STOCKHOLM — Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are also known as Hibakusha, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.  

Below are some facts about the background and efforts of the movement.  

Atomic bombing of Japan   

In 1945 the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to bring an end to World War II and avoid a hugely costly invasion of the Japanese home islands.  

The two bombs killed an estimated 120,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while many thousands more died of burns and radiation injuries in the following years. The two atomic bombs remain the only nuclear weapons used in war.  

Local associations    

The fates of those who survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were long concealed and neglected, especially in the initial years after the end of the war.  

Local Hibakusha associations, along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, formed the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations in 1956.   

The organisation, whose name was shortened in Japanese to Nihon Hidankyo, would become the largest and most influential Hibakusha organisation in Japan.   

Witness accounts  

Through the years, Nihon Hidankyo has provided thousands of witness accounts relating the experience of the nuclear bombs. It has issued resolutions and public appeals, and sent annual delegations to bodies such as the United Nations and peace conferences to advocate nuclear disarmament.   

The movement has helped drive global opposition to nuclear weapons through the force of the survivors’ testimonies while also creating educational campaigns and issuing stark warnings about the spread and use of nuclear arms.  

Future  

With each passing year, the number of survivors from the two nuclear blasts in Japan nearly 80 years ago grows smaller.  

But the grassroots movement has played a part creating a culture of remembrance, allowing for new generations of Japanese to carry on the work.  

Source: The Norwegian Nobel Committee 

 
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kyiv, Ukraine — A Russian missile slammed into a commercial building in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region overnight, killing four people including a 16-year-old girl, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Friday.

It was the fourth Russian attack on the Black Sea port of Odesa and the nearby region in the last five days. Kiper said a day of mourning had been announced for Friday in the region to remember people killed in a Russian drone attack on October 9.

“In two days Russian terrorists killed 13 civilian people in the Odesa region and most of them are youth,” Kiper said on the Telegram messaging app.

The ability to maintain exports through the Black Sea ports is vital for the Ukrainian economy which has been hit hard by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Prosecutor General’s office said Russian forces had struck civilian infrastructure with a ballistic Iskander missile at about 22:35 (19:35 GMT) on Thursday night.

A two-story commercial building hosting food production facilities where civilians worked was hit and 10 more people were wounded, officials said.

Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said the Russian attacks targeted civilian infrastructure and strived to create impossible living conditions for millions of Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 29 out of 66 Russian drones launched at Ukraine overnight. Moscow also fired two missiles, it said, and 31 drones were “locationally lost,” an apparent reference to electronic warfare, while two drones returned towards Russian territory.

Zelenskyy meets foreign leaders

The new wave of strikes on Ukrainian Black Sea ports has coincided with visits by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week to meet leaders in London, Paris, Rome and Berlin to discuss his proposed “victory plan.”

There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the strike on Odesa. Russia, which invaded in February 2022, denies targeting civilians. It says it targets only military infrastructure and other military targets although towns and cities across Ukraine have been struck repeatedly.

A Russian missile hit a Palau-flagged vessel in Odesa port Monday, while on Sunday, another Russian missile damaged a civilian Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged vessel loaded with corn in the port of Pivdennyi.

Ukrainian officials said Russia had carried out almost 60 attacks on ports over the past three months, resulting in the damage and destruction of almost 300 port infrastructure facilities, 177 vehicles and 22 civilian vessels.

“They are trying from all sides to suppress our intentions to develop, maintain our economy,” Kiper said.
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WASHINGTON — The United States still believes that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon despite Tehran’s recent strategic setbacks, including Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leaders and two largely unsuccessful attempts to attack Israel, two U.S. officials told Reuters.

The comments from a senior Biden administration official and a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) added to public remarks earlier this week by CIA Director William Burns, who said the United States had not seen any evidence Iran’s leader had reversed his 2003 decision to suspend the weaponization program.

“We assess that the Supreme Leader has not made a decision to resume the nuclear weapons program that Iran suspended in 2003,” said the ODNI spokesperson, referring to Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The intelligence assessment could help explain U.S. opposition to any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack that Tehran carried out last week.

U.S. President Joe Biden said after that attack he would not support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites, but did not explain why he had reached that conclusion. His remarks drew fierce criticism from Republicans, including former President Donald Trump.

U.S. officials have long acknowledged that an attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program might only delay the country’s efforts to develop a nuclear bomb and could even strengthen Tehran’s resolve to do so.

“We’re all watching this space very carefully,” the Biden administration official said.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment but Tehran has repeatedly denied ever having had a nuclear weapons program.

Key Iran ally weakened

In the past weeks, Israel’s military has inflicted heavy losses on Hezbollah, the most powerful member of the Iran-backed network known as the Axis of Resistance. The group’s setbacks have included the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike last month.

The weakening of a key Iranian ally has prompted some experts to speculate that Tehran may restart its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb to protect itself.

Beth Sanner, a former U.S deputy director of national intelligence, said the risk of Khamenei reversing his 2003 religious dictum against nuclear weapons is “higher now than it has been” and that if Israel were to strike nuclear facilities Tehran would likely move ahead with building a nuclear weapon.

That would still take time, however.

“They can’t get a weapon in a day. It will take months and months and months,” said Sanner, now a fellow with the German Marshall Fund.

Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% fissile purity, close to the 90% of weapons grade, at two sites, and in theory it has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for almost four bombs, according to a yardstick of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. watchdog.

The expansion in Iran’s enrichment program has reduced the so-called breakout time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb to “a week or a little more,” according to Burns, from more than a year under a 2015 accord that Trump pulled out of when president. Actually making a bomb with that material would take longer. How long is less clear and the subject of debate.

Possible Israeli attack

Israel has not yet disclosed what it will target in retaliation for Iran’s attack last week with more than 180 ballistic missiles, which largely failed thanks to interceptions by Israeli air defenses as well as by the U.S. military.

The United States has been privately urging Israel to calibrate its response to avoid triggering a broader war in the Middle East, officials say, with Biden publicly voicing his opposition to a nuclear attack and concerns about a strike on Iran’s energy infrastructure.

Israel, however, views Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat.

The conflicts in the Middle East between Israel and Iran and Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen have become campaign issues ahead of the November 5 presidential election, with Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, positioning themselves as pro-Israel.

Speaking at a campaign event last week, Trump mocked Biden for opposing an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, saying: “That’s the thing you wanna hit, right?”

Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence officer and government official, said Iran still had space to compensate for setbacks dealt to its proxies and missile force without having to resort to developing a nuclear warhead.

“The Iranians have to recalculate what’s next. I don’t think at this point they will rush to either develop or boost the (nuclear) program toward military capacity,” he said.

“They will look around to find what maneuvering space they can move around in.”
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VIENTIANE, Laos — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Southeast Asian leaders Friday that the U.S. is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea during an annual summit meeting and pledged the U.S. will continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the vital sea trade route.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ meeting with Blinken followed a series of violent confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam, which have fueled concerns that China’s increasingly assertive actions in the waterways could spiral into a full-scale conflict.

China, which claims almost the entire sea, has overlapping claims with ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan. About a third of global trade transits through the sea, which is also rich in fishing stocks, gas and oil.

Beijing has refused to recognize a 2016 international arbitration ruling by a U.N.-affiliated court in the Hague that invalidated its expansive claims and has built up and militarized islands it controls.

“We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who is filling in for President Joe Biden, in his opening speech at the U.S.-ASEAN summit. “The United States will continue to support freedom of navigation, and freedom of overflight in the Indo Pacific.”

The United States has no claims in the South China Sea but has deployed navy ships and fighter jets to patrol the waters in a challenge to China’s claims.

Chinese and Philippine vessels have clashed repeatedly this year, and Vietnam said last week that Chinese forces assaulted its fishermen in the disputed sea. China has also sent patrol vessels to areas that Indonesia and Malaysia claim as exclusive economic zones.

The United States has warned repeatedly that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines — its oldest treaty ally in Asia — if Filipino forces, ships or aircraft come under armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. complained to summit leaders on Thursday that his country “continues to be subject to harassment and intimidation” by China. He said it was “regrettable that the overall situation in the South China Sea remains tense and unchanged” due to China’s actions, which he said violated international law. He has called for more urgency in ASEAN-China negotiations on a code of conduct to govern the South China Sea.

Singaporean leader Lawrence Wong earlier this week warned of “real risks of an accident spiraling into conflict” if the sea dispute isn’t addressed.

Malaysia, who takes over the rotating ASEAN chair next year, is expected to push to accelerate talks on the code of conduct. Officials have agreed to try and complete the code by 2026, but talks have been hampered by sticky issues including disagreements over whether the pact should be binding.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang was defiant during talks on Thursday. He called South China Sea a “shared home” but repeated China’s assertion that it was merely protecting its sovereign rights, officials said. Li also blamed meddling by “external forces” who sought to “introduce bloc confrontation and geopolitical conflicts into Asia.” Li didn’t name the foreign forces, but China has previously warned the U.S. not to meddle in the region’s territorial disputes.

In another firm message to China, Blinken said the United States believed “it is also important to maintain our shared commitment to protect stability across the Taiwan Strait.” China claims the self-ruled island of Taiwan as its own territory and bristles at other countries’ patrolling the body of water separating it from the island.

Blinken also attended an 18-nation East Asia Summit, along with the Chinese premier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and leaders from Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

ASEAN has treaded carefully on the sea dispute with China, which is the bloc’s largest trading partner and its third largest investor. It hasn’t marred trade relations, with the two sides focusing on expanding a free trade area covering a market of 2 billion people.

Blinken said the annual ASEAN summit talks were a platform to address other shared challenges including the civil war in Myanmar, North Korea’s “destabilizing behavior” and Russia’s war aggression in Ukraine. He said the U.S. remained the top foreign investor in the region and aims to strengthen its partnership with ASEAN.
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WINTER PARK, Florida — Many Jews worldwide will mark Yom Kippur in fasting and prayer at their synagogues this weekend.

But for the faithful in Florida, destructive Hurricane Milton has disrupted plans for observing the Day of Atonement — the holiest day of the year in the Jewish faith — that begins Friday evening and caps off the High Holy Days that began with Rosh Hashana on October 2.

Across the storm-threatened areas, rabbis and their congregants spent part of the Days of Awe — the span between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur — protecting their homes and synagogues as Milton churned off the coast, spiraling into a Category 5 storm. Many — though not all — evacuated, heeding the voluntary and mandatory orders, and found safekeeping for their synagogues’ Torah scrolls and themselves.

Milton hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 cyclone, with damaging winds, heavy rains and tornadoes. By Thursday, the storm had moved eastward into the Atlantic Ocean.

Why this rabbi decided against evacuating before storm

Rabbi Yitzchok Minkowicz evacuated most of his family ahead of the storm, but chose to ride it out with his son, also a rabbi, at Chabad Lubavitch of Southwest Florida near Fort Myers. The center is hosting people displaced by the storm, including doctors, first responders and elderly who cannot evacuate.

It’s important to be “with the people and for the people,” and provide emotional and spiritual support, he said as the storm approached.

Near midnight Thursday, the Chabad center and the rest of the neighborhood lost power, said Minkowicz, making them among the millions without it. The center was spared from the storm surge, but homes and other buildings in the area were not, he said.

“Our pressing need is for Power so that we can help our community & hold Yom Kippur services,” Minkowicz told The Associated Press via email Thursday. “We’re praying for this to be resolved asap.”

The center planned to host Yom Kippur observances regardless of the storm. He said it was similar two years ago, when the holy day followed the major hurricane, Ian.

“Yom Kippur is a day that you open up your soul to God and you totally connect with God,” Minkowicz said. “When you go through a hurricane, anything materialistic is not important. They’re already in that zone where they’re totally focused on God.”

Congregation Beth Am in the Tampa Bay area also lost power and plans to hold Yom Kippur services online, said Rabbi Jason Rosenberg of the Reform synagogue.

“It’s important to keep perspective. Having a service online is not what anybody wants, but it could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. “This feels like a blessing.”

The storm underscored one of Yom Kippur’s annual reflections.

An implicit question, he said before Milton’s landfall, is “If this was going to be your last year on earth, how would you want to act differently? … When you’ve got a historical storm, a potentially life-threatening and life-altering storm bearing down on you, that message is really present.”

Milton disrupts Yom Kippur and October 7 commemoration

Like most of her congregants, Rabbi Nicole Luna had evacuated after helping secure Temple Beth El in Fort Myers, and entrusting several Torah scrolls to congregants should the threatened surge devastate the synagogue.

While the congregation braved Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022, Milton’s timing hit especially hard, having already forced the postponement of community-wide commemoration of Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023. The war that followed is ongoing.

“It just feels like too much for our hearts to carry right now,” Luna said from Miami ahead of the storm. “It’s all very heavy.”

After the storm passed through, Luna told her congregation that their synagogue had emerged undamaged, though it lost power.

She announced plans for a service via Zoom on Friday evening, and in-person services Saturday.

“We hope by Saturday more traffic lights will be restored but please only come if you can safely navigate the roads,” she said in her message.

Luna said she was grateful for the “big outpouring of support” she received from fellow rabbis across the East Coast of Florida, who were opening their temples for the holidays to evacuees and have emphasized they can come as they are since few grabbed “holiday-appropriate clothing” in the rush to escape Milton’s fury.

The Chabad of Southwest Broward near Fort Lauderdale is hosting several evacuees from areas most affected by the storm, ranging from a mother with her newborn to an elderly couple, said director Rabbi Pinny Andrusier. They are invited to spend Yom Kippur with the Cooper City-based group, including sharing kosher meals before and after the day of fasting.

“We were spared, thank God,” Andrusier said of the storm. “We’ve been able to open up our doors” for those in the hurricane zone.

Synagogue skips holding Yom Kippur services

Hundreds of Jewish families on Longboat Key, a barrier island off Sarasota Bay, won’t be able to observe Yom Kippur in their synagogue for the very first time in their 45-year history, said Shepard Englander, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee.

Access to the island, specifically the John Ringling Causeway, was closed ahead of the storm. The congregation decided it wasn’t worth risking Milton’s might for Day of Atonement services. They had celebrated Rosh Hashana in their building despite a number of nearby homes being damaged by Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last month.

Englander said he and his family evacuated from their home on a riverbank outside Sarasota and were hunkered down at a friend’s home inland. From there, he was trying to make sure community members from Longboat Key and other temples that won’t have services can say their prayers and break their daylong Yom Kippur fast at a newly constructed conference center in Sarasota with food items like blintzes, bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon.

Ahead of the storm, people were scattered in the region at emergency shelters or staying with family or friends, Englander said.

“It’s in difficult times that you really understand the power of community,” he said. “And this is a caring, tight-knit, generous Jewish community.”
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washington — The article in the Seattle Tribune had everything: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Adolf Hitler and a $15 million classic car. Unsurprisingly, it spread like wildfire across Russia’s state and pro-Kremlin media.

But the subject was a strange one for a news site about a U.S. city; such outlets usually cover only local stories.

In fact, the article with headline “Hitler’s parade car bought by Ukraine’s Zelensky” was another fake spread by Russian propaganda.

There is no such media outlet as the Seattle Tribune, just a website masquerading as a full-fledged publication. And the article itself was a compilation of Russia’s disinformation “greatest hits” about Ukraine — “Nazism,” “unrestrained corruption” and “wasting American aid.”

According to the phony news article, Zelenskyy was spotted in Kyiv exiting a Mercedes-Benz 770K Grosser Offener Tourenwagen, Adolf Hitler’s parade car. The sighting supposedly occurred just days after the Ukrainian leader returned from Washington, where the U.S. government had allocated an $8 billion aid package to his country.

The article featured a screenshot of a post by the Ukrainian Telegram messenger channel Realna Viyna (“Real War” in Ukrainian) featuring a photo of the vehicle parked in front of the Ukrainian presidential administration building in Kyiv.

However, beyond the Seattle Tribune news site not actually existing, the article had several other glaring problems.

First, Realna Viyna did not publish the post in the screenshot. Second, the image of “Hitler’s car” was stolen from a photo widely available on the internet that was digitally edited into an image of the Ukrainian presidential administration building.

VOA found that the angle of photo in the screenshot, a black spot on the asphalt under the car’s running board, and the reflection on the front windshield completely match the image of the Mercedes-Benz 770K found across the internet.

Third, the Seattle Tribune website was registered on October 3, 2024, just six days before the fake article was published. And the registration was set for only one year.

The Seattle Tribune appears to belong to a network of disinformation websites controlled by John Mark Dougan, an American living in Russia, according to Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist who fact checks and debunks disinformation at the BBC.

He noted on social network X that creating fake local American news sites is Dougan’s standard approach. That conclusion matches VOA’s observations about Dougan’s network.

A former deputy sheriff in Florida, Dougan was charged with extortion and wiretapping in the United States. In 2016, he fled to Russia and later received political asylum there.

He now operates at least 167 disinformation sites that often publish narratives serving Russian interests, according to a May 2024 investigation by NewsGuard.

Dougan’s sites previously attracted widespread attention for spreading a fake story claiming that Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, had purchased a $4.8 million Bugatti supercar during a visit to France for commemorations of the D-Day landing.

That story seemed to be aimed at a Western audience. The fake “Hitler car” story, however, is mostly spreading in the Russian information space. In a message on the Telegram messenger, Dougan told VOA that he was unaware of the Seattle Tribune.

“Never heard of it. But I looked it up [and] heard there’s lots of great information on there. A real pillar of journalistic integrity, on par with the NYT, CNN and MSNBC,” he wrote, referring to The New York Times and two major U.S. TV news channels.

As is often the case with higher-quality fakes, the phony story about Hitler’s parade car combines a fictitious narrative about Zelenskyy with real facts about the sale of a former Nazi parade car in the United States.

The factual information comes from an article in a real American newspaper: The Seattle Times, which reported in February 2018 that the Mercedes-Benz 770K had briefly appeared in the Seattle area after having been put up for auction in Scottsdale, Arizona, a month earlier.

While the vehicle did not sell at the auction, it soon found a buyer. After that, the “Hitler car” was briefly unloaded from a truck in the wealthy Seattle suburb of Medina, where it attracted the attention of a local resident, who told The Seattle Times about it. Later, the car was likely reloaded onto the truck and taken way.

The director of the auction company Worldwide Auctioneers, Rod Egan (his name was also mentioned in the fake Seattle Tribune story), refused to tell The Seattle Times the buyer of the car, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

However, Egan said the car’s ultimate destination was “very, very far away” outside the United States.

The Seattle Times article also cited a German media report that six such cars were bought by a Russian billionaire in 2009. Among them was the vehicle mentioned in the fake article.

The fake story about Zelenskyy and the “Hitler car” also recalled a scene from the 2001 American comedy film “Rat Race,” in which actor Jon Lovitz steals Hitler’s parade car from a fictional museum of Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie and then crashes it into a gathering of American World War II veterans.

Asked whether he was familiar with the film and scene, Dougan replied, “Comedy gold right there.”
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WASHINGTON — Russian opposition politician and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza was released from a Russian prison on August 1 as part of a wide-ranging exchange of prisoners between Russia and several Western countries. He had been jailed in April 2022 on charges of treason for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine. He was almost fatally poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017.

Since his release, Kara-Murza has been actively involved in the Russian opposition’s diplomatic efforts, meeting with the U.S. and French presidents and the German chancellor. During a recent visit to Washington, he sat down for interviews with Voice of America journalists. Speaking to VOA’s Ukrainian Service, he discussed the agenda that the Russian opposition is promoting in the West.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: After your release, you met with [U.S.] President [Joe] Biden, [French] President [Emmanuel] Macron and [German] Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz. What was your main message to them about policy toward Russia?

Vladimir Kara-Murza, Russian opposition politician: There are two main messages. The first message is that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin must lose the war in Ukraine, because if he does win, that means that in a year or a year and a half, we will be talking about another war or another Russian invasion, because this is what this man does.

The second message is that the democratic nations of the free world must have a strategy. We know from the last couple of centuries of Russian history that failed wars of aggression always lead to political changes at home. Once Putin is defeated in Ukraine, there must be a prepared strategy for reintegrating a new, changed, post-Putin democratic Russia back into Europe, back into the civilized world, and back into what we call the international rules-based order.

VOA: If Putin loses power, how can democratization possibly happen? Someone from his inner circle would most likely grab power.

Kara-Murza: I hope he doesn’t die in office and that’s how it ends. I’m a Christian, and I know that everybody gets a trial up there, and so will he. But I really want that man to get a trial in this life, too.

On the question of change, this is a personalistic dictatorship. It is not an ideological dictatorship like in Soviet times, with the collective Politburo, when you could replace the person at the top without replacing the regime. This system is going to collapse very quickly, as we saw in 1953 after [Josef] Stalin’s death.

VOA: But [Nikita] Khrushchev, who replaced Stalin, was from his inner circle; he wasn’t an outsider.

Kara-Murza: Even if the next leader comes from the same circle, they always base their rule on a complete denial of everything that happened before. Khrushchev was one of Stalin’s closest entourage. He was the one who released millions of people from the gulag and engaged in a very incomplete, very imperfect but nevertheless de-Stalinization process that we had in the late 1950s, early 1960s — the so-called “Thaw.”

VOA: What kind of preparations should be made? How could democratic forces seize power?

Kara-Murza: The domestic aspect concerns reflection and accountability, which I call a truth-and-reconciliation process. That is necessary for any society that has undergone the trauma of totalitarian rule. All the people who are responsible for the crimes against Russian citizens, like the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, the assassination of Alexei Navalny and the persecution of hundreds and hundreds of political prisoners, have to be brought to justice. All the archives and the documents of all the crimes committed must be made public.

VOA: What about confronting the Russian imperialist mentality? Should Russia also confront all the crimes it has committed toward other people throughout its history?

Kara-Murza: It is part of the totalitarian past, because for years and years, for decades, the regime in the Kremlin has been committing crimes against our people in Russia and against other countries, other people and other nations. Look at the aggression and the wars this regime has conducted against the Chechens, against the Georgians, against Ukraine — let’s not forget, starting in 2014. Then, in Syria, of course, let’s not forget [Sergei] Shoigu, [Putin’s] defense minister, boasted about new armaments they had tested — tested! — on people, on civilians in residential areas.

VOA: I want to address your main argument about integrating Russia into the West after democratization and liberalization. The main argument against this would be that the West already tried that in the 1990s. Russia was part of the G8. NATO and the EU engaged with Russia. It received assistance. However, as Russia became richer, it became more aggressive. The more it became integrated with the West, the more efficient its malicious activities against the West became.

Kara-Murza: Here is where I fundamentally disagree, because the whole problem is that the West did not do that in the 1990s. Yes, there were some symbolic steps, like the G8, which is just a summit meeting. But, unlike other countries of the former Warsaw Pact, Russia in the 1990s was never offered a prospect of what I would call first-tier European or Atlantic integration with tangible benefits like free trade, visa-free travel and common security guarantees.

VOA: But it requires time. Ukraine still hasn’t been offered NATO membership …

Kara-Murza: But the problem is that these windows of opportunity are, by definition, short and brief. They last a few months at best, and the West lost that window of opportunity in Russia in the early 1990s. We cannot allow that to happen again.

In 1943, as WWII was ongoing, the U.S. government developed the Morgenthau Plan for postwar Germany. It was about dismembering, de-industrializing, humiliating and basically destroying Germany as a functioning state. Given the horrors committed at the time of the war, it was emotionally very understandable. However, leaders of Western-allied nations realized that they could not base long-term strategic policy on emotion. So, the Morgenthau Plan was abandoned in favor of the Marshall Plan, which was the exact opposite: to rebuild and reconstruct Germany after the war, to make it a successful market economy and a functioning liberal democracy.

VOA: Should this happen before or after Russia pays reparations for the destruction of Ukraine?

Kara-Murza: It should be simultaneous. The only way we can ensure long-term peace, stability, security and democracy on the European continent is with a democratic Russia. It’s not going to happen any other way.
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STOCKHOLM — Swedish police said on Thursday they were investigating a shooting near an Israeli target in the city of Gothenburg, which the national broadcaster said was a unit of Israeli defense electronics firm Elbit Systems. 

Police said in a statement it had apprehended a young suspect at the scene and launched a probe into suspected attempted murder and serious weapons crimes. 

They did not identify the company, but Elbit Systems Sweden CEO Tobias Wennberg told Reuters there had been a serious incident outside its premises on Thursday, adding that no one was injured in the incident. 

“Elbit Systems Sweden otherwise has no knowledge of the incident. Our operations continue as usual,” he said in an email. 

A police spokesperson said there was only one suspect, and investigators were not aware of any concrete threats against other Israeli targets in the city on Sweden’s west coast. 

The suspect is under 15 years of age, public broadcaster SVT and other Swedish media reported, without identifying their sources. 

The Israeli Embassy in Stockholm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Swedish police in May said they had stepped up security around Israeli and Jewish interests in the Nordic country after officers on patrol heard suspected gunshots near Israel’s embassy in Stockholm. 

Sweden has seen an epidemic of gun violence in recent years, driven by criminal gangs feuding over drugs and other illicit activities. 
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When major disasters like hurricanes and floods hit the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, coordinates major rescue efforts that would overwhelm local officials. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports on how the agency works. 
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WASHINGTON — Disinformation and conspiracy theories have spread quickly in response to natural disasters in the southeastern United States, creating distrust in the government response, according to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It is absolutely the worst I have ever seen,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters on a Tuesday call.

The spread of lies surrounding the natural disasters comes at a time when social media infrastructure will allow “virtually any claim” to amplify and spread, experts say.

Hurricane Helene left more than 200 people dead and many more injured or without power, and Hurricane Milton has left at least four dead after ravaging Florida, according to the Associated Press.

Some frequently spread falsehoods include accusations that FEMA prevented Florida evacuations and claims that funding for storm victims was instead given to undocumented migrants.

Such misinformation is “demoralizing” to first responders, Criswell said in the press call.

Additionally, the fabrications could put first responders and residents of impacted areas in even more danger, according to Matthew Baum, a Harvard University professor who focuses on fake news and misinformation.

“When you’re talking about life-and-death situations, [misinformation] can cause people not to take advantage of help that’s available to them, and it can also be dangerous for first responders who are being accused of all sorts of badness,” Baum told VOA. “And if first responders start to worry about their own safety, that’s going to undermine how they do their jobs.”

Many of the other falsehoods stem from former President Donald Trump’s campaign and allies.

In an October 3 rally, the former president falsely claimed that the Biden-Harris administration was diverting FEMA funding to house illegal migrants.

Last week, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, claimed that “they control the weather” in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. She did not specify who “they” are.

To combat popular conspiracies surrounding hurricane relief efforts, FEMA launched a “Hurricane Rumor Response” webpage to “help correct rumors and provide accurate information,” according to a press release.

Baum, however, told VOA that those who believe the false claims may not be swayed by the government-funded website, as they are already “deep down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking.”

“I don’t think the website will have a significant effect, but it’s still worth doing because journalists read it and having that information out there gets it into the news ecosystem,” Baum said. “But fundamentally, it’s not likely to reach many of the people that are at risk of being harmed by this disinformation.”

FEMA put up a similar rumor response webpage during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

On social media platforms such as X, misinformation tends to spread faster than true stories, a 2018 MIT study found. False news stories are 70% more likely to be reposted than true ones are.

Media scholar Matt Jordan told VOA the vast amount of disinformation circulating is part of a “firehose of falsehood” strategy, in which bad actors publish so much “garbage” that people don’t know what to believe.

“It’s a way of eliminating the capacity for the press to help generate democratic consensus by just putting so much garbage into the zone,” the Penn State professor said.

U.S. President Joe Biden said during a Tuesday morning briefing that this misinformation “misleads” the public.

“It’s un-American, it really is,” he said in his remarks. “People are scared to death; people know their lives are at stake.”
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WASHINGTON — Inflation in the United States dropped last month to its lowest point since it first began surging more than three years ago, adding to a spate of encouraging economic news in the closing weeks of the presidential race. 

Consumer prices rose 2.4% in September from a year earlier, down from 2.5% in August, and the smallest annual rise since February 2021. Measured from month to month, prices increased 0.2% from August to September, the Labor Department reported Thursday, the same as in the previous month. 

But excluding volatile food and energy costs, “core” prices, a gauge of underlying inflation, remained elevated in September, driven higher by rising costs for medical care, clothing, auto insurance and airline fares. Core prices in September were up 3.3% from a year earlier and 0.3% from August. Economists closely watch core prices, which typically provide a better hint of future inflation. 

Taken as a whole, the September figures show that inflation is steadily easing back to the Fed’s 2% target, even if in a gradual and uneven pattern. Apartment rental costs grew more slowly last month, a sign that housing inflation is finally cooling, a long-awaited development that would provide relief to many consumers. 

Overall inflation last month was held down by a big drop in gas prices, which fell 4.1% from August to September. Grocery prices jumped 0.4% last month, after roughly a year of mild increases, though they’re 1.3% higher than a year earlier. 

Restaurant food prices increased 0.3% last month and are up 3.9% in the past year. And clothing prices rose 1.1% from August to September and are up 1.8% from a year ago. 

The improving inflation picture follows a mostly healthy jobs report released last week, which showed that hiring accelerated in September and that the unemployment rate dropped from 4.2% to 4.1%. The government has also reported that the economy expanded at a solid 3% annual rate in the April-June quarter. Growth likely continued at roughly that pace in the just-completed July-September quarter. 

Cooling inflation, solid hiring and healthy growth could erode former President Donald Trump’s advantage on the economy in the presidential campaign as measured by public opinion polls. In some surveys, Vice President Kamala Harris has pulled even with Trump on the issue of who would best handle the economy, after Trump had decisively led President Joe Biden on the issue. 

At the same time, most voters still give the economy relatively poor marks, mostly because of the cumulative rise in prices over the past three years. 

For the Fed, last week’s much-stronger-than-expected jobs report fueled some concern that the economy might not be cooling enough to slow inflation sufficiently. The central bank reduced its key rate by an outsized half-point last month, its first rate cut of any size in four years. The Fed’s policymakers also signaled that they envisioned two additional quarter-point rate cuts in November and December. 

In remarks this week, a slew of Fed officials have said they’re still willing to keep cutting their key rate but at a deliberate pace, a signal that any further half-point cuts are unlikely. 

The Fed “should not rush to reduce” its benchmark rate “but rather should proceed gradually,” Lorie Logan, president of the Federal Reserve’s Dallas branch, said in a speech Wednesday. 

Inflation in the United States and many countries in Europe and Latin America surged in the economic recovery from the pandemic, as COVID closed factories and clogged supply chains. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine worsened energy and food shortages, pushing inflation higher. It peaked at 9.1% in the U.S. in June 2022. 

Economists at Goldman Sachs projected earlier this week that core inflation will drop to 3% by December 2024. And few analysts expect inflation to surge again unless conflicts in the Middle East worsen dramatically. 

Though higher prices have soured many Americans on the economy, wages and incomes are now rising faster than costs and should make it easier for households to adapt. Last month, the Census Bureau reported that inflation-adjusted median household incomes — the level at which half of households are above and half below — rose 4% in 2023, enough to return incomes back to their pre-pandemic peak. 

In response to higher food prices, many consumers have shifted their spending from name brands to private labels or have started shopping more at discount stores. Those changes have put more pressure on packaged foods companies, for example, to slow their price hikes. 

This week, PepsiCo reported that its sales volumes fell after it imposed steep price increases on its drinks and snacks.
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Hurricane Milton left behind widespread destruction as it hit Florida on Wednesday as a dangerous Category 3 storm – the second time in two weeks the southeastern state was hit by a powerful hurricane. VOA’s Richard Green has the latest.
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Expect the unexpected, especially during the month before a U.S. presidential election. It’s called an October surprise.
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WASHINGTON — Neither rising death tolls nor plunging temperatures are likely to change the trajectory of Russia’s war against Ukraine, according to senior U.S. officials charged with supporting Kyiv’s fight against Moscow’s forces. 

The officials, briefing reporters Wednesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss battlefield developments, said fighting over the past several weeks has resulted in only minor changes to the front lines, with few indications Russia is making any adjustments.

“It’s an attritional strategy,” said a senior U.S. military official. “It’s kind of the Russian way of war that they continue to throw mass into the problem.”

That willingness to try to overwhelm Ukrainian positions with sheer numbers has cost Russia’s military, according to the latest U.S. military assessments.

The U.S. estimates Russian forces have suffered 600,000 casualties, killed and wounded, since Moscow first launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — a toll that U.S. officials said surpasses the number of Russian casualties in any conflict since World War II.

September has been especially costly, with Russia sustaining more casualties last month than in any other month of the war, officials said. 

Russia’s military has also suffered in other ways.

Senior U.S. officials estimate Ukraine has destroyed or damaged more than 30 medium to large Russian ships stationed in the Black Sea, forcing Russia to relocate its Black Sea fleet. Ukraine is also thought to have destroyed more than two-thirds of Russia’s prewar tank inventory.

“[It is] forcing the Russian military to dig into Soviet-era stockpiles and fuel tanks from World War II,” said a senior U.S. defense official.

And then there are the Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian ammunition depots, believed to have destroyed hundreds of thousands of Russian and North Korean-made rounds.

U.S. officials said the damage would likely slow delivery of ammunition and artillery rounds to the front lines.

Still, they warned, the Kremlin appears undeterred, even it means more Russian casualties.

“Russia does continue to devote significant amounts of resources and … lives toward a grinding campaign, redoubling its efforts in the east,” said the senior defense official. 

“Russia has also demonstrated time and time again a willingness to do whatever it takes to attempt to force the Ukrainians to capitulate, including purposely targeting Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure.”

For now, senior U.S. officials assess that Russian President Vladimir Putin has managed to avoid calling for a mass mobilization, like the call-up of some 300,000 reservists back in September 2022, thanks in part to pay increases for Russian volunteers. But just how long Putin can sustain Russia’s efforts without new troops is not clear.

As for Ukraine, senior U.S. officials point to the country’s success with its domestically produced drones and even its offensive into Russia’s Kursk region as reasons for hope.

“My assessment is that the Ukrainians will be able to maintain their position in Kursk for some amount of time, here into the future,” said the senior U.S. military official. “Several months and potentially beyond.”

The official said Ukraine’s military leadership appears to be looking at the big picture.

“Certainly, they’re focused on how they get through the winter, but they’re thinking a little bit longer term about how they set conditions for success next year,” the official said. 

“The Ukrainians are thinking forward to 2025,” the U.S. official added. “That includes things like ensuring that the additional brigades can come online as they increase their recruitment, as they get better equipment and training, reconstituting brigades that they’re cycling off the front line and really building up their combat power for the future.”
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US President Joe Biden warned Wednesday about the ‘storm of the century’ as Hurricane Milton churned toward Florida’s western coast. He and the head of his disaster management agency urged residents to evacuate — as did local officials who spoke to VOA on Wednesday. VOA’s Anita Powell and Jose Pernalete report from Washington and Pinellas County, Florida.
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NEW YORK — You’ve heard the horror stories: Someone casting multiple ballots, people voting in the name of dead relatives, mail-in ballots being intercepted. 

Voter fraud does happen occasionally. When it does, we tend to hear a lot about it. It also gets caught and prosecuted. 

The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, according to current and former election administrators of both parties. 

America’s elections are decentralized, with thousands of independent voting jurisdictions. That makes it virtually impossible to pull off a large-scale vote-rigging operation that could tip a presidential race — or almost any other race. 

“You’re probably not going to have a perfect election system,” said Republican Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state and the advisory board chair of the Secure Elections Project. “But if you’re looking for one that you should have confidence in, you should feel good about that here in America.” 

What’s stopping people from committing voter fraud? 

Voting more than once, tampering with ballots, lying about your residence to vote somewhere else, or casting someone else’s ballot are crimes that can be punished with hefty fines and prison time. Non-U.S. citizens who break election laws can be deported. 

For anyone still motivated to cheat, election systems in the United States are designed with multiple layers of protection and transparency intended to stand in the way. 

For in-person voting, most states either require or request voters provide some sort of ID at the polls. Others require voters to verify who they are in another way, such as stating their name and address, signing a poll book or signing an affidavit. 

People who try to vote in the name of a recently deceased friend or family member can be caught when election officials update voter lists with death records and obituaries, said Gail Pellerin, a Democratic in the California Assembly who ran elections in Santa Cruz County for more than 27 years. 

Those who try to impersonate someone else run the risk that someone at the polls knows that person or that the person will later try to cast their own ballot, she said. 

What protections exist for absentee voting? 

For absentee voting, different states have different ballot verification protocols. All states require a voter’s signature. Many states have further precautions, such as having bipartisan teams compare the signature with other signatures on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign. 

That means even if a ballot is erroneously sent to someone’s past address and the current resident mails it in, there are checks to alert election workers to the foul play. 

A growing number of states offer online or text-based ballot tracking tools as an extra layer of protection, allowing voters to see when their ballot has been sent out, returned and counted. 

Federal law requires voter list maintenance, and election officials do that through a variety of methods, from checking state and federal databases to collaborating with other states to track voters who have moved. 

Ballot drop boxes have security protocols, too, said Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. 

She explained the boxes are often designed to stop hands from stealing ballots and are surveilled by camera, bolted to the ground and constructed with fire-retardant chambers, so if someone threw in a lit match, it wouldn’t destroy the ballots inside. 

Sometimes, alleged voter fraud isn’t what it seems 

After the 2020 election, social media surged with claims of dead people casting ballots, double voting or destroyed piles of ballots on the side of the road. 

Former President Donald Trump promoted and has continued to amplify these claims. But the vast majority of them were found to be untrue. 

An Associated Press investigation that explored every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found there were fewer than 475 out of millions of votes cast. That was not nearly enough to tip the outcome. Democrat Joe Biden won the six states by a combined 311,257 votes. 

The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the voting. Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots. In one case, a man mistakenly thought he could vote while on parole. In another, a woman was suspected of sending in a ballot for her dead mother. 

Former election officials say that even more often, allegations of voter fraud turn out to result from a clerical error or a misunderstanding. 

Pellerin said she remembered when a political candidate in her county raised suspicion about many people being registered to vote at the same address. It turned out the voters were nuns who all lived in the same home. 

Patrick said that when she worked in elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, mismatched signatures were sometimes explained by a broken arm or a recent stroke. In other cases, an elderly person tried to vote twice because they forgot they had already submitted a mail ballot. 

“You really have to think about the intent of the voter,” Patrick said. “It isn’t always intuitive.” 

Why voter fraud is unlikely to affect the presidential race 

It would be wrong to suggest that voter fraud never happens. 

With millions of votes cast in an election year, it’s almost guaranteed there will be a few cases of someone trying to game the system. There also have been more insidious efforts, such as a vote-buying scheme in 2006 in Kentucky. 

In that case, Grayson said, voters complained, and an investigation ensued. Then participants admitted what they had done. 

He said the example shows how important it is for election officials to stay vigilant and constantly improve security in order to help voters feel confident. 

But, he said, it would be hard to make any such scheme work on a larger scale. Fraudsters would have to navigate onerous nuances in each county’s election system. They also would have to keep a large number of people quiet about a crime that could be caught at any moment by officials or observers. 

“This decentralized nature of the elections is itself a deterrent,” Grayson said. 
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WASHINGTON — A prominent Ukrainian news outlet reported Wednesday it is facing “ongoing and systematic pressure” from the office of the Ukrainian president that is threatening the outlet’s work.

In a statement on its website, the online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda said officials are being blocked from communicating with the outlet’s journalists, its reporters are being denied access to official events and businesses are being pressured to stop advertising on its website.

In the statement, the outlet also highlighted a tense exchange between Ukrainska Pravda journalist Roman Kravets and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a recent press conference. During the interaction, Zelenskyy questioned the outlet’s editorial independence.

Ukrainska Pravda editor-in-chief Sevgil Musayeva told VOA it was important for the outlet to be honest with readers about the pressure it faces from the government.

“Ukraine is fighting for the right to exist but also for the right to be democratic, independent and transparent,” Musayeva said from Kyiv.

“And freedom of press and freedom of speech is one of [the] essential values of democracy. That’s why we will protect this value as much as we can,” Musayeva continued.

Ukrainska Pravda said it views the government’s actions as attempts to influence the outlet’s editorial policy.

The outlet has been facing this kind of pressure for about one year, but it has become even worse over the past two months, according to Musayeva. From now on, Ukrainska Pravda said, it will make public any attempts by the president’s office to pressure the outlet, according to the statement.

“Each such attempt only strengthens our motivation to expose corruption and mismanagement in the highest ranks of power,” the statement said. “We call on everyone who values freedom of speech and the independence of Ukrainian journalism to join us in defending these values.”

Media watchdogs — and Ukrainian journalists — have expressed concern about the state of press freedom in Ukraine in recent months amid Russia’s war on the country.

In June, Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, said press freedom was “shrinking” in Ukraine, with challenges that include rising political pressure, surveillance and threats.

“The pressure, threats and interference must stop,” Jeanne Cavelier, head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said in the June statement. “Despite their admirable resilience after Russia launched its full scale invasion on 24 February 2022, the Ukrainian media landscape remains fragile.”

The Ukrainian president’s office, the Foreign Ministry and Ukraine’s Washington embassy did not immediately reply to VOA emails requesting comment for this story.

Musayeva told VOA she believes the pressure is in response to critical coverage Ukrainska Pravda has produced about the Ukrainian government, including on misconduct and corruption.

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Musayeva said, there has been a sense of less tolerance for news stories critical of the government. Still, the outlet will continue to cover all aspects of government, good or bad, she said.

“We continue our critical coverage on some bad governance,” she said. “We still see that corruption didn’t disappear.”

Musayeva said she recognizes the importance for the media to cover positive stories about Ukraine.

“But at the same time, the role of independent media in democratic countries is to provide information for the people and truthful information for the people about the current situation,” she said.
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One county in the battleground U.S. state of Wisconsin plays a disproportionate role in deciding whether Democrats or Republicans win the White House in November, analysts say. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias takes us to Dane County, where the fight to sway votes is getting hotter as the election draws near.
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LAS VEGAS — Sin City blew a kiss goodbye to the Tropicana before first light Wednesday in an elaborate implosion that reduced to rubble the last true mob building on the Las Vegas Strip. 

The Tropicana’s hotel towers tumbled in a celebration that included a fireworks display. It was the first implosion in nearly a decade for a city that loves fresh starts and that has made casino implosions as much a part of its identity as gambling itself. 

“What Las Vegas has done, in classic Las Vegas style, they’ve turned many of these implosions into spectacles,” said Geoff Schumacher, historian and vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum. 

Former casino mogul Steve Wynn changed the way Las Vegas blows up casinos in 1993 with the implosion of the Dunes to make room for the Bellagio. Wynn thought not only to televise the event but created a fantastical story for the implosion that made it look like pirate ships at his other casino across the street were firing at the Dunes. 

From then on, Schumacher said, there was a sense in Las Vegas that destruction at that magnitude was worth witnessing. 

The city hasn’t blown up a Strip casino since 2016, when the final tower of the Riviera was leveled for a convention center expansion. 

This time, the implosion cleared land for a $1.5 billion baseball stadium for the relocating Oakland Athletics, part of the city’s latest rebrand into a sports hub. 

That will leave only the Flamingo from the city’s mob era on the Strip. But, Schumacher said, the Flamingo’s original structures are long gone. The casino was completely rebuilt in the 1990s. 

The Tropicana, the third-oldest casino on the Strip, closed in April after welcoming guests for 67 years. 

Once known as the “Tiffany of the Strip” for its opulence, it was a frequent haunt of the legendary Rat Pack, while its past under the mob has long cemented its place in Las Vegas lore. 

It opened in 1957 with three stories and 300 hotel rooms split into two wings. 

As Las Vegas rapidly evolved in the following decades, including a building boom of Strip megaresorts in the 1990s, the Tropicana also underwent major changes. Two hotel towers were added in later years. In 1979, the casino’s beloved $1 million green-and-amber stained glass ceiling was installed above the casino floor. 

The Tropicana’s original low-rise hotel wings survived the many renovations, however, making it the last true mob structure on the Strip. 

Behind the scenes of the casino’s grand opening, the Tropicana had ties to organized crime, largely through reputed mobster Frank Costello. 

Costello was shot in the head in New York weeks after the Tropicana’s debut. He survived, but the investigation led police to a piece of paper in his coat pocket with the Tropicana’s exact earnings figure, revealing the mob’s stake in the casino. 

By the 1970s, federal authorities investigating mobsters in Kansas City charged more than a dozen operatives with conspiring to skim $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. Charges connected to the Tropicana alone resulted in five convictions. 

There were no public viewing areas for the event, but fans of the Tropicana did have a chance in April to bid farewell to the vintage Vegas relic. 

“Old Vegas, it’s going,” Joe Zappulla, a teary-eyed New Jersey resident, said at the time as he exited the casino, shortly before the locks went on the doors.
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