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  • Aid relief reaches Ukraine towns and cities reclaimed from Russian control

    Aid relief reaches Ukraine towns and cities reclaimed from Russian control

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    More than 73,000 people in Kharkiv oblast have now received food assistance, which is nearly half of the population in the retaken areas.

    Villages and settlements across the oblast that are back under Ukrainian Government control are unable to meet even their most basic needs, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

    “Our access to these areas follows several months of intense fighting,” said OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke. “Nearly 140,000 people are believed to remain in the towns, villages and settlement in areas where control has changed, but they have extremely limited access to food, water, gas, electricity and medical services.”

    Izium depleted

    In the town of Izium, the 8,000 to 9,000 people still there are “completely dependent” on humanitarian aid to survive, Mr. Laerke continued.

    Markets and shops have been destroyed or are closed, and families “gather in the main town square” to exchange possessions and supplies, to meet their basic needs, the OCHA spokesperson explained.

    ‘Frequent’ fighting in Kupiansk

    Further north and at the edge of Luhansk oblast, the town of Kupiansk is today home to 4,000 people, compared with the pre-war population of 28,000.

    “Hostilities and fighting are still frequent there,” OCHA reported, adding that aid convoys have delivered food, water, essential household items, medicines and health services to Izium and Kupiansk, where volunteer groups have responded, too.

    In addition to food assistance, OCHA has coordinated the distribution of 12,000 hygiene kits and kitchen sets, solar lamps and blankets to 15,000 people.

    Human Rights Council appoints top rights investigator on Russia

    And also on Friday, the UN Human Rights Council voted to appoint a top rights investigator on Russia on Friday, although the vote was not unanimous.

    Driven by concerns about the systematic oppression of rights defenders and journalists in Russia, several countries which supported the appointment of a Special Rapporteur also condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    In response, Russia rejected the result of the vote – 17 in favour, six against and 24 abstentions – and dismissed it as a political gesture that was an attempt to punish the country for pursuing an independent agenda.

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  • Greece: Gales stall efforts to find missing migrants

    Greece: Gales stall efforts to find missing migrants

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    KYTHIRA, Greece — Strong winds were hampering efforts around two Greek islands Friday to find at least 10 migrants believed to be missing after shipwrecks left 23 people dead, officials said.

    A dinghy and a sailboat sank in two separate incidents late Wednesday and early Thursday off the islands of Lesbos, near the coast of Turkey, and Kythira, south of the Greek mainland — prompting a dramatic nighttime rescue, with survivors hauled to safety up cliffs.

    Coast guard, navy and volunteer rescuers focused efforts around a rugged cove on Kythira where the sailboat smashed into rocks and broke up, leaving bodies floating in the wreckage on Thursday.

    Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who was attending a meeting of European leaders in the Czech capital, Prague, blamed neighbor Turkey for failing to stop boats crammed with migrants from leaving its coastline.

    “Once again, I call on Turkey to cooperate with Greece to stop these ruthless networks of traffickers of people in distress so no more lives are needlessly lost in the Aegean Sea,” he told reporters at the start of the meetings.

    “The root of this problem is the boats leaving the Turkish coastline,” he said. “And there is no doubt that Turkey, if it wants to, can do more to tackle this problem.”

    Turkey maintains that Greece is putting migrants’ lives at risk with reckless interceptions of boats at sea.

    The International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, says that before the latest incidents in Lesbos and Kythira, it had recorded 237 people as dead or missing while attempting to cross the eastern Mediterranean route so far this year, out of a total of 1,522 deaths in the Mediterranean.

    We have witnessed another two tragedies in the Mediterranean. People desperate for safety and better lives are risking everything in fatal journeys,” said Gianluca Rocco, head of the IOM mission in Greece.

    “This reiterates the need to intensify international cooperation to save lives and improve rights-based pathways for safe and regular migration.”

    Several hundred people joined a demonstration in the main port of Lesbos, Mytilene, late Thursday, calling on authorities in Greece and Turkey to cooperate to save lives in the eastern Aegean Sea.

    Wreaths of flowers were thrown into the sea to honor the victims who died off the Lesbos coast — 16 women, a boy and an adult man, most believed to be from Somalia.

    ——— Follow AP’s coverage of global migration: https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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  • White House left looking for answers after OPEC+ announces oil production cuts | CNN Politics

    White House left looking for answers after OPEC+ announces oil production cuts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The OPEC+ decision to dramatically cut its oil output targets has left the White House grappling with a complex – and potentially damaging – mix of geopolitical and domestic challenges with few easy answers.

    President Joe Biden now faces the reality that an already complex and tenuous bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia has deeply fractured, the Western effort to isolate and shrink Russia’s war effort has taken a direct hit and the US economy and political picture have both grown more fragile.

    “Disappointment. We’re looking at what alternatives we may have” to bring down oil prices, Biden told reporters when asked his reaction to the OPEC+ news.

    “There’s a lot of alternatives. We haven’t made up our mind yet,” he added.

    Biden’s advisers are now re-doubling efforts to find policy and diplomatic options to address the unwelcome surprise.

    “We’re going to work to identify the tools that we have to ensure that organizations like OPEC that assign quotas to their members of how much to produce are not – have a muted and less of an impact on American consumers, and quite frankly, on the global economy,” Amos Hochstein, Biden’s top energy envoy, told Bianna Golodryga on CNN’s “New Day” Thursday.

    The full scale of the fallout from Saudi Arabia-led oil cartel’s decision may not be apparent for months or longer, officials say. But they are also keenly aware just how many acutely important elements of the administration’s foreign and domestic agenda the production cut spills directly into.

    Biden administration officials acknowledge they’re in a very difficult position over their relationship with Saudi Arabia.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken called OPEC’s move to cut oil production both “shortsighted and disappointing,” and said the administration is reviewing a “number of response options” when it comes to US-Saudi relations.

    “We will not do anything that would infringe on our interests, that’s first and foremost, what will guide us,” Blinken said during a news conference in Peru on Thursday. “We will keep all of those interests in mind and consult closely with all of the relevant stakeholders as we decide on any steps going forward.”

    There is clearly a tacit effort underway to evaluate ways to respond to the OPEC+ decision to cut back oil production by 2 million barrels per day. But as has been laid bare repeatedly over the course of Biden’s time in office, the power dynamics between the US and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are simply in a different place now than at any earlier point due to the economic and energy pressures tied to Russia’s invasion.

    Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made abundantly clear he feels no need to be the junior actor, and his overt and explicit moves toward China and Russia have ensured there is no subtlety in his approach.

    On a purely oil market basis, the Saudis prize stability over anything else – stability the OPEC+ configuration has provided after damaging price wars and the volatility of the pandemic. Moscow, of course, is the key player in that configuration and it’s notable that beneath the output cut, an extension of the OPEC+ arrangement was also approved on Wednesday.

    Still, while administration officials always viewed Biden’s trip to Jeddah – which resulted in the diplomatic fist bump seen around the world – as a critical regional security move, the cartel’s willingness to move in ways so obviously detrimental to US interests has reverberated across the administration. Biden again defended the trip Thursday, saying, “The trip was not essentially for oil. The trip was about the Middle East and about Israel and rationalization of positions.”

    “It’s not always about us, we get it,” one US official said. “But they’re just as aware of the perceptions and implications of this move as we are.”

    The most obvious lever for the US to pull is security related – it’s far and away the biggest leverage point. But the ramifications of any moves on that front are much broader than the bilateral relationship, officials note, and would directly undercut more than a year of intensive work to establish a coherent regional security posture.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s statement on Wednesday that it “is clear OPEC+ is aligning with Russia” and its war effort was as intentional as it was blunt. Hochstein, in his CNN interview, reiterated that the OPEC+ decision was a “huge mistake” and “the wrong thing to do” amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and high energy prices, saying that Russia and Saudi Arabia are “working together.”

    US officials had previously been cautious about directly criticizing the obvious dance Saudi Arabia and others in the region have conducted with Moscow. That posture is gone.

    Biden administration officials, according to people with knowledge, made very clear to the Saudis in the days leading up the move that US rhetoric would change dramatically and they would open the door to new options to respond to a major cut. The specifics of those options were left somewhat ambiguous intentionally. But the warning was there.

    One notable line in the White House statement issued Wednesday by National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and national security adviser Jake Sullivan statement was the idea of working with Congress on legislation related to OPEC.

    It’s a reference to a bill that would remove sovereign immunity from antitrust suits, opening the door for the US to sue cartel members. The White House has been cool to the idea due to the very real concern it would launch a price war with the market’s biggest players that would only serve to hurt US consumers. But just cracking the door open to looking at it is notable – and underscores the scale of the anger inside the West Wing.

    The legislative reference underscores a key piece how the response will play out in the weeks ahead – the White House has made its statement, which – in a world of cautious diplo-speak – was sharply critical. Now officials have said they are perfectly comfortable letting congressional Democrats rail on the Saudis on their behalf, something they expect to only escalate in the days ahead given the convergence of geopolitical and domestic political factors.

    The blistering response from Capitol Hill has the potential to create some the kind of pressure that could create space to pursue actions the administration has been wary of pursuing up to this point.

    Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, for instance, tweeted, “I thought the whole point of selling arms to the Gulf States despite their human rights abuses, nonsensical Yemen War, working against US interests in Libya, Sudan, etc, was that when an international crisis came, the Gulf could choose America over Russia/China.”

    The biggest focus for the White House now on oil is on the domestic front. Biden’s top energy and economic advisers met privately with oil executives last week and discussions between officials and industry players have continued this week. Another meeting is likely soon as they continue to search for options to boost US production.

    While several options have been floated – including some that infuriate the industry, like potential curbs on exports – it remains unclear whether the White House is ready to move forward on any of them.

    A question being weighed now is if OPEC+’s decision changes that dynamic at all in a relationship between the White House and industry that has ping-ponged between clear animosity to cooler heads prevailing and back toward palpable tension over the course of the last several months.

    The White House rhetorical reversal hinting at the potential for new Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases, a complete 180-degree turn in less than 24 hours, was notable even if it didn’t signal anything concrete.

    What it did signal, however, was a clear message to markets that the option was, in fact, on the table.

    Blinken on Thursday once again highlighted what the administration has done to boost oil production in the US.

    “We’ve taken a number of steps over the last months to try and ensure that that’s the case, including releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increasing significantly our production. Oil production is up in the United States by about 500,000 barrels a day,” he said.

    Blinken also added that the administration is “looking at other steps that we can take to ensure that there is adequate supply to meet to meet global demand.”

    The final release of 10 million from Biden’s announced 180 million barrel release over six months is still scheduled for November, even though the actual total barrels released will fall under the full amount Biden initially targeted. Cracking the door open on additional releases was an effort to signal there is a view inside the White House that there are still metaphorical bullets in the chamber if they need them.

    One key point to remember amid the hand-wringing: Predictions of specific price increases at the pump are a fool’s errand.

    “I believe it will have less of an impact in the United States and far more of an impact on lower-income countries around the world,” Hochstein said.

    The market has been pricing in the output cut for several days. A key element of the output cut is that nearly all OPEC+ members have been missing their production targets for months. So “2 million barrels per day” is actually far less than that from a production basis.

    In other words, there are a myriad of factors that drive retail prices – such as in California, where soaring gas prices over the last two weeks were in large part due to a mess of refinery issues – and no single answer to the range of new complications White House officials are now facing.

    Biden’s message, behind his disappointment with the production cut, was clear cut, according to Hochstein.

    “The President is still instructing us to work, to do whatever we can,” he said.

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  • French writer Annie Ernaux awarded Nobel Prize in literature

    French writer Annie Ernaux awarded Nobel Prize in literature

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    PARIS (AP) — French author Annie Ernaux won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for blending fiction and autobiography in books that fearlessly mine her experiences as a working-class woman to explore life in France since the 1940s.

    In more than 20 books published over five decades, Ernaux has probed deeply personal experiences and feelings – love, sex, abortion, shame – within a society split by gender and class divisions.

    After a half-century of defending feminist ideals, Ernaux said “it doesn’t seem to me that women have become equal in freedom, in power,” and she strongly defended women’s rights to abortion and contraception.

    “I will fight to my last breath so that women can choose to be a mother, or not to be. It’s a fundamental right,” she said at a news conference in Paris. Ernaux’s first book, “Cleaned Out,” was about her own illegal abortion before it was legalized in France.

    The prize-giving Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, was recognized for “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.

    Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee, said Ernaux is “not afraid to confront the hard truths.”

    “She writes about things that no one else writes about, for instance her abortion, her jealousy, her experiences as an abandoned lover and so forth. I mean, really hard experiences,” he told The Associated Press after the award announcement in Stockholm. “And she gives words for these experiences that are very simple and striking. They are short books, but they are really moving.”

    French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “Annie Ernaux has been writing for 50 years the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is that of women’s freedom, and the century’s forgotten ones.”

    While Macron praised Ernaux for her Nobel, she has been unsparing with him. A supporter of left-wing causes for social justice, she has poured scorn on Macron’s background in banking and said his first term as president failed to advance the cause of French women.

    Ernaux’s books present uncompromising portraits of life’s most intimate moments, including sexual encounters, illness and the deaths of her parents. Olsson said Ernaux’s work was often “written in plain language, scraped clean.” He said she had used the term “an ethnologist of herself” rather than a writer of fiction.

    Dan Simon, Ernaux’s longtime American publisher at Seven Stories Press, said that in the early years, “she insisted that we not categorize her books at all. She did not allow us to refer to them as fiction and she did not allow us to refer to them as nonfiction.”

    Ultimately, he said, Ernaux has created “a genre of fiction in which nothing is made up.”

    “She’s a great storyteller of her own life,” Simon said.

    Ernaux worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her first book was “Les armoires vides” in 1974 (published in English as “Cleaned Out”). Two more autobiographical novels followed – “Ce qu’ils disent ou rien” (“What They Say Goes”) and “La femme gelée” (“The Frozen Woman”) – before she moved to more overtly autobiographical books.

    In the book that made her name, “La place” (“A Man’s Place”), published in 1983 and about her relationship with her father, she wrote: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”

    “La honte” (“Shame”), published in 1997, explored a childhood trauma, while “L’événement” (“Happening”), from 2000, dealt like “Cleaned Out” with an illegal abortion.

    Her most critically acclaimed book is “Les années” (“The Years”), published in 2008. Described by Olsson as “the first collective autobiography,” it depicted Ernaux herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the 21st century. Its English translation was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2019.

    Ernaux’s “Mémoire de fille” (“A Girl’s Story”), from 2016, follows a young woman’s coming of age in the 1950s, while “Passion Simple” (“Simple Passion”) and “Se perdre” (“Getting Lost”) chart Ernaux’s intense affair with a Russian diplomat.

    Ernaux has described facing scorn from France’s literary establishment because she is a woman from a working-class background.

    “My work is political,” she said at the news conference. She described growing up in a milieu outside the elite, a world of “people above you” and the seeming impossibility of becoming a famous writer.

    The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated. Last year’s prize winner, Tanzanian-born, U.K.-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa.

    More than a dozen French writers have captured the literature prize, though Ernaux is the first French woman to win, and just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates.

    Olsson said the academy was working to diversify its range, drawing on experts in literature from different regions and languages.

    “We try to broaden the concept of literature but it is the quality that counts, ultimately,” he said.

    Ernaux said she wasn’t sure what she would do with the Nobel’s cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000).

    “I have a problem with money,” she told reporters. “Money is not a goal for me. … I don’t know how to spend it well.”

    A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

    Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger won the physics prize on Tuesday for work showing that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.

    The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to explore cells, map DNA and design drugs to target cancer and other diseases.

    The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

    The prizes will be handed out on Dec. 10. The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

    ___

    Keyton reported from Stockholm and Lawless from London. Masha Macpherson in Clergy, France; John Leicester in Le Pecq, France; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Naomi Koppel in London; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

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    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

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  • Europe hails united stand over Russia’s war in Ukraine

    Europe hails united stand over Russia’s war in Ukraine

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    PRAGUE (AP) — Leaders across Europe hailed on Thursday their united front against Russia’s war on Ukraine at a summit that also saw the heads of old foes Turkey and Armenia meet face-to-face for the first time since they agreed last year to put decades of bitterness behind them.

    The inaugural summit of the European Political Community brought together the 27 European Union member countries, aspiring partners in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, as well as neighbors like Britain — the only country to have left the EU.

    Russia was the one major European power not invited to the gathering at Prague Castle along with Belarus, its neighbor and supporter in the war against Ukraine; a conflict fueling an energy crisis and high inflation that are wreaking havoc on Europe’s economies.

    “Leaders leave this summit with greater collective resolve to stand up to Russian aggression. What we have seen in Prague is a forceful show of solidarity with Ukraine, and for the principles of freedom and democracy,” said U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss.

    Her Belgian counterpart, Alexander De Croo, said “if you just look at the attendance here, you see the importance. The whole European continent is here, except two countries: Belarus and Russia. So it shows how isolated those two countries are.”

    Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said the fallout from the war is something they all have in common.

    “It’s affecting all of us in the security sense, and its affecting all of us through our economies, through the rising energy costs. So the only way that we can handle this is working together, and not just the European Union. All the European countries need to work together,” he said.

    Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was in Prague for the meeting, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the leaders by video link.

    “There are no representatives of Russia with us here — a state that geographically seems to belong to Europe, but from the point of view of its values and behavior is the most anti-European state in the world,” Zelenskyy said.

    “We are now in a strong position to direct all possible powers of Europe to end the war and guarantee long-term peace,” he said. “For Ukraine, for Europe, for the world.”

    The new forum is the brainchild of French President Emmanuel Macron and is backed by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. They say it should aim to boost security and prosperity across the continent.

    Critics claim the new forum is an attempt to put the brakes on EU enlargement. Others fear it may become a talking shop, perhaps convening once or twice a year but devoid of any real clout or content.

    “We will never accept (a situation) where this platform brings harm to our accession negotiations,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters. “Our expectation is for the European Political Community to help strengthen and contribute to our relations with the EU.”

    But the host of the event, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, said it had been a success.

    “We don’t replace existing formats of cooperation. We did not adopt any official resolution. We just feel the need of having space for informal exchange of views on ongoing events in Europe and beyond,” Fiala told reporters. He said the next meeting will be held in Moldova, then others in Spain and the U.K.

    The summit did create space for a series of meetings. Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held landmark talks. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was also present at what appeared to be an informal gathering of the three leaders.

    Turkey and Armenia, which have no diplomatic relations, agreed last year to start talks aimed at putting decades of enmity behind them and reopen their joint border. Special envoys appointed by the two countries have held four rounds of talks since then.

    Truss, Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte held talks on migration, as the U.K. seeks further help in preventing migrants from reaching its shores without authorization. Macron was even cautiously optimistic that the EU and the U.K. might be able to be put their Brexit differences behind them.

    “I do hope this is a new phase of our common relations and that this is the beginning of the day after,” he told reporters.

    Macron listed topics on which leaders agreed to work by the next summit in Moldova, including protecting “key facilities” like pipelines, undersea cables, satellites. “We need a European strategy to protect them,” he said, after two gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea were apparently sabotaged.

    But some old enmities also found a new forum to air themselves in. Referring to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Erdogan said that “a certain gentleman became very disturbed” by his remarks in one meeting. Erdogan was also critical of the Greek leadership in Cyprus.

    ___

    Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

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  • Munich Re to stop its backing for new oil, gas fields

    Munich Re to stop its backing for new oil, gas fields

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    BERLIN (AP) — Munich Re, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies, said Thursday that it will stop backing new oil and gas fields beginning next April.

    The company said it will also no longer invest in or insure new oil pipelines and power plants that weren’t already under construction by Dec. 31, 2022.

    Munich Re said the moves were part of its effort to reduce the harmful impact its business has on the environment. The burning of oil and gas is one of the main sources of greenhouses gases fueling climate change.

    Munich Re provides so-called reinsurance contracts that help other insurers spread risks. It also invests the insurance premiums it receives from customers and third-party assets, making it a major institutional investor.

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    Follow all AP stories on climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

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  • EXPLAINER: How will OPEC+ cuts affect gas prices, inflation?

    EXPLAINER: How will OPEC+ cuts affect gas prices, inflation?

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    FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Major oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia have decided to slash the amount of oil they deliver to the global economy.

    And the law of supply and demand suggests that can only mean one thing: higher prices are on the way for crude, and for the diesel fuel, gasoline and heating oil that are produced from oil.

    The decision by the OPEC+ alliance to cut 2 million barrels a day starting next month comes as the Western allies are trying to cap the oil money flowing into Moscow’s war chest after it invaded Ukraine.

    Here is what to know about the OPEC+ decision and what it could mean for the economy and the oil price cap:

    WHY IS OPEC+ CUTTING PRODUCTION?

    Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman says that the alliance is being proactive in adjusting supply ahead of a possible downturn in demand because a slowing global economy needs less fuel for travel and industry.

    “We are going through a period of diverse uncertainties which could come our way, it’s a brewing cloud,” he said, and OPEC+ sought to remain “ahead of the curve.” He described the group’s role as “a moderating force, to bring about stability.”

    Oil prices had fallen after a summer of highs. Now, after the OPEC+ decision, they are heading for their biggest weekly gain since March. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 3.2% on Friday, to $91.31 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.8% to $97.09, though it’s still down 20% from mid-June, when it traded at over $123 per barrel.

    One big reason for the slide is fears that large parts of the global economy are slipping into recession as high energy prices — for oil, natural gas and electricity — drive inflation and rob consumers of spending power.

    Another reason: The summer highs came about because of fears that much of Russia’s oil production would be lost to the market over the war in Ukraine.

    As Western traders shunned Russian oil even without sanctions, customers in India and China bought those barrels at a steep discount, so the hit to supply wasn’t as bad as expected.

    Oil producers are wary of a sudden collapse in prices if the global economy goes downhill faster than expected. That’s what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and during the global financial crisis in 2008-2009.

    HOW IS THE WEST TARGETING RUSSIAN OIL?

    The U.S. and Britain imposed bans that were mostly symbolic because neither country imported much Russia oil. The White House held off pressing the European Union for an import ban because EU countries got a quarter of their oil from Russia.

    In the end, the 27-nation bloc decided to cut off Russian oil that comes by ship on Dec. 5, while keeping a small amount of pipeline supplies that some Eastern European countries rely on.

    Beyond that, the U.S. and other Group of Seven major democracies are working out the details on a price cap on Russian oil. It would target insurers and other service providers that facilitate oil shipments from Russia to other countries. The EU approved a measure along those lines this week.

    Many of those providers are based in Europe and would be barred from dealing with Russian oil if the price is above the cap.

    HOW WILL OIL CUTS, PRICE CAPS AND EMBARGOES CLASH?

    The idea behind the price cap is to keep Russian oil flowing to the global market, just at lower prices. Russia, however, has threatened to simply stop deliveries to a country or companies that observe the cap. That could take more Russian oil off the market and push prices higher.

    That could push costs at the pump higher, too.

    U.S. gasoline prices that soared to record highs of $5.02 a gallon in mid-June had been falling recently, but they have been on the rise again, posing political problems for President Joe Biden a month before midterm elections.

    Biden, facing inflation at near 40-year highs, had touted the falling pump prices. Over the past week, the national average price for a gallon rose 9 cents, to $3.87. That’s 65 cents more than Americans were paying a year ago.

    “It’s a disappointment, and we’re looking at what alternatives we may have,” he told reporters about the OPEC+ decision.

    WILL THE OPEC PRODUCTION CUT MAKE INFLATION WORSE?

    Likely yes. Brent crude should reach $100 per barrel by December, says Jorge Leon, senior vice president at Rystad Energy. That is up from an earlier prediction of $89.

    Part of the 2 million-barrel-per-day cut is only on paper as some OPEC+ countries aren’t able to produce their quota. So the group can deliver only about 1.2 million barrels a day in actual cuts.

    That’s still going to have a “significant” effect on prices, Leon said.

    “Higher oil prices will inevitably add to the inflation headache that global central banks are fighting, and higher oil prices will factor into the calculus of further increasing interest rates to cool down the economy,” he wrote in a note.

    That would exacerbate an energy crisis in Europe largely tied to Russian cutbacks of natural gas supplies used for heating, electricity and in factories and would send gasoline prices up worldwide. As that fuels inflation, people have less money to spend on other things like food and rent.

    Other factors also could affect oil prices, including the depth of any possible recession in the U.S. or Europe and the duration of China’s COVID-19 restrictions, which have sapped demand for fuel.

    WHAT WILL THIS MEAN FOR RUSSIA?

    Analysts say that Russia, the biggest producer among the non-OPEC members in the alliance, would benefit from higher oil prices ahead of a price cap. If Russia has to sell oil at a discount, at least the reduction starts at a higher price level.

    High oil prices earlier this year offset much of Russia’s sales lost from Western buyers avoiding its supply. The country also has managed to reroute some two-thirds of its typical Western sales to customers in places like India.

    But then Moscow saw its take from oil slip from $21 billion in June to $19 billion in July to $17.7 billion in August as prices and sales volumes fell, according to the International Energy Agency. A third of Russia’s state budget comes from oil and gas revenue, so the price caps would further erode a key source of revenue.

    Meanwhile, the rest of Russia’s economy is shrinking due to sanctions and the withdrawal of foreign businesses and investors.

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  • IMF warns of higher recession risk and darker global outlook

    IMF warns of higher recession risk and darker global outlook

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Two principal economists painted very different pictures Thursday of what the global economy will look like in the coming years.

    Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told an audience at Georgetown University on Thursday that the IMF is once again lowering its projections for global economic growth in 2023, projecting world economic growth lower by $4 trillion through 2026.

    “Things are more likely to get worse before it gets better,” she said, adding that the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February has dramatically changed the IMF’s outlook on the economy. “The risks of recession are rising,” she said, calling the current economic environment a “period of historic fragility.”

    Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, on the other side of town at the Center for Global Development, focused on how the U.S. and its allies could contribute to making longer-term investments to the global economy.

    She called for ambitious policy solutions and didn’t use the word “recession” once. But despite Yellen’s more measured view, she said “the global economy faces significant uncertainty.”

    The war in Ukraine has driven up food and energy prices globally — in some places exponentially — with Russia, a key global energy and fertilizer supplier, sharply escalating the conflict and exposing the vulnerabilities to the global food and energy supply.

    Additionally, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation and worsening climate conditions are also impacting world economies and exacerbating other crises, like high debt levels held by lower-income countries.

    Georgieva said the IMF estimates that countries making up one-third of the world economy will see at least two consecutive quarters of economic contraction this or next year and added that the institution downgraded its global growth projections already three times. It now expects 3.2% for 2022 and now 2.9% for 2023.

    The bleak IMF projections come as central banks around the world raise interest rates in hopes of taming rising inflation. The U.S. Federal Reserve has been the most aggressive in using interest rate hikes as an inflation-cooling tool, and central banks from Asia to England have begun to raise rates this week.

    Georgieva said “tightening monetary policy too much and too fast — and doing so in a synchronized manner across countries — could push many economies into prolonged recession.” Maurice Obstfeld, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, recently wrote that too much tightening by the Federal Reserve could “drive the world economy into an unnecessarily harsh contraction.”

    Yellen agreed Thursday that “macroeconomic tightening in advanced countries can have international spillovers.”

    The two economists’ speeches come ahead of annual meetings next week of the 190-nation IMF and its sister-lending agency, the World Bank, which intend to address the multitude of risks to the global economy.

    Georgieva said the updated World Economic Outlook of the fund set to be released next week downgrades growth figures for next year.

    Many countries are already seeing major impacts of the invasion of Ukraine on their economies, and the IMF’s grim projections are in line with other forecasts for declines in growth.

    The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last week said the global economy is set to lose $2.8 trillion in output in 2023 because of the war.

    The projections come after the OPEC+ alliance of oil-exporting countries decided Wednesday to sharply cut production to support sagging oil prices in a move that could deal the struggling global economy another blow and raise politically sensitive pump prices for U.S. drivers just ahead of key national elections in November.

    Yellen said since many developing countries are facing all challenges simultaneously, from debt to hunger to exploding costs, “this is no time for us to retreat.”

    “We need ambition in updating our vision for development financing and delivery. And we need ambition in meeting our global challenges,” she said.

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  • ‘Genocide denial’: Anger as debate on Xinjiang rejected

    ‘Genocide denial’: Anger as debate on Xinjiang rejected

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    The UN Human Rights Council has voted not to debate the treatment of the Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang even after the UN’s human rights office concluded the scale of the alleged abuses there may amount to “crimes against humanity“.

    The motion for a debate on the issue was defeated by 19 votes to 17, with 11 countries abstaining in a decision China welcomed and others condemned as “shameful”.

    Many of those who voted “no” were Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia, Somalia, Pakistan, UAE and Qatar. Among the 11 countries that abstained were India, Malaysia and Ukraine.

    “This is a victory for developing countries and a victory truth and justice,” Hua Chunying, China’s foreign affairs spokesperson tweeted. “Human rights must not be used as a pretext to make up lies and interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, or to contain, coerce & humiliate others.”

    The UN first revealed the existence of a network of detention centres in Xinjiang in 2018, saying at least one million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities were being held in the system. China later admitted there were camps in the region, but said they were vocational skills training centres necessary to tackle “extremism”.

    Amid leaks of official government documents, investigations by human rights groups and academics, and testimony from Uighurs themselves, China has lobbied hard to prevent any further probe into the situation in Xinjiang.

    Former UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, who first called for “unfettered” access to the region in 2018, was only allowed to visit in May, in what appeared to be a tightly-choreographed visit.

    Her report (PDF) on the situation was also pushed back and was only released on August 31, minutes before her term was due to end.

    While it did not mention the word “genocide”, it found that “serious human rights violations” had been committed, and said “the extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups … may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

    The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim Turkic people who differ in religion, language and culture from China’s majority Han ethnic group.

    ‘Genocide denial’

    The United States, which called for the debate, condemned the latest vote.

    “The inaction shamefully suggests some countries are free from scrutiny and allowed to violate human rights with impunity,” Michele Taylor, the US representative to the Human Rights Council, said in a statement. “No country represented here today has a perfect human rights record. No country, no matter how powerful should be excluded from Council discussions — this includes my country, the United States, and it includes the People’s Republic of China.”

    In the wake of the UN report, Uighur groups had urged the UN Human Rights Council to establish a commission of inquiry to independently examine the treatment of Uighurs and other minorities in China and called on the UN Office on Genocide Prevention to immediately conduct an assessment of the risks of atrocities, including genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

    They expressed disappointment at Thursday’s outcome, with the Campaign for Uyghurs noting that Beijing had been “actively trying to suppress” the report “at every level”.

    “Some member states have adopted China’s genocide denial,” the group’s Executive Director Rushan Abbas said in a statement. “They should consider the consequences of allowing one powerful country to effectively have impunity for committing genocide.”

    Alim Osman, president of the Uighur Association of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, told Al Jazeera he was disappointed and angry at the decision.

    “That even a debate on the human rights situation is not allowed by few a countries which have economic ties with the Chinese regime clearly shows on the international stage that their moral obligation to defend human rights is for sale, therefore corrupting the UN itself,” he said. “The UN needs urgent reform.”

    Beijing has been lobbying hard against the findings of a long-delayed UN report into the situation in Xinjiang, which warned of possible ‘crimes against humanity’ [File: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP]

    Human rights groups also condemned the vote.

    In a strongly-worded statement, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard said the decision protected the perpetrators rather than the victims of abuses.

    “For Council member states to vote against even discussing a situation where the UN itself says crimes against humanity may have occurred makes a mockery of everything the Human Rights Council is supposed to stand for.” Callamard said in a statement.

    “Member states’ silence — or worse, blocking of debate — in the face of the atrocities committed by the Chinese government further sullies the reputation of the Human Rights Council.

    “The UN Human Rights Council has today failed the test to uphold its core mission, which is to protect the victims of human rights violations everywhere, including in places such as Xinjiang.”

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  • Experts: Russia finding new ways to spread propaganda videos

    Experts: Russia finding new ways to spread propaganda videos

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    Russia has devised yet another way to spread disinformation about its invasion of Ukraine, using digital tricks that allow its war propaganda videos to evade restrictions imposed by governments and tech companies.

    Accounts linked to Russian state-controlled media have used the new method to spread dozens of videos in 18 different languages, all without leaving telltale signs that would give away the source, researchers at Nisos, a U.S.-based intelligence firm that tracks disinformation and other cyber threats, said in a report released Wednesday.

    The videos push Kremlin conspiracy theories blaming Ukraine for civilian casualties as well as claims that residents of areas forcibly annexed by Russia have welcomed their occupiers.

    English-language versions of the Russian propaganda videos are now circulating on Twitter and lesser-known platforms popular with American conservatives, including Gab and Truth Social, created by former President Donald Trump, giving Russia a direct conduit to millions of people.

    In an indication of the Kremlin’s ambitions and the sprawling reach of its disinformation operations, versions of the videos were also created in Spanish, Italian, German and more than a dozen other languages.

    “The genius of this approach is that the videos can be downloaded directly from Telegram and it erases the trail that researchers try to follow,” Nisos’ senior intelligence analyst Patricia Bailey told The Associated Press. “They are creative and adaptable. And they are analyzing their audience.”

    The European Union moved to ban RT and Sputnik, two of Russia’s leading state-run media outlets, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. Tech companies such as Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram also announced they would ban content from the outlets within the 27-nation EU, undermining Russia’s ability to spread its propaganda.

    Russian attempts to get around the new rules began almost immediately. New websites were created to host videos that make debunked claims about the war. Russian diplomats took on some of the work.

    The latest effort revealed by analysts at Nisos involved uploading propaganda videos to Telegram, a loosely moderated platform that is broadly popular in Eastern Europe and used by many conservatives in the United States. In some cases, watermarks identifying the video as RT’s were removed in a further attempt to disguise their source.

    Once on Telegram, the videos were downloaded and reposted on platforms including Twitter without any labels or other indications that the video was produced by Russian state media. Hundreds of accounts that later posted or reposted the videos were linked by Nisos researchers to the Russian military, embassies or state media.

    Some of the accounts appeared to use fake profile photos or posted content in strange ways that suggested they were inauthentic.

    One example: a Twitter account supposedly run by a woman living in Japan that had a singular interest in Russian propaganda. Instead of posting about a variety of topics such as entertainment, food, travel or family, the account user only posted Russian propaganda videos — and not just in Japanese, but also in Farsi, Polish, Spanish and Russian.

    The account also cited or reposted content from Russian embassies hundreds of times, researchers found, showing again the close relationship between Russian diplomats and the country’s propaganda work.

    When it comes to Russia’s overall disinformation capabilities, Bailey said, the network is “just one piece of a puzzle that is quite large.”

    Twitter labels content that it can identify as coming from Russian state media. Since late February, the company says it’s added labels to more than 900,000 different Tweets that contained links to Russian state outlets like RT. In addition, the platform does not artificially promote content from state media accounts.

    “We use labels to make it clear on Twitter when an account is operated by a state actor, such as a state-backed media outlet, and we will not recommend or amplify Tweets from these types of accounts,” a company spokesperson told The AP.

    More examples of Russian disinformation campaigns have emerged as the war has dragged on.

    Last week, Russia sought to spread a baseless conspiracy theory blaming the U.S. for sabotage to the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

    The same week, Meta announced the discovery of a sprawling Russian disinformation network that created websites designed to look like major European news outlets. Instead of news, the websites carried propaganda intended to drive a wedge between Ukraine and its western allies.

    That operation was the largest of its kind to originate in Russia since the war began, researchers concluded.

    “The network exhibited an overarching pattern of targeting Europe with anti-Ukraine narratives and expressions of support for Russian interests,” according to a report from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which helped identify the network disabled by Meta.

    ___

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

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  • SpaceX delivers Russian, Native American women to station

    SpaceX delivers Russian, Native American women to station

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A Russian cosmonaut who caught a U.S. lift to the International Space Station arrived at her new home Thursday for a five-month stay, accompanied by a Japanese astronaut and two from NASA, including the first Native American woman in space.

    The SpaceX capsule pulled up to the station a day after launching into orbit. The linkup occurred 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the Atlantic, just off the west coast of Africa.

    It was the first time in 20 years that a Russian hitched a ride from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the result of a new agreement reached despite friction over the war in Ukraine.

    Cosmonaut Anna Kikina joins two Russians already at the orbiting outpost. She’ll live and work on the Russian side until March, before returning to Earth in the same SpaceX capsule.

    Riding along with Kikina: Marine Col. Nicole Mann, a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in California, Navy Capt. Josh Cassada and Japan’s Koichi Wakata, the only experienced space flier of the bunch with five missions.

    As the capsule closed in, the space station residents promised the new arrivals that their bunks were ready and the outside light was on.

    “You guys are the best,” replied Mann, the capsule’s commander.

    Mann and her crew will replace three Americans and one Italian who will return in their own SpaceX capsule next week after almost half a year up there. Until then, 11 people will share the orbiting lab.

    NASA astronaut Frank Rubio arrived two weeks ago. He launched on a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan, kicking off the cash-free crew swapping between NASA and the Russian Space Agency. They agreed to the plan last summer in order to always have an American and Russian at the station.

    Until Elon Musk’s SpaceX started launching astronauts two years ago, NASA was forced to spend tens of millions of dollars every time an astronaut flew up on a Soyuz.

    ———

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Wembanyama’s 2-game Las Vegas exhibition stay ends with win

    Wembanyama’s 2-game Las Vegas exhibition stay ends with win

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    HENDERSON, Nev. — Victor Wembanyama blocked a shot Thursday afternoon, ran to the other end of the court, went airborne from just inside the foul line, corralled an alley-oop pass with one hand and slammed home a dunk.

    The entire sequence lasted eight seconds.

    It may have been the signature moment — and there were a lot of candidates — from Wembanyama’s two-game trip to the U.S., which ended Thursday with the French phenom’s Metropolitans 92 team rallying from 16 points down to top the G League Ignite 112-106. He led the way, of course, with 36 points and 11 rebounds.

    “As a first impression of the American game, that was really great,” Wembanyama said.

    So was he.

    His final numbers from two exhibitions: 73 points on 22-for-44 shooting, nine 3-pointers, 15 rebounds and nine blocked shots. He flies back to France on Saturday, and the next time he plays in the U.S. there likely will be an NBA logo on his jersey, presumably after he becomes the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.

    “It’s very, very special for France,” Metropolitans 92 coach Vincent Collet said. “Not only for France. He has huge potential. He’s a huge talent.”

    The reviews are in from this two-game Vegas residency for Wembanyama, who stands 7-foot-3 in bare feet, and they were of the raving variety. The best of the bunch may have come from Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James, who suggested that calling Wembanyama a unicorn might not fully indicate how unique he is.

    Instead, James went with an out-of-this-world comparison.

    “Everybody’s been a unicorn over the last few years, but he’s more like an alien,” James said. “No one has ever seen anyone as tall as he is but as fluid and as graceful as he is out on the floor … He’s, for sure, a generational talent.”

    Sure enough, when Wembanyama’s around, a viral moment can happen at any time. It might be a dunk. It might be a block. It might be a fadeaway 3-pointer from the corner while his momentum has him drifting toward the baseline. It might be a 28-foot 3-pointer from the wing. It might be him kicking a ball into a monitor and narrowly missing fellow French center Rudy Gobert.

    Yes, all those things happened.

    The scene: Gobert and fellow Minnesota Timberwolves standout D’Angelo Russell, in town to play the Lakers in a preseason game later Thursday, decided to postpone their afternoon nap — a staple of the NBA gameday routine — and make the 20-minute ride from Las Vegas to watch the game, arriving at halftime.

    Gobert made a quick appearance on the game’s televised broadcast. Wembanyama, standing nearby, stuck one of his massive feet into the path of a pass by Ignite center Eric Mika. The ball ricocheted into the monitor near Gobert’s seat, knocking it over.

    Gobert laughed. Wembanyama raised his hand to apologize.

    “Hey, he played soccer too,” Gobert said.

    Gobert raves about Wembanyama, who almost certainly will be the first top-five draft pick from France. And he doesn’t think there’s any real comparison: Gobert said Wembanyama’s defensive instincts remind him of himself, while his ballhandling and shooting remind him of Kevin Durant.

    “What strikes me the most about him is his maturity,” Gobert said. “Obviously, he’s a very unique talent and he has a very unique physique. But his maturity and his confidence … he’s very unique.”

    Thursday’s game had a bit of a scare, and the other top NBA draft headliner in this showcase got the worst of that moment.

    Scoot Henderson, the guard whose 28 points led the Ignite to a 122-115 victory on Tuesday night in the exhibition opener, left Thursday’s game after less than five minutes. The reason: He banged knees with Wembanyama.

    Henderson switched onto Wembanyama, who was dribbling on the wing. Wembanyama made a move, collided into Henderson and tumbled to the court, looking initially like he got the worst of that exchange. But Henderson, who was called for a foul on the play, wound up limping off for evaluation and the Ignite quickly said he wouldn’t be returning.

    “Scoot’s fine,” G League coach Jason Hart said. “It was precautionary.”

    There are 31 games left on Metropolitans’ 34-game schedule in the French league, and the plan — as of now — is for Wembanyama to finish his season, which is slated to go through mid-May. The NBA Draft is June 22.

    Bouna Ndiaye, one of Wembanyama’s agents, said some NBA teams might not understand why he’s playing. The reason, he says, is because nobody can get Wembanyama out of the gym.

    “He wants to live on the court,” Ndiaye said.

    What these two games showed, in many ways, was just that the tapes of Wembanyama that have been coming out of Europe over the last few years weren’t lying. He needs to get stronger. There’s much he can still polish. He is, by all accounts, exceptional already.

    “Just before we came in last Saturday, we had a meeting with our doctor and we are going to prepare to plan the next two months to increase what he is doing, besides the court, to strengthen the body,” Collet said. “We’re always careful also with how much time he is practicing, not to go too far. … We plan so that we limit the risk.”

    When Thursday was over, when the comeback was complete, Wembanyama briefly lifted his arms skyward in celebration, then shook a lot of hands, partook in a lot of hugs and posed for a lot of pictures.

    With that, the draft hype continued on.

    “I’m still excited and so happy about it,” Wembanyama said. “I know I’m so lucky to have this chance.”

    ———

    More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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  • 2 Russians seek asylum after reaching remote Alaska island

    2 Russians seek asylum after reaching remote Alaska island

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    JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after landing in a small boat on a remote Alaska island in the Bering Sea, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office said Thursday.

    Karina Borger, a spokesperson for the Alaska Republican senator, said in an email that the office has been in communication with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection and that “the Russian nationals reported that they fled one of the coastal communities on the east coast of Russia to avoid compulsory military service.”

    Thousands of Russian men have fled since President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization to bolster Russian forces in Ukraine. While Putin said the move was aimed at calling up about 300,000 men with past military service, many Russians fear it will be broader.

    Spokespersons with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection referred a reporter’s questions to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security public affairs office, which provided little information Thursday. The office, in a statement, said the people “were transported to Anchorage for inspection, which includes a screening and vetting process, and then subsequently processed in accordance with applicable U.S. immigration laws under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

    The agency said the two Russians arrived Tuesday on a small boat. It did not provide details on where they came from, their journey or the asylum request. It was not immediately clear what kind of boat they were on.

    Alaska’s senators, Republicans Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, on Thursday said the two Russians landed at a beach near the town of Gambell, an isolated Alaska Native community of about 600 people on St. Lawrence Island. Sullivan said he was alerted to the matter by a “senior community leader from the Bering Strait region” on Tuesday morning.

    Gambell is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the western Alaska hub community of Nome and about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Chukotka Peninsula, Siberia, according to a community profile on a state website. The remote, 100-mile (161-kilometer) long island, which includes Savoonga, a community of about 800 people, receives flight services from a regional air carrier. Residents rely heavily on a subsistence way of life, harvesting from the sea fish, whales and other marine life.

    A person who responded to an email address listed for Gambell directed questions to federal authorities. A message seeking comment also was sent to the Consulate General of Russia in San Francisco.

    Sullivan, in a statement, said he has encouraged federal authorities to have a plan in place in case “more Russians flee to Bering Strait communities in Alaska.”

    “This incident makes two things clear: First, the Russian people don’t want to fight Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” Sullivan said. “Second, given Alaska’s proximity to Russia, our state has a vital role to play in securing America’s national security.”

    Murkowski said the situation underscored “the need for a stronger security posture in America’s Arctic.”

    Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday, as initial details of the situation were emerging, said he did not expect a continual stream or “flotilla” of people traversing the same route. He also warned that travel in the region could be dangerous as a fall storm packing strong winds was expected.

    It is unusual for someone to take this route to try to get into the U.S.

    U.S. authorities in August stopped Russians without legal status 42 times who tried to enter the U.S. from Canada. That was up from 15 times in July and nine times in August 2021.

    Russians more commonly try to enter the U.S. through Mexico, which does not require visas. Russians typically fly from Moscow to Cancun or Mexico City, entering Mexico as tourists before getting a connecting a flight to the U.S. border. Earlier this year, U.S. authorities contended with a spate of Russians who hoped to claim asylum if they reached an inspection booth at an official crossing.

    Some trace the spike to before Russia invaded Ukraine, attributing it to the imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny last year.

    ___

    Associated Press reporters Manuel Valdes in Seattle and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

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  • Munich Re to stop its backing for new oil, gas fields

    Munich Re to stop its backing for new oil, gas fields

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    Munich Re, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies, says it will stop backing new oil and gas fields beginning next April

    BERLIN — Munich Re, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies, said Thursday that it will stop backing new oil and gas fields beginning next April.

    The company said it will also no longer invest in or insure new oil pipelines and power plants that weren’t already under construction by Dec. 31, 2022.

    Munich Re said the moves were part of its effort to reduce the harmful impact its business has on the environment. The burning of oil and gas is one of the main sources of greenhouses gases fueling climate change.

    Munich Re provides so-called reinsurance contracts that help other insurers spread risks. It also invests the insurance premiums it receives from customers and third-party assets, making it a major institutional investor.

    ———

    Follow all AP stories on climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

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  • Live updates: Russia’s war in Ukraine

    Live updates: Russia’s war in Ukraine

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    Flowers and candles are placed next to a portrait of media commentator Darya Dugina in Moscow, Russia, on August 22. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

    Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov welcomed news reports in the United States that the US intelligence community suspected Ukrainian officials were behind the bombing that killed activist Darya Dugina near Moscow in August.

    CNN reported Wednesday that the US intelligence community believed that the car bombing that killed Dugina, daughter of prominent Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin, was authorized by elements within the Ukrainian government.

    The US was not aware of the plan beforehand, according to the sources who spoke with CNN, and it is still unclear who exactly the US believes signed off on the assassination. It is also not clear whether the US intelligence community believes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was aware of the plot or authorized it.

    The intelligence finding was first reported by The New York Times.

    Peskov added that he hoped US was not trying to distance itself from any future crimes allegedly planned by Kyiv.

    “We really want to believe that this is not an attempt by American colleagues, having obtained some information, to relieve themselves of responsibility from the preparation of future terrorist acts by the Kyiv state,” Peskov said during the daily Kremlin call with reporters. 

    “If this is not a fake, then it is indeed positive that American intelligence agreed with this,” Peskov said.

    More background: Ukrainian government officials did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment. They have previously denied any Ukrainian involvement in the murder. 

    “The Kremlin stands by the same information from the Russian special services since the beginning. The involvement of the Ukrainian state in this terrorist act, in this murder of a young girl, was argued and shown by our special services,” Peskov said.

    “Quite promptly, those responsible were established, and who the customers were is clear enough,” he said. 

    The Russian security service, the FSB, published the name of the alleged assailant within two days of the assassination, saying that she was working on behalf of Ukrainian special services. By then, she had left Russia via Estonia by car, according to the FSB. She has not been seen since. 

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  • Louis Vuitton’s ‘blow up’ show caps energetic fashion season

    Louis Vuitton’s ‘blow up’ show caps energetic fashion season

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    PARIS (AP) — The funfair lights at Louis Vuitton shone as brightly as the starry front row Tuesday for the vibrant and infectious spring collection from Nicolas Ghesquiere that capped Paris Fashion Week.

    Dramatic bursts from a tribal drum echoed across the storied cobbles of the Louvre, leading guests to a surreal world of circus mirrors, Las Vegas lights and myriad lattices of tent-like red latex — where clothes were blown up.

    Earlier in the day, a more understated collection awaited guests attending Chanel at the Grand Palais Ephemere for one of the season finale’s other big draws.

    Here are some highlights of Tuesday’s spring-summer 2023 collections:

    HONEY, I SHRUNK THE MODELS

    If Nicolas Ghesquiere raised excitement with the circus-like set that curved like a theater in the round, the fun designs did not disappoint.

    This season, the 51-year-old Louis Vuitton designer let his childhood imagination run wild with the theme of blowing up.

    Giant zippers accompanied even bigger Monogram “hand”-bags, humongous bow collars, clown-like buttons and enormous unfurling leather sections that evoked the hit movie “Honey I Shrunk The Kids.”

    Beyond the obvious gimmicks, there were some accomplished looks in the colorful and youthful collection that was also a playful, contemporary take on regal dress.

    Blown up Elizabethan collars — or were they lifebuoys? — were given a sporty revamp on loose, ruched gowns and black stomping boots. Elsewhere, the Renaissance collar silhouette traveled down the body playfully on another look at hip level.

    There was method in the madness — the designs’ sheer vibrancy giving a coherence to the collection as a whole.

    Ghesquiere perhaps went too far with a leather print series of blown-up zippers, but stand out pieces like an embroidered multicolored apron dress surely made up for it.

    LV’S STARS

    Pop icon Janet Jackson looked the model of calm as the cameras jostled around her inside the former royal palace’s oldest courtyard, the Cour Carre, amid the dazzling set lights.

    Jennifer Connelly breezed through backstage. Lea Seydoux posed for photographers near fashion’s richest CEO, Bernard Arnault of LVMH, and “House of the Dragon” star Milly Alcock soaked up her new found fame — a recent addition to the front row crowd. The Australian actress who played childhood Princess Rhaenyra did not forget her humor, lamenting it was “terrible” that her character had to grow up and she be replaced in the hit prequel.

    There were so many celebrities that some bewildered fashion journalists just sat down, beaten, with their VIP cheatsheet on their lap.

    High-octane scenes like these are the norm at Louis Vuitton — which since Karl Lagerfeld‘s death at Chanel has become the undisputed highlight of Paris ready-to-wear’s final day. It’s a glamorous bookend to the entire fashion season that travels through New York, London and Milan and always ends in the City of Light.

    CHANEL’S SPRING

    The Parisian stalwart’s designer, Virginie Viard, gently riffed on the 1980s in an overall simple collection doused in black and white that seemed as if it had nothing to prove.

    There were some minor thrills.

    A-line minis led the eyes down to flashes of tease — like white-lattice thigh-high socks. Irina Shayk ravished in a shoulder-less, capped-sleeve marbled gown with ruffled tiering. Jersey was created to be like scales.

    And a polka dot leather dress with stiff rippled peplum provided historic musing for the house founded in 1910, nicely borrowing from turn-of-the-century styles.

    But the looks that the house compared to “a collage” were very — sometimes, too — subtly delivered by Viard, who took over from the exuberant Lagerfeld following his death in 2019. The beating heart of this display was understatement.

    The decor’s black and white images spanning the ages, including empty historic gardens from the slow-moving 1961 movie “Last Year in Marienbad,” may not have helped the mood — but the 71-look collection felt lacking in energy at times.

    Still, accessories provided welcome shots of vibrancy. Jeweled clasps, swinging pearl and jewel pendants and cascading gold necklaces gave pared-down looks an on-trend ’80s feel.

    MIU MIU GOES UTILITARIAN

    The little sister brand of Miuccia Prada, Miu Miu, went utilitarian for a collection featuring takes on anoraks and handyman pockets — watched by an it-crowd including Poppy Delevingne, Alexa Chung and Pixie Geldof.

    With fewer daring design features than normal, Prada used anoraks, zippers and toggles to explore the theme of unfurling and turning things back-to-front.

    The front of an amorphous alabaster coat flapped unzipped at the top and bottom. Vests had the label on the front, as if they had been put on the wrong way. And one ecru toggled dress was created to look as if it had been worn back to front.

    Later in the 63-look collection, leather designs used the double pockets associated with handymen to fashion low-slung belts, or placed dotted haphazardly across an apron.

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  • IMF warns of higher recession risk and darker global outlook

    IMF warns of higher recession risk and darker global outlook

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    WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund is once again lowering its projections for global economic growth in 2023, projecting world economic growth lower by $4 trillion through 2026.

    Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, told an audience at Georgetown University on Thursday that “things are more likely to get worse before it gets better,” saying the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February has dramatically changed the IMF’s outlook on the economy.

    The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation and worsening climate conditions are also impacting world economies, exacerbating other crises, like food insecurity and high debt levels held by lower-income countries.

    “The risks of recession are rising,” she said, adding that the IMF estimates that countries making up one-third of the world economy will see at least two consecutive quarters of economic contraction this or next year.

    Georgieva said the institution downgraded its global growth projections already three times. It now expects 3.2% for 2022 and now 2.9% for 2023.

    The bleak projections come as central banks around the world raise interest rates in hopes of taming rising inflation. The U.S. Federal Reserve has been the most aggressive in using interest rate hikes as an inflation-cooling tool, though central banks from Asia to England have begun to raise rates this week.

    Georgieva said “tightening monetary policy too much and too fast — and doing so in a synchronized manner across countries — could push many economies into prolonged recession.”

    Many countries are already seeing major impacts of the invasion of Ukraine on their economies, and the IMF’s grim projections are in line with other forecasts for declines in growth.

    The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last week said the global economy is set to lose $2.8 trillion in output in 2023 because of the war.

    The projections come after the OPEC+ alliance of oil-exporting countries decided Wednesday to sharply cut production to support sagging oil prices in a move that could deal the struggling global economy another blow and raise politically sensitive pump prices for U.S. drivers just ahead of key national elections in November.

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  • French writer Annie Ernaux awarded Nobel Prize in literature

    French writer Annie Ernaux awarded Nobel Prize in literature

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    STOCKHOLM — French author Annie Ernaux, who has fearlessly mined her own biography to explore life in France since the 1940s, won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for work that illuminates murky corners of memory, family and society.

    Ernaux ‘s books probe deeply personal experiences and feelings – love, sex, abortion, shame – within a society split by gender and class divisions. The Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, was recognized for “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her background in a working-class family in the Normandy region of northwest France.

    Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee, said Ernaux is “an extremely honest writer who is not afraid to confront the hard truths.”

    “She writes about things that no one else writes about, for instance her abortion, her jealousy, her experiences as an abandoned lover and so forth. I mean, really hard experiences,” he told The Associated Press after the award announcement in Stockholm. “And she gives words for these experiences that are very simple and striking. They are short books, but they are really moving.”

    One of France’s most-garlanded authors and a prominent feminist voice, Ernaux said she was happy to have won the prize, which carries a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) — but “not bowled over.”

    “I am very happy, I am proud. Voila, that’s all,” Ernaux said in brief remarks to journalists outside her home in Cergy, a town west of Paris that she has written about.

    French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “Annie Ernaux has been writing for 50 years the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is that of women’s freedom, and the century’s forgotten ones.”

    While Macron praised Ernaux for her Nobel, she has been unsparing with him. A supporter of left-wing causes for social justice, she has poured scorn on Macron’s background in banking and said his first term as president failed to advance the cause of French women.

    Ernaux is the first female French Nobel literature winner and just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates. More than a dozen French writers have received the literature prize since Sully Prudhomme won the inaugural award in 1901. The most recent French winner before Ernaux was Patrick Modiano in 2014.

    Her more than 20 books, most of them very short, chronicle events in her life and the lives of those around her. They present uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents.

    Olsson said Ernaux’s work was often “written in plain language, scraped clean.” He said she had used the term “an ethnologist of herself” rather than a writer of fiction.

    Ernaux worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her first book was “Cleaned Out” in 1974. Two more autobiographical novels followed – “What They Say Goes” and “The Frozen Woman” – before she moved to more overtly autobiographical books.

    In the book that made her name, “A Man’s Place,” published in 1983 and about her relationship with her father, she writes: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”

    “Shame,” published in 1997, explored a childhood trauma, while “Happening,” from 2000 depicts an illegal abortion.

    Her most critically acclaimed book is “The Years,” published in 2008, which described herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the 21st century. Unlike in previous books, in “The Years,” Ernaux wrote in the third person, calling her character “she” rather than “I.” The book received numerous awards and honors, and Olsson said it has been called “the first collective autobiography.”

    “A Girl’s Story,” from 2016, follows a young woman’s coming of age in the 1950s.

    The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated. Last year’s prize winner, Tanzanian-born, U.K.-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa.

    Olsson said the academy was working to diversify its range, drawing on experts in literature from different regions and languages.

    “We try to broaden the concept of literature but it is the quality that counts, ultimately,” he said.

    The prizes to Gurnah in 2021 and U.S. poet Louise Glück in 2020 helped the literature prize move on from years of controversy and scandal.

    In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, which names the Nobel literature committee, and sparked an exodus of members. The academy revamped itself but faced more criticism for giving the 2019 literature award to Austria’s Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.

    A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

    Three scientists jointly won the prize in physics Tuesday. Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger had shown that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, that can be used for specialized computing and to encrypt information.

    The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to explore cells, map DNA and design drugs that can target diseases such as cancer more precisely.

    The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

    The prizes will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

    ———

    Macpherson reported from Clergy, France and Lawless from London. John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Naomi Koppel in London, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

    ———

    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

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  • A view from Moscow: Ukraine war will get worse

    A view from Moscow: Ukraine war will get worse

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    From: The Bottom Line

    Russian political scientist Andrey Kortunov sees no chance for a peaceful settlement to the Ukraine war any time soon.

    The war in Ukraine is not going as planned for Russia, and Ukraine currently has the upper hand on the ground. Under these circumstances, experts say there is no way Russia will seek to end the fighting.

    In a wide-ranging conversation with host Steve Clemons, Andrey Kortunov, one of Russia’s foremost political scientists, paints a bleak picture of the Ukraine war.

    Kortunov says the real issue Russia is grappling with is: does it want long-term isolation from the West, or compromise and reintegration? Everything else falls into place depending on the outcome of that fateful decision.

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  • At 15 least dead as 2 migrant boats sink in Greek waters

    At 15 least dead as 2 migrant boats sink in Greek waters

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    ATHENS, Greece — At least 15 people have died as two boats carrying migrants sank in Greek waters late Wednesday, and rescuers were looking for dozens still missing, authorities said early Thursday. The coast guard said 15 bodies had been recovered near the eastern island of Lesbos after a dinghy carrying about 40 people sank. Five people were rescued and three had been located on a rocky outcrop near the site of the sinking. A second rescue effort was launched several hundred kilometers (miles) to the west, near the island of Kythira, where a sailboat carrying about 100 migrants hit rocks and sank late Wednesday.

    Officials said 30 people had been rescued after that boat hit rocks off the village port of Diakofti on the east of the island. Winds in the area were up to 70 kph (45 mph).

    “We could see the boat smashing against the rocks and people climbing up those rocks to try and save themselves. It was an unbelievable sight,” Martha Stathaki, a local resident told The Associated Press. “All the residents here went down to the harbor to try and help.”

    Fire service rescuers lowered ropes to help migrants climb up cliffs on the seafront. Local officials said a school in the area would be opened to provide shelter for the rescued. Navy divers were also expected to arrive Thursday.

    Most migrants reaching Greece travel from neighboring Turkey, but smugglers have changed routes in recent months in an effort to avoid heavily patrolled waters around Greek islands near the Turkish coastline.

    Kythira is some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Turkey and on a route often used by smugglers to bypass Greece and head directly to Italy. ——— Full coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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