Month: September 2022

Liz Truss officially became Britain’s prime minister Tuesday, replacing Boris Johnson, who resigned in July.

In a private meeting Tuesday in Balmoral, Scotland, with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, Truss was asked to form a new government. The meeting, a formality, took place in Scotland as the 96-year-old monarch is not able to travel to London due to health problems.

Truss is the 15th prime minister to be appointed by Elizabeth, and the fourth Conservative party leader in just seven years – an indication of the monarch’s longevity and recent chaos in Britain’s politics. Truss’s meeting took place hours after Johnson traveled to Scotland to meet with the monarch.

Truss later flew back to London. In the evening, she outlined the government’s priorities in a televised address outside the prime minister’s residence at No. 10 Downing Street.

Energy crisis

Truss served as foreign secretary under Johnson. She is seen as a foreign policy hawk and has pledged a tough line against countries like Russia and China.

“We now face severe global headwinds caused by Russia’s appalling war in Ukraine and the aftermath of COVID. … United with our allies, we will stand up for freedom and democracy around the world,” Truss said.

Truss, however, also faces challenges at home.

She pledges to help Britons survive an energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine, as gas and electricity prices are predicted to rise as much as eight-fold in coming months.

“I will deal hands on with the energy crisis caused by Putin’s war,” Truss said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The BBC reported Tuesday that Truss plans to spend up to $150 billion on freezing energy bills for the next 18 months, by offering loans to energy companies. Further details are expected later this week.

Any political honeymoon will likely be short-lived, says analyst John Kampfner of London-based research group Chatham House.

“Ninety percent of her time is going to have to be dealing with the here and now on the domestic agenda – with an economy in crisis, strikes, health service (in crisis), huge energy bills, potential social unrest,” Kampfner told VOA.

Despite the cost of dealing with the energy crisis, Truss has promised to cut taxes.

Ukraine

Truss has also pledged to boost defense spending to 3% of GDP, which the analyst group the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) estimated will cost an additional $180 billion. Meanwhile, she has pledged to continue giving military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Britain has so far pledged around $3.8 billion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who made no secret of his desire for Boris Johnson to stay in power, welcomed the appointment of Truss as Britain’s prime minister.

“In Ukraine, we know her well. She was always on the enlightened side of European politics. I believe that together, we will be able to do much more for the protection of our nations and to ensure the failure of Russia’s destructive efforts,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted online Tuesday.

Ukraine’s military has strong public support in Britain, according to analyst Kampfner.

“There’s every reason — notwithstanding the energy price rises and all the other challenges that Liz Truss faces — that she will absolutely continue the Johnson approach, and we can expect an early visit to get a photo op with Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital pretty soon,” Kampfner said.

China

As a government minister, Truss took a hawkish stance on China. She was closely involved in the decision to ban Chinese telecoms firm Huawei from involvement in Britain’s 5G network, over national security concerns.

“Liz Truss is a more hawkish person than Boris Johnson, the former prime minister,” Neil Melvin of the Royal United Services Institute told The Associated Press. “She has, for example, committed to increasing the threat perception of China. So, China will be recognized under her premiership, she’s indicated, as a threat to the U.K.”

Europe

Truss has also pledged to push through legislation overriding the Northern Ireland protocol, a key Brexit agreement that Johnson signed with the European Union that prevented the need for a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which many fear would have reignited sectarian violence. The European Union has started legal proceedings against the British government, notes Kampfner.

“The worst-case scenario is a full-blooded trade war between — can you imagine — between the 27 European nations and Britain. In every respect, that will be a disaster, it will add fuel to the fire of an already pretty terrible U.K. economy,” he said.

Special relationship

U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated Truss via Twitter Tuesday. “I look forward to deepening the special relationship between our countries and working in close cooperation on global challenges, including continued support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression,” Biden wrote.

The special relationship is clouded by lingering tensions over Brexit, according to Kampfner.

“The Americans and particularly the Biden administration are incredibly wary of having to choose between the Brits and the European Union. They regard it as a false choice.”

Early election?

The next British election is due by December 2024. Truss was elected by just over 81,000 Conservative party members, a tiny fraction of the overall electorate. Truss, however, is not likely to seek a fresh mandate from the public through an early election, said Alan Wager of the U.K. in a Changing Europe program at Kings College London.

“The Conservative party is at the lowest level of polling they’ve been for over a decade. So that makes a general election extremely unlikely — because the vast majority of the public want one. The new prime minister will do anything to avoid facing the electorate right now,” Wager told VOA.
…

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday that it is “still gravely concerned” about the safety and security of Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia facility situated in the midst of intense fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in southern Ukraine.  

“The current situation is untenable, and the best action to ensure the safety and security of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities and its people would be for this armed conflict to end now,” the United Nations nuclear agency said in a new report after IAEA chief Rafael Grossi and a team of inspectors visited the site last week even as shelling raged near the plant. 

The IAEA said it found extensive damage at the plant but did not assign blame. Russia, whose forces have controlled the facility since early in its invasion, and Ukraine, whose engineers operate the plant, have each accused the other of shelling the facility. 

The IAEA inspectors said they found Russian troops and equipment inside, including military vehicles parked near turbines.

“Ukrainian staff operating the plant under Russian military occupation are under constant high stress and pressure, especially with the limited staff available,” the IAEA report said. “This is not sustainable and could lead to increased human error with implications for nuclear safety.”

The U.N. nuclear agency said, “Pending the end of the conflict and re-establishment of stable conditions, there is an urgent need for interim measures to prevent a nuclear accident arising from physical damage caused by military means.”

The agency called for “the immediate establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the Zaporizhzhia site, an apparent call for something approximating a demilitarized zone in the vicinity of the power plant. It’s a buffer that world leaders have previously asked for, but the warring countries have not implemented.

The IAEA said it is ready to immediately start consultations “leading to the urgent establishment of such a nuclear safety and security protection zone.”

The agency said, “Despite the unprecedented circumstances” at Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s three other nuclear power plants — Khmelnytskyy, Rivne and South Ukraine — “have continued operating safely and securely since the beginning of the conflict” on February 24.

The IAEA said Grossi later Tuesday planned to brief the U.N. Security Council on its inspection of the Zaporizhzhia plant. The IAEA said two of its experts remain at the plant to “observe the situation there and provide independent assessments.” 

Ukraine’s state-run nuclear company said Monday the Zaporizhzhia plant was disconnected from the electricity grid because of Russian shelling. 

“Today, as a result of a fire caused by shelling, the [last working] transmission line was disconnected,” Energoatom said in a statement on Telegram. 

Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Facebook that Energoatom was not able to make repairs while fighting raged around the facility. 

The IAEA said Ukraine informed the agency the backup power line itself was not damaged and that Ukrainian experts plan to reconnect power in the coming days. 

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video message Monday that the nuclear plant has again been put in a situation where it is “a step away from a radiation catastrophe.”  

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday doubled down on his warning that Turkey could “come all of a sudden one night” in response to perceived Greek threats, suggesting a Turkish attack on its neighbor cannot be ruled out.

Questioned about his earlier use of the phrase and the possibility of Turkish military action against its NATO ally, Erdogan reiterated the expression.

“What I’m talking about is not a dream,” he said at a news conference in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. “If what I said was that we could come one night all of a sudden [it means] that, when the time comes, we can come suddenly one night.”

Turkey and Greece have decades-old disputes over an array of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean Sea and disagreements over the airspace there. The friction has brought them to the brink of war three times in the last half-century.

Ankara says Greece is violating international agreements by militarizing islands close to Turkey’s Aegean coastline. It has also accused Greek air defenses of locking on to Turkish fighter jets during NATO exercises over the eastern Mediterranean.

Athens has also accused Turkey of violating its airspace.

“There are some illegitimate threats against us and if these illegitimate threats continue there’s an end to one’s patience,” Erdogan added, sitting alongside Bosnia’s three presidential representatives.

“When the time is due, necessary action will be taken because it is not a good sign to lock on radars to our planes. Such things done by Greece are not a good sign.”

Erdogan has previously said Turkish forces can “come all of a sudden one night” when threatening military action against Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq. Turkey has conducted several military operations against the militants in recent years.

He first used the phrase in connection to Greece at an aerial technology festival on Saturday.
…

Israel’s president addressed Germany’s parliament on Tuesday about atrocities committed during the Third Reich, while at the same time praising the close and friendly relations that have emerged between the two countries since the end of the Holocaust.

Six million European Jews were murdered by Germany’s Nazis and their henchmen during World War II.

“Never in human history was there a campaign like the one the Nazis and their accomplices conducted to annihilate the Jewish people,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told lawmakers at the Bundestag.

“Never in history was a state responsible, as Nazi Germany was responsible, for the loss of all semblance of humanity, for the erasure of all mercy, for the pursuit of the worldwide obliteration, with such awful cruelty, of an entire people.”

Herzog also spoke about his father, former Israeli President Chaim Herzog, who was among the liberators of the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany in April 1945, as an officer of the British forces.

“I shall never forget how he described to me the horrors he witnessed. The stench. The human skeletons in striped pajamas, the piles of corpses, the destruction, the hell on earth,” the Israeli president told German lawmakers.

After his speech, Herzog and Steinmeier, accompanied by their wives, went to Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews — a field of 2,700 gray concrete slabs near the city’s landmark Brandenburg Gate — where they laid two wreaths for the victims of the Holocaust.

On Tuesday afternoon, the two presidents are set to visit the site of the former concentration camp. After a tour of the memorial site, they are expected to meet with survivors and German high school students.

The Israeli president arrived for a state visit to Germany earlier this week that also included a trip to Munich on Monday where he participated in the 50-year anniversary ceremony for the 11 Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian militants at the 1972 Olympic Games.

Looking forward, Herzog praised close relations between the two countries and their joint commitment to fight antisemitism.

“The partnership between Israel and Germany has achieved global renown, and we must continue deepening and cultivating it, for the benefit of a brilliant future not only for our countries but for the whole of humanity,” he said in parliament.
…

Liz Truss is set to become Britain’s new prime minister Tuesday, replacing Boris Johnson at a time of economic upheaval and escalating energy bills.

Johnson is expected to formally tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II at her Balmoral estate in Scotland, after which the queen is expected to appoint Truss as prime minister.

The 47-year-old Truss will become the third woman to lead the country and Britain’s fourth prime minister in six years.

She prevailed in an intraparty vote, defeating former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.

After her victory was announced, Truss told a party gathering, “I campaigned as a Conservative, and I will govern as a Conservative.”

“I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy,” she said. “Dealing with people’s energy bills but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply.”

Truss, once an opponent of pulling Britain from the European Union but now a staunch supporter of Brexit, holds hawkish foreign policy views and is expected, like Johnson, to remain a steadfast link in the Western alliance sending aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s six-month-old invasion.

Truss will immediately face severe economic problems, including a recession, labor turmoil, surging energy bills for British households and possible fuel shortages this coming winter.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
…

Frances Tiafoe ended Rafael Nadal’s 22-match winning streak at Grand Slam tournaments by beating the 22-time major champion 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 in the U.S. Open’s fourth round Monday.

Tiafoe is a 24-year-old from Maryland who is seeded 22nd at Flushing Meadows and reached the second major quarterfinal of his career.

He is the youngest American man to get that far at the U.S. Open since Andy Roddick in 2006, but this was not a case of a one-sided crowd backing one of its own. Nadal is about as popular as can be in tennis and heard plenty of support in Arthur Ashe Stadium as the volume rose after the retractable roof was shut during the fourth set.

“I don’t even know what to say right now. I’m beyond happy. I can’t believe it,” said Tiafoe, who faces No. 9 seed Andrey Rublev next. “He’s one of the greatest of all time. I played unbelievable tennis today, but I don’t even know what happened.”

Here’s what happened: Tiafoe served better than No. 2 seed Nadal. More surprisingly, he returned better, too. And he kept his cool, remained in the moment and never let the stakes or the opponent get to him. The 36-year-old from Spain had won both of their previous matches, and every set they played, too.

“Well, the difference is easy: I played a bad match, and he played a good match,” Nadal said. “At the end that’s it.”

This surprise came a day after one of Tiafoe’s pals, Nick Kyrgios, eliminated the No. 1 seed and defending champion Daniil Medvedev. That makes this the first U.S. Open without either of the top two seeded men reaching the quarterfinals since 2000, when No. 1 Andre Agassi exited in the second round and No. 2 Gustavo Kuerten in the first.

That was before Nadal, Novak Djokovic, who has 21 Grand Slam titles, and Roger Federer, who has 20, began dominating men’s tennis. Djokovic, who is 35, did not enter this U.S. Open because is not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was not allowed to enter the United States; Federer, 41, has undergone a series of operations on his right knee and has not played since Wimbledon last year.

Now come the inevitable questions about whether their era of excellence is wrapping up.

“It signifies that the years go on,” Nadal said. “It’s the natural cycle of life.”

Either Tiafoe or Rublev will advance to a first major semifinal. Rublev, who is 0-5 in Slam quarterfinals, beat No. 7 Cam Norrie 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 earlier Monday.

The No. 1 woman, Iga Swiatek, covered her head with a white towel during one changeover after falling behind by a set and a break in her fourth-round match. She kept making mistakes, then rolling her eyes or glaring in the direction of her guest box.

Eventually, Swiatek got her strokes straightened out and moved into her first quarterfinal at Flushing Meadows by coming back to beat Jule Niemeier 2-6, 6-4, 6-0.

“I’m just proud,” Swiatek said, “that I didn’t lose hope.”

The 21-year-old from Poland will face another first-time U.S. Open quarterfinalist next. That’s No. 8 seed Jessica Pegula, the highest-ranked American woman, who advanced with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over two-time Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova.

Nadal won the Australian Open in January and the French Open in June. Then he made it to the semifinals at Wimbledon in July before withdrawing from that tournament because of a torn abdominal muscle; that does not go into the books as a loss, because he pulled out before the match.

Nadal competed only once in the 1½ months between leaving the All England Club and arriving in New York while recovering from that injury. His play has not been up to his usual standards at the U.S. Open, which he has won four times.

The match ended when one last backhand by Nadal found the net. Tiafoe put his hands on his headm then he sat in his sideline chair with his face buried in a towel.

“When I first came on the scene, a lot of people had limitations on what I would do. … I wasn’t ‘ready for it mentally.’ I wasn’t ‘mature,’” Tiafoe said. But these days, he added, “I’m able to just do me and do it my way and enjoy the game I love.”

This represents the latest significant step forward for Tiafoe, whose only previous trip to a Grand Slam quarterfinal came at the 2019 Australian Open — and ended with a loss to Nadal.

Tiafoe thanked a long list of folks who were in the stands, including his parents — they emigrated from Sierra Leone in West Africa and his dad worked as a maintenance man at a tennis facility near the U.S. capital — his girlfriend and Washington Wizards All-Star guard Bradley Beal.

“To have them see what I did today means more than anything,” Tiafoe said. “Today’s an unbelievable day and I’m going to soak this one in, for sure.”
…

The head of the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog is set to release a report Tuesday about the nuclear safety and security situation in Ukraine after his team’s visit to examine the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. 

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi will also brief the U.N. Security Council on his team’s findings, the IAEA said. 

The IAEA inspectors arrived at the Zaporizhzhia plant Sept. 1 and spent days evaluating damage at the site, how well safety and security systems are working, and conditions for the Ukrainian staff at the plant that has been under Russian control since the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Both Russia and Ukraine have accused the other side of being responsible for shelling in the area of the power plant. The attacks have raised international concern about the prospect of a nuclear disaster. 

The IAEA said two of its experts remain at the power plant to “observe the situation there and provide independent assessments.” 

Ukraine’s state-run nuclear company said Monday the Zaporizhzhia plant was disconnected from the electricity grid due to Russian shelling.    

“Today, as a result of a fire caused by shelling, the (last working) transmission line was disconnected,” Energoatom said in a statement on Telegram.   

Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Facebook that Energoatom was not able to make repairs while fighting raged around the facility.      

The IAEA said Ukraine informed the agency that the backup power line itself was not damaged and that Ukrainian experts plan to reconnect power in the coming days.  

‘A step away from a radiation catastrophe’

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video message Monday that the nuclear plant has again been put in a situation where it is “a step away from a radiation catastrophe.” 

In other developments Monday, Russia blamed Western sanctions on Moscow for its stoppages of natural gas to Europe.        

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Western sanctions were “causing chaos” for maintenance of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which Russian energy giant Gazprom shut down last week after saying it detected an oil leak.    

Western officials and engineers have disputed Russia’s claim of mechanical problems with the pipeline. Europe accuses Russia of using its leverage over gas supplies to retaliate against European sanctions.     

The energy battles between Europe and Russia led European markets to drop sharply Monday while natural gas prices surged.   

Nuclear power on standby

Germany announced Monday that it would keep two of its three remaining nuclear power stations on standby beyond the end of the year as the country suffers a gas crunch.  

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement on Monday that the two nuclear plants would “remain available until mid-April 2023 in case needed.”   

He said the move does not mean that Germany is going back on its long-standing promise to exit nuclear energy and said it remains “extremely unlikely” the country would face an energy crisis in which the power stations would be needed.      

Ukraine advocated Monday for “maximum support” for its efforts to defeat Russia in order to blunt economic effects on European allies.       

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia’s “military aggression against Ukrainians, energy blackmail against EU citizens” were to blame for “rising prices and utility bills in EU countries.”     

“Solution: maximum support to Ukraine so that we defeat Putin sooner and he does not harm Europe anymore,” Kuleba tweeted, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.    

The Group of Seven nations has proposed capping the price on Russian oil exports to limit Russian profits that help fund Moscows war efforts in Ukraine.    

Russia, in turn, said it would not sell oil to any countries that implement such a cap.    

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…