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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a visit to Ukraine Monday to reassure Ukrainian leaders the United States will continue to support the country in its fight against Russia. It was Austin’s first visit to the Ukrainian capital since April 2022, and the first time members of the press accompanied him since the war began. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb is traveling with the secretary and has more from Kyiv.
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Two Ukrainian senior cyber defense officials were fired Monday for alleged embezzlement in the government’s cybersecurity agency, a government official said.

Yurii Shchyhol, head of the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP) of Ukraine, and his deputy, Viktor Zhora, were dismissed by the government, senior cabinet official Taras Melnychuk wrote on Telegram.

Melnychuk, the cabinet’s representative to parliament, did not give the reason for the dismissals. Shchyhol wrote on Facebook that he was confident he could prove his innocence, Interfax Ukraine reported. There was no immediate comment from Zhora.

The SSSCIP is responsible for securing government communications and defending the state from cyberattacks.

Anti-corruption prosecutors announced they were investigating the head and deputy head of the SSSCIP over their alleged roles in a six-person plot to embezzle 62 million Ukrainian hryvnia ($1.72 million) between 2020 and 2022.

Authorities suspect the officials of buying software at an inflated price from two companies allegedly under their control in a sale that had been closed to other bidders, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau said.

In a statement on Telegram, the SSSCIP said it was cooperating with investigators and that all agency procurement had been carried out legally. 

Last September, Shchyhol told Reuters that Russian spies were using hackers to target computer systems at law enforcement agencies to identify and obtain evidence related to alleged Russian war crimes.

Ukraine has increased its efforts to stomp out corruption as it pursues membership in the European Union, which has made the fight against graft a key prerequisite for negotiations to begin.

Polish protests 

Kyiv hopes to negotiate with Poland and the European Commission this week about Ukraine’s export of goods through Polish routes. 

About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks were stuck on the Polish side of the border Sunday morning due to a lengthy blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.

Earlier this month, Polish truckers blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Truckers from Ukraine have been exempted from seeking permits to cross the Polish border since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Polish truckers want a limited number of licenses to be issued for Ukrainian truckers, a demand Kyiv said it would not consider.

“This week we hope to have negotiations in a trilateral format,” Taras Kachka, a Ukrainian trade representative, said in televised comments Monday.

He said the blockages may affect critical supplies of energy resources for Ukraine, which is suffering from constant Russian attacks.

Russian shelling increases 

Russian shelling killed three people Monday and damaged power lines and a gas pipeline in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk and southern Kherson regions, authorities said.

An elderly woman was killed, and a man injured in a Russian artillery strike on the town of Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk’s governor Serhiy Lysak wrote on Telegram messenger.

On Monday morning, two drivers were killed when Russian forces shelled a private transport company parking lot in Kherson, regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Russian drones have increased their attacks on Kyiv targeting Ukrainian infrastructure as the winter is approaching.

Russia launched 20 Iranian-made Shahed drones, targeting the Ukrainian capital and the Cherkasy and Poltava regions, according to a military statement.

Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems shot down 15 of the drones. 

Ukraine’s Military Administration spokesperson, Serhii Popko, said that the drones attacked Kyiv from different directions in waves that were “constantly changing vectors.” 

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for his pledge of $100 million in new military aid to Ukraine.

“There is a new defense package for our country from the United States. I am grateful for it. In particular, there will be more artillery – shells that are needed right now,” said Zelenskyy. 

The Ukrainian president also stressed talks on expanding cross-border cooperation with Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova. “This includes the work of the maritime corridor, the Danube export cluster and the overall trade turnover between our countries,” he said.

Some information for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.  
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Innovations in food production could alleviate hunger for millions of people, according to Britain, which hosted a global summit on food insecurity Monday. Critics say the focus on technology ignores the real driver of food shortages – growing inequality and poverty. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Innovations in food production could alleviate hunger for millions of people, according to Britain, which hosted a global summit on food insecurity Monday, but critics say the focus on technology ignores the growing inequality of wealth.

The summit was a joint initiative between Britain, Somalia, the United Arab Emirates, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, aimed at boosting food security through science and innovation.

Innovation hub

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said a renewed focus was needed to alleviate hunger.

“It can’t be right that today in 2023, almost 1 billion people across the world regularly do not have enough to eat, that millions face hunger and starvation, and over 45 million children under five are suffering acute malnutrition. In a world of abundance, no one should die from lack of food and no parent should ever have to watch their child starve,” Sunak told delegates in London.

He outlined Britain’s plans to host a “virtual hub” for innovation in food production, known as CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), aimed at making global food systems more resilient to future shocks in a changing climate.

“We’ve already helped develop crops that are drought-resistant and even richer in vitamins, now feeding 100 million people across Africa. And we’re going further, launching a new U.K. CGIAR science center to drive cutting-edge research on flood-tolerant rice, disease-resistant wheat and much more. These innovations will reach millions across the poorest countries, as well as improving U.K. crop yields and driving down food prices,” Sunak said.

Somalia emergency

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud also addressed the summit, telling delegates that the country’s stabilization program, developed in partnership with Britain, was working on tackling his country’s humanitarian crisis.

Somalia is among the countries worst-hit by climate change and food insecurity. The government recently declared a state of emergency after 113,000 people were forced to flee their homes following extreme rainfall and extensive flooding, which also caused widespread damage to crops and farmland. The floods come a year after Somalia suffered its worst drought in 40 years.

Technological solutions

Can new technology end global food insecurity, like that endured by Somalia and many other poorer nations? It’s one tool in the box, said analyst Steve Wiggins, a food security specialist at the ODI development think tank.

“The fundamentals of global hunger are the fundamentals of poverty, marginalization, and people being in situations of extraordinary vulnerability. Those are the fundamentals of hunger and that’s what we have to drive towards,” he told VOA.

“Of course, there are technical advances that we get that we’re very happy for, which make things a little bit easier,” Wiggins added, highlighting innovations like solar-powered irrigation in Mali. “So, if you want to pump water onto your fields, it’s becoming increasingly easy without having to spend money on diesel to do so.”

Inequalities

Critics say the focus on technology ignores the main driver of food insecurity.

“This summit is welcome. I think some of the solutions are welcome. But I think it’s not going to be enough to tackle that huge problem of hunger, which has been with us for decades and which we seem to be going backwards in many steps,” said Nick Nisbett of the Institute of Development Studies.

“Technological solutions tend to focus on the supply side, so new tech for agriculture and supply chains and so on. But what we actually need to do is to tackle the inequalities that lie behind that hunger.”

“Possibly the simplest thing to do is actually to give people food or to give people the money to [go] out and buy and purchase food in [the] markets themselves,” Nisbett told VOA.
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Finland’s prime minister said Monday the country may need to take further actions on its border with Russia after closing four border crossings to stem a recent increase in asylum-seekers.

Finland, which joined NATO this year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has accused Moscow of letting migrants from the Middle East and Africa without valid travel documents through to the Finnish border. The government closed the border crossings in southeastern Finland last week, but new migrant arrivals were reported at border checkpoints farther north.

“The situation has progressed in a bad direction,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo was quoted as saying by Finnish public broadcaster YLE during a visit to the Vartius border crossing in east-central Finland. “If there is no change, we will take more measures, and if necessary, quickly. The message is clear that we do not accept this behavior.”

He did not rule out closing more border crossings along the 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) Finnish-Russian border.

YLE said 500 asylum-seekers have arrived in Finland in November, significantly more than normal.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the decision to close border crossings would “aggravate” Russian-Finnish relations and criticized as a “pretext” Finland’s claim that Russia has been helping undocumented migrants to cross the border. A Foreign Ministry statement said the decision “violates the rights and interests of tens of thousands of citizens of our countries.”

European Union and NATO countries bordering Russia and Belarus have accused those countries of deliberately ushering migrants toward border zones as a type of “hybrid warfare.”
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Russia has placed a Ukrainian singer who won the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest on its wanted list, state news agencies reported Monday.

The reports said an Interior Ministry database listed singer Susana Jamaladinova as being sought for violating a criminal law.

The independent news site Mediazona, which covers opposition and human rights issues, said Jamaladinova was charged under a law adopted last year that bans spreading so-called fake information about the Russian military and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

Jamaladinova, who performs under the stage name Jamala, is of Crimean Tatar descent. She won the 2016 Eurovision contest with the song “1944,” a title that refers to the year the Soviet Union deported Crimean Tatars en masse.

Her winning performance came almost exactly two years after Russia annexed Crimea as political turmoil gripped Ukraine. Most other countries regard the annexation as illegitimate.

Russia protested “1944” being allowed in the competition, saying it violated rules against political speech in Eurovision. But the song made no specific criticism of Russia or the Soviet Union, although it drew such implications, opening with the lyrics “When strangers are coming, they come to your house, they kill you all and say ‘We’re not guilty.'”
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Verdicts are expected Monday in the trial of hundreds of people accused of membership in Italy’s ’ndrangheta organized crime syndicate, one of the world’s most powerful, extensive and wealthy drug-trafficking groups.

The trial started almost three years ago in the southern Calabria region, where the mob organization was originally based. The ’ndrangheta quietly amassed power in Italy and abroad as the Sicilian Mafia lost influence.

The syndicate now holds almost a monopoly on cocaine importation in Europe, according to anti-mafia prosecutors who led the investigation in southern Italy. The organization also has bases in North and South America and is active in Africa, Italian prosecutors maintain, and ’ndrangheta figures have been arrested in recent years around Europe and in Brazil and Lebanon.

The trial took place in a specially constructed high-security bunker. Part of an industrial park in Lamezia Terme, the bunker is so vast that video screens were anchored to the ceiling so participants could view the proceedings.

More than 320 defendants are charged with crimes that include drug and arms trafficking, extortion and mafia association, a term in Italy’s penal code for members of organized crime groups. Others are charged with acting in complicity with the ’ndrangheta without actually being a member.

The charges grew out of an investigation of 12 clans linked to a convicted ‘ndrangheta boss. The central figure, Luigi Mancuso, served 19 years in Italian prison for his role in leading what investigators allege is one of the ‘ndrangheta’s most powerful crime families, based in the town of Vibo Valentia.

Based almost entirely on blood ties, the ‘ndrangheta was substantially immune to turncoats for decades, but the ranks of those turning state’s evidence are becoming more substantial. In the current trial, they include a relative of Mancuso’s.

Several dozen informants in the case came from the ‘ndrangheta, while others formerly belonged to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra.

Despite the large number of defendants, the trial wasn’t Italy’s biggest one involving alleged mobsters.

In 1986, 475 alleged members of the Sicilian Mafia went on trial in a similarly constructed bunker in Palermo. The proceedings resulted in more than 300 convictions and 19 life sentences. That trial helped reveal many of the brutal methods and murderous strategies of the island’s top mob bosses, including sensational killings that bloodied the Palermo area during years of power struggles.

In contrast, the trial involving the ‘ndrangheta was aimed at securing convictions and sentences based on alleged acts of collusion among mobsters and local politicians, public officials, businessmen and members of secret lodges to show how deeply rooted the syndicate is in Calabria.

“The relevance (of this trial) is enormous,” Italian lawmaker former anti-mafia chief prosecutor and lawmaker Federico Cafiero De Raho, a former chief anti-mafia prosecutor, told The Associated Press in an interview. “First of all, because every trial against the ‘ndrangheta gives a very significant message to the territory, which is not only the Calabrian one, but the national territory.”

“But it has repercussions also at a European and world level, because the ‘ndrangheta is one of the strongest organizations in the world, able to manage the international traffic of narcotics, as well as many other activities,” Cafiero De Raho added.

Awash in cocaine trafficking revenues, the ’ndrangheta has gobbled up hotels, restaurants, pharmacies, car dealerships and other businesses throughout Italy, especially in Rome and the country’s affluent north, criminal investigations have revealed.

The buying spree spread across Europe as the syndicate sought to launder illicit revenues but also to make “clean” money by running legitimate businesses, including in the tourism and hospitality sectors, investigators alleged.

“Arrests allow their activities to be halted for a time, but the investigations determine the need for further investigations each time,” Cafiero De Raho said.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin slipped unannounced into Kyiv on Monday in a brazen display of Western solidarity to reassure Ukrainian leaders that the United States will continue to support their country’s fight against Russia’s invasion.

Austin was greeted at the train station in Kyiv by the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, and the U.S. defense attache, Brigadier General Kipling Kahler, and joined on the trip by U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, who serves as the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the head of U.S. European Command.

Senior U.S. defense officials said Austin came to Kyiv to discuss the immediate winter fight and to plan for future security assistance.

“We are continuing to provide a regular battle rhythm of security assistance, and we are planning to be able to do that throughout the winter,” said a senior defense official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity due to security concerns for the trip.

The visit, Austin’s first since April 2022, comes as the onset of winter has Ukrainian and Western officials convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin will resume targeting critical infrastructure as he did last winter, leaving many Ukrainians without power on some of the coldest days of the year.

“One of the most important capabilities this winter will be air defense,” a second senior defense official told reporters traveling with Austin, and speaking under the same conditions of anonymity. “We’ve been able to surge air defense equipment, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still needs and that there won’t still be needs in the coming months ahead.”

An onslaught of nearly 40 Iranian-made drones launched from Russian territory bombarded Ukrainian air defenses over the weekend.

Ukraine said its forces destroyed 29 of the 38 drones, but those that made it through Ukraine’s defenses struck multiple infrastructure facilities and caused power outages in more than 400 towns and villages throughout the country.

The drones attacked from the Odesa and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south, to the Chernihiv region in the north, near the border with Belarus. They also targeted Kyiv in the second attack so far this month, but all drones heading to the capital were shot down, Ukrainian officials said.

The Pentagon will continue to draw down from its current weapons and ammunition stockpiles to support Ukraine, but officials say that over the coming months, the United States also will be sending Ukraine a number of capabilities that were procured last year through contracting. Ammunition supplies have also increased, according to officials, due to Western improvements in production capacity.

Other countries say they are also surging capabilities, with Germany announcing earlier this month that it would deliver more crucial air defense systems by the end of this year.

In addition to air defense, officials hope to deny Russian forces an opportunity this winter to fortify their positions. Last winter, Russian fighters capitalized on a lull in the fighting by digging in on territory they controlled, causing some analysts to refer to the fight as a “stalemate.”

“I wouldn’t call it a stalemate. No. This is a dynamic battle,” a senior defense official said. “Ukraine continues to push and succeed on the battlefield against Russian forces. You’ve seen them continue to strike further behind Russian lines. … They are making inroads in disrupting Russian operations, in degrading Russian capabilities.”

The official pointed to the recent Ukrainian offensive in the Kherson region as an example of Ukraine’s ability “to create a disadvantage for Russian forces in an area where, frankly, their defenses are thinner.”

Ukrainian troops last week pushed Russian soldiers out of positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River and established several bridgeheads. Crossing the river with heavy equipment and supplies could give Ukrainian forces the opportunity to open a new line of attack on the most direct land route to Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Although Moscow’s forces still control about 18% of Ukrainian land, the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, told VOA last month that Kyiv’s forces had taken back more than 50% of its invaded territory.

The surprise visit to Kyiv also comes as Western support is at risk of wavering, especially as events in Israel and Gaza in the last month divert attention from the prolonged conflict in Europe.

Austin will host another round of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group virtually from the Pentagon this week. The Pentagon says more than 50 nations are expected to participate in the talks, which help Ukraine’s partners coordinate military aid sent to Kyiv.

There has been a growing reluctance in the U.S. Congress to send more military aid to Ukraine, although senior defense officials still point to “clear bipartisan support” for Ukrainian security assistance when speaking to their concerned Ukrainian counterparts.

“We continue to believe that Congress will provide that support, and we are planning based on that conviction,” said a senior defense official, while also acknowledging that should support for Ukraine aid change, the administration would have to reassess some of the longer-term military procurements planned for Kyiv.

The Pentagon has remained just as active on securing aid for Ukraine as it was before the conflict erupted in the Middle East because “Ukraine matters,” another senior defense official said.

“I keep hearing people, you know, coming up to me saying, ‘Oh, I guess you’re not as busy as before.’ That could not be further from the truth, and this trip is a testament to that,” the senior defense official added.
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Russia launched several waves of drone attacks on Kyiv early Sunday for the second night in row, stepping up its assaults on the Ukrainian capital after several weeks of pause, the city’s military administration said.

“The enemy’s UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) were launched in many groups and attacked Kyiv in waves, from different directions, at the same time constantly changing the vectors of movement along the route,” Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app. 

Ukraine’s air force said its air defense systems destroyed 15 of 20 Russia-launched Shahed kamikaze drones over Kyiv, Poltava and Cherkasy regions.

In Kherson five people including a 3-year-old girl were injured by Russian artillery shelling Sunday morning, Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said.

“All of them sustained shrapnel wounds. The child and the grandmother were walking in the yard. Enemy artillery hit them near the entrance,” Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian troops abandoned Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River in the region late last year, but now regularly shell those areas from positions on the eastern bank.

Ukraine’s military said on social media Friday that it had gained “a foothold on several bridgeheads” on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, near the southern city of Kherson. 

Ukrainian troops are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnipro to stop them from shelling civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a report Friday.  

Russia conceded that Ukrainian forces had claimed back some territory on the opposing bank.  

Teen returns to Ukraine

A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving Russia earlier this year, returned to Ukraine Sunday.

Bohdan Yermokhin, an orphan from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol that was captured by Moscow’s troops during the first year of the war, had been taken to Russia and placed in a foster family in the Moscow region.

Yermokhin, who turned 18 Sunday, appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this month to help bring him back to Ukraine.

“This is a very pleasant gift, to put it in the right way. The emotions are overwhelming, all good, with the notion that Ukraine needs me,” he said.

Zelenskyy welcomed Yermokhin’s return in his nightly video address.

“Many attempts were made to help him. I am happy everything worked out,” he said, expressing thanks to Ukrainian officials, international organizations, and particularly the U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF, and authorities in Qatar for help in mediation.

Twenty-thousand children have been illegally transferred to Russia since the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, with some being put up for adoption. Kyiv says this is a war crime, an allegation denied by Russia, which says it was protecting children in a war zone. 

Ukraine – EU

About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks were stuck on the Polish side of the border Sunday morning due to a blockade lasting more than 10-days by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.

Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“For over 10 days, Ukrainian drivers have been blocked at the Polish border. Thousands of people are forced to live in difficult conditions with limited food, water and fuel,” Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said on X, formerly Twitter.

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

 
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An orphaned Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia last year during the war in his country returned home after being reunited with relatives in Belarus on his 18th birthday Sunday.

Bohdan Yermokhin was pictured embracing family members in Minsk in photographs shared on social media by Russia’s children’s rights ombudswoman, Maria Lvova-Belova.

Andrii Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, confirmed that Yermokhin had arrived back in Ukraine and shared a photo of him with a Ukrainian flag. Yermak thanked UNICEF and Qatari negotiators for facilitating Yermokhin’s return.

Yermokhin’s parents died two years ago, before Russia invaded Ukraine. Early in the war, he was taken from the port city of Mariupol, where he lived with a cousin who was his legal guardian, placed with a foster family in the Moscow region and given Russian citizenship, according to Ukrainian lawyer Kateryna Bobrovska.

Bobrovska, who represents the teenager and his 26-year-old cousin, Valeria Yermokhina, previously told The Associated Press that Yermokhin repeatedly expressed the desire to go home and had talked daily about “getting to Ukraine, to his relatives.”

Yermokhin was one of thousands of Ukrainian children taken to Russia from occupied regions of Ukraine. The practice prompted the International Criminal Court in March to accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin and children’s rights ombudswoman Lvova-Belova of committing war crimes.

The court in The Hague, Netherlands, issued warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova’s arrests, saying they found “reasonable grounds to believe” the two were responsible for the illegal deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine.

The Kremlin has dismissed the warrants as null and void. Lvova-Belova has argued that the children were taken to Russia for their safety, not abducted — a claim widely rejected by the international community. Nevertheless, the children’s rights ombudswoman announced in a Nov. 10 online statement that Yermokhin would be allowed to return to Ukraine via a third country.

The teenager reportedly tried to return home on his own earlier this year. Lvova-Belova told reporters in April that Russian authorities caught Yerkmohin near Russia’s border with Belarus on his way to Ukraine. The ombudswoman argued that he was being taken there “under false pretenses.”

Before he was allowed to leave Russia, lawyer Bobrovska described an urgent need for Yermokhin to return to Ukraine before his 18th birthday, when he would become eligible for conscription into the Russian army. The teenager had received two official notices to attend a military enlistment office in Russia, although officials later said he had only been summoned for record-keeping purposes.

Last month, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said in his Telegram channel that a total of 386 children have been brought back to Ukraine from Russia. “Ukraine will work until it returns everyone to their homeland,” Lubinets stressed.
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About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks were stuck on the Polish side of the border as of Sunday morning due to a more than 10-day blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.

Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian officials said last week Kyiv and Warsaw had again failed to reach an agreement to stop the protest.

“For over 10 days, Ukrainian drivers have been blocked at the Polish border. Thousands of people are forced to live in difficult conditions with limited food, water and fuel,” Oleksandr Kubrakov, Deputy Ukraine’s Prime Minister, said on X, formerly Twitter.

He said trucks were backed up more than 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) toward the Yahodyn crossing, more than 10 kilometers toward Rava-Ruska, and more than 16 kilometers toward the Krakivets crossing.

According to the Ukrainian Infrastructure Ministry, an average of 40,000-50,000 trucks cross the border with Poland per month via eight existing crossings, twice as many as before the war. Most of the goods are carried by Ukraine’s transport fleet.

Now only a few vehicles per hour are going through the Polish border at blocked checkpoints, Ukrainian border guards say.

Ukrainian grain brokers said last week Ukraine’s shipments of food by road decreased 2.7% in the first 13 days of November due to difficulties on the Polish border caused by a drivers’ strike.

Spike Brokers, which regularly tracks export statistics, said that the passage of vehicles through customs checkpoints on the border with Poland decreased to 4,000 tons of cargo per day, compared to the peak of 7,500 tons per day a month earlier.
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A hat belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte when he was French emperor sold for a record of nearly two million euros at a French auction on Sunday, the auction house said.

It went for 1.932 million euros ($2.1 million) — breaking the previous record for a Napoleonic hat, held by the same auction house, of 1.884 million euros in 2014 shelled out by a South Korean businessman.

The hat, known as a bicorne, is in Napoleon’s trademark colors — black, with the French flag’s colors blue-white-red as insignia — and attracted interest from collectors “the world over”, auctioneers Osenat said, declining to give the identity or nationality of the eventual buyer.

It was last owned by businessman Jean-Louis Noisiez, who died last year.

Other Napoleon memorabilia from the Noisiez collection also went on the block, including a Legion of Honor medal and a pair of silver spurs owned by Napoleon.

The final price for the hat, including all charges, was more than double the estimate of 600,000 to 800,000 euros, and nearly four times the reserve price, the auction house based in Fontainebleau, south of Paris, said.

Napoleon is believed to have owned around 120 such hats in total over 15 years, most of which are now lost.

“The hat in itself represented the emperor’s image,” auction house expert Jean-Pierre Osenat told AFP ahead of the sale.

‘A romantic’

Napoleon wore this particular hat towards the middle of his time as emperor, according to the auction house.

Unlike most other officers at the time, Napoleon wore his hat sideways, which gave him a distinct silhouette easily recognized by his troops in battle.

Napoleon rose to prominence during the French Revolution, becoming a key figure in the revolutionary wars.

He served the republic as first consul, and had himself crowned as emperor in 1804.

He was exiled in 1815 after losing the battle against British and Prussian forces at Waterloo.

He died in 1821 on the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.

Sunday’s hat sale comes only days before a biopic on Napoleon reaches cinemas worldwide.

The film, by Ridley Scott, features massive-scale battles across Europe but also portrays his complex relationship with his wife Josephine.

Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Napoleon in the movie, said of the late emperor that he was “socially awkward”, but also a “romantic.”

Phoenix told AFP in an interview that there had been “something almost endearing” about Napoleon, except that he was “also responsible for the deaths of millions of people.”

Research for the movie was complicated by the vastly different accounts that have come down through the centuries.

“It’s very hard to get a clear answer about many things,” said Phoenix, who said his interest was in finding “inspiration more than information”, through details like how Napoleon ate and drank.
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Gale-force winds and heavy rain and snow hit large parts of Bulgaria Sunday, claiming the lives of two people, causing severe damage and disrupting the power supply in towns and villages, officials said Sunday.

Residents in eastern Bulgaria, that was hit hardest by the storm said they had never experienced such weather.

A state of emergency has been declared in the Black Sea city of Varna, where officials said the extreme weather poses serious risks to the population. The port city was struck by gale-force winds and torrential rain mixed with snow.

The mayor’s office reported that the power supply is disrupted in all boroughs of Varna, key roads are blocked by fallen trees and branches, leaving vehicles stranded. It called on citizens to stay at home and not to use their cars except in urgent cases.

Varna International Airport was open, but there were delayed and canceled flights, airport officials said.

On Saturday, police reported that a man had died after his van hit a fallen tree on a major boulevard in the capital, Sofia, while in Varna, a woman died instantly after being struck by a falling tree branch.

Bulgarian meteorologists issued warnings for dangerous weather for most of eastern Bulgaria on Sunday, with winds gusting up to 125 kph (78 mph). The heavy rain is expected to turn into snow due to falling temperatures.
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A German lawmaker who serves as the political sponsor of Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi has welcomed the release on bail of the dissident artist but warned he is still at risk as all charges against him are still pending.

“While it is certainly a positive development that Toomaj is no longer in prison, it is essential for me to caution against excessive jubilation because the actions of the Iranian regime are unpredictable, lawmaker Ye-One Rhie told VOA. “They might detain him again next week, or they may never arrest him again. It is imperative for everyone to temper their joy and to remain mindful of Toomaj and other prisoners.”

An outspoken rapper, Toomaj Salehi was jailed in connection with anti-government protests that erupted in 2022. He had been sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “corruption on earth.” His lawyer told Iran’s reformist newspaper Shargh that upon appeal, the Supreme Court found “flaws” in the initial sentence and ordered him to be freed on bail.

Like thousands of other mostly young Iranians, Salehi embraced a widespread anti-government protest movement that began last September following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police. She was arrested allegedly for violating Iran’s strict Islamic dress code.

In the days before Salehi’s arrest in October 2022, he posted videos of himself on Instagram participating in peaceful street demonstrations and urging others to do the same.

Ye-One Rhie underscored her unwavering support for Toomaj.

“Consider the challenges this man has faced during this time, particularly in the past year. I hold the utmost respect for him,” she said. “I will stand by him in every possible way, maintaining this support until the end, and I am aware that numerous others will persist in providing their support as well.”

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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Pope Francis’ recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in a working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic.

Thanks to the local parish priest, these women now make monthly visits to Francis’ Wednesday general audiences, where they are given VIP seats. On any given day, they receive handouts of medicine, cash and shampoo. When COVID-19 struck, the Vatican bused them into its health facility so they could be vaccinated ahead of most Italians.

On Sunday, these women — many of whom are Latin American migrants and work as prostitutes — will join over 1,000 other poor and homeless people in the Vatican auditorium as Francis’ guests for lunch to mark the Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor. For the marginalized trans community of Torvaianica, it is just the latest gesture of inclusion from a pope who has made reaching out to the LGBTQ+ community a hallmark of his papacy, in word and deed.

“Before, the church was closed to us. They didn’t see us as normal people, they saw us as the devil,” said Andrea Paola Torres Lopez, a Colombian transgender woman known as Consuelo, whose kitchen is decorated with pictures of Jesus. “Then Pope Francis arrived and the doors of the church opened for us.”

Francis’ latest initiative was a document from the Vatican’s doctrine office asserting that, under some circumstances, transgender people can be baptized and can serve as godparents and witnesses in weddings. It followed another recent statement from the pope himself that suggested same-sex couples could receive church blessings.

In both cases, the new pronouncements reversed the absolute bans on transgender people serving as godparents issued by the Vatican doctrine office in 2015, and on same-sex blessings announced in 2021.

Prominent LGBTQ+ organizations have welcomed Francis’ message of inclusivity, given gay and transgender people have long felt ostracized and discriminated against by a church that officially teaches that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

Starting from his famous “Who am I to judge” comment in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, to his assertion in January that “being homosexual is not a crime,” Francis has evolved his position to increasingly make clear that everyone — “todos, todos, todos” — is a child of God, is loved by God and welcome in the church.

That judgment-free position is not necessarily shared by the rest of the Catholic Church. The recent Vatican gathering of bishops and laypeople, known as a synod, backed off language explicitly calling for welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics. Conservative Catholics, including cardinals, have strongly questioned his approach. And a 2022 Pew Research Center analysis showed most U.S. Catholics, or 62%, believe that whether a person is a man or woman is determined by the sex assigned at birth, while only a minority, 37%, said it can change.

After his latest statement about trans participation in church sacraments, GLAAD and DignityUSA said Francis’ tone of inclusion would send a message to political and cultural leaders to end their persecution, exclusion and discrimination against transgender people.

For the trans community in Torvaianica, it was a more personal message, a concrete sign that the pope knew them, had heard their stories and wanted to let them know that they were part of his church.

Carla Segovia, a 46-year-old Argentine sex worker, said for transgender women like herself, being a godparent is the closest thing she will ever get to having a child of her own. She said that the new norms made her feel more comfortable about maybe one day returning fully to the faith that she was baptized in but fell away from after coming out as trans.

“This norm from Pope Francis brings me closer to finding that absolute serenity,” she said, which she feels is necessary to be fully reconciled with the faith.

Claudia Vittoria Salas, a 55-year-old transgender tailor and house cleaner, said she had already served as a godparent to three of her nieces and nephews back home in Jujuy, in northern Argentina. She choked up as she recalled that her earnings from her former work as a prostitute put her godchildren through school.

“Being a godparent is a big responsibility, it’s taking the place of the mother or father, it’s not a game,” she said as her voice broke. “You have to choose the right people who will be responsible and capable, when the parents aren’t around, to send the kids to school and provide them with food and clothes.”

Francis’ unusual friendship with the Torvaianica trans community began during Italy’s strict COVID-19 lockdown, when one, then two, and then more sex workers showed up at the Rev. Andrea Conocchia’s church on the main piazza of town asking for food, because they had lost all sources of income.

Over time, Canocchia got to know the women and as the pandemic and economic hardships continued, he encouraged them to write to Francis to ask for what they needed. One night they sat around a table and composed their letters.

“The pages of the letters of the first four were bathed in tears,” he recalled. “Why? Because they told me ‘Father, I’m ashamed, I can’t tell the pope what I have done, how I have lived.'”

But they did, and the first assistance arrived from the pope’s chief almsgiver, who then accompanied the women for their COVID-19 vaccines a year later. At the time of the pandemic, many of the women weren’t legally allowed to live in Italy and had no access to the vaccine.

Eventually, Francis asked to meet them.

Salas was among those who received the jab at the Vatican and then joined a group from Torvaianica to thank Francis at his general audience on April 27, 2022. She brought the Argentine pope a platter of homemade chicken empanadas, a traditional comfort food from their shared homeland.

Showing the photo of the exchange on her phone, Salas remembered what Francis did next: “He told the gentleman who receives the gifts to leave them with him, saying ‘I’m taking them with me for lunch,'” she said. “At that point, I started to cry.”

For Canocchia, Francis’ response to Salas and the others has changed him profoundly as a priest, teaching him the value of listening and being attentive to the lives and hardships of his flock, especially those most on the margins.

For the women, it is simply an acknowledgement that they matter.

“At least they remember us, that we’re on Earth and we haven’t been abandoned and left to the mercy of the wind,” said Torres Lopez.
…

Survivors of Nazi atrocities joined young Jewish activists outside the Paris Holocaust memorial Saturday to sound the alarm about resurgent antisemitic hate speech, graffiti and abuse linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

The impact of the conflict is drawing increasing concern in France and beyond. Thousands of pro-Palestinian and left-wing activists rallied in Paris and around Britain on Saturday to call for a cease-fire, the latest of several such protests in major cities around the world since the war began.

France is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel and the U.S., and western Europe’s largest Muslim population. The war has re-opened the doors to anti-Jewish sentiment in a country whose wartime collaboration with the Nazis left deep scars. Some 100,000 people marched through Paris last week to denounce antisemitism.

Esther Senot, 96, said the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 stirred up her memories of World War II.

“Massacres like that, I have lived through,” she said at the Paris Holocaust Memorial. ”I saw people die in front of me.”

Her sister was among them: ”They brought her to the gas chamber in front of my eyes,” she said.

Most of Senot’s family members died. She survived 17 months in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps and made it back to France at age 17, weighing just 32 kilograms.

Senot was speaking at an event organized by Jewish youth organization Hachomer Hatzai, at which teenage activists drew parallels between what’s happening now and the leadup to World War II. They held a sign saying ”We will not let history repeat itself.”

France’s Interior Ministry said this week that 1,762 antisemitic acts have been reported this year, as well as 131 anti-Muslim acts and 564 anti-Christian acts. Half of the antisemitic acts involve graffiti, posters or protest banners bearing Nazi symbols or violent anti-Jewish messages. They also include physical attacks on people and Jewish sites, and online threats. Most were registered after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, the ministry said.

Serge Klarsfeld, a renowned Nazi hunter and head of the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France, noted that anger at the Israeli government’s actions often gets mixed with anti-Jewish sentiment. While he is concerned about the current atmosphere in France, he sought to put it in perspective.

“Certainly there are antisemitic acts (in France), but they are not at an urgent level,” he said. He expressed hope in ”the wisdom of the two communities, who know how lucky they are to live in this exceptional country.”

France has citizens directly affected by the war: The initial Hamas attack killed 40 French people, and French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu is shuttling around the Middle East this week to try to negotiate the release of eight French citizens held hostage by Hamas.

Two French children have also been killed in Israel’s subsequent offensive on Gaza, according to the Foreign Ministry, which is pushing for humanitarian help for Gaza’s civilians.

On Sunday, hundreds of French entertainment stars from different cultural and religious backgrounds plan a silent march in central Paris to call for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. They will march from the Arab World Institute to the Museum of Art and History of Judaism.

Like France and some other countries, Britain has seen protests to demand a cease-fire each weekend since the war began. Organizers from Palestinian organizations and left-wing groups said rallies and marches were held in dozens of towns and cities across the U.K. on Saturday.

Some staged sit-in protests in busy railway stations, while hundreds of people demonstrated outside the north London office of opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer. His refusal to call for a cease-fire and instead to advocate a “humanitarian pause” has angered some members of the left-of-center party.
…

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sanctioned 37 Russian groups and 108 people including a former prime minister and a former education minister and said he aimed to fight wartime abductions of children from Ukraine and other “Russian terror.”

“We are increasing the pressure of our state onto them and each of them must be held responsible for what they have done,” he said Saturday in his nightly video address after his office issued corresponding decrees with his signature.

Zelenskyy did not associate specific individuals or groups with particular wrongdoings. The decrees showed a range of 10-year penalties against individuals and five-year penalties against non-profit groups including one named in English as the “Russian Children’s Foundation.”

Zelenskyy said in his address that the list included “those involved in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory” and individuals who “in various ways help Russian terror against Ukraine.”

Some of the newly sanctioned people, which included many with Russian citizenship, had previously been punished with separate or similar penalties.

Those included Dmytro Tabachnyk, a former minister of education and science whose Ukrainian citizenship was stripped from him in February, and ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

Azarov, along with former President Viktor Yanukovich, previously saw some of his assets and property frozen, among other penalties. The two men fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 after a crackdown on street protests that killed more than 100 demonstrators in Kyiv.

Other individuals penalized on Saturday included Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, and Leonid Pasechnik, whom Putin appointed head of Luhansk, the eastern Ukrainian region Russia annexed in 2022.

The sanctioned Russian groups included several whose names or websites indicate they work with children.

One sanctioned group was named Kvartal Lui, which matches an organization with a website that says its founder is Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, herself sanctioned by Kyiv in October 2022.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague this month issued an arrest warrant against Lvova-Belova, along with President Vladimir Putin, accusing them of the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s new list also sanctioned the executive director of Kvartal Lui, Sofia Lvova-Belova. Her older sister, Maria Lvova-Belova, has said children were taken to shelter them from violence and denied committing any war crime.

Kyiv says about 20,000 children have been removed to Russia or Russian-held territory without the consent of their family or guardians, which it says amounts to a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide.

Yale University published research Thursday saying more than 2,400 children ages 6-17 had also been taken to 13 facilities across Russian-allied Belarus.

The report, from a group that receives U.S. State Department funding, said that the transports across Russian territory to its western neighbor were “ultimately coordinated” between Putin and Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Zelenskyy’s decrees upheld a decision by the National Security and Defense Council to issue sanctions with an array of penalties including blocking assets, trade, transit, leasing, removal of capital, land purchases and other financial and economic activities.
…

Germany confirmed Saturday that it has launched an investigation into an alleged unauthorized trip to the country by a senior member of Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban regime.  

The controversy erupted after Abdul Bari Omar, head of the Taliban-led food and medicine authority, appeared at a mosque in Cologne on Thursday, addressing an audience largely made up of Afghan expatriates.  

The German Interior Ministry, on the X social media platform, condemned the appearance of Omar as “completely unacceptable,” saying Taliban members have no place in the country. It urgently sought clarification from the organizers, the Turkish-Islamic Union, or DITIB, on how the appearance came about.  

“Nobody is allowed to offer radical Islamists a platform in Germany. The Taliban are responsible for massive human rights violations,” the ministry wrote. “The responsible authorities are investigating the case intensively.”

‘We are shocked’

The DITIB distanced itself from the event, saying it had only rented the space to a Cologne-based Afghan cultural association for a religious gathering and did not know the Taliban official had been invited. 

“We are shocked by this incident,” the DITIB said in a Friday statement, insisting it “learned from the press” that the speaker was a Taliban representative.  

“Contrary to contractual agreement, this turned into a political event to which a speaker unknown to us was invited,” it said. This constituted a “blatant breach of contract,” and the association has been banned from the premises, it added. 

On Friday, the German foreign ministry said its official data shows that none of the country’s visa offices had issued a visa to Omar, nor was it informed about his visit. The ministry stressed in a statement posted on X that Germany does not recognize the Taliban government.  

“As long as the Taliban in Afghanistan blatantly tramples on human rights, especially the rights of women and girls, there will be no normalization with the Taliban regime,” the ministry added. 

Chief Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed Friday the presence of Omar in Germany by tweeting pictures from the controversial Thursday event. 

“He encouraged the Afghan participants to return to the country and use their capital to contribute to the reconstruction and development of the country, telling them security has returned to the country,” Mujahid wrote.  

The DITIB is reportedly the largest Sunni Muslim organization in Germany and is linked to the Turkish government.  

Separately, the Dutch health and sports minister apologized Saturday for having his picture taken with Omar while both attended the Second World Local Production Forum in the Hague from November 6 to 8.   

Ernst Kuipers wrote on X that he stands for human rights, particularly women’s rights, and does not want to associate himself with what he denounced as the “terrible” Taliban regime.  

“I didn’t know who this person was at the time. This was a mistake, and it should not have happened, and I regret it,” he said. “We are investigating how this person was present at this conference.” 

The hard-line Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021, when U.S.-led Western troops chaotically withdrew after nearly two decades of involvement in the Afghan war.  

No foreign country has recognized the male-only Taliban regime mainly because it bans female education beyond the sixth grade in Afghanistan and bars women from most public and private sector workplaces, including the United Nations.  

De facto Afghan authorities justify their governance, saying it is aligned with Afghan culture and Islamic law. They have rejected international criticism of the Taliban government and calls for removing sweeping restrictions on women. 
…

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Saturday that his country and Azerbaijan are speaking “different diplomatic languages” even though they were able to agree on the basic principles for a peace treaty. 

Azerbaijan waged a lightning military campaign in September in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The offensive ended three decades of rule there by ethnic Armenians and resulted in the vast majority of the 120,000 residents fleeing the region, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. 

Addressing the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Pashinyan said it was “good that the basic principles of peace with Azerbaijan have been agreed upon.” The principles include Armenia and Azerbaijan recognizing each other’s territorial integrity. 

But Armenian state news agency Armenpress quoted Pashinyan as going on to say, “We have good and bad news about the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process.” He said that Azerbaijan did not publicly comment on the agreed-upon peace outline announced last month, making him question its commitment and fostering what Pashinyan described as an atmosphere of mistrust. 

Rhetoric by Azerbaijani officials that he said included referring to Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan” leaves the door open for further “military aggression” against Armenia, the prime minister said. 

“This seems to us to be preparation for a new war, a new military aggression against Armenia, and it is one of the main obstacles to progress in the peace process,” Pashinyan said. 

The OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly opened its fall meeting Saturday in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. On Thursday, the government of Azerbaijan said it would not participate in normalization talks with Armenia that were planned to take place in the United States later this month. 
…

About 170,000 people marched through Madrid Saturday in the largest protest yet against an amnesty law that Spain’s Socialists agreed over Catalonia’s 2017 separatist bid to form a government. 

The demonstration, the latest in a series of protests in cities across the country against the amnesty, took place two days after Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez won a four-year term with the backing of Catalan and Basque nationalist parties in return for agreeing to the law. 

Protesters, many waving Spanish flags and holding signs that read “Sanchez traitor” and “Don’t sell Spain,” demonstrated against the law that four judicial associations, opposition political parties and business leaders said threatens the rule of law and the separation of powers. 

Authorities put the number of demonstrators at 170,000. 

Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the opposition conservative People’s Party, and Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party, also attended the march that was organized by civil groups. 

After the rally, hundreds protested in the motorway near the Moncloa Palace, the prime minister’s residence in Madrid. The A6 road was closed for about an hour during the protest but later reopened after the police cleared the area. 

A small protest was held outside the Spanish Embassy in London. 

The amnesty will cover about 400 people involved in the independence bid that came to a head in 2017, including separatists but also police involved in clashes with activists. 

The independence referendum was declared illegal by the courts and resulted in Spain’s worst political crisis for decades. 

The amnesty will be the largest in Spain since the 1977 blanket amnesty for crimes committed during the Francisco Franco dictatorship, and the first amnesty law approved in the European Union since 1991, according to Spain’s CSIC research council. 

Sanchez, who won a parliamentary vote to form a new government Thursday by 179 votes in favor and 171 against, has defended the law saying an amnesty would help to defuse tensions in Catalonia. 

Protesters, including neo-Nazi groups, have held rowdy demonstrations outside the Socialist headquarters in Madrid for 15 consecutive nights since the deal was announced. There have been clashes with police that left officers and demonstrators injured but in general the protests have been peaceful. 

In a survey by Metroscopia in mid-September, around 70% of respondents — 59% of them Socialist supporters — said they were against the idea of an amnesty.  
…

Germany’s Foreign Ministry scrutinized humanitarian aid payments to the Palestinian territories and did not detect any misuse, the ministry said Saturday after a review prompted by the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. 

Europe is one of the main sources of aid to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, where the United Nations estimates that 2.1 million people need humanitarian assistance, among them 1 million children. 

The German announcement of the aid review had sparked a mixed reaction at home and elsewhere, with critics saying the Palestinian people were not responsible for the Hamas attacks. 

Berlin, which has pledged its unwavering support for Israel, says Israeli security is its “reason of state” due its responsibility for the Holocaust, in which about 6 million Jews were killed in Nazi Germany. 

“The review of humanitarian aid for the Palestinians has been completed, and there have been no anomalies regarding possible indirect aid for terrorist organizations,” the foreign ministry said. 

However, a separate review by the Development Ministry, which suspended development aid to Palestinian people after Hamas’ attacks, has not concluded yet, a ministry spokesperson told Reuters. 

The European Commission also announced on October 9 it would suspend aid to the Palestinians, only to backtrack later the same day after EU countries complained it had overstepped the mark. 

The German Development Ministry had earmarked 250 million euros ($272 million) for bilateral projects in the Palestinian territories for this year and next. It did not say how much of that it has already disbursed so far. 

The spokesperson said that pledges totaling 71 million euros ($77.4 million) for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, were released and an additional 20 million euros were made available. 

These will be used to finance measures to maintain basic services for displaced people in Gaza and to support Palestinian refugees in Jordan. 

Germany has provided humanitarian aid totaling around 161 million euros ($175.6 million) for people in Palestinian territories this year. 

The country, together with the United States, is the largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Saturday during a visit to Nuthetal in Brandenburg state. 

“It is not the states in the neighborhood, although some are very rich,” he said about Arab countries. “We are the ones who make it possible for schools and hospitals to be run there,” he said about the Palestinian territories. 
…

The British Defense Ministry said Saturday in its daily intelligence update on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that over the last week there has been intense ground combat in three areas – the Kupiansk axis in Luhansk oblast; Avdiivka in Donetsk oblast; and on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson oblast, where Ukrainian forces have established a bridgehead.

While Russia had “particularly heavy casualties” around Avdiivka, the report said, neither side has achieved much progress in any of the locations.

There are not likely to be any substantial changes in the areas, the British ministry warned, as the Eastern European winter sets in.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said Friday in his daily address that Ukraine “will find resources for the reconstruction of universities damaged by Russian attacks.”

He said he visited one of the schools Friday – Mariupol State University, which has relocated to Kyiv.  Zelenskyy said the university is “working” and “preserves faith in Ukraine, in our people, and in the belief that Ukraine will be free.”

The Moscow Times, an online newspaper popular among Russia’s expatriates, was added Friday to the list of “foreign agents” by Russia’s Justice Ministry. This was the latest addition in Russia’s continuing crackdown on news media and opposition critical of its war in Ukraine.

The foreign agent designation subjects individuals and organizations to increased financial scrutiny and requires any of their public material to prominently include notice of being declared a foreign agent. The label aims at undermining the designee’s credibility.

It was not immediately clear how the move would affect The Moscow Times, which moved its editorial operations out of Russia in 2022 after the passage of a law imposing stiff penalties for material regarded as discrediting the Russian military and its war in Ukraine.

Russia has methodically targeted people and organizations critical of the Kremlin, branding many as foreign agents and some as “undesirable” under a 2015 law that makes membership in such organizations a criminal offense.

The Moscow Times publishes in English and in Russian, but its Russian-language site was blocked in Russia several months after the Ukraine war began.

Foothold across the Dnipro

Ukraine’s military said on social media Friday that it had gained “a foothold on several bridgeheads” on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, near the key southern city of Kherson.

Russia conceded that Ukrainian forces had claimed back some territory on the opposing bank.

Ukrainian troops are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnipro to stop them from shelling civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a report Friday.

Ukraine also said Friday it has destroyed 15 Russian naval vessels and damaged 12 others in the Black Sea since the Russia’s invasion began in February 2022. 

Ukraine has forced Russia to move its naval forces to positions more difficult for Kyiv’s weapons to reach, navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said in televised comments.

Russia is also suffering logistical problems, he said, because it had to move vessels to Novorossiysk and periodically to Tuapse, both ports on the eastern flank of the Black   Sea southeast of Crimea and farther from Ukraine.

The Associated Press and Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield claims. Russia usually does not acknowledge damage to its military assets and says it repels most Ukrainian attacks.

More aid

Meanwhile, EU membership talks with Ukraine are at risk, and there is no agreement in the bloc to grant Kyiv a further $54 billion in aid, a senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Friday.

The official said Hungary is potentially obstructing the unanimity necessary for Ukraine’s EU membership talks.

The proposal by the bloc’s executive European Commission to revise its long-term budget to assign the funds for Ukraine through 2027 was also criticized from several sides, said the official.

“Leaders … were realizing it’s quite expensive,” said the official, who is involved in preparing a Dec. 14-15 summit in Brussels of the 27 EU member states’ national leaders. “How do we pay for this?”

The downbeat comments reflect the increasing fatigue and gloomier mood setting in among Kyiv’s Western backers as the war drags on.

The Dutch government has earmarked $2.2 billion more in military aid for Ukraine in 2024, in what Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said Friday was a sign of unwavering support for Kyiv’s war against Russia.

It is part of a wider package the Netherlands will provide to Ukraine next year that includes an initial $111 million for reconstruction and humanitarian aid that will be increased during the year if needed.

The latest package takes the total amount of Dutch support for Ukraine during the conflict to around $8 billion, Ollongren said.

“What’s most critical for me is that we’ll be providing an additional 2 billion euros [$2.2 billion] in military aid next year,” Ollongren told Reuters.

Military conference

Ukraine and the United States will hold a military industry conference next month, Zelenskyy said in a Friday evening address.

“In December of this year, a special conference involving Ukrainian and American industries, government officials and other state actors will take place — everyone involved in organizing our defense,” he said.

Kyiv is ramping up efforts to produce its own weapons amid concerns that supplies from the West might be faltering. It also hopes joint ventures with international armament producers can help revive its domestic industry.

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

Britain’s medicines regulator has authorized the world’s first gene therapy treatment for sickle cell disease, in a move that could offer relief to thousands of people with the crippling disease in the U.K.

In a statement Thursday, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency said it approved Casgevy, the first medicine licensed using the gene editing tool CRISPR, which won its makers a Nobel prize in 2020.

The agency approved the treatment for patients with sickle cell disease and thalassemia who are 12 years old and older. Casgevy is made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Europe) Ltd. and CRISPR Therapeutics. To date, bone marrow transplants, extremely arduous procedures that come with very unpleasant side effects, have been the only long-lasting treatment.

“The future of life-changing cures resides in CRISPR based (gene-editing) technology,” said Dr. Helen O’Neill of University College London.

“The use of the word ‘cure’ in relation to sickle cell disease or thalassemia has, up until now, been incompatible,” she said in a statement, calling the MHRA’s approval of gene therapy “a positive moment in history.”

Both sickle cell disease and thalassemia are caused by mistakes in the genes that carry hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carry oxygen. 

In people with sickle cell — which is particularly common in people with African or Caribbean backgrounds — a genetic mutation causes the cells to become crescent-shaped, which can block blood flow and cause excruciating pain, organ damage, stroke and other problems.

In people with thalassemia, the genetic mutation can cause severe anemia. Patients typically require blood transfusions every few weeks, and injections and medicines for their entire life. Thalassemia predominantly affects people of South Asian, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern heritage.

The new medicine, Casgevy, works by targeting the problematic gene in a patient’s bone marrow stem cells so that the body can make properly functioning hemoglobin.

Patients first receive a course of chemotherapy, before doctors take stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow and use genetic editing techniques in a laboratory to fix the gene. The cells are then infused back into the patient for a permanent treatment. Patients must be hospitalized at least twice — once for the collection of the stem cells and then to receive the altered cells.

“This is so exciting. It’s a new wave of treatments that we can utilize for patients with sickle cell disease,” said Dr. James LaBelle, director of the pediatric stem cell and cellular therapy program at the University of Chicago. He said Britain’s approval suggested the U.S. authorization was likely “imminent.”

Casgevy is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; the agency is expected to make a decision early next month, before considering another sickle cell gene therapy.

LaBelle said officials at the University of Chicago are “already moving forward to build not only the clinical infrastructure but also the reimbursement infrastructure to get these patients this treatment.”

Britain’s regulator said its decision to authorize the gene therapy for sickle cell disease was based on a study done on 29 patients, of whom 28 reported having no severe pain problems for at least one year after being treated. In the study for thalassemia, 39 out of 42 patients who got the therapy did not need a red blood cell transfusion for at least a year afterwards.

Gene therapy treatments can cost millions of dollars and experts have previously raised concerns that they could remain out of reach for the people who would benefit most.

Last year, Britain approved a gene therapy for a fatal genetic disorder that had a list price of £2.8 million ($3.5 million). England’s National Health Service negotiated a significant confidential discount to make it available to eligible patients.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals said it had not yet established a price for the treatment in Britain and was working with health authorities “to secure reimbursement and access for eligible patients as quickly as possible.”

In the U.S., Vertex has not released a potential price for the therapy, but a report by the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review said prices up to around $2 million would be cost-effective. By comparison, research earlier this year showed medical expenses for current sickle cell treatments, from birth to age 65, add up to about $1.6 million for women and $1.7 million for men.

Medicines and treatments in Britain must be recommended by a government watchdog before they are made freely available to patients in the national health care system.

Millions of people around the world, including about 100,000 in the U.S., have sickle cell disease. It occurs more often among people from places where malaria is or was common, like Africa and India, and is also more common in certain ethnic groups, such as people of African, Middle Eastern and Indian descent. Scientists believe being a carrier of the sickle cell trait helps protect against severe malaria.
…

British author A.S. Byatt, who wove history, myth and a sharp eye for human foibles into books that included the Booker Prize-winning novel Possession, has died at the age of 87.

Byatt’s publisher, Chatto & Windus, said Friday that the author, whose full name was Antonia Byatt, died “peacefully at home surrounded by close family” on Thursday.

Byatt wrote two dozen books, starting with her first novel, The Shadow of the Sun, in 1964. Her work was translated into 38 languages.

Possession, published in 1990, follows two young academics investigating the lives of a pair of imaginary Victorian poets. The novel, a double romance which skillfully layers a modern story with mock-Victorian letters and poems, was a huge bestseller and won the prestigious Booker Prize.

Accepting the prize, Byatt said Possession was about the joy of reading.

“My book was written on a kind of high about the pleasures of reading,” she said.

“Possession” was adapted into a 2002 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart. It was one of several Byatt books to get the film treatment. Morpho Eugenia, a gothic Victorian novella included in the 1992 book Angels and Insects, became a 1995 movie of the same name, starring Mark Rylance and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Her short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, which won the 1995 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, inspired the 2022 fantasy film Three Thousand Years of Longing. Directed by Mad Max filmmaker George Miller, it starred Idris Elba as a genie who spins tales for an academic played by Tilda Swinton.

Byatt’s other books include four novels set in 1950s and ’60s Britain that together are known as the Frederica Quartet: The Virgin in the Garden, published in 1978, followed by Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman. She also wrote the 2009 Booker Prize finalist The Children’s Book, a sweeping story of Edwardian England centered on a writer of fairy tales.

Her most recent book was Medusa’s Ankles, a volume of short stories published in 2021.

Byatt’s literary agent, Zoe Waldie, said the author “held readers spellbound” with writing that was “multilayered, endlessly varied and deeply intellectual, threaded through with myths and metaphysics.”

Clara Farmer, Byatt’s publisher at Chatto & Windus — part of Penguin Random House — said the author’s books were “the most wonderful jewel-boxes of stories and ideas.”

“We mourn her loss, but it’s a comfort to know that her penetrating works will dazzle, shine and refract in the minds of readers for generations to come,” Farmer said.

Born Antonia Susan Drabble in Sheffield, northern England, in 1936 – her sister is novelist Margaret Drabble – Byatt grew up in a Quaker family, attended Cambridge University and worked for a time as a university lecturer.

She married economist Ian Byatt in 1959 and they had a daughter and a son before divorcing. In 1972, her 11-year-old son, Charles, was struck and killed by a car while walking home from school.

Charles died shortly after Byatt had taken a teaching post at University College London to pay for his private school fees. After his death, she told The Guardian in 2009, she stayed in the job “as long as he had lived, which was 11 years.” In 1983, she quit to become a full-time writer.

Byatt lived in London with her second husband, Peter Duffy, with whom she had two daughters.

Queen Elizabeth II made Byatt a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, in 1999 for services to literature, and in 2003 she was made a chevalier (knight) of France’s Order of Arts and Letters.

In 2014, a species of iridescent beetle was named for her — Euhylaeogena byattae Hespenheide — in honor of her depiction of naturalists in Morpho Eugenia.
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