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paris — Scientist Jim Wild has traveled to the Arctic Circle numerous times to study the northern lights, but Thursday night he needed only to look out of his bedroom window in Lancaster, England. For at least the second time this year, sky-gazers in many parts of the world were treated to colorful auroras at latitudes beyond the polar extremes where they normally light up the skies.  The dazzling celestial shows were caused by a gigantic ball of plasma — and an accompanying magnetic field — that erupted from the sun earlier this week.  When this eruption, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), arrived at Earth about 1600 GMT on Thursday, it triggered a strong geomagnetic storm.   This storm in turn sparked northern and southern lights — aurora borealis and aurora australis — in swaths of Europe, the United States, Australia and elsewhere.   While Wild could see the shimmering reds and greens from his back garden, he jumped in the car with his family to get a better look away from the bright lights of Lancaster.  "All the little backroads and parking spots were full of people with flasks of coffee and deck chairs looking at the northern lights," he told AFP.  "It was a party atmosphere," he said, comparing the scenes to UFO spotters looking up at the sky in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."  While Wild was explaining the phenomenon to his 11- and 13-year-old children, another nearby sky-gazer approached and asked how come he knew so much about it.  "Well, actually, this is what I study for a living," responded the professor in space physics at Lancaster University, who specializes in how solar weather disrupts power grids and transport here on Earth.   Perfect hit  Auroras were also visible across northern Europe, including near London and Berlin, and as far south in the U.S. as the state of Georgia. In the Southern Hemisphere, areas of Australia and New Zealand were also treated to a show, AFP photos showed.  The CME that triggered Thursday's auroras erupted from a spot on the sun pointed directly at Earth, said Juha-Pekka Luntama, the head of the European Space Agency's Space Weather Office.  "It was a perfect hit," he told AFP.  The CME caused a "severe" geomagnetic storm given a rating of G4. This fell narrowly short of the highest level of G5, which was seen in May, when auroras delighted many sky-gazers across swaths of the world.  Storms on the sun have been intensifying as solar activity approaches — or may have already reached — the peak of its 11-year cycle.  While such storms offer pretty light shows for sky-gazers, they can pose a serious threat to satellites, GPS services, power grids and even astronauts in space.  The U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center warned Thursday that the geomagnetic storm could disrupt emergency services already stretched thin by two deadly hurricanes, Helene and Milton.   Luntama said the European Space Agency had not received any information about disruptions caused by the latest storm, but sometimes this can take days.  The storm is "gradually dissipating," he added, which means that any auroras seen Friday night or over the weekend will likely be farther north in Europe, such as central Sweden.   Delighted  But for those still hoping to see an aurora, there could be some more chances in the next couple of years.   Luntama explained that during past solar cycles, the biggest eruptions have come in the two years after the sun passed its peak.  Wild also did not expect a repeat of Thursday's "magical" display.   But space weather — like Earth's weather — is not an "exact art," he emphasized.  And if there is an aurora lighting up the sky nearby, it is worth seeking out.  Wild said his neighbors had traveled to Norway twice to see the northern lights, but had been foiled by clouds both times.  Then, Thursday night, they saw an aurora from their garden.  "They were really delighted to finally have seen it," Wild said. 

WASHINGTON — Lebanese militia Hezbollah is running out of money, researchers tell VOA, as a weekslong Israeli offensive against the Iran-backed group disrupts three of its key sources of cash. U.S. and Lebanon-based researchers and U.S. Treasury Department reports identify Hezbollah’s main cash source as Al-Qard al-Hasan, or AQAH, a Lebanese quasi-banking institution operated by the U.S.-designated terror group without a government banking license. The researchers say the group’s other cash sources include Lebanon’s insolvent but licensed commercial banks and arrivals of cash-bearing planes at Beirut’s airport. The Israeli military escalated its attacks on Hezbollah leaders and facilities last month, after 11 months of limiting its responses to the militia’s daily attacks on northern Israel in support of Hamas. The Palestinian terror group, also backed by Iran, invaded southern Israel from Gaza last October, sparking a fierce Israeli response. Hezbollah founded AQAH in 1982 as a charitable institution providing interest-free loans to needy Lebanese, primarily fellow Shiites, according to Israel's Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, or ITIC, a nongovernmental research group of Israeli intelligence community veterans. ITIC says AQAH has since grown into a major institution with branches in Hezbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold of Dahiyeh and other Hezbollah-dominated parts of Lebanon. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned AQAH in 2007. In a 2021 announcement of further sanctions on AQAH employees, it said the institution had amassed about half a billion dollars. AQAH was hit hard by Israel’s initial airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh in late September, according to MTV Lebanon, one of the country’s leading TV networks. In a September 30 Arabic-language report, MTV Lebanon said the Israeli airstrikes had targeted Hezbollah’s “cash storage centers, including a large part of the AQAH vaults,” leaving the group in what it called a “financial crisis.” Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut, said in a Wednesday phone interview that Israel “destroyed” most of AQAH’s branches in the airstrikes. “Hezbollah is facing a very serious financial problem. They are unable to pay rank and file members who have fled their homes and need to feed their families,” Khashan said. The Treasury Department’s 2021 announcement of sanctions against six AQAH employees said they had used personal accounts at licensed Lebanese banks to transfer more than $500 million to and from AQAH over the previous decade. It said that activity gave AQAH access to the international financial system through the employees’ personal accounts at the Lebanese banks. David Asher, a former U.S. Defense and State Department official who targeted Hezbollah’s global drug trafficking and money laundering networks, said in a separate interview Wednesday that the group is in “deep trouble” because it also is losing access to the Lebanese banking system. “I’m hearing from Lebanese bankers, including Hezbollah financiers, that Lebanon’s wealthiest bankers who can afford to fly have fled to Europe and the Gulf, fearing they could be targeted next by Israel for helping Hezbollah,” said Asher, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute. Asher said he is in contact with Lebanon-based sources whom the U.S. recruited over the years to provide information about Hezbollah. “These Lebanese bankers, most of them billionaires, see the wind is blowing against Hezbollah, so they are not going to let it take millions of dollars out of their banks, which still have cash despite being bankrupt on paper,” Asher said. “They know that if they do, Israel probably will eliminate them, too.” Another Hezbollah funding source that has dried up, according to Asher and Khashan, is deliveries of cash on planes flying to Beirut’s airport, particularly from Iran, the group’s main patron. Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters on September 27 that Israeli warplanes had begun patrolling the airspace of Beirut’s airport and would not allow hostile flights carrying weapons to land at a civilian facility. He did not mention the issue of cash being transported aboard what Israel deems to be hostile flights. The next day, Lebanon’s Transport Ministry told Lebanese and Western media that it ordered an Iranian plane bound for Beirut to turn away from Lebanese airspace. The ministry attributed the move to an Israeli warning to Beirut’s air traffic control tower that Israel would use force if the plane landed there. “I’ve heard from my Israeli counterparts that the Iranians are scared to send money to Lebanon right now because Israel is threatening to target flights into Beirut. The Israelis are warning they will target flights full of money, not just weapons,” Asher said. Khashan said Iran used to organize regular flights from Tehran to Beirut to smuggle cash to Hezbollah without going through the Lebanese government's customs department. “In the weeks since Israel escalated its attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs, the Lebanese government has asserted more control over the airport, and now there is no cash flow to Hezbollah,” Khashan said. Lebanese Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamieh told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday that the Beirut airport “is subject to Lebanese laws and to the scrutiny of various relevant departments and security agencies.” Hamieh added that any plane carrying weapons must be approved by the Lebanese army and be licensed by his ministry.  Saudi TV network Al Arabiya in a Thursday report cited a Lebanese army source saying the army and other security agencies have been “scrambling” to assert control over the airport by starting inspections of cargo shipments to ensure their contents are as declared. Khashan said Hezbollah’s lack of cash is unlikely to stop its thousands of operatives from fighting Israeli forces anytime soon. “Keeping up the fight depends more on the availability of food and ammunition,” he said. “When your fight is motivated by religious zeal, you have more fundamental issues to worry about than the availability of cash.”

washington — The United States hit Iran's oil and petrochemicals sectors with fresh sanctions Friday in response to Tehran's October 1 attack against Israel, designating dozens of new companies and firms.   In a statement Friday, the Treasury Department said it was going after Iran's so-called "shadow fleet" of ships involved in selling Iranian oil in circumvention of existing sanctions, designating 10 companies and 17 vessels as "blocked property" over their involvement in "shipments of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products."  The State Department announced it was sanctioning an additional six firms and six ships for "knowingly engaging in a significant transaction for the purchase, acquisition, sale, transport, or marketing of petroleum or petroleum products from Iran."  The sanctions form part of the U.S. response to Iran's attack, in which it launched some 200 ballistic missiles against Israel in retaliation for the killing of Tehran-backed militant leaders and a general from Iran's Revolutionary Guards.  Israel has said its response to Iran's second direct attack against its territory this year would be "deadly, precise, and surprising."  U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters last week that Israel should consider "other alternatives than striking oil fields," amid reports it was planning to do so.   "In response to Iran's attack on Israel, the United States is taking decisive action to further disrupt the Iranian regime's ability to fund and carry out its destabilizing activity," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.  "Today's sanctions target Iranian efforts to channel revenues from its energy industry to finance deadly and disruptive activity — including development of its nuclear program, the proliferation of ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles," she added.   Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had made clear after the October 1 attack that Tehran would face consequences.  "To that end, we are taking steps today to disrupt the flow of revenue the Iranian regime uses to fund its nuclear program and missile development, support terrorist proxies and partners, and perpetuate conflict throughout the Middle East," he said in a statement. 

Tehran, Iran — Iran said Friday that it had recovered the body of a Revolutionary Guard general killed alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike last month in Beirut.  "With hard work and efforts around the clock, the body of martyr Abbas Nilforushan has been discovered," the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement.  "The time of transferring the body of martyr Nilforushan to the Islamic homeland and the funeral and burial plans will be announced later," the statement said.  Nilforushan, a top commander of the Quds Force, the IRGC's foreign operations arm, was killed September 27 alongside Nasrallah.   On October 1, the Revolutionary Guards fired 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of the general, as well as Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas who was assassinated in Tehran in late July.  Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed this week that his country's response would be "deadly, precise and surprising."  Iran has promised to respond if it is targeted by arch-enemy Israel.  In an address to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, said the Islamic Republic "stands fully prepared to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity against any aggression targeting its vital interests and security."  Iran, he said, was not seeking "war or escalation" but would exercise its "inherent right to self-defense fully in line with international law and will notify the Security Council of its legitimate response."

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iran’s president Friday, at a time when Tehran is supplying weapons for Moscow’s war in Ukraine and concerns are growing over escalating attacks between Israel and Iran and its militant allies. Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian discussed the situation in the Middle East on the sidelines of an international forum in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, Russian state media said. Moscow and Tehran signed a $1.7 billion deal for Iran to export drones to Russia after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the U.S. also believes it has transferred short-range ballistic missiles. Both countries were accused this week by Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, of carrying out a “staggering” rise in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on U.K. soil. McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the U.K. if conflicts in the Middle East deepen. During the two presidents' meeting, Putin told Pezeshkian that Moscow and Tehran's positions on international events are often very close, according to Russian state news agency Tass. He also invited the Iranian leader to visit Russia and Pezeshkian accepted, Tass said. “We have many opportunities now, and we must help each other in our relationships. Our principles, our positions in the international arena are similar to yours,” Pezeshkian said at the start of his meeting with Putin. Pezeshkian said that Israel's “savage attacks,” on Lebanon are “beyond description.” The Israeli military sent ground troops into southern Lebanon and is carrying out airstrikes in the country against Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters. Speaking Friday as the forum opened, Putin said he wants to create a “new world order” of Moscow’s allies to counter the West, according to video provided by the Kremlin. The conference is being attended by other regional leaders including Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and the heads of the other Central Asian nations, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Putin is also expected to hold talks with Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhamedov. Berdymukhamedov was elected in March 2022 to succeed his father, Gurbanguly, who had run the gas-rich country since 2006. Turkmenistan has remained largely isolated under autocratic rulers since it became independent following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

washington — A media watchdog group's report is prompting renewed scrutiny of the role Serbia is playing in the dissemination of Russian propaganda in the Balkans, particularly as it concerns Moscow's war on Ukraine.  "Thanks to the Serbian government's grip on the media and favorable political environment, RT — formerly Russia Today — uses its Belgrade office to adapt the Kremlin's narratives before disseminating them across southeastern Europe," said the report from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which was updated early this week.  The Paris-based watchdog group added that it "calls on the European Union (EU) and its member states to hold Serbia accountable for hosting [Russian President] Vladimir Putin's factory of lies."  The EU's response was not long in coming. On Tuesday, EU spokesperson for external affairs Peter Stano called on Serbia to take urgent measures to counter Russian media manipulation and interference.   "The European Union has adopted sanctions against Russian state-owned media, including RT," Stano told Agence France-Presse, adding that those outlets have become an instrument of Russia's war against Ukraine and "a channel for the dissemination and manipulation of information."  A day earlier, Pavol Szalai, head of the Europe and Balkans desk at RSF, told AFP that the Serbian government was allowing the country, an EU candidate nation, to be used as "an amplifier and translator of Kremlin propaganda in the Balkans."  In a post on X, Arno Guyon, who heads the Serbian government's Office for Public and Cultural Diplomacy, responded to the comments by the EU's Stano and RSF's Szalai, calling them "very worrying."  "It reminds of the period of communism during which censorship was applied in Yugoslavia in the name of fighting against 'harmful or undesirable ideas.' It contradicts the values of pluralism, tolerance and freedom of speech, which the Serbs believe in and for which numerous Serbian intellectuals who were imprisoned and killed because of it fought."  Asked by VOA's Serbian Service about the accusations concerning the Serbian government's alleged role in disseminating Russian disinformation, the U.S. State Department responded:   "Media manipulation and interference poses significant risks to democratic processes and societal stability in Serbia and the Western Balkans. The Department of State's Global Engagement Center previously warned  that the Kremlin's state-funded and state-directed media outlets RT and Sputnik are critical elements in Russia's disinformation and propaganda ecosystem."    The State Department added that it would continue its cooperation with Serbian partners in responding to RT's activities.  In September, U.S. President Joe Biden's administration announced new measures to thwart the activities of the Russian state-funded and -directed media company Rossiya Segodnya, and five of its subsidiaries, including RT.  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said those Russian state media entities "are no longer merely firehoses of Russian Government propaganda and disinformation," but are engaged in "covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia's intelligence apparatus."  "Thanks to new information — much of which originates from RT employees — we know that RT possess cyber capabilities and engaged in covert information and influence operations and military procurement," Blinken said. "As part of RT's expanded capabilities, the Russian Government embedded within RT a unit with cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence. RT's leadership had direct, witting knowledge of this enterprise."  RT Balkan, which has existed in Serbia since 2022, publishes its content on the internet and social media. Sputnik Serbia, a subsidiary of Russia's Sputnik state news agency, arrived in the country a little earlier, in 2017.   Ruslan Trad, a resident fellow for security research with the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, told VOA that the Serbian government is providing Russia with a platform for building a serious infrastructure, which also includes a media presence.  "Russian propaganda media use Serbia to establish a presence in the wider region," he said. "They use different methods, such as advertising platforms on Google that users have confidence in, in order to redirect them to the contents of 'Russia Today' or other Russian or pro-Russian media in the Serbian language."   Trad believes that the Serbian authorities will ignore the criticism expressed by the European Union and non-governmental organizations.  "Belgrade 's position is clear. The European Union, which has economic interests in Serbia related to lithium, will do little more than comment," he said. "[Serbian President Aleksandar] Vucic doesn't see it as a problem, so things will continue to work in the same way."  Still, Trad said the Serbian government's relationships with Russia and the West are provisional, not set in stone.  "It is obvious that Belgrade enables all this out of interest, and not because it is pressed against the wall," he said. "Unlike other countries in the region, Serbia sees the Russian Federation as an ally, but not as a partner at any cost. It is no coincidence that Belgrade also has ties with China, the U.S. and European countries such as France."  He added: "However, if it wants to become a part of the European family, Belgrade will have to implement the rule of law and improve the situation in the media environment."  

The photographs are AI-generated fakes. While Milton flooded and destroyed hundreds of buildings, taking lives and devastating Florida, Disney World was closed to visitors but not flooded.

Ukrainian polls show majority support for continued resistance against Russian aggression.

GENEVA — United Nations human rights officials warn the widening conflict and military escalation across the Middle East are putting “the lives and well-being of potentially millions of people across the region at risk” and diminishing prospects for peace. “I’m having trouble finding the right words today to just describe how terrible this situation has been for civilians” on the ground in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel and Syria, Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, told journalists at a briefing in Geneva Friday. “This is going to have an impact that will reverberate across many generations of people in the Middle East,” she said. “Children who have been out of school for so long, children who have had their limbs amputated, who will be living with lifelong injuries, as well as the trauma of the impunity that has marked this conflict, means that it is going to continue to feed cycles of revenge and injustice.” The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, reports more than 2,000 people have been killed and nearly 10,000 injured in fighting in Lebanon over the past year. About one-fifth of those killed were women and children. According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, at least 22 people were killed and over 100 injured Thursday night when Beirut was bombed “in the heaviest strike yet on the central part of the city.” Essential civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, clinics, ambulances, schools and housing, reportedly have been destroyed or damaged. While the Lebanese people are bearing the brunt of this latest phase of conflict, Hezbollah and other armed groups continue to fire rockets into Israel, resulting in the deaths of two people on Oct. 9, “the first civilian fatalities in northern Israel since the most recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon last month,” Shamdasani said. “Amidst this escalating violence, we are appalled by sweeping inflammatory language on multiple sides,” Shamdasani said. “Recent language threatening Lebanese people as a whole and calling on them to either rise up against Hezbollah or face destruction like Gaza” risks being understood as encouraging violence against civilians and civilian objects, “in violation of international law,” she said. This was a reference to a threat made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a video address Wednesday. Shamdasani said that “ongoing denigration of the U.N., in particular UNRWA, is unacceptable. This kind of toxic rhetoric, from any source, must stop.” UNRWA is the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees. Gaza suffering continues Meanwhile, the suffering of the population in the Gaza Strip goes on. Gaza’s Ministry of Health reports more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, many of them women and children, and 96,600 people have been injured since Israel began its military offensive in the Palestinian enclave a year ago. The offensive was triggered by the surprise Hamas terror attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people; some 250 others were taken hostage. Over the last week, Israel has intensified its military operation in northern Gaza. “We are greatly concerned about the safety of patients and the health workers amid these intensifying hostilities and the current evacuation orders covering Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals in northern Gaza,” said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s representative to the occupied Palestinian territories, said on a video link from Jerusalem. “We had three missions planned over the last week” to assist in the transfer of “critical nonwalking patients from these hospitals,” he said, adding that “none have been successful.” He said that the mission to Kamal-Adwan hospital was impeded after delays at the checkpoint, and a mission to resupply As-Sahaba hospital with fuel, blood units and medical supplies was denied October 9 and impeded on October 10. “Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda remain partially functional but are struggling due to shortage of supplies, including blood, trauma disposables and medications for patients with noncommunicable diseases and fuel,” he said, adding that Indonesian Hospital “is no longer able to provide services and accommodate patients.” Attacks on health care locations The World Health Organization recorded 18 attacks on health care facilities, resulting in 72 deaths and 40 injuries among health staff since Sept. 17. It reported 96 primary health care centers and health facilities were forced to close in the south due to rising hostilities. Five hospitals were reported nonfunctional “due to physical or infrastructural damage, and four hospitals were partially evacuated, requiring the transfer of patients,” the WHO said. Amid this chaos, confusion and multiple challenges, UNICEF and WHO officials said, the second round of emergency polio vaccinations is scheduled to go ahead Monday in Gaza. The first round, held Sept. 1-12, successfully vaccinated an estimated 591,700 children against the crippling disease. As in the first round, the second round will have three phases, each involving three campaign days and one catch-up day in the central, the south and the north of the Gaza Strip. “Local teams will be deployed in areas that need special coordination to reach children, including those who could not receive vaccines in the first round. It is critical they are reached,” Peeperkorn said. Speaking from Jerusalem, Jean Gough, UNICEF special representative, said one of the challenges facing vaccinators is the “endless population movements.” “Once again, it will be absolutely critical that not only the localized humanitarian pauses are respected in the north, but also that people are not forced to move from one area to the other,” she said. “This will be essential for us to be able to vaccinate at least 90% of children under the age of 10 among the population in the north. We have reassurance from COGAT that these humanitarian pauses will take place.” She said U.N. agencies overseeing the campaign will be meeting every day with COGAT, an Israeli unit that is responsible for implementing Israel’s civilian and humanitarian policies in the Palestinian territories. “So, we are confident that the humanitarian pause will continue” throughout the campaign, Gough said. “It worked for round one, and we are confident that it will work for round two.”

WASHINGTON — A pair of unwelcome and destructive guests named Helene and Milton have stormed their way into this year's U.S. presidential election. The back-to-back hurricanes have jumbled the schedules of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, both of whom devoted part of their recent days to tackling questions about the storm recovery effort. The two hurricanes are forcing basic questions about who as president would best respond to deadly natural disasters, a once-overlooked issue that has become an increasingly routine part of the job. And just weeks before the November 5 election, the storms have disrupted the mechanics of voting in several key counties. Vice President Harris is trying to use this as an opportunity to project leadership, appearing alongside President Joe Biden at briefings and calling for bipartisan cooperation. Former President Trump is trying to use the moment to attack the administration's competence and question whether it is withholding help from Republican areas, despite no evidence of such behavior. Adding to the pressure is the need to provide more money for the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would require House Republicans to work with the Democratic administration. Biden said Thursday that lawmakers should address the situation immediately. Timothy Kneeland, a professor at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York, who has studied the issue, said, “Dealing with back-to-back crises will put FEMA under more scrutiny and, therefore, the Biden administration will be under a microscope in the days leading up to the election. “Vice President Harris must empathize with the victims without altering the campaign schedule and provide consistent messaging on the widespread devastation that makes FEMA’s work even more challenging than normal,” Kneeland said. Already, Trump and Harris have separately gone to Georgia to assess hurricane damage and pledge support, and Harris has visited North Carolina, requiring the candidates to cancel campaign events elsewhere and use up time that is a precious resource in the final weeks before any election. Georgia and North Carolina are political battlegrounds, raising the stakes. Campaign language altered The hurricane fallout is evident in the candidates' campaign events as well. On Thursday, the first question Harris got at a Univision town hall in Las Vegas came from a construction worker and undecided voter from Tampa, Florida. Ramiro Gonzalez asked about talk that the administration has not done enough to support people after Helene, and whether the people in Milton's path would have access to aid — a sign that Trump’s messaging is breaking through with some potential voters. Harris has called out the level of misinformation being circulated by Republicans, but her fuller answer revealed the dynamics at play just a few weeks before an election. “I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she said. On the same day, Trump opened his speech at the Detroit Economic Club by praising Republican governors in the affected states and blasting the Biden-Harris administration. “They’ve let those people suffer unjustly,” he said about those affected by Helene in North Carolina. Voting systems affected The storms have also scrambled the voting process in places. North Carolina’s State Board of Elections has passed a resolution to help people in the state's affected counties vote. Florida will allow some counties greater flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing polling sites for in-person voting. But a federal judge in Georgia said Thursday the state doesn't need to reopen voter registration despite the disruptions by Helene. Tension and controversy have begun to override the disaster response, with Biden on Wednesday and Thursday saying that Trump has spread falsehoods that are “un-American.” Candace Bright Hall-Wurst, a sociology professor at East Tennessee State University, said that natural disasters have become increasingly politicized, often putting more of the focus on the politicians instead of the people in need. “Disasters are politicized when they have political value to the candidate," she said. "This does not mean that the politicization is beneficial to victims.” As the Democratic nominee, Harris has suddenly been a major part of the response to hurricanes, a role that traditionally has not involved vice presidents in prior administrations. On Thursday, she participated virtually at a Situation Room briefing on Milton while she was in Nevada for campaign activities. She has huddled in meetings about response plans and on Wednesday phoned into CNN live to discuss the administration's efforts. At a Wednesday appearance with Biden to discuss Milton ahead of it making landfall, Harris subtly tied back the issues into her campaign policies to stop price gouging on food and other products. “To any company that — or individual that — might use this crisis to exploit people who are desperate for help through illegal fraud or price gouging — whether it be at the gas pump, the airport or the hotel counter — know that we are monitoring these behaviors and the situation on the ground very closely and anyone taking advantage of consumers will be held accountable,” she said. Harris warned that Milton “poses extreme danger.” It made landfall in Florida late Wednesday and left more than 3 million without power. But the storm surge never reached the same levels as Helene, which led to roughly 230 fatalities and for a prolonged period left mountainous parts of North Carolina without access to electricity, cell service and roads. Misinformation about Helene Trump and his allies have seized on the aftermath of Helene to spread misinformation about the administration's response. Their debunked claims include statements that victims can only receive $750 in aid, as well as false charges that emergency response funds were diverted to immigrants. The former president said the administration's response to Helene was worse than the George W. Bush administration's widely panned handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which led to nearly 1,400 deaths. “This hurricane has been a bad one; Kamala Harris has left them stranded," Trump said at a recent rally in Juneau, Wisconsin. “This is the worst response to a storm or a catastrophe or a hurricane that we’ve ever seen ever. Probably worse than Katrina, and that’s hard to beat, right?" Asked about the Trump campaign's strategic thinking on emphasizing the hurricane response, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it reflects a pattern of “failed leadership” by the Biden administration that also includes the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and security at the U.S. southern border. John Gasper, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who has researched government responses to natural disasters, said storm victims generally want to ensure foremost that they get the aid they need. “These disasters essentially end up being good tests of leadership for local, state and federal officials in how they respond," he said. But Gasper noted that U.S. politics have gotten so polarized and other issues such as the economy are shaping the election, such that the debate currently generating so much heat between Trump and the Biden administration might not matter that much on Election Day.

Bangladesh is busy reforming institutions after an uprising in July and August ended Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule. As VOA’s Sarah Zaman reports from Dhaka, Hasina’s brutal crackdown on the mass protests left deep scars. Videographer: Rubel Hassan

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers asked AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Lumen Technologies on Friday to answer questions after a report that Chinese hackers accessed the networks of U.S. broadband providers.  The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday hackers obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, and said the three companies were among the telecoms whose networks were breached.  House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican, and the top Democrat on the committee Representative Frank Pallone along with Representatives Bob Latta and Doris Matsui asked the three companies to answer questions. They are seeking a briefing and detailed answers by next Friday.  "There is a growing concern regarding the cybersecurity vulnerabilities embedded in U.S. telecommunications networks," the lawmakers said. They are asking for details on what information was seized and when the companies learned about the intrusion.  AT&T and Lumen declined to comment, while Verizon did not immediately comment.  It was unclear when the hack occurred.  Hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized U.S. requests for communications data, the Journal said. It said the hackers had also accessed other tranches of internet traffic.  China's foreign ministry said on Sunday that it was not aware of the attack described in the report but said the United States had "concocted a false narrative" to "frame" China in the past. 

Maputo, Mozambique — Mozambique's electoral body extended voting until Saturday in some areas and in one overseas location because material didn't arrive on time. Most of the country completed voting Wednesday and now awaits results. National Electoral Commission spokesperson Paulo Cuinica told reporters on Friday that voting did not take place in some districts of Zambezia province, in central Mozambique,  partly due to problems getting voting materials in time.  "As a result of this fact, 23 polling stations did not open in the province of Zambezia, [or in the coastal circle of Zambezia], with 4 in Maganja da Costa and 19 in the district of Gilé," Cuinica said. Voting outside the country also had hiccups, he said, noting that 670 Mozambicans living in Germany in were unable to vote. He said voting materials were shipped to Germany on September 27th, but were held up in Cologne and did not reach Berlin until Thursday, the day after the election. As a result, Cuinica said voting is being extended in affected areas. He said voters can cast ballots from 7 am to 6 pm Saturday in the districts of Gilé and Maganja, and from 9 am to 9 pm in Germany. Meanwhile, election monitors in Mozambique gave preliminary assessments of the process. Laura Valerin, a member of parliament from Spain and chief observer of the European Union election mission, told VOA monitors observed about 800 polling stations. While she praised the peaceful campaign and orderly voting, she said there were issues.  "We saw the counting phase," she said. "Our observers saw the processes were in many times very long, really slow with some difficulties foreseen by polling staff, with some doubts about how the process had to take place." She said that before election day, the EU team's engagement with political parties, media and civil society indicated that there is widespread mistrust about the independence of the electoral bodies. Succès Masra, a former prime minister of Chad and head of the observer mission for the U.S.-based International Republican Institute, said his organization had teams from 20 countries, including 12 in sub–Saharan Africa, deployed across Mozambique.  Masra praised the democratic spirit of Mozambicans but said his teams had reservations about the electoral process.  "Citizens were not deterred from exercising their right to determine their future," he said. "Our observations show delayed accreditation for observers and party agents, late changes to electoral laws and the misuse of state resources during the campaign. These issues raised concerns about public confidence in the process and independence of institutions." Masra said he hopes that Mozambicans can address the issues to strengthen their democratic institutions.  Now Mozambique awaits the results from this, the country's seventh general elections since the advent of multiparty democracy 30 years ago.   The first official results from the National Electoral Council could come as early as Saturday. 

zurich — Two months before FIFA is set to confirm Saudi Arabia as the 2034 World Cup host, the soccer body was urged again Friday to allow independent scrutiny of the kingdom's human rights obligations for the tournament. A group of law and human rights experts plus Saudi activists abroad want FIFA to mandate ongoing reviews — and a potential termination clause — into the 2034 World Cup hosting contract. The advisers who came to Zurich on Friday want FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is closely tied to Saudi political and soccer leaders, to learn from how Qatar was picked to host the 2022 World Cup. Qatar won in 2010 with little thought from FIFA's then-leaders about legal safeguards and reputational challenges. Saudi Arabia, like Qatar, is a traditionally conservative society and needs a huge construction project relying on migrant workers to build stadiums and other infrastructure for global soccer's biggest event. "There are really no excuses now," British lawyer Rodney Dixon told The Associated Press. "If it means that they therefore have to come to a different kind of agreement in December, that is what they should do." World Cup hosting contracts will be signed after the Dec. 11 decision by more than 200 FIFA member federations at an online meeting. Saudi Arabia is the only candidate for 2034. Promising not to be confrontational with FIFA, Dixon said: "We are not naive. It is not FIFA's role to change the world. They are not the UN." The briefing in FIFA's home city came two days after the UN General Assembly in New York rejected a Saudi bid to get a seat on the 47-nation Human Rights Council for the next three years. On Friday, the would-be FIFA advisers cited Saudi Arabia's record on freedom of speech and assembly, and laws on labor and male guardianship that limit women's freedoms. After Infantino was first elected in 2016, when scrutiny was intense on Qatar and its treatment of migrant workers, FIFA demanded a human rights strategy from future World Cup hosts. Bid rules for the 2030 and 2034 men's tournaments refer to "activities in connection with the bidding for and hosting" rather than rights in wider society. In May, FIFA got an offer from the law and human rights experts to create an independent process for monitoring progress in Saudi Arabia. Swiss law professor Mark Pieth, an anti-corruption advisor to FIFA from 2011-14, said they had been ignored and "we are here in Zurich to try again." In July, Saudi plans for the World Cup were published including a review of its human rights strategy by lawyers it chose, and 15 stadium projects. Human Rights Watch researcher Joey Shea said Friday it documented "grave labor violations" against migrant workers who number more than 13 million, or about 40% of the kingdom's population. The scale of construction required for the World Cup and potential for labor abuses "is really, really chilling," Shea said in a live link from London. She cautioned that while rights groups had limited access to operate in Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup, there is "zero access" to Saudi Arabia. Saudi soccer officials have consistently said the kingdom is making progress on social reforms as part of the Vision 2030 drive by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to modernize and create a post-oil economy. The 2034 bid campaign was contacted for comment Friday. In a video message from Washington D.C., Abdullah Alaoudh of the Middle East Democracy Center insisted "the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia has worsened under Mohamed bin Salman's leadership." Saudi Arabia was ranked No. 131 of 146 nations on gender issues by the World Economic Forum, Dixon noted. "[There are] so many laws that prejudice women," he said. "None of them are addressed by the Saudi bid." FIFA is evaluating World Cup bidders with reports likely in early December. It also must assess the human rights strategy of the sole candidate for the 2030 World Cup: co-hosts Spain, Portugal and Morocco with single games in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. FIFA and Infantino have not held a news conference to take any questions on World Cup bids since the 2034 edition was fast-tracked toward Saudi Arabia one year ago. Any protest among FIFA voters on Dec. 11 has been made less likely because of how the organization is structuring the voting. FIFA said last week both 2030 and 2034 awards will be combined in a single vote. Any European opposition to the Saudi bid also would count against Spain and Portugal. Victory by acclamation without an itemized vote is possible.