London — Prime Minister Keir Starmer will warn Britons next week that the changes needed to fix Britain’s many problems will take time, saying “things will get worse before we get better” in a speech he describes as a chance to level with the public. 

After being elected as prime minister at a July landslide election, Starmer has repeatedly blamed the former Conservative government for leaving Britain in a parlous state, something he said allowed “thugs” to spark this month’s anti-migrant riots. 

In a speech due on Tuesday, a week before Britain’s parliament returns to work after a summer break, Starmer will say that “change won’t happen overnight” but that his government is determined to tackle a multitude of problems ranging from overflowing prisons to long waiting lists for health services. 

“I said change would not happen overnight. When there is rot deep in the heart of a structure, you can’t just cover it up. You can’t tinker with it or rely on quick fixes. You have to overhaul the entire thing,” Starmer will say, according to excerpts of his speech provided by his office. 

“We have inherited not just an economic black hole but a societal black hole and that is why we have to take action and do things differently. Part of that is being honest with people about the choices we face and how tough this will be. Frankly, things will get worse before we get better.” 

Starmer, a former director of Public Prosecutions, canceled his summer holiday to tackle riots that targeted Muslims and migrants. The riots began after the killings of three young girls in northern England was wrongly blamed on an Islamist migrant based on online misinformation. 

Starmer said the Conservative government’s failure to tackle problems had widened cracks in society making it harder to deal with rioters than when he was Britain’s top prosecutor from 2008 to 2013. 

“And those people throwing rocks, torching cars, making threats, they didn’t just know the system was broken. They were betting on it, they were gaming it, they saw the cracks in our society after 14 years of populism and failure and they exploited them. That’s what we have inherited,” he will say. 

Appealing to what he calls Britain’s working people such as teachers, nurses, small business owners and firefighters, Starmer will say his government has taken the “first steps towards the change people voted for” on July 4. 

But he will say the poor state of Britain’s public finances — which his finance minister says are on course to show a $29 billion overspend this year — mean his government will have to make tough decisions. 

“If we don’t take tough action across the board, we won’t be able to fix the foundations of the country like we need,” he will say. “I won’t shy away from making unpopular decisions now if it’s the right thing for the country in the long term. That’s what a government of service means.”  
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BUDAPEST, hungary — Hungary’s foreign minister said Saturday the European Commission’s decision not to mediate in a dispute over a blockage of oil supplies from Russia via Ukraine into his country suggested that Brussels was behind the stoppage. 

Hungary and its neighbor Slovakia have been protesting since Ukraine put Russian oil producer Lukoil on a sanctions list in June, stopping that company’s oil from passing through Ukrainian territory to Slovak and Hungarian refineries. 

The assertion from Hungary’s Peter Szijjarto, which he made without providing evidence, came a day after the European Commission declined a request from Hungary and Slovakia for it to mediate between them and Ukraine over the sanctions. 

“The fact that the European Commission declared that it was unwilling to help to secure the energy supply of Hungary and Slovakia suggests that the order was sent from Brussels to Kyiv to cause challenges and problems in the energy supply of Hungary and Slovakia,” Szijjarto said at a conservative political festival. 

A European Commission spokesperson declined to comment on Szijjarto’s remarks. 

The Commission, which has been supportive of Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion, has repeatedly urged EU countries to end their dependency on energy supplies from Moscow. The EU has imposed sanctions on most Russian oil imports. 

On Friday, a Commission spokesperson said there were no indications that Ukraine’s sanctions had endangered European energy supplies, as Russian oil continued to flow through the separate Druzhba pipeline, which also connects Russia to Slovakia and Hungary via Ukraine. 

Ukraine’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Hungarian statement Saturday. 

Slovakia and Hungary are both EU countries that have opposed Western allies’ military aid to Ukraine as it fights the invasion that Russia launched in February 2022. 

The pipeline’s southern branch runs through Ukraine to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, and has served as their refineries’ primary supply source for years. 

Last month, Szijjarto made similar comments when he accused the European Commission of blackmail in the oil dispute and said that maybe it was “Brussels, not Kyiv, that invented the whole thing.” 

A Hungarian government official said Thursday that Hungarian oil company MOL was in the final stages of discussions to establish a scheme to ensure crude oil flows from Russia. 
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SOLINGEN, Germany — The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Saturday for a knife attack in the German city of Solingen that killed three people and wounded eight others.  

Police have detained a 15-year-old and were investigating whether this person was linked to the attacker. The perpetrator was still at large on Saturday.  

Describing the man who carried out the attack as a “soldier of the Islamic State,” the militant group said in a statement on its Telegram account: “He carried out the attack in revenge for Muslims in Palestine and everywhere.”  

The statement did not immediately provide any evidence for its assertion, and it was not clear how close any relationship between the attacker and Islamic State was. 

Hendrik Wuest, premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, described Friday evening’s attack during a festival in the city as an act of terror.  

“This attack has struck at the heart of our country,” Wuest told reporters.

Before the IS claim, Markus Caspers, an official with the public prosecutor’s office in Duesseldorf, said authorities were treating the attack as a possible terrorist incident because there was no other known motive and the victims seemed unrelated.  

The attack took place in the Fronhof, a market square in the western German city where live bands were playing as part of a festival marking its 650th anniversary. 

A police official, Thorsten Fleiss, said the assailant appeared to aim for his victims’ throats. 

“The perpetrator must be quickly caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a post on X. 

Police cordoned off the square on Saturday and passers-by placed candles and flowers outside the barriers. 

“We are full of shock and grief,” Solingen Mayor Tim-Oliver Kurzbach told journalists. 

Authorities canceled the remainder of the weekend festival. 

Fatal stabbings and shootings are relatively rare in Germany. The government said earlier this month it wanted to toughen rules on knives that can be carried in public by reducing the maximum length allowed. 

In June, a 29-year-old policeman was fatally stabbed in Mannheim during an attack on a right-wing demonstration. A stabbing attack on a train in 2021 injured several people. 

Solingen, well known for its knife manufacturing industry, is a city of some 165,000 people.  

The episode comes ahead of three state elections next month in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, in which the anti-immigrant far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a chance of winning. 

Though the motive and identity of the assailant were not known, a top AfD candidate for one of the state elections, Bjoern Hoecke, seized on Friday’s attack, posting on X: “Do you really want to get used to this? Free yourselves and end this insanity of forced multiculturalism.” 
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SOLINGEN, Germany — Special police units on Saturday joined the search for an unknown man who carried out a stabbing attack at a crowded festival in the western German city of Solingen, killing three people and wounding at least eight others, five of them seriously.

“The police are currently conducting a large-scale search for the perpetrator,” police said in a statement. “Both victims and witnesses are currently being questioned.”

Police did not indicate that they had yet established the identity of the attacker and warned people to stay vigilant even as well-wishers started to leave flowers at the scene. Police established an online portal where witnesses could upload video and any other information relevant to the attack.

People alerted police shortly after 9:30 p.m. Friday to an unknown attacker having wounded several people with a knife on a central square, the Fronhof. Police said they believe the stabbings were carried out by a lone attacker and gave no information about the identities of the victims.

“Last night our hearts were torn apart. We in Solingen are full of horror and grief. What happened yesterday in our city has hardly let any of us sleep,” the mayor of Solingen, Tim Kurzbach, said, speaking to reporters on Saturday near the scene of the attack.

The “Festival of Diversity,” marking the city’s 650th anniversary, began Friday and was supposed to run through Sunday, with several stages in central streets offering attractions such as live music, cabaret and acrobatics.

The attack took place in the crowd in front of one stage. Hours after the attack, the stage lights were still on as police and forensic investigators looked for clues in the cordoned-off square.

One of the festival organizers, Philipp Muller, appeared on stage on Friday and asked festivalgoers to “go calmly; please keep your eyes open, because unfortunately the perpetrator hasn’t been caught.” Solingen has about 160,000 residents and is near the bigger cities of Cologne and Duesseldorf.

The rest of the festival was canceled.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday that the perpetrator of the attack must be caught quickly and punished with the full force of the law.

“The attack in Solingen is a terrible event that has shocked me greatly. An attacker has brutally killed several people. I have just spoken to Solingen’s mayor, Tim Kurzbach. We mourn the victims and stand by their families,” Scholz said on social media platform X.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also spoke to the mayor Saturday morning.

“The heinous act in Solingen shocks me and our country. We mourn those killed and worry about those injured, and I wish them strength and a speedy recovery from all my heart,” Steinmeier said in a statement on Saturday.

“The perpetrator needs to be brought to justice. Let’s stand together — against hatred and violence.”

There has been concern about increased knife violence in Germany. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser recently proposed toughening weapons laws to allow only knives with a blade measuring up to 6 centimeters (almost 2½ inches) to be carried in public, rather than the 12 centimeters currently allowed.
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ROME — Prosecutors in Italy said Saturday they have opened an investigation into culpable shipwreck and multiple manslaughter after a superyacht capsized during a storm off the coast of Sicily, killing seven people onboard. They include British tech magnate Mike Lynch and his daughter.

Termini Imerese prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio confirmed the investigation has been launched but said no suspect has been identified.

“We are only in the initial phase of the investigation. We can’t exclude any sort of development at present,” he told reporters at a news conference.

Cartosio said his team will carefully consider each possible element of responsibility, including those of the ship’s captain, the crew, individuals in charge of supervision, the shipbuilder and others.

“For me, it is probable that offenses were committed, that it could be a case of manslaughter, but we can only establish that if you give us the time to investigate,” he said.

The main question investigators are focusing on is how a sailing vessel deemed “unsinkable” by its manufacturer, Italian shipyard Perini Navi, sank while a nearby sailboat remained largely unscathed.

Prosecutors said the event was “extremely rapid” and information they gained seemed to point to a “downburst,” a localized, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm and spreads out rapidly upon hitting the ground.

Initially, civil protection officials said they believe the yacht, which featured a distinctive 75-meter (246-feet) aluminum mast, was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout.

Investigators were also asked why the crew was almost entirely saved, except for the chef, while six passengers remained trapped in the hull.

Local officials confirmed that most of the bodies recovered were found in the same part of the ship, close to the exit, suggesting that passengers had tried to get out.

Deputy Prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano said it was likely that the passengers were asleep, adding that one focus of the investigation is to ascertain whether anyone alerted them.

Cammarano confirmed that one person was on watch in the cockpit.

Rescuers on Friday brought ashore the last of seven bodies from the sinking of The Bayesian, a 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged luxury yacht that went down in a storm near the Mediterranean island in southern Italy early Monday. The boat was carrying a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers.

The seventh victim was Hannah Lynch, 18, the daughter of Mike Lynch, whose body was recovered Thursday. He had been celebrating his recent acquittal on fraud charges with his family and the people who had defended him at trial in the United States. His wife, Angela Bacares, was among the 15 survivors.

Rescuers struggled for four days to find all the bodies, making slow headway through the interior of the wreck lying on the seabed 50 meters (164 feet) below the surface.

The other five victims are Christopher Morvillo, one of Lynch’s U.S. lawyers, and his wife, Neda; Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley’s London-based investment banking subsidiary, and his wife, Judy; and Recaldo Thomas, the yacht’s chef.
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SOLINGEN, Germany — An attacker with a knife killed three people and seriously wounded at least five late on Friday at a festival in the western German city of Solingen, authorities said.

Witnesses alerted police shortly after 9:30 p.m. local time to an unknown perpetrator who had wounded several people indiscriminately with a knife on a central square. Police said have no one in custody and had little information on the man.

They said they believe the stabbings were carried out by a lone attacker.

One of the festival organizers, Philipp Müller, appeared on stage and asked festivalgoers to “go calmly; please keep your eyes open, because unfortunately the perpetrator hasn’t been caught.”

He said many people had been wounded by “a knifeman.”

At least one helicopter was seen in the air, while many police and emergency vehicles with flashing blue lights were on the road and several streets were closed off.

Police put the number of seriously injured at five. The region’s top security official, Herbert Reul, gave a figure of six as he visited the scene in the early hours of Saturday.

“None of us knows why” the attack took place, said Reul, who is the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state.

“I can’t say anything about the motive now” and it isn’t clear who the assailant was, he said, adding that the attacker had left the scene “relatively quickly.”

The “Festival of Diversity,” marking the city’s 650th anniversary, began on Friday and was supposed to run through Sunday, with several stages in central streets offering attractions such as live music, cabaret and acrobatics.

The city canceled the rest of the festival after the attack. Solingen has about 160,000 residents and is near Cologne and Duesseldorf.

There has been concern about an increase in knife violence in Germany recently.

In May, a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant on members of a group that describes itself as opposing “political Islam” left a police officer dead.

Germany’s top security official, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, this month proposed toughening weapons laws to allow only knives with a blade measuring up to 6 centimeters to be carried in public, rather than the length of 12 centimeters that is allowed now. 
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Washington — China and Russia agreed to expand their economic cooperation using a planned banking system, which analysts say is aimed at supporting their militaries and undermining U.S.-led global order.

The two countries issued a joint communiqué agreeing “to strengthen and develop the payment and settlement infrastructure,” including “opening corresponding accounts and establishing branches and subsidiary banks in two countries” to facilitate “smooth” payment in trade.

The communiqué was issued when Chinese Premier Li Qiang met with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow on Wednesday, Russian news agency Tass reported the following day.

At the meeting, Mishustin said, “Western countries are imposing illegitimate sanctions under far-fetched pretext, or, to put it simply, engaging in unfair competition,” according to a Russian government transcript.

Mishustin also noted the use of their national currencies “has also expanded, with the share of roubles and RMB in mutual payments exceeding 95%,” as the two have strengthened cooperation on investment, economy and trade.

Li and Mishustin signed more than a dozen agreements on Tuesday on economic, investment and transport cooperation. Li was making a state visit to Moscow at the invitation of Mishustin.

David Asher, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said, “This meeting between the Russians and the Chinese is important because it’s getting into a much widening aperture of cooperation” that would have “a bigger military dimension,” threatening U.S. national security.

Asher added that their bilateral cooperation could lead to “Russia’s assistance to China in the Pacific and the South China Sea” in return for Beijing’s support for Moscow’s economy and industry that aid Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, “in defiance of the U.S.”

A spokesperson for the State Department told VOA Korean on Thursday that the U.S. is “concerned about PRC [People’s Republic of China] support for rebuilding Russia’s defense industrial base, particularly the provision of dual-use goods like tools, microelectronics and other equipment.”

The spokesperson continued: “The PRC cannot claim to be a neutral party while at the same time rebuilding Russia’s defense industrial base and contributing to the greatest threat to European security.”

“China is Putin’s only lifeline,” said Edward Fishman, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs who helped the State Department design international sanctions in response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

“Chinese firms have taken advantage of Russia’s weak bargaining position and cut a slew of favorable deals,” Fishman said. “But these deals have more than just commercial significance. They keep Putin’s war machine going.”

The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday imposed sanctions on more than 400 entities and individuals that support Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, including Chinese firms that it said were helping Moscow evade Western sanctions by shipping machine tools and microelectronics.

In response to a China-Russia plan to set up a financial system to facilitate trade, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told the Financial Times that Washington “will go after the branch they’re setting up” and the countries that let them.

Analysts said China and Russia could increasingly turn to alternative methods of payments to evade sanctions.

Russia in June suspended trading in dollars and euros in the Moscow Exchange, in response to a round of sanctions the U.S. had issued targeting Russia’s largest stock exchange. The move by Russia prohibits banks, companies and investors from trading in either currency through a central exchange.

Shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. cut big Russian banks off from the U.S. dollar, the preferred currency in global business transactions.

“There is clearly a desire in both Moscow and Beijing to build financial and trade connections that operate beyond the reach of U.S.-led sanctions,” said Tom Keatinge, director of the Center for Finance and Security at the London-based Royal United Service Institute.

“This includes the development of non-U.S. dollar payment and settlement mechanisms and a wider ‘insulated’ payment system that allows other countries in their orbit to avoid U.S. sanctions,” he continued.

Other possible methods of payments could involve central bank digital currencies as well as cryptocurrencies and stable coins, Keatinge added.

The Chinese yuan replaced the dollar as Russia’s most traded currency in 2023, when the U.S. imposed sanctions on a few banks in Russia that could still trade across the border in dollars, according to Maia Nikoladze, an associate director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, in a June report.

Nikoladze told VOA that transactions made in renminbi and in rubles allowed Moscow to mitigate the effects of sanctions until Washington in December 2023 created an authority to apply secondary sanctions on foreign banks that transacted with Russian entities.

“Since then, Russia has struggled to collect oil payments from China,” with some transactions delayed “up to six months,” even as Moscow found a way to process transactions through Russian bank branches in China, Nikoladze said.

According to an article this month from Newsweek, the Russian newspaper Izvestia reported that as many as 98% of Chinese banks are refusing Chinese yuan payments from Russia.

Hudson Institute’s Asher said even more critical than the Russian use of yuan is the use of U.S. dollars in Beijing-Moscow transactions through the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Clearinghouse Automated Transfer Settlement System (CHATS), a payment system used by banks such as HSBC that trade “hundreds of billions of dollars a year.”

“It can settle transactions in a way that is not visible to the U.S. government,” Asher said. “I’m talking about U.S. dollar reserves that are not in the United States, that are not controlled by the U.S. government, that we don’t have good visibility on, and Hong Kong is providing that financial service.”

The Hong Kong government has said it does not implement unilateral sanctions but enforces U.N. sanctions at the urging of China, according to Reuters.

William Pomeranz, an expert on Russian political and economic developments at the Wilson Center, said that despite Beijing’s and Moscow’s talk this week about financial and economic cooperation, “China does not want to get onto the bad side of European and American markets” and will not risk its economic ties with the West “just to help Russia in a problem that, quite frankly, is of Russia’s own making.”
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As the war in Ukraine drags on, Ukrainian civilians are coping the best they can. For hundreds, that means attending special military centers to learn how to fight. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. Videographer: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will send about $125 million in new military aid to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Thursday, even as Washington works to get a better understanding of Kyiv’s incursion into Russia and how it advances the broader battlefield goals more than two years into the war. 

U.S. officials said the latest package of aid includes air defense missiles, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Javelins and an array of other anti-armor missiles, counter-drone and counter-electronic warfare systems and equipment, 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, vehicles and other equipment. 

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not been publicly announced. The formal announcement could come as soon as Friday, which is the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day. 

The weapons are being provided through presidential drawdown authority, which means they are taken from Pentagon stockpiles and can be delivered more quickly. 

The aid comes as Ukrainian forces continue to broaden their surprise offensive into Russia, where officials say they have taken about 100 square kilometers (62 square miles) of territory around Kursk. Russian troops, meanwhile, are making gains in the east, around the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub. 

Pentagon officials have said repeatedly that the U.S. has been talking with Ukrainian leaders to get a better assessment of their longer-term goals for the Kursk operation, particularly as they see Russia advancing near Pokrovsk. 

If Pokrovsk falls, the defeat would imperil Ukraine’s defenses and bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the Donetsk region. Russian soldiers are now just 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away. 

Asked about the Kursk operation, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Thursday that “we are still working with Ukraine on how that fits into their strategic objectives on the battlefield itself.” 

The U.S., she said, understands that Ukraine wants to build a buffer zone along the border, but the administration still has more questions about how it furthers Ukraine’s broader war effort. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first visit Thursday to the border area where his forces launched the offensive on August 6. He said Kyiv’s military had taken control of another Russian village and captured more prisoners of war. 

The latest package of aid brings the total amount of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine to more than $55.7 billion since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. 
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Berlin — Germany’s next national election has been set for Sept. 28, 2025. Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he will run for a second term, but his party and the others in his three-party coalition have seen their popularity decline sharply as a result of constant infighting. 

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s office said Friday that the head of state has signed off on the government’s recommendation and formally set the date of the election for the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. The Bundestag then elects the chancellor, after weeks or sometimes months of coalition negotiations. 

Scholz has run a three-party coalition of his center-left Social Democrats with the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats since December 2021. The alliance, which brings together parties that weren’t traditionally allies, has become notorious for frequent infighting and on several occasions has reopened hard-fought policy agreements. 

Last week, its leaders agreed on details of the 2025 budget, weeks after an initial deal got bogged down in a new dispute that further damaged the government’s image. 

Elections to the European Parliament in June produced dismal results for the governing parties. They brought a clear win for the mainstream conservative opposition bloc, the Union, and a second-place finish for the far-right Alternative for Germany. 

The Union, which led Germany for 16 years until 2021 under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, hasn’t yet chosen its challenger to Scholz in the 2025 election. It plans to do so after three state elections over the next month in the formerly communist east, a region in which Alternative for Germany is particularly strong. 

Germany is the most populous member of the European Union and has Europe’s biggest economy. 

Elections have to be held between 46 and 48 months after a parliamentary term begins. The last one was held on Sept. 26, 2021. 
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