Baku, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijan formally applied Tuesday to join the BRICS bloc of developing economies, a day after Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s visit to the oil-rich South Caucasus country to shore up regional ties and secure Moscow’s under-pressure trade routes.

The announcement from the foreign ministry in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, comes as the BRICS alliance has seen a major expansion. For over a decade, the bloc included just five nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates joined in January, and Saudi Arabia has said it’s considering doing so as well.

The club already includes some of the world’s biggest oil producers, and accounts for well over a quarter of the world’s GDP. Its members Russia and Iran have had their relations with the West stretched to breaking point over Moscow’s war on Ukraine and Iran’s regional policies.

Business ties were high on the agenda during the meeting between Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Monday, with Aliyev announcing that $120 million had been earmarked to boost cargo transport between the two countries.

Putin increasingly depends on countries such as Azerbaijan to access global markets because of sanctions imposed on Moscow over its actions in Ukraine, according to political scientist Zardusht Alizade.

For Azerbaijan, retaining Moscow’s good-will is important for national security over tensions with neighboring Armenia, said Alizade.

Russia has been Armenia’s longtime sponsor and ally since the fall of the Soviet Union. But relations between them became increasingly strained since Sept. 2023, when Azerbaijan’s military took control of the Karabakh region, ending three decades of ethnic Armenian separatist rule.

Armenia accused Russian peacekeepers deployed to the region of failing to stop Azerbaijan’s onslaught. Moscow, which has a military base in Armenia, argued that its troops didn’t have a mandate to intervene.
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces have either destroyed or damaged all three of the bridges over the Seym River in western Russia, according to Russian sources, as Kyiv’s incursion into western Russia entered its third week Tuesday.

Kyiv’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is changing the trajectory of the war and boosting morale among Ukraine’s war-weary population, though the ultimate outcome of the incursion — the first attack on Russia since World War II — remains impossible to predict.

Even as Ukraine hails its success on Russian territory, the Russian push in eastern Ukraine is poised to claim another key center, the city of Pokrovsk.

Ukraine’s attacks on the three bridges over the Seym River in Kursk could potentially trap Russian forces between the river, the Ukrainian advance and the Ukrainian border. Already they appear to be slowing down Russia’s response to the Kursk incursion, which Ukraine launched on Aug. 6.

Over the weekend, Ukraine’s Air Force commander posted two videos of bridges over the Seym being hit, and satellite photos by Planet Labs PBC analyzed Tuesday by The Associated Press confirmed that a bridge in the town of Glushkovo had been destroyed.

A Russian military investigator confirmed Monday that Ukraine had “totally destroyed” one bridge and damaged two others in the area. The full extent of the damage remained unclear.

“As a result of targeted shelling with the use of rocket and artillery weapons against residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in the Karyzh village … a third bridge over the Seym River was damaged,” the unnamed representative for Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a video published on the Telegram channel of Russian state TV anchor Vladimir Solovyov.

Russian military bloggers Vladimir Romanov and Yuri Podolyaka and several high-profile pro-war Telegram channels in Russia also claimed that the third bridge had been targeted and damaged. Podolyaka’s post was shared by Roman Alekhin, an advisor to Kursk’s acting regional governor.

Since the incursion into the Kursk region began, the Ukrainian army has captured 1,250 square kilometers (480 square miles) and 92 settlements, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

Zelenskyy said in recent days that the operation is aimed at creating a buffer zone that can prevent future attacks on his nation from across the border, and that Ukraine is capturing a large number of Russian prisoners of war that it hopes to exchange for captured Ukrainians.

TASS, a Russian state news agency, reported that 17 people have died and 140 have been injured in Ukraine’s incursion, citing an unnamed source in the Russian medical service. Of 75 people hospitalized, four are children.

Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said Tuesday afternoon that more than 500 people had left dangerous areas in the Kursk region over the past 24 hours. In total, more than 122,000 people have been resettled since the Ukrainian attack began, it said.

In another example of Ukraine taking the war to Russian soil, a massive fire burned for the third consecutive day after an oil depot was hit by Ukrainian drones.

The fire at the depot in the town of Proletarsk burned across an area of a hectare (2 1/2 acres), according to Russian state news agencies. There were 500 firefighters involved in the operation, and 41 of them already have been hospitalized with injuries, according to TASS, citing local officials.

Ukraine’s Army General Staff claimed responsibility Sunday for attacking the oil depot, which was used to supply the needs of Russia’s army, calling it a measure “to undermine the military and economic potential of the Russian Federation.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the Ukrainians of “trying to destabilize our country” and compared them to terrorists.

“We will punish the criminals. There can be no doubt about that,” Putin said Tuesday. He was meeting with mothers of children killed in the 2004 Beslan school attack by Islamic militants that left more than 330 people dead.

Ukraine’s incursion has exposed Russian vulnerabilities according to analysts and Ukrainian officials.

Zelenskyy said Monday that he believes Ukraine’s actions would help to dispel Western fears of offering more robust military aid to Kyiv. Some allies have been handing over weapons slowly and imposing limits on how they can be used, fearing that crossing a Russian “red-line” could lead to escalation, even nuclear escalation.

“We have now achieved an extremely important ideological shift: the naive and illusory concept of so-called ‘red lines’ regarding Russia that dominated the assessments of the war by some of our partners has crumbled these days somewhere near Sudzha,” the president said, referring to a seized Russian town under Ukrainian control.

Much remains unknown about Ukrainian operations in Russia but satellite images provide some clues.

Pontoon bridges — temporary bridges used by militaries when formal bridges are blown out — could be seen in the satellite images provide by Planet Labs PBC in two different positions along the Seym River in recent days. The pontoons likely were built by Russian troops trying to supply forces around the Ukrainian advance.

One pontoon bridge appeared along the serpentine path of the river between Glushkovo and the village of Zvannoye on Saturday, but not in images taken Monday. On Monday, smoke could be seen rising along the banks of the river nearby — typically the sign of a strike.

Meanwhile along the frontline in eastern Ukraine, Russia continued to bear down on the city of Pokrovsk, one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region, forcing Kyiv’s forces to pull back and Ukrainian civilians to flee their homes. Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes and would bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region.

Russia’s relentless six-month slog across the region following the capture of Avdiivka, has cost both sides heavily in troops and armor. 

Russia wants control of all parts of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk, which together make up the Donbas industrial region. 
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MOSCOW — Russia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the pre-trial detention of three lawyers who once represented Russia’s slain opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, and are now facing charges of extremism. It also refused to transfer their case to a different court, even as the defense alleged a conflict of interest. 

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October in a case widely seen at the time as a means to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin’s fiercest foe. 

According to Navalny’s allies, authorities accused the lawyers of using their status as defense attorneys to pass letters from the imprisoned politician to his team, thus serving as intermediaries between Navalny and what they called his “extremist group.” 

Navalny’s organizations in Russia — the Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a vast network of regional offices — were outlawed and labeled as extremist groups in 2021, a step that exposed anyone involved with them to prosecution. 

Lawyers for the three attorneys had petitioned the Supreme Court to transfer their case away from a court in Russia’s western Vladimir region, claiming it may not be objective or impartial. 

The defense argued the bulk of the prosecution’s evidence was gathered in a law enforcement raid they consider illegal, and that had been ordered by a superior court in the same region — something they said constituted a conflict of interest. It also charged that courts in Vladimir had pressured Navalny’s lawyers to disclose confidential communications with him before the politician’s February death in a remote Arctic prison. 

Navalny himself had been serving prison terms totaling more than 30 years, including on extremism charges tied to his anti-corruption activism. He and his allies had rejected all charges against him as politically motivated, and accused the Kremlin of seeking to jail him for life. 

Russian authorities in February also put two more of Navalny’s lawyers on a wanted list. One of them, Olga Mikhailova, who had defended the politician for a decade, said she had been previously charged in absentia with extremism after fleeing the country. The other, Alexander Fedulov, also said last year that he was no longer in Russia.
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Southport, United Kingdom — King Charles III on Tuesday visited the town in northwest England where a devastating knife attack that killed three young girls sparked nationwide anti-immigration riots.

The 75-year-old monarch inspected a vast sea of floral tributes to the victims and will meet children who survived the attack in the seaside town of Southport.

Buckingham Palace said he wanted to thank “frontline emergency staff for their ongoing work serving local people.”

Charles was criticized by some, including historian Kate Williams, for not issuing a public statement on the riots. Although the monarch conveyed his condolences to the families of the three girls killed, he did not comment on the unrest until nearly two weeks later. Traditionally, the monarch does not comment on anything that could cause political controversy.

But in calls with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and police chiefs, the king later said he had been “greatly encouraged” by the reaction “that countered the aggression and criminality from a few with the compassion and resilience of the many.”

Footage showed the king waving to people as he walked through the town center.

He was later set to meet regional leaders, representatives from the emergency services and others. They will include local groups and faith leaders affected by the violent disorder that hit Southport the day after the July 29 mass stabbing.

Charles was also due to meet privately with some of those caught up in the knife attack, which claimed the lives of three girls, ages 6, 7 and 9, and injured 10 others, eight of them also children.

The meeting was to include some of the surviving children who were present at the community center, as well as their families.

The children were attending a dance class when an assailant entered the building and began attacking them.

Axel Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time, has been charged with murder and attempted murder over the stabbing spree. A motive for the atrocity has not been disclosed, but police have said it is not being treated as terrorism related.

More than a dozen English towns and cities saw unrest and riots in the week that followed the events in Southport.

Officials have blamed far-right elements for helping to stir up the disorder, which targeted mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers as well as police officers and other properties.

The authorities have cited misinformation spread online that Rudakubana was a Muslim asylum seeker for fueling the violence. He was actually born in Britain to parents who hail from Rwanda, an overwhelmingly Christian country.

In the immediate aftermath of the July 29 tragedy, Charles and Queen Camilla conveyed their condolences to the families of the three girls killed but did not comment on the near-daily riots for some time.

The king eventually praised British police and emergency services “for all they are doing to restore peace in those areas that have been affected by violent disorder.”

He hoped the “shared values of mutual respect and understanding will continue to strengthen and unite the nation,” a Buckingham Palace spokesperson had said.

The riots have led to more than a thousand arrests and hundreds of convictions, after Prime Minister Starmer vowed those who participated would be quickly called to account.
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PALERMO, Sicily — Rescue teams in Sicily on Tuesday resumed a search for six missing people, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter, after a luxury yacht was struck by a violent storm and sank on Monday, killing at least one on board.

The British-flagged “Bayesian,” a 56-meter-long sailboat was carrying 22 people and was anchored just off the port of Porticello when it was hit by ferocious weather.

Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance who represented Lynch in a U.S. trial, were among the missing.

The wives of both men were also unaccounted for, said Salvatore Cocina, head of civil protection in Sicily.

“The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel,” he told Reuters.

Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation.

Specialist divers had reached the ship on Monday at a depth of some 50 meters, but access was limited due to objects in the way, the fire brigade said.

Fifteen people had escaped before the boat went down, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who owned the boat, and a 1-year-old girl.

On Monday, rescue teams recovered the body of the yacht’s onboard chef, identified as Antiguan citizen Ricardo Thomas.

Storms and heavy rainfall have swept Italy in recent days, after weeks of scorching heat lifted the temperature of the Mediterranean sea to record levels, raising the risk of extreme weather conditions, experts said.

“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius, which is almost 3 degrees more than normal. This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms,” said meteorologist Luca Mercalli.

“We can’t say that this is all due to global warming but we can say that it has an amplifying effect,” he told Reuters.

The British government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch said four inspectors had been sent to Sicily to conduct a “preliminary assessment.”

One expert at the scene of the disaster who declined to be named said an early focus of the investigation would be whether the yacht’s crew had had time to close access hatches into the vessel before the storm struck.
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BERLIN — Two German warships await orders from Berlin, their commander said, to determine whether next month they will be the first German naval vessels in decades to pass through the Taiwan Strait, drawing a rebuke from Beijing.

While the U.S. and other nations, including Canada, have sent warships through the narrow strait in recent weeks, it would be the German navy’s first passage through the strait since 2002.

China claims sovereignty over democratically governed Taiwan, and says it has jurisdiction over the nearly 180-km (110 miles) wide waterway that divides the two sides and is part of the South China Sea. Taiwan strongly objects to China’s sovereignty claims and says only the island’s people can decide their future.

The Taiwan Strait is a major trade route through which about half of global container ships pass, and both the United States and Taiwan say it’s an international waterway.

“The decision has not been taken yet,” the commander of the naval task group, Rear Admiral Axel Schulz, told Reuters in a telephone interview, adding the weather would play a role.

“We are showing our flag here to demonstrate that we stand by our partners and friends, our commitment to the rules-based order, the peaceful solution of territorial conflicts and free and secure shipping lanes.”

Asked about the German ships’ potential passage, China’s foreign ministry said Taiwan was an internal Chinese affair and the key to stability was opposing Taiwan’s independence.

“China has always been opposed to the undermining of China’s territorial sovereignty and security under the guise of freedom of navigation,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing.

Before their possible passage through the strait next month, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main plan to call in Tokyo on Tuesday. They will also make stops in South Korea and the Philippines.

They will take part in exercises in the region with France, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and the United States.

Over the last four years, Beijing’s military has increased its activities in the strait.

Expanding military presence

Sailings through the waterway by foreign warships, especially American, are regularly condemned by Beijing, which says such missions “undermine peace and stability” in the region.

Germany, for whom both China and Taiwan, with its huge chip industry, are major trade partners, has joined other Western nations in expanding its military presence in the region as their alarm has grown over Beijing’s territorial ambitions.

In 2021, a German warship sailed through the South China Sea, for the first time in almost 20 years.

Last month, the Luftwaffe deployed fighter jets to Japan for the first joint drills there.

Schulz said he was not planning for any specific security measures should the warships under his command cross the Taiwan Strait, calling it a “normal passage” similar to sailing through the English Channel or the North Sea.

However, he anticipated any passage would be closely monitored.

“I expect the Chinese navy and potentially the coastguard or maritime militia to escort us,” he said, describing this as common practice.
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Rome — A luxury superyacht carrying foreign tourists capsized and sank off Sicily in bad weather early Monday. One body was found, six people remain missing and 15 people were rescued, including a 1-year-old girl, authorities said.

The sailboat had overturned sometime before 5 a.m. off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, where it was anchored. It had a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers that included British, American and Canadian citizens, the Italian coast guard said. Local media said a sudden fierce storm, including tornadoes over water known as waterspouts, had battered the area overnight but skies were clear and seas calm by Monday morning.

The 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged Bayesian was known for its single 75-meter (246-feet) mast, one of the world’s tallest made of aluminum and which was lit up at night, just hours before it sank. Online charter sites list it for rent for up to 195,000 euros (about $215,000) a week.

One of the survivors, identified only as Charlotte, said she had momentarily lost hold of her 1-year-old daughter Sofia in the water, but then managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were both pulled to safety, Italian news agency ANSA reported, quoting the mother.

Eight of the 15 people rescued and taken to shore at Porticello were hospitalized. One body was found near the wreck, but six others were unaccounted for, said Luca Cari, a spokesperson for the Italian fire rescue service.

Rescue crews located the vessel at a depth of 50 meters (163 feet) off Porticello and deep-water police divers were trying to access the hull, Cari said. The operations, which were visible from shore, involved helicopters and rescue boats from the coast guard, fire rescue and civil protection service.

Fisherman Francesco Cefalu said he had seen a flare from shore at around 4:30 a.m. and immediately set out to the site but by the time he got there, the Bayesian had already sunk, with only cushions, wood and other items from the superyacht floating in the water.

“But for the rest, we didn’t find anyone,” he said from the port hours later. He said that he immediately alerted the coast guard and stayed on site for three hours, but didn’t find any survivors. “I think they are inside, all the missing people.”

He said he had been up so early to check the weather to see if he could go fishing, and surmised that a sudden waterspout had struck the yacht.

“It could be that the mast broke, or the anchor at the prow pulled it, I don’t know,” he said.

The seven who weren’t rescued included one crew member and six passengers, the coast guard said.

The yacht, built in 2008 by the Italian firm Perini Navi, can accommodate 12 passengers in four double cabins, a triple and the master suite, plus crew accommodations, according to Charter World and Yacht Charters.

The vessel, which previously was named Salute when it flew under a Dutch flag, featured a sleek, minimalist interior of light wood with Japanese accents designed by the French designer Remi Tessier, according to descriptions and photos on the charter sites.
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Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national in the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines that carry natural gas from Russia to Western Europe. At question is whether the Ukrainian government was involved in the 2022 attack, which many say contributed to a global spike in inflation. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in Berlin.
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Serhiy Danilets is one of the more than 100 thousand Ukrainian soldiers estimated to have been wounded in Russia’s war against Ukraine. But serious combat injuries haven’t stopped him and other fighters from enjoying life and, in some cases, making plans to head back to the front lines. Anna Kosstutschenko met with some of them in Kyiv
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Lisbon — Hundreds of Portuguese firefighters scrambled Sunday to put out a wildfire sweeping parts of the Atlantic island of Madeira’s south coast, a popular tourist destination, with strong winds complicating efforts to tackle the blaze. 

The wildfire, which started Wednesday in a remote rural area of Ribeira Brava has spread to the neighboring municipality of Camara de Lobos, and now has three fronts, island authorities said. 

Nearly 200 firefighters, backed by 38 vehicles, are tackling the fire but high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds are complicating efforts to combat the flames. A helicopter also battled the blaze but had to stop operating as the night set in. 

“This fire, which is very dangerous, I have no doubt it was caused by arson in an inaccessible area where air support could not operate,” the president of the regional government of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, told reporters. 

No injuries or fatalities have been reported, but 160 people have been evacuated as a precaution, he said. 

The entire coastline of Madeira — an autonomous region of Portugal home to around 250,000 people — has been placed on orange alert, the second highest level, until Monday, due to high temperatures. 

According to weather agency IPMA, the temperature in Madeira reached 30 degrees Celsius (86°F) in the last few days. Strong winds that were fanning the flames led to dozens of canceled flights. 

Portugal sent a force of 76 firefighters from the mainland to Madeira on Saturday and the neighboring Azores archipelago was to send 15 firefighters Sunday evening. 
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Seoul, South Korea — North Korea condemned Ukraine’s incursion into Russia as an unforgivable act of terror backed by Washington and the West, adding it would always stand with Russia as it seeks to protect its sovereignty, state media said Sunday.

Ukraine’s drive into Russia is a product of the anti-Russia confrontational policy of the United States, which is pushing the situation to the brink of World War III, KCNA news agency said.

The U.S. handed “astronomical” sums of lethal weapons to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the report said.

“We strongly condemn the armed attack against the Russian territory by the Zelenskyy puppet regime under the control and support of the United States and the West as an unforgivable act of aggression and terror,” North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement, according to KCNA.

North Korea has dramatically upgraded its ties with Russia in the past year with two summit meetings by their leaders who pledged closer cooperation in all areas.

In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pact in Pyongyang on a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that included a mutual defense agreement.

South Korea, Ukraine and the United States have accused North Korea of supplying artillery and missiles to Russia for use in its unprovoked war against Ukraine. North Korea and Russia have denied the allegations. 
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Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku on Sunday for a two-day state visit, Russian news agencies reported.

Russian television broadcast images of the president’s plane as it arrived in Baku in the evening.  

His visit to the Caucasus country, a close partner of both Moscow and Turkey but also a major energy supplier to Western countries, comes against the backdrop of an unprecedented Ukrainian military offensive on Russian soil.  

Putin is due to hold talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev on bilateral relations and “international and regional problems”, the Kremlin said.

The two leaders are dining Sunday evening at the Azerbaijani president’s official residence, local official news agency Asertac said.

On Monday, Aliyev and Putin will sign joint documents and make statements to the press, said Russian agency Ria Novosti.

Putin will also lay a wreath on the tomb of Heydar Aliyev, father of the current leader, who was president from 1993 to 2003.   

Earlier, the Kremlin said they would also discuss “the question of settling (the conflict) between Azerbaijan and Armenia.”  

Azerbaijan reconquered the mountainous enclave in September 2023 from the Armenian separatists who had held it for three decades.

Armenia accused Russia of inadequate support in its conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Since then, Armenia has sought to deepen its ties with Western countries, especially the United States, much to the annoyance of Moscow, which considers both former Soviet republics to be in its sphere of influence.

Azerbaijan is a major producer of natural gas, to whom many European countries turned to make up for the sharp reduction in Russian deliveries after the start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022.

It is also hosting the COP29 climate conference in November.

Putin’s last visit to Azerbaijan was in September 2018.  

Putin has been under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court since March 2023 for the “deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia, an accusation the Kremlin denies.

While the threat of arrest has limited Putin’s travels abroad, Azerbaijan is not a signatory to the Rome Statute treaty that established the ICC.
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Kyiv — Russia on Sunday carried out its third ballistic missile attack on Kyiv this month but preliminary data indicated that most of the projectiles were shot down on approach, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said.

“This is already the third ballistic strike on the capital in August, with exact intervals of six days between each attack,” Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Popko said the Russians had most likely used North Korean-made ballistic missiles.

Reuters could not independently verify the type of missiles launched. 

Separately, the commander of Ukraine’s air force, Lt. Mykola Oleshchuk, said it had destroyed eight Russian attack drones and five out of eight missiles launched overnight across the country, including Kyiv.

Oleshchuk said anti-aircraft combat, anti-aircraft missile troops, mobile firing groups and electronic warfare units had downed 13 air targets in the Kyiv, Sumy and Poltava regions.

He said Russia launched eight missiles Sunday morning, including three ballistic, three cruise and two guided aircraft missiles. Ukraine shot down five of them, he said, and the three missiles it missed had failed to reach their targets.

Kyiv officials said there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in the capital. However, Kyiv region governor Ruslan Kravchenko said two private houses were destroyed and 16 others were damaged by falling debris.

“Russia always knows where it is hitting with its missiles and bombs, and this is deliberate and targeted Russian terror,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram.

He said Russia had launched more than 40 missiles, 750 guided aerial bombs and 200 attack drones this week against Ukrainian villages and cities.

Reuters could not independently verify the scale of damage in the Kyiv region. A Reuters witness heard blasts that sounded like air defense systems early Sunday.

About two hours after the initial attack, Kyiv, its surrounding region and most of central and northeast Ukraine were under fresh raid alerts, with threats of more missiles heading toward the city, Ukraine’s air force said.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine two-and-a-half years ago and now holds about 18% of its territory in the east and south. 
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Ankara — Firefighters in Turkey have brought under control two large forest fires that had been burning for three days, with several other wildfires across the country expected to be put out soon, the Forestry Minister said on Sunday.

The blazes in Turkey’s western coastal province of Izmir and northern province of Bolu started late on Thursday and firefighters have been working to contain them since then.

Speaking in Izmir’s Karsiyaka district, Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said cooling efforts were under way to fully extinguish the fires. A small fire that started in Izmir’s Urla district on Saturday was also under control, he said.

More forest fires in Izmir’s Menderes district and in the western provinces of Aydin, Manisa and Usak as well as the northern province of Karabuk were still burning. Planes, helicopters and other vehicles had been brought in to douse the flames and all were “close to being contained.”

Turkish authorities warned of a high risk of further wildfires in northern and western Turkey for the next couple of days due to high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds.

Several parts of Turkey, especially its coastal regions, have been ravaged by wildfires in recent years as summers have become hotter and drier, which scientists attribute to climate change. 
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paris — French actor Alain Delon, who melted the hearts of millions of film fans whether playing a murderer, hoodlum or hitman in his postwar heyday, has died, French media reported on Sunday. He was 88.

Delon had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2019, rarely leaving his estate in Douchy, in France’s Val de Loire region.

With his striking blue eyes, Delon was sometimes referred to as the “French Frank Sinatra” for his handsome looks, a comparison Delon disliked. Unlike Sinatra, who always denied connections with the Mafia, Delon openly acknowledged his shady pals in the underworld.

In a 1970 interview with The New York Times, Delon was asked about such acquaintances, one of whom was among the last “Godfathers” of the underworld in the Mediterranean port of Marseille.

“Most of them, the gangsters I know … were my friends before I became an actor,” he said. “I don’t worry about what a friend does. Each is responsible for his own act. It doesn’t matter what he does.”

Delon shot to fame in two films by Italian director Luchino Visconti, Rocco and His Brothers in 1960 and The Leopard in 1963.

He starred alongside venerable French elder Jean Gabin in Henri Verneuil’s 1963 film Melodie en Sous-Sol (Any Number Can Win) and was a major hit in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 Le Samourai (The Godson). The role of a philosophical contract killer involved minimal dialogue and frequent solo scenes, and Delon shone.

Delon became a star in France and was idolized by men and women in Japan, but never made it as big in Hollywood despite performing with American cinema giants, including Burt Lancaster when the Frenchman played apprentice-hitman Scorpio in the eponymous 1973 film.

In the 1970 film Borsalino, he starred with fellow French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, playing gangsters who come to blows in an unforgettable, stylized fight over a woman.

Crowning moments also included 1969 erotic thriller La Piscine (The Swimming Pool), where Delon paired up with real-life lover Romy Schneider, in a sultry French Riviera saga of jealousy and seduction.

Troubled man

Born just outside Paris on November 8, 1935, Delon started life on the back foot: he was put in foster care at age 4 after his parents divorced.

He ran away from home at least once and was expelled several times from boarding schools before joining the marines at 17 and serving in then-French-ruled Indochina. There, too, he got into trouble over a stolen jeep.

Back in France in the mid-50s, he worked as a porter at the Paris wholesale food market Les Halles and spent time in the red-light Pigalle district before migrating to the cafes of the bohemian St. Germain des Pres area.

There he met French actor Jean-Claude Brialy, who took him to the Cannes Film Festival, where he attracted the attention of an American talent scout who arranged a screen test.

He made his film debut in 1957 in Quand la femme s’en mele (Send a Woman When the Devil Fails).

Sulphurous friends

Delon was a businessman as well as an actor, leveraging his looks to sell branded cosmetics and dabbling in racehorses with old underworld friends. He invested in a racehorse stable with Jacky “Le Mat” Imbert, a notorious figure in a thriving Marseille crime scene.

Delon’s more louche friendships exploded to the surface when a former bodyguard-cum-confidant, a young Yugoslav called Stefan Markovic, was found dead in a bag, with a bullet in his head, discarded in a rubbish dump near Paris.

The actor was interrogated and cleared by police but the “Markovic Affair” snowballed into a national scandal.

The man police charged with the Markovic murder — he was later acquitted — was Francois Marcantoni, a Corsican cafe owner and friend of Delon who thrived in the hustle and bustle of the Pigalle district in the aftermath of World War II.

Outspoken

Delon was outspoken offstage and courted controversy when he did so — notably when he said he regretted the abolition of the death penalty and spoke disparagingly of gay marriage, which was legalized in France in 2013.

He publicly defended the far-right National Front and telephoned its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, an old friend, to congratulate him when the party did well in local elections in 2014.

Delon’s lovers included Schneider and German model-turned-singer Nico, with whom he had a son. In 1964, he married Nathalie Barthelemy and fathered a second son before ending the marriage and embarking on a 15-year relationship with Mireille Darc. He had two more children with Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen.

In a January 2018 interview, Delon told Paris Match he was fed up with modern life and had a chapel and tomb ready for him on the grounds of his home near Geneva, and for his Belgian shepherd dog, called Loubo.

“If I die before him, I’ll ask the vet to let us go together. He will give the dog an injection so he can die in my arms.”

Delon’s last major public appearance was to receive an honorary Palme d’or at the Cannes film festival in May 2019.

In his last years, Delon was the center of a family feud over his care, which made headlines in French media.

In April 2024 a judge placed Delon under “reinforced curatorship,” meaning he no longer had full freedom to manage his assets. He was already under legal protection over concerns over his health and well-being.
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WARSAW, Poland — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Saturday reacted to reports that revived questions about who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, saying the initiators of the gas pipeline project should “apologize and keep quiet.” That comment came after one of his deputies denied a claim that Warsaw was partly responsible for its damage.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Ukrainian authorities were responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022, a dramatic act of sabotage that cut Germany off from a key source of energy and worsened an energy crisis in Europe.

Germany was a partner with Russia in the pipeline project. Poland has long said its own security interests have been harmed by Nord Stream.

“To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologize and keep quiet,” Tusk wrote on the social media portal X Saturday.

Tusk appeared to be reacting specifically to a claim by a former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, BND, August Hanning, who told the German daily Die Welt that the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines must have had Poland’s support. Hanning said Germany should consider seeking compensation from Poland and Ukraine.

Hanning, who retired from his spy chief job, did not provide any evidence in support of his claim. Some observers noted that he served under former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who went on to work later for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream.

Krzysztof Gawkowski, a deputy Polish prime minister and the minister of digital affairs, strongly denied reports that Poland and Ukraine had damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline in an interview Friday on the Polsat broadcaster.

Gawkowski alleged that the comments of the former member of the German intelligence service were “inspired by Moscow” and were aimed at destabilizing NATO countries.

“I believe that this is the sound of Russian disinformation,” he added.

On Wednesday, Polish prosecutors confirmed that they had received a warrant for a Ukrainian man wanted by Germany as a suspect in the pipeline attack, but that he left the country before he could be arrested.

The Nord Stream project, with its two pipelines created to carry gas from Russia to Europe along the Baltic Seabed, went ahead despite opposition from Poland, the U.S. and Ukraine.

They allowed Russia to send gas directly to Western Europe, bypassing Poland and Ukraine. With all gas previously going over land, Warsaw and Kyiv feared losing huge sums in transit fees and political leverage that came with controlling the gas transports.

The Wall Street Journal said in its report published Thursday that it spoke to four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who either participated in or had direct knowledge of the plot. All of them said the pipelines were a legitimate target in Ukraine’s war of defense against Russia. Ukrainian authorities are denying the claims.

Nord Stream 1 was completed and came online in 2011. Nord Stream 2 was not finished until the fall of 2021 but never became operational due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 
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moscow — A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia’s far-eastern Kamchatka Peninsula early Sunday morning local time, according to the regional earthquake monitoring service.

The local emergencies ministry said tremors were felt along the coast including in the region’s capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

“Operational teams of rescuers and firefighters are inspecting buildings,” the regional branch of Russia’s emergencies ministry in the Kamchatka region said on Telegram.

The earthquake struck at a depth of nearly 50 kilometers just after 7 a.m. local time, some 90 kilometers east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the United States Geological Survey reported.

The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center had initially issued a tsunami threat, but later said the threat had passed. Local authorities never issued a tsunami alert.

Several aftershocks were recorded after the initial quake, but of lower intensity, the Kamchatka branch of Russia’s Unified Geophysical Service reported on its website.

“Most of the aftershocks are imperceptible,” the regional emergency authority said on Telegram.

The peninsula lies on a seismically active belt surrounding most of the Pacific Ocean known as the “Ring of Fire,” and is home to more than two dozen active volcanoes. 
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Istanbul — Wildfires raged across western Turkey for a third straight day Saturday, exacerbated by high winds and warm temperatures, authorities said. 

More than 130 fires have erupted across the country in the past week, according to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate. Most have been brought under control, but eight major fires continued in the provinces of Izmir, Aydin, Manisa, Karabuk and Bolu. 

Thousands of firefighters were tackling the blazes on land and from the air, with dozens of aircraft and hundreds of vehicles aiding in the emergency response. 

Thousands of people have been evacuated from the affected areas, but there have been no reported casualties, according to Agriculture and Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli, who spoke to reporters Saturday as he toured the affected provinces. 

Yumakli cited low humidity, high winds and high temperatures as exacerbating factors. The General Directorate of Forestry warned people not to light fires outside for the next 10 days because of the weather conditions across western Turkey, warning of a 70% greater risk of wildfires. 

Meanwhile, authorities detained four people in Bolu in connection with the fires, two of whom were arrested and two released. 

In June, a fire spread through settlements in southeast Turkey, killing 11 people and  leaving dozens of others requiring medical treatment. 
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Helsinki, Finland — Western officials and analysts are suspicious of Beijing’s admission this week that a Chinese container ship damaged the Balticconnector — a vital Baltic Sea gas pipeline linking Estonia and Finland — in October.

The South China Morning Post reported August 12 that the Chinese government notified Finland and Estonia 10 months after the incident that it was caused by a Hong Kong-registered ship called Newnew Polar Bear, but blamed a storm for what it called the accident.

In an interview August 13 with Estonia’s public radio, ERR, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said he was skeptical of China’s claim that a storm caused the incident.

“Personally, I find it very difficult to understand how a ship’s captain could fail to notice for such a long time that its anchor had been dragging along the seabed, but it is up to the prosecutor’s office to complete the investigation,” he said.

Markku Mylly, the former director of the European Maritime Safety Agency, told local media in Helsinki there were no storms in the Gulf of Finland at the time. The Finnish newspaper Iltalehti consulted data from the Finland Meteorological Institute and confirmed that Mylly’s memory was correct.

Pevkur told ERR that Estonia would not give up claims against China for compensation.

The Baltic Sea oil and gas pipeline, which was built with EU assistance, was commissioned in 2019 at a total cost of around $331 million, to wean Finland and the three Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — off their dependence on Russia for natural gas.

The pipeline was the source of almost all of Estonia’s natural gas supply after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine sparked European restrictions on the import of Russian gas.  After the damage, Estonia had to temporarily rely on Latvia for natural gas.

The pipeline was reopened for commercial operations in April after repairs that cost about $38 million, a senior vice president at Gasgrid Finland told The Associated Press. A few telecoms cables were also damaged in the incident.

Finnish and Estonian investigative agencies recovered the ship’s 6-ton anchor from the sea floor near the damaged pipeline after the incident and tracked it to the ship, which they tried to contact; it refused to respond.

The damage occurred at a time of heightened tension between Europe and Russia over sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, and critics suspected it was a deliberate act of sabotage by Russia or its ally China.

After the damage to the pipeline, the Newnew Polar Bear first sailed to St. Petersburg and Arkhangelsk in Russia and later docked in China’s port of Tianjin. 

Eoin Micheal McNamara, a global security expert at the Finland Institute of International Affairs, told VOA that Finnish people doubt Beijing’s claim that the ship’s damage to the pipeline was an accident.

“Undersea infrastructure elsewhere in the wider Nordic-Baltic region has also been damaged by ‘manmade activity’ in recent years. There was the Nord Stream sabotage in 2022 and the severing of a data cable between Norway and its Arctic island of Svalbard before that,” McNamara said. “As geopolitical tensions rise, more targeted sabotage is being expected.”

German media reported this week that investigators asked Poland to arrest a Ukrainian diving instructor for allegedly being part of a team that blew up the Baltic Sea’s Nord Stream gas pipelines, which supplied Russian gas to Europe. Russia blamed Britain, Ukraine and the United States for the sabotage, which they denied.

McNamara said there are suspicions that Russia was involved in the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline. “Plausible deniability is a key tenet for hybrid interference. There are suspicions that use of a Hong Kong-registered vessel was a tactic to gain this plausible deniability,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year dismissed the idea that Russia could have been behind an attack on the pipeline as “rubbish.”

Estonia and Finland are still jointly investigating the ship, which China’s NewNew Shipping Company owns.

The Estonian prosecutor’s office, which oversees the investigation, said under international law, China’s statement acknowledging the ship caused the damage as an “accident” cannot be used as evidence in a criminal investigation because China has not invited Estonian criminal investigators to participate in Beijing’s own investigation.

VOA contacted the Chinese Foreign Ministry about the matter but was referred to the Chinese shipping departments.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a news briefing on August 13 said, “China is advancing the investigation in accordance with the facts and the law and is in close communication with relevant countries. It is hoped that all parties will continue to promote the investigation in a professional, objective and cooperative manner, and jointly ensure that the incident is handled in a sound manner.”

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told VOA in an email, “We are constantly cooperating with China and exchanging information regarding this matter, but we will not go into details because the investigation is still ongoing.”

The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, or NBI, which is investigating the case, told VOA that the Finnish and Estonian authorities have been cooperating with the Chinese authorities on the matter. The NBI said it will publish the findings with the Estonian side as early as this fall.

“Based on the evidence collected and information analyzed during the investigation, it can be stated that the course of events is considered clear and there are sufficient reasons to suspect that the container vessel Newnew Polar Bear is linked to the damages. The cause for the damages seems to be the anchor and anchor chain [struck] the mentioned vessel.”

The NBI added, “It must be stated that the investigation is still ongoing and final conclusions, what was behind these incidents (technical failure — negligence, poor seamanship — deliberate act), can be made only after all necessary investigative measures have been finalized, and this will still take some time.”

VOA’s Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report. Some information was provided by Reuters.
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LONDON — A fire broke out Saturday at Somerset House, a large arts venue on the River Thames in central London.

Smoke billowed from the building and flames could be seen coming from the roof as firefighters on tall ladders showered it with water.

The cause of the fire was not yet known, the London Fire Brigade said. Fifteen engines and about 100 firefighters were deployed.

Somerset House said all staff and the public were safe and the site was closed. The venue had been scheduled to host a breakdancing event.

The neoclassical building, which is nearly 250 years old, houses the Courtauld Gallery that features works by Van Gogh, Manet and Cezanne.
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MOSCOW — Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Ukraine used Western rockets, likely U.S.-made HIMARS, to destroy a bridge over the Seym River in the Kursk region, killing volunteers trying to evacuate civilians.

“For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by Western-made rocket launchers, probably American HIMARS,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said late Friday on the Telegram messaging app.

“As a result of the attack on the bridge over the Seym River in the Glushkovo district, it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed,” she said.

There was no indication of how many volunteers were killed in Friday’s attack.

Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Kyiv’s forces had advanced between 1 and 3 kilometers (up to 1.8 miles) in some areas in the Kursk region on Friday, 11 days since beginning an incursion into the western Russian territory.

Kyiv claimed to have taken control of 82 settlements over 1,150 square kilometers (444 square miles) in the region since August 6.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, cited by the Interfax news agency, said on Saturday that Russian forces repelled several Ukrainian attacks in the Kursk region, but it did not report recapturing any territory.

It said Ukrainian forces had unsuccessfully attempted to advance towards the villages of Kauchuk and Alekseyevskiy, which lie roughly halfway between the Ukrainian border and the Kursk nuclear power plant.

In a separate statement, the ministry accused Ukraine of planning to attack the plant in a false flag operation.

Reuters could not independently verify either side’s battlefield accounts.

Russia has accused the West of supporting and encouraging Ukraine’s first ground offensive on Russian territory and said that Kyiv’s “terrorist invasion” would not change the course of the war.

The U.S. HIMARS rockets provided to Ukraine have a range of up to about 80 kilometers (50 miles).

The United States, which has said it cannot allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the war he launched in February 2022, so far deems the surprise incursion a protective move that justifies the use of U.S. weaponry, according to officials in Washington.
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Stockholm — Health authorities warned Friday that Europe must be ready for more cases of a deadly strain of mpox that has killed hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The World Health Organization urged pharmaceutical firms to ramp up vaccine production and China said it would screen travelers for the disease after the first cases of the more deadly strain to be recorded outside Africa were announced in Sweden and Pakistan.

France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said his country was on the “highest alert” and would implement “new recommendations” for travelers to risk areas.

Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by animals but can also spread human-to-human through close physical contact.

It causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.

The WHO on Wednesday declared the rapid spread of the new Clade 1b strain an international public health emergency — the agency’s highest alert.

This follows the spread of the more deadly mpox from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to other African countries.

“We do need the manufacturers to really scale up so that we’ve got access to many, many more vaccines,” WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told reporters.

The WHO is asking countries with vaccine stockpiles to donate them to countries with outbreaks.

Harris said mpox was “particularly dangerous for those with a weak immune system, so people who maybe have HIV or are malnourished,” and was also dangerous for small children.

The United States has said it will donate 50,000 doses of an mpox vaccine to DRC and Attal said France would also send vaccines to risk countries.

Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic said Thursday it would be ready to make up to 10 million doses of its mpox vaccine by 2025 but that it needed contracts to start production.

The Stockholm-based European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said the overall risk in Europe was “low.” But it warned that “effective surveillance, laboratory testing, epidemiological investigation and contact tracing capacities will be vital to detecting cases.”

“Due to the close links between Europe and Africa, we must be prepared for more imported clade I cases,” ECDC director Pamela Rendi-Wagner said in a statement.

Hundreds killed in DRC

The virus has swept across DRC, killing 548 people so far this year, the government said Thursday.

Nigeria has recorded 39 mpox cases this year, but no deaths, according to its health authorities. Previously unaffected countries such as Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda have reported outbreaks, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sweden’s Public Health Agency announced Thursday it had registered a case of Clade 1b.

The patient was infected during a visit to “the part of Africa where there is a major outbreak of mpox Clade 1,” epidemiologist Magnus Gisslen said in a statement.

The mpox strain in the Pakistan case was not immediately known, the country’s health ministry said in a statement.

It said the patient, a 34-year-old man, had “come from a Gulf country.”

China announced it would begin screening people and goods entering the country for mpox over the next six months.

People arriving from countries where outbreaks have occurred, who have been in contact with mpox cases or display symptoms should “declare to customs when entering the country,” China’s customs administration said.

Vehicles, containers and items from areas with mpox cases should be sanitized, it added in a statement.

Vaccination drive

Mpox has two subtypes: the more virulent and deadlier Clade 1, endemic in the Congo Basin in central Africa; and Clade 2, endemic in West Africa.

A worldwide outbreak beginning in 2022 involving the Clade 2b subclade caused some 140 deaths out of about 90,000 cases, mostly affecting gay and bisexual men.

France reported 107 cases of the milder mpox variant between January 1 and June 30 this year.

The WHO’s European regional office in Copenhagen said the Sweden case was “a clear reflection of the interconnectedness of our world.”

But it added: “Travel restrictions and border closures don’t work and should be avoided.”
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