RIYADMEDIA

China is looking at the experience of the war in Ukraine to develop “hybrid warfare” strategies against Taiwan including using drones and psychological pressure, a senior Taiwanese security official said on Wednesday.

Taiwan has been carefully studying the lessons of the Ukraine war to inform how it may react should China, which views the democratically ruled island as its own territory, ever makes good on threats to use force to enforce its sovereignty claim.

China mounted military exercises around Taiwan in August to express its anger at a visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and it has maintained its military activities since then, though at a scaled-back pace.

Speaking in parliament, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau Director-General Chen Ming-tong said China was also paying attention to what was happening in Ukraine.

“This year, the communist military has borrowed from the experience of the Russia-Ukraine war to develop ‘hybrid warfare’ against Taiwan and strengthen its combat training and preparation against strong enemies,” he told lawmakers.

“Grey-Zone” warfare

After the military drills in August, China expanded its “grey zone” and hybrid activities against Taiwan, especially with the use of drones that have flown both near Taiwan-controlled islands off China’s coast and into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, Chen said.

Taiwan says China’s “grey-zone” warfare campaign involves irregular tactics to exhaust a foe without resorting to open combat, like frequently flying into Taiwan’s air defense zone and forcing Taiwan’s air force to scramble.

China has released images of Taiwan’s military online to “slander” it and attack the government, he said, referring to video that circulated on Chinese social media in August of Taiwanese soldiers on offshore islands taken by drones.

These activities “highlight that the Chinese communists have increased their cognitive warfare, grey zone activities, and other hybrid methods, which have constituted a new form of threat to national security,” Chen added.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China has blamed Taiwan for the increase in tensions, saying it is “colluding” with foreign forces against Beijing to promote the island’s formal independence.

Taiwan strengthens defense

Taiwan is bolstering its defenses in the face of the stepped-up China activity, and navy commander Chiang Cheng-kuo said that includes a new generation of destroyer given that its fleet of 26 main warships was on average 20 to 30 years old.

“We’re planning for the capital ships, but the tonnage is yet to be decided,” he told the same parliament session.

Chen said China’s military threats had coalesced support from the United States and its allies for Taiwan to ensure what happened to Ukraine would not be repeated across the Taiwan Strait.

This will enhance Taiwan’s ability to deal with China and deter “their plots to attack Taiwan,” he said.

Russia calls its invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation.”
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Top U.S. cyber officials are warning that now is no time for governments or private sector companies to let down their guard and assume Russia’s struggles on the battlefield in Ukraine will carry over into the Kremlin’s efforts in cyberspace. 

Instead, they say the recent denial of service attacks targeting the public websites of major U.S. airports – and claimed by the Russian hacker group Killnet – could be “the leading edge of other types of attacks.” 

“We are not at a place where we should be putting our shields down,” Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told an audience in Washington late Tuesday. 

“We should remain very concerned, very vigilant about potential attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure,” she said. The Russians are very unpredictable. Their back is up against the wall.” 

The United States and its Western allies have been bracing for potentially large-scale, destructive cyberattacks on key industries and critical infrastructure by Russia or Russian-linked actors since before Russian forces invaded Ukraine in late February.  

“Companies of any size and of all sizes would be foolish not to be preparing right now,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in the weeks before the invasion. “It’s not hypothetical. … I am absolutely concerned.” 

Moscow has consistently denied involvement in offensive cyberattacks, including some that targeted Ukraine on the eve of the Russian invasion. And aside from the recent denial of service attacks, which CISA’s Easterly described as “a nuisance,” there has not been much evidence of any attempted or successful Russian or Russian-linked cyberattacks against targets outside Ukraine. 

Instead, it appears Russia has focused most of its cyber efforts on Ukraine itself. 

A report by the U.S.-based cybersecurity firm Check Point Software, issued last month, found that since February, cyberattacks on Ukrainian government and military websites “more than doubled, increasing by a staggering 112%.”

Other researchers have pointed to Russia’s ongoing use of cyberspace to peddle disinformation, some of it designed to try to weaken the resolve of countries that so far have remained steadfast in their support for Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials, however, have repeatedly warned that a new wave of Russian cyberattacks is coming, with the targets likely to include Ukraine’s energy and financial sectors. 

“The risk of new attacks remains very high,” Volodymyr Kondrashov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, said in a statement late last month.

But U.S. officials Tuesday praised Ukraine, saying its cybersecurity efforts have kept Russia off-balance. 

“Credit to the Ukrainians in terms of what they’ve been able to do to harden their networks, to understand what is going on, to be able to be a step ahead of what the Russians are doing,” U.S. Cyber Command’s General Paul Nakasone said. “We have learned a tremendous amount.” 

Still, Nakasone and CISA’s Easterly said their private-sector partners have detected an increase in scanning of critical systems by cyber actors potentially tied to Russia.   

“We need to ensure that we are prepared for threats, for incursions against our critical infrastructure whether it’s state-supported actors, criminally aligned ransomware groups or even the cascading attacks, with attacks in Ukraine … could bleed over the U.S.,” Easterly said. 

There are also ongoing concerns that Russia will try to launch some sort of cyberattack aimed at disrupting next month’s U.S. midterm elections. 

But while the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has seen indications of Russian-linked influence operations, the U.S. says the voting systems themselves are safe. 

“We are seeing no significant indications of attacks that are being planned right now,” Nakasone said. “But this is, again, for us a matter of vigilance.”
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Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthiest nations say they will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” following Russia’s major missile strikes in early October. White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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The head of Britain’s cyber intelligence agency on Tuesday accused China of trying to “rewrite the rules of international security,” saying Beijing is using its economic and technological clout to clamp down at home and exert control abroad. 

Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ, said that despite war raging in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing’s growing power is the “national security issue that will define our future.” 

In a rare public speech to the Royal United Services Institute think tank, Fleming alleged that Beijing’s communist authorities want to “gain strategic advantage by shaping the world’s technology ecosystems.” 

“When it comes to technology, the politically motivated actions of the Chinese state is an increasingly urgent problem we must acknowledge and address,” Fleming said. “That’s because it’s changing the definition of national security into a much broader concept. Technology has become not just an area for opportunity, for competition and for collaboration, it’s become a battleground for control, for values and for influence.” 

He argued that the one-party system in Beijing seeks to control China’s population and sees other countries “as either potential adversaries or potential client states, to be threatened, bribed or coerced.” 

Relations between Britain and China have grown increasingly frosty in recent years, with U.K. officials accusing Beijing of economic subterfuge and human rights abuses. 

British spies have given increasingly negative assessments of Beijing’s influence and intentions. Last year the head of the MI6 overseas intelligence agency, Richard Moore, called China one of the biggest threats to Britain and its allies. 

In 2020, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson followed the United States in banning Chinese tech firm Huawei as a security risk, ordering it to be stripped out of the U.K.’s 5G telecoms network by 2027. 

Fleming warned that China is seeking to fragment the infrastructure of the internet to exert greater control. He also said China is seeking to use digital currencies used by central banks to snoop on users’ transactions and as a way of avoiding future international sanctions of the sort imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. 

Fleming argued that China’s BeiDou satellite system — an alternative to the widely used GPS navigation technology — could contain “a powerful anti-satellite capability, with a doctrine of denying other nations access to space in the event of a conflict.” 

Fleming warned that the world is approaching a “sliding doors” moment in history — a reference to the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow film in which a woman’s fate hinges on a seemingly trivial moment. 

He called on Western firms and researchers to toughen intellectual property protections and for democratic countries to develop alternatives that can prevent developing nations from “mortgaging the future by buying into the Chinese vision for technology.” 

He said the world’s democracies can’t afford to fall behind in cutting-edge fields such as quantum computing, and warned of a potential weakness over semiconductors, the critical chips used in everyday electronics. Taiwan — which China regards as a breakaway province to be reclaimed by force if necessary — is a world leader in their production. 

“Events in the Taiwan Straits — any risk to that vital supply chain — have the potential to directly impact the resilience of the U.K. and global future growth,” Fleming said. 

Fleming also addressed the war in Ukraine, saying Russia is running short of weapons and Ukraine’s “courageous action on the battlefield and in cyberspace is turning the tide.” 

“Russia’s forces are exhausted,” he said. “The use of prisoners as reinforcements, and now the mobilization of tens of thousands of inexperienced conscripts, speaks of a desperate situation.” 

GCHQ, formally known as the Government Communications Headquarters, is one of Britain’s three main intelligence agencies, alongside MI5 and MI6. It did not disclose the sources of its intelligence on China and Russia. 
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The Rosetta Stone stars in a new exhibition opening Thursday at the British Museum marking one of the most significant dates in Egyptology — 200 years after a French scholar finally cracked its code and deciphered hieroglyphs.

The exhibition comes at a time the British Museum is under pressure from some Egyptologists to hand the Rosetta Stone back to Cairo as British institutions are beginning to return to other countries artifacts looted during the colonial era.

Once seen as magical symbols unrelated to spoken language, Egyptian hieroglyphs were swathed in mystery for centuries until philologist Jean-Francois Champollion decoded their meaning in 1822.

French troops had discovered the stone in the walls of an Egyptian fort in 1799 and gave it to British forces as part of a surrender agreement. The British Museum has displayed it since 1802.

The basalt slab dating from 196 BC was so crucial because it has inscriptions of identical meaning in three languages: hieroglyphs, an ancient Egyptian vernacular script called Demotic and Ancient Greek, which provided the translation key.

“We decided because the Rosetta Stone was such an important key to that decipherment that we will do this properly: with an exhibition that also features our star objects,” said Ilona Regulski, curator of Egyptian written culture at the museum. “It’s a wonderful moment to celebrate.”

Yet the anniversary exhibition is controversial to some.

Egyptian archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass recently released a petition for the return of the stone and other foreign-held treasures he considers “stolen.”

The British Museum told AFP that Egypt has never made a formal request for the Rosetta Stone’s return.

‘Muddied legacy’

Regulski added that it was a “universal object” and “it doesn’t really matter where it is, as long as it’s available to people.”

Activists from a group called Culture Unstained protested in the museum Tuesday, calling for Cairo to release political prisoners including British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, and criticizing sponsorship by BP oil giant.

The exhibition, “Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt” tracks hieroglyphs’ fall into obscurity after Egyptians switched to other forms of script.

It explores the rich discoveries about life in ancient Egypt that came from unlocking the symbols.

“For the first time in 3,000 years, Ancient Egyptians spoke directly to us,” the museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, said.

The exhibition does acknowledge attempts by non-Europeans to grasp the symbols but focuses on the race between Western scholars to crack the code.

“Our travelers … went to Egypt and were amazed by all these intriguing picture-like signs on the temple walls,” said Regulski.

This led to their “interpretation as magical signs, as secret knowledge, the idea that if you would be able to decipher hieroglyphs, you will understand the meaning of everything.”

Champollion was the first to fully grasp the logic of hieroglyphs, outdoing an English rival, Thomas Young, who was in correspondence with him.

The exhibition suggests the French scholar has a “muddied legacy,” however, and “often relied on the work of others,” including Young.

It also depicts the more bizarre side of Egyptology, including special events where enthusiasts unwrapped a mummified body and took lengths of bandages home as souvenirs.
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Energy infrastructure will become more vulnerable to extreme weather such as heatwaves and hurricanes, the World Meteorological Organization warned on Tuesday, with a senior official saying that climate change poses as big a threat to global energy security as the war in Ukraine.

This year was illustrative of what the WMO says are the challenges ahead, with hot weather and drought hampering power production in parts of Europe and China. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation,” has led to deep cuts to European energy supplies, with possible power rationing and blackouts ahead.

“I think that if we don’t do anything, if we don’t make our energy system more resilient to climate change, there will be as big a disruption in the energy system as the war,” Roberta Boscolo, WMO climate and energy lead told Reuters as the U.N. agency launched a major report on energy.

To meet the challenges, she said “huge” investment was needed to prepare for and adapt to that scenario, such as retrofitting dams to match new rainfall patterns and shoring up plants against storm surge. A WMO document showed that more than a third of all nuclear plants are found at sea level and said some will be threatened as they rise.

Overall, the WMO said in its report that countries are behind in their renewable power pledges, saying they have so far committed to building less than half of the capacity needed by 2030 to reach the Paris accord goals.

However, the WMO secretary-general said that he expects the Ukraine war to accelerate the transition to renewables, despite greater short-term reliance on fossil fuels such as coal.

.”..It’s speeding up this green transition,” Petteri Taalas said at an earlier press conference. “From a climate perspective, the war in Ukraine may be seen as a blessing.”

Taalas said countries should also consider making “certain compromises” to meet global emissions targets such as embracing nuclear power despite misgivings about waste.
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The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says missile attacks by Russia’s armed forces against civilian targets and infrastructure across several cities in Ukraine Monday could amount to war crimes. 

The U.N. reports Russian attacks on nearly a dozen cities including Kyiv, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia, have killed at least 20 civilians and injured more than 100.  

U.N. monitors say the series of attacks appears to have been coordinated. They say the location and timing of the strikes when people were commuting to work and taking children to school is particularly shocking.

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said critical civilian infrastructure, including at least 12 energy facilities, were targeted. She noted some of these facilities may be indispensable for the survival of the civilian population just ahead of the cold winter months.

“We have seen the story of elderly people trapped in their homes. People with disabilities were also unable to flee. I mean, this is unconscionable,” she said. “We have to stress that intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives, amounts to a war crime.”   

Russian President Vladimir Putin says the missile attacks were in retaliation for what he called a terrorist blast that destroyed parts of a bridge connecting Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.

Shamdasani said Russian-targeted attacks have destroyed or damaged many residential buildings and key power stations. She warned that the lack of a steady supply of energy to stave off the winter cold will likely put the lives of particularly vulnerable people at risk.

“We urge the Russian Federation to refrain from further escalation, and to take all feasible measures to prevent civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure,” she said.   

Shamdasani noted that the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine will keep tabs on the evolution of the war in Ukraine. She saaid the mission will continue to corroborate civilian casualties resulting from these attacks and document violations of human rights and international humanitarian law throughout the country.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due to address the leaders of the Group of Seven nations during a virtual meeting Tuesday that follows a series of deadly Russian missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital and other cities located across the country.

Zelenskyy said Monday that Ukraine “cannot be intimidated,” and rather than instill fear, Russia’s attacks made “the whole world take notice.”

“We will do everything to strengthen our armed forces,” Zelenskyy said. “We will make the battlefield more painful for the enemy.”

The Ukrainian leader tweeted after a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden that air defense was his top priority, and that he was looking to the United States for leadership on a “tough stance” from the G-7 as it considers its response to Russia’s attacks.

Biden and Western allies were quick to condemn the attacks and vowed to continue to send military aid to Ukraine’s forces to help fend off Moscow’s invasion, now in its eighth month.

A White House statement said Biden told Zelenskyy the United States would provide advanced air defense systems.

Biden said in a statement earlier Monday that Russia’s latest missile launches “once again demonstrate the utter brutality of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war on the Ukrainian people.

“These attacks only further reinforce our commitment to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes,” he said. “Alongside our allies and partners, we will continue to impose costs on Russia for its aggression, hold Putin and Russia accountable for its atrocities and war crimes, and provide the support necessary for Ukrainian forces to defend their country and their freedom.”

Russian attack includes 84 missiles, 24 drones    

Putin called Monday’s missile attack a “massive strike” against Ukraine in response to the recent destructive attack on the bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland.

The Ukrainian military said Russia launched a barrage of 84 cruise missiles and 24 drones, hitting at least 14 areas of the country, and killing at least 14 people. Most of the attacks on Kyiv hit the center of the city, killing at least six people there and wounding 12 others in populated areas, including parks and tourist sites.

The attacks also caused a blackout in much of the country, with hundreds of thousands of people without power Monday night.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was “shocked and appalled by the vicious attacks on Ukrainian cities. Putin’s Russia has again shown the world what it stands for: brutality and terror.”

Putin told a meeting of his security council that the strikes targeted Ukraine’s energy, military and communications infrastructure, and that they were in response to an attack Saturday on a bridge linking Russia to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Moscow illegally seized in 2014.

“It is obvious that the Ukrainian secret services ordered, organized and carried out the terrorist attack aimed at destroying Russia’s critical civilian infrastructure,” Putin said.

Aside from Kyiv, explosions were also reported in the western city of Lviv, the southeast city of Dnipro and the eastern city of Kharkiv. Ukraine’s military said it shot down 56 of the Russian aerial targets.

“Unacceptable escalation”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply shocked” by the Russian attacks, his spokesman said. “This constitutes another unacceptable escalation of the war and, as always, civilians are paying the highest price,” the spokesman added. Guterres later talked with Zelenskyy, saying they agreed that the world must react to Russia’s attack as soon as possible.

Ukraine has strongly suggested its security agents carried out the truck bomb attack on the bridge but has not publicly claimed responsibility. The bridge has been a major supply route for Russian operations in southern Ukraine.

Putin said any continued “terrorist attacks” by Ukraine on Russia would be met with a “tough and proportionate” response.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba contended the bridge attack did not provoke Putin “to unleash missile terror.”

“Russia had been constantly hitting Ukraine with missiles before the bridge, too,” Kuleba tweeted. “Putin is desperate because of battlefield defeats and uses missile terror to try to change the pace of war in his favor.”

Kyiv was last attacked in June. Once under pressure from advancing Russian forces, Kyiv had been relatively calm for months as fighting raged in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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A third cruise ship was hired by World Cup organizers in Qatar on Monday to operate as a soccer fan hotel docked in Doha Port to add much-needed rooms for the tournament.

Geneva-based MSC Cruises announced the agreement only six weeks before the World Cup is scheduled to start on Nov. 20. The 1,075-cabin MSC Opera will be available from Nov. 19 to Dec. 19.

Prices for the Opera were listed Monday on MSC’s website starting from $470 per person per night during the group stage, with a minimum two-night stay.

Qatar does not have the hotel capacity for all teams, workers, volunteers and fans at the World Cup and is creating camping and cabin sites, hiring cruise ships and encouraging fans to stay in neighboring countries and fly in for games.

MSC previously signed a deal with the Qatari government in 2019 to provide two ships with about 4,000 cabins as floating hotels to help house the expected 1.2 million international visitors.

The high-end flagship MSC World Europa is starting work at the World Cup after being built in France.

Prices on the cruise ships fall during the tournament when half the teams go home. During the round of 16 and quarterfinals, the cheapest rooms on MSC Opera cost $320, then $220 during the final week.

Basic rates include breakfast on board with an option to pay a $87 daily supplement for all meals.

Alcohol is expected to be available on board with MSC offering wine and draft beer.

Qatar is a Muslim-majority country that typically limits the consumption of alcohol to luxury hotels but has eased its rules for FIFA’s commercial partners, including the corporate hospitality provider at stadiums and World Cup sponsor AB InBev, the brewer of Budweiser.

The MSC Opera had its maiden voyage in 2004 and had an eventful sailing season three years ago.

In March 2019, passengers suspected of smuggling 18 kilograms (40 pounds) of cocaine hidden in bowls and packets of snacks were arrested when the ship docked at the Portuguese island of Madeira after sailing from the Caribbean.

Three months later, the Opera collided with a tourist boat and its dock in Venice, Italy.

Cruise ships were discussed ahead of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil as a potential solution to a shortage of hotel rooms in Rio de Janeiro. They were ultimately not hired by organizers, with only seven of the 64 games held in the city.

However, the United States basketball teams did stay on a cruise ship docked in Rio at the 2016 Olympics. A second ship was used as a hotel for Olympic stakeholders.
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The U.N. refugee agency will have to make “severe cuts” unless it gets extra funding soon, its chief said on Monday, warning cuts could lead to more malnutrition and child marriages as well as unrest in some of the world’s poorest regions. 

The war in Ukraine has sent millions fleeing, and there are now more than 100 million people forcibly displaced in the world. This, along with an ongoing crisis in Afghanistan, floods in Pakistan, and violence in Cameroon, has caused the budget of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to balloon to a record of almost $11 billion. 

“I regret to inform you that for the first time during my tenure, I’m worried about UNHCR’s financial situation,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a speech to member countries’ representatives in Geneva after being reappointed as head of the agency last month.   

“If we do not receive at least an additional $700 million, especially for our most underfunded operations, between now and the end of this year, we will be forced to make severe cuts with negative and sometimes dramatic consequences for refugees and host communities,” he added. 

The United States is by far the agency’s biggest donor, contributing over $2 billion so far this year. 

Now, 12 of the agency’s programs are funded at 50% or less, a spokesperson said. Asked which of them might be cut, the spokesperson expressed concerns about parts of the Middle East, including Yemen, and Ethiopia. 

“We fear the consequences (of cuts) will be far reaching — from increasing malnutrition rates to rising risks of increasing gender-based violence, child marriage, labor exploitation, increased tensions and unrest within local communities over resource scarcity, and so on,” the spokesperson said. 

In the same sweeping speech in Geneva, Grandi also said he was worried about the impact of cold weather during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter on some 6.2 million people internally displaced in Ukraine. 

“I share the government’s concerns about the looming winter,” he said, adding that the elderly and disabled were especially vulnerable. 
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Ukraine appealed to the international community Monday to condemn Russia’s deadly missile strikes on its capital and several other cities, and to reject Moscow’s attempt to annex four regions of eastern and southern Ukraine.

“A trail of blood is left behind the Russian delegation when it enters the General Assembly, and the hall is filled up with the smell of smoldering human flesh,” Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told a special meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

Kyslytsya said at least 84 missiles and two dozen drones had been launched at cities across Ukraine, leaving a trail of death and destruction.

“Energy facilities, residential buildings, schools and universities, museums and crossroads in the city centers were among the targets that the Russian Defense Ministry later declared legitimate,” he said. “The entire world has once again seen the true face of the terrorist state that kills our people.”

Monday’s special emergency session was convened to discuss Russia’s so-called referendums and attempted annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the country’s south. But it was overshadowed by the airstrikes that rained down on Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, which had been quiet since June.

Of the 20 countries that spoke, all but Russia condemned the latest attacks, some noting they could rise to war crimes.

Moscow’s envoy said Monday’s strikes were in response to Saturday’s bombing of the bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland.

“We warned that this will not be conducted with impunity,” Vassily Nebenzia said. “When you do these acts of sabotage, when you kill those who are unfavorable to you, the Kyiv regime is on the same level with the most outrageous terrorist organizations.”

Ukraine has strongly suggested its security agents carried out the truck bomb attack on the bridge but has not publicly claimed responsibility.

Of the Kremlin’s “referendums” and “annexation,” Nebenzia said an “absolute majority” in the four regions supported the idea of joining Russia.

“In the east and south of Ukraine, peaceful civilians are dying, and the people in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia know that very well. And that’s why they decided to opt for the future with Russia,” Nebenzia said. “I call upon you to respect their choice.”

The General Assembly debate will resume again Wednesday morning, and another 45 countries have requested to take the floor. Among them, a few Russian allies, including Belarus, North Korea and Syria. Of Russia’s friends in the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), only China has signaled it will address the assembly.

African nations are notably absent from the debate, with only the Democratic Republic of Congo so far planning to take the floor.

The United States will speak at the end of the debate. Ahead of Monday’s meeting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that no country of principle could be unmoved by the horrors Russia is inflicting on Ukraine.

“The international community has a responsibility to make clear that President [Vladimir] Putin’s actions are completely unacceptable,” he said. “Now is the time to speak out in support for Ukraine. It is not the time for abstentions, placating words or equivocations under claims of neutrality. The core principles of the U.N. Charter are at stake.”

The debate will culminate with the 193-nation assembly being asked to vote on a resolution put forward by Ukraine and the European Union condemning and rejecting Russia’s move to annex Ukrainian territory.

“Russia is putting global peace and security at risk,” EU envoy Silvio Gonzato said. “If we do not condemn the actions of the Russian Federation in Ukraine today, then we condone similar blatant attacks on any and all of our countries tomorrow.”

Russia’s ambassador tried but failed repeated procedural maneuvers to turn what will be a public, recorded vote into a secret ballot.
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The United Nations and other aid organizations in Ukraine said on Monday that Russia firing missiles at cities across the country had disrupted their humanitarian work on the ground.

Russia hit sites across Ukraine, striking Kyiv with an intensity not seen since Russian forces sought to capture the capital early in the more than seven-month war.

Moscow says the strikes were against energy, command and communication targets in retaliation for what it describes as terrorist attacks.

“The wave of attacks, claimed by Russia has … impacted humanitarian operations across Ukraine, particularly hampering the movement of aid workers and delivery of emergency supplies in the east of the country, where people are in desperate need of assistance,” the U.N. humanitarian office said in a report.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has some 700 staff at 10 locations across the country and delivers aid and medicine, said earlier on Monday that its teams had paused operations. A second Red Cross spokesperson later added that while field work had temporarily halted, aid workers were able to continue desk work.

“As soon as it’s safe to move, they will,” said Jason Straziuso.

The Norwegian Refugee Council also said that it had halted its aid operations in Ukraine until it is safe to resume, saying the temporary pause was affecting its work to pre-position supplies ahead of winter.

“We cannot aid vulnerable communities when our aid workers are hiding from a barrage of bombs and in fear of repeated attacks,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the NRC.

“People are heartbroken that they had to freeze out work today. Hopefully, we can start work again even as early as tomorrow,” he later told Reuters in an interview, saying he was worried about the impact of the disruptions on the elderly, many of whom are too weak to seek refuge elsewhere.

A spokesperson for the U.N. Refugee Agency said its operations continued, with staff sheltering during air raids.
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Jailed Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza has won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize awarded annually by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to honor “outstanding” civil society action in the defense of human rights.

The prize was presented by PACE President Tiny Kox to Kara-Murza’s wife, Yevgenia Kara-Muza at a special ceremony on Monday, the opening day of PACE’s autumn plenary session in Strasbourg.

The prize is named after the late Czech dissident and playwright who became president of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic after the fall of communism. The award comes after the Russian rights group Memorial was named last week as a co-winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

“It takes incredible courage in today’s Russia to stand against the power in place. Today, Mr. Kara-Murza is showing this courage, from his prison cell,” Kox said.

The 41-year-old politician was detained in April and sentenced to 15 days in jail on a charge of disobeying police. He was later charged with spreading false information about the Russian Army while speaking to lawmakers in the U.S. state of Arizona.

Kara-Murza has rejected the charge, calling it politically motivated.

Last week, a high treason charge was added to the charges he faces over his alleged cooperation with organizations in a NATO member for many years. If convicted on the charge, the staunch opponent of the Kremlin faces up to 20 years in prison.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has blasted the Russian accusations as “baseless,” saying it is “painfully obvious” that the Kremlin sees Kara-Murza as “a direct and imminent threat.”

“With the start of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, he launched a war on truth in our country,” Kara-Murza said in a statement read by his wife.

“In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, speaking the truth is considered a crime against the state.”

The son of a prominent journalist, also named Vladimir, who died in 2019, the younger Kara-Murza was a television correspondent in Washington for several years and later worked on political projects launched by former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a prominent Putin foe who now lives in Europe after spending more than a decade in prison.

A close associate of slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, Kara-Murza is best known for falling deathly ill on two separate occasions in Moscow — in 2015 and 2017– with symptoms consistent with poisoning.

Tissue samples smuggled out of Russia by his relatives were turned over to the FBI, which investigated his case as one of “intentional poisoning.”

U.S. government laboratories also conducted extensive tests on the samples, but documents released by the Justice Department suggest they were unable to reach a conclusive finding.
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In an opening speech to the UNHCR’s Executive Committee, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi appealed to member states to provide protection to people fleeing conflict and persecution, regardless of ethnicity and nationality.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) reports the number of people forcibly displaced by armed conflict, violence, discrimination, persecution, and climate shocks has hit an all-time high of 100 million.

High Commissioner Filippo Grandi says the climate emergency increasingly drives displacement, making life harder for those already uprooted. He says the link between climate change and displacement is clear and growing.

“We see it in the Horn of Africa, for example, where people are forced to flee by a combination of conflict and drought — more than one million have been displaced in Somalia alone since January 2021. Around 80% of refugees are from countries that are most affected by the climate emergency,” he said.

Most African refugees flee for safety to neighboring countries. However, many make the perilous journey to Europe in search of asylum and a better life.

Grandi notes that they and refugees fleeing conflict and persecution from other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan and the Middle East, too often are turned back by European countries.

He says the reception of these refugees stands in stark contrast to the generous welcome by European countries to some seven million Ukrainian refugees who fled Russia’s invasion of their country.

“The Ukrainian crisis debunked so many myths that we have heard over the years from some politicians: ‘Europe is full!’ ‘Public opinion is against taking in more refugees.’ ‘Relocation is impossible,’” he said.

He says efforts to deny access to territory for those seeking asylum, often through violent pushbacks, must be rejected.

“I also reject what we have heard some politicians on this continent tell their voters: that Ukrainians are ‘real refugees’ while others — fleeing similar horrors, but from different parts of the world — are not. There is only one word to define this attitude: racist,” he said.

Grandi adds failures on the part of member states to uphold their international protection obligations is deeply worrying and concerning.
…

Thousands of people rallied Sunday in Bosnia for the second time in a week, alleging that a pro-Russian Bosnian Serb leader rigged a ballot during a general election in the Balkan country earlier this month.

Final results of the Oct. 2 vote in Bosnia are yet to be announced. The election was held for all levels of government in both the Serb-dominated and Bosniak-Croat parts of the Balkan country, as well as for the joint central institutions.

Leading Bosnian Serb politician Milorad Dodik has claimed victory in the election for the post of presidency of the Serb entity. Opposition leaders, however, claim that their candidate Jelena Trivic is the winner, and that Dodik rigged the ballot.

Citing reports of irregularities, central election authorities in Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo have ordered the unsealing of ballot boxes and a recount at around 1,000 polling stations throughout the country before establishing the final tally.

Dodik, the most powerful politician the Bosnian Serb’s semi-autonomous region, has denied allegations that he orchestrated an election fraud to rob his main challenger of her election triumph.

At Sunday’s rally in the northern city of Banja Luka, Trivic said the opposition wants a recount and a check of all ballots in the Bosnian Serb entity, and an investigation into possible vote-rigging.

“It wasn’t me who was robbed, it was the people,” said Trivic. “We will not back down, we won’t stop.”

The crowd chanted “Mile thief!” referring to Dodik by his nickname.

Dodik has ruled practically unchallenged for years despite being sanctioned by the West for advocating the separation of Republika Srpska, as the Serb entity is called, from the rest of Bosnia. Russia has backed Dodik, fueling fears in the West that Moscow might try to create further instability in volatile Bosnia to avert some attention from the war in Ukraine.

Separatist ambitions among ethnic Serbs sparked the devastating 1992-95 war in Bosnia, which killed more than 100,000 people, displaced millions and shattered the country for years to come. A U.S.-brokered peace agreement that ended the war created the Serb and Bosniak-Croat entities, tied loosely by joint institutions.

The Balkan nation of 3.3 million people remains plagued by corruption and ethnic tensions that have impeded efforts to join the European Union.
…

India has sharply criticized the United States and Germany for recent, but rare, back-to-back moves related to a long-running territorial dispute with neighbor and archrival Pakistan.  

The controversy erupted when Donald Blome, Washington’s ambassador to Islamabad, made a three-day visit to the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, in the divided Himalayan region. Pakistan refers to the area under its control as Azad (meaning free) Jammu and Kashmir, or AJK.

“I’m honored to visit during my first trip to AJK,” the U.S. embassy quoted Blome as saying on Twitter after touring historic sites there.  

The U.S. diplomat held meetings with senior AJK officials, as well as academic, business, cultural, and civil society representatives. The U.S. embassy noted later in a formal statement that Blome’s visit was designed to promote “the U.S.-Pakistan partnership and highlight the two countries’ deep economic, cultural and people-to-people ties.”

It is rare for a U.S. ambassador to travel to what New Delhi considers an integral part of India and refers to it as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.  

Islamabad rejects Indian claims and calls Kashmir an internationally recognized disputed territory in line with a decades-old United Nations resolution. Pakistan also refers to the other side of the divided region as Indian occupied Kashmir. Both countries claim the region in its entirety and have fought two of their three wars over it since they gained independence from Britain in 1947. The dispute remains at the center of bilateral tensions.

“Our objection to the visit and meetings in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir by the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan has been conveyed to the U.S. side,” Indian foreign ministry representative Arindam Bagchi told a news conference Friday.  

Later that Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, in a rare backing for Islamabad’s stance on the territorial rivalry, said that Berlin had a “role and responsibility” with regard to the tension over Kashmir.  

Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the chief German diplomat hailed a February 2021 Kashmir cease-fire agreement between the nuclear-armed rival nations, urging both sides to build on it. She stressed that Germany supports “intensively the engagement of the United Nations” to find a peaceful solution to the dispute.

“So, we encourage Pakistan, and we encourage India to follow the track of the cease-fire, to follow the track of the United Nations, and to intensify the political dialogue, and also the political and practical cooperations in the region,” Baerbock added.

The cease-fire has since effectively halted deadly military skirmishes between Indian and Pakistani troops in Kashmir.  

On Saturday, the Indian government strongly objected to Baerbock’s Kashmir-related remarks because it vehemently opposes any third-party intervention in what India considers a bilateral issue with Pakistan.  

“All serious and conscientious members of the global community have a role and responsibility to call out international terrorism, especially of a cross-border nature,” Bagchi said in a statement.  

New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of supporting and funding Muslim militants waging cross-border attacks against Indian security forces in Kashmir, charges Pakistan rejects.  

“The Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has borne the brunt of such a terrorist campaign for decades. This continues until now,” Bagchi said. “When states do not recognize such dangers, either because of self-interest or indifference, they undermine the cause of peace, not promote it. They also do grave injustice to the victims of terrorism,” he added.  

The Pakistani foreign ministry Sunday rejected the Indian criticism of the remarks made by Zardari and his German counterpart as “preposterous.” It again accused Indian authorities of inflicting massive human rights abuses on Kashmiri Muslims on their side of the divided region.

“Hollow denials and evasion of responsibility will no longer cover up India’s mischievous strategy of posing as a ‘victim’ of terrorism while shifting blame elsewhere,” a ministry statement quoted its representative in Islamabad as saying.  

India would do well, the representative added to the statement, to address the international community’s valid concerns and mend its conduct in Kashmir.

Pakistan has welcomed the U.S. diplomat’s visit and the German foreign minister’s statement.  

Senator Mushahid Hussain of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which heads the coalition government in Islamabad, says a settlement to the Kashmir dispute can only ensure “enduring stability, peace and security” in South Asia.  

“The West has finally realized that putting all their eggs in South Asia in India’s basket was a strategic mistake as it ended up alienating Pakistan and its people; moreover, they now feel that the road to stability in the region lies through Islamabad, while Delhi continues to hunt with the hound and run with the hare,” Hussain, the chair of the Senate Defense Committee, told VOA.

Some critics in Pakistan have speculated that diplomatic tensions between India and the U.S. over New Delhi’s imports of oil products from Russia might have prompted the West to put political pressure on India. Washington has imposed sanctions on Moscow for invading Ukraine in February and been critical of India’s continued oil purchases from Russia. New Delhi defends its actions, saying Russian prices are the cheapest compared to other sources.

Michael Kugelman is the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, a non-partisan policy forum. He cautions against linking Blome’s visit to the Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the German foreign minister’s comments or reading too much into them in the wake of reported diplomatic tensions. He said New Delhi would not make a major policy shift under external pressure, especially in the case of Kashmir.  

“If the U.S. were to try to work with its Western allies to get India to change its position on Russia/Ukraine by pressuring New Delhi on the Kashmir issue, then that would be a fool’s errand,” Kugelman said.

“The U.S. wants to signal its willingness to partner more with Pakistan, and a trip to Pakistan-administered Kashmir sends a strong signal to that effect. It can be a big confidence building measure for the two sides when Washington knows Islamabad is looking for signs that the U.S. is ready to reframe the relationship around non-security cooperation,” he said.  

“Baerbock’s comment is tough to assess. Very rarely do senior Western officials publicly express a desire for the Kashmir issue to be internationalized,” Kugelman stated.  

India controls two-thirds of the Muslim-majority Kashmir and Pakistan the rest. New Delhi ended the decades-old semi-autonomous status of its part of the Himalayan region in 2019 and divided it into two union territories to be directly controlled by the federal government.

Pakistan strongly condemned the unilateral moves by India and has demanded their unconditional reversal — increasing mutual tension and the deterioration in ties.

“We believe, and absolutely, that international law should apply everywhere, U.N. resolutions should be respected everywhere, the sovereignty of territory, or even internationally disputed territory, should be respected,” Zardari said while speaking alongside Baerbock Friday.  

India disregards a 1948 U.N. resolution on the world body’s role in Kashmir and wants a settlement in line with a bilateral pact the two countries signed in 1972. Known as the Simla agreement, it calls on the two countries to resolve their disputes bilaterally.

Pakistan maintains that bilateral attempts to find a solution have failed for decades and seeks U.N. intervention.

Among other steps, the U.N. resolution asks India to allow for a free and impartial vote to enable Kashmiris to determine the fate of the region.
…

Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen secured a second six-year term in office by winning more than 50% of the vote in an election on Sunday to avoid a runoff, according to initial projections issued soon after voting closed.

Neither of the main centrist parties fielded candidates in the election, and senior figures from both backed Van der Bellen, a 78-year-old former leader of the Greens. The far-right Freedom Party was the only party in parliament to put forward a candidate against the president.R

A projection by pollster SORA for national broadcaster ORF, based on a partial count of 64.8% of votes, put Van der Bellen on 55.4% with a margin of error of 1.9 percentage points. His nearest rival was the Freedom Party’s Walter Rosenkranz on 18.4%.

Initial projections in Austria, based on the count from the polling stations that closed earlier in the day, have proved reliable in the past. The last polling stations to close include those in the cities of Vienna and Innsbruck.

A separate projection by ARGE Wahlen for national news agency APA put Van der Bellen on 55.9% and Rosenkranz on 17.9%, based on 62% of votes counted.

The Austrian president largely performs a ceremonial role, but also has sweeping powers that mean overseeing periods of transition and turbulence. Van der Bellen has built up a reputation for having a steady hand and calm manner, particularly in times of crisis.
…

Pope Francis on Sunday made an impassioned defense of migrants, calling their exclusion “scandalous, disgusting and sinful,” putting him on a collision course with Italy’s upcoming right-wing government.

Francis made his comments as he canonized a 19th century bishop known as the “father of migrants” and a 20th century man who ministered to the sick in Argentina.

Francis, who has made support of migrants a major theme of his pontificate, presided over the ceremony before 50,000 people in St. Peter’s Square.

“The exclusion of migrants is scandalous. Indeed, the exclusion of migrants is criminal. It makes them die in front of us,” he said.

“And so today the Mediterranean is the world’s largest cemetery,” he said, referring to thousands who have drowned trying to reach Europe.

“The exclusion of migrants is disgusting, it is sinful. It is criminal not to open doors to those who are needy,” he said.

Giorgia Meloni is expected to become prime minister later this month at the head of a right-wing coalition that has vowed to crack down on immigration and tighten Italy’s borders.

She has promised accelerated repatriations and tighter asylum rules. Meloni has also called for a naval blockade of North Africa to prevent migrants from sailing and for renewed curbs on charity rescue ships.

Francis, who did not mention Italy, said some migrants sent back are put in “concentration camps where they are exploited and treated as slaves.” In the past he has said this has happened in Libya.

The pope went off script about migrants at the point in his prepared comments when he mentioned the most well-known of the two new saints – Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, who lived between 1839 and 1905.

Scalabrini founded two religious orders — one of priests and one of nuns — to help Italian immigrants in the United States and South America.

The other new saint is Artemides Zatti, who lived between 1880 and 1951. His family fled poverty in Italy and settled in Argentina.

A lay member of the Salesian religious order, he worked as a nurse, bringing healthcare to the poor on his bicycle.

 
…

Germany’s foreign minister is calling for European Union entry bans and asset freezes against those responsible for what she described as brutal repression against anti-government protesters in Iran.

The most sustained protests in years against Iran’s theocracy are now in their fourth week. They erupted Sept. 17 after the burial of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in the custody of Iran’s feared morality police. Amini had been detained for an alleged violation of strict Islamic dress codes for women.

Since then, protests spread across the country and have been met by a fierce crackdown, in which dozens are estimated to have been killed and hundreds arrested.

“Those who beat up women and girls on the street, carry off people who want nothing other than to live freely, arrest them arbitrarily and sentence them to death stand on the wrong side of history,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was quoted as telling Sunday’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

“We will ensure that the EU imposes entry bans on those responsible for this brutal repression and freezes their assets in the EU,” she added. “We say to people in Iran: We stand and remain by your side.”

Baerbock didn’t name any specific individuals or organizations.

On Thursday, EU lawmakers approved a resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for the death of Amini and the subsequent crackdown.

Germany, along with fellow EU member France, is among the nations that are part of a 2015 agreement with Iran to address concerns over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and have been attempting to revive the deal.

Talks on the deal have languished but if it’s reinstated, the agreement would provide sanctions relief that would help strengthen the Iranian government.

On Sunday, videos on Iranian social media appeared to show students staging a protest on the campus of al-Zahra University in Tehran, a day after students chanted against Iran’s president during a visit there.

Protests erupted in cities across Iran on Saturday. In Tehran’s bazaar, traditionally a stronghold of Iran’s rulers, a crowd set fire to a police kiosk. Later that evening, anti-government marches drew a large crowd in the capital’s central Naziabad area, social media posts showed.

Facing persistent unrest, authorities have turned to targeting prominent Iranians who have expressed support for the protests.

The semi-official ILNA news agency reported that Iranian officials seized the passports of Homayoun Shajarian, a prominent singer, and Sahar Dolatshahi, an actress, after the pair returned from a concert tour in Australia on Saturday. The passports were taken at Tehran’s international airport, the news agency said.

Shajarian had expressed support for the protesters during his foreign tour. During a Sept. 13 concert, a large photo of Mahsa Amini served as a stage backdrop and he sang an old song dealing with cruelty and oppressors.

Another backdrop had the caption: “Don’t kill these people. These people deserve life, not death. These people deserve happiness and freedom. My position is clear, I will always stand by the people of my land.”

Since the start of the demonstrations, Iranian authorities have detained a number of prominent artists, including singer Shervin Hajipour whose song “For” became an anthem of the protest movement. Hajipour was released on bail on Oct. 4.
…

Nicolas Touillou had just proposed marriage to his girlfriend. Nelson Marinho Jr. was heading off on a new oil exploration job. Eric Lamy was about to celebrate his 38th birthday.

They were among 228 people killed in 2009 when their storm-tossed Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into the Atlantic. After more than a decade of legal battles, their families at last have a chance at justice.

Aviation industry heavyweights Airbus and Air France are charged with manslaughter in a trial that opens Monday over the crash of Flight 447 on June 1, 2009. The worst plane crash in Air France history killed people of 33 nationalities and had lasting impact, leading to changes in air safety regulations, how pilots are trained and the use of airspeed sensors.

But it almost didn’t come to trial. The companies insist they are not criminally responsible, and Air France has already compensated families. Investigators argued for dropping the case, but unusually, judges overruled them and sent the case to court.

“We made a promise to our loved ones to have the truth for them and to ensure that they didn’t die for nothing,” Ophelie Touillou, whose 27-year-old brother Nicolas was killed, told The Associated Press. “But we are also fighting for collective security, in fact, for all those who board an Airbus every day, or Air France, every day.”

She said the companies present themselves as “untouchable,” and that Airbus made no effort to address families’ concerns. “For them, we are nothing. They did not lose 228 people. They lost a plane.”

Few families in Brazil, which lost 59 citizens in the crash, can afford to travel to France for the trial. Some feel the French justice system has been too soft on Airbus and Air France — two industrial giants in which the French government has an ownership stake.

The trial is expected to focus on two key factors: the icing over of external sensors called pitot tubes, and pilot error.

The Airbus A300-200 disappeared from radars over the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and Senegal with 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard. The first debris was only spotted at sea five days later. And it wasn’t until 2011 that the plane — and its black box recorders — were located on the ocean floor, in an unprecedented search effort at depths of more than 4,000 meters.

France’s air accident investigation agency BEA found that the accident involved a cascading series of events, with no single cause.

As a storm buffeted the plane, ice crystals present at high altitudes disabled the pitot tubes, blocking speed and altitude information. The autopilot disconnected.

The crew resumed manual piloting, but with erroneous navigation data. The plane went into an aerodynamic stall, its nose pitched upward. And then it plunged.

The pilots “did not understand what was happening to them. A difficulty of interpretation, in an all-digital aircraft like all the aircraft in the world today — well, it’s easy to be wrong,” said Gerard Feldzer, a former pilot and pilot trainer for Air France.

He said he and pilots around the world asked themselves afterward “if it had been me, would I have acted in the same way? It has been a very difficult question to answer.”

No one risks prison in this case; only the companies are on trial. Each faces potential fines of up to 225,000 euros — a fraction of their annual revenues — but they could suffer reputational damage if found criminally responsible.

Nelson Marinho, whose son Nelson Jr. was killed, is angry that no company executives will be tried.

“They have changed various directors, both at Airbus and Air France, so who will they arrest? No one. There won’t be justice. That’s sadly the truth,” Marinho, a retired mechanic who leads a support group for victims’ families, told the AP.

Air France is accused of not having implemented training in the event of icing of the pitot probes despite the risks.

In a statement, the company said it would demonstrate in court “that it has not committed a criminal fault at the origin of the accident” and plead for acquittal.

Air France has since changed its training manuals and simulations. It also provided compensation to families, who had to agree not to disclose the sums.

Airbus is accused of having known that the model of pitot tubes on Flight 447 was faulty, and not doing enough to urgently inform airlines and their crews about it and to ensure training to mitigate the resulting risk.

An AP investigation at the time found that Airbus had known since at least 2002 about problems with pitots, but failed to replace them until after the crash. The model in question — a Thales AA pitot — was subsequently banned and replaced.

Airbus blames pilot error, and told investigators that icing over is a problem inherent to all such sensors.

“They knew and they did nothing,” said Danièle Lamy, president of an association of victims’ families that pushed for a trial. “The pilots should never have found themselves in such a situation, they never understood the cause of the breakdown and the plane had become unpilotable.”

Lamy lost her son Eric a few days before his 38th birthday. She has struggled ever since to find out the truth.

“The plane had sent messages to the ground about the problem but had not warned the pilots. It’s as if you were driving a car at 130 kph, your brakes were no longer working but the car sent the alert to the mechanic and not to the driver,” Lamy told the AP.

She is among 489 civil parties to the trial, which is scheduled to last through December.

The crash forced Airbus and Air France to be more transparent and reactive, Feldzer said, noting that the trial will be important for the aviation industry as well as for families.

“The history of aviation security is made from this, from accidents,” Feldzer said.
…

The exquisite golden tiara, inlaid with precious stones by master craftsmen some 1,500 years ago, was one of the world’s most valuable artifacts from the blood-letting rule of Attila the Hun, who rampaged with horseback warriors deep into Europe in the 5th century.

The Hun diadem is now vanished from the museum in Ukraine that housed it — perhaps, historians fear, forever. Russian troops carted away the priceless crown and a hoard of other treasures after capturing the Ukrainian city of Melitopol in February, museum authorities say.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its eighth month, is being accompanied by the destruction and pillaging of historical sites and treasures on an industrial scale, Ukrainian authorities say.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Ukraine’s culture minister alleged that Russian soldiers helped themselves to artifacts in almost 40 Ukrainian museums. The looting and destruction of cultural sites has caused losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros, the minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, added.

“The attitude of Russians toward Ukrainian culture heritage is a war crime,” he said.

For the moment, Ukraine’s government and its Western backers supplying weapons are mostly focused on defeating Russia on the battlefield. But if and when peace returns, the preservation of Ukrainian collections of art, history and culture also will be vital, so survivors of the war can begin the next fight: rebuilding their lives.

“These are museums, historical buildings, churches. Everything that was built and created by generations of Ukrainians,” Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said in September when she visited a Ukrainian museum in New York. “This is a war against our identity.”

Workers at the Museum of Local History in Melitopol first tried hiding the Hun diadem and hundreds of other treasures when Russian troops stormed the southern city. But after weeks of repeated searches, Russian soldiers finally discovered the building’s secret basement where staff had squirrelled away the museum’s most precious objects — including the Hun diadem, according to a museum worker.

The worker, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, fearing Russian punishment for even discussing the events, said the Ukrainians don’t know where Russian troops took the haul, which included the tiara and some 1,700 other artifacts.

Dug up from a burial chamber in 1948, the crown is one of just a few Hun crowns worldwide. The museum worker said other treasures that disappeared with Russian soldiers include 198 pieces of 2,400-year-old gold from the era of the Scythians, nomads who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine and founded an empire in Crimea.

“These are ancient finds. These are works of art. They are priceless,” said Oleksandr Symonenko, chief researcher at Ukraine’s Institute of Archaeology. “If culture disappears, it is an irreparable disaster.”

Russia’s Culture Ministry did not respond to questions about the Melitopol collection.

Russian forces also looted museums as they laid waste to the Black Sea port of Mariupol, according to Ukrainian officials who were driven from that the southern city, which was relentlessly pounded by Russian bombardment. It fell under Moscow’s complete control only in May when Ukrainian defenders who clung to the city’s steelworks finally surrendered.

Mariupol’s exiled city council said Russian forces pilfered more than 2,000 items from the city’s museums. Among the most precious items were ancient religious icons, a unique handwritten Torah scroll, a 200-year-old Bible and more than 200 medals, the council said.

Also looted were art works by painters Arkhip Kuindzhi, who was born in Mariupol, and Crimea-born Ivan Aivazovsky, both famed for their seascapes, the exiled councilors said. They said Russian troops carted off their stolen bounty to the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

The invasion has also wrought extensive damage and destruction to Ukraine’s cultural patrimony. The U.N.’s cultural agency is keeping a tally of sites being struck by missiles, bombs and shelling. With the war now in its eighth month, the agency says it has verified damage to 199 sites in 12 regions.

They include 84 churches and other religious sites, 37 buildings of historic importance, 37 buildings for cultural activities, 18 monuments, 13 museums and 10 libraries, UNESCO says.

Ukrainian government tallies are even higher, with authorities saying their count of destroyed and damaged religious buildings alone is up to at least 270.

While invasion forces hunted for treasures to steal, Ukrainian museum workers did what they could to keep them out of Russian hands. Tens of thousands of items have been evacuated away from the front lines and combat-struck regions.

In Kyiv, the director of the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine lived in the building, guarding its artifacts, during the invasion’s first weeks when Russian forces sought, unsuccessfully, to encircle the capital.

“We were afraid of the Russian occupiers, because they destroy everything that can be identified as Ukrainian,” recalled the director, Natalia Panchenko.

Fearing Russian troops would storm the city, she sought to confuse them by taking down the plaque on the museum’s entrance. She also dismantled exhibits, carefully packing away artifacts into boxes for evacuation.

One day, she hopes, they’ll go back into their rightful place. For now, the museum is just showing copies.

“These things were fragile, they survived hundreds of years,” she said. “We couldn’t stand the thought they could be lost.”
…

Germans in the coastal state of Lower Saxony vote in a closely watched regional election Sunday, seen as a key test for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats amid an acute energy crisis.

Polls open at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT), with the latest surveys putting Scholz’s center-left SPD slightly ahead of the conservative CDU party of former chancellor Angela Merkel.

Anxiety about soaring energy bills has dominated the race in the northwestern region on the North Sea, providing a snapshot of the national mood as Europe’s top economy grapples with the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Lower Saxony’s popular premier Stephan Weil from the SPD, eyeing a third term, said the election contest had been “the most difficult of my life.”

“Never have I seen so many question marks and worries on citizens’ faces,” he told WirtschaftsWoche magazine.

Weil, 63, has cast himself as a safe pair of hands in uncertain times and wants Lower Saxony, home to auto giant Volkswagen as well as most of Germany’s wind turbines, to play a leading role in the green energy transition.

He has also welcomed the $198 billion energy fund newly unveiled by Scholz to shield German consumers from price shocks.

Weil’s main rival, state economy minister Bernd Althusmann from the CDU, says the massive support package lacks clarity. He accuses the federal government of being slow to act as recession fears mount.

The 55-year-old challenger has billed Sunday’s vote as a verdict on Scholz’s coalition government in Berlin of the SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP.

“If the CDU becomes the strongest party in Lower Saxony, which is realistic, it will be a serious blow to the already divided federal government,” he told the Rheinische Post.

Nuclear plant row

Opinion polls put the SPD at 31-33% in Lower Saxony, followed by the CDU at 27-28%. The gap has widened in recent days.

A win would be a boost for Scholz’s SPD after it lost the last two state polls to the CDU, in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein.

The Greens are tipped to win some 16% of the vote, which would be their best showing yet in the state of 6.1 million voters.

The far-right AfD is polling at around 11%, nearly double what it scored in 2017.

The FDP meanwhile is hovering at 5%, the threshold needed to enter the regional parliament.

One major bone of contention between the leading candidates has been the fate of Lower Saxony’s Emsland nuclear power plant, one of only three still operational in Germany.

Althusmann has responded angrily to Berlin’s decision to proceed with Emsland’s planned shutdown this year, despite the need for energy diversification as the country weans itself off Russian gas and oil.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, from the traditionally anti-nuclear Greens, recently announced that the other two plants will be kept on standby until April 2023, in a landmark U-turn.

Weil has backed Berlin’s stance, saying Emsland was not needed to secure Lower Saxony’s energy supply — though he conceded that other regions may struggle when the colder winter weather hits.

Weil and Althusmann have each touted their state’s central role in reducing reliance on Russian energy, pointing to the construction of import terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the ports of Stade and Wilhelmshaven.

Although the SPD and CDU currently govern together in Lower Saxony, Weil has ruled out a repeat of the left-right coalition.
…

Austrians vote Sunday in a presidential election expected to return incumbent Alexander Van der Bellen, seen as a beacon of stability as the Alpine EU member struggles with an energy crisis and inflation.

Campaigning on a slogan of “clarity,” Van der Bellen is widely tipped to clinch a second mandate, with his six challengers — all men — lagging far behind.

“The biggest competitor on Sunday will be the sofa,” the 78-year-old economics professor said Friday at his last campaign rally, appealing to people to vote.

Polls put the pro-European liberal as securing more than 50% of the vote, thus avoiding a run-off vote.

Some 6.4 million people are eligible to cast their ballots from the country’s total population of 9 million.

With posters proclaiming him “the safe choice in stormy times” amid an energy crisis pushing up inflation throughout Europe, the former Greens leader runs as an independent.

But he has the explicit or implicit backing of Austria’s major parties except the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which has fielded its own candidate, Walter Rosenkranz, who is sitting in second place in the polls on 15% support.

Also standing for the presidency is 35-year-old punk rocker Dominik Wlazny, founder of the Beer Party named for its advocacy of the popular beverage.

Van der Bellen — who supporters affectionately call “the professor” — faced an unexpectedly tough fight in 2016, only winning the race in a runoff against an FPOe politician.

But the FPOe’s ratings have plummeted since 2019 after a corruption scandal brought down the government they were part of and eventually led to the resignation of then-chancellor Sebastian Kurz himself in 2021.

Analyst Thomas Hofer said it is “crucial” that Van der Bellen avoids a run-off like in 2016 when the campaign was “very divisive and hostile.”

‘Stability’

“Van der Bellen stands for integrity and stability, which is very appreciated by voters given the multitude of crises that many European countries are currently facing,” Julia Partheymueller, a political analyst at the University of Vienna, told AFP.

Known for his trademark professorial manner, Van der Bellen will be Austria’s oldest head of state to be sworn in if he wins.

The presidential post, with a term of six years, is largely ceremonial.

Van der Bellen — also known as “Sascha,” a nickname that nods to his Russian roots — was born during World War II in Vienna to an aristocratic Russian father and an Estonian mother who fled Stalinism.

The arrival of the Red Army a year later forced the family to escape to the southern state of Tyrol, where Van der Bellen spent an “idyllic childhood.”

He studied economics at the University of Innsbruck and finished his Ph.D. in 1970 before going on to become dean of economics at the University of Vienna.

Polling stations open at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and close at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT) with exit polls published once they close.

At an election event last month, Alexandra Hoefenstock said she would vote Van der Bellen as he had managed the political crises well in his last stint in office.

“I hope for political stability,” the 38-year-old Vienna city worker said. 
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The European Union’s top diplomat Saturday condemned “in the strongest possible terms” Russia’s attempt to annex the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and said Russia’s forces must fully withdraw from the plant and return control of it to Ukraine.  

High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell called the seizure of the nuclear power plant “illegal, and legally null and void,” and said a reinforced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “presence at the site and its unhindered access to the plant are urgently needed in the interest of the security of Europe as a whole.” 

Earlier in the day, the IAEA reported that the Zaporizhzhia plant, the biggest in Europe, had lost its only external power source as a result of renewed Russian shelling and was forced to rely on emergency diesel generators. 

All six reactors at the plant are shut down, but they still require electricity for cooling and other safety functions. The IAEA said plant engineers have begun work to repair the damaged power line.  

The nuclear watchdog agency said the plant’s link to a 750-kilovolt line was cut about 1 a.m. Saturday local time. It cited official information from Ukraine, as well as reports from IAEA experts at the site, which is held by Russian forces. 

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi is traveling to Moscow to hold talks in the coming days about establishing a protection zone around the nuclear plant. He was in Ukraine Friday and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy regarding the situation. Transferring the plant to Russian ownership, Grossi said, is a violation of international law.  

Russian shake-up? 

Russia’s Defense Ministry named General Sergei Surovikin on Saturday as the new overall commander of Kremlin forces engaged in Ukraine. It was the first official announcement of a single overall commander for all Russian forces fighting in Ukraine since its February 24 invasion began.  

“By the decision of the defense minister of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Surovikin has been appointed commander of the joint group of troops in the area of the special military operation,” the statement said, using the Kremlin’s term for the invasion of Ukraine.  

Surovikin had since 2017 led Russia’s Aerospace Forces. In June, he was placed in charge of Russian forces in southern Ukraine. 

Bridge partly opens 

Saturday dawned with an explosion that partially collapsed a bridge over the Kerch Strait, an important road and rail link between Russia and Crimea and a vital supply line for Russia’s war effort against Ukraine.  

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast that killed three people and shut down the bridge. Russian transportation authorities said limited road and rail traffic had resumed about 10 hours after the attack. 

Zelenskyy, in a video address, indirectly acknowledged the bridge attack but not its cause. 

“Today was not a bad day and mostly sunny on our state’s territory,” he said. “Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it was also warm.” 

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge. 

Moscow stopped short of assigning blame, but the speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament accused Ukraine, while downplaying the severity of the damage.  

“Now they have something to be proud of: over 23 years of their management, they didn’t manage to build anything worthy of attention in Crimea, but they’ve managed to damage the surface of the Russian bridge,” Vladimir Konstantinov, chairperson of the State Council of the Republic, wrote on Telegram. 

The official Twitter account of the Ukraine government tweeted, “Sick burn.”  

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Zelenskyy adviser, lauded the attack, tweeting, “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.” 

Russian Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram, “The Kiev regime’s reaction to the destruction of civilian infrastructure highlights its terrorist nature.” 

The Ukrainian postal service announced it would issue stamps commemorating the blast, saying in a statement that the images would draw on classic film posters to highlight the bridge’s “sacred significance” to Moscow. The postal service previously released a set of stamps commemorating the sinking of the Moskva, a Russian flagship cruiser, by a Ukrainian strike in late May. 

Investigation ongoing

The blast, reportedly a truck bomb, occurred even though all vehicles driving across it undergo automatic checks for explosives by state-of-the-art control systems.  That has drawn a stream of critical comments from Russian war bloggers. 

The truck was owned by a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. It noted that investigators arrived at his home as part of the inquiry and are looking at the truck’s route and other details. 

The 19-kilometer bridge across the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov opened in 2018 and is the longest in Europe. The $3.6 billion project is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea, and it has provided an essential link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. 

While Russia seized areas north of Crimea early on during the invasion and built a land corridor to it along the Sea of Azov, Ukraine is pressing a counteroffensive to reclaim them. 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press and Reuters.  
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