BEIJING —  

China has urged France to take on “an active role” to push the European Commission toward a solution acceptable to both the European and Chinese electric vehicle industries, Beijing’s commerce ministry said on Monday, citing its minister.

Wang Wentao, in a meeting with French junior trade minister Sophie Primas in Shanghai on Sunday, reiterated the European Union’s investigation into China’s EVs is a major concern and has “seriously hindered” China-EU auto industry cooperation.

The EU launched an anti-subsidy investigation into imports of Chinese-made battery EVs last year and in October voted for tariffs on those vehicles. China in the past year has launched its own investigations into European pork and dairy, and imposed temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of brandy from the EU early this month.

Primas is on a three-day visit to challenge China over its import duties on brandy, which Paris calls political and unjustified, Reuters reported last week.

Wang told Primas China’s trade remedy investigations on EU brandy, pork and dairy products were in accordance with the domestic industry’s applications and complied with the World Trade Organization rules, “unlike the EU” which was “rash” in launching its EV probe.

“China will continue to conduct investigations in strict accordance with the law, safeguard the legitimate rights of enterprises of EU member states, including France, and make rulings based on facts and evidence,” the ministry statement cited Wang as saying.

But he said China is willing to work with the European Commission towards a “proper solution” as well, without elaborating.

China opened an anti-subsidy probe into imported EU dairy products in August and an investigation focusing on pork intended for human consumption in June.
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Madrid — Five bodies were found floating in the sea Sunday after the inflatable boat they were travelling in punctured around 90 km (56 miles) off the Spanish island of Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, Spanish Sea Rescue services told Reuters.

A spokesperson said a rescue aircraft sighted two inflatable boats heading toward the archipelago, and that one of them had one of its floats deflated.

The aircraft launched two life rafts and was able to rescue 17 people from one vessel and 80 from another, but five bodies were also found.

State agency EFE said the rescue services had rescued more than 1,500 people over the weekend.

It also reported Sunday that at least 48 migrants died trying to reach the Canary Islands in a boat that departed Mauritania three weeks ago. Ten more migrants from the same craft were rescued near the island of El Hierro on Saturday, it said.

Calm seas and gentle winds associated with late summer in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa have prompted a surge of migrants trying to escape extreme poverty and political instability in Africa’s Sahel region.

The Atlantic route to the Canary Islands has seen the fastest growth in irregular migration in recent years, though numbers remain below those on the Central Mediterranean route toward Italy.

Some 32,878 migrants took the route in boats from West Africa to the Canary Islands between January and Oct. 15, according to government figures, a rise of 39.7% from the same period last year.
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Taipei, Taiwan — A second Taiwanese volunteer fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers against Russia has been killed, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said Sunday.

The man was a member of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, the ministry said in a statement, expressing condolences to his family, who did not want him publicly identified.

The ministry said it was informed of the man’s death Saturday and that Taiwan’s representative office in Poland had verified the information with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.

No further details were released about how he died.

At the start of the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy openly invited foreigners to come to his country to join a “foreign legion” that would fight alongside Ukrainians against the invading Russians.

Taiwanese media reported that the soldier returned to Ukraine in July after recovering from a leg injury.

There are currently “five to six” Taiwanese fighters in Ukraine, Taiwanese lawmaker Puma Shen, a member of the parliamentary defense committee, told AFP.

The first Taiwanese volunteer died on the battlefield in Ukraine in November 2022.
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Spain’s government reports more than 200 dead and dozens still missing following the deadliest flash floods in that country’s modern history. Locals say they feel abandoned by their government. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Moscow sent 96 drones and a guided air missile into Ukraine overnight into Sunday, Ukrainian officials said.

According to Ukraine’s Air Force, 66 drones were destroyed during the overnight barrage, along with the missile. A further 27 drones were “lost” over various areas, it said, likely having been electronically jammed, while one drone flew into Belarusian airspace. No casualties were reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Russia had launched around 900 guided aerial bombs, 500 drones and 30 missiles against Ukraine over the past week.

Zelenskyy appealed Sunday on X to Ukraine’s allies to provide “long-range capabilities for our security”, saying that these “attacks would have been impossible if we had sufficient support from the world.”

Kyiv is still awaiting word from its Western partners on its repeated requests to use the long-range weapons they provide to hit targets on Russian soil, including for preemptive Ukrainian strikes on camps where North Korean troops are being trained.

The Ukrainian President also urged partners to enact “truly effective sanctions to prevent Russia from importing critical components for drone and missile production”. This appeal followed an address on Saturday, in which he said over 2,000 drones and missiles “still using Western components” were launched against Ukraine in October, and underlined the need for more stringent export controls to prevent sanctions evasion.

In Russia, the Defense Ministry said that 19 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight into Sunday in three regions of Russia: 16 in the Rostov region, two in the Belgorod region and one in the Volgograd region.

A man died Sunday in a Ukrainian drone attack in the Belgorod region, according to regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.
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VALENCIA, Spain — A crowd of angry survivors of Spain’s floods tossed mud and shouted insults at Spain’s King Felipe VI and government officials when they made their first visit to one of the hardest hit towns on Sunday. 

Government officials accompanied the monarch who tried to talk to locals while others shouted at him in Paiporta, an outskirt of Valencia city that has been devastated. 

Police had to step in with officers on horseback to keep back the crowd of several dozens. 

“Get out! Get out!” and “Killers!” rang out among other insults. 

After being forced to seek protection from the mud, the king remained calm and made several efforts to speak to individual residents. One person appeared to have wept on his shoulder. He shook the hand of a man. 

It was an unprecedented incident for a Royal House that takes great care to craft an image of a monarch who is liked by the nation. 

Queen Letizia and regional Valencia President Carlo Mazón were also in the contingent. 

Over 200 people have died from Tuesday’s floods and thousands have had their homes destroyed by the wall of water and mud. At least 60 of the dead were in Paiporta, an epicenter of suffering. 
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Berlin — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will hold meetings with his top two ministers to try to find common ground after they put forward contradictory plans to fix the nation’s ailing economy, a government source told Reuters on Sunday.  

A document leaked by Christian Lindner’s finance ministry raised eyebrows in Berlin last week, with its push for tax cuts and fiscal discipline widely interpreted as a challenge to the multibillion-euro investment plan put forward by Economy Minister Robert Habeck just days earlier.  

The stand-off is the latest escalation in a row over economic and industrial policy between the FDP, the Greens and Scholz’s Social Democrats that has fueled speculation of the coalition’s potential collapse, less than a year before elections are due.  

But a government source told Reuters that Scholz and the ministers would hold several meetings in the coming days, saying that “now that everyone has submitted their paper, we have to see how they fit with each other.”  

A worsening business outlook in Europe’s largest economy has widened divisions in Scholz’s ideologically disparate coalition over policy measures to drive growth, protect industrial jobs, and reinforce Germany’s position as a global industrial hub.  

While Habeck wants the creation of a fund to stimulate investment and to get around Germany’s strict fiscal spending rules, Lindner advocates tax cuts to spur the economy and an immediate halt on all new regulation.  

SPD leader Lars Klingbeil signaled openness to discussing Lindner’s proposals in a local newspaper interview, but said that some of them were untenable for his party, which released its own economic plan earlier in October.  

“Giving more to the rich, letting employees work longer and sending them into retirement later – it will come as no surprise to anyone that we think this is the wrong approach,” Klingbeil told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. 
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MOSCOW — Kyiv called on Moscow on Sunday to provide a list of Ukrainian prisoners of war ready for a swap after Russia accused Ukraine of sabotaging the exchange process. 

In requesting the list of Ukrainians from his Russian counterpart, Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets wrote on his Telegram messaging channel: “We are always ready to exchange prisoners of war!”  

Kyiv and Moscow have frequently exchanged prisoners since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor in 2022. The last swap took place in mid-October with each side bringing home 95 prisoners.  

On Saturday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Ukraine was essentially sabotaging the process and has refused to take back its own citizens.  

Zakharova said Russia’s defense ministry had offered to hand over 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war, but that Ukraine had taken only 279.  

Lubinets, in turn, said that Ukraine was always ready to accept its citizens and accused Russia of slowing the exchange process.  

Russian Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova said on Saturday that Ukraine has politicized the issue.  

“We consider it necessary to return to a constructive dialog and speed up the exchange of prisoners,” Moskalkova wrote on Telegram.  
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washington — Mariana Katzarova, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Russia, reported Tuesday on the human rights situation in Russia at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, describing torture as Moscow’s main tool of repression. In an interview with VOA, Katzarova detailed how the Russian government has turned brutality into the new norm and how Russians are persecuted for their anti-war views.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: You came to Washington with a new report about torture in Russia. The torture system is not something new. Did it get worse during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Russia Mariana Katzarova: The main message of this report was about the state-sanctioned system of torture being a tool used in a widespread and systematic manner by the authorities for oppression and control of Russian society.

Yes, it did get worse. First of all, because it’s a tool in the war against Ukraine. For example, we don’t even know how many. Still, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been detained in the occupied territories of Ukraine by the Russian forces and then deported to Russia proper in Russian prisons. They’re kept incommunicado. They have been tortured, including with electric shocks, with sexual violence, rape against them. Many of them haven’t even been charged with any criminal offenses; they’re just kept there kidnapped. I’ve seen pictures of some of them who have been tried in Rostov-on-Don in military courts. I mean, they look like [they’re] coming from concentration camps.

Also, after the terrorist attack in March in Moscow, it was kind of, you know, a new page was turned where the authorities almost legitimized torture, normalized it, almost encouraged it to be happening because they allowed it on the national television to show torture of the suspects, Tajik migrants. As it happened, the suspects in the Crocus [City Hall] attack, terrorist attack, [were subjected to beatings and torture] including the electric shock to the genitals of one of the suspects or [the] cutting of the ear. There was another transmission on television. These people were [nearly] dead and were brought in front of a judge, and the judge completely pretended that nothing was happening.

VOA: Are you expecting any reaction from Russian officials regarding that report?

Katzarova: I, of course, as a special rapporteur of the U.N. system, I hope that the Russian Federation will pay attention because governments around the world are in charge of protecting the rights of their citizens. If the Russian authorities are not interested in the protection of the human rights of their own people, this is shocking. I mean, that’s why I’m hoping that they’re not going to turn a blind eye, particularly when we’re talking about torture, which is entirely outlawed by international law under all circumstances.

VOA: You said you would like to have some constructive dialogue with the Russian officials. Is that possible?

Katzarova: All special rapporteurs of the U.N. are independent experts the governments appoint, members of the U.N., to advise and present the truth about the human rights situation in these countries. Of course, in normal circumstances, I should have had a constructive dialogue with the Russian authorities.

So far, it’s been one way. It’s a monologue. I’m presenting my report. They’re reading it, but they’re not answering. All I can say is that I am planning to send them my new letters. I do it every year after my mandate is voted on by the governments of the Human Rights Council.

They’re not allowing me to visit Russia to meet with all the Russian people, victims of human rights violations, lawyers, the government authorities, the ombudsperson for human rights. This is what we should be doing as special rapporteurs.

VOA: What kind of role can the U.N. play in helping the victims?

Katzarova: First of all, this report is shedding light on the continuing almost full, complete impunity for torturing ill-treatment. Various people of various targeted groups, starting with [the ones] I just mentioned, the Ukrainian detained civilians and POWs, but also from the Russian society. These are the LGBT persons who are pronounced as extremist organizations by the Supreme Court of Russia.

These are the mobilized conscientious objectors and the mobilized men who refuse to fight and who are tortured as well, subjected to torture, to … convince them to continue fighting or join the war against Ukraine.

And, of course, now another targeted group where the political prisoners, they’re being subjected to torture as conditions of detention. They’re also a target for the authorities, of course, to begin with. Alexey Navalny spent something like 394 and 96 days in SHIZO, which is a special punishment cell.

Also, anti-war activists have been subjected in administrative detention to something called Carrousel. They’re kept for two weeks, then another two weeks until criminal cases are fabricated against them. And we know of deaths in custody of such activists under torture.

VOA: If some Russian officials, let’s say, Sergey Lavrov, would listen to us right now, what would you say?

Katzarova: I would say, “Dear Mr. Lavrov, Your Excellency, please respect your own laws and most importantly, the international law and the rules of the United Nations. All the conventions that you have signed and ratified. And please respect the human rights of the Russian people. They’re your people, and they deserve better than languishing in prisons. They deserve better than being herded, and then sent to fight in the war, which is not their war. So, please respect human rights and show the United Nations that you deserve to be a member of the Security Council and a beacon, a country to show the way for other countries that need to follow in your steps because you’re one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

And please stop the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people and the Russian people suffered enough because of this aggressive war.

What else can we do apart from shed light? Speak up, not be afraid, and wait for our messages and the truth to be heard. As we say in Bulgaria and other countries, the darkest time is before sunrise.
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ATHENS, GREECE — Greek anti-terror investigators have arrested a man in connection with a deadly explosion in Athens, police said Saturday, warning of “a new generation of terrorists” at work.

Thursday’s blast in an apartment in the capital, which killed a man and seriously injured a woman, is suspected to have been caused by the accidental detonation of a homemade bomb.

Police sources told AFP they had identified the dead man from his dismembered remains as a 36-year-old from the port city of Piraeus who had been previously arrested in Germany.

His fingerprints were in the international database of Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, the sources said.

Investigators have also opened a case for alleged participation in a terrorist organization and committing terrorist acts against the injured woman, 33, who was hospitalized under police supervision, and a 30-year-old woman who remains at large.

In their statement, police said Saturday that the arrested man was detained after turning himself in Friday.

He is believed to have a connection with one of the two women wanted in the case but has denied having anything to do with the explosion, police said.

Police said that a search of the apartment produced two handguns, wigs and face masks among other materials.

Greek police sources told AFP that investigations were ongoing and that the deceased and those charged were probably members of “a new generation of terrorists.”

The country has a decades-old history of far-left extremism involving small urban groups.

The shadow November 17 group, named after an anti-junta student uprising, was behind the 1975 killing of the CIA’s Athens station Chief Richard Welch and claimed responsibility for assassinating 23 people in scores of attacks on U.S., British, Turkish and Greek targets between the 1970s and 1990s.

In the past decade, scores of arson and bomb attacks in Greece have hit financial, diplomatic and political targets, with police blaming radical anarchists.
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MOSCOW — A court in Russia’s far east said on Friday it had convicted Robert Shonov, a former U.S. consular employee, of illegally and covertly cooperating with the U.S. government to harm Russia’s national security and had jailed him for nearly five years.

Russia’s FSB security service detained Shonov, a Russian national, in Vladivostok in May 2023 and accused him of taking money to covertly supply U.S. diplomats with information that was potentially harmful to Russia.

The United States on Saturday condemned the conviction, calling it “an egregious injustice.”

“The allegations against Mr. Shonov are entirely fictitious and without merit,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

A court in the Primorsky region in Russia’s far east confirmed in a statement on Friday that it had found Shonov guilty and had sentenced him to four years and 10 months in a penal colony.

Video of the verdict being read, released by the court, showed Shonov listening inside a courtroom cage as the judge sentenced him.

The FSB published a video in August 2023 showing a purported confession by Shonov in which he said two senior U.S. diplomats based in Moscow whom Russia later expelled had asked him to collect information about Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, its annexation of “new territories,” its military mobilization and the 2024 Russian presidential election.

In the video, Shonov said he was told to gather “negative” information on these topics, to look for signs of popular protest, and to reflect these in his reports.

It was not clear whether he was speaking under duress.

Shonov was employed by the U.S. Consulate General in Vladivostok for more than 25 years until Russia in 2021 ordered the dismissal of the U.S. mission’s local staff.
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VALENCIA, SPAIN — Spain will deploy 10,000 more troops and police officers to the eastern Valencia region devastated by floods that have killed 211 people, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday.

Sanchez said in a televised address that he accepted the regional leader’s request for 5,000 more troops and informed him of a further deployment of 5,000 police officers and civil guards. 

Meanwhile, rescuers resumed a grim search for bodies as the nation scrambled to organize aid to stricken citizens.

Hopes of finding survivors more than three days after torrents of mud-filled water submerged towns and wrecked infrastructure were slim in the European country’s deadliest such disaster in decades.

Almost all deaths have been recorded in the eastern Valencia region, where thousands of soldiers, police officers and civil guards were frantically clearing debris and mud in the search for bodies.

Officials have said that dozens of people remain unaccounted for, but establishing a precise figure is difficult with telephone and transport networks severely damaged.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska on Friday told Cadena Ser radio station that 207 people had died and that it was “reasonable” to believe more fatalities would emerge.

It is also hoped that the estimated number of missing people will fall once telephone and internet services are running again.

Restoring order and distributing aid to destroyed towns and villages — some of which have been cut off from food, water and power for days — is a priority.

Authorities have come under fire over the adequacy of warning systems before the floods, and some residents have also complained that the response to the disaster is too slow.

Susana Camarero, deputy head of the Valencia region, told journalists on Saturday that essential supplies had been delivered “from day one” to all accessible settlements.

But it was “logical” that affected residents were asking for more, she said.

Authorities in Valencia have restricted access to roads for two days to allow emergency services to carry out search, rescue and logistics operations more effectively.

‘Overwhelmed’ by solidarity

Thousands of people pushing shopping trolleys and carrying cleaning equipment took to the streets on Friday to help with the effort to clean up.

Camarero said some municipalities were “overwhelmed by the amount of solidarity and food” they had received.

The surge of solidarity continued Saturday as around 1,000 people set off from the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia toward nearby towns laid waste by the floods, an AFP journalist saw.

Authorities have urged them to stay at home to avoid congestion on the roads that would hamper the work of emergency services.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez chaired a meeting of a crisis committee made up of top cabinet members on Saturday and is due to address the country later.

The storm that sparked the floods on Tuesday formed as cold air moved over the warm waters of the Mediterranean and is common for this time of year.

But scientists warn that climate change driven by human activity is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of such extreme weather events.
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