Ukraine’s foreign minister has held strategic security talks in Washington with the U.S. secretary of state. The meeting comes as Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reports that about 90,000 Russian troops have been positioned along their common border and in rebel-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.

Camera: VOA Ukraine Service. Contributing: Ostap Yarysh.
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The World Health Organization said in its weekly epidemiological COVID-19 update that Europe again was leading the world in percentages of new cases and deaths from the disease.

The WHO said the number of new cases in Europe rose by 7% last week and the number of deaths rose by 10%. Africa was the only other region to report an increase in new cases.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called for an urgent meeting with state governors after the nation’s Robert Koch Institute for Infectious diseases reported a record number of COVID-19 cases for a single day.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert told the DPA news agency the disease was “spreading dramatically” and said a “quick and unified response” was required.

Seibert said Merkel was conducting talks with ministers, regional governments and likely future coalition parties.

The European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, acknowledged the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Europe during a Wednesday news briefing in Brussels. Spokeswoman Dana Spinant described the situation as “complex” and “rapidly changing,” adding that member states were discussing next steps to be taken.

Bulgaria seeks help

It was also announced that Bulgaria on Wednesday activated the European bloc’s civil protection mechanism, an emergency designation in which member states request assistance with disasters or other emergencies.

Bulgaria, which reported 334 COVID-19 patient deaths on Tuesday — the country’s highest daily toll since the start of the pandemic — requested oxygen devices, patient monitors and hospital beds.

In the U.S., drugmaker Pfizer on Tuesday filed a request with the Food and Drug Administration to make booster shots of its COVID-19 vaccine available to all U.S. adults 18 or older. The request cited a new clinical trial involving 10,000 volunteers who had each received a third injection of the two-dose vaccine, which it developed in collaboration with Germany-based BioNTech. Pfizer said preliminary results showed the third shot boosted a person’s protection against the virus to about 95%.

The request came weeks after the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized third shots of the Pfizer vaccine for Americans 65 and older, adults at high risk of severe illness and front-line workers such as teachers, health care workers and others whose jobs place them at greater risk of contracting COVID-19.

The Pfizer booster shot is available for people regardless of whether they initially received the two-shot Moderna vaccine or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which offers less protection than either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Authorities in Turkey say they arrested a shop owner and two employees Wednesday, one day after the collapse of a commercial building that trapped several people. The private DHA news agency reported that those arrested are suspected of having conducted unauthorized renovations. An investigation is continuing by local authorities in the city of Malatya in central Turkey.

At the time of the collapse on Tuesday, about 20 people were inside the two-story building, which housed a coffee shop and other retail businesses, according to the Associated Press.

Turkish emergency agencies said they sent 260 personnel to the site to search for people trapped under the rubble and rescue them. Local authorities said workers helped 13 people escape. They were taken to area hospitals for treatment. Others reportedly were able to find their way out on their own.

The state-run Anadolu News Agency reported Wednesday that the suspects were hospitalized for injuries sustained in the collapse. Two of them received medical treatment in intensive care but were not in critical condition, the news service reported.

DHA News reported that authorities accused the suspects of illegal changes to the building that might have resulted in its structural failure.

A survivor told Anadolu that a wall fell on him but he was able to escape with two friends.

According to Sky News, the building was on a busy street in Malatya, a city of 450,000 about 500 kilometers east of Ankara. The incident reportedly occurred shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, while people were shopping on their way home from work.

Emergency service agencies concluded their operations late Tuesday after determining that no one remained under the building debris, Anadolu reported.

Workers have begun using excavators to clear the site.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Sky News 
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The European Union’s General Court has rejected Google’s appeal of a $2.8 billion European Commission fine for giving its own shopping suggestions an illegal advantage in search results.

The commission fined the American technology giant in 2017 for wrongfully directing visitors to its Google Shopping service at the expense of smaller European competitors.

The General Court ruled that it “largely dismisses” Google’s appeal and is upholding the fine after “finding that Google abused its dominant position by favoring its own comparison-shopping service over competing” services.

Google, which is also appealing two other EU antitrust penalties totaling $9.5 billion, said in a statement it amended its practices in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s decision.

“Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services,” the statement said.

Earlier this year, the commission launched antitrust probes into whether Google and Facebook are suppressing competition in the classified and digital advertising sectors. The commission is also investigating Apple over payments and Amazon, another U.S. tech giant, over concerns it is unfairly competing with independent retailers on its platform with its own products.

Google said it has not decided whether to appeal Wednesday’s ruling in the European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court.

Some information in this report also came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The International Space Station will perform a brief maneuver on Wednesday to dodge a fragment of a defunct Chinese satellite, Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

The station crewed by seven astronauts will climb 1,240 meters higher to avoid a close encounter with the fragment and will settle in an orbit 470.7 km (292 miles) above the Earth, Roscosmos said. It did not say how large the debris was.

“In order to dodge the ‘space junk’, (mission control) specialists … have calculated how to correct the orbit of the International Space Station,” the agency’s statement said.

The station will rely on the engines of the Progress space truck that is docked to it to carry out the move.

An ever-swelling amount of space debris is threatening satellites hovering around Earth, making insurers leery of offering coverage to the devices that transmit texts, maps, videos and scientific data.

The document reaffirms the goals set in Paris in 2015 of limiting warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with a more stringent target of trying to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) preferred because that would keep damage from climate change “much lower.”

Highlighting the challenge of meeting those goals, the document “expresses alarm and concern that human activities have caused around 1.1 C (2 F) of global warming to date and that impacts are already being felt in every region.”

Small island nations, which are particularly vulnerable to warming, worry that too little is being done to stop warming at the 1.5-degree goal — and that allowing temperature increases up to 2 degrees would be catastrophic for their countries.

“For Pacific (small island states), climate change is the greatest, single greatest threat to our livelihood, security and wellbeing. We do not need more scientific evidence nor targets without plans to reach them or talking shops,” Marshall Islands Health and Human Services minister told fellow negotiators Wednesday. “The 1.5 limit is not negotiable.”

Separate draft proposals were also released on other issues being debated at the talks, including rules for international carbon markets and the frequency by which countries have to report on their efforts.

The draft calls on nations that don’t have national goals that would fit with the 1.5- or 2-degree limits to come back with stronger targets next year. Depending on how the language is interpreted, the provision could apply to most countries. Analysts at the World Resources Institute counted that element as a win for vulnerable countries.

“This is crucial language,” WRI International Climate Initiative Director David Waskow said Wednesday. “Countries really are expected and are on the hook to do something in that timeframe to adjust.”

Greenpeace’s Morgan said it would have been even better to set a requirement for new goals every year.

In a nod to one of the big issues for poorer countries, the draft vaguely “urges” developed nations to compensate developing countries for “loss and damage,” a phrase that some rich nations don’t like. But there are no concrete financial commitments.

“This is often the most difficult moment,” Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Development Program and former chief of the U.N.’s environment office, said of the state of the two-week talks.

“The first week is over, you suddenly recognize that there are a number of fundamentally different issues that are not easily resolvable. The clock is ticking,” he told The Associated Press.
…

Governments are poised to express “alarm and concern” about how much Earth has already warmed and encourage one another to end their use of coal, according to a draft released Wednesday of the final document expected at U.N. climate talks.

The early version of the document circulating at the negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland, also impresses on countries the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions by about half by 2030 — even though pledges so far from governments don’t add up to that frequently stated goal.

In a significant move, countries would urge one another to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels” in the draft, though it has no explicit reference to ending the use of oil and gas. There has been a big push among developed nations to shut down coal-fired power plants, which are a major source of heat-trapping gases, but the fuel remains a critical and cheap source of electricity for countries like China and India.

While the language about moving away from coal is a first and important, the lack of a date when countries will do so limits the pledge’s effectiveness, said Greenpeace International Director Jennifer Morgan, a long-time climate talks observer.

“This isn’t the plan to solve the climate emergency. This won’t give the kids on the streets the confidence that they’ll need,” Morgan said.

The draft doesn’t yet include full agreements on the three major goals that the U.N. set going into the negotiations — and may disappoint poorer nations because of a lack of solid financial commitments from richer ones. The goals are: for rich nations to give poorer ones $100 billion a year in climate aid, to ensure that half of that money goes to adapting to worsening global warming, and the pledge to slash emissions that is mentioned.

The draft does provide insight, however, into the issues that need to be resolved in the last few days of the conference, which is scheduled to end Friday but may push past that deadline. Still, a lot of negotiating and decision-making is yet to come since whatever emerges from the meetings has to be unanimously approved by the nearly 200 nations attending.

The draft says the world should try to achieve “net-zero (emissions) around mid-century.” That means requiring countries to pump only as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as can be absorbed again through natural or artificial means.

It also acknowledges “with regret” that rich nations have failed to live up to the climate aid pledge.

Poorer nations, which need financial help both in developing green energy systems and adapting to the worst of climate change, are angry that the promised aid hasn’t materialized.

“Without financial support little can be done to minimize its debilitating effects for vulnerable communities around the world,” Mohammed Nasheed, the Maldives’ parliamentary speaker and the ambassador for a group of dozens of countries most vulnerable to climate change, said in a statement.

He said the draft fails on key issues, including the financial aid and strong emission cuts.

“There’s much more that needs to be done on climate finance to give developing countries what they need coming out of here,” said Alden Meyer, a long-time conference observer, of the European think-tank E3G.

The document reaffirms the goals set in Paris in 2015 of limiting warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with a more stringent target of trying to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) preferred because that would keep damage from climate change “much lower.”

Highlighting the challenge of meeting those goals, the document “expresses alarm and concern that human activities have caused around 1.1 C (2 F) of global warming to date and that impacts are already being felt in every region.”

Small island nations, which are particularly vulnerable to warming, worry that too little is being done to stop warming at the 1.5-degree goal — and that allowing temperature increases up to 2 degrees would be catastrophic for their countries.

“For Pacific (small island states), climate change is the greatest, single greatest threat to our livelihood, security and wellbeing. We do not need more scientific evidence nor targets without plans to reach them or talking shops,” Marshall Islands Health and Human Services minister told fellow negotiators Wednesday. “The 1.5 limit is not negotiable.”

Separate draft proposals were also released on other issues being debated at the talks, including rules for international carbon markets and the frequency by which countries have to report on their efforts.

The draft calls on nations that don’t have national goals that would fit with the 1.5- or 2-degree limits to come back with stronger targets next year. Depending on how the language is interpreted, the provision could apply to most countries. Analysts at the World Resources Institute counted that element as a win for vulnerable countries.

“This is crucial language,” WRI International Climate Initiative Director David Waskow said Wednesday. “Countries really are expected and are on the hook to do something in that timeframe to adjust.”

Greenpeace’s Morgan said it would have been even better to set a requirement for new goals every year.

In a nod to one of the big issues for poorer countries, the draft vaguely “urges” developed nations to compensate developing countries for “loss and damage,” a phrase that some rich nations don’t like. But there are no concrete financial commitments.

“This is often the most difficult moment,” Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Development Program and former chief of the U.N.’s environment office, said of the state of the two-week talks.

“The first week is over, you suddenly recognize that there are a number of fundamentally different issues that are not easily resolvable. The clock is ticking,” he told The Associated Press.
…

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Pakistani Taliban for campaigning for girls’ education, got married on Tuesday in a small ceremony in Birmingham, central England, she announced on social media.

“Today marks a precious day in my life. Asser (Malik) and I tied the knot to be partners for life,” she wrote on Twitter, where she also posted images of herself and her new husband on their wedding day.

“We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead,” she added.

A nikkah ceremony is the first step in an Islamic marriage.

When she was 15, Yousafzai was shot in the head by militants from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an offshoot of the Afghan Taliban, in her home town in the Swat valley while on a school bus in 2012.

She recovered after months of treatment at home and abroad before co-writing a best-selling memoir titled “I am Malala.”

Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a 17-year-old in 2014, sharing the award with Kailash Satyarthi, a children’s rights activist from India.

She graduated last year from the University of Oxford with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

Now 24 years old, she advocates for girls’ education, with her non-profit Malala Fund having invested $2 million in Afghanistan.

She has also signed a deal with Apple TV+ that will see her produce dramas and documentaries that focus on women and children. 
…

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to host U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris for talks Wednesday at Elysee Palace with an agenda that includes climate change, the economy, global health and supply chain issues. 

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters Tuesday that the bilateral meeting is important because the U.S. relationship with France is a global one, and that France and other European allies are key to the future of the United States. 

In addition to meeting with Macron, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, are taking part in a wreath laying Wednesday at Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial outside of Paris to mark the U.S. Veterans Day holiday and Armistice Day, which commemorates the end of World War I. The site honors American service members killed in both world wars and holds the remains of nearly 1,600 Americans. 

Harris and Macron will take part in a further Armistice Day ceremony as it is observed on Thursday. 

The U.S. vice president’s trip to France is the latest step in a push to improve soured relations with the country’s oldest ally. 

Relations between the two countries plunged to a historic low in September when Australia scrapped a $65 billion deal to buy traditional submarines from France in favor of an agreement in which Australia will build nuclear subs with the help of the United States and Britain.    

U.S. President Joe Biden told Macron in Rome last month the United States had been “clumsy” in its handling of the matter.    

Harris will also represent the Biden administration Thursday at the Paris Peace Forum and at a summit Friday on Libya ahead of that country’s elections next month.    

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, the Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Turkey is being accused by Kurdish security forces of carrying out a drone attack Tuesday in northeastern Syria that killed three civilians in a car. 

The strike took place in Qamishli, a city on the Syria-Turkey border that is controlled by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The three victims were from the same family, according to a statement by SDF’s internal security forces, which also said the attack was “carried out by a Turkish drone.” 

Turkey has not commented on the incident, but Kurdish forces say the Turkish military has increased targeted drone operations in northeastern Syria in recent months. 

Turkey views the SDF and its main component, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as an extension of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant group labeled as terrorist by Washington and Ankara. 

The United States, on the other hand, distinguishes between the two Kurdish groups. In the war against Islamic State, the SDF has been a key U.S. ally. 

The reason for the strike on the civilian vehicle in Qamishli is unknown, although local sources claim the victims were tied to a high-ranking YPG commander. 

Following a massive military assault against SDF members, Turkish military and allied Syrian militias have been in control of sections of northeastern Syria since October 2019. 

Tensions between the SDF and Turkish-backed forces have increased in recent weeks. Turkish officials have also hinted at a potential push into Kurdish-controlled territory in northeastern Syria. 

This story originated in VOA’s Kurdish service. 

 
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Poland has warned of a possible armed escalation on its border with Belarus. Europe accuses Belarus of directing the migrants towards the border as part of a campaign of ‘hybrid warfare’. Henry Ridgwell reports from London. Producer: Henry Ridgwell, Barry Unger
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As France approaches an election in which questions over the country’s image of itself are being raised, hunting has come under the spotlight. As the nation’s third most popular pastime, growing debate over the practice raises the issue of French tradition versus modernity. Jacob Russell reports for VOA from Charente-Maritime.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris began a four-day visit to France Tuesday aimed at improving soured relations with America’s oldest ally.

Relations between the two countries plunged to a historic low in September when Australia scrapped a $65 billion deal to buy traditional submarines from France in favor of an agreement in which Australia will build nuclear subs with the help of the United States and Britain.

Harris will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron after U.S. President Joe Biden told Macron in Rome last month the U.S. had been “clumsy” in its handling of the matter.

Harris will first visit the renowned Institut Pasteur to underscore what U.S. officials said were longstanding scientific exchanges between the U.S. and France. She will meet with French and American scientists working to combat COVID-19 globally. Her late mother, a scientist, conducted breast cancer research in the 1980s with the institute’s scientists.

Minutes after her arrival in Paris, Harris said, “It is good to be in France” and added “I’m looking forward to many, many days of productive discussion to strengthen our relationship.”

On Thursday, she’ll visit the Suresnes American Cemetery for an Armistice Day ceremony marking the end of World War I.

Harris will also represent the Biden administration Thursday at the Paris Peace Forum and at a summit Friday on Libya ahead of that country’s elections next month.

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

 
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Poland and Belarus traded accusations Tuesday as a group of migrants remained on the Belarus side of the border between the two countries. 

Poland says the migrants, mostly from the Middle East, are being encouraged to push their way into European Union member Poland by the government of Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko. 

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter that it is in Poland’s interest to seal its border, and that with Belarus’ actions “the stability and security of the entire EU is at stake.” 

Belarus denies the accusations, with its defense ministry saying in a statement Tuesday they are “unfounded and unsubstantiated.” 

The Belarussian foreign ministry, in its own statement, further warned Poland “against the use of any provocations.” 

Tensions were heavy along the border Monday, but Polish police said Tuesday the situation overnight was calm. Polish authorities shut an official border crossing in the area and shared a video showing a group of migrants with tents and campfires on the Belarus side. 

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

U.S. prosecutors on Monday said they had charged a Ukrainian man with launching a July ransomware attack on an American firm that had infected 1,500 businesses throughout the world.

Authorities also announced they had seized $6 million in ransom payments made to a Russian national accused of launching more than 3,000 other attacks targeting American companies.

An indictment filed in the southwestern state of Texas by the Justice Department accused Yaroslav Vasinskyi, a Ukrainian national arrested in Poland last month, of unleashing the ransomware attack known as REvil on Florida-based firm Kaseya, a global information technology software infrastructure supplier, which in turn affected its customers across the globe.

Vasinskyi and another alleged REvil operative, Russian national Yevgeniy Polyanin, who was accused in the other attacks, were charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, among other charges.

The U.S. Treasury Department also said the two men face sanctions for their roles in carrying out other ransomware attacks in the U.S., as well as creating a virtual currency exchange called Chatex “for facilitating financial transactions for ransomware actors.”

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Vasinskyi was in fact charged just six weeks after the July attack.

“His arrest demonstrates how quickly we will act, alongside our international partners, to identify, locate and apprehend alleged cybercriminals, no matter where they are,” Garland said.

U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop providing a haven for cybercriminals in Russia, where many of the attacks are believed to originate. Hackers have locked up companies’ computer operations from afar and demanded millions of dollars in ransom payments to let the companies resume their operations.

Authorities said the July attack corrupted a widely used software tool made by Kaseya, and its customers were immediately infected with REvil encryption. Some of the companies paid ransoms totaling millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies to resume business operations, though a master decryption key was eventually recovered by authorities and distributed weeks later.

Many of the 1,500 companies affected by the attack on Kaseya use its software to handle back-office functions because they are too small to have their own technology departments.

Vasinskyi, 22, is being held in Poland pending U.S. extradition proceedings, while Polyanin, 28, remains at large.

The indictment of Vasinskyi alleged that he and other conspirators launched the hacking software around April 2019 and “regularly” updated and refined it.

Europol said Monday that Romanian authorities last week arrested two individuals suspected of cyberattacks using the REvil ransomware, with three others arrested earlier in the year.

Europol said Friday that 12 people suspected of mounting ransomware attacks against companies or infrastructure in 71 countries were “targeted” in raids in Ukraine and Switzerland.
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The eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma entered its eighth week Monday, powerful as ever and showing no signs of stopping. 

From its official Twitter account, INVOLCAN, the Canary Islands Volcanology Center, reported lava and huge plumes of smoke and ash have been spouting from the crater all day.

Citing a report from Italy’s volcano department, INVOLCAN said the minimum height of the volcano’s plume Monday was 1,600 meters. 

The eruption has alternately surged and ebbed since September 19 and scientists say the eruption could last for up to three months. 

But experts have said that predicting the end of the eruption is difficult because the lava, ash and gases coming to the surface reflect complex geological activity happening deep inside the Earth, far from the reach of currently available technology. 

An area of more than 8,200 hectares between the Cumbre Vieja volcano and the Atlantic Ocean has been declared off limits. 

Lava from the volcano has destroyed several hundred homes and industrial buildings, and scorched hectares of farmland in the largely agricultural area. Officials evacuated more than 7,000 residents and tourists to prevent loss of life.

The previous eruption on La Palma happened 50 years ago and lasted about three weeks. The island of roughly 85,000 residents is part of Spain’s Canary Islands off the northwestern coast of Africa. 

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. 
…

A European human rights group alleged Monday that Israeli-made Pegasus spyware was used to hack the phones of staff members of six Palestinian civil society groups that Israel’s defense ministry has designated as terrorist organizations.

Dublin-based Front Line Defenders said its allegation was confirmed independently by researchers for Amnesty International and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

Front Line Defenders stopped short of blaming the Israeli government for installation of the spyware on the phones of the Palestinian human rights workers. But it condemned Israel’s designation of their organizations as linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, a Marxist group labeled as a terrorist organization by many Western nations, including the United States.

Last month, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz designated six Palestinian civil society territory groups in the occupied West Bank territories as “terrorist organizations.” The groups are Addameer, Al-Haq, Defense for Children – Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees.

Israel declined Monday to comment on the allegation that Pegasus was used against the groups’ staff members but pushed back against international criticism of the terrorism designation against the organizations, saying it had an “excellent file” of evidence linking the groups to the PFLP.  

Front Line Defenders said use of the Pegasus spyware made by NSO Group turns cell phones into pocket-spying devices, giving attackers “complete access to a phone’s messages, emails, media, microphone, camera, passwords, voice calls on messaging apps, location data, calls and contacts.”

The U.S. Commerce Department sanctioned the NSO Group last week, putting in on a blacklist that prohibits the company from receiving American technologies. It acted after U.S. officials determined that the NSO Group’s phone-hacking tools had been used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” government officials, journalists and activists around the world.

Asked about the new allegations, NSO Group said, “As we stated in the past, NSO Group does not operate the products itself … and we are not privy to the details of individuals monitored.” The company said it only sells to law enforcement and intelligence agencies and that it takes steps to curb abuse.

Front Line Defenders said it examined 75 iPhones and found six of them contaminated with the spyware, including phones used by Ghassan Halaika, a field researcher and human rights defender working for Al-Haq; Ubai Al-Aboudi, an American who is executive director of the Bisan Center for Research and Development; and French national Salah Hammouri, a lawyer and field researcher at the Jerusalem-based Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Three other Palestinians whose phones were hacked declined to be identified.

Front Line Defenders said that use of the Pegasus spyware “means that, in addition to the targeting of Palestinians, including dual nationals, non-Palestinians (including foreign nationals and diplomats) with whom these victims were in contact, including Israeli citizens, could have also been subject to this surveillance, which, in the case of its citizens, would amount to a breach of Israeli law.”

In a statement, Front Line Defenders said it “strongly condemns the decision and allegations of terrorism brought against these Palestinian human rights organizations in response to their peaceful human rights work. Human rights defenders are not terrorists.”

Some material in this report was supplied by Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed regional conflicts and a crisis in ties with the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency who paid a rare trip to Moscow last week, the Kremlin said Monday.

CIA chief William Burns was in Russia for two days of meetings with top officials at the request of President Joe Biden, the US embassy has said.

CNN reported last week that Burns had been sent to Moscow to warn the Kremlin about the alleged build-up of troops near Ukraine’s border. It said that after his meetings in Russia, Burns spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by phone.

The Kremlin’s spokesman said on Monday that Putin and Burns discussed bilateral ties, “regional conflicts” and a crisis in diplomatic relations. He did not provide further details. 

Burns, who was the US ambassador to Russia in 2005-2008, visited Moscow during a severe crisis in ties between Moscow and Washington. 

Biden has increased pressure on Putin since becoming US president in January. In May, Russia formally designated the United States an “unfriendly state”.

The Pentagon said last week it was monitoring the situation in Ukraine closely amid reports of a new build-up of Russian troops on the country’s border.

Publicly, Ukraine has denied reports of a new Russian troop build-up.

The Ukrainian army is locked in a simmering conflict with pro-Russian separatists that erupted after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.

After a rise in violence early this year, Russia in the spring amassed around 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, sparking fears of a major escalation. Under pressure from Kiev’s Western allies, Moscow later announced a pullback.
…

Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, convicted by Russia of spying, will continue to fight for his transfer to the United States despite losing a court appeal on Monday, Interfax news agency quoted his lawyer as saying.

Whelan, who holds U.S., British, Canadian and Irish passports, was sentenced last year to 16 years in jail. He denies espionage and has said he was set up in a sting operation. Washington has demanded his release. 

Whelan had challenged the refusal of a regional court to hear his case for being sent home, but an appeals court in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, around 400 km east of Moscow, deemed the original ruling lawful. 

Ahead of the hearing, one of Whelan’s lawyers, Vladimir Zherebenkov, said that negotiations between Washington and Moscow to try to agree to his release were no longer taking place, but that his team would continue to seek deportation through other channels.

“According to my information, all negotiations, including about a possible exchange, extradition or pardon of Whelan are not being held now, everything is suspended,” Zherebenkov was quoted as saying. 

“That is why we are trying to do it this way. I hope our justice system will expel him.” 

However, Zherebenkov said that extradition was unlikely without the recognition of the Russian sentence by the U.S. side. 

Whelan has said he hoped to be freed as part of a prisoner swap, a topic President Vladimir Putin discussed with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden at a summit in June. 

Moscow said that Whelan had been caught red-handed with classified information in a Moscow hotel room where agents from the Federal Security Service detained him on Dec. 28, 2018. 

Whelan said he was in Russia for a wedding and on holiday and set up by a Russian man he thought was a friend. 
…

A German humanitarian ship with more than 800 rescued migrants, including 15 very young children, steamed into a Sicilian port on Sunday after being granted permission by Italian authorities following days of waiting in the Mediterranean Sea.

The charity group Sea-Eye said the vessel Sea-Eye 4 was assigned to the port of Trapani, in western Sicily, on Saturday evening. Most of the adults were to be transferred to other ships for preventative quarantine against COVID-19, while some 160 minors, including babies and other children younger than 4, were to be taken to shelters on land.

Many of the passengers came from countries in West Africa, Egypt or Morocco, said Giovanna di Benedetto, an official from Save the Children in Italy.

Shouts of joy from those aboard Sea-Eye 4 could be heard on Trapani’s dock as the vessel drew near, SkyTG24 TV reported.

About half of the migrants were rescued from a sinking wooden boat on November 4, while the other passengers had been plucked from the sea in separate operations.

Sea-Eye officials had lamented that Malta, a European Union island nation in the central Mediterranean, hadn’t responded to the wooden boat’s distress signal in the Maltese search-and-rescue area.

Meanwhile, another charity ship, Ocean Viking, with 308 migrants aboard, was still awaiting a port assignment near Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily.

The humanitarian organization SOS Mediterranee, which operates Ocean Viking, tweeted that its team on Friday night was involved in a search for a boat in distress south of Lampedusa. The charity tweeted that the Italian Coast Guard “eventually coordinated and completed the rescue requesting the assistance” of Ocean Viking.

Separately, the coast guard, working in rough seas, evacuated two people, along with four family members, from the Ocean Viking for medical treatment, including for burns, SOS Mediterranee said.

On Saturday, Sea-Eye 4 received a delivery of food and blankets while it waited to learn where the migrants could set food on land. Doctors aboard Sea-Eye 4 had treated 25 people for hypothermia, sea sickness and high blood pressure, along with injuries consistent with torture.

U.N. refugee agencies have long denounced the practice of torture in detention camps in Libya, where the migrants live, often for weeks or months, until human traffickers arrange their passage aboard flimsy boats. 

The number of migrants daring the dangerous central Mediterranean crossing has surged this year to more than 54,000. Still, the numbers are dramatically below those of 2014-2017, when 120,000-180,000 people reached Italy each year, often in rickety smugglers’ boats. 
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Poland’s Health Ministry issued instructions Sunday to doctors confirming that it is legal to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health or life is in danger, a directive that comes amid apparent confusion over a new restriction to the country’s abortion law. 

The document addressed to obstetricians comes in reaction to the hospital death of a 30-year-old mother whose pregnancy was in its 22nd week. The woman died in September but her death became widely known this month. Doctors at the hospital in Pszczyna, in southern Poland, held off terminating her pregnancy despite the fact that her fetus lacked enough amniotic fluid to survive, her family and a lawyer say.

The doctors have been suspended and prosecutors are investigating. 

Angered Poles held massive nationwide protests over the weekend, blaming the woman’s death on Poland’s restrictive abortion law. Women’s rights activists say it has a chilling effect on doctors in this predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

The ministry stressed it is in line with the law to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health is in danger, even more so in case of threat to her life. It included guidance in case of premature loss of the amniotic fluid.

“It should be clearly stressed that doctors must not be afraid to take evident decisions. stemming from their experience and the available medical knowledge,” the ministry said.

Until a year ago, women in Poland could have abortions in three cases: if the pregnancy resulted from a crime like rape, if the woman’s health or life was at risk, or in the case of irreparable defects of the fetus. That last possibility was eliminated a year ago, when the Constitutional Tribunal ruled it went against Poland’s law. 
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John Kerry is everywhere and on the move at a fateful U.N. climate summit.

President Joe Biden’s envoy at the talks in Glasgow, Kerry steams from side talks with U.S. rivals China and Russia that painstakingly probe for common ground on climate to news conferences extolling progress. Kerry pops into project launches, rewarding CEOs and bankers for emissions-cutting efforts with high-level face time and praise. The lanky envoy smiles for a photo with Indigenous women from Brazil, their feather headdresses barely reaching his chin.

Toward the end of the U.N. climate summit’s first of two weeks, Kerry’s voice grew hoarse from his mission of rallying global climate efforts that are threatening to hit a wall at home.

“The alternative is you don’t do anything, you don’t say anything” on climate, Kerry told reporters at the summit. “You don’t have any promises, you don’t have any commitments. And you’re sitting there, waiting for the deluge.”

He was speaking of a climate fight growing more urgent, as global warming from the burning of fossil fuel intensifies, and more fraught, as the United States’ own wildly swinging seesaw politics imperil Biden’s climate efforts and again threaten global momentum on the matter.

With the summit underway, the U.S. House on Friday finally passed a stalled infrastructure bill that contains some important measures to cut U.S. emissions.

But Biden’s lagging political support, and Republican upsets in off-year elections last week, are heightening uncertainty that the U.S. administration can deliver on some of Biden’s biggest climate promises.

Kerry, President Barack Obama’s secretary of state and a former senator, came back post-President Donald Trump to serve as Biden’s climate envoy. 

The job has entailed apologizing for the global disruption that Trump, who mocks the science behind climate change, wreaked when he pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate accord, which Kerry helped to negotiate. Scientists say the ground lost during the Trump administration leaves this decade a last chance to keep the Earth from warming to more catastrophic levels.

Kerry’s job now is part diplomat, part cheerleader. At the Glasgow climate conference, as in the months before, Kerry negotiates to nail down every possible bit of new climate effort from countries and businesses — then pushes for more. While the U.S. return to global climate negotiations has helped push allies to some deeper cuts on emissions, the world’s other big polluters besides the United States — China, Russia, India and others — are short on emission promises, at best.

At 77, Kerry is waging only the latest of his campaigns in a decades-long personal battle to curb the fossil fuel emissions heating Earth.

Kerry “brings a deep knowledge of what’s at stake,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, and a veteran of climate talks. “He brings long-term relationships to these talks, and the spirit of collaboration.” Yet, she adds, he “gets limited by what is happening at home.”

If there’s not “a credible U.S. plan to meet the targets and phase out fossil fuels, there’s only so much, only so far, he can get here,” Morgan said.

Conservative groups single out Kerry online, making social media memes out of his wealth — at Glasgow he introduced a speaker as his neighbor on Martha’s Vineyard — and supposed love for jetting around the world.

Kerry’s intentness on diplomacy to try to push and pull coal-loving China into faster emission cuts also brings him into public contrast with Biden and some of Biden’s top officials, who have become vocally critical of China. China is currently the world’s top climate polluter. The U.S. is No. 2 at the moment, and the world’s worst carbon polluter over time.

Biden’s parting words as he left the Glasgow summit this past week after joining more than 100 other world leaders here were that Chinese President Xi Jinping had made a “big mistake” in not attending.

“They’ve lost an ability to influence people around the world,” Biden said. 

Veteran observers of global climate talks speak favorably of Kerry’s quieter work as climate envoy.

Thom Woodroofe, a researcher on U.S.-China climate diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said Biden’s appointment of the former secretary of state made countries such as China “really sit up and take notice with just how significant … how much importance the Biden administration was going to place on diplomacy and their climate action at home.”

While Chinese leaders publicly scold and snub members of the Biden administration, China’s own veteran climate diplomat, Xie Zhenha, told reporters at Glasgow he calculated he had talked to Kerry 23 times in Kerry’s current position.

When a news site ran a caricature showing an exaggeratedly chinned Kerry with one hand on the shoulder of the equally exaggerated round-faced Xie, and the other hand cupping the Earth and its future, Kerry had the cartoon framed and presented it to Xie.

At the climate summit, Kerry’s height makes him an easy spot among the thousands of climate advocates, government officials and reporters at the summit site, which sprawls for more than a half-mile (close to a kilometer). It’s a mix of permanent and temporary structures along Glasgow’s River Clyde that feels like an airport terminal flanked by a military forward-operating base.

Kerry appears patient and polite with the random advocates and reporters from around the world who approach him at the summit.

Before the summit, climate activists carrying out a hunger strike at the White House gates filmed another Biden administration official impatiently thumbing his phone when they approached him on the need for climate action. 

Kerry, by contrast, went out and talked to the young climate strikers, telling them about his own environmental activism when he was young.

Kerry’s first cause after returning from fighting in the Vietnam War was activism for the first Earth Day, in 1970, he says. His wife, Teresa Heinz, says they met at a later Earth Day, in 1990.

In 2015, his work in climate negotiations, and the trust Xie seemed to place in Obama negotiators including Kerry, helped seal a global climate deal in which more than 190 nations committed to taking action to cut climate emissions.

The irreversible damage being wrought by global warming was even more obvious to all by November 2016, when Kerry made one of his last trips as Obama’s secretary of state, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Antarctica.

The U.S. presidential election had just handed victory to Trump, who already had pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord and would soon be rolling back U.S. climate efforts in office.

Kerry crunched in boots over a frozen sea, faced off with a curious penguin and talked with U.S. scientists there.

The South Pole had the purest air in the world, but it, too, was heavily polluted with coal and petroleum waste, scientists told him. The West Antarctic ice sheet was melting from below in the warming waters, breaking off and floating out to sea.

It was “some of the most stunning wilderness,” Kerry recalled last month to The Associated Press, and it was “mixed with the negative impacts of human beings.”
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Three people were wounded in a knife attack on a high-speed train in southern Germany on Saturday, local police said, adding a suspect had been arrested.

Officers said the danger was over and a 27-year-old man was in custody, with unconfirmed media reports saying the suspect was of Syrian origin and suffered from psychiatric issues.

The motive for the attack on the passenger train, making its way from Bavaria to the northern city of Hamburg with roughly 300 people on board, was not yet clear.

Local prosecutors are handling the case rather than the federal officials who would deal with suspected terrorism.

The three victims were being treated in hospital, said police in Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, adding that none had suffered life-threatening injuries.

The ICE high-speed train was halted in the station of Seubersdorf, southeast of Nuremberg, and travel on the line was suspended.

“This knife attack is horrible,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Twitter.

“I would like to thank everyone, especially the police and the train staff, for their brave action, which prevented something even worse from happening.

“The motive for the crime is still unclear and will now be determined.”

The attack took place at a tense time in Germany, which faces terror threats from jihadis and right-wing extremist groups.

Islamist suspects have committed several violent attacks in recent years, the deadliest being a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.

The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the Islamic State jihadist group.

Seehofer said earlier this year that German authorities had foiled 23 attempted attacks since 2000.

“Germany and Western Europe are still in the sights of radical Islamists,” he warned at the time.

Since 2013, the number of Islamists considered dangerous in Germany has increased fivefold to 615, according to the interior ministry.

Several attacks or attempted attacks were carried out by asylum seekers who arrived in Germany during the 2015 migration crisis.

Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the country’s doors to some 900,000 asylum seekers.

German officials believe the attackers planned their acts alone, unlike some of the attacks in France in 2015 that were ordered by the Islamic State jihadist group. 
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Tens of thousands of climate activists marched Saturday through the Scottish city hosting the U.N. climate summit, physically close to the global negotiators inside but separated by a vast gulf in expectations, with frustrated marchers increasingly dismissive of the talks and demanding immediate action instead to slow global warming. 

The mood at the protest in Glasgow was upbeat despite the anger and bursts of rain. Similar protests were also held in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin, Copenhagen, Zurich and Istanbul. 

Many of the marchers condemned government leaders for failing to produce the fast action they say is needed, with some echoing activist Greta Thunberg’s view Friday that the talks were just more “blah, blah, blah.”

“We’re having these conversations, but there’s no policies to actually back them,” said Daze Aghaji, a marcher from London at the Glasgow demonstration, shouting over the steady beat of the drums.

“And on top of that, the real people should be in the room,” Aghaji said, referring to complaints that the Glasgow summit has too sharply limited participation by the public. “How are we expecting to make decent policy when the people who are the stakeholders of this aren’t even present in the room?”

Marchers held signs with messages including “Code Red for Humanity,” “Stop big polluters,” “COP26, we are watching you” or simply “I’m angry.” One sign asked “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?” 

Megan McClellan, 24, of Glasgow said she doubted that climate negotiators were listening.

“This is a very easy thing for them to ignore. They’re nice and comfortable” inside the summit conference center, she said, which is ringed by steel fences. 

But her friend Lucette Wood, 30, of Edinburgh disagreed. 

“They might not actually do anything about it but they pretend that they do … and they will just put it off for 20-30 years,” Wood said. 

Thunberg’s dismissive talk of the two-week climate summit — which has another week to go — has touched a nerve inside and outside the summit site. Government leaders and negotiators insist they are as equally aware as the marchers of the urgency of their task, with time slipping away to rein in pollution from fossil fuels before the Earth faces much higher levels of warming. 

Jamila Khatoon from Pakistan carried a sign in Glasgow about three glaciers in her region that may disappear because of climate change. 

“The glaciers are melting,” Khatoon said. “Villages are drowning. Nobody is doing anything.” 

Elaine Knox, 69 and William Oliphant, 60, both from Glasgow, said they were attending the rally for the next generations. 

“I’m dying before the worst happens,” Knox said. “It’s the youngsters we’re leaving a horrible, horrible world.” 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose country is hosting the talks, has defended the progress made by governments in raising promises of emissions cuts and climate financing, while acknowledging the public’s demands that more needs to be done. 

At the huge U.N. conference venue, negotiators spent a seventh straight day haggling over draft agreements that can be passed to government ministers for political approval next week. Among the issues under discussion were a fresh commitment to capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), pushing countries to review their efforts more frequently to increase the pressure for deeper cuts, and providing more financial support for poor nations to adapt to climate change. 

The summit’s president, Alok Sharma, told reporters he understood the protesters’ frustration. 

“I think we have overall made progress,” Sharma said Saturday. “I think people have been constructive in the negotiating rooms.” 

“We are getting to the point where the rubber hits the road, where we’re going to have to make, you know, tough decisions” by government officials, he said. “I don’t, certainly do not, underestimate the difficulty of the task which is ahead of us.” 

Saturday’s marches drew a range of participants and ages, a day after tens of thousands of young people in the Fridays for Future movement protested outside the Glasgow conference’s fences. Thunberg’s mix of school strikes, blunt and impatient talk about government excuses, and mass demonstrations have galvanized climate protests since 2018, especially in Europe. 

The climate protest movement — and the worsening droughts, storms, floods, wildfires and other disasters around the world this year — have brought home to many the accelerating damage of global warming and have kept the pressure on governments for stronger and faster action to reduce fossil fuel emissions. 

Elizabeth May, a Canadian member of parliament and 16-time participant in the U.N. climate talks, said the protests are making a difference. 

“Most of the people on the inside are here in their hearts and sometimes physically,” May said, who joined the Glasgow demonstrators Saturday.

In central London, thousands of climate protesters marched from the Bank of England to Trafalgar Square. Protester Sue Hampton, 64, said everyone is at risk and all generations need to press for action. 

“We can’t let the young people do all the work here. We’ve all got to do it together,” she said. 

In Istanbul, climate protesters brought their children to the demonstration Saturday, emphasizing the impact of global warming on future generations. 

“I want my children to live on a beautiful planet,” said Kadriye Basut, 52, in Istanbul.
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As this year’s U.N. climate talks go into their second week, negotiations on key topics are inching forward. Boosted by a few high-profile announcements at the start of the meeting, delegates are upbeat about the prospects for tangible progress in the fight against global warming. 

Laurent Fabius, the former French foreign minister who helped forge the Paris climate accord, said the general atmosphere had improved since the talks began October 31 and “most negotiators want an agreement.”

But negotiators were still struggling late Saturday to put together a series of draft decisions for government ministers to finalize during the second week of the talks. 

“People are having to take tough decisions, as they should,” Archie Young, the U.K.’s lead negotiator, said Saturday. 

Here’s the state of play in four main areas halfway through the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow: 

Top Result from the Conference 

Each Conference of the Parties, or COP, ends with a general statement. It’s as much a political declaration as a statement of intent about where countries agree the effort to combat climate change is heading. 

A flurry of announcements at the start of the COP26 talks in Glasgow on issues including ending deforestation, cutting methane emissions, providing more money for green investments and phasing out the use of coal could be reflected in this final declaration. Even though only some countries signed on to each of those deals, others would be encouraged to add their signatures at a later date. 

Affirming the goal of keeping global warming at or below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, compared to pre-industrial times, is also seen as important. With greenhouse gas emissions continuing to rise, host Britain has said it wants the Glasgow talks to “keep 1.5 C alive.” One way to achieve that would be to encourage rich polluters in particular to update their emissions-cutting targets every one or two years, rather than every five years as now required by the Paris accord. 

Money Matters to Combat Climate Change 

Rich countries pledged to mobilize $100 billion each year by 2020 to help poor nations cope with climate change. That target was likely missed, much to the frustration of developing nations. 

Restoring goodwill and trust between rich and poor countries on this issue requires a clear commitment on raising financial support starting from 2025. Addressing the thorny question of who is to pay for the losses and damages that nations face as a result of global warming they aren’t responsible for is likewise important, but agreement there could be elusive, observers say. 

“It’s about finance, finance, finance, finance,” said Fabius. 

Carbon Trading: A Tricky Nut to Crack 

Many negotiators and observers at climate conferences roll their eyes when they hear the words “Article 6.” 

The section dealing with rules for carbon markets has become one of the trickiest parts of the Paris climate accord to finalize. Six years after that deal was sealed, countries appear to be making headway and there’s even talk of a breakthrough on the issue that so frustrated negotiators in Madrid two years ago.

Observers say Brazil and India may be willing to drop demands to count their old — but others say worthless — carbon credits amassed under previous agreements. The price for this might be that rich nations grant poor countries a share of proceeds from carbon market transactions to adapt to climate change. This has been a red line for the United States and the European Union until now.

A deal on Article 6 is seen as crucial because many countries and companies aim to cut their emissions to “net zero” by 2050. This requires balancing out any remaining pollution with an equal amount of carbon they can reliably say is captured elsewhere, such as through forests or by technological means. 

Transparency, Rigor in National Emissions-Cutting Targets 

The Paris Agreement lets governments set their own emissions-cutting targets, and many of them are in the distant future. 

Verifying that countries are doing what they committed to, and that their goals are backed up by realistic measures, is tricky. China in particular has bristled at the idea of having to provide data in formats set by other nations. Brazil and Russia, meanwhile, have resisted demands to lay out in greater detail the short-term measures they’re taking to meet their long-term goals.
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