UN Watchdog Says Landmines Are Placed Around Ukrainian Nuke Plant Occupied by Russia 

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, is seen in the background of the shallow Kakhovka Reservoir after the dam collapse, in Energodar, Russian-occupied Ukraine, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP)
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, is seen in the background of the shallow Kakhovka Reservoir after the dam collapse, in Energodar, Russian-occupied Ukraine, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP)
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UN Watchdog Says Landmines Are Placed Around Ukrainian Nuke Plant Occupied by Russia 

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, is seen in the background of the shallow Kakhovka Reservoir after the dam collapse, in Energodar, Russian-occupied Ukraine, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP)
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, is seen in the background of the shallow Kakhovka Reservoir after the dam collapse, in Energodar, Russian-occupied Ukraine, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (AP)

The UN atomic watchdog says its staff at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant report seeing anti-personnel mines around the site as Kyiv pursues a counteroffensive against the Kremlin’s entrenched forces after 17 months of war.

“Having such explosives on the site is inconsistent with the IAEA safety standards and nuclear security guidance and creates additional psychological pressure on plant staff,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement late Monday.

However, any detonation of the mines, located between the site’s internal and external perimeter barriers, “should not affect the site’s nuclear safety and security systems,” the statement said.

The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concern about the facility, which is one of the 10 biggest in the world, amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe. The UN agency has officials stationed at the plant, which is still run by its Ukrainian staff.

The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

Ukraine’s military intelligence said last month without providing evidence that Russia is planning a “large-scale provocation” at the nuclear power plant in the southeast of the country and had placed suspected explosives on the roof. Russia, in turn, has alleged without offering evidence that Ukraine was planning a false flag attack involving radioactive materials.

The IAEA statement said that the Russian occupiers still haven't granted it access to the roofs of the reactors and their turbine halls.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday that air defenses intercepted Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia fired at Kyiv overnight, in what was the sixth drone attack on the capital this month. No casualties or damage were reported, according to Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration head.

The Russian Defense Ministry said a Russian patrol ship destroyed two Ukrainian sea drones that attacked it in the Black Sea early Tuesday. It said the crew of the Sergey Kotov patrol ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet wasn’t hurt in the attack 370 kilometers (200 nautical miles) southwest of the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

Ukrainian officials, in turn, said that Russians used cluster munitions in an attack on Kostiantynivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, late Monday.

Rockets hit a recreational pond, killing a 10-year-old boy and wounding four other children ranging in age from 5 to 12, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration.

Russia and Ukraine have both used cluster munitions throughout the war, and the US has recently provided them to Ukraine.

Western analysts said Tuesday that Russia's recent attacks on Odesa and other parts of southern Ukraine have employed missiles that were originally developed to destroy aircraft carriers.

Each missile weighs 5.5 metric tons, the UK Ministry of Defense said in an assessment.

In only a week, Russia has fired dozens of missiles and drones at the Odesa region, on Monday hitting a cathedral. The strikes have come since Moscow broke off from a landmark grain deal a week ago. Odesa is a key Ukrainian hub for exporting grain.

The attacks have damaged several grain silos at Chornomorsk Port, south of Odesa, and Russian drones have hit docks on the Danube River, approximately 200 meters (650 feet) from the Romanian border, according to the assessment.



Congress Approves Trump's $9 billion Cut to Public Broadcasting, Foreign Aid

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., leaves the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., leaves the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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Congress Approves Trump's $9 billion Cut to Public Broadcasting, Foreign Aid

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., leaves the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., leaves the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The House gave final approval to President Donald Trump's request to claw back about $9 billion for public broadcasting and foreign aid early Friday as Republicans intensified their efforts to target institutions and programs they view as bloated or out of step with their agenda.

The vote marked the first time in decades that a president has successfully submitted such a rescissions request to Congress, and the White House suggested it won't be the last. Some Republicans were uncomfortable with the cuts, yet supported them anyway, wary of crossing Trump or upsetting his agenda.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 216-213. It now goes to Trump for his signature, The AP news reported.

“We need to get back to fiscal sanity and this is an important step,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

Opponents voiced concerns not only about the programs targeted, but about Congress ceding its spending powers to the executive branch as investments approved on a bipartisan basis were being subsequently canceled on party-line votes. They said previous rescission efforts had at least some bipartisan buy-in and described the Republican package as unprecedented.

No Democrats supported the measure when it passed the Senate, 51-48, in the early morning hours Thursday. Final passage in the House was delayed for several hours as Republicans wrestled with their response to Democrats' push for a vote on the release of Jeffrey Epstein files.

The package cancels about $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and nearly $8 billion for a variety of foreign aid programs, many designed to help countries where drought, disease and political unrest endure.

The effort to claw back a sliver of federal spending came just weeks after Republicans also muscled through Trump’s tax and spending cut bill without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase the U.S. debt by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.

"No one is buying the the notion that Republicans are actually trying to improve wasteful spending,” said Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.

A heavy blow to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting The cancellation of $1.1 billion for the CPB represents the full amount it is due to receive during the next two budget years.

The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.

The corporation distributes more than two-thirds of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.

Democrats were unsuccessful in restoring the funding in the Senate.

Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced particular concern about what the cuts to public broadcasting could mean for some local public stations in their state.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the stations are "not just your news — it is your tsunami alert, it is your landslide alert, it is your volcano alert.”

As the Senate debated the bill Tuesday, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the remote Alaska Peninsula, triggering tsunami warnings on local public broadcasting stations that advised people to get to higher ground.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some money administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states.

But Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said that deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save.”

Inside the cuts to foreign aid Among the foreign aid cuts are $800 million for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and family reunification for refugees and $496 million to provide food, water and health care for countries hit by natural disasters and conflicts. There also is a $4.15 billion cut for programs that aim to boost economies and democratic institutions in developing nations.

Democrats argued that the Republican administration's animus toward foreign aid programs would hurt America's standing in the world and create a vacuum for China to fill.

“This is not an America first bill. It's a China first bill because of the void that's being created all across the world,” Jeffries said.

The White House argued that many of the cuts would incentivize other nations to step up and do more to respond to humanitarian crises and that the rescissions best served the American taxpayer.

“The money that we're clawing back in this rescissions package is the people's money. We ought not to forget that,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., chair of the House Rules Committee.

After objections from several Republicans, Senate GOP leaders took out a $400 million cut to PEPFAR, a politically popular program to combat HIV/AIDS that is credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under Republican President George W. Bush.

Looking ahead to future spending fights Democrats say the bill upends a legislative process that typically requires lawmakers from both parties to work together to fund the nation’s priorities.

Triggered by the official rescissions request from the White House, the legislation only needed a simple majority vote to advance in the Senate instead of the 60 votes usually required to break a filibuster. That meant Republicans could use their 53-47 majority to pass it along party lines.

Two Republican senators, Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, joined with Democrats in voting against the bill, though a few other Republicans also raised concerns about the process.

“Let’s not make a habit of this,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who voted for the bill but said he was wary that the White House wasn’t providing enough information on what exactly will be cut.

Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the imminent successful passage of the rescissions shows “enthusiasm” for getting the nation’s fiscal situation under control.

“We’re happy to go to great lengths to get this thing done,” he said during a breakfast with reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

In response to questions about the relatively small size of the cuts -- $9 billion -- Vought said that was because “I knew it would be hard” to pass in Congress. Vought said another rescissions package is ’likely to come soon.”