NATO’s most senior military official has warned that European ammunition stocks are running short as the West continues to send large amounts of military aid to Ukraine to fend off invading Russian forces.  

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

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

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

Forces fire thousands daily 

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

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

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

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

Pentagon warns US leaders

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

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

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

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

Boosting weapons production takes time, Soare said. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The tale of Lady R

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

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

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

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

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

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

What now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

President Joe Biden asked Congress in July to approve another $24 billion related to Ukraine, which Ukraine supporters — Republicans as well as Democrats — had hoped could become law as part of a spending bill. 
…

Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania have agreed on a plan they hope will help expedite Ukrainian grain exports, officials said Tuesday, with needy countries beyond Europe potentially benefiting from speedier procedures.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine downs Russian drones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russia Shelling

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

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

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

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

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

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

The order was disregarded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pope Francis has suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, responding to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm church teaching on homosexuality ahead of a big meeting where LGBTQ+ Catholics are on the agenda.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Vatican’s doctrine office published his reply to them a few hours later, though it did so without his introduction in which he urged the cardinals to not be afraid of the synod.
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The Serbian army has cut the number of troops stationed on the border with Kosovo by nearly half, top Serbian military officials said Monday, denying U.S. and other reports of a mass military buildup in the wake of a shooting over a week ago that killed four people and raised fears of instability in the volatile region. 

Troop numbers are now at their “regular” level of some 4,500 soldiers, reduced from 8,350 in the wake of violence on September 24 in northern Kosovo between heavily armed Serb gunmen and Kosovo police, the Serbian Army Chief of Staff Gen. Milan Mojsilovic said at a news conference. 

He said troop numbers in the past had reached 14,000 soldiers and that unlike several times in the recent past, the army had not raised its combat readiness, so “from the military point of view I see no reason for such [critical] comments” by both U.S. and European Union officials. 

Mojsilovic and Serbia’s Defense Minister Milos Vucevic also denied reports by Kosovo officials that the Serbian army trained and armed the group of some 30 men involved in the shootout in the northern Kosovo village of Banjska that left a Kosovo police officer and three insurgents dead. 

Mojsilovic added the army training sometimes includes Serb reservists from Kosovo, a former Serbian territory whose 2008 declaration of independence Belgrade does not recognize, but that they were not part of the group that took part in the clashes. 

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said on X, the former Twitter, that the “terrorists who carried out the attacks” recently trained at two bases in Serbia and that “the attackers enjoyed the full support & planning of the Serbian state” with a wider plan to “annex” the north of Kosovo. 

Such accusations present an “intellectual insult,” Mojsilovic said in Belgrade. 

The incident in Banjska has raised concern in the West of possible instability in the Balkans as war also rages in Ukraine. U.S. and EU officials have been trying to negotiate an agreement to normalize relations between Serbia and Kosovo following their 1998-99 war after which NATO intervened to force Serbia to pull out of the province. 

In Brussels, European Commission spokesman Peter Stano said the military buildup near Kosovo was “very concerning and needs to stop immediately.” Stano urged a thorough investigation into the Kosovo incident with full cooperation from Serbia, a candidate nation for EU membership. 

“There is no place for arms and [a] security forces buildup on the European continent,” said Stano. “All forces need to stand down.” 

There was no immediate comment from NATO on the reports of the Serbian army pullout from the border zone. John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, Friday described the Serbian troop movement as an “unprecedented staging of advanced Serbian artillery, tanks and mechanized infantry units.” 

NATO last week announced it was beefing up its peacekeeping presence in Kosovo by some 200 British troops in the wake of the crisis. Spokesperson Dylan White signaled Sunday that this would not be all, saying “further reinforcements will follow from other Allies.” 

KFOR already comprises around 4,500 troops from 27 nations as part of the peacekeeping mission established after the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. An agreement that ended the conflict also defines relations with the Serbian military and its presence in the border area. 

“Cooperation with KFOR is good and continuous,” said Vucevic. “The Serbian army believes additional presence of KFOR units [in Kosovo,] and primarily in the areas where Serbs live, would improve the security situation. 

“If the army of the Republic of Serbia receives an order from the president, as the commander in chief, for its units to enter the territory of Kosovo and Metohija as part of the Republic of Serbia, the Army of Serbia would perform such a task efficiently, professionally and successfully,” Vucevic said, adding that KFOR would be informed in advance of such a decision. 

Kosovo officials have said they are also investigating possible Russian involvement in the violence. Serbia is Russia’s main ally in Europe, and there are fears in the West that Moscow could try to stir trouble in the Balkans to avert attention from the war in Ukraine. 

Serbia insists the insurgents were local ethnic Serbs fed up with constant harassment from the Kosovo government. Belgrade also claims at least one of the killed insurgents was executed after he was injured, rather than killed in the fighting. 
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A senior Ukrainian official called on Monday for a reassessment of Western anti-aircraft systems being supplied to Ukraine, saying simpler and cheaper weapons could be more cost-efficient in countering Russia’s Iranian-made Shahed drones.

The Shahed drones are deployed in Russian attacks virtually every day. Ukraine has become skilled at downing them though some still hit industrial and residential sites despite Moscow’s assurances that it does not target civilians.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the issue was not just one of securing more anti-aircraft systems “but primarily solving a mathematical problem lying in the economics of war.”

While Western systems, like NASAMS and Iris-T, were used to down missiles, he said, using them to intercept Shaheds may not be cost-effective, Podolyak wrote in English on the X platform, formerly Twitter.

“Thus, it leads to depletion of allied stockpiles and long-term weakening,” Podolyak wrote.

“The solution is obvious: in addition to mobile large-caliber machine guns, there are plenty of simpler and cheaper anti-aircraft systems available today that have proven themselves to be effective against Shaheds. These include Gepard and Vampire.”

The Gepard is an anti-aircraft-gun tank made in Germany. The U.S.-made Vampire counter-drone system consists of a laser-guided missile launcher than can be installed on a truck bed.

Such scaling-down, Podolyak wrote, “will minimize the effect of Russian ‘raids’ and ensure long-term stability of Ukrainian skies and our neighboring NATO countries.”

Ukraine has relied heavily on arms supplies from Western countries in facing the 19-month-old Russian invasion and in launching a counteroffensive in June aimed at recovering the roughly 18% of its territory held by Moscow’s troops.

Zelenskyy and other officials have stressed in recent weeks the importance of developing Ukraine’s own arms industry and in jointly developing weapons with Western companies.
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Iran said Monday it opposes any “geopolitical changes” in the Caucasus, where it has long been angered over Azerbaijan’s desire to set up a transport link along the Armenian-Iranian border.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani, while voicing support for Azerbaijan’s reclamation of the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region last month, said Tehran is “against making geopolitical changes in the region and this is our clear position.”  

He was referring to the Zangezur land corridor which would connect mainland Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan and then to Turkey.

Relations between Baku and Tehran have been traditionally sour, as Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan is a close ally of Iran’s historical rival Turkey.

Following a lightning Azerbaijani military offensive which recaptured the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh enclave to the east of Zangezur last month, some experts believe that Azerbaijan’s leader Ilham Aliyev could now seek to launch operations in southern Armenia to create territorial continuity with Nakhchivan.

Armenian separatists, who had controlled Nagorno-Karabakh for three decades, agreed to disarm, dissolve their government and reintegrate with Baku.

Nakhchivan does not share a border with Azerbaijan but has been tied to Baku since the 1920s — and is located between Armenia, Turkey and Iran.

The annexation of this corridor, strategic to Tehran, would cut off Iran’s access to Armenia and consequently to Europe.

Kanani was commenting after the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, met Sunday with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, during a visit to Tehran.

They discussed “the latest developments in the South Caucasus” and “military movements in the region,” Kanani said.

“We have always supported the return of these occupied territories to Azerbaijan,” he said, referring to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Islamic Republic, bordering Azerbaijan and Armenia, has an Azeri-speaking community of around 10 million people, as well as an Armenian community of just under 100,000 people.

Ties between Azerbaijan and Iran soured in January when a gunman stormed into Baku’s embassy in Tehran.

He killed a diplomat and wounded two embassy security guards.

Tehran fears that its archenemy, Israel, also a major weapons supplier to Azerbaijan, could use Azerbaijani territory for an offensive against Iran. 
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The last bus carrying ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh left the region Monday, completing a grueling weeklong exodus of over 100,000 people — more than 80% of its residents — after Azerbaijan reclaimed the area in a lightning military operation. 

The bus that entered Armenia carried 15 passengers with serious illnesses and mobility problems, said Gegham Stepanyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman. He called for information about any other residents who want to leave but have had trouble doing so. 

In a 24-hour military campaign that began on Sept. 19, the Azerbaijani army routed the region’s undermanned and outgunned Armenian forces, forcing them to capitulate. Separatist authorities then agreed to dissolve their government by the end of this year. 

While Baku has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, most of them hastily fled the region, fearing reprisals or losing the freedom to use their language and practice their religion and customs. 

The Armenian government said Monday that 100,514 of the region’s estimated 120,000 residents have crossed into Armenia. 

Armenian Health Minister Anahit Avanesyan said some people had died during the exhausting and slow journey over the single mountain road into Armenia that took as long as 40 hours. The exodus followed a nine-month Azerbaijani blockade of the region that left many suffering from malnutrition and lack of medicines. 

Sergey Astsetryan, 40, one of the last Nagorno-Karabakh residents to leave the region in his own vehicle Sunday, said some elderly people have decided to stay, adding that others might return if they see it’s safe for ethnic Armenians to live under Azerbaijani rule. 

“My father told me that he will return when he has the opportunity,” Astsetryan told reporters at a checkpoint on the Armenian border. 

Azerbaijani authorities moved quickly to reaffirm control of the region, arresting several former members of its separatist government and encouraging ethnic Azerbaijani residents who fled the area amid a separatist war three decades ago to start moving back. 

The streets of the regional capital, Stepanakert, which Azerbaijanis call Khankendi, appeared empty and littered with trash, with doors of deserted shops flung open. Azerbaijani police checkpoints were set up on the city’s edges. 

Russian peacekeeping troops could be seen on a balcony of one building, and others were at their base outside the city, where their vehicles were parked.

On Sunday, Azerbaijan prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for former Nagorno-Karabakh leader Arayik Harutyunyan, who led the region before stepping down at the beginning of September. Azerbaijani police arrested one of Harutyunyan’s former prime ministers, Ruben Vardanyan, on Wednesday as he tried to cross into Armenia. 

“We put an end to the conflict,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a speech Monday. “We protected our dignity, we restored justice and international law.” 

He added that “our agenda is peace in the Caucasus, peace in the region, cooperation, shared benefits, and today, we demonstrate that.” 

After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia. After a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the south Caucasus Mountains along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had captured earlier. 

Armenian authorities have accused the Russian peacekeepers, who were deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh after the 2020 war, of standing idle and failing to stop the Azerbaijani onslaught. The accusations were rejected by Moscow, which argued that its troops didn’t have a mandate to intervene. 

The mutual accusations have further strained the relations between Armenia and its longtime ally Russia, which has accused the Armenian government of a pro-Western tilt. 

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan alleged Thursday that the exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh amounted to “a direct act of ethnic cleansing and depriving people of their motherland.” 

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected Pashinyan’s accusations, arguing their departure was “their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation.” 

A United Nations delegation arrived Sunday in Nagorno-Karabakh to monitor the situation. The mission is the organization’s first to the region for three decades, due to the “very complicated and delicate geopolitical situation” there, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Friday. 

Local officials dismissed the visit as a formality. Hunan Tadevosyan, spokesperson for Nagorno-Karabakh’s emergency services, said the U.N. representatives had come too late and the number of civilians left in the regional capital of Stepanakert could be “counted on one hand.” 

“We walked around the whole city but found no one. There is no general population left,” he said. 
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The start of October in Spain this year has been the warmest since records began, the country’s meteorological agency AEMET said on Monday, with nearly 40% of weather stations recording maximum temperatures above 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 Fahrenheit).

The early autumn season is so far offering Spaniards little respite after a summer with four heatwaves spread out over 24 days, part of a global pattern of rising temperatures that is widely attributed by scientists to human activity.

“In most of the Iberian Peninsula, temperatures on Oct. 1 were between seven and 14 degrees above normal for this time of the year,” said AEMET spokesperson Ruben del Campo, adding almost 100 individual records had been beaten on Sunday.

Two cities in south-central Spain, Badajoz and Montoro, broke the heat record for continental Spain during the month of October with 38 C and 38.2 C, respectively. The previous record was 37.5 C, documented in the resort city of Marbella in October 2014.

The weather station at Madrid’s iconic Retiro Park, which is over a century old, equaled its October record of 30 C set in 1930.

“The footprint of climate change is manifested in the fact that such warm spells are now much more frequent and more intense,” Del Campo told state broadcaster TVE.

He added that future summers would not only be hotter, but also longer, extending into the traditionally mild and rainy autumn.

 
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Fall has arrived in Scandinavia, which means Nobel Prize season is here.

The start of October is when the Nobel committees get together in Stockholm and Oslo to announce the winners of the yearly awards.

First up, as usual, is the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, which will be announced Monday by a panel of judges at the Karolinska Institute in the Swedish capital. The prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will follow, with one announcement every weekday until Oct. 9.

Here are some things to know about the Nobel Prizes:

An Idea More Powerful Than Dynamite

The Nobel Prizes were created by Alfred Nobel, a 19th-century businessman and chemist from Sweden. He held more than 300 patents, but his claim to fame before the Nobel Prizes was having invented dynamite by mixing nitroglycerine with a compound that made the explosive more stable.

Dynamite soon became popular in construction and mining as well as in the weapons industry. It made Nobel a very rich man. Perhaps it also made him think about his legacy, because toward the end of his life he decided to use his vast fortune to fund annual prizes “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

The first Nobel Prizes were presented in 1901, five years after his death. In 1968, a sixth prize was created, for economics, by Sweden’s central bank. Though Nobel purists stress that the economics prize is technically not a Nobel Prize, it’s always presented together with the others.

Peace in Norway

For reasons that are not entirely clear, Nobel decided that the peace prize should be awarded in Norway and the other prizes in Sweden. Nobel historians suspect Sweden’s history of militarism may have been a factor.

During Nobel’s lifetime, Sweden and Norway were in a union, which the Norwegians reluctantly joined after the Swedes invaded their country in 1814. It’s possible that Nobel thought Norway would be a more suitable location for a prize meant to encourage “fellowship among nations.”

To this day, the Nobel Peace Prize is a completely Norwegian affair, with the winners selected and announced by a Norwegian committee. The peace prize even has its own ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s death — while the other prizes are presented in Stockholm.

What’s politics got to do with it?

The Nobel Prizes project an aura of being above the political fray, focused solely on the benefit of humanity. But the peace and literature awards, in particular, are sometimes accused of being politicized. Critics question whether winners are selected because their work is truly outstanding or because it aligns with the political preferences of the judges.

The scrutiny can get intense for high-profile awards, such as in 2009, when President Barack Obama won the peace prize less than a year after taking office.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is an independent body that insists its only mission is to carry out the will of Alfred Nobel. However, it does have links to Norway’s political system. The five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, so the panel’s composition reflects the power balance in the legislature.

To avoid the perception that the prizes are influenced by Norway’s political leaders, sitting members of the Norwegian government or Parliament are barred from serving on the committee. Even so, the panel isn’t always viewed as independent by foreign countries. When imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the peace prize in 2010, Beijing responded by freezing trade talks with Norway. It took years for Norway-China relations to be restored.

Gold and glory

One reason the prizes are so famous is they come with a generous amount of cash. The Nobel Foundation, which administers the awards, raised the prize money by 10% this year to 11 million kronor (about $1 million). In addition to the money, the winners receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma when they collect their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December.

Most winners are proud and humbled by joining the pantheon of Nobel laureates, from Albert Einstein to Mother Teresa. But two winners refused their Nobel Prizes: French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, who turned down the literature prize in 1964, and Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho, who declined the peace prize that he was meant to share with U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger in 1973.

Several others were not able to receive their awards because they were imprisoned, such as Belarusian pro-democracy activist Ales Bialiatski, who shared last year’s peace prize with human rights groups in Ukraine and Russia.

Lack of diversity

Historically, the vast majority of Nobel Prize winners have been white men. Though that’s started to change, there is still little diversity among Nobel winners, particularly in the science categories.

To date, 60 women have won Nobel Prizes, including 25 in the scientific categories. Only four women have won the Nobel Prize in physics and just two have won the economics prize.

In the early days of the Nobel Prizes, the lack of diversity among winners could be explained by the lack of diversity among scientists in general. But today critics say the judges need to do a better job at highlighting discoveries made by women and scientists outside Europe and North America.

The prize committees say their decisions are based on scientific merit, not gender, nationality or race. However, they are not deaf to the criticism. Five years ago, the head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it had started to ask nominating bodies to make sure they don’t overlook “women or people of other ethnicities or nationalities in their nominations.”
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At memorials to Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in an unexplained plane crash exactly 40 days ago, dozens of mourners hailed the mutinous mercenary chief as a patriotic hero of Russia who had spoken truth to power.  

The private Embraer jet on which Prigozhin was traveling to St. Petersburg crashed north of Moscow killing all 10 people on board on Aug. 23, including two other top Wagner figures, Prigozhin’s four bodyguards and a crew of three. 

It is still unclear what caused the plane to crash two months to the day since Prigozhin’s failed mutiny. The Kremlin said on Aug. 30 that investigators were considering the possibility that the plane was downed on purpose.  

At his grave in the former imperial capital of St. Petersburg, his mother, Violetta, and his son, Pavel, laid flowers. Supporters waved the black flags of Wagner, which sport a skull and the motto “Blood, Honor, Motherland, Courage.” 

In eastern Orthodoxy, it is believed that the soul makes its final journey to either heaven or hell on the 40th day after death. 

At memorials in Moscow and other Russian cities, dozens of Wagner fighters and ordinary Russians paid their respects, though there was no mass outpouring of grief. Russian state television was completely silent about the Prigozhin memorials.  

“He can be criticized for certain events, but he was a patriot who defended the motherland’s interests on different continents,” Wagner’s recruitment arm said in a statement on Telegram.  

“He was charismatic and, importantly, he was close to the fighters and to the people. And that’s why he became popular both in Russia and abroad,” it said. 

Prigozhin’s mutiny posed the biggest challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule since the former KGB spy rose to power in 1999. Western diplomats say it exposed the strains on Russia of the war in Ukraine.  

After months of insulting Putin’s top brass with a variety of crude expletives and prison slang over their perceived failure to fight the Ukraine war properly, Prigozhin took control of the southern city of Rostov in late June. 

His fighters shot down several Russian aircraft, killing their pilots, and advanced toward Moscow before turning back 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the capital.  

Putin initially cast Prigozhin as a traitor whose mutiny could have tipped Russia into civil war, though he later did a deal with him to defuse the crisis. 

Mourners spoke of respect for Prigozhin.  

“He was a real authority, a leader,” Mikhail, a serviceman in Russia’s armed forces who refused to give his second name, told Reuters. 

Moscow resident Marta, who also refused to give her surname, said the people believed in Prigozhin, but that Wagner had been “decapitated” by the deaths of him and co-founder Dmitry Utkin.  

“Hope for justice died with him,” she said. “People believed in him.” 

Pro-Wagner groups posted a video of Prigozhin flying to Mali where, after a thunderstorm, he met a senior commander known by his call sign “Lotus” — Anton Yelizarov — who is now reported to be leading the group. 

Opponents, such as the United States, cast Wagner as a brutal crime group that plundered African states and meted out sledgehammer deaths to those who challenged it. 

Putin was shown meeting one of the most senior former commanders of the Wagner mercenary group Friday and discussing how best to use “volunteer units” in the Ukraine war.
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A United Nations mission arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh Sunday, Azerbaijani media reported, as a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians from the region began drawing to a close following an Azerbaijani military offensive last month.

The mission, led by a senior U.N. aid official, is the global body’s first access to the region in about 30 years.

Armenia has asked the World Court to order Azerbaijan to withdraw all its troops from civilian establishments in Nagorno-Karabakh and give the United Nations access.

The World Court, formally known as the International Court of Justice, in February ordered Azerbaijan to ensure free movement through an area known as the Lachin corridor leading to and from the region.

The process of moving those wishing to relocate from Nagorno-Karabakh to neighboring Armenia is coming to an end, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted the Armenian government as saying late Sunday.

Earlier Sunday, the World Health Organization said over 100,000 ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh have made the journey in less than a week.

“We’ve activated our emergency systems and will be sending experts to the country across a range of disciplines including mental health, burns management, essential health services, and emergency coordination following a full assessment of the needs,” Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, regional director of the WHO Regional Office for Europe, said in a statement.

“The challenges are truly enormous, and we’re there to do all we can.”

The departure of hungry and exhausted Armenian families this week was blighted by an explosion at a fuel depot that killed at least 170 people.
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he All-Ukrainian Environmental League is a grassroots organization that has been operating since 1997. As part of its portfolio, it trains groups of volunteers to fight wildfires. But in times of war, the firefighters’ responsibilities have expanded. Tetiana Kukurika has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Sergiy Rybchynski. Video editing by Vitaliy Hrychanyuk and Anna Rice.
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