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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak named Grant Shapps as his new defense minister Thursday following the resignation of defense chief Ben Wallace. 

Shapps had been serving as secretary of energy security.

Wallace, who led Britain’s military response to the war in Ukraine, signaled his intention to step down last month and issued a formal letter of resignation Thursday after four years on the job.

Wallace said the defense ministry is “more modern, better funded and more confident” than when he took the post in 2019.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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U.N.-backed human rights experts focusing on racial discrimination urged Italy’s government to do more to eliminate violence, hate speech, stigmatization and harassment against Africans and people of African descent.

They also expressed concern that no legal cases have been brought to punish fans and others for racist acts at sports events.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a panel of independent experts that works with the U.N.’s human rights office, also said it regrets that Italy’s government hasn’t provided it with an updated number of complaints and cases of racial discrimination that have been investigated and prosecuted, among other concerns.

The findings released Thursday were part of the committee’s periodic look at efforts by governments of U.N. member states to crack down on racial hatred and discrimination. Other countries under the panel’s scrutiny in this round were Croatia, Namibia, Senegal, Turkmenistan and Uruguay.

Italian soccer has a longstanding issue with Black players being racially abused by fans and incidents in which players, including Kevin-Prince Boateng in 2013 and Romelu Lukaku this year, felt they were not adequately supported by match officials and soccer bodies.

The committee noted Italy had adopted laws and other measures to fight racial discrimination, including hate speech in sports. But it said it was “concerned that cases of racist acts during sport events, including physical and verbal attacks against athletes of African descent, continue” in Italy and “legal proceedings to punish those responsible are not initiated.”

Italy also has been a major thoroughfare and destination for Africans and other migrants who make dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean to reach Europe, where peace and economic opportunity may be greater than in their home countries.

The panel urged Italian authorities to do more to protect the human rights of migrants and asylum-seekers, as well as ethnic minorities. It expressed concern about “persistent and increasing use and normalization of racist hate speech” against ethnic groups in the media and on the internet.

Italy’s diplomatic mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the report.
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Russian officials said Thursday the country’s air defenses shot down a Ukrainian drone flying toward Moscow.

The Russian defense ministry said the drone was destroyed over the Voskresensky district.

Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said on Telegram there were no reports of casualties or damage.

Ukraine on Wednesday launched a wave of drone attacks aimed at six Russian regions, including hitting an airport near Russia’s border with Estonia and Latvia.  That drone ignited a huge blaze and damaged four Il-76 military transport planes, which can carry heavy machinery and troops, the Russian news agency Tass reported, quoting emergency officials.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military would undoubtedly analyze “how this was done in order to take appropriate measures to prevent these situations in the future.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Ukraine was relying on foreign help because the drones “simply would not be able to fly such a distance without carefully researched information from Western satellites.”

Meanwhile, Moscow’s forces hit Kyiv with drones and missiles with what Ukrainian officials described as a “massive, combined attack” that killed two people with falling debris.

Sergei Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, described Russia’s attack on the Ukrainian capital as the biggest since the spring, even as Ukraine’s air defenses shot down more than 20 drones and missiles.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Fiji will sign a defense agreement with France, after the Cabinet of the Pacific Islands nation approved the deal, Fiji’s government said in a statement Thursday.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron in July toured the Pacific Islands, where France has overseas territories, denouncing predatory behavior by big powers in a region where China is extending trade and security ties.

Macron’s advisers say France can be an “alternative” and help island nations diversify their partnerships without becoming too reliant on one single country.

A statement from the Fiji Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday said its Cabinet had discussed defense cooperation between Fiji and France and approved a Status of Forces Agreement.

Areas covered by the agreement include joint defense technology research, training, logistical support and emergency and humanitarian assistance.

“The agreement provides a framework for cooperation and assistance through military exchanges and the sharing of expertise between the Republic of Fiji military force and the defense force of the French Republic,” the statement said.

A joint document would be signed by both parties, it said.

France’s embassy in Fiji did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fiji and France began negotiations for a Status of Forces Agreement in 2016, under the Bainimarama government. China instead became a major donor of military vehicles, vessels and other defense equipment around 2018.

The government of Sitiveni Rabuka, elected last year, has shifted attention to the United States and Australia.

France has recently worked with Fiji, Australia and the United States on illegal fishing patrols in the Pacific Ocean.

Rabuka said last week the Pacific Islands should be a “zone of peace, a zone of non-aligned territories”, adding that he hopes the rivalry between the United States and China in the region does not develop into a military conflict or build-up.

The Pacific Islands, pivotal during World War II, are again at the center of a geopolitical contest: Solomon Islands has a security pact with China, while Papua New Guinea signed a defense cooperation deal with the United States.
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United Nations sanctions on Mali will end on Thursday after Russia vetoed a renewal of the measures me that targeted anyone violating or obstructing a 2015 peace deal, hindering aid delivery, committing rights abuses or recruiting child soldiers.

Independent U.N. sanctions monitors reported to the Security Council this month that Mali’s troops and its foreign security partners, believed to be Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, are using violence against women and other “grave human rights abuses” to spread terror.

Thirteen Security Council members voted in favor of a resolution, drafted by France and the United Arab Emirates, to extend the U.N. sanctions and independent monitoring for another year. Russia cast a veto, while China abstained from the vote.

Russia then instead proposed extending U.N. sanctions in Mali for one final year, but immediately ending the independent monitoring now. It was the only country to vote yes, while Japan voted no and the remaining 13 members abstained.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the council that Russia wanted to eliminate the independent monitoring “to stifle publication of uncomfortable truths about Wagner’s actions in Mali, which require attention.”

In response, Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told Reuters that was speculation and resembled “paranoia,” adding that Russia was “upholding the interests of the affected country — Mali, as the council is supposed to do.”

The U.S. has also accused Wagner, which has about 1,000 fighters in Mali, of engineering an abrupt request by the junta for a 13,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force to leave. The decade-long operation is due to shutdown by the end of the year.

Mali’s junta, which seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021, teamed up with Wagner in 2021 to fight an Islamist insurgency. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash in Russia last week and President Vladimir Putin then ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state.

Mali’s military junta wrote to the Security Council earlier this month to ask for the sanctions to be lifted.

The current annual mandate for the U.N. sanctions regime and independent monitoring will expire Thursday. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia made clear that Russia would not discuss the issue any further after the two votes Wednesday.

The council established the Mali sanctions regime in 2017, which allowed it to impose travel bans and asset freezes. There are currently eight people subjected to the U.N. sanctions measures. The independent monitors reported to the council twice a year on implementation and potential new designations. 
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England will bring forward the start of its autumn flu and COVID-19 vaccination programs as a precautionary step after the identification of highly mutated COVID variant BA.2.86, which has been found in Britain. 

Scientists have said BA.2.86, an offshoot of the omicron variant, was unlikely to cause a devastating wave of severe disease and death, given immune defenses built up worldwide from vaccination and prior infection. 

However, Britain’s health ministry said annual vaccination programs for older and at-risk groups would start a few weeks earlier than planned in light of the variant. 

“As our world-leading scientists gather more information on the BA.2.86 variant, it makes sense to bring forward the vaccination program,” junior health minister Maria Caulfield said in a statement. 

The variant was first detected in Britain on August 18, and vaccinations will start on September 11, with care home residents and people at highest risk to receive the shots first. 

It is not currently categorized as a “variant of concern” in Britain, and the health ministry said there was no change to wider public health advice. 

The variant was first spotted in Denmark on July 24 after the virus that infected a patient at risk of becoming severely ill was sequenced. It has since been detected in other symptomatic patients, in routine airport screening, and in wastewater samples in a handful of countries. 

England has been without coronavirus restrictions since February 2022, but UK Health Security Agency Chief Executive Jenny Harries said new variants were expected.

“There is limited information available at present on BA.2.86, so the potential impact of this particular variant is difficult to estimate,” Harries said in a statement. 

“As with all emergent and circulating COVID-19 variants … we will continue to monitor BA.2.86 and to advise government and the public as we learn more.”
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Millions of children across Ukraine and in seven neighboring asylum countries are being deprived of an education and the skills needed to help Ukraine recover from the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion of their country, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF.

“Inside Ukraine, attacks on schools have continued unabated, leaving children deeply distressed and without safe spaces to learn,” said Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF’s regional director for Europe and Central Asia.

“Not only has this left Ukraine’s children struggling to progress in their education, but they are also struggling to retain what they learned when their schools were fully functioning,” she said at a Tuesday briefing.

De Dominicis visited Ukraine last week and met several teachers there who she said were injured in an attack on a civilian area in the northern city of Romny.

“The attack ripped through a school where teachers were preparing lessons for the new school year. On the same day, a kindergarten in Kherson city was hit in another attack,” she said, noting that such attacks are not anomalies.

An assessment by UNICEF and the Ukrainian Ministry of Education reports that Russian attacks have destroyed more than 1,300 schools, and that others are damaged and not ready to open for the academic year, which begins this week.

“These senseless and reckless attacks have left many of Ukraine’s children deeply distressed and without a safe space to learn,” De Dominicis said. “As a result, children in Ukraine are showing signs of widespread learning loss, including a deterioration in learning outcomes of the Ukrainian language, reading and mathematics.”

According to the latest UNICEF survey data, up to 57% of teachers report a deterioration in students’ Ukrainian language abilities; up to 45% report a reduction in mathematics skills; and up to 52% report a reduction in foreign language abilities.

Another UNICEF survey finds that just one in three schoolchildren in Ukraine are learning in person full time, and that three-quarters of children of preschool age in front-line areas are not attending kindergarten.

“This war is layering crisis upon crisis,” De Dominicis said. “It is leaving children grappling with mental health problems. It is denying millions a chance to be educated.”

As for Ukraine’s refugee children, UNICEF reports that they, too, are missing out on an education, noting that more than half of children from preschool to secondary school age are not enrolled in the national education systems of their host countries.

De Dominicis cited language difficulties as one of the main reasons children do not attend school.

“In Poland, in Czech Republic, in Moldova — very often, the family were hoping to go back after a couple of months,” she said. “So, they prefer to be hooked to the online Ukrainian language system. Unfortunately, we see that they will reside in these countries for longer, because the war is still ongoing. Many of them are facing difficulty in not having teachers to support their children” in preparing them to attend classes in their host countries.

De Dominicis said that children are resilient and can learn multiple languages, even at a young age.

“So, we hope they will see a richness in actually being included in host country education without losing their right to their culture, to their language,” she said.

UNICEF said schools provide far more than a place of learning in times of crisis or war. They can provide a safe space where children can escape violence, make friends and create a sense of normalcy in an otherwise uncertain environment.

“The war in Ukraine has become a war on children,” De Dominicis said.

When the war ends and the children grow up, they will be essential to the country’s recovery and future. This will require a workforce that is both highly educated and healthy, she said.

“Investing in education for Ukraine’s children, no matter where they reside, is the best investment we can make in the country’s future,” De Dominicis said.
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When Pope Francis travels to Mongolia this week, he will in some ways be completing a mission begun by the 13th-century Pope Innocent IV, who dispatched emissaries east to ascertain the intentions of the rapidly expanding Mongol Empire and beseech its leaders to halt the bloodshed and convert.

Those medieval exchanges between Roman pope and Mongolian khan were full of bellicose demands for submission and conversion, with each side claiming to be acting in the name of God, according to texts of the letters that survive.

But the exchanges also showed mutual respect at a time when the Catholic Church was waging Crusades and the Mongol Empire was conquering lands as far west as Hungary in what would become the largest contiguous land empire in world history.

Some 800 years later, Francis won’t be testing new diplomatic waters or seeking to proselytize Mongolia’s mostly Buddhist people when he arrives in the capital Ulaanbaatar Friday for a four-day visit.

His trip is nevertheless a historic meeting of East and West, the first-ever visit by a Roman pontiff to Mongolia to minister to one of the tiniest, newest Catholic communities in the world.

“In a way, what’s happened is that both sides have moved on,” said Christopher Atwood, professor of Mongolian and Chinese frontier and ethnic history at the University of Pennsylvania. “Once upon a time, it was either/or: Either the world was ruled by the pope, or the world was ruled by the Mongol Empire. And now I think both sides are much more tolerant.”

Officially, there are only 1,450 Catholics in Mongolia and the Catholic Church has only had a sanctioned presence since 1992, after Mongolia shrugged off its Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution. Francis last year upped the Mongolian church’s standing when he made a cardinal out of its leader, the Italian missionary Giorgio Marengo.

“It is amazing [for the pope] to come to a country that is not known to the world for its Catholicism,” said Uugantsetseg Tungalag, a Catholic who works with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in a nursing home in the capital. “When the pope visits us, other countries will learn that it has been 30 years since Catholicism came to Mongolia.”

The Mongol Empire under its famed founder Genghis Khan was known for tolerating people of different faiths among those it conquered, and Francis will likely emphasize that tradition of religious coexistence when he presides over an interfaith meeting Sunday. It was after all, one of Genghis Khan’s descendants, Kublai Khan, who welcomed Marco Polo into his court in Mongol-ruled China, providing the Venetian merchant with the experiences that would give Europe one of the best written accounts of Asia, its culture, geography and people.

Invited to Francis’ interfaith event are Mongolian Buddhists, Jewish, Muslim and Shinto representatives as well as members of Christian churches that have established a presence in Mongolia in the last 30 years, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which officially claims more than 12,500 members in Mongolia in 22 congregations.

In a message to Mongolians ahead of his visit, Francis emphasized their interfaith traditions and said he was travelling to the “heart of Asia” as a brother to all.

“It is a much-desired visit, which will be an opportunity to embrace a Church that is small in number, but vibrant in faith and great in charity; and also to meet at close quarters a noble, wise people, with a strong religious tradition that I will have the honor of getting to know, especially in the context of an interreligious event,” Francis said Sunday.

Aside from the historic first, Francis’ trip holds great geopolitical import: With Mongolia sandwiched between China and Russia, Francis will be travelling to a region that has long been one of the thorniest for the Holy See to negotiate.

Francis will fly through Chinese airspace in both directions, allowing him a rare opportunity to send an official telegram of greetings to President Xi Jinping at a time when Vatican-Chinese relations are once again strained over the nomination of Chinese bishops.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s crackdown on religious minorities grind on, Francis will be visiting a relatively neutral player but one that is striving to show its regional importance in the shadow of its two powerful neighbors, said Manduhai Buyandelger, a professor of anthropology at MIT and a Mongolia scholar.

“I think Mongolia is a very safe arena for the pope to land to demonstrate his outreach, as well as to show Mongolia’s belonging on equal stage with the rest of the world,” she said from Ulaanbaatar.

Mongolia’s environmental precariousness, climate shocks and the increasing desertification of its land are likely to be raised by the pope, given he has made combatting climate change and addressing their impacts on vulnerable peoples a priority of his 10-year pontificate.

Mongolia, a vast, landlocked country historically afflicted by weather extremes, is considered to be one of the most affected by climate change. The country has already experienced a 2.1-degree Celsius increase in average temperatures over the past 70 years, and an estimated 77% of its land is degraded because of overgrazing and climate change, according to the U.N. Development Program.

The cycles of dry, hot summers followed by harsh, snowy winters are particularly devastating for Mongolia’s nomadic herders, since their livestock are less able to fatten up on grass in summer before cold winters, said Nicola Di Cosmo, a Mongolian historian and professor of East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

“If these events become more and more common and more frequent … this change interferes with this very delicate pastoral economy, which is a delicate balance between the resources of the grassland and the animals using those resources,” Di Cosmo said.

Already, many of Mongolia’s herders, who comprised about a third of the population of 3.3 million, have abandoned their traditional livelihoods to settle around Mongolia’s capital, stressing social services in a country where already nearly 1 in 3 people live in poverty.

More recently, Mongolia has turned to extraction industries, particularly copper, coal, gold, to fuel the economy, which gets more than 90% of its export revenue from minerals. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis would likely refer to this trend in his remarks; Francis has frequently spoken out about the harm caused by extraction industries, particularly on the natural environment and local populations.

Munkh-Erdene Lkhamsuren, a professor of anthropology at the National University of Mongolia, said he hoped Francis would speak out about “predatory” Western mining companies which, he said, together with Mongolian officials, are robbing Mongolia of its natural wealth.

In December, hundreds of people braved freezing cold temperatures in the capital to protest corruption in Mongolia’s trade with China over the alleged theft of 385,000 tons of coal.

The government has declared 2023 to be an “anti-corruption year” and says it is carrying out a five-part plan based on Transparency International, the global anti-graft watchdog that ranked Mongolia 116th last year in its corruption perceptions index.

“It is well known fact that most common Mongolians now see their country as a victim of a neo-colonialism,” Lkhamsuren said.
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The European Union’s fossil fuel energy production hit a record low the first half of the year, think tank Ember Climate reported Wednesday, although green sources are struggling to fill the gap. 

The decline in coal and gas generation was driven by a drop in electricity consumption across the bloc of 4.6% amid high power prices, which surged after Russia invaded Ukraine, upending gas supplies. 

“The decline in fossil fuels is a sign of the times,” said Ember analyst Matt Ewen.  

Coal generation was down 23%, accounting for less than 10% of the EU’s total electricity production for the first time ever in May, Ember reported. 

While gas prices have fallen from “crisis highs” last year, they remain double the cost compared with the first half of 2021, the report said.  

The drop in electricity consumption resulted from emergency measures implemented by nearly all EU members between November and March to combat rising prices.  

Industrial demand, notably in Germany, had also declined over the period, the report said.  

Fossil fuels now make up the “lowest share ever of the power mix” at 33%, Ember said.  

The greatest declines in fossil fuel use year-over-year at more than 30% were seen in Portugal, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia and Finland.  

But reduced demand being the driver for the decline in fossil fuel use is not “sustainable or desirable,” Ember warned.  

With demand expected to rise in the future, replacing fossil fuels with alternative sources needs to happen faster, Ewen said.  

Solar power generation was up 13% in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2022, while wind was up a more modest 4.8%.  

Denmark and Portugal saw renewables account for more than 75% of the electricity mix while in Greece and Romania renewables for the first time exceeded 50% of the share of supply.  

However the growth in clean energy was still not enough to compensate for the gap left by the fall in fossil fuels, the report found.  

“A massive push, especially on solar and wind, is urgently needed to underpin a resilient economy across Europe,” Ewen said.  
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Historic rivals Greece and Turkey are stepping up efforts to improve ties after the two countries’ leaders received strong election mandates this year. Next week, Turkish and Greek foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in Turkey, but analysts warn substantial obstacles remain between the neighbors. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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While it might be too early to assess the effects the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin and other leaders on the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa, some analysts say there will be short-term disruptions.

Given Prigozhin’s reach on the continent the past few years, it will take time to replace Wagner’s top man, said Steven Gruzd, head of the Africa Russia Project at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg.

“There’s going to be a period of uncertainty; of people jockeying for position, of seeing who wants to take over,” Gruzd said. “There’s also the talk of Russia incorporating it into the army, taking it out of private hands.”

But the International Crisis Group’s Charles Bouessel told VOA the private mercenary group’s activities in Africa will be disrupted because of the relationships the Wagner boss and some of his associates, including Valery Chekalov and Dmitry Utkin, who all died with him in a plane crash — were able to cultivate the past few years.

“Prigozhin and Utkin especially had deep knowledge,” Bouessel said, “and they had all the connections with the African regimes where Wagner is working. It will take time for Russia to take it over and to rebuild relations with these countries.”

Wagner’s influence stretches across the continent, Gruzd said.

“The Wagner presence in Africa is large,” he said. “Reportedly over 5,000 soldiers [are] spread across the various countries, embedded in countries like Central African Republic and Mali, less so in Libya and Sudan. Even as late as last week, it looked like Niger and Burkina Faso, the countries that have undergone coups in West Africa across the Sahel, are targets for Wagner.”

The U.S. Treasury Department accused the Wagner Group of mass executions, rape and physical abuse in Mali and the Central African Republic, or CAR, and designated it a “criminal organization.”

In the CAR, in particular, it’s too early to assess the impact Prigozhin’s death will have, but it’s important to remember the role the group had under its leader, said Bouessel.

“The Central African Republic signed a deal with Russia in late 2017,” he said. “This deal included the arrival of Wagner and assistance of Wagner toward the president. Since then, Wagner was able to oust the former colonizer France out of the country and out of the decision-making part of the country. They also managed to secure [Faustin] Touadera’s power and make him re-elected. They managed to deter rebel groups from attacking the capital again. And they managed to weaken the armed groups.”

In the CAR, Bouessel said, the group controlled businesses in the mining of gold and diamonds. They are also present in the timber industry and beverage sector.

Dr. Edgar Githua, a lecturer at the United States International University in Nairobi and Strathmore University who specializes in international relations, peace and conflict, said that Prigozhin’s death will affect the group’s finances, and that its global influence might take a hit.

“Prigozhin is the one who had the financial streams of the Wagner Group,” Githua said. “He’s the one with the international connections. He’s the one who was getting all the international contracts.

“It was a one man show. Prigozhin had a lot of power and a lot of say within that group. With his demise, that group is going to find itself rudderless for some time,” he said.

Prigozhin died a couple of months after he staged an unsuccessful rebellion against top Russian military commanders. After that failed mutiny, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated that operations in the CAR and Mali would not be affected.
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