dijon, France — The International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV), a sort of “U.N. of wine” which brings together experts from the sector, called for “sustainable development” of the vine Sunday, following a ministerial meeting in France.

“The effects of climate change amplify” the challenges facing the vine, stressed 37 members out of 50 participating in the meeting at the OIV headquarters in Dijon.

The signatories encourage “biodiversity reservoirs, such as grape varieties and the entire ecosystem that surrounds them, by limiting soil erosion, capturing carbon … and reducing waste,” adds the ministerial declaration, the first in the history of the organization which is celebrating its centenary this year.

The OIV has set itself the “objectives” of “supporting innovation, ambitious, resilient and sustainable cultural and oenological practices … as well as biodiversity such as the conservation and use of diversity in the vine, the exploitation of new vine varieties and efficient water management.”

The “sustainability” of vines and wine also applies to “economic and social” matters, explained the director general of the OIV, New Zealander John Barker, at a news conference, stressing the need for the sector to adapt to the decline in wine consumption.

Created on November 29, 1924, by eight countries (Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Tunisia), the OIV today brings together 50 countries, covering 88% of world wine production, with the notable absence of the United States, which slammed the door in 2001, after the failure of its candidate for its presidency.

China will become the 51st member state in November.

The organization is not political but brings together technical and scientific experts who exchange information on the sector and try to harmonize standards at the international level.
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Since May 2024, heavy fighting has been going on near the village of Hlyboke, some 30 kilometers from Kharkiv, and animals are the victims of active fighting just as much as locals. Volunteers recently rescued four ponies from Hlyboke, and now these horses are giving back… in their own way. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story.
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Madrid — Thousands protested Sunday in Madrid to demand more affordable housing amid rising anger from Spaniards who feel they are being priced out of the market.

Under the slogan “Housing is a right, not a business,” residents marched in the Spanish capital to demand lower housing rental prices and better living conditions.

Twelve thousand people took to the streets, according to the Spanish government.

“Spaniards cannot live in their own cities. They are forcing us out of the cities. The government has to regulate prices, regulate housing,” said nurse Blanca Prieto, 33.

In July, Spain’s government announced a crackdown on short-term and seasonal holiday lettings. It plans to investigate listings on platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com to verify if they have licenses.

Spain is struggling to balance promoting tourism, a key driver of its economy, and addressing citizens’ concerns over unaffordable high rents due to gentrification and landlords shifting to more lucrative tourist rentals.

In a separate demonstration in Barcelona on Sunday against the America’s Cup yachting race, protesters blamed the international sporting event for pushing up rental prices and bringing more tourists into an overcrowded city.

Residents of the Canary Islands and Malaga have also staged protests this year against the rise in tourist rentals. Seasonal hospitality workers struggle to find accommodation in these tourism hot spots, with many resorting to sleeping in caravans or even their cars. 
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Kyiv — Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman urged international organizations Sunday to respond to a claim that several Ukrainian prisoners of war were executed in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv had launched an incursion in August.

DeepState, a Ukrainian battlefield analysis site close to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, said Russian troops shot and killed nine Ukrainian “drone operators and contractors” on Oct. 10 after they had surrendered. 

Dmytro Lubinets said on Telegram that he sent letters to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding the claim, calling it “another crime committed by the Russians.” 

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine said Russian troops had killed 16 captured Ukrainian soldiers in the partially occupied Donetsk region. 

There was no immediate response from Russian officials. 

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force said Sunday that its air defenses had shot down 31 of 68 drones launched at Ukraine by Russia overnight into Sunday in the regions of Kyiv, Poltava, Chernihiv, Sumy and Cherkasy. A further 36 drones were “lost” over various areas, it said, likely having been electronically jammed. 

The air force added that ballistic missiles struck Odesa and Poltava while Chernihiv and Sumy came under attack by a guided air missile. Local authorities didn’t report any casualties or damage. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Russia had launched around 900 guided aerial bombs, more than 40 missiles and 400 drones against Ukraine over the past week. 

Zelenskyy appealed on social platform X to Ukraine’s allies to “provide the necessary quantity and quality of air defense systems” and “make decisions for our sufficient range”. Kyiv is still awaiting word from its Western partners on its repeated requests to use the long-range weapons they provide to hit targets on Russian soil. 

In Russia, the Defense Ministry said that 13 Ukrainian drones were shot down over three regions of Russia: six each in the Belgorod and Kursk regions, and one in the Bryansk region, all of which border Ukraine.
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moscow — Speaking behind the thick white walls of Moscow’s ancient Danilov Monastery, Archpriest Igor Yakimchuk is adamant: People must not be forbidden to pray in their chosen branch of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

He speaks calmly, but Yakimchuk is one of many Orthodox Christians in Russia who are angry about a law passed by Kyiv in August that targets a Russia-linked Orthodox church that long dominated religious life in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration accuses the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of spreading pro-Russian propaganda in time of war and of housing spies, charges it denies.

Under the law, the Russian Orthodox Church itself was banned on Ukrainian territory and a government commission was tasked with compiling a list of “affiliated” organizations – expected to include the UOC – whose activities will be outlawed, too.

“In the 21st century, in the center of Europe, millions of people are being deprived of their basic civil rights,” Yakimchuk, wearing a black cassock and a large Orthodox cross around his neck, told Reuters in an interview.

“Because what does it mean to ban a church, which is the largest religious denomination in Ukraine, no matter how much the current Ukrainian authorities would like to downplay its scale? Everyone understands perfectly well that it is impossible to forbid people to pray.”

Whether the UOC retains the following it once did is disputed. An independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) that was set up after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 to be fully independent of Moscow has seen its popularity grow rapidly since President Vladimir Putin sent his forces into Ukraine in 2022.

Ukrainian authorities say the UOC is fair game. They have launched dozens of criminal proceedings, including treason charges, against dozens of its clergy. At least one has been sent to Russia as part of a prisoner swap.

 

Church divided

However, Yakimchuk’s denunciation of what he calls “absolute lawlessness” in Ukraine is a reflection of how the nearly 32-month war – which Moscow calls a “special military operation” – has divided Orthodox hierarchies in the two countries, even though they all adhere to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

The UOC tried to distance itself from Moscow once the war was underway, condemning Russia’s actions and removing references to the “Moscow Patriarchate” from its name.

But those attempts angered clerics in Moscow, who have thrown their weight behind what they cast as Russia’s “holy war” in Ukraine against the expanding influence of what they see as a decadent, godless West. The UOC’s efforts also failed to allay Kyiv’s concerns about the church’s activities and loyalties.

The process of shutting down UOC operations in Ukraine – something one Ukrainian lawmaker called “cleansing” – is likely to be lengthy and involve court battles, but the church’s days seem numbered. Some opinion polls suggest more than 80% of Ukrainians do not trust the UOC.

The Kremlin, which has forged close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, has described Ukraine’s new law as “an open attack on freedom of religion.”

One Russian Orthodox priest in St. Petersburg, Leonid Trofimuk, branded Ukraine’s action as “Satanism” and compared it to Soviet-era state repression of religion.

“The 20th century is behind us,” he said. “We saw the persecution of the church at that time, but we didn’t think that there would be this kind of persecution that is going on now in Ukraine.”

Ordinary Russian churchgoers interviewed by Reuters also expressed concern.

“There is a kind of total politicization of matters of faith going on,” said Sergei, a St. Petersburg resident. “I would like common sense to prevail and the international community to finally pay attention.”

His criticism of Kyiv’s moves was echoed by churchgoers leaving a golden onion-domed church more than 900 miles (1,448 km) away to the south, in Mariupol, a Ukrainian port city seized by Russian forces in 2022 after a long siege.

“This is wrong – you shouldn’t do this kind of thing,” said Olga, a Mariupol resident who was wearing a headscarf. “How can he [Zelenskyy] interfere with faith in God? This is not a matter for the state.”
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paris — A 22-year-old Afghan was indicted and imprisoned in France on Saturday, accused of supporting the ideology of the Islamic State (IS) and of having “fomented” a “plan for violent action” in a football stadium or a shopping center.

His arrest, which took place Tuesday in Haute-Garonne, has “links” with the arrest of an Afghan living in the United States and charged Wednesday with planning an attack on the day of the U.S. elections, the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office (PNAT) said, confirming a source close to the case questioned by AFP.

This 27-year-old Afghan, living in the southern U.S. state of Oklahoma, was in contact on the Telegram messaging service with a person identified by the FBI as an IS recruiter, according to American judicial authorities.

According to the source close to the case, during their investigations, the American authorities transmitted information to the French authorities, triggering the opening of an investigation in Paris and leading to three arrests.

On Tuesday morning in the southwest of France, three men, aged 20 to 31, two of whom are brothers, were arrested in Toulouse and Fronton by investigators from the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), supported by the RAID, the police intervention unit, as part of a preliminary investigation opened on September 27 for “terrorist criminal association with a view to preparing one or more crimes against persons.”

“The investigations carried out have highlighted the existence of a plan for violent action targeting people in a football stadium or a shopping center fomented by one of them, aged 22, of Afghan nationality and holder of a resident card, several elements of which also establish radicalization and adherence to the ideology of the Islamic State,” the PNAT told AFP on Saturday.

His lawyer, Emanuel de Dinechin, did not wish to comment at this stage.

In accordance with the PNAT requisitions, he was charged with terrorist criminal association by an investigating judge, then placed in provisional detention.

According to a source close to the case, this young man comes from the Tajik community in Afghanistan and his project, which he reportedly spoke about on Telegram, remained rather vague and unfinished.

According to another source close to the investigation, he has been living in France for around three years.

The other two men were released after their police custody.

Reconfiguration

The last arrests for a plan for violent action in France date back to the end of July.

Two young men, aged 18 and originally from Gironde in the southwest, were indicted on July 27, suspected of having created a group on social networks “intended to recruit” people “motivated (to) perpetrate a violent action” during the Paris Olympic Games.

Three attacks were foiled during the Olympic period, according to the authorities. In addition to the two young people from Gironde, one of the plans targeted establishments, including bars, around the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne (southeast), and the other came from a group that had planned attacks against institutions and representatives of Israel in Paris. Five people have been charged, including a minor teenager, in these cases.

The “jihadist threat represents 80% of the procedures” initiated by the PNAT, anti-terrorism prosecutor Olivier Christen recalled in mid-September. “In the first half of 2024, there were approximately three times more procedures” of this type than in the same period in 2023, he added.

According to him, this increase is explained by the “geopolitical context,” but also by “the reconfiguration, particularly in Afghanistan” of the Islamic State group.

In September, two attacks by the Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K) group, the regional branch of IS in Afghanistan, killed around 20 people in that country.

The deadliest attack by ISIS left 145 dead in March at a concert hall in Moscow.
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VILNIUS, Lithuania — Lithuanians elect a new parliament Sunday in a vote dominated by concerns over the cost of living and potential threats from neighboring Russia, with the opposition Social Democrats tipped to emerge as the largest party but well short of a majority.

The outgoing center-right coalition of Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte has seen its popularity eroded by high inflation that topped 20% two years ago, by deteriorating public services and a widening gap between rich and poor.

Polling stations open at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT) and close at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT). Results are expected after midnight local time.

Opinion polls suggest Simonyte’s Homeland Union will win just 9%, behind the Social Democrats at 18% and the anti-establishment Nemunas Dawn at 12%, though the eventual shape of a future coalition will depend on how smaller parties perform.

The Baltic state of 2.9 million people has a hybrid voting system in which half of the parliament is elected by popular vote, with a 5% threshold needed to win seats.

The other half is chosen on a district basis, a process which favors the larger parties.

If no candidate gets over 50% of the vote in a district, its top two candidates face each other in a run-off on October 27.

Domestic issues have loomed large in the election campaign, with the Social Democrats vowing to tackle increased inequality by raising taxes on wealthier Lithuanians to help fund more spending on healthcare and social spending.

But national security is also a major concern in Lithuania, which is part of the eastern flank of NATO and the European Union and shares a border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad as well as with Belarus, a close Moscow ally.

Three quarters of Lithuanians believe that Russia could attack their country in the near future, a Baltijos Tyrimai/ELTA poll found in May.

The main parties strongly support Ukraine in its war with invading Russian forces and back increased defense spending.
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PRISTINA, KOSOVO — Persistent ethnic tension in north Kosovo could trigger a repeat of violence seen in the area last year when four people died in a gun battle and NATO peacekeepers were hurt in clashes, a senior official from the military alliance warned Saturday.

Kosovo is predominantly ethnic Albanian, but about 50,000 Serbs in the north reject Pristina’s government and see Belgrade as their capital. A former Serbian province, Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a decade after a guerrilla uprising.

U.S. Navy Admiral Stuart B. Munsch, commander of the Allied Joint Force Command Naples — which oversees NATO’s peacekeeping force in Kosovo — said the alliance remained concerned about the risk of repeated violence in the volatile north.

“Heated political rhetoric could inspire some nongovernment forces to commit violence such as what happened last year,” Munsch told reporters in Pristina.

“I would not say that definitely conflict is coming; I think there is a persistent risk,” he said, referring to a lack of progress in EU-mediated talks between Kosovo’s government and Serbia.

A police officer and three gunmen were killed in September 2023 when a group of heavily armed attackers entered from Serbia and attacked police in the village of Banjska.

Four months earlier, more than 90 soldiers were injured when Serb protesters attacked NATO peacekeepers.

Kosovo has accused Serbia of being behind the Banjska attack, but Belgrade has denied the accusations.

The U.S. and the European Union, Kosovo’s leading global allies, have criticized the Pristina government for taking unilateral actions in the north that could spark ethnic violence and risk the lives of some 4,000 NATO troops on duty there.

Kosovo rejects such criticism, and the issue has strained Pristina’s ties with its Western supporters.

As part of the EU-mediated dialogue, Kosovo and Serbia have been holding talks for more than a decade to normalize their relations, but there has been little progress.

Like the Serbs living in north Kosovo, Belgrade also considers Kosovo to be part of Serbia and refuses to recognize it as an independent state.
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DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — Iran has sent two locally made satellites to Russia to be put into orbit by a Russian space vehicle, the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported Saturday, in the latest space cooperation between the two U.S.-sanctioned countries.

The development of Kowsar, a high-resolution imaging satellite, and Hodhod, a small communications satellite, is the first substantial effort by Iran’s private space sector, the report said.

Russia sent Iranian satellites into orbit in February and in 2022, when U.S. officials voiced concern over space cooperation between Russia and Iran, fearing the satellite will not only help Russia in Ukraine but also help Iran monitor potential military targets in Israel and the wider Middle East.

Kowsar could be used in agriculture, natural resource management, environmental monitoring and disaster management, Tasnim said. Hodhod is designed for satellite-based communications and could be used in remote areas with little access to terrestrial networks.

In September, Iran carried out its second satellite launch this year using a rocket built by its Revolutionary Guards. The launch came as the United States and European countries accuse Tehran of transferring ballistic missiles to Russia that could be used in its war with Ukraine. Iran has denied this.
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia said on Saturday it had downed 47 Ukrainian drones while Kyiv reported neutralized 24 drones fired by Moscow.

The Ukrainian air force said many missiles were fired from the Russian border region of Belgorod, without specifying the number or the type.

It said Russia had fired 28 drones at Ukraine, of which 24 were destroyed in the Sumy, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Mikolayev and Kherson regions.

The Ukrainian chief of staff also said Kyiv’s forces had struck a fuel depot overnight in the eastern Russian-occupied Lugansk region, setting it on fire. It did not give any details.

Moscow did not confirm the attack. But the Russian defense ministry said its forces had downed 47 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 17 in the southeastern Krasnodar region, 16 over the Azov Sea and 12 over the border region of Lursk.

The Krasnodar governor said on Telegram that Ukrainian drone attacks had damaged three homes and set a vehicle on fire.

Russian forces have made advances across the eastern front line and targeted Ukraine’s power grid as the country faces its toughest winter since the full-scale Russian invasion started in February 2022.
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NEW ORLEANS — On the eve of World War II, Nazis in Austria seized a pastel by renowned impressionist artist Claude Monet, selling it off and sparking a family’s decadeslong search that culminated Wednesday in New Orleans.

At an FBI field office, agents lifted a blue veil covering the Monet pastel and presented Adalbert Parlagi’s granddaughters with the artwork over 80 years after it was taken from their family. Helen Lowe said she felt that her grandfather would be watching and that he would be “so, so proud of this moment.”

Monet’s 1865 Bord de Mer depicts rocks along the shoreline of the Normandy coast, where Allied forces stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied France during D-Day in 1944, marking a turning point in the war. The Monet pastel is one of 20,000 items recovered by the FBI Art Crime Team out of an estimated 600,000 artworks and millions of books and religious objects stolen by the Nazis.

“The theft was not random or incidental, but an integral part of the Nazis’ plan to eliminate all vestiges of Jewish life in Germany and Europe, root and branch,” U.S. State Department Holocaust adviser Stuart E. Eizenstat said in a March speech.

After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Adalbert Parlagi, a successful businessman and art lover, and his wife, Hilda, left behind almost everything they owned and fled Vienna, using British license plates to drive across the border, their granddaughters said. Though the Parlagis hadn’t identified as Jewish for years and baptized their children as Protestants, they were still considered Jewish under Nazi laws, according to Austrian government records. Other relatives were killed in concentration camps.

The Parlagis attempted to ship their valuable carpets, porcelain and artworks out of Vienna to London, but found out later that their property had been seized and auctioned off by the Gestapo to support the Third Reich.

Multiple international declarations decried trading in Nazi-looted art, beginning with Allied forces in London in 1943. The 1998 Washington principles, signed by more than three dozen countries, reiterated the call and advocated for the return of stolen art.

Yet Adalbert Parlagi’s efforts were stonewalled by the Vienna auctioneer who had bought and sold the Monet pastel and another artwork owned by Parlagi. The records were lost after the fighting in Vienna, the auctioneer told Adalbert in a letter shortly after World War II, according to an English translation of a document prepared by an Austrian government body reviewing the Parlagi family’s art restitution claims.

“I also cannot remember two such pictures either,” the auctioneer said.

Many survivors of World War II and their descendants ultimately give up trying to recover their lost artwork because of the difficulties they face, said Anne Webber, co-founder of the London-based nonprofit Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which has recovered more than 3,500 looted artworks.

“You have to just constantly, constantly, constantly look,” Webber said.

Adalbert Parlagi and his son Franz kept meticulous ownership and search records. After Franz’s death in 2012, Françoise Parlagi stumbled upon her father’s cache of documents, including the original receipt from her grandfather’s purchase of the Monet pastel. She reached out to Webber’s commission for help in 2014.

The commission’s research team reviewed archives and receipts, contacted museums and art experts and scoured the internet, but initially found “absolutely no trace,” Webber said. Then, in 2021, the team discovered online that a New Orleans dealer acquired the Monet in 2017 and sold it to a Louisiana-based doctor and his wife.

The FBI investigated the commission’s research and, earlier this year, a federal court ruled the pastel should be returned to the Parlagis’ descendants.

“There was never a question” of returning the art to the rightful owners after learning of its sordid history, said Bridget Vita-Schlamp, whose late husband had purchased the Monet pastel.

“We were shocked, I’m not going to lie,” she said.

The family recovered another work in March from the Austrian government but there are still six more artworks missing, including from acclaimed artists Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac. The U.S. is likely the “largest illegal art market in the world,” said Kristin Koch, supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Art Crime Program.

The art world has a greater responsibility to investigate the origins of artworks and a moral obligation to return looted works to their rightful owners, Webber said.

“They represent the life and the lives that were taken,” Webber said. “They represent the world that they were exiled from.”

The granddaughters of Adalbert and Hilda Parlagi say they are grateful for what they have already gotten back. Françoise Parlagi, a broad smile on her face, said she hoped to hang a copy of the pastel in her home. She said the moment felt “unreal.”

“So many families are in this situation. Maybe they haven’t even been trying to recover because they don’t believe, they think this might not be possible,” she said. “Let us be hope for other families.”
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new york — Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who was President Vladimir Putin’s top political opponent before his death in February, believed he would die in prison, according to his posthumous memoir, which will be released October 22.

The New Yorker published excerpts from the book Friday, featuring writing from Navalny’s prison diary and earlier.

“I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” he wrote on March 22, 2022.

“There will not be anybody to say goodbye to … All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I’ll never see my grandchildren.”

Navalny had been serving a 19-year prison sentence on “extremism” charges in an Arctic penal colony.

His death on February 16 at age 47 drew widespread condemnation, with many blaming Putin.

Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Russia after suffering a major health emergency from being poisoned in 2020.

“The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites,” he wrote on January 17, 2022.

The excerpts capture the loneliness of imprisonment, but also a touch of humor.

For instance, on July 1, 2022, Navalny outlined his typical day: wake up at 6 a.m., breakfast at 6:20 a.m. and start work at 6:40 a.m.

“At work, you sit for seven hours at the sewing machine on a stool below knee height,” he wrote.

“After work, you continue to sit for a few hours on a wooden bench under a portrait of Putin. This is called ‘disciplinary activity.'”

The book, entitled Patriot, will be released by U.S. publisher Knopf, which is also planning a Russian version.

“It’s impossible to read Navalny’s prison diary without being outraged by the tragedy of his suffering, and by his death,” wrote New Yorker editor David Remnick.

In the last excerpt published in the magazine, dated January 17, 2024, Navalny responds to the question asked to him by his fellow inmates and prison guards: Why did he return to Russia?

“I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary,” he said. 
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STOCKHOLM — Meta Platforms said on Friday that it had removed a network of group accounts targeting Russian speakers in Moldova ahead of the country’s October 20 election, for violation of the company’s policy on fake accounts.

Authorities in Moldova, an ex-Soviet state lying between Romania and Ukraine, said they had blocked dozens of Telegram channels and chat bots linked to a drive to pay voters to cast “no” ballots in a referendum on European Union membership held alongside the presidential election.

Pro-European President Maia Sandu is seeking a second term in the election and called the referendum on joining the 27-member bloc as the cornerstone of her policies.

The fake Meta accounts posted criticism of Sandu, pro-EU politicians and close ties between Moldova and Romania, and supported pro-Russia parties in Moldova, the company said.

The company said its operation centered on about a dozen fictitious, Russian-language news brands posing as independent entities with presence on multiple internet services, including Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, as well as Telegram, OK.ru and TikTok.

Meta said it removed seven Facebook accounts, 23 pages, one group and 20 accounts on Instagram for violating its “coordinated inauthentic behavior policy.”

About 4,200 accounts followed one or more of the 23 pages and about 335,000 accounts followed one or more of the Instagram accounts, Meta said.

In Chisinau, the National Investigation Inspectorate said it had blocked 15 channels of the popular Telegram messaging app and 95 chat bots offering voters money. Users were told the channels “violated local laws” on political party financing.

It had traced the accounts to supporters of fugitive businessman Ilan Shor — members of the banned party bearing his name or the “Victory” electoral bloc he had set up in its place from his base of exile in Moscow.

Moldovan police said on Thursday that they searched homes of leaders linked to Shor as part of a criminal investigation into election-meddling. Police have said tens of thousands of voters were paid off via accounts in a Russian bank to derail the vote.

Shor was sentenced to 15 years in jail in absentia last year in connection with the 2014 disappearance of $1 billion from Moldovan banks. He denies allegations of trying to bribe voters.

Sandu accuses Moscow of trying to topple her government while Moscow has accused her of fomenting “Russophobia.”
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The photographs are AI-generated fakes. While Milton flooded and destroyed hundreds of buildings, taking lives and devastating Florida, Disney World was closed to visitors but not flooded.
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zurich — Two months before FIFA is set to confirm Saudi Arabia as the 2034 World Cup host, the soccer body was urged again Friday to allow independent scrutiny of the kingdom’s human rights obligations for the tournament.

A group of law and human rights experts plus Saudi activists abroad want FIFA to mandate ongoing reviews — and a potential termination clause — into the 2034 World Cup hosting contract.

The advisers who came to Zurich on Friday want FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is closely tied to Saudi political and soccer leaders, to learn from how Qatar was picked to host the 2022 World Cup. Qatar won in 2010 with little thought from FIFA’s then-leaders about legal safeguards and reputational challenges.

Saudi Arabia, like Qatar, is a traditionally conservative society and needs a huge construction project relying on migrant workers to build stadiums and other infrastructure for global soccer’s biggest event.

“There are really no excuses now,” British lawyer Rodney Dixon told The Associated Press. “If it means that they therefore have to come to a different kind of agreement in December, that is what they should do.”

World Cup hosting contracts will be signed after the Dec. 11 decision by more than 200 FIFA member federations at an online meeting. Saudi Arabia is the only candidate for 2034.

Promising not to be confrontational with FIFA, Dixon said: “We are not naive. It is not FIFA’s role to change the world. They are not the UN.”

The briefing in FIFA’s home city came two days after the UN General Assembly in New York rejected a Saudi bid to get a seat on the 47-nation Human Rights Council for the next three years.

On Friday, the would-be FIFA advisers cited Saudi Arabia’s record on freedom of speech and assembly, and laws on labor and male guardianship that limit women’s freedoms.

After Infantino was first elected in 2016, when scrutiny was intense on Qatar and its treatment of migrant workers, FIFA demanded a human rights strategy from future World Cup hosts.

Bid rules for the 2030 and 2034 men’s tournaments refer to “activities in connection with the bidding for and hosting” rather than rights in wider society.

In May, FIFA got an offer from the law and human rights experts to create an independent process for monitoring progress in Saudi Arabia.

Swiss law professor Mark Pieth, an anti-corruption advisor to FIFA from 2011-14, said they had been ignored and “we are here in Zurich to try again.”

In July, Saudi plans for the World Cup were published including a review of its human rights strategy by lawyers it chose, and 15 stadium projects.

Human Rights Watch researcher Joey Shea said Friday it documented “grave labor violations” against migrant workers who number more than 13 million, or about 40% of the kingdom’s population.

The scale of construction required for the World Cup and potential for labor abuses “is really, really chilling,” Shea said in a live link from London.

She cautioned that while rights groups had limited access to operate in Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup, there is “zero access” to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi soccer officials have consistently said the kingdom is making progress on social reforms as part of the Vision 2030 drive by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to modernize and create a post-oil economy.

The 2034 bid campaign was contacted for comment Friday.

In a video message from Washington D.C., Abdullah Alaoudh of the Middle East Democracy Center insisted “the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia has worsened under Mohamed bin Salman’s leadership.”

Saudi Arabia was ranked No. 131 of 146 nations on gender issues by the World Economic Forum, Dixon noted.

“[There are] so many laws that prejudice women,” he said. “None of them are addressed by the Saudi bid.”

FIFA is evaluating World Cup bidders with reports likely in early December. It also must assess the human rights strategy of the sole candidate for the 2030 World Cup: co-hosts Spain, Portugal and Morocco with single games in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

FIFA and Infantino have not held a news conference to take any questions on World Cup bids since the 2034 edition was fast-tracked toward Saudi Arabia one year ago.

Any protest among FIFA voters on Dec. 11 has been made less likely because of how the organization is structuring the voting.

FIFA said last week both 2030 and 2034 awards will be combined in a single vote. Any European opposition to the Saudi bid also would count against Spain and Portugal. Victory by acclamation without an itemized vote is possible.
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STOCKHOLM — Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are also known as Hibakusha, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.  

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

Atomic bombing of Japan   

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

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

Local associations    

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

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

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

Witness accounts  

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

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

Future  

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

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

Source: The Norwegian Nobel Committee 

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zelenskyy meets foreign leaders

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

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

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

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

“They are trying from all sides to suppress our intentions to develop, maintain our economy,” Kiper said.
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ROME — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was city-hopping across Europe on Thursday to promote a “victory plan” that he said “aims to create the right conditions for a just end to the war” against Russia, detailing the proposals to European allies after a summit with President Joe Biden was derailed by Hurricane Milton.

Zelenskyy’s talks in London with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte were quickly followed by another meeting in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, who just the previous day sent a strong signal of support for Ukraine by visiting Ukrainian troops being trained in France.

Zelenskyy posted on X that he “outlined the details” of the Ukrainian victory plan to Starmer and added: “We have agreed to work on it together with our allies.”

Starmer’s Downing Street office said the leaders discussed the blueprint, the challenges for Ukraine of the approaching winter and “how investment in the country’s security today would support Europe’s broader security for generations to come.”

The Ukrainian leader also met Rutte with Starmer. Zelenskyy posted afterward that they discussed trans-Atlantic cooperation and further reinforcing Ukraine militarily. He gave no details but posted that “these are the steps that will create the best conditions for restoring a just peace.”

Zelenskyy has yet to publicly present his proposals for victory. But the timing of his efforts to lock in European support appeared to have the looming U.S. election in mind. Former President Donald Trump has long been critical of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy had planned to present his blueprint at a weekend meeting of Western leaders in Germany, but it was postponed after Biden stayed home because of the hurricane that struck Florida.

Zelenskyy then embarked on his whistle-stop tour of European capitals that have been among Ukraine’s staunchest allies outside of the United States.

In Paris, Macron and Zelenskyy hugged before talks on the plan at the French presidential Elysee Palace. Afterward, Zelenskyy said “all the details” would come in November and that he’s talking with allies about securing more military aid and permission for Ukrainian forces to carry out long-range strikes.

Kyiv wants Western partners to allow strikes deep inside Russia, using long-range weapons they provide. Some, including the U.K. and France, appear willing, but Biden is reticent about escalating the conflict.

“The situation looks bleak for all sides,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Thursday on X. “The West hesitates amid internal divisions, Ukraine struggles while bracing for a harsh winter, and Russia presses forward without any strategic shifts in its favor, yet grows increasingly impatient.”

Later Thursday, Zelenskyy met in Rome with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, who ensured Italy’s full and continued support “at both bilateral and multilateral level in order to put Kyiv in the best position possible to build a just and lasting peace.”

Meloni said the meeting provided an opportunity to discuss the situation on the ground and Ukraine’s “most immediate military, financial and humanitarian needs, as well as the forthcoming diplomatic initiatives and the pathway to bring an end to the conflict.”

She added that Rome will continue to do its part also in the future reconstruction of Ukraine and announced the dates for the next Ukraine recovery conference, which will be held in Rome in July 2025.

Zelenskyy stressed that his priority is to strengthen Ukraine’s position, with the help of its international partners, to create the necessary conditions for diplomacy.

“Russia is not really looking for a diplomatic path,” he said. “If we are able to implement the victory plan, Russia won’t be able to continue the war.”

Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet Pope Francis Friday morning for a half-hour audience, the Vatican said. Later in the day, he’ll meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin.

Ukraine relies heavily on Western support, including tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military and financial aid, to keep up the fight against its bigger enemy after almost 1,000 days of fighting since the full-scale Russian invasion began in 2022.

Fearing that crucial help could be in jeopardy due to political changes in donor countries, Ukraine has been building up its domestic arms industry. It also wants to raise more money from taxpayers to pay for the war effort. The Ukrainian parliament passed a bill on second reading Thursday that raises the so-called military tax from 1.5% to 5%. Some amendments are expected before it becomes law.

Zelenskyy’s tour comes as Russia continues a slow but relentless drive deeper into Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and targets key infrastructure with airstrikes.

Zelenskyy said Wednesday that the victory plan seeks to strengthen Ukraine “both geopolitically and on the battlefield” before any kind of dialogue with Russia.

“Weakness of any of our allies will inspire (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” he said. “That’s why we’re asking them to strengthen us, in terms of security guarantees, in terms of weapons, in terms of our future after this war. In my view, he (Putin) only understands force.”

The death toll from a Russian ballistic missile strike on Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa rose Thursday to eight, regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said. It was the latest in a string of assaults on the Black Sea port.

Authorities in Kyiv also announced Thursday that Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna died while being in Russian captivity, although the circumstances of her death remained unknown. Moscow admitted detaining Roshchyna, who went missing in 2023 while on a reporting trip to Russia-occupied areas.
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washington — The article in the Seattle Tribune had everything: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Adolf Hitler and a $15 million classic car. Unsurprisingly, it spread like wildfire across Russia’s state and pro-Kremlin media.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kara-Murza: It should be simultaneous. The only way we can ensure long-term peace, stability, security and democracy on the European continent is with a democratic Russia. It’s not going to happen any other way.
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