paris — Several people, including a child, died while trying to cross the English Channel from France to England, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said Saturday. 

Attempts to cross the channel in small, overloaded boats are frequent despite strong currents in what is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. 

“Smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands and our government will step up the fight against these mafias that organize these deadly crossings,” Retailleau said on social media platform X. 

Fourteen people were on the boat. One was flown by helicopter to a hospital after a search and rescue operation was conducted Saturday morning, local maritime authorities said. 

The incident was the latest in a series this year, including one last month in which 12 migrants died when their boat capsized in the channel. 
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kyiv, ukraine — Ukrainian forces said they shot down a Russian fighter plane Saturday while Russia claimed it made gains in Ukraine’s east.

The Russian bomber was shot down near the city of Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk province, head of the Kostiantynivka Military Administration Serhiy Horbunov was quoted as saying by Ukraine’s public broadcaster, Suspilne. Photos showed charred remains of an aircraft after it landed on a house that caught fire.

Also in the partially occupied Donetsk province, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed Saturday that it had taken control of the village of Zhelanne Druhe.

If confirmed, the capture would come three days after Ukrainian forces said they were withdrawing from the front-line town of Vuhledar, some 33 kilometers (21 miles) from Zhelanne Druhe, following a hard-fought two-year defense.

Although unlikely to change the course of the war, the loss of Vuhledar is indicative of Kyiv’s worsening position, in part the result of Washington’s refusal to grant Ukraine permission to strike targets deep inside Russian territory and preventing Kyiv from degrading Moscow’s capabilities.

Zelenskyy to present victory plan to allies

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that he will present his “victory plan” at the Oct. 12 meeting of the Ramstein group of nations that supplies arms to Ukraine.

“We will present the victory plan — clear, concrete steps towards a just end to the war. The determination of our partners and the strengthening of Ukraine are what can stop Russian aggression,” he wrote on X, adding that the 25th Ramstein meeting would be the first to take place at the leaders’ level.

Zelenskyy presented his plan to U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington last week. Its contents have not been made public but it is known that the plan includes Ukraine’s membership in NATO and the provision of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia.

Russia shells southern Ukraine

Meanwhile, two people died in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched three guided missiles and 13 attack drones at Ukraine overnight into Saturday. It said the missiles were intercepted, three drones were shot down over the Odesa region and 10 others were lost.

Nine people were wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a passenger bus in the city of Horlivka in the partially occupied Donetsk region, the city’s Russian-installed Mayor Ivan Prikhodko said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that air defenses shot down 10 Ukrainian drones overnight in three border regions, including seven over the Belgorod region, two over the Kursk region, and one over the Voronezh region.
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beijing — The European Commission’s decision to press ahead with tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles threatens to undermine decades of cooperation between China and the EU, and endangers climate-change goals, Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

On Friday, the EU said it would push forward with hefty tariffs on China-made EVs, even after the bloc’s largest economy Germany rejected them. The dispute is its biggest trade row with Beijing in a decade.

State-run Xinhua said the move revealed a “deep-seated protectionist impulse.”

“Instead of fostering co-operation, these tariffs risk sparking a trade conflict that could harm not only China-EU relations but also Europe’s own ambition for a green transition,” it said.

“The path forward is clear: Protectionist tariffs must be abandoned in favor of continued negotiations.”

European imports of Chinese-made EVs have soared in recent years, raising concerns among some domestic EV producers that they could suffer significant losses from a wave of cheap Chinese electric vehicles.

The proposed duties on EVs built in China of up to 45% would cost carmakers billions of extra dollars to bring cars into the bloc and are set to be imposed from next month for five years.

The Commission, which oversees the bloc’s trade policy, has said the tariffs would counter what it sees as unfair Chinese subsidies after a yearlong anti-subsidy investigation. It said on Friday, however, that it would continue talks with Beijing.

A possible compromise could be to set minimum sales prices.

China’s Commerce Ministry has expressed strong opposition to the planned tariffs, calling them “unfair, non-compliant and unreasonable.” It has launched a challenge to them at the World Trade Organization.

In what has been seen as retaliatory moves, Beijing this year launched probes into imports of EU brandy, dairy and pork products.

The U.S. imposes a 100% duty on imported Chinese EVs.
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Mozelos, Portugal — Portugal, the world’s leading cork producer, is finding new uses for the material, from footwear to furniture, as demand for wine bottle stoppers wanes.

Producers highlight the environmentally friendly properties of cork, which is lightweight, recyclable, waterproof and fire-resistant, to encourage its use in diverse settings.

Cork is obtained by stripping the bark of cork oak trees every nine years in a careful process that allows the tree to regenerate and grow, making the industry naturally sustainable.

The material has “a negative carbon footprint because it comes from a tree that captures CO2 day and night”, Antonio Rios de Amorim, the CEO of the world’s largest cork producer Corticeira Amorim, told AFP.

The push to diversify comes as global sales of wine decline, reducing demand for cork wine stoppers which have long faced competition from cheaper plastic stoppers and screw tops.

“Periods of slowdown must be used to question what we do,” said Amorim, whose ancestors founded Corticeira Amorim 154 years ago in the northern village of Mozelos, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of second city Porto.

Booster rockets, metro seats

Thanks to cork’s cell-like structure, the material is elastic and highly impermeable, making it suitable to make shoes as well as ties, pants and other clothes.

Furniture designers are also increasingly drawn to the material.

British designer Tom Dixon has called it a “dream material” and put out a range of dark cork furniture that includes tables, stools and shelves using cork from Portugal.

The Lisbon metro in 2020 replaced the fabric lining on all seats of its train fleet with cork, an easier to maintain material.

Builders have been drawn to the material because of its unique thermal insulation and sound absorption properties.

Cork is also finding its way into space. It is used in thermal protection coating on booster rockets because of its resistance “to strong variations in temperature”, said Amorim.

Making wine bottle stoppers, however, remains the main activity for Portugal’s cork industry, which employs around 8,000 people.

Corticeira Amorim makes some six billion cork wine bottle stoppers per year, almost all of them for export mainly to Chile, France and the United States.

It accounts for 70 percent of the global market share for cork stoppers and posted sales of 985 million euros (one billion dollars) in 2023, slightly lower than in the previous year.

Traditional methods

Cork is made from the bark of the cork oak (Quercus suber) found in countries of the Mediterranean basin.

Portugal is home to about a third of the world’s total area dedicated to this tree — more than any other country — and accounts for nearly half the world’s supply of cork.

There are also plantations in France, Spain, Italy. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

In the province of Ribatejo around 80 kilometers east of Lisbon, cork oaks stretch as far as the eye can see.

The bark is removed from the tree in summer using traditional methods handed down from generation to generation.

It is a highly precise technique “that takes several years to learn”, said Nelson Ferreira, a 43-year-old cork bark harvester, adding he takes great care not to damage the tree.

The bark is then taken to Corticeira Amorim’s factories in the north of Portugal where it is steam-treated, cut into smaller pieces and then fed into machines that punch out stoppers.

The preservation of cork oaks is crucial for Portugal, which has made them a protected species since it takes an average of 40 years for a tree to start producing cork that can be used by cork makers.
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milan — Ticket prices for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics range from 30 euros (U.S. $33) for men’s and women’s preliminary hockey games all the way up to nearly 3,000 euros ($3,300) for the most costly seats at the closing ceremony inside Verona’s Arena, a large Roman amphitheater. 

The most expensive sports event is the men’s hockey final with prices ranging from 450 to 1,400 euros ($500 to $1,545). 

Local organizers announced Thursday that more than 20% of the tickets for the games in February, 2026, are available for under 40 euros ($44) and more than half are priced at under 100 euros ($110). 

Anyone interested in attending should register on the official ticketing platform to enter a draw that will allocate specific time slots for purchasing tickets in the first phase of sales. 

Ticket prices for the Winter Paralympics in March, 2026, start at 10 euros ($11) for children under 14, with more than 200,000 tickets — about 90% of the total — available for less than ($40) euros each. 

It’s not necessary to register for a draw for Paralympics tickets, which will go on sale in March, 2025. 

Starting in April, 2025, both Olympic and Paralympic tickets will be available to the general public on a first-come, first-served basis, with no need to register in advance. 

The 2026 Games will be held across a large swath of northern Italy, with ice sports in Milan, Alpine skiing in Bormio and Cortina, snowboard and freestyle in Livigno, Nordic sports in Val di Fiemme and biathlon in Anterselva. 

Questions remain whether the sliding center in Cortina will be completed in time or if bobsled, luge and skeleton events will be moved to another track in Austria (Igls), Switzerland (St. Moritz) or New York (Lake Placid). 
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moscow — A court in Minsk sentenced a dozen individuals to prison terms of between two  and 25 years Friday for helping commit what Belarus has called an “act of terrorism” at a military airfield outside the capital last year. 

A group of Belarusian anti-government activists said in February 2023 that they had blown up a sophisticated Russian military surveillance aircraft in a drone attack at the base. 

Russia and Belarus dismissed the assertion as fake, with Belarusian state television publishing footage showing what it said was the undamaged Beriev A-50 surveillance craft. 

About a week later, Minsk said it had detained a “terrorist” and more than 20 accomplices over attempted sabotage at the airfield. 

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, alleged at the time that Ukrainian security services and the U.S. Central Intelligence agency were behind the operation. He said the aircraft had suffered only superficial damage in the attack, which was carried out using a “small drone,” the Belta news agency reported. 

On Friday, Belarus’ general prosecutor’s office said the Minsk City Court had sentenced 12 individuals after finding them guilty of terrorism, extremism and other serious crimes. 

The main defendant, Ukrainian national Nikolai Shvets, was sentenced in absentia to 25 years in prison. Shvets, who gave an interview to Belarusian state television last April in which he detailed how he planned the attack, was released in a prisoner exchange with Ukraine in June, according to Belarusian rights group Viasna. 

It was not clear how many of the others were sentenced in absentia. 
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NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, ((eds.: pronounced ROO-tuh)) who took up the role this week, visited Ukraine Thursday and pledged to prioritize the alliance’s support for Kyiv. But Rutte faces daunting challenges in his new job, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
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washington — While the Belarusian government continues a long-running clampdown on use of the Belarusian language, exiled news outlets are leading the fight to keep their language — and cultural identity — alive.

Although Belarusian has been the country’s official language since Belarus declared independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, there has been an ongoing process of Russification since President Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994. 

That process has only accelerated since 2020 when Lukashenko — seen by some to be a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin — declared victory in an election that was widely viewed as fraudulent. Since then, the Belarusian government has grown increasingly hostile toward Belarusian as the language has become more and more associated with resistance toward Lukashenko’s rule. 

As Minsk continues to grow closer to Moscow, Belarusian media outlets that left the country following the 2020 elections see it as their duty to help keep the Belarusian language alive through their reporting, multiple media leaders told VOA. 

“It’s a strategic move to preserve the language, to preserve the culture, which is being actively attacked,” said Natalia Belikova, head of international cooperation at Press Club Belarus in Poland’s capital Warsaw. 

Belarusian not illegal, but unwelcome

Speaking Belarusian isn’t illegal in Belarus, but the government has long made clear its preference for Russian, which has been the other official language in Belarus since 1995. Belarusian is more similar to Ukrainian than Russian.

Instead of outlawing Belarusian entirely, the government has taken steps like targeting Belarusian-language newspapers and bookstores. Classes in school are more often taught in Russian, and there aren’t any universities where Belarusian is the primary language. Government officials tend to speak Russian, and government documents are often in Russian, too. 

“The presence of Belarusian language is vividly vanishing,” Belikova said. “‘Upsetting’ is probably a milder word for this. It’s really devastating.”

A 2019 census found that around 60% of the population consider Belarusian their native language, but only about 28% use the language at home. 

Still, since Belarusian isn’t banned, speaking it is one of the few remaining ways for people to safely signal their political beliefs and opposition to Lukashenko, multiple journalists said. 

However, multiple analysts said doing so in public is likely to draw negative attention from authorities because the language is so closely associated with the resistance. 

“Formally, it’s safe. It’s OK to speak Belarusian in Belarus. But in practice, well, it’s not safe,” Pavel Sviardlou, editor-in-chief of European Radio for Belarus, told VOA from Warsaw. 

The Belarusian foreign ministry did not reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

As the Belarusian government works to suppress the Belarusian language in favor of Russian, leaders from prominent exiled outlets like European Radio for Belarus, Nasha Niva and Zerkalo say their outlets are prioritizing coverage in the Belarusian language.

In the case of Nasha Niva, one of the oldest Belarusian newspapers, the outlet’s mission has long been to popularize the Belarusian language, culture and history, according to the newspaper’s director Nastassia Rouda. That mission has become more important since the contested 2020 election, after which hundreds of journalists fled the country to escape harassment and censorship. 

“Who, if not us? This is the question,” Rouda told VOA from Lithuania. 

Nasha Niva’s primary language is Belarusian, but the outlet also translates everything into Russian. European Radio for Belarus operates similarly. 

“This is a chance to, for example, listen to Belarusian every day, to read in Belarusian every day. And, of course, to feel that the language is not dead,” Sviardlou said.

The fight to preserve the Belarusian language goes hand in hand with the more obvious role that exiled media play — ensuring people still inside Belarus can access independent news about what’s happening. 

“Only media like us, who are working from exile right now, can give some truthful information about the political situation. No one inside can do this,” Nasha Niva’s Rouda said. 

Although Belarusian authorities block access to independent news sites, Belarusians still access them with circumvention tools like virtual private networks, or VPNs. 

Despite the risks and the fact that the government spent about 50 million euros ($55 million) on propaganda in 2023 alone, it’s clear that many people inside Belarus, which has a population of about 9 million, still regularly access banned news sites. 

The five biggest sites had over 17 million visits in December 2023, according to a 2024 JX Fund report. The news outlet Zerkalo, for instance, receives about 3 million unique visitors each month, with about 60% of them located inside Belarus, according to a 2024 Press Club Belarus report. 

Zerkalo is the successor outlet of Tut.by, which was the largest independent news site in Belarus until authorities shut it down in 2021. 

As the Belarus government grows ever closer with Russia amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, exiled Belarusian media view their efforts as critical to maintaining a distinct Belarusian identity. The stakes are high, according to Aliaksandra Pushkina, a board member of Zerkalo.

“If we lose our culture, our language, we really will be a part of Russia,” she told VOA  from Austria. 

While exiled outlets are prioritizing Belarusian language coverage, Belarusian propaganda outlets inside the country primarily use Russian, according to Sviardlou. 

“They don’t even try to work in Belarusian because they understand that no one will listen to them,” he said. 

He asserted that Belarusian has taken on a different meaning, saying, “It is a language of truth.”
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london — With an escalating war in the Middle East, uncertainty over Western military aid for Ukraine, and the U.S. presidential election looming next month, new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has no time to settle in.

The former Dutch prime minister was appointed to the role at a ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday, where he told delegates that “there can be no lasting security in Europe without a strong, independent Ukraine,” and affirmed that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO.”

On Thursday, Rutte was welcomed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Kyiv.

Zelenskyy wasted no time in relaying his demands.

“We have discussed the most urgent needs of our troops, the weapons and the recruitment to the brigades,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference alongside Rutte on Thursday. “We will have more time today to discuss more details on how to strengthen Ukraine’s positions on the front so that we can exert more pressure on Russia in order to support just and realistic diplomacy. That is why we need sufficient quantity and quality of weapons, including long-range weapons, the decision on which, in my opinion, our Western partners are delaying,” he told reporters.

Ukraine wants to use Western long-range missiles on targets inside Russia. The U.S. and other allies are holding back, fearing escalation with Moscow.

NATO’s new secretary-general made his position clear.

“Ukraine obviously has the right to defend itself and international law is on the side of Ukraine, meaning that this right does not end at the border. Russia is pursuing this illegal war … targeting Russian fighter jets and missiles before they can be used against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure can help save lives,” Rutte told reporters.

Ukraine’s president was asked whether he feared the world was forgetting about his country, amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

“I wish that Ukraine is not forgotten,” Zelenskyy said. “And the best way to show this is by giving particular weapons, by giving particular permissions. And help to shoot down hostile drones — by the way, the same Iranian rockets and drones — to shoot them down the same way as they are shot down in the sky of Israel. Do the same over the skies of Ukraine.”

Rutte is a longtime ally of Ukraine, noted analyst Armida van Rij, a senior research fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

“While he was prime minister of the Netherlands, he was very supportive of Ukraine. He’s the one who signed off on the F-16s [fighter jets] deal for Ukraine as well. So, there is that history of support,” van Rij told VOA.

However, Rutte is facing headwinds as he tries to boost military support for Ukraine among NATO allies.

Next month, U.S. voters will choose a new president: Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. Rutte said he would work with whoever is elected — but neither outcome will be straightforward, said van Rij.

“There is a real risk for Ukraine that Trump may try to force Ukraine’s hand and force Ukraine to capitulate to Russia, which would be terrible for European security. That’s the first challenge. But the second challenge is even if Vice President Harris were to win the U.S. elections, she may still face a divided Congress and she may still struggle to pass aid packages in support for Ukraine through Congress.”

Either scenario would require European NATO allies to step up their military aid.

“And there again, there’s challenges because many countries have depleted their stocks. They’ve given as much as they feel comfortable with at this point. What I would like to see is to think through some of the practical ways in which we can advance EU and NATO collaborations specifically on this issue of developing a European defense industrial base,” van Rij told VOA.

There are fears in Europe that a victory for Trump could upend the United States’ relationship with NATO.

“Like [former NATO Secretary-General Jens] Stoltenberg, Rutte is known as a ‘Trump whisperer.’ He is one of the few European politicians who developed a good working relationship with Donald Trump. However, a potential second Trump term could prove much more disruptive, with less U.S. aid to Ukraine, more concessions to Russia and further questioning of the value of NATO,” said Oana Lungescu, a distinguished fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a former NATO spokesperson, in an email to VOA.

The Kremlin said this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin knew Rutte well from his time as Dutch prime minister.

“At that time there were hopes of building good pragmatic relations,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a phone call Tuesday. “But we know what followed — the Netherlands adopted a rather defiant attitude to fully exclude all contacts with Russia. So, we don’t think that anything new or significant will happen with the policy of the [NATO] alliance,” Peskov said.

Meanwhile, Rutte takes the helm of NATO as it faces an increasingly assertive China.

“On Ukraine, everyone’s very much on the same line. On China, there’s still some allies saying, ‘We’re not sure we need to quite go into the Indo-Pacific theater.’ In a scenario where U.S. resources and capabilities are drawn elsewhere, i.e., the Indo-Pacific, Europeans have to be able to fend for themselves — including look after Ukraine in the current short-term scenario,” van Rij told VOA.

Rutte said another priority would be to strengthen NATO’s partnerships with allies outside the alliance in an interconnected world.

His primary focus must be on keeping NATO members safe, said Lungescu of RUSI.

“As NATO secretary-general, Rutte must take the lead in arguing for more defense spending across the alliance,” Lungescu said. “He should make a strong case not just about figures and percentages, but about the concrete capabilities that are needed to keep NATO nations safe in a dangerous world.”
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stavanger, norway — Wars, a refugee crisis, famine and artificial intelligence could all be recognized when Nobel Prize announcements begin next week under a shroud of violence.

The prize week coincides with the October 7 anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, which began a year of bloodshed and war across the Middle East.

The literature and science prizes could be immune. But the peace prize, which recognizes efforts to end conflict, will be awarded in an atmosphere of ratcheting international violence — if awarded at all.

“I look at the world and see so much conflict, hostility and confrontation, I wonder if this is the year the Nobel Peace Prize should be withheld,” said Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

As well as events roiling the Middle East, Smith cites the war in Sudan and risk of famine there, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and his institute’s research showing that global military spending is increasing at its fastest pace since World War II.

“It could go to some groups which are making heroic efforts but are marginalized,” Smith said. “But the trend is in the wrong direction. Perhaps it would be right to draw attention to that by withholding the peace prize this year.”

Withholding the Nobel Peace is not new. It has been suspended 19 times in the past, including during the world wars. The last time it was not awarded was in 1972.

However, Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, says withdrawal would be a mistake in 2024, saying the prize is “arguably more important as a way to promote and recognize important work for peace.”

Civil grassroot groups, and international organizations with missions to mitigate violence in the Middle East could be recognized.

Nominees are kept secret for 50 years, but nominators often publicize their picks. Academics at the Free University Amsterdam said they have nominated the Middle East-based organizations EcoPeace, Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun for peace efforts between Israelis and Palestinians.

Urdal believes it’s possible the committee could consider the Sudan Emergency Response Rooms, a group of grassroots initiatives providing aid to stricken Sudanese facing famine and buffeted by the country’s brutal civil war.

The announcements begin Monday with the physiology or medicine prize, followed on subsequent days by the physics, chemistry, literature and peace awards.

The Peace Prize announcement will be made on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, while all the others will be announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. The prize in economics will be announced the following week on October 14.

New technology, possibly artificial intelligence, could be recognized in one or more of the categories.

Critics of AI warn the rise of autonomous weapons shows the new technology could mean additional peace-shattering misery for many people. Yet AI has also enabled scientific breakthroughs that are tipped for recognition in other categories.

David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information, says scientists from Google Deepmind, the AI lab, could be among those under consideration for the chemistry prize.

The company’s artificial intelligence, AlphaFold, “accurately predicts the structure of proteins,” he said. It is already widely used in several fields, including medicine, where it could one day be used to develop a breakthrough drug.

Pendlebury spearheads Clarivate’s list of scientists whose papers are among the world’s most cited, and whose work it says are ripe for Nobel recognition.

“AI will increasingly be a part of the panoply of tools that researchers use,” Pendlebury said. He said he would be extremely surprised if a discovery “firmly anchored in AI” did not win Nobel prizes in the next 10 years.
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kyiv, ukraine — Ukrainian feminist activists staged a topless protest Friday outside the Embassy of Iran, which Kyiv and the West say is arming Russia.

Ukraine’s Femen group is a feminist art collective that has for years staged stunts in Ukraine and abroad, with its trademark move being women appearing with their chests bare, protest slogans written across their bodies.

Kyiv has branded Iran an “accomplice” in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and regularly reports finding fragments of Iranian Shahed drones used by Moscow in attacks targeting civilian infrastructure.

AFP saw two activists take their shirts off near the Iranian Embassy building in Kyiv, chanting and displaying anti-Iran and anti-Russia slogans written on their bodies.

Western governments have accused Iran of supplying Moscow with both drones and missiles, which Tehran has repeatedly denied.

At the U.N. last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced Russia involving authoritarian states Iran and North Korea — also widely believed to be arming Russia — in Moscow’s more than two-year invasion of his country.

“Russia has no legitimate reason — none at all — for making Iran and North Korea de facto accomplices in its criminal war in Europe, with their weapons killing us, killing Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said.

Western countries have imposed sanctions on Iran’s air transport links over its alleged supply of ballistic missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine.

Femen, which campaigns for women’s rights and against sexism and conservative Orthodoxy, originated in Ukraine but now also has branches in other countries.

It has staged numerous stunts, including two of its activists lunging at Russian President Vladimir Putin on a visit to Germany in 2013 shouting “dictator!”
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Kiseljak, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Heavy rains that flooded towns and touched off landslides left at least 14 people dead in Bosnia on Friday, authorities said.

Jablanica, some 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Sarajevo, appeared to bear the brunt of the 24 hours of downpours, which cut it off from the outside world.

Photos on local media from the Jablanica region showed mudslides coming up to roofs of houses and a mosque with only its minaret sticking out.

“For now, the bodies of 14 people have been found” in the region of Jablanica, spokesman Darko Jukan told AFP, adding that the toll was likely to rise.

Jablanica “cannot be entered or exited at the moment”, a mountain rescue service said of the town of around 4,000 people.

A number of people from the area were reported missing, the authorities said while some injured were evacuated with a helicopter from the European Union peacekeeping force (EUFOR).

At mid-Friday the situation was the most critical in the village of Donja Jablanica that remained cut off, the spokesman said.

Several roads and bridges in the region collapsed, he said.

In Kiseljak, some 20 kilometers west of Sarajevo, houses, gardens and cars were under water, an AFP journalist reported.

A large part of Bosnia’s population is at risk due to heavy floods and landslides, the federal civil protection administration said in a statement.

Firefighters, police and utility companies were working in the affected areas, but more help is needed to mitigate the consequences of storms and rainfall, the federal civil protection administration warned.

Prime Minister of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat half Nermin Niksic wrote on social media platform X that the situation was “very serious as many citizens are still trapped in their houses.

In neighboring Croatia, weather authorities issued a warning for the northern Adriatic coast, Istria peninsula and central part of the country due to the heavy rains.

In a statement, it said that urban flooding and interruption of traffic, communications, electricity and water supply were expected.

Scientist warn that climate change worsens the impact of extreme weather events.

Torrential rains and strong winds have led to widespread flooding in central and eastern Europe last month, killing at least 24 people and devastating towns and villages.
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vienna — Thousands of people protested in Austria’s capital, Vienna, on Thursday against a possible return to power for the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which topped national elections on Sunday.

The FPOe won almost 29% of the vote in Sunday’s general election, ahead of the conservative People’s Party (OeVP) with just over 26%.

“The Austrian Freedom Party is a danger because it has already said that it wants to govern in the image of Hungary’s Viktor Orban,” said student Rihab Toumi, 26, referring to the nationalist leader of Austria’s neighboring country.

Although the FPOe topped the polls, there is no guarantee that its radical leader, Herbert Kickl, will be given a chance to form a government since no other party is willing to work with him.

“This result was a shock, and we cannot let a party that drifts so far to the right garner so much support without saying anything,” said social worker Marianne, 53, who declined to share her surname.

Organizers said there were 15,000 to 17,000 protesters in central Vienna who marched toward parliament. Demonstrators held up placards that said, “Let’s defend democracy,” “No alliances with Putin’s friends,” and other anti-FPOe slogans.

Kickl has criticized European Union sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Demonstrators intend to march every Thursday, having similarly done so after the far-right formed part of short-lived coalition governments in 2000 and 2017.
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Tbilisi, Georgia — The speaker of the Georgian parliament signed into a law Thursday a bill that severely curtails LGBTQ+ rights in the country and mirrors legislation adopted in neighboring Russia.

Shalva Papuashvili, the parliament speaker, said on social media that the legislation does “not reflect current, temporary, changing ideas and ideologies, but is based on common sense, historical experience and centuries-old Christian, Georgian and European values.”

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili had refused to sign the bill and returned it to parliament on Wednesday. It was introduced by the governing Georgian Dream party and approved by lawmakers last month.

The bill includes bans on same-sex marriages, adoptions by same-sex couples and public endorsement and depictions of LGBTQ+ relations and people in the media. It also bans gender-affirming care and changing gender designations in official documents.

“This law protects the rights of all citizens, including freedom of expression, so that the rights of others are not violated, which is the essence and idea of true democracy,” Papuashvili wrote.

Parliament gave the legislation its final approval as Georgia, a largely conservative country where the Orthodox Church wields significant influence, prepares to vote in a parliamentary election. The law has been widely seen as an effort by the governing party to shore up support among conservative groups. It was decried by human rights advocates and LGBTQ+ activists, who said it further marginalized an already vulnerable community.

By signing the law, Georgian Dream “have taken homophobia to a new level, and that is political and institutional homophobia,” said Ana Tavadze, an activist with Tbilisi Pride, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group.

Georgian Dream’s aim is to “fabricate” problems ahead of the election to distract people from “their failure” to solve issues involving unemployment, education and healthcare, Tavadze told The Associated Press.

The law has drawn comparisons with Russia, where the Kremlin has been highlighting what it calls traditional family values. Russian authorities in the last decade have banned public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” and introduced laws against gender-affirming care, among other measures. Its Supreme Court effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism by labeling what the authorities called the LGBTQ+ “movement” operating in Russia as an extremist organization and banning it.

In Georgia, the LGBTQ+ community has struggled even before the legislation was introduced. Demonstrations and violent outbursts against LGBTQ+ people have been common, and last year hundreds of opponents of gay rights stormed an LGBTQ+ festival in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, forcing the event’s cancellation. This year, tens of thousands marched in Tbilisi to promote “traditional family values.”

A day after parliament gave its final approval to the anti-LGBTQ+ bill, transgender actor and model Kesaria Avramidze was stabbed to death in her apartment in Tbilisi. Rights advocates had worried that the bill would stoke more violence.

Papuashvili, the parliament speaker, said that by not signing the bill, President Zourabichvili and the Georgian opposition “did not have enough courage to openly express their opinion regarding this law.”

Some analysts say parts of the Georgian opposition are walking a fine line ahead of the Oct. 26 election between condemning the move to curtail LGBTQ+ rights and not wanting to alienate some voters.

Zourabichvili has long been at odds with the governing party and vetoed a “foreign influence” law adopted by parliament earlier this year. She was overridden by parliament, where Georgian Dream dominates.

The measure requires media and nongovernmental organizations to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad. It ignited weeks of protests and was widely criticized as threatening democratic freedoms. Those opposing the law compared it to similar legislation in Russia which is routinely used to suppress dissent, and accused the governing party of acting in concert with Moscow, jeopardizing Georgia’s chances of joining the European Union.

The South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million formally applied to join the EU in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the bloc halted its accession in response to the “foreign influence” law and froze some of its financial support. The United States imposed sanctions on dozens of Georgian officials in response to the law.

Georgian Dream was set up by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia and served briefly as Georgia’s prime minister in 2012. It promised to restore civil rights and “reset” relations with Moscow, which fought a brief war with Georgia in 2008 over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Russia then recognized the independence of South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian province, Abkhazia, and established military bases there.

Many Georgians backed Ukraine as Kyiv battled Russia’s invasion in 2022. But the Georgian government abstained from joining sanctions against Moscow, barred dozens of Kremlin critics from entering the country, and accused the West of trying to drag Georgia into open conflict with Russia. The opposition has accused the governing party of steering the country into Russia’s orbit to the detriment of its European aspirations.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Two Swedish teenagers were jailed Thursday in pretrial detention in connection with two predawn explosions in the vicinity of the Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen a day earlier. Prosecutors said investigators were establishing “whether the motive could be a terror attack.”

No one was injured in the blasts on early Wednesday in a neighborhood with several foreign diplomatic missions, although the nearby Jewish school was closed following the explosions.

The pair, who cannot be identified under a court order, were ordered held for 27 days. They faced preliminary charges of possessing illegal weapons and carrying five hand grenades. Two of the grenades blew up when the suspects threw them at a house near the embassy, prosecutor Soren Harbo said.

“This was pretty close to the Israeli Embassy,” Harbo said before Thursday’s court hearing. The explosions caused damage to a roof terrace of a nearby house. The diplomatic mission was not harmed.

Thursday’s hearing was held behind closed doors after the preliminary charges were read. Reporting from inside the court room, Danish broadcaster DR said the teenagers, ages 16 and 19, are suspected of acting “in association and together with prior agreement with one or more perpetrators.”

Both denied the charges, local media reported.

The two suspects were arrested Wednesday shortly before noon on a train at Copenhagen’s central station. Danish media ran photos of a man in a white hazmat suit being taken away by police on a train platform at the station. A third suspect, age 19, who had been arrested near the embassy, has been released, police said Thursday.

In Denmark, the charges are one step short of formal charges and allow authorities to keep criminal suspects in custody during an investigation.

Separately, shots were fired late Tuesday at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm. No one was injured. No arrests have been made.

The Danish domestic security service, known by its acronym PET, said that “Swedish authorities have assessed that at least one specific act directed at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm, which was carried out by young criminals in Sweden, has links to Iran.”

In May the Swedish domestic security agency SAPO accused Iran of using established criminal networks in Sweden as a proxy to target Israeli or Jewish people. The announcement came after the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm was sealed off in late January after what was then described as “a dangerous object” was found on the grounds of the diplomatic mission. Swedish media said the object was a hand grenade.

In a statement, PET said, “If we have a state actor who gets young criminals to carry out actions aimed at Jewish targets in our neighboring country, then we can be concerned that this will also happen in Denmark.”

In Stockholm, the operative of Sweden’s domestic security agency SAPO, Fredrik Hallstrom, said, “The latest incident at the Israeli Embassy is not classified as a terrorist crime at the moment.”

His counterpart at the Swedish police’s National Operations Department, Johan Olsson, told the same press conference that the charges were of “aggravated weapons offenses, causing danger or other serious illegal threats and damage.”
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