Kyiv could face ‘complete shutdown’ of power amid crippled Ukrainian grid; hundreds of Ukrainians disappeared in Kherson, say war crime researchers

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Russian missile strikes have crippled almost half of Ukraine’s energy system, the government in Kyiv has said, as authorities warned that the city could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in.

With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the war. The UN says Ukraine’s electricity and water shortages threaten a humanitarian disaster.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dismissed the idea of a “short truce” with Russia, saying it would only make things worse. “Russia is now looking for a short truce, a respite to regain strength,” the Ukrainian president said in remarks broadcast at the Halifax International Security Forum. “Someone may call this the war’s end, but such a respite will only worsen the situation.”

Hundreds of Ukrainians were detained and abducted in Kherson after Russia seized the province, in evidence of a planned campaign, a Yale University group researching war crimes has said. The Conflict Observatory said it had documented 226 extrajudicial detentions and forced disappearances in Kherson. About a quarter of that number were allegedly subjected to torture and four died in custody.

The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war following the circulation of a video on social media purporting to be from the frontline. The footage appears to show Russian soldiers emerging from an outbuilding in the grounds of a house with their hands above their heads before they are told to lie face down. One of the men, as he emerges from the building, appears to turn his gun on Ukrainian soldiers. The footage suggests all the Russians were killed in the violence that followed.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, talked with Volodymyr Zelenskiy and they congratulated each other for the extension of a UN-brokered grains deal, Erdoğan’s office said. Erdoğan told Zelenskiy the “extension of this understanding to the negotiation table” would benefit all parties.

The Dutch government will summon the Russian ambassador in the Netherlands over Russia’s response to the verdict in the trial over the 2014 shooting down of passenger flight MH17, news agency ANP reported, citing the foreign minister, Wopke Hoekstra. Russia has criticised the Dutch court’s decision to convict two former Russian intelligence agents and a Ukrainian separatist leader.

Ukrainian experts were working at the site in the border area of south-eastern Poland where a missile killed two people, said Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. He wrote on Twitter that Ukraine would continue “open and constructive” cooperation with Poland over the incident.

Poland will not grant a Russian delegation visas to attend an Organisation for Security and cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Lodz on 1 and 2 December. “We are not giving them visas,” said Lukasz Jasina from the Polish foreign ministry.

Vladimir Putin discussed creating a Turkish “gas hub” with Erdoğan, the Kremlin said on Friday. “Particular attention is paid to the prospects of implementing the initiative, launched by the Russian president in October and supported by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”

Ministers of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group said some members condemned the war in Ukraine and also pledged to keep supply chains and markets open. “There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions,” their joint statement read, adding that Apec was not the forum to resolve security issues.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukraine president’s office, has said two more bodies have been recovered in Vilniansk in the Zaporizhzhia region. “Thus nine people have already been found dead from the rockets of Russian terrorists who fired at residential buildings yesterday,” he said on Telegram. The claims have not been independently verified.

The UK Ministry of Defence said Russia appeared to be preparing defences for further major Ukrainian breakthroughs in Donetsk province.

Construction of a planned barbed-wired fence along Finland’s long border with Russia will start early next year, Finnish border guard officials said, amid concerns over Europe’s changing security environment.

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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – Negotiators were poised to make a final push for a deal at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt on Saturday, as persistent disagreements over money forced the two-week talks into overtime.

Complicating matters, U.S. Special Climate Envoy John Kerry – a powerful force in climate diplomacy – tested positive for COVID-19 following days of bilateral in-person meetings with counterparts from China and the European Union to Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.

The outcome of the conference, which was meant to end on Friday, is widely seen as a test of global resolve to fight climate change, as a war in Europe and rampant consumer inflation distract international attention.

An official draft of the agreement released Friday morning reaffirmed past commitments to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – the point at which scientists say the effects of climate change will get much worse.

But it left crucial issues unresolved, including the main sticking point between rich and poor nations of how to compensate countries already ravaged by climate-driven floods, droughts, mega-storms and wildfires.

In a potential breakthrough, the European Union said late on Thursday it would back the demand of the G77 group of 134 developing countries to set up a fund to help them cope with so-called “loss and damage”.

But it was unclear on Friday whether developing countries would accept the EU’s stipulation that the funding come from a broad base of countries including China, and that only “the most vulnerable countries” benefit from the aid.

Delegates were still waiting to learn how the United States and China would respond.

Some countries, including the EU and Britain, have also pushed for the overall deal in Egypt to lock in country commitments for more ambitious climate action.

Others, including India, are hoping the final deal asks countries to phase down all fossil fuel use, instead of just coal – an idea that resource-rich countries, especially in Africa, have resisted.

A deal at COP27 must be made with support from all of the nearly 200 countries present.

For daily comprehensive coverage on COP27 in your inbox, sign up for the Reuters Sustainable Switch newsletter here.

At an upscale Mexico City hotel on Friday, several hundred right-wing activists and international allies gathered to carve an identity for Mexico’s fledgling conservative movement just as governments across Latin America swing left.

The U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference, which has boosted far-right leaders like Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Hungary’s Victor Orban, is holding its first offshoot event in Mexico on Nov. 18-19.

The meeting follows a wave of leftist electoral victories in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and elsewhere that have cast doubt on the far right’s strength in Latin America while also rallying it against perceived adversaries in the media, pop culture, electoral agencies and big tech.

“This is a global movement right now, and the reality is we are under complete assault,” said former Trump advisor Steve Bannon in a streamed address, claiming falsely that Brazil’s President-elect Lula Inacio Lula da Silva stole the country’s election from President Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo was scheduled to speak later on Friday. Worries about the left’s return in Brazil and elsewhere in the region were front and center, followed by anger about changing gender values, including transgender issues.

Tim Schlaff, chairman of CPAC parent group American Conservative Union, said in opening remarks that his “biggest worry” was the “march of godless communism” from Latin America to the United States.

Trump, star of CPACs past, was not present, and no Trumps appeared on the speaker lineup. Just one attendee donned a red MAGA cap.

Speakers, who included conspiracy theorists, activists and media personalities from around the world, called for new leaders to fight the spread of “socialism,” “globalism” and “woke” culture in Mexico and elsewhere in the region.

“The right, the true right, has been orphaned,” said Eduardo Verastegui, a Mexican soap actor turned anti-abortion advocate who helped organize the conference.

The far right does not play an influential role in Mexico, where left-leaning President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador enjoys one of the hemisphere’s highest popularity ratings.

“A new right is needed, at least here in Mexico,” said Andres Burgueno, 28, who traveled from Mexico’s western Sinaloa state to attend the conference.

“Right now what we see is really center-right, or centrist.”

On Nov. 13, opposition groups protested Lopez Obrador’s proposed reform of Mexico’s electoral institute in the largest demonstration against his policies since he took office in 2018. Several CPAC speakers signaled the reform as a key concern.

Still, “it’s difficult to see a conservative backlash against Lopez Obrador because Lopez Obrador has been very conservative,” said political analyst Carlos Bravo, citing the president’s strong ties to the army, business and evangelical voters. But Bravo did not rule out the far right’s ability to move from the margins to the mainstream.

“They are playing a long game,” he said.

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The House majority has finally been called for Republicans, and the Democrats retained control of the Senate-with or without the upcoming runoff between Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker because John Fetterman flipped Pennsylvania’s seat. Of course, if we can get Senator Warnock back to Washington, Democrats won’t need Vice President Harris as the tie breaker. That is obviously reasoning that only Democrats share, but Robert Pawlicki, makes a strong case against Walker being elected to the senate. According to Savannah Morning News, Pawlicki is a member and former president of a non-partisan, men’s civic organization in Savannah called Hamiltons. More importantly, however, Mr. Pawlicki is a semi-retired psychologist who can probably tell better than us that Walker isn’t mentally stable enough to sit in such an important position.

Pawlicki not only agrees with Walker’s own self-assessment that “he’s not that smart,” Pawlicki points out that Walker poses a danger to the state and the country if he is elected. One of the biggest self-imposed myths about Walker is that he is an “every man” as opposed to a member of the elite because that appeals to rural voters. Walker’s main credential for running is that he played football, as if that somehow uniquely qualifies him. He makes no stand of any of the important issues impacting voters today such as inflation or climate change. Instead, he’s worried about critical race theory, as if true American history doesn’t include him. Herschel, you’re Black, okay? Walker is merely glad-handing to rural (racist) voters, which is stupid beyond words. On top of his obvious stupidity, should he win this seat, Walker will have to learn to read and comprehend complicated bills and legislation, most of which will undoubtedly go right above his head.

Walker says idiotic things such as a “mist” that kills Covid and when addressing climate change, asking: “Don’t we have enough trees already?” When he was specifically asked about air quality, he went on an unintelligible diatribe about China’s “bad air” making our “good air” move, leading to the U.S. needing to “reclean” the air. Really, what can you say about any of this? As Pawlicki points out: “Voting for ignorance is dangerous no matter your political party,” and Walker is certainly ignorant. If Georgians really believe someone this out of touch can adequately represent the state, they need to think again. Of course, some of the rural voters are likely not much smarter than Walker. The mere fact that they are voting for an ignorant Black man over an intelligent, educated Black man tells you just about all you need to know.

Walker was egged into running for senate for very specific reasons. One is that he will be the perfect “yes man” to whatever the Republican party tells him because he’s just not intelligent enough to research issues and make his own decisions. Besides, he’s what racist whites have always loved: an ignorant Black man. Even if he hurts the state, they could care less. As long as he’s no “uppity Black” like Raphael Warnock, they’re good with it. That in and of itself is downright shameful.

The post Herschel Walker’s runoff campaign is crashing and burning already appeared first on Palmer Report.

All the world claims to love a grand, ambitious filmmaker—but not really. There’s something in us that makes us more likely to root for the underdog director, the one who makes an intimate film that quietly wows us, than for the one who announces his filmmaking genius with the subtlety of a flare gun.

Enter Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, with a big pop and a lingering, smoky fizzle. In this ambitious semiautobiographical dream riff, Daniel Giménez Cacho plays Silverio, a sometimes arrogant, sometimes bumbling documentary filmmaker who’s about to win a big American prize for his work. Silverio was born in Mexico but has lived mostly in Los Angeles, a place he calls home. But is it really home? This is one of the big questions that swirls through the movie like a bird of prey. Silverio has become successful in a larger pond than the one he left back in Mexico, and his former colleagues there resent him for it. His kids, twentyish Camila (Ximena Lamadrid) and teenage Lorenzo (Íker Sánchez), are extremely Americanized. And there’s some major, haunting heartbreak in his life: he and his wife Lucia (Griselda Siciliani) have lost a child, an absence that has virtually cut a hole in him.

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Read more: There’s Lots of Suffering in The Revenant, But Bear With It

Courtesy of NetflixDaniel Giménez Cacho

That’s the straightforward summary of Bardo. Describing its trippier, existential-spin-art qualities is a bit more complicated. The movie opens with Lucia giving birth to what appears to be a healthy baby boy. But the doctor learns that the infant has other wishes, which he then relays to the mother: The baby doesn’t want to come out; the world is just too messed up. The doctor stuffs the baby back into the birth canal and that, apparently, is that—until, many years later, when the reluctant baby reappears, inopportunely, just as Silverio is about to perform oral sex. Then it’s his job to push the little interloper back in, as if putting a memory into a drawer. As you can imagine, it’s a big-time mood killer.

Nothing is reliable in Silverio’s rubber world, one that keeps stretching and shifting and whirling through space and time. In Mexico, Silverio attends a massive party thrown in his honor; he’s the first Latin American to win that big prestigious American award, and the locals want to fete him. But when he’s called to the stage, he chickens out and dips into the men’s room, where his dead father, big as life and fully alive, greets him warmly. Silverio’s father is a giant to him in all ways, a presence he desperately misses. Iñárritu illustrates that with a straightforward sight gag: Silverio’s body has suddenly shrunk to child-size, while his head—complete with its raggedy beard and persistently forlorn expression—is the normal adult version. What grownup hasn’t felt this at one time another—either the feeling of returning to childhood, or the wish that one could do so?

Read more: How Alejandro Iñárritu Made Oscar History

SeoJu Park/Netflix Griselda Siciliani as Lucia (right)

Bardo isn’t always that straightforward, and often, it’s exhausting. Iñárritu has a lot of thoughts and feelings, and he apparently sought to stuff them all into one movie. (The picture was co-written with Nicolás Giacobone, who also collaborated with Iñárritu on Biutiful and Birdman.) Bardo was three hours long when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in early September; Iñárritu has since cut 22 minutes from it, though that may not be quite enough. The picture still meanders and drags, and sometimes Iñárritu’s lofty ideas come off like a hot-air balloon that deflates and gets stuck in the trees. You wish he could just move on with things already.

And yet there are some magnificent visions in Bardo. The great cinematographer Darius Khondji helps Iñárritu bring his ideas to life, the grandest of which is a fantasy sequence set in the heart of Mexico City, where Silverio encounters the ruthless Hernán Cortés, standing atop a pile of dead indigenous Mexicans as if it were nothing. Silverio’s feelings about his birthplace may be conflicted, but in the end he knows exactly where his loyalties lie. Those feelings are particularly fierce when it comes to the jagged, exploitive kinship between the United States, his adopted home, and Mexico, the place where part of his heart will always live, whether he likes it or not. (One of the movie’s more bitter and pointed jokes is a revelation that Amazon is making a deal to purchase the state of Baja California.)

Late in the movie, Bardo takes a turn into less fantastical and more personal territory; the movie’s texture becomes warmer and more inviting. And even if you haven’t felt much for Silverio through most of the movie—he’s pretty insufferable—by this point, he becomes touchingly human. Some of the sights along the way have been dazzling, sure, but Iñárritu makes us work to get there. It’s hard to know whether he fully trusts in his audience’s intelligence and powers of perception, or if he knowingly overcomplicates everything just so it will be harder for us to keep up. The truth is probably somewhere in between, an intermediate state that not even Iñárritu can define.

Malaysians were voting in a general election on Saturday expected to be a close race between coalitions led by Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, long-time opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and former premier Muhyiddin Yassin.

With an unprecedented split of the vote among the three coalitions and numerous smaller groups, no bloc is expected to win the majority in parliament’s lower house needed to form a government.

Here are the candidates vying for the top job:

Incumbent Ismail is the prime ministerial candidate for the Barisan Nasional coalition, which has won all but one election in Malaysia’s history.

He was premier for just 14 months before a power struggle forced him to call for early polls.

Ismail faces the difficult task of convincing Malaysians to vote for Barisan despite corruption charges against some of its leaders.

Former Barisan leader and ex-premier Najib Razak is in jail for the multi-billion-dollar 1MDB graft scandal, which cost the coalition the election in 2018.

Ismail is part of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) political party, which leads Barisan and prioritises the interests of the dominant ethnic-Malay community in multiethnic, Muslim-majority Malaysia.

A survey released on Friday by independent pollster Merdeka Center showed Barisan lagging behind Anwar’s coalition.

Anwar leads the Pakatan Harapan alliance, the multiethnic coalition that ousted Barisan from power in 2018 for the first time since independence in 1957.

His reformist coalition was on course to take 82 seats of the 222 lower house seats, according to the Merdeka survey, ahead of Muhyiddin’s Perikatan Nasional alliance at 43 seats and Ismail’s Barisan at 15, but with 45 too close to call.

Anwar has eyed the premiership for more than two decades since he served in Mahathir Mohamad’s government in the 1990s as deputy prime minister and finance minister. But the two fell out, with Anwar leading massive protests against Mahathir and calling for reforms.

They buried the hatchet in 2018, coming together to defeat Barisan. But their alliance collapsed less than two years later due to infighting over Mahathir’s promise to hand over power to Anwar, returning Barisan to power as part of another coalition.

Anwar spent a decade in jail on a conviction for sodomy and corruption, which he says was politically motivated.

The former prime minister’s Perikatan has emerged as a third force in Malaysia. Muhyiddin is winning crucial support from the majority Malays, taking away some voters from Barisan, analysts say.

His coalition prioritises Malay interests and includes the Islamist party PAS, which has called for sharia Islamic law.

He was a crucial player in the collapse of the Pakatan administration in 2020, leading a group of defectors to form a government at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Muhyiddin, who underwent treatment for pancreatic cancer in 2018, has also served as deputy prime minister.

While Ismail is the official prime ministerial candidate for Barisan, there is intense speculation that Zahid – who leads the coalition – might seek the job if his alliance wins.

Zahid, a former deputy prime minister, has denied the rumours. He is senior to Ismail in the coalition, which is plagued by infighting.

This month Zahid purged the coalition of some long-time members who were aligned with Ismail, dropping them as candidates for the election.

He is on trial for graft, where he has pleaded not guilty.

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Relatives of passengers killed in two Boeing 737 MAX crashes pressed U.S. Justice Department lawyers on Friday to unwind a 2021 deal that allowed the U.S. planemaker to escape criminal prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas ruled last month that people killed in two Boeing 737 MAX crashes are legally considered “crime victims” and said he would decide what remedy should be imposed.

The crashes in 2018 and 2019 in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which cost Boeing more than $20 billion, led to a 20-month grounding for the best-selling plane and prompted Congress to pass legislation reforming airplane certification.

Families and their lawyers met for about five hours with government lawyers on Friday with some participating virtually from around the world.

The families argued the U.S. government “lied and violated their rights through a secret process,” and asked O’Connor to rescind Boeing’s immunity from criminal prosecution, which was part of the 2021 $2.5 billion Boeing settlement over fraud conspiracy charges related to the plane’s flawed design, and to arraign Boeing on the felony charges.

Nadia Milleron, mother of a 24-year-old killed in the second Boeing MAX crash, said she was disappointed in the meeting and said the Justice Department was “supporting a deal with Boeing that was made secretly, illegally, omits input from victims and lets Boeing off the hook.”

Both Boeing and the Justice Department oppose reopening the deferred prosecution agreement that included $500 million in victim compensation, a $243.6 million fine and $1.7 billion in compensation to airlines.

The Justice Department said in a court filing it does not oppose an arraignment for Boeing but opposes undoing the agreement, saying it “would impose serious hardships on the parties and the many victims who have received compensation.”

The department said without the agreement it would lose its leverage to make Boeing follow through with public safety reforms.

Boeing said in a court filing it opposes any effort to reopen the agreement, calling it “unprecedented, unworkable, and inequitable…. An investigated party has the right to finality and to the benefits of a resolution it negotiated with the government.”

Boeing noted it has been complying with the agreement for nearly two years.

The Justice Department said on Friday after the meeting it takes its obligations to victims seriously.

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Malaysians were voting on Saturday in a closely fought election pitting Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob against longtime opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and former premier Muhyiddin Yassin.

Here are the key issues in the election:

Rising prices and economic prospects are voters’ top considerations as the government and central bank have warned of slowing growth next year.

Prices have been creeping up, especially for food items, even as growth is expected to slow to 4%-5% next year from this year’s forecast 6.5%-7%.

The government has said it will trim subsidies next year due to fiscal pressures, which could result in further price increases if the next administration proceeds with the plan.

“The top issue (in the election) would be socioeconomic wellbeing, which is rapidly deteriorating,” said Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow with Singapore’s Institute of International Affairs.

Most of Malaysia’s ethnic-Malay majority would expect the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) party to be the “most willing to provide handouts during these harsh times”, he said.

Malaysians have been frustrated with the politicking that has rocked the country since the opposition ended six decades of UMNO rule in 2018. Malaysia’s first opposition victory was led by Mahathir Mohamad, who had previously been an UMNO prime minister.

Since its ouster, UMNO has tried to make its way back to power and has been the main source of turmoil, with infighting both within its ranks and among its alliance partners.

The country has had three prime ministers in the last two years.

Announcing the dissolution of parliament, Prime Minister Ismail said political instability had hurt the economy, saying the mandate must be returned to the people.

Analysts expect disillusionment with the instability to hurt voter turnout due.

Graft was a key reason for UMNO’s defeat in 2018, and some critics say a convincing UMNO win could worsen corruption and see the return of graft-tainted politicians to power.

Several of the party’s top leaders were charged after the election loss. They are the ones who urged Ismail to call for early polls.

Ismail last month announced a wide-ranging misconduct probe against a former attorney-general who had brought graft cases against UMNO officials.

Former premier Najib Razak, along with UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and several other senior party officials, faced dozens of corruption charges. All have denied wrongdoing, with Najib and Ahmad Zahid calling the charges against them politically motivated.

In August, Najib started a 12-year jail term for corruption and money laundering in a case linked to the multibillion-dollar financial scandal 1MDB. He still faces four other trials.

Race and religion remain divisive issues in Malaysia, multiethnic country of 32.7 million people.

Ethnic Malays, who are mainly Muslim, and indigenous groups make up about 70% of the population. The rest are mostly ethnic Chinese and Indians.

Conservative Malays are split between UMNO and another Malay-centric party led by Muhyiddin, analysts say.

Many had felt sidelined by Mahathir’s administration, which saw a higher number of non-Malays appointed to high-ranking cabinet positions.

Malay nationalist UMNO built its support over the years through a strong system of patronage, especially with ethnic Malays.