Author: Mike Nova

The first big ship carrying grain from a Ukrainian Black Sea port has set sail since Moscow quit a deal in July to allow exports, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister said on Friday, part of Kyiv’s campaign to break Russia’s de facto blockade.

The Aroyat “left the port Chornomorsk after loading 17,600 (metric tons of) Ukrainian wheat for Egypt,” Oleksandr Kubrakov said on the X social media app, formerly Twitter.

He posted a photo of the ship at sea.

It was the second of two bulk carriers to leave the port this week using what Kyiv calls a new temporary humanitarian corridor. The first, the much smaller Resilient Africa, left on Tuesday, testing the route with a cargo of just 3,000 tons.

After invading Ukraine last year, Moscow closed off the Black Sea ports from one of the world’s biggest suppliers of grain, in what Kyiv and its Western backers called an attempt to use global food supplies as blackmail. Moscow said the ports could bring in weapons.

From July 2022 the ports were reopened under the UN-backed grain deal, allowing Russia to inspect ships for arms. But Moscow quit a year later and reimposed the blockade, saying its demands for better terms for its own food and fertiliser exports were being ignored.

Ukraine last month announced a “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea, initially using it to release ships that do not carry grain and were not covered by the grain deal, which had been trapped in its ports for more than a year.

Five vessels have left so far using the corridor, which hugs the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts.

Kyiv has also kept up exports from river ports on the Danube while its Black Sea ports were shut. Russia has launched frequent drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian grain export infrastructure in what Ukraine and its allies call attacks with no military justification. Moscow says it hits military targets.

Odesa’s three seaports, including Chornomorsk, shipped tens of millions of tons of grain during Russia’s invasion under the U.N.-brokered deal before Russia abandoned it.

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AstraZeneca (AZN.L) said on Friday its experimental precision drug had slowed the progression of breast cancer in a late-stage trial, a boost for the company after its shares fell in July on results from a separate trial of the same drug for lung cancer.

The drug, datopotamab deruxtecan, which AstraZeneca is jointly developing with Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo (4568.T), is being closely watched by analysts and investors in part due to the promise of the class of drugs to which it belongs, known as antibody drug conjugates (ADC).

ADCs consist of tumour-seeking monoclonal antibodies that are combined with a cell-killing chemotherapy payload.

The trial data released on Friday showed the drug, abbreviated as Dato-DXd, demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in slowing the progression of breast cancer in trial participants, compared to patients who received other treatments such as chemotherapy.

The British drugmaker also said that there was a “trend in improvement” in the other main goal of the study, “overall survival” of patients, but the data on that was not mature so the trial would continue as planned.

AstraZeneca shares rose 1.7% in early trading, to their highest level in more than five weeks.

AstraZeneca is simultaneously developing the drug for use in lung cancer, and while data from a separate late-stage trial released in July was positive, the market was concerned that the drug’s benefits for use in lung cancer treatment might not as pronounced as hoped, leading shares to fall more than 6% on the day the data was released.

The company has not said when it will release detailed data from the lung cancer study.

Analysts see the positive results from the breast cancer trial as good for AstraZeneca, but the market is more focused on the results of a trial called MARIPOSA by Johnson & Johnson. It compares AstraZeneca’s blockbuster cancer drug Tagrisso alone with its own drug, Rybrevant, in combination with another medicine.

Those results are expected later this year.

A storm churning in waters off the eastern U.S. has increased to tropical storm strength and is forecast to reach the North Carolina coast Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center said.

The storm was off the coast of South Carolina and North Carolina late Thursday with top sustained winds of 65 kph. A storm surge watch was in effect, with surges between 91 centimeters and 1.5 meters forecast for parts of North Carolina, the center reported.

As of Thursday night, the storm was located about 570 kilometers southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and about 635 kilometers south Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and moving north at 6 kph, the center said.

Though the system had reached tropical storm strength, it was yet to be given a name and the center was still referring to it as Potential Tropical Cyclone 16 on Thursday night. The hurricane center defines a potential tropical cyclone as a disturbance posing a threat of tropical storm or hurricane conditions to land within 48 hours.

Meteorologist Maria Torres, a public affairs officer with the Miami-based center, said people along the Atlantic coast need to watch the storm’s progress, gather supplies and make preparations for its arrival.

“This will bring some tropical storm force winds and storm surge along with the high winds to the East Coast through the weekend, mainly from the Southeast to the Mid-Atlantic states,” she told The Associated Press.

The tropical storm warning was in effect from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to Fenwick Island, Delaware. It also includes the Chesapeake Bay south of North Beach, Tidal Potomac south of Cobb Island and Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. Storm surge warnings were in effect for areas throughout the region, the hurricane center said.

Virginia emergency management officials warned of heavy rain, high winds and flooding in the next few days.

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management said on social media Thursday that officials are coordinating with local weather service offices to watch the system developing off the coast. Officials called on residents to prepare for the storm and impacts on the region throughout the weekend.

North Carolina Emergency Management warned large swells from distant Hurricane Nigel also would reach the state’s coast on Thursday, boosting the rip current risk. The combination of those swells and the low-pressure system could mean additional ocean overwash, beach erosion and coastal flooding.

The hurricane center said storm surge between 0.6 and 1.2 meters was expected.

A storm surge warning was in effect from Duck, North Carolina, to Chincoteague, Virginia.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Nigel was headed toward cooler North Atlantic waters as a Category 1 storm. The hurricane center said Nigel was expected to become “extratropical” and was centered about 1,125 kilometers northwest of the Azores.

Nigel’s maximum sustained winds reported in the center’s most recent update late Thursday were 120 kph. There were no coastal watches or warnings associated with Nigel.

Soon after one of Maui’s Japanese Buddhist temples, the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, burned in the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, its resident minister was desperate to go back and see what remained.

Six weeks later, he’s more hesitant.

“Now I feel like I have to have mental preparation to go there,” the Rev. Ai Hironaka said. “I’m kind of afraid.”

Hironaka and other Lahaina residents are grappling with a range of emotions as Maui authorities plan next week to begin allowing some on supervised visits back into the areas devastated by the Aug. 8 fire, which killed at least 97 people and demolished thousands of buildings.

Lana Vierra is bracing to see the ruins of the home where she raised five children, a house that started with three bedrooms in 1991 and was expanded to six to accommodate her extended family as the cost of living in Hawaii soared.

She’s been telling her family to be ready when it’s their turn, so that they can all visit together.

“We’re preparing our minds for that,” she said. “I don’t know know if our hearts are prepared for that.”

Authorities have divided the burned area into 17 zones and dozens of sub-zones. Residents or property owners of the first to be cleared for reentry — known as Zone 1C, along Kaniau Road in the north part of Lahaina — will be allowed to return Monday and Tuesday on supervised visits.

Government agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Maui County’s highways division are involved in clearing the zones for reentry by, among other things, removing any hazardous materials, checking buildings for structural safety and ensuring safe road access.

Those returning will be provided water, shade, washing stations, portable toilets, medical and mental health care, and transportation assistance if needed, said Darryl Oliveira, Maui Emergency Management Agency interim administrator.

Authorities are also offering personal protective equipment, including respirator masks and coveralls. Officials have warned that ash could contain asbestos, lead, arsenic or other toxins. There are other hazards, too, Oliveira said, such as burned out cars along roads and chunks of metal or concrete in the ruins.

“We really want to help guide them, provide them the support, but also provide them the privacy, that space and quiet, so they can get the closure they’re looking for,” Oliveira said in a video message Thursday.

Some people might want to sift through the ashes for any belongings or mementos that survived, but officials are urging them not to, for fear of stirring up toxic dust that could endanger them or their neighbors downwind. Other residents said they didn’t immediately have plans to return to the properties because jobs or the hassle of obtaining a pass to reenter the burn zone would keep them away.

Melody Lukela-Singh plans to take a hazardous materials course before visiting the Front Street property where the house she lived in with about a dozen relatives once stood.

“I’m hoping to learn what we’re going to encounter as far as exposure to things we know nothing about,” she said. “The winds pick up and it’s going to be all in the air. It’s going be a while before all of that is gone.”

Hironaka reflected on how his feelings toward reentry have changed as the weeks have passed — and as the magnitude of losing the temple, along with his home on the temple grounds, has set in.

“After a week, I feel like I still have energy, like a car with full tank of gas,” Hironaka said. “After I use all the gasoline, I don’t know where to fill it up, what to fill it up. No gas. I feel like I’m pushing the empty-gas car only by myself. Pushing from the back.”

He, his wife, their four children and their French bulldog piled into his Honda Civic to escape the flames. As they drove off, he said, he imagined the temple as protecting their home.

In a phone interview, he said he initially intended not to cry until he could return to thank the temple and apologize to the Buddha statue that had been at its main altar. But he became emotional and sobbed as he spoke, saying, “The temple building, I was supposed to protect as resident minister.”

He has found solace, he said, in Buddhism’s teachings of wisdom and compassion, that Buddha has no judgment and allows him to feel whatever he feels in the moment.

Hironaka said he often sees a photo taken by The Maui News and distributed worldwide by The Associated Press that shows the temple burning alongside Waiola Church next door. He considered the temple, built in 1933, to be like a family member, he said.

“That’s the end-of-life picture to me,” he said.

Lahaina’s two other Japanese Buddhist temples also burned down.

Jarom Ayoso is eager to get back to the property where he and his wife rented a house for nearly 15 years. His son was able to get in the day after the fire and took video of the destruction.

“I want closure for my end,” he said. “The only way I going get that is if I go and see it.”

Ayoso wants to see what’s left of the vehicles he lovingly rebuilt, including his 1986 GMC Sierra pickup truck. There were also motors he built on the property, including one that cost more than $13,000. He was just about to install it, he said, and “poof — gone.”

Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) restructured acquisition of Activision Blizzard (ATVI.O) “opens the door” to the deal being cleared, Britain’s antitrust regulator said on Friday.

Microsoft announced the biggest gaming deal in history in early 2022, but the $69 billion acquisition was blocked in April by Britain’s competition regulator, which was concerned the U.S. computing giant would gain too much control of the nascent cloud gaming market.

In August the “Call of Duty” maker agreed to sell its streaming rights to Ubisoft Entertainment (UBIP.PA).

The Ubisoft divestment “substantially addresses previous concerns,” the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in a statement.

“While the CMA has identified limited residual concerns with the new deal, Microsoft has put forward remedies which the CMA has provisionally concluded should address these issues,” the regulator said.

Microsoft said it was “encouraged by this positive development in the CMA’s review process”.

“We presented solutions that we believe fully address the CMA’s remaining concerns related to cloud game streaming, and we will continue to work toward earning approval to close prior to the October 18 deadline,” Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith said.

The CMA said there were “residual concerns” that certain provisions in the Ubisoft deal could be circumvented, terminated or not enforced.

Microsoft has offered remedies to ensure that the terms of the sale are enforceable by the regulator.

The CMA is now consulting on the remedies before making a final decision.

U.S. President Joe Biden has again called for an increase in the number of permanent and non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

In his speech on Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly, Biden said the U.S. has “undertaken serious consultation with many member states. And we’ll continue to do our part to push more reform efforts forward, look for points of common ground, and make progress in the year ahead.”

“We need to be able to break the gridlock that too often stymies progress and blocks consensus on the council,” he said. “We need more voices and more perspectives at the table.”

Confrontations between the U.S., China and Russia often paralyze the Security Council. The three, along with Britain and France have permanent seats on the council, and any one of them can veto a resolution. There are 10 non-permanent members elected by the United Nations General Assembly for two-year terms, with five replaced each year. The non-permanent members lack veto power.

Biden called for the council’s expansion last year when he addressed the General Assembly.

“The current increased competition makes countries even more sensitive to the zero-sum nature of those decisions … and there’s so little solidarity and trust right now,” said Stewart Patrick, senior fellow and director of the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Patrick told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview that the deepening of frictions between the U.S. and China and between the U.S. and Russia have increasingly intruded on the ability of the council to address other matters such as climate change.

But Patrick said there is “renewed momentum” on “the desire to reform the composition and perhaps the rules of the U.N. Security Council to make it more representative, but also more effective.”

The declaration that came out after the BRICS summit in August included a line that supported calls for Brazil, India and South Africa to play “a greater role in international affairs, in particular in the United Nations, including its Security Council.” All three nations belong to the bloc, which also includes China and Russia.

Maya Ungar, U.N. project officer at the International Crisis Group who monitors the Security Council, told VOA Mandarin the BRICS declaration is “quite significant because it’s the first time that [the bloc] has put out a statement bringing that much support …”

Other groups of U.N. member states are advocating for particular types of reforms. The G4 group of Brazil, Germany, India and Japan have been campaigning for permanent council seats for years.

Patrick said the G4 countries have regional rivals that object to their permanent memberships. Pakistan opposes India, South Korea and Indonesia have objections to Japan, and Argentina and Mexico have concerns about Brazil. 

“Each of the aspirants has regional rivals and they have their own coalition called the Uniting for Consensus Coalition,” he said. “And what they are attempting to do is to offer an alternative plan for council expansion.”

In addition, the 54-member Africa Group of U.N. members wants Security Council representation.

Algeria’s foreign minister, Mourad Medelci, who spoke during the annual meeting of heads of state and governments at the U.N., said the council’s “membership must be expanded to include new permanent and non-permanent members of the developing world, particularly Africa, the cradle of civilization.”

Anjali Dayal, associate professor of international politics at Fordham University, told VOA Mandarin, “Everybody agrees that the Security Council needs to be reformed, but nobody agrees on how it should be reformed.”

Besides the geopolitical hurdles, Patrick said, “the procedural hurdles for actually extending the U.N. Security Council are quite daunting because it would require, even if it was only about elected members, it would require the approval of two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly and all of the P5 to get the required charter amendments. And then each of those approvals would have to be backed by domestic legislation in the relevant countries.” P5 refers to the Security Council’s permanent five members.

Ungar said that while Biden expressed support for Security Council expansion, he did not make specific suggestions.

“The process of choosing who would join will be almost impossible to manage,” Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA in an email. “Enlarging the UNSC will make it more unwieldy and even less able than it is now to reach decisions.”

A survey of major strategists around the world released in July by the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, found that 64% of respondents believed that the Security Council would not add any new permanent members in the next 10 years. The survey found that if a new country were to be added it would most likely be India, Japan or Brazil.

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, said last month that China is the only permanent member in the U.N. Security Council that opposes India joining the Council as a permanent member, according to The Economic Times of India.

Harsh Pant, vice president for studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation, told VOA Mandarin in an email, “China is the only country on the UNSC that as a permanent member refuses to support India’s permanent membership using procedural issues.”

China has insisted for many years that it supports necessary and reasonable reforms, but it advocates reaching the broadest consensus.

Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the U.N., said in 2021 that all parties still have major differences, so they should not act hastily. He said member states should seek a package solution that takes into account the interests and concerns of all parties and reach the broadest political consensus.

“It is very, very difficult to imagine the Chinese approving a permanent membership in particular for either Japan or India given that they are regional rivals. And in the case of India, they have significant territorial disputes in particular,” Patrick said.

“China’s stated position is to favor adding developing countries to the UNSC, but it has also said reforms must be made slowly and carefully,” Abrams said. “In reality, I do not think China wants to see the present makeup changed.”