continue to do so. And this is what I am going to tell to Mr. Lavrov as well.”
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Dozens of families with children still live close to the front line in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. And despite the ongoing war, these families refuse to evacuate. Eva Myronova has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Oleksandr Oliynyk.
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Pope Francis canceled his trip to Dubai for the U.N. climate conference on doctors’ orders Tuesday even though he is recovering from the flu and lung inflammation, the Vatican said. 

Francis was scheduled to leave Rome on Friday to address the COP28 meeting first thing Saturday morning. He also was supposed to inaugurate a faith pavilion on Sunday on the sidelines of the conference before returning home. 

The pope revealed Sunday that he had lung inflammation but said at the time that he still planned to go to Dubai, where he was to become the first pontiff to address a U.N. climate conference. 

Tuesday’s announcement marked the second time the pope’s frail health had forced the cancellation of a foreign trip: He had to postpone a planned trip to Congo and South Sudan in 2022 because of knee inflammation, though he was able to make the journey earlier this year. 

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis was improving from the flu and inflammation of his respiratory tract that had forced him to cancel his audiences Saturday. But “the doctors have asked the pope not to make the trip planned for the coming days to Dubai. 

“Pope Francis accepted the doctors’ request with great regret and the trip is therefore canceled,” he added. 

Francis, who turns 87 next month, had part of one lung removed as a young man. 

Francis came down with the flu late last week. He went to the hospital Saturday for a CAT scan, and the Vatican said the test had ruled out pneumonia. 

On Sunday, he skipped his traditional appearance at his studio window overlooking St. Peter’s Square to avoid the cold. Instead, Francis gave the traditional noon blessing in a televised appearance from the chapel in the Vatican hotel where he lives and asked a priest to read his written daily reflections out loud. 

Francis coughed and spoke in a whisper, and sported the cannula in which he was receiving antibiotics intravenously. 

People who saw him this week said his health was improving but he still spoke in a whisper. 

Francis spent three days at Rome’s Gemelli hospital in April for what the Vatican said was bronchitis after he had trouble breathing. He was discharged after receiving intravenous antibiotics. 

Francis spent 10 days at the same hospital in July 2021 following intestinal surgery for a bowel narrowing. He was readmitted in June of this year for an operation to repair an abdominal hernia and remove scarring from previous surgeries. 

When asked about his health in a recent interview, Francis quipped in reply what has become his standard line — “Still alive, you know.” 
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A new America House is celebrating its opening in Odesa, making it the third major cultural and educational center in Ukraine supported and financed by the U.S. Embassy. America House Odesa was supposed to open in early 2022, but Russia’s invasion changed those plans. Anna Kosstutschenko visited the center and found out how the war altered its program. Camera — Pavel Suhodolskiy.
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