KYIV, Ukraine — The United Nations atomic watchdog warned of a potential threat to nuclear safety from a spike in fighting near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine, whose forces continued pressing their counteroffensive Saturday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said its experts deployed at the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant reported hearing numerous explosions over the past week, in a possible indication of increased military activity in the region. There was no damage to the plant.
“I remain deeply concerned about the possible dangers facing the plant at this time of heightened military tension in the region,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warned in a statement issued late Friday.
He noted that the IAEA team was informed that staff at the nuclear power plant had been reduced temporarily to minimum levels due to concerns of more military activity in the area.
“Whatever happens in a conflict zone, wherever it may be, everybody would stand to lose from a nuclear accident, and I urge that all necessary precautions must be taken to avoid it happening," Grossi said.
The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concern that the fighting could cause a potential radiation leak from the facility, which is one of the world’s 10 biggest nuclear power stations. The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.
As Ukrainian forces pressed to expand their gains after recently capturing the village of Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region, the U.K. Defense Ministry noted in its latest report that Russia has brought in reinforcements to stymie the Ukrainian advances.
“It is highly likely that Russia has redeployed forces from other areas of the frontline to replace degraded units around Robotyne,” it said. “These redeployments are likely limiting Russia’s ability to carry out offensive operations of its own along other areas of the front line.”
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted that the Russian military has made notable changes to its command and control structure to “protect command infrastructure and improve information sharing.”
Russian forces have continued their barrage across Ukraine. The regional authorities in the northeastern region of Sumy that borders Russia said that the latest Russian shelling left four people wounded, one of whom later died in a hospital.
The Kremlin reaffirmed Saturday that Russia will not extend a landmark deal allowing Ukraine to export grain safely through the Black Sea until the West fully meets Moscow’s demands regarding its own agricultural exports.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov commented on reports that Western powers were allegedly discussing a deal that would allow the Russian Agricultural Bank to open a subsidiary that would be reconnected to the SWIFT payment system and meet other Russian demands. He said that Moscow expects the West to fulfill the original agreements to facilitate Russian agricultural exports that were reached in July 2022.
“For instance, they are now saying that the West is allegedly ready to promise to open SWIFT for a subsidiary of the Russian Agricultural Bank, but the thing is that the agreements envisage SWIFT access for the Russian Agricultural Bank, not its subsidiary,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.
He added that “because they have already made a lot of promises, we considered ourselves entitled and obligated to wait first for the implementation before resuming the deal.”
Russia refused to extend the deal in July, complaining that a parallel agreement promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer hadn’t been honored. It said restrictions on shipping and insurance hampered its agricultural trade, though it has shipped record amounts of wheat since last year.
Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed the Kremlin’s demands as a ploy to advance its own interests.
On Saturday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi arrived to Ukraine for an official visit and prayed at a church in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where some of the worst atrocities of Russia’s war occurred early during the invasion.
"I am grateful to Japan for remaining our key partner in Asia and supporting Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Speaking after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Hayashi pledged that “Japan will go hand in hand with Ukraine until peace returns to its beautiful land.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that while Japan cannot provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, it has "already demonstrated that it can do many other important things to improve our security.”
Japan has given Ukraine more than $7 billion in assistance since the start of the full-scale invasion. As part of its assistance, Tokyo provided two transformers to help Ukraine restore its energy systems after relentless Russian strikes, and donated 24 trucks to help Ukraine clear unexploded ordnance.
TASELI PLATEAU, Turkey — Rescue teams began the arduous process Saturday of extricating an American researcher who became seriously ill while he was 3,000 feet below the entrance of a cave in Turkey, officials said.
It could take days to bring Mark Dickey to the surface since rescuers anticipate he will have to stop and rest frequently at camps set up along the way as they pull his stretcher through the narrow passages.
“This afternoon, the operation to move him from his camp at 1040 meters to the camp at 700 meters began,” Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate, AFAD, told The Associated Press.
The 40-year-old experienced caver began vomiting Sept. 2 because of stomach bleeding while on an expedition with a handful of others in the Morca cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains.
Rescuers from across Europe rushed to the cave to help Dickey and to extract him, including one Hungarian doctor who treated him inside the cave Sept. 3. Doctors gave Dickey IV fluids and 1 gallon of blood inside the cave, officials said. Teams composed of a doctor and three or four others take turns staying with the American at all times.
There are 190 personnel from eight countries assisting in the rescue effort, including doctors, paramedics and experienced cavers, Mersin Gov. Ali Hamza Pehlivan told media Saturday. He said 153 of them were search and rescue experts.
“We have received information that his condition is getting better, thanks to medical intervention. He has been in stable condition as of yesterday," he said.
Speaking with the AP before rescue operations began, Recep Salci, head of AFAD’s search and rescue department, said the rescue will depend on Dickey's condition.
"If he feels well, we will assist him, and he will come out (of the cave) fast. But if his condition worsens, we will have to bring him up on a stretcher.” He said bringing Dickey up in a stretcher could take up to 10 days.
Yusuf Ogrenecek of the Speleological Federation of Turkey says that one of the most difficult tasks of cave rescue operations is widening the narrow cave passages to allow stretcher lines to pass through at low depths.
“Stretcher lines are labor intensive and require experienced cave rescuers working long hours,” Ogrenecek said, adding that other difficult factors range from navigating through mud and water at low temperatures to the psychological toll of staying inside a cave for long periods of time.
In Rome, Federico Catania, the spokesman for Italy’s National Alpine and Speleological Rescue, described the cave as one of the deepest in the world.
“The cave is made up of many vertical shafts, so many sections that are extremely vertical with few horizontal sections where (the) rescuers are setting up temporary camps,” he said.
Turkish authorities made a video message available that showed Dickey standing and moving around Thursday. While alert and talking, he said he was not “healed on the inside” and needed a lot of help to get out of the cave. He thanked the caving community and the Turkish government for their efforts to rescue him.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, one of Donald Trump’s favorite punching bags, hit back at the former president Saturday for what he sees as a misrepresentation of his record on Covid-19-related health policies.
“The fact is former president Trump led the opposition to my decision to reopen Georgia — the first state in the country to do so,” Kemp wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where he responded to a video of Trump calling people “sick” for being “Covid tyrants” that want to take away rights and freedoms.
“While he listened to [Anthony] Fauci & parroted media talking points, I listened to hardworking Georgians. He may not remember, but I sure as hell do,” he added.
At a rally in South Dakota on Friday night, Trump praised Gov. Kristi Noem, who was among a number of governors who did not impose statewide stay-at-home orders during the pandemic.
“Unlike other governors, she never locked down South Dakota,” Trump said. “They all say, ‘Oh, I kept it open, I kept it open.’ They didn’t keep it open.”
After local, state and federal coronavirus measures began shutting down American public life in March 2020, Kemp moved to reopen some businesses and restaurants about a month later in April. Trump said he “strongly” disagreed with the governor’s decision at the time.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who conservatives often praise for his rejection of public health authorities' guidance during the pandemic, moved to reopen Florida at the beginning of May.
"@BrianKempGA and @RonDeSantis were right and Donald Trump was wrong,” James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ campaign manager, wrote on X in response to the original video.
A current uptick of Covid-19 cases has led to a resurgence in pushback against potential further mask mandates, including a GOP-led effort in the Senate to block federal mandates. Many Americans have moved on from previously widespread pandemic precautions, and even President Joe Biden has displayed resistance to masking after the first lady recently tested positive.
Kemp, whose relationship with Trump turned fraught after the former president started making false claims about election fraud in the state, won reelection by around 7.5 percentage points.
Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated 50 years of hip-hop’s influence on American arts and culture Saturday, honoring the genre’s prominent Black roots as the Democratic ticket seeks to retain the community’s support in their 2024 reelection bids.
“Hip-hop is the ultimate American art form,” Harris said at the event at her official residence, according to a pool report. “It tells the stories that don't make the news. But as the great Chuck D once said, rap is Black America's CNN. And by telling the truth, hip-hop calls us to action.”
Harris is one of the prominent standard bearers for rallying Black voters in the Democratic Party. Her role could prove crucial in the coming year with some polls showing the reelection bid is losing some support among Black people and other communities of color.
“Every day, vice president Harris is fighting for the people,” Harvey Mason, Jr., CEO of The Recording Academy, said at the event. “She's fighting for our people. Our vice president was rooted in hip-hop, and it's essential to who she is.”
The event, the first of its kind at the vice president's official residence where several hip-hop artists performed and politicians rubbed shoulders with entertainment industry executives, featured Harris speaking about the Biden administration commitment to the arts, especially hip-hop, in American life.
Harris's policy areas, including voting rights and the border, have proven challenging given the Democratic agenda’s tough odds in Congress over the past two years.
Recently she has pushed back forcefully on Florida’s contentious educational standards that she says whitewash Black history — a chorus that some Republicans have also joined.
Professing a love of hip-hop on its 50th milestone, though, should be an easy political winner.
“This is a hip-hop household!” Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff said.
NEW ORLEANS — A federal appeals court Friday significantly whittled down a lower court's order curbing Biden administration communications with social media companies over controversial content about COVID-19 and other issues.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Friday said the White House, the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and the FBI cannot “coerce” social media platforms to take down posts the government doesn’t like.
But the court threw out broader language in an order that a Louisiana-based federal judge issued on July 4 that effectively blocked multiple government agencies from contacting platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) to urge that content be taken down.
Even the appeals court’s softened order doesn’t take effect immediately. The administration has 10 days to seek a Supreme Court review.
Friday evening's ruling came in a lawsuit filed in northeast Louisiana that accused administration officials of coercing platforms to take down content under the threat of possible antitrust actions or changes to federal law shielding them from lawsuits over their users’ posts.
COVID-19 vaccines, the FBI’s handling of a laptop that belonged to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and election fraud allegations were among the topics spotlighted in the lawsuit, which accused the administration of using threats of regulatory action to squelch conservative points of view.
The states of Missouri and Louisiana filed the lawsuit, along with a conservative website owner and four people opposed to the administration’s COVID-19 policy.
In an unsigned 75-page opinion, three 5th Circuit judges agreed with the plaintiffs that the administration “ran afoul of the First Amendment” by at times threatening social media platforms with antitrust action or changes to law protecting them from liability.
But the court excised much of U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty's broad July 4 ruling, saying mere encouragement to take down content doesn't always cross a constitutional line.
“As an initial matter, it is axiomatic that an injunction is overbroad if it enjoins a defendant from engaging in legal conduct. Nine of the preliminary injunction’s ten prohibitions risk doing just that. Moreover, many of the provisions are duplicative of each other and thus unnecessary,” Friday's ruling said.
The ruling also removed some agencies from the order: the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the State Department.
The case was heard by judges Jennifer Walker Elrod and Edith Brown Clement, nominated to the court by former President George W. Bush; and Don Willett, nominated by former President Donald Trump. Doughty was nominated to the federal bench by Trump.
