Fire at cooling tower of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
A fire broke out Sunday at a cooling tower of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, with Kyiv and Moscow trading blame for the incident.
Both sides said there had been no detected spike in radiation levels around the power station, which has been under the control of Russian forces since the first days of its full-scale military offensive.
“As a result of shelling of the town of Energodar by the Ukrainian armed forces, there was a fire at a cooling system of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-installed governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region said on Telegram.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social media post “Russian occupiers have started a fire” at the plant.
“Currently, radiation levels are within the norm,” he added.
Balitsky also reported the “radiation background” around the facility was normal.
Ukraine’s interior minister said it was “intensively monitoring” the situation from meterological stations near the plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power station.
All six of its units are currently in cold shutdown, Balitsky said.
“There is no threat of a steam explosion or any other consequences,” he said, adding that firefighters were on site battling the blaze.
A video published by Zelensky showed black smoke billowing out of one of the station’s cooling towers as red flames licked around the bottom.
The site is on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river — a de facto frontline snaking through southern Ukraine.
Ukraine controls the opposite bank and Russia has repeatedly accused its forces of deliberately shelling the plant — claims denied by Ukraine.
Kyiv, in turn, has accused Moscow of militarising the facility, including by placing heavy weapons there at the start of the conflict.
Russia’s control over the plant is a form of nuclear “blackmail”, it says.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has staff stationed there, has repeatedly urged restraint, saying it fears reckless military action could trigger a major nuclear accident at the plant.
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Australia spy chief accuses friendly nations of foreign interference
Australia’s spy chief on Sunday accused some friendly nations of running foreign interference operations in the country, saying their identities would surprise people if revealed.
Canberra last year named Iran as having engaged in foreign interference, adding that Australian intelligence had disrupted “individuals” conducting a surveillance operation on an Iranian-Australian’s home.
But other countries are also secretly attempting to interfere in Australia’s political system and in its diaspora communities, said Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
“I can think of at least three or four that we’ve actually actively found involved in foreign interference in Australian diaspora communities,” Burgess said in an interview with public broadcaster ABC.
“Some of them would surprise you. Some of them are also our friends,” he said.
Burgess declined to identify the countries involved beyond confirming the government’s allegation of Iran’s involvement.
Foreign interference, espionage and politically motivated violence are Australia’s principal security concerns, Burgess said.
“In diaspora communities, there are multiple countries that attempt to threaten and intimidate Australians living in this country,” he said.
“When we find it, we deal with it effectively.”
In 2022, Burgess revealed ASIO had foiled a foreign interference plot by a wealthy person — named only as “the puppeteer” — with deep connections to a foreign government.
That person had funnelled hundreds of thousands of dollars to an employee to try to influence an election, he said at the time, without specifying which vote was targeted.
ASIO this month raised Australia’s terrorism threat level to “probable”, saying a homegrown rise in extreme ideologies had increased the likelihood of a violent act in the next 12 months.
Burgess said Sunday the spread of misinformation on social media made it harder to tackle the threat of politically motivated violence, with minors notably “locked in their bedrooms on their devices” and increasingly exposed to violent extremism.
The spy chief said ASIO would be keeping an eye on such risks surrounding Australia’s next general election, widely expected to be held in 2025, because it would be a “focal point” for robust debate on social issues.
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Zelensky acknowledges attack ‘pushing the war’ into Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday acknowledged the recent offensive into the western Russian border region of Kursk, referring to actions “pushing the war into the aggressor’s territory”.
In his evening address, Zelensky referred to army chief Oleksandr Syrsky, who he said had “already reported several times — on the frontline and our actions and pushing the war into the aggressor’s territory.
“I am grateful to each of our Defence Forces units that ensure this,” he added.
“Ukraine is proving that it can really bring justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed — pressure on the aggressor.”
Earlier Saturday, Russia said it had evacuated tens of thousands of people from its border region, launching what it called a “counter-terror operation”.
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IOC president says there is no solid scientific system on how to identify men and women
IOC President Thomas Bach said there isn’t a reliable scientific method to differentiate between men and women.
As Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was getting ready to compete for an Olympic gold medal on Friday, Bach once again supported her right to participate in the women’s events at the Paris Games.
IOC calls for clear standards on gender identification, says president
“If someone can provide us with a scientifically reliable way to distinguish men from women, we would be the first to use it,” said the International Olympic Committee leader. “We don’t like this uncertainty.”
“What is not possible is someone saying ‘this is not a woman’ just by looking at somebody or by falling prey to a defamation campaign by a not credible organization with highly political interests,” he added.
NEW – IOC president says there is no solid scientific system on how to identify men and women.pic.twitter.com/VdXaXDPtIp
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 9, 2024
The IOC President mentioned that he won’t be attending either of the gold-medal matches at the Roland Garros tennis complex because he still needs to visit four of the 32 Olympic sports before the Games end on Sunday.
“But this has no impact on our very clear position,” Bach said. “Women have the right to participate in women’s competitions. And the two are women.”
Khelif and Li prepare for the Olympic boxing finals
Khelif is set to compete in the final of the women’s welterweight division. Meanwhile, Li Yu-ting from Taiwan will fight for the women’s featherweight title on Saturday. This follows global confusion and controversy over misunderstandings about their gender.
The debate at the Olympics reignited 16 months after both women were disqualified. And denied medals at the 2023 World Championships by the Russian-controlled International Boxing Association.
The IBA, which has been in a long and bitter feud with the IOC, alleges that both fighters failed a vague eligibility test for women’s competition. In Paris, boxing is being managed by an IOC-appointed team. However, they are using eligibility rules from 2016, which are outdated compared to other Olympic sports.
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Plane with 62 aboard crashes in Brazil: firefighters, airline
An airplane with 62 people on board crashed Friday in the interior of Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, firefighters and the airline Voepass said.
The aircraft, which was traveling from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport, crashed in the city of Vinhedo, according to images published by local media.
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Iran ramping up US election interference efforts: Microsoft
Fake news sites, hacking, cyber attacks — Iran is ramping up efforts to influence US elections this fall, Microsoft said Friday, following warnings from American officials about the threat of foreign interference.
Among the Iranian-built sites masquerading as news portals are “Nio Thinker,” which has a left-leaning stance and frequently insults former president Donald Trump, and another aimed at conservative audiences called “Savannah Time” that focuses on Republican politics and LGBTQ issues, the tech giant said in a report.
The sites appear to be plagiarizing some of their content from US publications using artificial intelligence tools, the report from the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) added.
Groups linked to the Iranian government have “laid the groundwork for influence campaigns on trending election-related topics and begun to activate these campaigns in an apparent effort to stir up controversy or sway voters -– especially in swing states,” said Clint Watts, MTAC’s general manager.
“They’ve launched operations that Microsoft assesses are designed to gain intelligence on political campaigns and help enable them to influence the elections in the future.”
Since March, a separate Iran-linked group has been impersonating social and political activists online, setting itself up for extreme activities including intimidation or inciting violence against political figures, the report said.
The ultimate goal of the group appears to be inciting chaos and sowing doubt about election integrity, it added.
Another Iranian group linked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard compromised the email account of a former advisor to a presidential campaign.
That account was used to send a phishing email to a senior official involved in the campaign in a bid to intercept other messages, the report said.
One other Iranian group managed to compromise an account belonging to “a county-level government employee in a swing state,” the report said, adding that it was difficult to identify its motives.
US officials have warned of efforts by foreign powers, including Russia and Iran, to meddle in the November election.
Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned that Iran was becoming “increasingly aggressive” in its influence efforts, seeking to stoke discord and undermine democratic institutions as it has done in prior election cycles.
Last month, the Justice Department said the United States had disrupted a Russian disinformation campaign involving an AI-powered “bot farm” used to create fake profiles on the social media platform X.
The campaign — aimed at sowing “discord” in the United States and other countries — was developed by a senior editor of RT, a Russian state-owned media outlet, financed by the Kremlin and aided by an officer of Russia’s FSB security service, it added.
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Israel agrees to resume Gaza truce talks next week
Israel has agreed to resume Gaza ceasefire talks next week at the request of international mediators, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, after intensive diplomatic efforts aimed at averting a region-wide conflagration.
The announcement followed an Iranian claim that Israel wants to spread war in the Middle East, as well as repeated accusations by Hamas militants, some analysts, and critics in Israel that Netanyahu has prolonged the fighting in Gaza.
Israel’s military on Thursday said troops had begun operations in the area of Khan Yunis, the southern Gaza city from which Israeli soldiers had withdrawn in April after months of fierce fighting with Hamas.
Israel has vowed to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement but during 10 months of war across Gaza has found itself returning to some areas to fight the militants again.
“Enough, for both, the Jews and Hamas!” shouted Khan Yunis resident Ahmed al-Najjar.
“Have mercy on us for God’s sake, the young children and women are dying in the streets. Enough! Where will the people go?”
After the military issued an evacuation order for parts of Khan Yunis, AFPTV images showed a crowd of people flowing through dusty, damaged streets on foot or on donkey and motorcycle carts piled with belongings as horns honked.
“We’ve been displaced 15 times,” said Mohammed Abdeen.
Hamas’s unprecedented October attack on Israel started the war in Gaza that has pulled in Iran-aligned groups in neighbouring countries. Following vows of vengeance after the killing of two senior militants, fears of a broader Middle East war have surged.
There has been only one truce in the Gaza fighting, a week-long pause in November that saw Israeli hostages held by Hamas freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel.
United States, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have for months tried to secure another deal.
In a joint statement on Thursday, the three countries’ leaders invited the warring parties to resume talks on August 15 in Doha or Cairo “to close all remaining gaps and commence implementation of the deal without further delay”.
Mediators were “prepared to present a final bridging proposal” to resolve remaining issues, they said.
Netanyahu’s office said later Thursday that Israel would send a negotiating team “to conclude the details of implementing a deal”.
Recent discussions have focused on a framework outlined by US President Joe Biden in late May which he said had been proposed by Israel. The UN Security Council endorsed that framework.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Palestinian militants seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 39 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,699 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
In talks with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, “raised the importance of swiftly achieving an agreement” to return the hostages from Gaza, Israel’s military said on Friday.
The killing last week of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh during a visit to Tehran had sidelined truce talks. Iran and Hamas blamed his death on Israel which has not directly commented on it.
In the hours after Haniyeh’s killing, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani questioned how mediation can succeed “when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?”
Haniyeh’s killing came hours after a strike on south Beirut killed military commander Fuad Shukr of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.
Israel said it carried out that attack in response to deadly rocket fire on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
Hezbollah, in what it says is support for Hamas, has been trading near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces.
Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and others vowed retaliation for the Shukr and Haniyeh killings, sending fears of a regional war soaring and triggering intensive de-escalation efforts.
Biden called the Egyptian and Qatari leaders this week, after which came word of the planned talks.
A senior Biden administration official said, however: “There’s still a significant amount of work to do.”
Israel had been “very receptive” to the idea of the talks, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity, rejecting suggestions that Netanyahu was stalling on a deal.
Far-right members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition oppose any truce.
But Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli national security adviser and researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said the killing of Haniyeh has left Netanyahu “acting more from a position of strength now.”
After criticism from Biden and other American officials of the Gaza war’s impact on civilians, Freilich added that he thinks Netanyahu is also trying “to align with the US now, since Israel needs the US so much for dealing with the potential Iranian and Hezbollah attacks.”
The United States, which has sent extra warships and jets to the region to support Israel, has urged both Iran and Israel to avoid an escalation.
On Friday General Michael Kurilla, the head of US Central Command which covers the Middle East, returned to Israel for his second security assessment this week, Israel’s military said.
Netanyahu said this week that Israel was “prepared both defensively and offensively” and “determined” to defend itself.
In Khan Yunis, Israeli troops were “engaging in combat both above and below-ground” to eliminate militants and had struck more than 30 Hamas targets in the area, the military said on Friday.
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Russian economic growth dips to 4 percent in second quarter
The pace of Russia’s economic growth slowed in the second quarter of 2024, official data showed Friday, amid concerns over stubborn inflation and warnings of “overheating”.
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew four percent year-on-year from April to June, according to the Rosstat statistics agency, the lowest quarterly result since the start of 2023, but still a sign that the economy is expanding.
The Kremlin has heavily militarised Russia’s economy since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, spending huge sums on arms production and on military salaries.
That spending boom has fuelled economic growth, helping the Kremlin buck initial predictions of a recession when it was hit with unprecedented Western sanctions in 2022.
But it has sent inflation surging at home, forcing the central bank to raise borrowing costs.
Consumer prices rose again in July, with inflation running at an annual rate of 9.13 percent, up from 8.59 percent in June, Rosstat data also showed.
The Central Bank has aggressively raised interest rates in a bid to cool what it has warned is an economy growing at unsustainable rates due to the massive increase in government spending on the Ukraine offensive.
The Russian central bank raised its key interest rate to 18 percent last month — the highest level since an emergency hike in February 2022 took it to 20 percent.
The bank’s governor Elvira Nabiullina said the economy was showing signs of “overheating” and pointed to difficulties with international payments — an effect of Western sanctions — as another factor driving up inflation.
Russia is set to spend almost nine percent of its GDP on defence and security this year, a figure unprecedented since the Soviet era, according to President Vladimir Putin.
Moscow’s federal budget has jumped almost 50 percent over the last three years — from 24.8 trillion rubles ($289 billion) in 2021, before the Ukraine offensive, to a planned 36.6 trillion rubles ($427 billion) this year.
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‘Powerful’ explosion hits ship in east China
A “powerful explosion” ripped through a container ship at a port in eastern China on Friday, state media reported, leaving emergency services rushing to douse the flames.
No deaths or injuries were immediately reported from the blast, despite footage showing a ball of flames engulfing much of the ship’s deck and spewing debris high into the air.
The explosion occurred at around 1:40 pm (0540 GMT) on the bow of the YM Mobility, moored at Ningbo-Zhoushan port in Zhejiang province, state news agency Xinhua reported.
“An investigation is underway” to determine the cause, it said.
Another video clip showed red fire engines spraying jets of water onto the charred vessel as black smoke billowed into the sky.
State broadcaster CCTV said the fire had been extinguished by 5:00 pm and that the local coast guard had been brought in to assist with the response.
“After preliminary verification, all dock workers and vessel staff are safe and there are no casualties,” CCTV reported.
The vast Ningbo-Zhoushan port is one of the world’s busiest in terms of cargo throughput.
Industrial accidents occur frequently in China due to poor safety training and lax protocols.
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Czech police probe self-proclaimed ‘paedophile hunters’
Czech police are investigating groups of mostly young people hunting for paedophiles on the internet to blackmail them or beat them up, a spokesman said Friday.
Pretending they are children, the self-proclaimed “paedophile hunters” contact sexual predators online, often exchanging pornographic material with them, and ask to meet, police said.
“At the meeting, the group confronts or menaces the sexual predators, or they attack or blackmail them,” police spokesman Jakub Vincalek said in a statement.
“The hunters shoot videos of the encounter and then publish them on social networks,” he added.
Czech police were working in cooperation with Europe’s police agency Europol, the spokesman said.
Similar groups are active across Europe and the Czech “hunters” drew inspiration from the foreign social networks.
“The paedophile hunting groups are trying to act as self-proclaimed protectors of society taking justice into their hands,” Vincalek said.
He added that police were investigating several crimes linked to the groups including robbery and causing serious injury.
“An alarming fact is that the largest group the detectives are investigating… comprises above all youths,” Vincalek said.
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