Category World News

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says situation ‘critical’ at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is “critical” as the facility has been without power for seven days.

“It has been seven days now. There has never been anything like this before,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Tuesday.

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One of the diesel generators providing emergency power to the plant is no longer working, Zelenskyy said, a week after external power lines went down.

“Russian shelling has cut the plant off from the electricity network,” the Ukrainian leader said.

“This is a threat to everyone. No terrorist in the world has ever dared to do with a nuclear power plant what Russia is doing now.”

The outage is the longest the Russian-occupied plant has gone without power since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It is also the 10th time since the start of the war that the plant – the largest in Europe – has been disconnected from the power grid.

Russia seized control of Zaporizhzhia in the first weeks of the war, and the plant’s six reactors, which before the conflict produced about one-fifth of Ukraine’s electricity, were shut down after Moscow took over.

But the plant needs power to maintain cooling and safety systems, which prevent reactors from melting – a danger that could set off a nuclear incident.

[Al Jazeera]

Russian officials have not commented on the latest statements on conditions at the plant.

But Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of risking a potentially devastating nuclear disaster by attacking the site, and have traded blame over the latest blackout.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog, earlier this week decried the cutoff of the external power lines but assigned no blame to either side.

In a statement on Tuesday, Grossi said he was engaging with officials from both countries to restore offsite power to Zaporizhzhia as soon as possible.

“I’m in constant contact with the two sides with the aim to enable the plant’s swift re-connection to the electricity grid,” the IAEA chief said.

“While the plant is currently coping thanks to its emergency diesel generators – the last line of defence – and there is no immediate danger as long as they keep working, it is clearly not a sustainable situation in terms of nuclear safety,” he added.

“Neither side would benefit from a nuclear accident.”

IAEA monitors are stationed permanently at Zaporizhzhia and at Ukraine’s three other nuclear power stations.

Will a government shutdown hurt the US economy?

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The United States government is set to shut down unless Congress passes an appropriations bill to fund its operations.

Without this legislation, federal agencies will be forced to suspend nonessential activities starting on Wednesday at 12:01am in Washington, DC (04:01 GMT).

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Although Republicans control the House of Representatives, Senate and White House, they cannot pass the bill on their own. While Republicans have 53 of the 100 seats in the Senate, 60 votes are needed to advance the bill to a vote.

Republicans have proposed a short-term spending plan, but Democrats have been trying to use the approaching shutdown as leverage. They are pushing to reverse Medicaid cuts included in tax legislation passed in July and extend tax credits for healthcare purchased through government exchanges.

With neither side willing to compromise, a shutdown could have ripple effects across the US economy.

Layoffs and impact on consumer sentiment

The federal government is the nation’s largest employer. In a memo last week, federal agencies were told to prepare layoff notices for programmes that would run out of funds by the deadline and for those not considered a priority by the administration. The memo itself did not explicitly make it clear what those priorities are.

The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for clarification.

The cuts would be through what is called Reduction In Force, or RIF. But it is unclear whether the cuts, even if the president were to push them through, would last because Trump doesn’t have the power to carry them out, said Daniel Hornung, policy fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research.

“There’s no legal authority that you [the White House] get from shutting down to do RIFs,” Hornung  told Al Jazeera.

RIFs require 30- to 60-days notice if an agency looks to make cuts, so Hornung expected that any cuts made now would be challenged in court.

But even if the job cuts are blocked, it is not clear when that would happen. As a result, those out of work may put off purchases, especially for big-ticket items, according to Michael Klein, professor of international economic affairs at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

“Consumers will start spending less because they’re concerned about what the future looks like,” Klein told Al Jazeera.

“It might be decided [by the court] that it’s not lawful, but that could be a long time. Even if it all gets resolved, those out of a job probably aren’t going to be spending like they otherwise would.”

The memo did not provide a specific number of jobs that could be cut. It comes as more than 150,000 workers are also expected to leave the federal workforce after accepting buyouts this year. Those reductions – as part of the deferred exit programme, which kept workers on payrolls until the end of September – are the largest federal worker job cuts in almost 80 years.

In addition to the permanent layoffs, government workers face furloughs as long as the government is shut down. Workers considered not essential to government operations would stop working until Congress passes budget bills or a stopgap measure.

Delayed jobs report

On Tuesday, the Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, released by the Department of Labor showed that hiring declined by 114,000 jobs to 5.1 million in August while job openings increased slightly by 19,000 to 7.2 million. If the government shuts down, the Labor Department would delay the release of key economic reports that gauge the health of the US economy.

On Thursday, it is scheduled to publish weekly jobless claims and on Friday the monthly jobs report, detailing how many jobs were created, in which sectors and the unemployment rate. Normally, the department releases that report on the first Friday of each month unless a holiday intervenes.

The broader labour market has already shown signs of cooling in recent months. In August, the US economy, the largest in the world, added only 22,000 jobs.

Softening labour conditions were one reason the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points in September. A delay in new data could leave the central bank with less information to consider as it weighs whether to cut rates again. Still, a short delay is unlikely to have a major effect because the Fed’s next two-day policy meeting is not until October 28-29.

Hornung believes this shutdown is coming during a fairly unique economic situation that the central bank will need to watch.

“The main risk is that we’re in a precarious spot in the economy anyway. Unlike the prior shutdowns like the prolonged 2018 shutdown, the economy was performing well, the prolonged 2013 shutdown, the economy, was in the midst of a slow but long, gradual recovery,” Hornung said.

“Now the labour market has really weakened. It appears in recent months the risk of inflation remains because of the tariffs. And so, it’s kind of this question of how much can the economy withstand.”

Market impact

Historically, shutdowns have had limited impact on financial markets because investors typically recognise that a shutdown is short-lived.

“Typically in shutdown scenarios, there’s not much impact on either equity markets or in bond markets, mostly because investors tend to look through shutdowns and assess that any temporary slowdown associated with the shutdown will be reversed when the government opens back up,”  Hornung added.

This time, the dynamics are different as the government is planning to slash jobs vs just putting employees on furlough, and this is set against Trump’s broader economic agenda focused on tariffs, which have already pressured businesses.

UN Security Council approves ‘Gang Suppression Force’ for Haiti

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The UN Security Council approved transforming Haiti into a “Gang Suppression Force” from an international security force that already exists there.

The force’s clear mandate is to “neutralize, isolate, and deter” gangs, secure infrastructure, and work with local authorities to secure institutional stability, according to the council’s resolution on Friday. The current mission’s personnel cap, which was initially approved in 2023, would be raised to 5, 550 personnel.

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In order to provide more logistical support to Haiti as it grapples with its overlapping security, humanitarian, and political crises, the resolution recommends that the UN secretary-general establish a UN Support Office there.

Following the vote, Panama’s representative to the UN, Eloy Alfaro De Alba, said, “The result today allows us to have the necessary reconfiguration on the ground to address the country’s insecurity situation.”

Alfaro De Alba remarked, “Today, we tell Haiti that you are not alone. For all.”

The most recent resolution was first introduced in August by Panama and the US. On Tuesday, it received 12 votes for and 1 against. Members of the Permanent Security Council, including rotating members Pakistan and China, did not cast a ballot.

Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia claimed that “the international aid to Haiti” that had been approved by the Security Council “failed to produce any sustainable results.”

He criticized the resolution for having a “virtually unrestricted mandate to use force against anyone and everyone labelled with the vague term “gangs,” and added that the plan was “ill-conceived and rushed.”

In light of the widespread sexual abuses committed by peacekeepers in Haiti following the earthquake, which was a controversial history, especially in light of the country’s history. A cholera outbreak that claimed the lives of about 10,000 people was also caused by the forces.

However, Laurent Saint-Cyr, the current head of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, expressed support for a new force last week during the UN General Assembly General Debate, noting that the Kenyan-led security support mission has been woefully understaffed and underfunded.

Despite an initial pledge of 2,500, less than 1, 000 police officers have been stationed under the mission, which is scheduled to end on October 2. Port au Prince, the capital’s center, is still largely under the control of powerful gangs.

According to Saint-Cyr, “it is a war between criminals who want to impose violence as the social order and an unarmed population trying to preserve human dignity.”

At least 1.3 million Haitians are still internally displaced as a result of violence, and 5.7% are facing food insecurity, according to the UN. Between January and June 2025, at least 3,100 people died in violent incidents. At least 2,300 serious child abuses have been reported.

The nation is also at the center of a political crisis that began with Jovenel Moise’s 2021 assassination. In response to the unrest, a general election has been repeatedly postponed.

Acting Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime praised the resolution’s adoption on Tuesday.

He stated, “This decision represents a significant advance in the international community’s partnership.”

A renewed international mission to Haiti has also been offered hesitant support from rights observers, with Human Rights Watch stating last week that any operation must have reliable funding and safeguards for human rights.

Instead, parties must work to establish those rules in accordance with “Haiti’s sovereignty and in strict compliance with international law,” according to the resolution passed on Tuesday.