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Tag: europe

  • Magnitude 5.0 tremor strikes Greece; no damage reported

    Magnitude 5.0 tremor strikes Greece; no damage reported

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    ATHENS, Greece — A magnitude 5.0 earthquake hit central Greece early Sunday, but there were no early reports of damage or casualties.

    The tremor struck at 1:02 a.m. and had an epicenter 12.7 kilometers (8 miles) below sea level in the Gulf of Corinth, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) west-northwest of the capital, the Athens Institute of Geodynamics reported.

    The tremor lasted at least 15 seconds and was felt over a large area. Near the sparsely populated epicenter, residents reported hearing a buzzing sound, according to local media.

    Tremors of this magnitude are common in Greece, which lies in a highly earthquake-prone area, north of where the African plate is pushing underneath the Eurasian plate.

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  • Truck bomb hits bridge to Crimea, hurts Russian supply lines

    Truck bomb hits bridge to Crimea, hurts Russian supply lines

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    KYIV, Ukraine — An explosion Saturday caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia, damaging a key supply artery for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine. Russian authorities said a truck bomb caused the blast and that three people were killed.

    The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament immediately accused Ukraine of being behind the explosion, though Moscow didn’t apportion blame. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some lauded the destruction, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.

    The explosion risked a sharp escalation in Russia’s eight-month war, with some Russian lawmakers calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation” in retaliation, shedding the term “special military operation” that had downplayed the scope of fighting to ordinary Russians.

    Such a move could be used by the Kremlin to further broaden the powers of security agencies, ban rallies, tighten censorship, introduce restrictions on travel and expand a partial military mobilization that Putin ordered last month.

    Hours after the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, would be named commander of all Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. It was the first official appointment of a single commander for all Russian forces in Ukraine.

    Surovikin, who over the summer was placed in charge of Russian troops in southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a brutal bombardment that destroyed much of the city of Aleppo.

    Moscow, however, continues to suffer battlefield losses.

    On Saturday, a Kremlin-backed official in Ukraine’s Kherson region announced a partial evacuation of civilians from the southern province, one of four illegally annexed by Moscow last week, amid an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive. Kirill Stremousov told Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti agency that young children and their parents, as well as the elderly, could be relocated to two southern Russian regions because Kherson was getting “ready for a difficult period.”

    The 19-kilometer (12-mile) Kerch Bridge across the Kerch Strait that links the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and has provided an essential link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The $3.6 billion bridge, the longest in Europe, opened in 2018 and is key to sustaining Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.

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

    Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said that a truck bomb caused seven railway cars carrying fuel to catch fire, resulting in the “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge.” A man and a woman riding in a vehicle across the bridge were killed by the explosion, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. It didn’t provide details on the third victim or what happened to the truck driver.

    The blast occurred even though all vehicles crossing the bridge undergo checks for explosives by state-of-the-art control systems, drawing a stream of critical comments from Russian war bloggers who urged Moscow to retaliate by striking Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

    The truck that exploded was owned by a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia. Russia’s Investigative Committee said investigators searched the man’s home and were looking at the truck’s route.

    Train and automobile traffic over the bridge was temporarily suspended. Automobile traffic resumed Saturday afternoon on one of the two links that remained intact from the blast, with the flow alternating in each direction and vehicles undergoing a “full inspection procedure,” Crimea’s Russia-backed regional leader, Sergey Aksyonov, wrote on Telegram.

    Rail traffic is expected to resume Saturday night, the Russian Transport Ministry said, while passenger ferry links between Crimea and the Russian mainland were being relaunched Sunday.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said troops in the south were receiving necessary supplies through the land corridor along the Sea of Azov and by sea. Russia’s Energy Ministry said Crimea has enough fuel for 15 days.

    Putin was informed about the explosion and he ordered the creation of a government panel to deal with the emergency.

    The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament blamed Ukraine for the explosion, but downplayed the severity of the damage and said the bridge would be promptly repaired.

    Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of Russian parliament, said “consequences will be imminent” if Ukraine is responsible.

    Gennady Zyuganov, the head of the Russian Communist Party, said the “terror attack” should serve as a wake-up call.

    “The long-overdue measures haven’t been taken yet, the special operation must be turned into a counterterrorist operation,” he said.

    Sergei Mironov, the head of the Just Russia faction in parliament, said that Russia should respond to the explosion on the bridge by attacking key Ukrainian infrastructure including power plants, bridges and railways.

    The statements, especially from Zyuganov and Slutsky, may herald a decision by Putin to declare a counterterrorism operation.

    The parliamentary leader of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party on Saturday stopped short of claiming that Kyiv was responsible but appeared to cast it as a consequence of Moscow’s takeover of Crimea.

    “Russian illegal construction is starting to fall apart and catch fire. The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, then sooner or later it will explode,” said David Arakhamia, the leader of the Servant of the People party.

    The Ukrainian postal service announced that it would issue stamps commemorating the blast like it did after the sinking of the Moskva, a Russian flagship cruiser, by an Ukrainian strike.

    The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, tweeted a video with the Kerch Bridge on fire and a video with Marilyn Monroe singing her famous “Happy Birthday Mr. President” song. Putin turned 70 on Friday.

    In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said “the reaction of the Kyiv regime to the destruction of civilian infrastructure shows its terrorist nature.”

    Local authorities in Crimea made conflicting statements about what the damaged bridge would mean for residents and their ability to buy consumer goods. The peninsula is a popular destination for Russian tourists year-round and home to Sevastopol, a key city and a naval base. A Russian tourist association estimated that 50,000 tourists were in Crimea on vacation at the time of the blast.

    Elsewhere, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has lost its last remaining external power source as a result of renewed shelling and is now relying on emergency diesel generators.

    The blast on the bridge occurred hours after explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early Saturday, sending towering plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions.

    Ukrainian officials accused Russia of pounding Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with surface-to-air missiles and said at least one person was wounded. The strikes targeted two largely residential neighborhoods, the governor said.

    Kharkiv resident Tetiana Samoilenko’s apartment caught fire in the attack. She said she was in the kitchen when the blast struck, sending glass flying.

    “Now I have no roof over my head. Now I don’t know what to do next,” the 80-year-old said.

    ———

    Stepanenko reported from Kharkiv, Ukraine. Francisco Seco contributed from Kharkiv.

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Death toll rises to 10 in blast at gas station in Ireland

    Death toll rises to 10 in blast at gas station in Ireland

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    LONDON — The death toll from a gas station explosion that shattered a small village in northwest Ireland rose to 10 on Saturday, and emergency workers who combed through piles of rubble said they did not expect to find more bodies.

    Irish police said no one remained missing after Friday’s explosion in Creeslough, County Donegal. Police are investigating the cause of the blast, and Superintendent David Kelly said evidence “is pointing toward a tragic accident.”

    Ireland’s police force, An Garda Siochana, said the midafternoon explosion killed four men, three women, two teenagers and a girl of primary school age. Eight people were hospitalized — one in critical condition — after the blast destroyed the Applegreen service station in the community of about 400 people near Ireland’s rugged Atlantic coast.

    Emergency responders from Ireland and neighboring Northern Ireland joined in what police said Saturday was “search and recovery” operation. Sniffer dogs combed the debris, and a mechanical digger lifted piles of rubble from the site on Saturday.

    The explosion leveled the gas station building, which holds the main shop and post office for the village, damaged an adjacent apartment building and shattered the windows in nearby cottages.

    “There were blocks thrown a hundred yards away from the scene,” local medic Dr. Paul Stewart told Irish broadcaster RTE. “The whole front of the building collapsed… and the roof of the first floor collapsed down into the shop. It’s a miracle they got anyone out.”

    Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said it was one of the “darkest of days for Donegal and the entire country.”

    “People across this island will be numbed by the same sense of shock and utter devastation as the people of Creeslough at this tragic loss of life,” Martin said.

    Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue, who represents Donegal in Ireland’s parliament, said the service station was well known across the country because of its prominent position on the area’s main N56 road, and was “the heart” of the local community.

    “People are shocked and numbed,” he told Irish broadcaster RTE. “People have been rallying together and everyone’s concern is with the families of those who have lost their loved ones and how they can support them.”

    Another local lawmaker, Pearse Doherty, said people in the community were in shock.

    “(It’s) something nobody ever thought could happen in a little village like this where everyone knows each other,” he said. “A quarter past three yesterday, kids were coming out of school, people were going to collect their welfare payments. For such a nightmare to occur, that will take some time to sink in.”

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  • Two teens and a child among 10 people killed in Ireland gas station explosion | CNN

    Two teens and a child among 10 people killed in Ireland gas station explosion | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Ten people, including two teenagers and a young child, were killed in Friday’s explosion at a gas filling station in the northwest of Ireland, local authorities said.

    Irish police said that among the 10 dead in the blast in Donegal ere four men, three women, a teenage boy, a teenage girl, and another younger girl. Police said earlier that eight people had been injured.

    The explosion happened shortly after 3 p.m. local time on Friday in County Donegal at the Applegreen petrol station on the outskirts of the village of Creeslough.

    Police said they believed it was a “tragic accident,” and the largest number of civilian casualty seen in decades in the region.

    Superintendent David Kelly said: “This is a tragedy for our community. There are families left devastated.

    “I want to offer, on behalf of myself and my colleagues that attended the scene, our very sincere condolences.

    Speaking on Saturday morning to the national broadcaster RTE, Irish Prime Minister, known as the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin expressed his condolences.

    Martin said: “It is absolutely devastating and quite shocking in terms of the enormity of this tragedy, the scale of it. An explosion ripping through the normality of a community, with people going to the shop, the normal toing and froing of life.

    “Community is what defines our people and we are witnessing a terrible tragedy in a wonderful community,” he said.

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  • Sabotage hits trains in north Germany, forcing 3-hour halt

    Sabotage hits trains in north Germany, forcing 3-hour halt

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    BERLIN — A train communications system in Germany was targeted by sabotage Saturday, forcing both passenger and cargo trains to halt for nearly three hours across the northwest of the country, authorities said.

    Operator Deutsche Bahn said early Saturday that no long-distance or regional trains were running in the states of Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Bremen. That also affected trains between Berlin and Cologne, neither of which was directly affected by the system failure, and between Berlin and Amsterdam, while trains from Denmark weren’t crossing the border into Germany.

    The sabotage hit a primary mode of regional and intercity transport in Germany as well as disrupting supply lines for industries using cargo trains.

    After the nearly three-hour suspension, Deutsche Bahn said the problem — a “failure of the digital train radio system” — had been resolved but that some disruptions could still be expected. It later said the outage was caused by sabotage.

    Transport Minister Volker Wissing said cables that are “essential for handling railway traffic safely” were deliberately severed at two separate locations. He said Germany’s federal police were investigating the incident.

    Federal police said the crime scenes were in a Berlin suburb and in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, German news agency dpa reported. There was no immediate word on who might have been responsible.

    “We can’t say anything today either about the background to this act or the perpetrators,” Wissing said. “The investigation will have to yield that.”

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  • Nobel prize will give us ‘strength’, says Ukraine NGO head

    Nobel prize will give us ‘strength’, says Ukraine NGO head

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    Kyiv, Ukraine – The head of the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), a Kyiv-based human rights organisation that was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, says the prize will give them “more strength” in their efforts to fight for human rights.

    “We were shocked; even this morning, we knew nothing,” Oleksandra Matviychuk told Al Jazeera.

    “We are grateful for this award because we have made a titanic effort at the altar of peace, democracy and freedom; an effort that is still ongoing,” said Matviychuk who is currently returning to Ukraine from an event in New York.

    The organisation was originally founded in 2007 to tackle the high levels of corruption and promote democratic rights in Ukraine.

    In 2013 and 2014, the CCL set up the EuroMaidan SOS project, which recorded human rights abuses at the demonstrations in Kyiv’s Maidan Square by the security forces under the pro-Russian government led by then-President Viktor Yanukovych. The project also provided legal assistance to protesters.

    After a change of government, the CCL began to work on legislative initiatives to reform the country’s major institutions, including the security service, judicial sector and police force.

    During this period, the CCL also began documenting human rights abuses committed by Russia, recording multiple instances of torture, kidnapping, and murder committed by Russian forces and pro-Russian separatists in Crimea and the eastern Donbas region since fighting began in 2014. Russia annexed Crimea in a step considered a violation of international law.

    Matviychuk, the head of the CCL, told Al Jazeera the war crimes committed during this period, which went unpunished by the international community, resulted in a “cycle of impunity” that continued after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country on February 24.

    Since then, CCL volunteers have been tirelessly sifting through testimonies, medical documents, and other evidence sent in by people who say they have been the victims of or witnessed crimes committed by Russian forces.

    In light of the recent media attention the CCL has received since the award was announced, Matviychuk took to social media to call for Russia to be excluded from the UN Security Council. She also called for the UN and participating states to engage in large-scale reform of the international peace and security system.

    Matviychuk, who has researched human rights abuses for 20 years, describes the war crimes committed by Russia since February 24 as different in their “scale and brutality”.

    Negotiating the release of civilian hostages

    At the CCL’s offices in a secluded back street in Kyiv’s bustling centre, the CCL now has been working towards negotiating the release of civilian hostages held in Russia or Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia.

    Natalia Yashchuk, co-ordinator for national projects at the CCL, said that the organisation has recorded 671 cases of forced civilian kidnappings, of which 205 have been released. It is currently working with a bilateral Russian-Ukrainian legal team.

    Yashchuk, speaking to Al Jazeera, said Russia, in a “major violation of humanitarian law”, has failed to distinguish many civilians held captive in detention centres from prisoners of war.

    Recently, however, the CCL oversaw the successful release of Viktoria Andrusha, a teenager adducted from the Chernihiv region in March 2022 after being accused by Russia of sharing information about troop movements with Ukrainian authorities.

    Olga Scherba said she recently found out that her brother, husband and friend, who went missing in February, are currently being held in Crimea. The 25-year-old said she has received help from the CCL.

    Speaking from a secure room in central Kyiv, she said that Yashchuk’s successful work in getting Andrusha released had given her “new hope” that the three men would also be allowed to return home.

    In the social media post, Matviychuk also called for the creation of an international tribunal that would bring Russian and Belarusian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, who she describes as war criminals, “to justice”.

    In May 2022, Matviychuk told Al Jazeera that Ukraine needed more international support in prosecuting war crimes committed by Russia as its domestic capacity was overwhelmed. “At the international level, there is only one effective mechanism that can provide justice, and that is the International Criminal Court,” she said, “but they only look at a few cases.”

    Since 2013 Ukraine has accepted the court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed on its territory.

    The Nobel Peace Prize was also awarded to Memorial, a Russian organisation and Ales Bialiatski, a jailed Belarusian activist.

    Matviychuk said that the Nobel Peace Prize will “give us more strength and inspiration in our further efforts”.

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  • Sabotage hits trains in north Germany, forcing 3-hour halt

    Sabotage hits trains in north Germany, forcing 3-hour halt

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    BERLIN — A train communications system in Germany was targeted by sabotage Saturday, forcing both passenger and cargo trains to halt for nearly three hours across the northwest of the country, authorities said.

    Operator Deutsche Bahn said early Saturday that no long-distance or regional trains were running in the states of Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Bremen. That also affected trains between Berlin and Cologne, neither of which was directly affected by the system failure, and between Berlin and Amsterdam, while trains from Denmark weren’t crossing the border into Germany.

    The sabotage hit a primary mode of regional and intercity transport in Germany as well as disrupting supply lines for industries using cargo trains.

    After the nearly three-hour suspension, Deutsche Bahn said the problem — a “failure of the digital train radio system” — had been resolved but that some disruptions could still be expected. It later said the outage was caused by sabotage.

    Transport Minister Volker Wissing said cables that are “essential for handling railway traffic safely” were deliberately severed at two separate locations. He said Germany’s federal police were investigating the incident.

    Federal police said the crime scenes were in a Berlin suburb and in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, German news agency dpa reported. There was no immediate word on who might have been responsible.

    “We can’t say anything today either about the background to this act or the perpetrators,” Wissing said. “The investigation will have to yield that.”

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  • Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ talk edges beyond bounds of US intel

    Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ talk edges beyond bounds of US intel

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s warning that the world is at risk of a nuclear “Armageddon” was designed to send an unvarnished message that no one should underestimate the extraordinary danger if Russia deploys tactical nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, administration officials said Friday.

    The president’s grim assessment, delivered during a Democratic fundraiser on Thursday night, rippled around the globe and appeared to edge beyond the boundaries of current U.S. intelligence assessments. U.S. security officials continue to say they have no evidence that Vladimir Putin has imminent plans for a nuclear strike.

    Biden veered into talk about Ukraine at the end of his standard fundraising remarks, saying that Putin was “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”

    “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he added. He suggested the threat from Putin is real “because his military is — you might say — significantly underperforming.”

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday did not directly respond to a question about whether Biden had gone into the event intending to invoke Armageddon, as the White House sought to clarify the president’s off-the-cuff comments.

    She told reporters: “Russia’s talk of using nuclear weapons is irresponsible and there’s no way to use them without unintended consequences. It cannot happen.” She added that “if the Cuban missile crisis has taught us anything, it is the value of reducing nuclear risk and not brandishing it.”

    Biden’s national security team for months has warned that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine as it has faced a series of strategic setbacks on the battlefield. But the president’s remarks were the starkest warnings yet by the U.S. government about the nuclear stakes.

    One U.S. official said Biden was also trying to warn against underestimating the danger any level of tactical nuclear weapons.

    There’s some concern in the administration that Russia has determined it can use its nuclear arsenal in a manner short of a “full-blown” nuclear attack on Ukraine and face only limited reaction from U.S. and Western allies who are determined to keep the Ukraine conflict from turning into a broader war, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss administration thinking

    Putin has repeatedly alluded to using his country’s vast nuclear arsenal, including last month when he announced plans to conscript Russian men to serve in Ukraine.

    “I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction … and when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal,” Putin said. “It’s not a bluff.”

    In Europe, leaders sought to turn down the volume after Biden’s stark warning.

    Asked about Biden’s remarks, French President Emmanuel Macron said it was crucial to speak with care on the nuclear threat.

    “I have always refused to engage in political fiction, and especially … when speaking of nuclear weapons,” Macron said at a EU summit in Prague. “On this issue, we must be very careful.”

    European Council President Charles Michel told reporters that leaders take “every escalation very seriously,”

    “Threats will not intimidate us,” Michel said. “Instead, we are going to remain calm. We are going to keep cool heads and we will, each time, denounce the irresponsible character of these threats.”

    Jean-Pierre reiterated on Friday the U.S. has “not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons.”

    It’s not the first time that Biden’s comments have appeared to push against the margins of U.S. policy.

    Last month, Biden, in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview, said that “U.S. forces, U.S. men and women, would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. ”

    The White House said after the interview that U.S. policy toward Taiwan hasn’t changed. That policy says Washington wants to see Taiwan’s status resolved peacefully but doesn’t say whether U.S. forces might be sent in response to a Chinese attack.

    In March, as he wrapped up a speech in Warsaw, Biden seemed to call for the ouster of Putin, saying, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Before Biden could even board Air Force One to begin the flight back to Washington, aides were scrambling to clarify that he wasn’t calling for an immediate change in government in Moscow.

    Earlier that month, Biden called Putin a “war criminal” for the Russian onslaught in Ukraine before the White House walked back the comments. The White House had been avoiding applying the “war criminal” label to Putin, because it requires investigation and an international determination.

    After Biden used the term, his then-press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the president was “speaking from his heart” and clarified that the administration acknowledged there is a process for making a formal determination.

    As for Biden’s latest eyebrow-raising remarks, “People sort of say, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s Biden. You know, he says this stuff,’” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, and a veteran of nuclear policy research.

    “But overseas countries are saying, ‘Whoa, this is what the U.S. president says,”’ Kristensen said. “And so that means we have to be really careful about using big words” that in themselves can escalate nuclear tensions unintentionally.

    Biden’s strong choice of words could have an have an unintended impact with Russia, Kristensen said, the biggest problem with the president’s latest comments.

    “It’s quite clear to me that Putin will be looking at this and say to himself ’Wow, you know, I got their attention now. So they’re really afraid.’”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Sylvie Corbet in Prague, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed reporting. Boak reported from Hagerstown, Maryland.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • How meltdown in a $1 trillion market brought the UK to the brink of a financial crisis | CNN Business

    How meltdown in a $1 trillion market brought the UK to the brink of a financial crisis | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN Business
     — 

    Pension funds are designed to be dull. Their singular goal — earning enough money to make payouts to retirees — favors cool heads over brash risk takers.

    But as markets in the United Kingdom went haywire last week, hundreds of British pension fund managers found themselves at the center of a crisis that forced the Bank of England to step in to restore stability and avert a broader financial meltdown.

    All it took was one big shock. Following finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng’s announcement on Friday, Sept. 23 of plans to ramp up borrowing to pay for tax cuts, investors dumped the pound and UK government bonds, sending yields on some of that debt soaring at the fastest rate on record.

    The scale of the tumult put enormous pressure on many pension funds by upending an investing strategy that involves the use of derivatives to hedge their bets.

    As the price of government bonds crashed, the funds were asked to pony up billions of pounds in collateral. In a scramble for cash, investment managers were forced to sell whatever they could — including, in some cases, more government bonds. That sent yields even higher, sparking another wave of collateral calls.

    “It started to feed itself,” said Ben Gold, head of investment at XPS Pensions Group, a UK pensions consultancy. “Everyone was looking to sell and there was no buyer.”

    The Bank of England went into crisis mode. After working through the night of Tuesday, Sept. 27, it stepped into the market the next day with a pledge to buy up to £65 billion ($73 billion) in bonds if needed. That stopped the bleeding and averted what the central bank later told lawmakers was its worst fear: a “self-reinforcing spiral” and “widespread financial instability.”

    In a letter to the head of the UK Parliament’s Treasury Committee this week, the Bank of England said that if it hadn’t interceded, a number of funds would have defaulted, amplifying the strain on the financial system. It said its intervention was essential to “restore core market functioning.”

    Pension funds are now racing to raise money to refill their coffers. Yet there are questions about whether they can find their footing before the Bank of England’s emergency bond-buying is due to end on Oct. 14. And for a wider range of investors, the near-miss is a wake-up call.

    For the first time in decades, interest rates are rising quickly around the world. In that climate, markets are prone to accidents.

    “What the previous two weeks have told you is there can be a lot more volatility in markets,” said Barry Kenneth, chief investment officer at the Pension Protection Fund, which manages pensions for employees of UK companies that become insolvent. “It’s easy to invest when everything’s going up. It’s a lot more difficult to invest when you’re trying to catch a falling knife, or you’ve got to readjust to a new environment.”

    The first signs of trouble appeared among fund managers who focus on so-called “liability-driven investment,” or LDI, for pensions. Gold said he started to receive messages from worried clients over the weekend of Sept. 24-25.

    LDI is built on a straightforward premise: Pensions need enough money to pay what they owe retirees well into the future. To plan for payouts in 30 or 50 years, they buy long-dated bonds, while purchasing derivatives to hedge these bets. In the process, they have to put up collateral. If bond yields rise sharply, they are asked to put up even more collateral in what’s known as a “margin call.” This obscure corner of the market has grown rapidly in recent years, reaching a valuation of more £1 trillion ($1.1 trillion), according to the Bank of England.

    When bond yields rise slowly over time, it’s not a problem for pensions deploying LDI strategies, and actually helps their finances. But if bond yields shoot up very quickly, it’s a recipe for trouble. According to the Bank of England, the move in bond yields before it intervened was “unprecedented.” The four-day move in 30-year UK government bonds was more than twice what was seen during the highest-stress period of the pandemic.

    “The sharpness and the viciousness of the move is what really caught people out,” Kenneth said.

    The margin calls came in — and kept coming. The Pension Protection Fund said it faced a £1.6 billion call for cash. It was able to pay without dumping assets, but others were caught off guard, and were forced into a fire sale of government bonds, corporate debt and stocks to raise money. Gold estimated that at least half of the 400 pension programs that XPS advises faced collateral calls, and that across the industry, funds are now looking to fill a hole of between £100 billion and £150 billion.

    “When you push such large moves through the financial system, it makes sense that something would break,” said Rohan Khanna, a strategist at UBS.

    When market dysfunction sparks a chain reaction, it’s not just scary for investors. The Bank of England made clear in its letter that the bond market rout “may have led to an excessive and sudden tightening of financing conditions for the real economy” as borrowing costs skyrocketed. For many businesses and mortgage holders, they already have.

    So far, the Bank of England has only bought £3.8 billion in bonds, far less than it could have purchased. Still, the effort has sent a strong signal. Yields on longer-term bonds have dropped sharply, giving pension funds time to recoup — though they’ve recently started to rise again.

    “What the Bank of England has done is bought time for some of my peers out there,” Kenneth said.

    Still, Kenneth is concerned that if the program ends next week as scheduled, the task won’t be complete given the complexity of many pension funds. Daniela Russell, head of UK rates strategy at HSBC, warned in a recent note to clients that there’s a risk of a “cliff-edge,” especially since the Bank of England is moving ahead with previous plans to start selling bonds it bought during the pandemic at the end of the month.

    “It might be hoped that the precedent of BoE intervention continues to provide a backstop beyond this date, but this may not be sufficient to prevent a renewed vigorous sell-off in long-dated gilts,” she wrote.

    As central banks jack up interest rates at the fastest clip in decades, investors are nervous about the implications for their portfolios and for the economy. They’re holding more cash, which makes it harder to execute trades and can exacerbate jarring price moves.

    That makes a surprise event more likely to cause massive disruption, and the specter of the next shocker looms. Will it be a rough batch of economic data? Trouble at a global bank? Another political misstep in the United Kingdom?

    Gold said the pension industry as a whole is better prepared now, though he concedes it would be “naive” to think there couldn’t be another bout of instability.

    “You would need to see yields rise more quickly than we saw this time,” he said, noting the larger buffers funds are now amassing. “It would require something of absolutely historic proportions for that not to be enough, but you never know.”

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  • USWNT defeated by England in front of record Wembley crowd under shadow of Yates report | CNN

    USWNT defeated by England in front of record Wembley crowd under shadow of Yates report | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) was defeated 2-1 by England at Wembley in an international friendly that spotlighted both the increasing popularity of women’s football and its failures.

    Billed as a match-up between the world and European champions, both teams had displayed impressive form in recent months – the USWNT arrived on a 21-game unbeaten streak and England on its own 23-game unbeaten run that included winning Euro 2022.

    But the build-up to the match was dominated by matters off the pitch as, back in the US, women’s professional soccer had been left reeling from an independent investigation that found systemic abuse and misconduct within the sport.

    “It’s been an extremely difficult week for everybody and I’m proud of the players for even being on the field and playing the game,” US head coach Vltako Andonovski said after the match, according to the BBC. “It wasn’t easy.

    “I applaud their bravery and I applaud their fearless mentality and relentlessness. Once again they showed that nothing can stop them playing the game that they love. I’m very proud of them and hoping we never have to go through that again.”

    Before kickoff, both teams came together, holding a banner that read, “Protect the Players,” while the Wembley Arch was illuminated with teal light to show support for the victims of abuse.

    “First and foremost, if the players aren’t protected, then you don’t have a game, you don’t have anything. So for us to put that at the forefront of such an important night and game was really amazing and powerful for all of us,” American soccer star Megan Rapinoe said after the game, per Sky Sports.

    Throughout the match, both teams also wore teal armbands in a further display of support.

    “To take the time to do that, get the armbands – I think they were flown in from California and a little tight on some people, I’m happy I have a skinny arm – just an incredible show by all of us, some things are bigger than the game and we were able to put that on display,” Rapinoe added.

    “Obviously the report came out about our league but … it’s probably a global issue as well. To anyone in the stands tonight who has been affected by it, obviously all the players, to just show that kind of support on a night like this.”

    And the night showcased the increasing reach of women’s football as 76,893 fans gathered at Wembley Stadium – the highest attended friendly match in USWNT history – to watch both sides beginning to fine tune their preparations for next year’s World Cup.

    England took the lead after just nine minutes, as Beth Mead played a ball into the box that eluded US defender Alana Cook and landed at the feet of Lauren Hemp, who guided the ball into the goal.

    Although England continued to threaten, the American defense held firm and the USWNT tied the scores less than 20 minutes later as Sophia Smith capitalized on a mistake to fire the ball past England goalkeeper Mary Earps.

    “[Smith] seemed like she made a name for herself. But we can’t forget she’s 21 years old,” US head coach Vltako Andovnoski told media after the game, according to CBS Sports.

    “To come in an environment like this, and to be a difference maker … it just shows the potential that she has. I think that we haven’t seen the best of her [yet].

    “These are games that will expedite Soph’s development, and I’m excited to see what she’s going to look like six months from now, nine months from now.”

    Sophia Smith is one of the USWNT's rising stars.

    But England restored its lead soon after when the VAR intervened to award the home side a penalty after a high foot from Hailie Mace caught Lucy Bronze in the head. Georgia Stanway converted for a 2-1 lead.

    And the free flowing first half seemed to show no signs of abating as Smith opened up the English defense for Rapinoe who fed Trinity Rodman for a goal. But once again, the VAR intervened in England’s favor, ruling that Smith had been fractionally offside in the move.

    The second half was an altogether cagier affair as England missed two opportunities to extend its lead, allowing the USWNT a glimmer of hope.

    When the referee awarded a penalty to the Americans for handball with just 10 minutes remaining, that glimmer widened a little but replays overturned the decision and England held on to close out its first win against the reigning world champions since 2017.

    “You are the best team in the world when you have won the World Cup. We haven’t,” England head coach Sarina Wiegman told reporters, per Reuters. “We are in a good place, but there are so many good countries.

    “We just have to do what we can, control, stick together and communicate with each other at all times. We need to have the freedom to make our own choices in the game. I think we are doing well in that.”

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  • Ukrainian authorities take stock of ruins in liberated Lyman

    Ukrainian authorities take stock of ruins in liberated Lyman

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    LYMAN, Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities are just beginning to sift through the wreckage of the devastated city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine as they assess the humanitarian toll, and possibility of war crimes, from a months-long Russian occupation.

    Few of the buildings in the city in the Donetsk region — an area which Moscow illegally claimed as Russian territory last week following a staged “referendum” — have survived without damage, and most houses are without basic utilities.

    Walls around the town bear graffitied reminders of the four-month occupation by Russian troops, with words like “Russia,” “USSR” and “Russian World” scrawled on surfaces that are riddled by bullets.

    Mark Tkachenko, communications inspector for the Kramatorsk district police of the Donetsk region, said Friday that authorities are still searching for the bodies of civilians amid the destruction, and trying to determine causes of death.

    “They will look at when people died and how they died. If it was in the period when the city was occupied and they have injuries from Kalashnikov rifles, then of course, it’s a war crime,” Tkachenko told The Associated Press.

    While it is still unclear how many died in the city since it was overrun by Russian forces in May, he said, Lyman today has become a “humanitarian crisis” which could still hold further grim discoveries.

    “Some people died in their houses, some people died in the streets, and the bodies are now being sent to experts for examination,” he said. “For now we are looking for grave sites, and there are probably mass graves.”

    The road approaching Lyman, which Russians used as a strategic logistics and transport hub during its occupation, is littered with miles of desolation left behind from intense fighting as Ukrainian troops pressed to retake it late last week.

    The forests surrounding the city were decimated by the fighting, and the burned out and twisted wreckage of dozens of vehicles lined the road which was pockmarked by craters from falling rockets.

    Tetyana Ignatchenko, spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional administration, said the city’s civilian infrastructure had been “completely destroyed,” and that an effort was ongoing to clear it of the bodies of Russian soldiers abandoned during their army’s retreat.

    “Police and criminologists are working, looking for Russian bodies and collecting them in the streets and forests. There are very many of them because the occupiers didn’t bring them with them,” Ignatchenko said.

    As they left Lyman, Russian soldiers placed mines on the bodies of some of their fallen comrades, set to explode when Ukrainian authorities attempted to clear them, said Tkachenko of the Kramatorsk district police. Some had exploded, but caused no injuries.

    As Ukrainian authorities entered the city, they found that many civilian residents had been killed by shelling while others, mostly older people, had died during the Russian occupation because of a lack of food and medicine, Tkachenko said.

    Looting of civilian homes by Russian soldiers, he said, was widespread.

    Anatolii, 71, a Lyman resident who lined up in the city’s central square Friday to receive humanitarian aid, said Russian soldiers generally left people his age alone, but that he had heard rumors of prolonged detentions of civilians and that his daughter’s home had been robbed.

    “I was looking after my daughter’s house when they came over and opened the house with a crowbar and stole everything that they needed and escaped,” he said. “What could I say, and to whom? Could I fight with them? No.”

    The liberation of Lyman came as the latest in a series of gains by Ukrainian forces as part of successful counteroffensive operations in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions.

    Even as Ukraine has recovered thousands of square miles of territory in the last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to illegally annex the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Western leaders decried the move as illegitimate and a reckless escalation of the war, which began on Feb. 24.

    As Ukrainian forces moved back into liberated cities and towns, they discovered some instances of mass graves and torture sites, such as those recently observed by AP journalists in recaptured settlements in the Kharkiv region.

    In one liberated city, Izium, an AP investigation uncovered 10 separate torture sites.

    Ukrainian media earlier reported the discovery of a mass grave in Lyman, but authorities on site wouldn’t confirm or deny its existence and wouldn’t elaborate further, saying only that investigations were ongoing.

    But Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko on Friday said that two burial sites had been found in Lyman, including around 200 individual civilian graves and a mass grave with an undetermined number of bodies.

    On Friday, Tetyana, who didn’t want to give her last name, wheeled a hand cart full of squashes toward her house on the outskirts of Lyman on a street where most houses bore damage from the fighting.

    Her home had been heavily damaged in a Russian attack, she said, pointing at what used to be a window in her kitchen from when a rocket came through the wall.

    “I was at home and fell into the bathroom, and my daughter was in the hallway. How we weren’t killed, I don’t know,” she said. “The storage shed is destroyed, the roof was destroyed, but now we’ve repaired it. Here you see the doors are also damaged.”

    Tetyana pointed to a pair of green trousers she was wearing, and several camouflage coats hanging on hooks outside her house. She’d found the Russian uniforms, she said, “laying around. All my stuff was destroyed so I have nothing to wear.”

    Daria Yevheniivna, 15, said that while she had spent most of the occupation at home in hiding, she now feels a new sense of hope that her city can be salvaged.

    “Everything got better,” she said. “It became very calm. I don’t hear shooting anymore, and I can sleep in the house, not in the cellar. People became more kind.”

    Anatolii, who also didn’t give his last name, complained as he spoke on the central square that some of his neighbors only watched Russian television, which he said had “messed with their heads.” He has tried to influence them, he said, but without success.

    “There are some people who were waiting for the Russians, but I am Ukrainian, and we don’t like them,” he said.

    “War is war. This is a real war,” he said. “Russians shout that it’s a special operation, but it’s only a special operation for them. For us, it’s a real war.”

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Can Truss’s tax cut U-turn restore financial stability in the UK?

    Can Truss’s tax cut U-turn restore financial stability in the UK?

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    From: Counting the Cost

    Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss forced to scrap plans to remove the 45 percent top income tax rate on high earners.

    Just a few days ago, Britain’s new prime minister was confident she would be able to kick-start economic growth by cutting taxes. Yet the country is still on course for a recession.

    Faced with market turmoil and criticism from within her Conservative Party, Liz Truss was forced to scrap plans to remove the 45 percent top income tax rate on high earners.

    The U-turn is being seen as a humiliating about-face that leaves Truss’s economic policy and premiership in crisis.

    Elsewhere, another wake-up call on the cost of climate change from Hurricane Ian. And we speak to Boeing’s vice president.

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  • Massive explosion on Crimea’s Kerch bridge, Russian state media reports | CNN

    Massive explosion on Crimea’s Kerch bridge, Russian state media reports | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A fuel tank exploded early Saturday on Europe’s longest bridge, which links Russia to the annexed territory of Crimea, according to Russian state media RIA and social media footage.

    Images of the Kerch bridge posted on social media appear to show a portion of the roadway of the vehicle and rail bridge had fallen into the waters below it. Flames are seen burning from rail cars above.

    The tanker was located on the 19-kilometer (11 mile) long bridge – strategically important because it links Russia’s Krasnodar region with the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

    The bridge spans the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov.

    The source of the explosion remains unclear.

    In an interview in August, a senior Ukrainian military commander said the Kerch bridge was a legitimate target.

    “This is a necessary measure in order to deprive them (Russia) of the opportunity to provide reserves and reinforce their troops from Russian territory,” Maj. Gen. Dmytro Marchenko said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.

    Work is “underway to extinguish the fire,” the adviser to the Russian administration head of occupied Crimea, Oleg Kryunchkov, said in a Telegram post, adding that the bridge’s “shipping arches were not damaged.”

    The Kerch bridge is able to handle 40,000 cars a day and to move 14 million passengers and 13 million tons of cargo per year, state news agency RIA Novosti reported when the bridge opened in 2018.

    After the bridge opened, the United States condemned its construction as illegal.

    “Russia’s construction of the bridge serves as a reminder of Russia’s ongoing willingness to flout international law,” a US State Department statement said.

    “The bridge represents not only an attempt by Russia to solidify its unlawful seizure and its occupation of Crimea, but also impedes navigation by limiting the size of ships that can transit the Kerch Strait, the only path to reach Ukraine’s territorial waters in the Sea of Azov.”

    This is a developing story. More to follow.

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  • Large fire reported on key bridge linking Russia to Crimea

    Large fire reported on key bridge linking Russia to Crimea

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian state-backed media are reporting that a fire has occurred on the bridge linking mainland Russia with the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula.

    RIA-Novosti and the Tass news agency quoted local Russian official Oleg Kryuchkov as saying an object thought to be a fuel storage tank caught fire and that traffic has been stopped on the bridge.

    Images shared on social media purported to show fire and damage to the span.

    The authenticity of the reports and images could not be immediately verified.

    The crossing is a pair of road and rail bridges that Russia built after it seized and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in violation of international law in 2014.

    The fire occurred hours after explosions rocked the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv early Saturday, sending towering plumes of smoke into the sky and triggering a series of secondary explosions.

    Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that the early-morning explosions were the result of missile strikes in the center of the city. He said that the blasts sparked fires at one of the city’s medical institutions and a nonresidential building. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

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  • US to host top officials from 30 countries in effort to escalate crackdown on Russian defense supply chains | CNN Politics

    US to host top officials from 30 countries in effort to escalate crackdown on Russian defense supply chains | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Top officials from 30 countries are scheduled to meet next week with senior US sanctions and intelligence officials as the Biden administration continues to escalate its efforts to strangle Russia’s military industrial complex.

    The meeting will serve as a critical opportunity for senior officials from across the Western sanctions coalition to detail where the effort has effectively blocked or shattered critical supply networks, as well as share intelligence and information about ongoing Russian evasion efforts, the official said.

    “We’re getting together the countries that are really taking action,” Deputy Treasury Wally Adeyemo told CNN in an interview on the first event of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. “We’re bringing all 30 countries together to talk about how our attack on Russia’s supply chain is going.”

    The meeting comes at an inflection point in the eight-month conflict as Ukraine continues to notch major battlefield gains and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to escalate his country’s military efforts despite the defeats. US officials and their allies have focused intensively on finding and cracking critical supply chains for a Russian military already facing morale and materiel shortages.

    It’s been an effort driven by US market and intelligence information, as well as significant coordination with officials from the Defense Department and Defense Intelligence Agency who bring significant experience with the shape and critical elements of military supply chains.

    But the meeting also comes at a moment Russia is desperately engaged in an intensive effort to find work-arounds to the Western coalition’s crackdown in order to maintain the effort, even as it has turned to countries like Iran and North Korea for potential supplies and equipment.

    If the Russian central bank’s emergency actions to keep the broader Russian economy afloat amid an avalanche of sanctions marked one key element of the Russian response, the constant search for new shell companies, entities and go-betweens to evade sanctions has been critical to the other. Both have maintained a semblance of productivity despite the scale of the Western efforts, but both face growing pressures – and atrophying stockpiles and supplies – each month that passes.

    The Treasury Department will host the October 14 event, which will be co-led by Adeyemo, Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Morgan Muir.

    Muir’s presence is particularly notable. Adeyemo and Graves serve as point people in the administration’s sanctions effort and head up teams engaged daily with coalition members about sanctions efforts. But Muir, representing the intelligence community at the meeting, signals the goal of providing allies with critical information to tighten their own sanctions efforts.

    A goal of the meeting is “to provide information to them that many of them have never received before,” a senior Treasury official said. It’s something that underscores the range of participants in the meeting – and the coalition generally.

    While G7 countries have served as the critical players in crafting and implementing the sharpest edge of the economic sanctions and export controls, dozens of other nations have played a significant role in shutting off financial and technological avenues for Putin.

    “It’s important to remember that countries from Asia and around the world have taken actions to constrain the Russian military industrial complex,” Adeyemo said.

    US officials, relying on the intelligence community’s efforts and extensive assistance from the financial sector, have made tracking those efforts central to their economic war strategy, underscoring the

    The meeting will be in person on the margins of the annual fall meetings of the IMF and World Bank, and will include representatives at the deputy finance minister level from Baltic nations, Poland, Japan, Cyprus, the European Commission and New Zealand.

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  • Iran’s ‘women’s revolution’ could be a Berlin Wall moment | CNN Politics

    Iran’s ‘women’s revolution’ could be a Berlin Wall moment | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The Islamic regime in Iran has ruled for decades with fear and intimidation.

    Outrage at the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22 year-old who died after being detained by Iran’s morality policy, allegedly for improperly wearing her hijab, ignited nationwide protests across the country that have gone on for weeks.

    That Iranians are risking their lives and freedom to stand up to their government has sparked hope among many that change is coming. Read CNN’s latest report.

    I talked on the phone to Masih Alinejad, an Iranian in exile in the US who works as a journalist and activist.

    Key points:

    • She uses social media – 8 million followers on Instagram alone – to amplify and aid the protests inside Iran.
    • US authorities charged four Iranian nationals with trying to kidnap her last year.
    • To Alinejad, that women in Iran are removing their headscarves as an act of protest is equal to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
    • She sees solidarity with dissidents from other oil-rich autocracies like Russia and Venezuela, and has a stern message for feminists in the West.

    Our conversation, edited for clarity and length, is below. I’ve also added some context and links in parentheses where appropriate.

    WHAT MATTERS: This newsletter is not usually focused on Iran. Can you first just explain what’s happening?

    ALINEJAD: Mahsa Amini was only 22 years old. … She came from Saqqez to Tehran for a vacation. Then she got arrested by the so-called morality police – because I call them the hijab police.

    And for your audience, if they don’t know what morality police means, they’re a bunch of police walking in the streets, telling people whether their way of wearing hijab is proper or not.

    Mahsa was arrested for wearing inappropriate hijab. So she was not unveiled.

    (Here is a CNN report in which the Iranian police deny the allegation she was beaten.)

    ALINEJAD: That created huge anger among Iranians. And that is why women across Iran first started to cut their hair. Then they took to the street and they started to burn their headscarves. And now, with men, shoulder to shoulder, across Iran they’re not only saying no to compulsory hijab, they are actually chanting against the dictator and they are saying we want an end to the Islamic Republic.

    This is a revolution.

    To me, this is a women’s revolution against a gender apartheid regime.

    WHAT MATTERS: The Iranian government has tried to crack down on this. We see video that gets out of Iran of these protests. How have things changed in the weeks since Mahsa’s death?

    ALINEJAD: From the beginning, the level of crackdown was so brutal. They opened fire, they really opened fire on teenagers, school leaders, university students, they opened fire on unarmed people.

    Now some reports say more than 130 people have been killed. But it’s strongly believed the number is much more than this. Only in Zahedan on only one day, they opened fire on those who were praying. Who were praying. They killed more than 80 people in Zahedan.

    (CNN has not verified all of these claims. Related CNN report: Iranian security forces beat, shot and detained students of elite Tehran university, witnesses say.

    Amnesty International has reported on the killing of 66 in Zahedan along with other deaths recorded in other places.

    Regarding death tolls: CNN cannot independently verify the death toll –  a precise figure is impossible for anyone outside the Iranian government to confirm – and different estimates have been given by opposition groups, international rights organizations and local journalists.)

    ALINEJAD: The Iranian regime cut off the internet in some cities to prevent the rest of the world from getting to know about the crackdown, to get to learn about the number of people killed.

    But again. That didn’t stop people. Actually, it changed the tone of the protesters. They became more angry. They were holding the names and photos of those who got killed and the major slogan was this: ‘We are ready to die, but we won’t live under humiliation.’

    One of the young women whose name was Hadis Najafi, she was only 20 years old. She made a video of herself walking in the street and saying I’m joining the protests. In the future, if I see that Iran has changed, that change came, then I was proudly part of this demonstration. She got killed. There are many of them.

    (CNN has reported that Najafi’s family said she was shot six times and never made it home from a protest. She was 23. There are reports of multiple young women killed. Here’s a CNN video report on Nika Shahkarami, whose family found her body at a morgue after not being able to find her for 10 days following an Instagram story of her burning her headscarf.)

    Students filmed themselves burning their headscarves, but they got killed. But murdering and killing didn’t stop the protests. Instead they became more angry. Now schoolgirls came out, university professors came out, teachers came out and ask for a strike.

    (Here’s a CNN report that explains the special significance of strikes in Iran.)

    WHAT MATTERS: The flashpoint is one woman’s death that set off all of these protests. But it’s a movement that’s been building for months –

    ALINEJAD: Don’t say for months. I don’t accept that. It has been building for years. Years of women pushing back the boundaries the anti-woman laws, especially compulsory hijab laws.

    For years and years, these women that you see in the streets, they have been fighting back compulsory hijabs alone. Like lonely soldiers. I myself have published videos of women being beaten by morality police under the hashtag #mycameraismyweapon. I really want you to go and check this hashtag. Brave women filming themselves while being harassed by morality police and looking to the morality police and saying that you cannot tell me what to wear.

    Slavery used to be legal. I’m not going to respect bad law in Iran.

    This is being built up by women within the society practicing their civil disobedience in bravely saying no to forced hijab and the gender apartheid regime for years and years. That’s my opinion. Mahsa’s name became a symbol of resistance for women to take to the streets in large numbers. That’s the new thing.

    WHAT MATTERS: How will this be transformed into permanent change? How will it evolve from here?

    ALINEJAD: Look, this is not going to happen overnight. This is the beginning of an end. It takes time. It reminds me of the revolution 40 years ago. People were taking to the streets for like one month and were going back home and then coming back again. The national strike helped a lot. For me and millions of people, this is just the beginning to an end.

    The compulsory hijab is not just a small piece of cloth for Iranians. It’s like the Berlin Wall. I keep saying that. If women can successfully tear this wall down, the Islamic Republic won’t exist.

    Maybe in the West, people ignore me and they never take this seriously. But the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, he knows what I’m talking about. That’s why, just two days ago, he referred to my statement comparing the hijab to the Berlin Wall, saying that ‘she is an American agent and we have taken action against her.’

    (Alinejad shared this video of Khamenei on Twitter, in which he refers to US political elements making the comparison to the Berlin Wall.)

    ALINEJAD: But it’s not me. It’s millions of people who believe that compulsory hijab is like the main pillar of the religious dictatorship. It’s like the main pillar of the Islamic Republic.

    That’s why I believe that now people are being fearless and clear that we want to break this weakest pillar of the Islamic Republic… I strongly believe that the biggest threat to the Islamic Republic are the women who are leading the revolution, who are facing guns and bullets and saying that we want an end for this gender apartheid regime.

    WHAT MATTERS: In Iran, and we’ve seen this in Russia as well, social media is helping spread the word and is essential to organizing protests. Here in the US, it is often viewed as a threat to our democracy because that’s where misinformation is spread. I wonder if you had any thoughts on that dichotomy.

    ALINEJAD: Let me be very clear with you. Right now, the tech companies are actually helping the Islamic Republic. First of all, Iranians are banned from using social media – Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are filtered. The leaders like Khamenei and other officials who ban 80 million people from using social media, they all have verified accounts. They have multiple accounts on social media. Basically, the Iranian regime cut off the Internet for its own people, but they’re being more than welcomed on social media to spread fake information, misinformation, disinformation.

    (Accounts that appear to be associated with Khamenei are on Twitter and Instagram and have large followings. They are not verified by Instagram or Twitter. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Meta said this in an email: “Iranians use apps like Instagram to stay close to their loved ones, find information and shed light on important events – and we hope the Iranian authorities restore their access soon. In the meantime, our teams are following the situation closely, and are focused on only removing content that breaks our rules, while addressing any enforcement mistakes as quickly as possible.”)

    WHAT MATTERS: The US government has tried to increase Iranian’s access to the internet. Is that working?

    ALINEJAD: Oh, of course, this is phenomenal. But we need more. We need more.

    The thing is, at the same time, the US government, we’re pleased that they’re providing internet access for Iranians. This is good. We appreciate that.

    But at the same time, the US government is focused on getting a deal from this regime, the same regime.

    They condemn the brutality, they condemn the Iranian government for killings, but at the same time, they try to give money, billions of dollars, to the same murderers. And I don’t understand this contradiction.

    (The US government could give Iran’s government ​access to billions of dollars of frozen Iranian funds if it re-joins an agreement whereby Iran can sell oil in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons capability. Recent talks, however, have not gone well. Read more.)

    ALINEJAD: Many people in the streets are now risking their lives and want an end for the same regime. They aren’t asking for US government to go there and save them at all. They’re brave enough to do it themselves. But they’re really clearly asking the US government not to save the Iranian regime. …

    People believe that the money goes to the benefit of the people. It doesn’t go to the people. The money goes to Syria, Lebanon, to Hamas, Hezbollah, to terrorist organizations.

    For millions of Iranians now, this is the moment they want the US government to ask its allies, the European countries, to recall their ambassadors and to cut their ties with the murders until the day that they are sure that the Iranian regime is stopped killing its own people.

    (CNN isn’t able to confirm that all the money goes to terrorist organizations or that none of it goes to Iranian people. Iran does fund terror groups outside its borders, according to the US government, and its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard is a terror group, according to the US government.)

    WHAT MATTERS: I want to talk about another dichotomy you’ve pointed out. You wrote in The Washington Post that feminists all over the world need to pay attention and take to the streets.

    ALINEJAD: You cannot call yourself a feminist in the West, in America, and not take action on one of the most important feminist revolutions, in Iran.

    By saying that, I don’t mean that I want the feminists to just appear on TV and cut their hair to show their solidarity.

    I want, especially the female politicians, to cut their ties … and instead take to the streets to show their solidarity with the women of Iran. When the Women’s March happened here in America, like every single feminist around the world showed solidarity. I was part of the Women’s March in New York. The main slogan was ‘my body my choice.’

    But at the same time I’m witnessing that when it comes to Iran and Afghanistan, it seems that my body my choice is not as important as it is in the West.

    (Here Alinejad said women representing Western governments who meet with Iranian and Afghan officials should refrain from wearing headscarves.)

    WHAT MATTERS: You took part this week in an Oslo Freedom Forum event in New York with other dissidents from Russia and Venezuela. Those are two places that are repressive, and they’re also funded largely by oil. The US wants more oil on the market. I just wondered if you had any larger comments to make on this question?

    ALINEJAD: This is what’s missing here. The dictators are more united than our freedom fighters.

    Let me give you an example. Just two months ago, (Vladimir) Putin went to Iran. (Nicolás) Maduro from Venezuela went to Iran … from China to Russia to Venezuela to Nicaragua, everywhere. The leaders from autocracies and dictatorships are united. They’re helping each other. They’re supporting each other to oppress protests taking place in each country. But we the freedom fighters, we the opposition to these dictators must be united as well, because when we fight against autocracy or dictatorship on our own, we’re not going to be successful.

    (Alinejad said she has talked to dissidents from Russia and Venezuela about calling a World Liberty Congress for opposition and activist leaders.)

    ALINEJAD: If we don’t get united to end dictatorship, then the dictators will get united to end democracy. We’re not fighting just for ourselves. I’m not fighting just for Iran. Garry Kasparov is not fighting for just Russia. Leopoldo Lopez is not fighting just for Venezuela. We are fighting for democracy. We’re trying to protect the rest of the world from these dictators.

    (Our conversation continued from here and Alinejad argued the “United Nations is useless.” It’s true the United Nations prioritizes inclusion of most countries over action. And it is awkward at best that Iran sits on the UN’s Commission on Women’s Rights and Russia sits on the Security Council.)

    ALINEJAD: We need to have our own alternative United Nations, where all the good people get united, not the bad guys. Now the bad guys are winning because they’re helping each other. So this is the time that all the good people who care for freedom and democracy get united and have their own society.

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  • A ‘Great British Bake Off’ episode is getting heat for stereotyping Mexican culture | CNN

    A ‘Great British Bake Off’ episode is getting heat for stereotyping Mexican culture | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A recent episode of “The Great British Bake Off” is drawing criticism from some viewers for its depictions of Mexican culture.

    In the “Mexican Week” episode of the reality competition series, which aired in the UK on Tuesday and was released in the US on Friday, contestants are tasked with making pan dulce, tacos and tres leches cake – dishes that critics saw as cliché and uninspired. The hosts, meanwhile, pepper in attempts at tongue-in-cheek humor that not all viewers found funny.

    In the opening scene, hosts Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas wear sombreros and serapes while quipping about whether people might find such jokes offensive. At another point, Fielding muses, “So, is Mexico a real place?” while Lucas, in turn, likens the country to Xanadu. Other scenes include Lucas shaking maracas and contestants butchering pronunciations for guacamole and pico de gallo.

    The episode’s flippant tone and use of stereotypes rubbed many viewers the wrong way.

    Lesley Tellez, a food journalist and author of the cookbook “Eat Mexico: Recipes from Mexico City’s Streets, Markets and Fondas,” said that while she hadn’t seen the full episode, she found the snippets that were circulating on social media unimaginative.

    Despite its diversity, Mexican cuisine gets overshadowed in the culinary world by European cuisines, she added, and the show’s treatment of it perpetuates misconceptions.

    “I think they should have been a lot more thoughtful about it,” Tellez told CNN. “It reduces Mexican food to stereotypes – to being this two-dimensional cuisine.”

    Though it would have veered from the show’s typical format, Tellez said she would have liked to see “The Great British Bake Off” bring in a Mexican chef as a guest, as opposed to having two White, British judges serve as authorities.

    Alejandra Ramos, host of “The Great American Recipe” on PBS and a chef of Puerto Rican descent, said the episode reflected a lack of diversity behind and in front of the camera.

    “This would have been a perfect moment to bring in a Mexican guest judge or host to lead the discussions on camera and to guide the contestants,” she wrote in an email to CNN. “There should have also been consultants with actual Mexican cultural and food background and expertise brought in to consult on the story, scripting, food styling and challenges – as well as the post-production and marketing.”

    Ramos also questioned why a baking competition would challenge contestants to make tacos – a point viewers of the show have also called out on social media.

    “Mexico has incredible pastries, cakes, breads, and even baked savory dishes that they could have made instead,” she said. “But that would have called for more actual knowledge about Mexican culture and cuisine which is clearly lacking here.”

    CNN has reached out to “The Great British Bake Off” for comment.

    Since the first episode aired in 2010, “The Great British Bake Off” – which streams stateside as “The Great British Baking Show” – has become a cultural phenomenon, soothing viewers with its spirit of camaraderie and offering them an escape. Still, it’s garnered complaints of cultural insensitivity before.

    During a “Japanese Week” episode in 2020, some contestants devised concoctions that instead relied on Chinese and Indian flavors, which some critics said amounted to conflating distinct Asian cuisines. That same episode saw Lucas refer to katsu curry as “cat poo curry.”

    “Anyone who’s watched GBBO also knows how prickly the judges get when they think something has too much spice, how easily they exoticize non-British foods, and how the standard marker of a good baker is their ability to make a Victoria Sponge,” Jaya Saxena wrote in a 2020 article for Eater.

    Former contestants have also spoken out on the show’s diversity issues.

    In an interview with Insider last year, Rav Bansal called for new hosts and judges who were better versed in non-English ingredients and recipes, and who could better reflect the show’s diverse cast of contestants. Ali Imdad expressed surprise that production staff had allowed certain missteps to occur. Ruby Tandoh referred to the show as a “strange vehicle for change,” writing in an essay for the food publication Heated that it had launched the careers of several Black and brown chefs while being “steeped in the symbolism of an old-fashioned, implicitly white Britishness.”

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  • Leader of Belarus gifts Putin a tractor for 70th birthday

    Leader of Belarus gifts Putin a tractor for 70th birthday

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    FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures during a meeting with the winners and finalists of the School Teacher of the Year national contest via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022. Putin, who turned 70 on Friday, has found himself increasingly cornered with his army suffering humiliating defeats in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing his mobilization order and rifts opening up among his top lieutenants. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

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  • Facing risk of blackouts this winter, the UK will drill for more oil | CNN Business

    Facing risk of blackouts this winter, the UK will drill for more oil | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN Business
     — 

    The UK government could award oil and gas companies more than 100 new licenses to drill in the North Sea, as it looks for ways to bolster energy security amid a global supply crunch.

    Launched Friday, the licensing round won’t lead to new UK production for several years. And when drilling does begin, Britain will still be dependent on energy imports, according to the government, leaving it vulnerable to soaring prices and supply disruptions of the kind that threaten blackouts this winter.

    UK utilities company National Grid

    (NGG)     warned Thursday that households and businesses could be left without power for up to three hours at a time in a worst-case scenario of very cold weather, low levels of wind, gas shortages and an inability to import electricity from Europe. It said it would take steps to mitigate the risk, including bringing old coal-fired power stations back online if necessary.

    Starting November 1, National Grid will also offer financial incentives to customers to reduce power consumption at peak times.

    Kathryn Porter, an energy consultant at Watt-Logic, told CNN Business that National Grid was still underestimating the risks to supply, but that blackouts for households were unlikely because it could disconnect large energy users at peak times if necessary.

    The latest licensing round won’t improve the immediate supply picture and could face a legal challenge from environmental activists. Greenpeace said that new oil and gas licenses were “potentially unlawful” and that it would be looking for ways to act.

    “New oil and gas licenses won’t lower energy bills for struggling families this winter or any winter soon nor provide energy security in the medium term,” Philip Evans, energy transition campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said in a statement.

    “New licenses — and more importantly more fossil fuels — solve neither of those problems but will make the climate crisis even worse,” he added.

    Analysis by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), the regulator that grants licenses, shows the average time between discovery of oil and gas deposits and first production is close to five years, though that lag is “falling.”

    In a statement on Friday, the NSTA said it will prioritize areas in the southern North Sea that can be developed quickly and where gas has already been discovered. Companies have until January 12 to apply for licenses, with permits expected to be issued as soon as the second quarter of 2023.

    The NSTA said the licensing round has been subject to a “climate compatibility check” to ensure it aligns with the UK government’s commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It added that producing gas domestically has a much lower carbon footprint than importing it from abroad.

    The International Energy Agency said last year that investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, including drilling for oil and gas, must stop immediately if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

    The UK government set out plans earlier this year to generate 95% of Britain’s electricity from low carbon sources by 2030. The plan, which allows drilling for oil and gas, will also ramp up nuclear power and wind energy.

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  • Biden offers stark ‘Armageddon’ warning on the dangers of Putin’s nuclear threats | CNN Politics

    Biden offers stark ‘Armageddon’ warning on the dangers of Putin’s nuclear threats | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Thursday delivered a stark warning about the dangers behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats as Moscow continues to face military setbacks in Ukraine.

    “First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” Biden warned during remarks at a Democratic fundraiser in New York where he was introduced by James Murdoch, the youngest son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, according to the pool report.

    He added: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

    It’s striking for the President to speak so candidly and invoke Armageddon, particularly at a fundraiser, while his aides from the National Security Council to the State Department to the Pentagon have spoken in much more measured terms, saying they take the threats seriously but don’t see movement on them from the Kremlin.

    “I’m trying to figure out what is Putin’s off ramp?” Biden said during the event, “Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself in a position that he does not not only lose face but lose significant power within Russia?”

    His comments come as the US considers how to respond to a range of potential scenarios, including fears that Russians could use tactical nuclear weapons, according to three sources briefed on the latest intelligence and previously reported by CNN.

    Ex-US defense secretary says in unlikely event that Putin resorts to nukes, he could use this weapon

    Officials have cautioned as recently as Thursday that the US has not detected preparations for a nuclear strike. However, experts view them as potential options the US must prepare for as Russia’s invasion falters and as Moscow annexes more Ukrainian territory.

    “This nuclear saber rattling is reckless and irresponsible,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said earlier Thursday. “As I’ve mentioned before, at this stage, we do not have any information to cause us to change our strategic deterrence posture, and we don’t assess that President Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons at this time.”

    Following Biden’s remarks, officials emphasized to CNN Thursday night that they had not seen any changes to Russia’s nuclear stance.

    A US official said that despite Biden’s warning that the world is the closest it has been to a nuclear crisis since the 1960s, they have not seen a change to Russia’s nuclear posture as of now. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s Tuesday statement that there has been no indication of a change in Russia’s posture and therefore no change in the US posture still stands, the official said.

    A senior US government official expressed surprise at the President’s remarks, saying there were no obvious signs of an escalating threat from Russia.

    While there is no question Russia’s nuclear posture is being taken seriously, this official said the President’s language at a fundraiser tonight caught other officials across the government off guard.

    “Nothing was detected today that reflected an escalation,” the official said, who went on to defend Biden’s remarks because of the ongoing gravity of the matter.

    At the fundraiser, Biden was speaking clearly about the threat officials believe Russia poses, a person familiar with his thinking told CNN.

    Still, US officials have taken somber note of the Russian President’s repeated public threats to use nuclear weapons. In a televised address late last month, Putin said, “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff.”

    Last Friday, at a ceremony in which he announced the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Putin said Russia would use “all available means” to defend the areas, adding that the US had “created a precedent” for nuclear attacks in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

    “We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” Biden said of Putin Thursday. “He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly under-performing.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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