Before the pandemic, before the war in Ukraine, before new came to define normal, Netchanok “Love” Promkao and Dmytro Denysov met in a Bangkok restaurant when Netchanok’s friends asked the solo traveler to join them.

A gym-fit Ukrainian with dark blond hair, Denysov was “breaking bad, drinking and smoking” in September 2019, with Bangkok another stop on a monthslong Asia trek.

He had just broken up with his girlfriend in China. Netchanok had just broken up with her boyfriend in South Korea.

They bonded as rebound buddies. Each had been married and divorced. Denysov helped Netchanok build online engagement for the social media channels she developed for her online marketplace while managing a Bangkok restaurant.

By February 2020, they were a committed couple unaware that their future would manifest a snarl of bureaucracy, prejudice, online celebrity, money woes and mental illness, an ever-changing chaos made endurable by a love many failed to understand.

Then, before March arrived, Denysov departed on an unplanned two-month visit to Ukraine to care for his ailing father.

COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions kept the couple apart until May 2021, when they reunited in Hua Hin, a dreamy seaside resort town once favored by Thai nobility. As the couple adjusted from long-distance to up-close loving, Denysov told Netchanok, “I want to change. I want to take (female sex) hormones.”

Since the age of 12, Denysov, now 37, had wanted to live as Jane.

“When I started traveling, I started seeing like ‘Oh, it’s normal’ that people can be who they want to be … and I have enough power right now to do what I want,” he said. “Because we only have one life, I want to live my life, to be myself and not to fall.”

As Denysov recalled, Netchanok looked confused for a moment, then told him, “‘No problem.'”

“Then, we just went to a pharmacy together,” Jane told VOA Thai. “My only regret is why I didn’t start taking hormones earlier.”

Netchanok, 33, the mother of two, observed, “No one lives problem-free. No one is perfectly perfect. I would like to choose the most understanding one as my partner. I think Jane is the one.”

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In the following months, the couple moved between Thailand and Europe, where they found Ukraine challenging. A survey by the sociological group “Rating” published last August indicated that 47% of respondents in Ukraine had a negative view of the LGBTQ+ community, Reuters reported.

“Ukraine came from the Soviet Union, so there’re restrictions about everything LGBTQ+,” Jane told VOA Thai via video interview in late June, wearing full makeup and a platinum wig.

Partly in response to encountering these restrictions, in June 2021 the couple launched their TikTok channel. They became social media personalities with more than 256,000 followers, most of them in Thailand. Jane tried speaking some Thai as well as English on their channel. At one point, she used “kathoey” which is Thai for a transgender woman or a gay man who presents as a woman.

“The automatic translation put it as ‘homosexual.’ My mother saw it and was like ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you homosexual?’ and I was like ‘No, no, no,'” Jane said.

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In October 2021, Netchanok decided to travel with Jane to Kyiv to meet with her in-laws.

“When I went to meet my parents, I was wearing something oversized to hide my breasts,” Jane said. “They had thought I dressed up as a woman only for TikTok appearance. They didn’t expect it to be real.”

Netchanok said Jane’s parents were initially “shocked yet eventually accepting” and supported the couple’s marriage that December in Kyiv, a ceremony possible because Jane was a man before the law and the altar.

Video translation:

0.01-0.09: Here we are. I would like to say that I and Jane have been married. Thank you for supporting us.

0.10 – 0.14: Today is a good day. I’m very happy. Let me hug her first.

0.17 – 0.28: We’ve been through obstacles for… how many years have we dated each other? Around three years. We have been through a lot.

0.37 – 0.43: From the first day we met and that’s been three years, Jane’s Thai language level has been the same.

0.45- 0.51: You may’ve notice we’ve been inactive on TikTok for a couple of weeks.

0.52 – 0.58: We got temporarily banned by TikTok. We also had to prepare our visas among other things.

1.00-1.03: But now, we’re back to see you again!

Then Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

“We would hear siren sounds for 20 minutes and after they stopped for another 20 minutes, bombing would usually follow,” Netchanok said. “The siren sounds were so frequent that most people did not seem to escape when hearing them unless when they were in dangerous zones.”

The war meant the couple couldn’t use ATMs to access their Ukrainian accounts. Given Netchanok’s outlay on her Ukraine visa application and Jane’s recent apartment purchase in Ukraine, money became a problem.

Jane, who had struggled with diagnosed depression since childhood, fell into a dark place. Together, they began planning to leave Ukraine, an effort complicated by the government’s wartime ban on male citizens aged 18-60 leaving the country.

The couple went first to Lviv, where the Thai embassy in Warsaw, which also oversees Thai interests in Ukraine, had established a temporary post to assist and repatriate Thai nationals.

Netchanok wanted to move Jane to Thailand because she believed Jane would receive better care there.

When Thai officials told the couple Jane did not qualify for help despite being married to a Thai citizen, Netchanok declared, “If you’re not going, I’m not going. We have to be together no matter what.”

By March, Jane was cutting herself, and Netchanok was struggling to stay in touch with family in Thailand.

“It was a big mess,” Netchanok said. “It was about dealing with war, work, family and Jane’s emotions.

“I wasn’t worried about myself,” she said. “I was worried about my children and necessary spending. I had to quit a job shortly after the war broke out and most of our savings went to an apartment in Kyiv, from where we had to evacuate.”

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Netchanok found a hospital to treat Jane in April after a friend in Lviv referred them to a military medical office in Dnipro where Jane eventually received consultations for depression.

The couple assembled proof of Jane’s unsuitability for the military, documentation that included a video clip of Jane, wearing women’s clothing and presenting as a woman, being publicly assaulted in Ukraine.

Video translation:

Jane

4.58-5.22: I can’t go out in high heels … with make-up, with hair. Because if I do, people will think there’s something wrong with me, that I’m an idiot. I can’t be myself.

Netchanok

5.23- 5.29: As far as I have observed, especially in Lviv, people tend to be more conservative.

From what I’ve seen, especially in Lviv, people tend to be conservative.

5.30-5.33: We wouldn’t know whether if Jane would be in trouble if when she dresses as a woman in public.

5.34-5.40: This is what we see in Ukrainians, not only Ukraine actually but also in Russia, because they seem to be very Soviet-like.

5.41- 5.46: However, there are around about 70% of the younger generations who seem to be more progressive …

5.47 – 5.50: … while the other 30% tend to be more conservative and pro-Russia.

Jane received a military service waiver. The couple spent three weeks in Dnipro sorting out their paperwork, then returned to Lviv for a 72-hour bus trip to Switzerland.

Netchanok and Jane decided to settle in Switzerland after the LGBTQ+ community there suggested it.

Medical treatments to support gender change are relatively accessible, they learned. Jane plans to receive facial surgery, vocal feminization surgery and breast augmentation. She doesn’t want complete gender-confirmation surgery.

“I don’t want to change this part of my body because I have a wife and I like her,” Jane said.

A Swiss law effective since Jan. 1 allows people in the country to legally change gender without hormone therapy, medical diagnosis or gender-confirmation surgery. However, the gender options under Swiss laws remain binary, and this means Jane is considered female under Swiss law, the couple says.

Jane and Netchanok, who settled in Geneva on May 27, are waiting to receive a one-year renewable “Permit S” that allows people in need of protection to stay and work in Switzerland provisionally. According to Swissinfo, Switzerland had handed out work permits to at least 1,500 of the 57,000 refugees from Ukraine as of June16. Switzerland’s Federal Council provides 21,000 francs for each Ukrainian refugee.

Jane said she enjoys Geneva, where she lives without fear. This is so new, so transformative for her that she told VOA Thai she “needs to study” to be herself again, adding, “It sounds weird but that’s really true because (normally) there would be some people laughing at me … In Kyiv, it was always like this.”

Video translation:

0.01-0.02: We’re going to review Swiss government’s assistance.

0.03-0.10: This is the check. Because we haven’t opened our account yet, the Swiss government would give us an actual check for us to cash.

0.11-0.16: However, in Switzerland, unlike in Thailand, we can cash this check at a post office instead of a bank.

0.17-0.23: We would like to say that the Swiss government takes a very good care of Ukrainian migrants.

The couple has started mapping out their future. They want to divide their time between Thailand and Ukraine so they are always with family.

Beyond their online celebrity in Thailand, Netchanok has maintained her business connections there.

Thailand draws Jane because of what she sees as an acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, even though the Thai government has yet to recognize the LGBTQ+ community in full. Gender is legally assigned at birth and cannot be changed under Thai law, which does not recognize same-sex marriage on par with heterosexual marriage. In June, the Thai Cabinet approved a civil partnership bill which, while partially recognizing same-sex partnership, still lacks benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples such as tax benefits, government pensions and spousal medical decisions.

Swiss laws are more progressive than Ukraine’s on LGBTQ+ rights. Switzerland has a score of 42% on ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map and Index based on legal and policy practices for LGBT+ people in Europe, compared with Ukraine’s score of 19%. Same-sex marriage in Switzerland became legal on July 1.

Although Ukraine does not recognize same-sex marriages and civil partnerships, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked his government on Aug. 2 to look into whether they should be legalized, according to Reuters, adding there would be no change as the war with Russia continues.

But Jane said that in Switzerland, “there are not so many people like me, so I don’t have transsexual society here.” Although she acknowledges that this may be because she hasn’t been in Geneva long enough to find like-minded people, “I still want to go back to Thailand,” she said.

For their primary source of income, the couple wants to expand their online celebrity via TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. Netchanok plans to operate a Thai massage parlor in Switzerland, once she obtains a business permit. This would be the first step toward accumulating resources and experience in a European market before expanding in a post-war Ukraine, Netchanok said. The concept could also provide a future source of income for their Thai family.

It is a long shot to think that far ahead, they told VOA Thai.

“We barely have hope with (situations) in Ukraine,” Netchanok said. “With a lot of foreign soldiers and military hardware there right now, I certainly don’t think things will end by this year.”
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In a very special bakery in Kyiv, thousands of loaves of bread are being baked every week and sent out to those in need. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story.
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Italy’s worst drought in decades has reduced Lake Garda, the country’s largest lake, to near its lowest level ever recorded, exposing swaths of previously underwater rocks and warming the water to temperatures that approach the average in the Caribbean Sea. 

Tourists flocking to the popular northern lake Friday for the start of Italy’s key summer long weekend found a vastly different landscape than in past years. An expansive stretch of bleached rock extended far from the normal shoreline, ringing the southern Sirmione Peninsula with a yellow halo between the green hues of the water and the trees on the shore. 

“We came last year, we liked it, and we came back this year,” tourist Beatrice Masi said as she sat on the rocks. “We found the landscape had changed a lot. We were a bit shocked when we arrived because we had our usual walk around, and the water wasn’t there.” 

 

Little snow or rain

Northern Italy hasn’t seen significant rainfall for months, and snowfall this year was down 70%, drying up important rivers like the Po, which flows across Italy’s agricultural and industrial heartland. Many European countries, including Spain, Germany, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Britain, are enduring droughts this summer that have hurt farmers and shippers and promoted authorities to restrict water use. 

The parched condition of the Po, Italy’s longest river, has caused billions of euros in losses to farmers who normally rely on it to irrigate fields and rice paddies. 

To compensate, authorities allowed more water from Lake Garda to flow out to local rivers — 70 cubic meters (2,472 cubic feet) of water per second. But in late July, they reduced the amount to protect the lake and the financially important tourism tied to it. 

With 45 cubic meters (1,589 cubic feet) of water per second being diverted to rivers, the lake on Friday was 32 centimeters (12.6 inches) above the water table, near the record lows in 2003 and 2007. 

Garda Mayor Davide Bedinelli said he had to protect both farmers and the tourist industry. He insisted that the summer tourist season was going better than expected, despite cancellations, mostly from German tourists, during Italy’s latest heat wave in late July. 

“Drought is a fact that we have to deal with this year, but the tourist season is in no danger,” Bendinelli wrote in a July 20 Facebook post. 

He confirmed the lake was losing two centimeters (0.78 inches) of water a day. 

Caribbean temperatures

The lake’s temperature, meanwhile, has been above average for August, according to seatemperature.org. On Friday, the Garda’s water was nearly 26 degrees Celsius (78 degrees Fahrenheit), several degrees warmer than the average August temperature of 22 C (71.6 F) and nearing the Caribbean Sea’s average of around 27 C (80 F). 

For Mario Treccani, who owns a lakefront concession of beach chairs and umbrellas, the lake’s expanded shoreline means fewer people are renting his chairs since there are now plenty of rocks on which to sunbathe. 

“The lake is usually a meter or more than a meter higher,” he said from the rocks. 

Pointing to a small wall that usually blocks the water from the beach chairs, he recalled that on windy days, sometimes waves from the lake would splash up onto the tourists. 

Not anymore. 

“It is a bit sad. Before, you could hear the noise of the waves breaking up here. Now, you don’t hear anything,” he said. 
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French firefighters tackled wildfires raging in the country’s southeast Saturday as officials kept a wary eye on a huge blaze that appeared to be contained farther west.

France has been buffeted this summer by a historic drought that has forced water use restrictions nationwide, as well as a series of heatwaves that experts say are being driven by climate change.

On Saturday, a reignited “virulent” fire in the Aveyron department near Toulouse forced the evacuation of more than 130 people, officials said, while another blaze in the department of Drome, south of Lyon, progressed.

The Aveyron and Drome fires have destroyed more than 1,200 hectares (3,100 acres).

A fire in the legendary Broceliande Forest in the northwestern region of Brittany, where King Arthur roamed, devastated nearly 400 hectares but officials said Saturday the fire was no longer progressing.

A 40-kilometre (25-mile) fire front in the Gironde and Landes departments around Bordeaux also “did not significantly progress overnight. Firefighters are working on its periphery,” police said in a statement.

But officials said it was premature to say that the blaze — which has already reignited once — was under control.

“We remain vigilant” because “while we can’t see huge flames, the fire continues to consume vegetation and soil,” Arnaud Mendousse, of Gironde fire and rescue, told AFP.

Officials suspect arson may have played a role in the latest flare-up, which has burned 7,400 hectares since Tuesday.

Weather forecasters are expecting thunderstorms with wind gusts of up to 60 kilometers (40 miles) an hour in the region in the evening.

The wind “could reignite the fire” that “is in a state of pause,” Mendousse warned.

In a bid to keep the situation contained, firefighters in Gironde on Saturday were busy dousing the hot and still smoking earth with water.

Fireworks banned

Authorities Saturday reopened a highway linking Bordeaux and Spain after closing a 20-kilometer stretch Wednesday.

Traditional firework displays for the Catholic Feast of the Assumption on Monday, when Mary is believed to have entered heaven, have been banned in several areas.

Corsica was lashed by winds traveling at 95 kilometers an hour overnight and hit by hail, Meteo-France said.

Forecaster Claire Chanal said the storms expected this weekend could lead to flooding and hail.

EU members including Germany, Poland, Austria and Romania have pledged reinforcements totaling 361 firefighters to join the roughly 1,100 French ones on the ground, along with several water-bombing planes from the European Union fleet.

Most of the reinforcements had arrived on the ground, with the last 146 firefighters from Poland arriving late Saturday afternoon.

“Here we are all volunteers. We’re trained, we want to help,” said Tone Neuhalfel, a German firefighter aged 36.

The Atlantic port of Brest hit 35.9 degrees Celsius (96.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a record for the month of August.

Forests off limits

In eastern France, police said Saturday they were banning entry to most forests in the Bas-Rhin region near the German border.

Cars, cyclists, hikers, hunters and fishermen are prohibited from entry until Tuesday, police said in a statement. Only residents will be able to access the area.

“It’s an extreme step in the face of an exceptional situation,” said Pierre Grandadam, president of a group that includes the Alsace forested communities.

“Everything is dry, the slightest gesture can lead to a conflagration. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the 74-year-old.

“We’re praying for rain.”

The blaze near Bordeaux erupted in July — the driest month seen in France since 1961 — destroying 14,000 hectares and forcing thousands of people to evacuate before it was contained.

But it continued to smolder in the tinder-dry pine forests and peat-rich soil.

Fires in France in 2022 have ravaged an area three times the annual average over the past 10 years, with blazes also active in the Alpine Jura, Isere and Ardeche regions this week.

European Copernicus satellite data showed more carbon dioxide greenhouse gas — over 1 million tons — had been released from 2022’s forest fires in France than in any summer since records began in 2003.
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Poland’s environment minister says laboratory tests following a mass fish die-off have detected high salinity levels but no mercury in the Oder River. That means the mystery is continuing as to what killed tons of fish in Central Europe.
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The United Nations is calling for immediate access to a nuclear power plant as Russia and Ukraine again Friday accused the other of firing weapons near the plant.

Ukrainian officials said Russian forces fired more than 40 rockets at the city of Marhanets, which is across the Dnieper River from the power plant.

The region’s governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said three civilians, including a 12-year-old boy, were wounded in the attack.

Russia accuses Ukraine of firing at the plant.

Heavy fighting and artillery shelling in the area of the plant were reported Friday.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said there’s “a real risk of nuclear disaster” unless the fighting stops and inspectors are allowed inside the facility.

“This is a serious hour, a grave hour,” IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi said late Thursday during a U.N. Security Council meeting. “The IAEA must urgently be allowed to conduct a mission to Zaporizhzhia.”

Russian forces who occupy the plant have been accused of using it as a shield to fire at Ukrainian army positions.  Heavy shelling in areas near the plant has been reported over the past two weeks.

Russian soldiers control the facility, but Ukrainian staff are continuing to operate the plant.

“We know that the Russians have been there for some time. We also know that the Russians have fired artillery, I think specifically rockets, from around the power plant,” a senior U.S. military official told reporters Friday, refuting Russian allegations that the plant has been targeted by Ukrainian forces.

“I don’t have any belief that the Ukrainians, who know very well what the impacts of hitting that power plant would be, have an interest in hitting the power plant,” the official added.

Separately, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in a statement that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “must not be used as part of any military operation.”

“Urgent agreement is needed at a technical level on a safe perimeter of demilitarization to ensure the safety of the area,” he added.

In other developments, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday urged the United States and other countries to label Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, saying in his nightly video address, “After everything that the occupiers have done in Ukraine, there can be only one approach to Russia — as a terrorist state.”

A senior Russian official said Friday that ties between Moscow and Washington would be badly damaged if the U.S. Senate were to pass a law labeling Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.

The action would be “the most serious collateral damage for bilateral diplomatic relations, to the point of downgrading and even breaking them off,” Russia’s Tass news agency quoted Alexander Darchiyev, head of the North American department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, as saying.

Meanwhile, a senior Ukrainian official claimed 60 Russian pilots and technicians were killed and 100 people were wounded at the Russian-operated Saki military air base in western Crimea on Tuesday.

Russia claims that only munitions stored at the airfield exploded, but Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, told The New York Times on Friday that was “a blatant lie.”

The U.S. on Friday said its own assessment indicated that several Russian fighter jets, several Russian fighter-bombers and a Russian surveillance aircraft were destroyed, along with a “pretty significant cache of munitions.”

Satellite images taken earlier this week showed several fighter jets and at least five bombers destroyed at the base, according to a British military intelligence report.

Some information for this report came from Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. 
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A man went on a shooting rampage Friday in the streets of this western Montenegro city, killing 10 people, including two children, before being shot dead by a passerby, officials said.

Montenegrin police chief Zoran Brdjanin said in a video statement shared with media that the attacker was a 34-year-old man he identified only by his initials, V.B.

Brdjanin said the man used a hunting rifle to first shoot to death two children ages 8 and 11 and their mother, who lived as tenants in his house in Cetinje’s Medovina neighborhood.

The shooter then walked into the street and randomly shot 13 more people, seven of them fatally, the chief said.

“At the moment, it is unclear what provoked V.B. to commit this atrocious act,” Brdjanin said.

Andrijana Nastic, the prosecutor coordinating the crime scene investigation, told journalists that the gunman was killed by a passerby and that a police officer was among the wounded. She said nine of those killed died at the scene and two died at a hospital where they were taken for surgery.

Cetinje, the seat of Montenegro’s former royal government, is 36 kilometers west of Podogrica, the capital of the small Balkan nation.

Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic wrote on his Telegram channel that the incident was “an unprecedented tragedy” and urged the nation “to be, in their thoughts, with the families of the innocent victims, their relatives, friends and all the people of Cetinje.”

President Milo Djukanovic said on Twitter that he was “deeply moved by the news of the terrible tragedy” in Cetinje, calling for “solidarity” with the families who lost loved ones in the incident.
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The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine has been shelled in recent days, opening up the possibility of a grave accident about 500 kilometers from the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

On Thursday United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on both Russia and Ukraine to halt all fighting near the plant after fresh shelling that day.

What is it?

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has six Soviet-designed water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing Uranium 235, which has a half-life of more than 700 million years.

It is Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant and one of the biggest in the world. Construction began in 1980 and its sixth reactor was connected to the grid in 1995.

As of July 22, just two of its reactors were operating, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA).

What are the risks to the reactors?

The biggest risk to the reactors is from a drop in water supply.

Pressurized water is used to transfer heat away from the reactor and to slow down neutrons to enable the Uranium 235 to continue its chain reaction.

If the water was cut, and auxiliary systems such as diesel generators failed to keep the reactor cool due to an attack, then the nuclear reaction would slow though the reactor would heat up very swiftly.

At such high temperatures, hydrogen could be released from the zirconium cladding and the reactor could start to melt down.

However, experts say the building housing the reactors is designed to contain radiation and withstand major impacts, meaning the risk of a major leak there is still limited.

“I do not believe there would be a high probability of a breach of the containment building even if it was accidentally struck by an explosive shell and even less likely the reactor itself could be damaged by such. This means the radioactive material is well protected,” said Mark Wenman, Reader in Nuclear Materials at Nuclear Energy Futures, Imperial College London.

What about the spent fuel?

Besides the reactors, there is also a dry spent fuel storage facility at the site for used nuclear fuel assemblies and spent fuel pools at each reactor site which are used to cool down the used nuclear fuel.

“The basins of spent fuel are just big pools with uranium fuel rods in them — they are really hot depending on how long they have been there,” said Kate Brown, an environmental historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose book Manual for Survival documents the full scale of the Chernobyl disaster.

“If fresh water is not put in then the water will evaporate. Once the water evaporates then the zirconium cladding will heat up and it can catch on fire and then we have a bad situation — a fire of irradiated uranium which is very like the Chernobyl situation releasing a whole complex of radioactive isotopes.”

An emission of hydrogen from a spent fuel pool caused an explosion at reactor 4 in Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

According to a 2017 Ukrainian submission to the IAEA, there were 3,354 spent fuel assemblies at the dry spent fuel facility and around 1,984 spent fuel assemblies in the pools.

That is a total of more than 2,200 tons of nuclear material excluding the reactors, according to the document.

Who controls it?

After invading Ukraine February 24, Russian forces took control of the plant in early March.

Ukrainian staff continue to operate it, but special Russian military units guard the facility and Russian nuclear specialists give advice.

The International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) has warned that the staff are operating under extremely stressful conditions.

If there was a nuclear accident, it is unclear who would deal with it during a war, said Brown.

“We don’t know what happens in a wartime situation when we have a nuclear emergency,” Brown said. “In 1986 everything was running as well as it ran in the Soviet Union so they could mobilize tens of thousands of people and equipment and emergency vehicles to the site.

“Who would be taking charge of that operation right now?”

What has happened so far?

The plant was struck in March but there was no radiation leak, and the reactors were intact. Both Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for that strike.

In July, Russia said Ukraine had repeatedly struck the territory of the plant with drones and missiles. Pro-Ukrainian social media said “kamikaze drones” had struck Russian forces near the plant.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify battlefield accounts of either side.

August 5: The plant was shelled twice. Power lines were damaged. An area near the reactors was hit.

Russia said that Ukraine’s 45th Artillery Brigade also struck the territory of the plant with 152-millimeter shells from the opposite side of the Dnipro river. Ukraine’s state nuclear power company, Energoatom, said Russia fired at the plant with rocket-propelled grenades.

August 6: Shelled again, possibly twice. An area next to the dry spent nuclear fuel storage facility was hit.

Energoatom said Russia fired rockets at the plant. The Russian forces said Ukraine struck it with a 220-millimeter Uragan rocket launcher.

August 7: Shelled again.

Russia said Ukraine’s 44th Artillery Brigade struck the plant, damaging a high-voltage line. Russia’s defense ministry said power at reactors 5 and 6 was reduced to 500 megawatts.

August 11: Shelled again.Ukraine’s Energoatom said it was struck five times, Russian-appointed officials said it was struck twice during a shift changeover.
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German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said in a statement that because Malian leaders of the U.N. mission to Mali, MINUSMA, denied overflight rights, the German mission must stop all reconnaissance and transport operations until further notice.

The comments from Lambrecht were posted Friday to the defense ministry’s Twitter account.

In them, Lambrecht said she had spoken with Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara, “to describe to him the irritations” about problems with denial of flight permissions.

Lambrecht also said that “Germany can only stay involved with MINUSMA in Mali if this doesn’t happen again and we are welcome in the country.”

Germany provides more than 1,000 soldiers to the U.N. mission to Mali.

There was no immediate comment from Malian and MINUSMA officials.

The episode is another sign of tension between Mali’s military rulers and foreign military forces stationed in Mali to help stabilize the country.

In July, Mali arrested 49 soldiers from Ivory Coast who came to Mali to support a U.N. contingent, calling them “mercenaries.” After MINUSMA spokesperson Olivier Salgado said on Twitter that Mali had been notified of the soldiers’ arrival, he was expelled from the country.

French forces are in the final stages of withdrawing from Mali, following increasing tensions with the government and concerns over Mali working with mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company with ties to the Kremlin. The government has said it works only with official Russian instructors.

Earlier this week, Mali received a shipment of military aircraft from Russia, the latest of multiple shipments of aircraft and weapons from the country’s new ally in the decade-long fight against Islamist insurgents.
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While many countries cut diplomatic ties with Afghanistan after the Taliban’s return to power last year, Turkey, the only NATO member with a diplomatic presence in the war-torn country, has been active on many fronts.

Recently, the second phase of the Kajaki hydroelectric dam in Helmand province was completed by the Turkish company 77 Construction, which has invested $160 million in the project.

Several senior Taliban officials attended the opening ceremonies for the dam, including Abdul Ghani Baradar and Abdul Salam Hanafi, acting deputy prime ministers of the Taliban government. Turkey’s ambassador in Kabul, Cihad Erginay, also was present.

“Although the Kajaki dam is an important investment in economic relations between our country and Afghanistan, our relations are more diverse and deeper,” Erginay said during the ceremony, adding that total trade volume between the countries increased 23% in the first six months of 2022.

‘Positive legacy’

Some experts think that Turkey’s engagement with Afghanistan derives from the countries’ shared diplomatic legacy, which dates back to modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Afghanistan’s modernist king Amanullah Khan in the 1920s.

“That positive legacy has throughout all these years never been interrupted,” Alper Coskun, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told VOA.

From 2001 until the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Turkey had taken part in NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

“Turkey took a very deliberate position in ensuring that Turkish forces were not involved in [active warfare or lethal force] against the Afghan population in any way whatsoever,” Coskun said. “That, I believe, is something that the current regime in Afghanistan, the Taliban, are also cognizant of.”

Turkey withdrew its troops from Afghanistan before the Taliban’s August 2021 deadline for foreign forces to leave the country.

Kabul airport

According to Turkey’s Defense Ministry, one of the Turkish soldiers’ final assignments in Afghanistan was to provide “operational and force protection services” in Kabul at what was then known as the Hamid Karzai International Airport, since renamed the Kabul Airport.

Senior Turkish authorities have repeatedly shown interest in running the airport.

Last August, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that “a secure, operational airport we feel is integral to our ability to have a functioning diplomatic presence on the ground. So, the safety, the security, the continuing operation of that airport — it is of high importance to us.”

“We are grateful that our Turkish partners have indicated a willingness to play a role in protecting that,” Price added.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a NATO summit in Madrid in June that Turkey had offered to operate the airport with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates but was awaiting the group’s response.

On July 7, however, Reuters quoted sources familiar with the negotiations saying the Taliban was close to handing all airport operations to the United Arab Emirates.

Some experts say Turkey’s proposal was significant even though the bid fell through.

“It’s no small matter that Turkey was one of just a few countries in a position to be negotiating an accord to provide security at the Kabul Airport,” said Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center.

“That accord didn’t work out, but the fact that Turkey was even involved was significant, especially as the Taliban have made clear that they won’t allow any foreign security presence on their soil,” he told VOA.

Recognition

Turkey has not formally recognized the Taliban, and Kugelman thinks that Turkey does not want to be the first to do so, considering “some reputational costs.”

On the other hand, Turkey hosted Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, for high-level talks in October and the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, organized by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, in March.

On the sidelines of the forum, Thomas West, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, met Muttaqi and Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani to talk about Washington’s Afghanistan policy.

West on Twitter thanked Turkey for hosting the event and said that “I look forward to discussions with important partners regarding international engagement with Afghanistan.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said after his meeting with Muttaqi, “We have told the international community about the importance of engagement with the Taliban administration. In fact, recognition and engagement are two different things.”

Turkey has advised the Taliban to form an inclusive government and ensure girls’ education under its rule. Ankara has also repeatedly talked about the importance of stability in Afghanistan to prevent additional refugee flow into Turkey.

“Our country, which is currently hosting around 5 million foreigners — 3.6 million of whom have come from Syria — cannot shoulder a new migration burden originating from Afghanistan,” Erdogan said at the G-20 meeting on Afghanistan in October.

According to figures from Turkey’s Presidency of Migration Management, Turkish authorities arrested around 70,000 irregular Afghan migrants in 2021.

Humanitarian aid

Speaking at the 15th annual summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization in November, Erdogan also said that the Afghan economy should be revitalized to prevent a refugee crisis, adding that Turkey supports “efforts aimed at keeping basic state structures, including critical sectors such as health care and education, functioning.”

Since the Taliban’s return to power a year ago, Turkey’s state-run Disaster and Emergency Management Authority has sent five charity trains with 5,570 tons of humanitarian aid to the war-torn country. The Turkish Red Crescent, which has been operating in Afghanistan, has delivered aid assistance to people affected by the 6.1 magnitude earthquake on June 22.

Active in Afghanistan since 2005 and with offices in Kabul, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, Turkey’s state-run Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency has recently delivered 2,000 aid kits to help malnourished Afghan children.

Turkey also exerts soft power in Afghanistan via the Yunus Emre Institute, a cultural center owned by the Turkish government; Diyanet, the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs; and at least 46 Afghan-Turk Maarif Schools in seven provinces.

Twelve of these schools had been owned by the Gulen movement, a group Turkey blames for a failed coup attempt in 2016, but the Afghan government transferred the schools to the Turkish government’s Maarif Foundation in 2018.

Azarakhsh Hafizi, former head of the international relations committee at Afghanistan’s Chamber of Commerce and Industries, calls the Turkey-run schools “near to international standards,” adding, “The youth of Afghanistan need these services.”

Some analysts say, however, that one of the reasons Ankara has active public diplomacy in Afghanistan is because it wants to boost its domestic popularity.

“Ankara likes to see itself as a world player, and so having its foundations and education apparatuses participating in Afghanistan is a good … domestic political checkmark to show that it has an active foreign policy,” said Aaron Stein, director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

But Stein thinks Ankara’s Afghanistan policy does not resonate with the Turkish public.

“They care about the cost of living rather than foreign policy in that sense,” he told VOA. “They are a lot like everybody else around the world, like, ‘Our cost of living is skyrocketing. Take care of that. We don’t care about what’s going on in Afghanistan.’”

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
…

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest, has agreed to reimburse travelers who missed flights because of staff shortages that have thrown the airport into chaos for months.

Since April, Schiphol has seen staff shortages at security checkpoints that led to lengthy lines, which could take hours to clear, causing thousands of travelers to miss their flights. In May, the situation caused Dutch flagship carrier KLM to suspend ticket sales from Amsterdam.

In a statement Thursday, the airport said the agreement calls for compensating airline passengers who were at the airport on time between April 23 and August 11 of this year, but missed their flight due to an exceptional waiting time at security control. Affected travelers will have until September 30 to submit a request for compensation.

The airport statement said the agreement was developed in cooperation with the Dutch consumer association, Consumentenbond, and Max Vakantieman, host of a Dutch television show that addresses travel problems, which frequently aired complaints about Schiphol. The agreement heads off a possible mass claim for passengers being considered by the consumer association.

In the statement, airport CEO Dick Benschop apologized for the delays that forced people to miss their holidays. He wrote, “During these special times and circumstances, we must not let these people fall through the cracks.”

The Associated Press reports Schiphol was among several European airports, including London’s Heathrow, which was plunged into chaos by staff shortages and soaring demand as air travel rebounded strongly from two years of COVID-19 restrictions.

Airlines and airports slashed jobs during the pandemic, making it difficult to quickly ramp back up to serve the new burst of travelers.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.
…

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address late Thursday that “another shelling by Russia was recorded” around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear power facility.

“No one else has used a nuclear plant so obviously to threaten the whole world,” Zelenskyy said. “And absolutely everyone in the world should react immediately to expel the occupiers from the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. This is a global interest, not just a Ukrainian need.”

Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the shelling at the nuclear plant.

“The facility must not be used as part of any military operation,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “Instead, urgent agreement is needed at a technical level on a safe perimeter of demilitarization to ensure the safety of the area.”

Zelenskyy also said that on Thursday he met with chef Jose Andres, the founder of World Central Kitchen, the international humanitarian organization that feeds people in countries suffering wars and natural disasters.

“From the first days of Russia’s full-scale war against our country, his organization started working on the border with Poland – for migrants,” Zelenskyy said. “Subsequently, it started activities in many cities of Ukraine. … More than 130 million meals have been cooked for our citizens.”

In another development, two ships left Ukraine ports Friday. Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s minister of infrastructure, wrote in a tweet that one of the vessels would be loaded with 23,000 tons of grain bound for Ethiopia. Fourteen ships, including the two Friday, have left Ukraine’s ports laden with foodstuffs.

The British defense ministry said Friday that explosions earlier in the week at the Russian-operated Saky military airfield in western Crimea “certainly destroyed or seriously damaged” eight planes belonging to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet.

The cause of the original blast is not clear, according to the report posted on Twitter, but the ministry said “the large mushroom clouds visible in eyewitness video were almost certainly from the detonation of up to four uncovered munition storage areas.”

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
…

The thick layer of ice that has covered a Swiss mountain pass for centuries will have melted away completely within a few weeks, a ski resort said Thursday.

Following a dry winter, the summer heatwaves hitting Europe have been catastrophic for the Alpine glaciers, which have been melting at an accelerated rate.

The pass between the Scex Rouge and Tsanfleuron glaciers has been iced over since at least the Roman era.

But as both glaciers have retreated, the bare rock of the ridge between the two is beginning to emerge and will be completely ice-free before the summer is out.

“The pass will be entirely in the open air in a few weeks,” the Glacier 3000 ski resort said in a statement.

While the ice measured about 15 meters thick in 2012, the ground underneath “will have completely resurfaced by the end of September.”

The ridge is at an altitude of 2,800 meters in the Glacier 3000 ski domain and effectively marks the border between the Vaud and Wallis cantons in western Switzerland.

Skiers could glide over the top from one glacier to the other. But now a strip of rock between them has emerged, with just the last remaining bit of ice left.

“No one has set foot here for over 2,000 years; that’s very moving,” said Glacier 3000 chief executive Bernhard Tschannen.

The Scex Rouge glacier is likely to turn into a lake within the next 10 to 15 years. It should be about 10 meters deep with a volume of 250,000 cubic meters.

Covers have been put on sections of the Tsanfleuron glacier by the pass to protect them from the sun’s melting rays.

Glaciologist Mauro Fischer, a researcher at Bern University, said the loss of thickness of the glaciers in the region will be on average three times higher this year compared with the past 10 summers. 
…

Wildfires continued to spread through France, Spain and Portugal on Thursday as record-breaking heat waves plague Europe, prompting the head of the European Space Agency to demand immediate action on climate change. 

A “monster” wildfire has destroyed thousands of hectares in the Gironde area of southwestern France just two weeks after another fire tore through the same region. 

More than 1,000 firefighters have struggled to bring the conflagration, which has forced about 10,000 people from their homes, under control. 

About 79% of the 250,000 firefighters in France are volunteers, according to data from the French Fire Fighter Service. And 10,000 of them are deployed across the country to battle wildfires, including the Gironde blaze, which has been exacerbated by drastic heat waves and fierce winds. 

Similar to France, firefighters in Portugal are on their sixth day of fighting a wildfire that has destroyed about 10,500 hectares in the central Covilha region, as well as part of the Serra da Estrela national park. 

Extreme weather and climate change are widely blamed for the increasingly common heat waves, melting glaciers, and flooding. 

The head of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, reported that these extreme climatological events have begun taking a toll on agriculture and other vital industries. 

“It’s pretty bad. We have seen extremes that have not been observed before,” Aschbacher said to Reuters. 

Extreme drought conditions have also taken a toll elsewhere in the European Union, with France and Germany feeling the effects through slow agricultural production and water shortages. 

 
…

The McDonald’s corporation announced Thursday it plans to begin reopening some of its restaurants in Ukraine, after closing them due to Russia’s invasion of that country in February.

In a statement to the company’s employees, the senior vice president of international operated markets, Paul Pomroy, said the decision was made “after extensive consultation and discussion with Ukrainian officials, suppliers, and security specialists.”

He said McDonald’s also considered the “strong desire” to return to work expressed by the company’s more than 10,000 employees in Ukraine.

The statement said McDonald’s will, over the next few months, institute a phased plan to “reopen some restaurants in Kyiv and western Ukraine, where other businesses have safely reopened.”

The statement noted that McDonald’s has continued to pay the salaries of its Ukrainian employees and established an employee assistance fund to support them and help aid the relief efforts.

The Associated Press reports other multinational companies have resumed operating in Ukraine in areas away from fighting. Western businesses like Nike, KFC and Spanish clothing retailer Mango are open in Kyiv.

AP also reports Ukraine’s economy has been severely damaged by the war and restarting businesses like McDonald’s restaurants, even in a limited capacity, would help. The International Monetary Fund expects Ukraine’s economy to shrink 35 percent this year.
…

Latvia’s parliament declared Russia a state sponsor of terror Thursday for its targeted military attacks against civilians and public places

Lativia’s unicameral parliament, known as the Saeima, approved a resolution noting that Russia has supported and financed terrorist regimes and organizations for years.

The Saeima used as examples Moscow’s support for the Assad government in Syria shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the poisoning of British intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018.

The Saeima statement said Russia has now used “similarly ruthless, immoral, and illegal tactics in Ukraine, as it uses imprecise and internationally banned weapons and ammunition” on civilians. It also cites reports from human rights groups and international observers, which have documented atrocities committed by Russian forces against Ukrainian civilians, “including torture, rape, killings, and mass detentions of civilians.”

Latvian lawmakers said Russia uses “suffering and intimidation as tools in its attempts to demoralize the Ukrainian people.” They recognize these acts against civilians “committed in pursuit of political aims as terrorism and Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and calls on other like-minded countries to express the same view.”

They also called on the European Union and the West to “urgently intensify and implement comprehensive sanctions against Russia, as well as call on European Union member states to immediately suspend the issuance of tourist visas and restrict the issuance of entry visas to citizens of the Russian Federation and Belarus, among other measures.”

Latvia shares borders with both Russia and Belarus.

Russia insists it does not deliberately target civilians in what it calls its “special military operation” aimed at safeguarding Russia’s security and protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine.

Reuters news service reports Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, expressed his gratitude for the Latvian parliament’s resolution.

Some information for this report was provided by the Reuters news agency.
…

Satellite pictures released Thursday showed devastation at a Russian air base in Crimea, hit days earlier in an attack that suggested Kyiv may have obtained new long-range strike capability with potential to change the course of the war.

Pictures released by independent satellite firm Planet Labs showed three near-identical craters that had precisely struck buildings at Russia’s Saki air base. The base, on the southwest coast of Crimea had suffered extensive fire damage with the burnt-out husks of at least eight destroyed warplanes clearly visible.

Russia has denied aircraft were damaged and said explosions seen at the base on Tuesday were accidental.

Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility for the attack or said exactly how it was carried out.

“Officially, we are not confirming or denying anything; there are numerous scenarios for what might have happened… bearing in mind that there were several epicenters of explosions at exactly the same time,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters in a message.

Western military experts said the scale of the damage and the apparent precision of the strike suggested a powerful new capability with potentially important implications.

Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014, uses the peninsula as the base for its Black Sea fleet and as the main supply route for its invasion forces occupying southern Ukraine, where Kyiv is planning a counter-offensive in coming weeks.

“I’m not an intel analyst, but it doesn’t look good,” Mark Hertling, a former commander of U.S. ground forces in Europe, wrote on Twitter, linking to an image of the devastation at the Russian base.

“I am. It’s very good,” replied his fellow retired four-star American general, Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency.

Exactly how the attack was carried out remains a mystery. Some Ukrainian officials have been quoted suggesting it may have been sabotage by infiltrators. But the near identical impact craters and simultaneous explosions appear to indicate it was hit by a volley of new long-range weapons, capable of evading Russian defenses.

The base is well beyond the range of advanced rockets that Western countries acknowledge sending to Ukraine so far, but within the range of more powerful versions that Kyiv has sought. Ukraine also has its own surface-to-ship missiles which could theoretically be used to hit targets on land.

New phase

The war in Ukraine is expected to enter a new phase in coming weeks. Ukraine drove Russian forces back from the capital, Kyiv, in March and from the outskirts of the second-largest city, Kharkiv, in May. Russia captured more territory in the east in huge battles that killed thousands of troops on both sides in June.

Since then, front lines have been largely static, but Kyiv says it is preparing a big push to recapture the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the main slice of territory captured since the Feb. 24 invasion held by Moscow.

Russia has reinforced those regions, but its defense depends on being able to control supply lines to stock its troops with the thousands of shells a day that its artillery-heavy forces are accustomed to firing.

Kyiv hopes the arrival last month of U.S. rocket systems capable of hitting Russian targets behind the front line could tip the balance in its favor. But so far, the West had held off on providing longer-range rockets that could strike deep in Russia itself or hit Moscow’s many bases in annexed Crimea.

Russia says its “special military operation” is going to plan, to protect Russian speakers in the south and east, where it recognizes separatists as independent. Ukraine and its Western allies say the invasion failed in an initial bid to overthrow the government in Kyiv, and Moscow now aims to solidify its grip on as much territory as possible with the ultimate goal of extinguishing Ukraine as an independent nation.

Tens of thousands of people have died; millions have fled and cities have been destroyed since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.

Bombardment

Although there have been few major advances on either side in recent weeks, intense skirmishes are still under way.

Ukraine reported Russian bombardment along the entire front line, from the area around Kharkiv in the northeast, across eastern Donetsk province, and on the banks of the wide Dnipro River in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and adjacent provinces.

Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Valentyn Reznychenko said three people were killed and seven wounded by shelling in Nikopol on the right bank of the Dnipro, which was hit by 120 Grad rockets.

“The enemy is concentrating its efforts on establishing full control over the territories of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions,” Ukraine’s General Staff said in an early Thursday report, citing more than 60 settlements and military targets.

Russian-backed separatists claimed to have captured Pisky, a small town on the outskirts of separatist-held Donetsk city, which has seen fighting in recent days.

“It’s hot in Pisky. The town is ours but there remain scattered pockets of resistance in its north and west,” separatist official Danil Bezsonov said on Telegram.

Ukrainian officials denied that the town had fallen. Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield accounts.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said in an interview posted on YouTube that Russian “movement into Pisky” had been “without success.”

Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of killing at least 13 people and wounding 10 with rockets fired from the vicinity of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in the knowledge it would be risky for Ukrainian forces to return fire.

“The cowardly Russians can’t do anything more, so they strike towns ignobly hiding at the Zaporizhzhia atomic power station,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said on social media.

Ukraine says about 500 Russian troops are at the plant, where Ukrainian technicians continue to work. The Group of Seven major industrialized countries on Wednesday told Russia to hand back the plant to Ukraine, after the U.N. atomic energy watchdog sounded the alarm over the possibility of a nuclear disaster.
…

A British man accused of being part of an Islamic State (IS) kidnap-and-murder cell known as the “Beatles” was arrested Wednesday when he returned to the UK, media reports said.

Aine Davis, 38, was arrested after landing at Luton airport on a flight from Turkey, where he had been serving a prison sentence for terrorism offenses, according to BBC News and other U.K. outlets.

He is suspected to be a member of the IS cell, which held dozens of foreign hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015 and was known to their captives as the “Beatles” because of their British accents.

The Metropolitan Police, which leads anti-terror investigations in the U.K., said in a statement that officers had arrested a man at Luton airport.

But the London force, which does not name suspects until they are charged with a crime, did not name the person being held.

“The 38-year-old man was arrested this evening after he arrived into the UK on a flight from Turkey,” the statement said.

The Met said the man was arrested under several different sections of British anti-terrorism laws and taken to a south London police station “where he currently remains in police custody.”

The interior ministry said in a statement that a British national had been deported from Turkey to the U.K.

“It would be inappropriate to comment further while police enquiries are ongoing,” it added.

The four members of the “Beatles” are accused of abducting at least 27 journalists and relief workers from the United States, Britain, Europe, New Zealand, Russia and Japan.

They were all allegedly involved in the murder of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

The quartet allegedly tortured and killed the four American victims, including by beheading, and IS released videos of the murders for propaganda purposes.

Alexanda Kotey, a 38-year-old former British national extradited from the U.K. to the U.S. in 2020 to face charges there, pleaded guilty to his role in the deaths last September and was sentenced to life in prison in April.

El Shafee Elsheikh, 34, another former British national also extradited to the U.S. at the same time, was found guilty of all charges in April, and will be sentenced next week.

The fourth “Beatle,” Mohamed Emwazi, was killed by a U.S. drone in Syria in 2015.

Elsheikh and Kotey were captured in January 2018 by a Kurdish militia in Syria and turned over to U.S. forces in Iraq before being sent to Britain.

They were eventually flown to Virginia in 2020 to face charges of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.

Davis served a 7½-year sentence in Turkey for membership in the terrorist group, according to reports.

In 2014, his wife, Amal El-Wahabi, became the first person in Britain to be convicted of funding IS jihadists after trying to send 20,000 euros, worth $25,000 at the time, to him in Syria.

She was jailed for 28 months following a trial in which Davis was described as a drug dealer before he went to Syria to fight with IS.
…

At the end of a dusty track in southwest England where the River Thames usually first emerges from the ground, there is scant sign of any moisture at all.

The driest start to a year in decades has shifted the source of this emblematic English river several miles downstream, leaving scorched earth and the occasional puddle where water once flowed.

It is a striking illustration of the parched conditions afflicting swaths of England, which have prompted a growing number of regional water restrictions and fears that an official drought will soon be declared.

“We haven’t found the Thames yet,” said Michael Sanders, on holiday with his wife in the area known as the official source of the river.

The couple were planning to walk some of the Thames Path that stretches along its entire winding course — once they can find the waterway’s new starting point.

“It’s completely dried up,” the IT worker from northern England told AFP in the village of Ashton Keynes, a few miles from the source, noting it had been replaced by “the odd puddle, the odd muddy bit.”

“So hopefully downstream we’ll find the Thames, but at the moment it’s gone,” he said.

The river begins from an underground spring in this picturesque region at the foot of the Cotswolds hills, not far from Wales, before meandering for 350 kilometers (215 miles) to the North Sea.

Along the way it helps supply fresh water to millions of homes, including those in the British capital, London.

‘So arid’

Following months of minimal rainfall, including the driest July in England since the 1930s, the country’s famously lush countryside has gone from shades of green to yellow.

“It was like walking across the savanna in Africa, because it’s so arid and so dry,” David Gibbons said.

The 60-year-old retiree has been walking the length of the Thames Path in the opposite direction from Sanders — from estuary to source — with his wife and friends.

As the group members reached their destination, in a rural area of narrow country roads dotted with stone-built houses, Gibbons recounted the range of wildlife they had encountered on their journey.

The Thames, which becomes a navigable, strategic and industrial artery as it passes through London and its immediate surroundings, is typically far more idyllic upstream and a haven for bird watching and boating.

However, as they neared the source, things changed.

“In this last two or three days, [there’s been] no wildlife, because there’s no water,” Gibbons said. “I think water stopped probably 10 miles away from here; there’s one or two puddles,” he added from picturesque Ashton Keynes.

Andrew Jack, a 47-year-old local government worker who lives about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the village, said locals had “never seen it as dry and as empty as this.”

The river usually runs alongside its main street, which boasts pretty houses with flower-filled gardens and several small stone footbridges over the water.

But the riverbed there is parched and cracked, the only visible wildlife were some wasps hovering over it, recalling images of some southern African rivers during the subcontinent’s dry season.

‘Something’s changed’

There will be no imminent respite for England’s thirsty landscape.

The country’s meteorological office on Tuesday issued an amber heat warning for much of southern England and eastern Wales between Thursday and Sunday, with temperatures set to reach the mid-30s Celsius.

It comes weeks after a previous heat wave broke Britain’s all-time temperature record and breached 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time.

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heat waves and other such extreme weather events.

Local authorities are reiterating calls to save water, and Thames Water, which supplies 15 million people in London and elsewhere, is the latest provider to announce forthcoming restrictions.

But Gibbons was sanguine.

“Having lived in England all my life, we’ve had droughts before,” he said. “I think that it will go green again by the autumn.”

Jack was more pessimistic as he walked with his family along the dried-up riverbed, where a wooden measuring stick gauges nonexistent water levels.

“I think there are lots of English people who think, ‘Great, let’s have some European weather,’ ” he said. “But we actually shouldn’t, and it means that something’s changed and something has gone wrong.

“I’m concerned that it’s only going to get worse and that the U.K. is going to have to adapt to hotter weather as we have more and more summers like this.”
…

Wildfires tore through the Gironde region of southwestern France on Wednesday, destroying homes and forcing the evacuation of 10,000 residents, some of whom had clambered onto rooftops as the flames got closer. 

Black-and-orange skies, darkened by the smoke billowing from forests and lit up by the flames, were seen across the area as the fires continued to burn out of control despite the efforts of firefighters backed by water-bombing aircraft. 

Fires, which have razed about 6,200 hectares, have now crossed into the neighboring Landes region. 

France, like the rest of Europe, has been struggling this summer with successive heat waves and its worst drought on record. Dozens of wildfires are ablaze across the country, including at least eight major ones. 

“Prepare your papers, the animals you can take with you, some belongings,” the Gironde municipality of Belin-Beliet said on Facebook before evacuating parts of the town. 

In the nearby village of Hostens, police had earlier been door to door telling residents to leave as the fire advanced. Camille Delay fled with her partner and her son, grabbing their two cats, chickens and house insurance papers. 

“Everyone in the village climbed onto their rooftops to see what was happening. Within 10 minutes, a little twist of smoke became enormous,” Delay, 30, told Reuters by telephone. 

Firefighters said more evacuations were likely. Even so, some Hostens residents were reluctant to abandon their homes. 

“It’s complicated to go with the dogs, and we cannot leave them here,” said Allisson Horan, 18, who stayed behind with her father. 

“I’m getting worried because the fire is in a plot of land behind ours, and the wind is starting to change direction.” 

Numerous small roads and a highway were closed. 

Heat waves 

More than 57,200 hectares have gone up in flames so far in France this year, nearly six times the full-year average for 2006-2021, data from the European Forest Fire Information System show. 

“The fire is creating its own wind,” senior local official Martin Guespereau told reporters, adding that efforts to fight it were made more difficult by how unpredictable it was. 

Sweden and Italy are among countries preparing to send help to France, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. 

He repeated calls for everyone to be responsible — nine out of 10 fires are either voluntarily or involuntarily caused by people, he said. 

The Gironde wildfire is one of many that have broken out across Europe this summer, triggered by heat waves that have baked the continent and brought record temperatures. 

In Portugal, nearly 1,200 firefighters backed by eight aircraft have battled a blaze in the mountainous Covilha area 280 km northeast of Lisbon that has burned more than 3,000 hectares of forest since Saturday. 

Spain and Greece have also had to tackle multiple fires over the past few weeks. 

The Gironde was hit by major wildfires in July that destroyed more than 20,000 hectares of forest and temporarily forced almost 40,000 people from their homes. 

Authorities believe the latest inferno was a result of the previous fires still smoldering in the area’s peaty soil. 

Fires were also raging in the southern departments of Lozere and Aveyron. In the Maine-et-Loire department in western France, more than 1,200 hectares have been scorched by another fire.
…

A senior U.N. official said Wednesday that a deal to move stranded Ukrainian grain that had been blocked in silos and Black Sea ports is working well, with more than 370,000 tons of food stuffs moved in the first week.

“Three hundred and seventy-thousand metric tons in the initial phase of this operation, I think is a very encouraging sign,” said Fred Kenney, the U.N. representative at the Istanbul-based Joint Coordination Centre, which oversees the deal.

The JCC has representatives from Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations. It was established under the July 22 Black Sea Grain Initiative, signed in Istanbul to monitor the safe movement of commercial ships to and from Ukraine’s southern ports for the purpose of exporting food items to international markets.

More than two dozen ships have been stuck in Ukraine’s ports since Russia invaded on February 24. A dozen have been authorized to sail or left so far.

“It is imperative upon us now, to get those ships out, so that we can bring ships in to load cargos that will be destined for ports that will contribute to reducing global food insecurity,” said Kenney, who is also the director of legal affairs for the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency responsible for regulating the global shipping industry.

He told reporters in a video call from Istanbul that the JCC has seen a “tremendous willingness” from shippers to cross the Bosporus into the Black Sea to pick up grain cargo at the ports of Odesa, Chernomorsk and Pivdennyi (also known as Yuzhny) and that there are a number of empty grain vessels waiting in Turkish anchorages for contracts. Four ships have already been authorized to enter Ukraine’s ports.

More than 20 million tons of grain await export to the world market. The U.N. says global grain prices have already started to drop since the initiative was signed nearly three weeks ago.

The JCC’s role is to make sure ships transit safely along a demarcated humanitarian corridor as much of the Black Sea has been mined.

“Thus far, we haven’t had any safety issues with any of the vessels that transited. None reported any floating hazards to navigation,” Kenney told reporters.

The JCC also is tasked with looking for unauthorized personnel or cargo – be it food items not covered by the terms of the grain deal or illicit weapons.

“We haven’t found anything that would violate the terms of the initiative,” he confirmed.

Commercial ships leaving Ukraine have headed for destinations in Turkey, Britain, China, Ireland, Italy and South Korea, carrying loads of corn, soya, sunflower meal and sunflower oil. Kenney said the first ship that is coming in to pick up wheat has been cleared and should sail out next week.

He described the voyage from Odesa to Istanbul, saying it takes between a day and a half to two days. Inspections take between two to four hours at the Istanbul inspection area. From there vessels transit the Black Sea on a largely open route until they reach the Romanian-Ukrainian maritime border. Ships are forbidden to enter the humanitarian corridor from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. for visibility and safety reasons.

“We are looking at our procedures to see ways we can cut time on the inspection side without sacrificing the accuracy and the completeness of those inspections,” he said.

The JCC also monitors ships to warn them of any military threats. Kenney said they can contact vessels immediately if there is action near the maritime humanitarian corridor and could order them to stop or turn around to avoid danger.
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The U.S. military says Russian military surveillance aircraft entered the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone on two separate occasions over the past two days.

U.S. F-22 fighter jets intercepted the second aircraft upon entering the airspace, a defense official told VOA. Both entries involved the same type of Russian surveillance aircraft, the official added.

An Air Defense Identification Zone extends beyond a country’s airspace to include an area in which a country tries to identify, locate and control aircraft in the interest of national security.

The Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace, according to social media posts by North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, on Wednesday.

“We remain ready to employ a number of response options in defense of North America and Arctic sovereignty,” the post added.

This is the first reported incident of Russian military aircraft nearing Alaskan airspace in 2022, but sightings have become common in recent years.

Russian military aircraft were tracked in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone 14 times in 2020, a high in recent years, with six such incidents occurring within a span of just one month.

Russia launched a massive invasion into Ukraine in February.

Speaking to VOA earlier this year, Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska said the U.S. military has had to “scramble” more fighter jets in recent years to intercept Russian military aircraft “probably more than any other time since the mid-1980s.”

“They’re aggressive here, too, and the only thing that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin understands, and the only thing in my view that [Chinese President] Xi Jinping understands in this new era of authoritarian aggression is power,” Sullivan said.

 
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Britain is launching a polio vaccine booster campaign for children in London aged below 10, after confirming that the virus is spreading in the capital for the first time since the 1980s. 

The UK Health Security Agency has identified 116 polioviruses from 19 sewage samples this year in London. It first raised the alert on finding the virus in sewage samples in June.  

The levels of poliovirus found since and the genetic diversity indicated that transmission was taking place in a number of London boroughs, the agency said on Wednesday. 

No cases have yet been identified but, in a bid to get ahead of a potential outbreak, GPs will now invite children aged 1-9 for booster vaccines, alongside a wider catch-up campaign already announced. Immunization rates across London vary, but are on average below the 95% coverage rate the World Health Organization suggests is needed to keep polio under control. 

Polio, spread mainly through contamination by faecal matter, used to kill and paralyse thousands of children annually worldwide. There is no cure, but vaccination brought the world close to ending the wild, or naturally occurring, form of the disease. It paralyses less than 1% of children who are infected. 

The virus found in London sewage is mainly the vaccine-like virus, which is found when children vaccinated with a particular kind of live vaccine — now only used overseas — shed the virus in their feces. This harmless virus can transmit between unvaccinated children, and while doing so, can mutate back into a more dangerous version of the virus, and cause illness. 

Last month, the United States found a case of paralytic polio outside New York in an unvaccinated individual, its first for a decade. The UKHSA said the case was genetically linked to the virus seen in London.  

Britain is also expanding surveillance for polio to other sites outside London to see if the virus has spread further. The risk to the wider population is assessed as low because most people are vaccinated even if rates are below the optimal levels to prevent spread. 
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