Russian authorities say the country is facing a surge in new coronavirus infections.  And, as Charles Maynes reports from Moscow, that has prompted a renewed effort to convince a skeptical public that the time to get vaccinated is now.Camera: Ricardo Marquina      Video editor: Rob Raffaele
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Belgium’s Africa Museum, once a celebration of the country’s colonial rule, will begin a multi-year process of returning stolen art to Democratic Republic of Congo, the Belgian government said on Tuesday.
 
From the late 19th century to 1960, thousands of art works including wooden statues, elephant ivory masks, manuscripts and musical instruments were likely taken by Belgian and other European collectors, scientists, explorers and soldiers.
 
Following a 66-million-euro ($78 million) overhaul of the Africa Museum to take a more critical view of Belgium’s colonial past, the government is ready to meet DRC calls for restitution.
 
“The approach is very simple: everything that was acquired through illegitimate means, through theft, through violence, through pillaging, must be given back,” Belgian junior minister Thomas Dermine told Reuters. “It doesn’t belong to us.”
 
Millions of Congolese are estimated to have died from the late 19th century when Congo was first a personal fiefdom of King Leopold II, before becoming a colony of the Belgian state.
 
Belgium will transfer legal ownership of the artefacts to DRC. But it will not immediately ship art works to the country from the museum in Tervuren, just outside Brussels, unless they are specifically requested by DRC authorities.
 
That is partly because the museum, which has proved popular since its renovation and attracted hundreds of thousands visitors before the COVID-19 pandemic, wants to keep artefacts on display. One option is to pay a loan fee to DRC.
 
Belgium says the Congolese authorities are conscious of the bigger audience in Belgium compared to DRC, which is one of the world’s poorest countries, according to the United Nations. It has few cultural centers or storage facilities.
 
“The museum believes it will be able to cooperate with the Congolese authorities, as is common among international institutions, to keep the objects in Belgium via loan agreements,” said museum director Guido Gryseels.
 
The museum also has a huge number of artefacts whose provenance is unclear. It hopes to use a team of scientists and experts over the next five years to identify them and to separate those that were acquired legally by the museum.
 
“In five years with a lot of resources we can do a lot, but it could be work for the next 10 to 20 years to be absolutely sure of all the objects we have, that we know the precise circumstances in which they were acquired,” Gryseels said.
 
Placide Mumbembele Sanger, a professor of anthropology at the University of Kinshasa who is working at the museum in Tervuren, said the process was a simple one.
 
“These are objects going back to their natural context so I don’t see why we should ask so many questions,” he said. “It’s as if you go out and someone steals your wallet and the person asks you whether or not you are ready to have it back.”
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Russia reported a record 737 deaths from coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours on Tuesday, pushing the national death toll to 139,316.
 
The country confirmed 23,378 new COVID-19 cases, including 5,498 in Moscow, taking the official national tally since the pandemic began to 5,658,672.
 
The federal statistics agency has kept a separate count and has said Russia recorded around 270,000 deaths related to COVID-19 from April 2020 to April 2021.
 
Health Minister Mikhail Murashko was quoted by TASS on Tuesday as saying that up to 850,000 people were being vaccinated against COVID-19 in Russia every day and building up immunity was key.
 
The Kremlin would not support the idea of closing borders between Russia’s regions to stop the virus from spreading, although some regions may take swift and harsh measures to withstand the pandemic, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
 
The recent surge in COVID-19 cases, along with the need to raise interest rates to combat inflation, are seen challenging economic growth in Russia this year.
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Russia’s aviation agency said Tuesday wreckage had been found in the Kamchatka region in the far eastern portion of the country after a plane with 28 people on board went missing. Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Antonov An-26 plane that was on its way from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Palana. The aviation agency said the wreckage was found about five kilometers from the airport where it was supposed to land. Russian news agencies reported there were no survivors among the 22 passengers and six crew members. This report includes information from the Associated Press, AFP and Reuters.  
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Raffaella Carrà, for decades one of Italian television’s most beloved entertainers, a woman affectionately nicknamed the “queen of Italian TV,” died Monday at 78, Italian state TV quoted her family as saying. Rai state TV read a statement from the star’s family, announcing that she died in Rome after a long illness. No further details were released. With her energetic presence and strong, almost husky, singing voice, the trim Carrà was a wildly popular staple in the early heyday decades of Rai, especially when it was the only nationwide TV broadcaster. With often sexy costumes — daring by state TV standards in a country where the Vatican wields considerable influence — Carrà also was credited with helping Italian women become more confident with their bodies and their sexuality, once even baring her belly button during a TV performance.  FILE – Raffaella Carra smiles as she poses for photographers during a press conference at Rome’s Foro Italico, Sept. 30, 1999.But she could also be devastatingly classy in her dress and manners. The La Repubblica newspaper wrote that she managed to pull off being provocative but still familiar and reassuring to millions of TV viewers. She also was considered an icon for gay fans due to her joyful performances.  Her trademark bouncy blond haircut and bangs — dubbed the helmet look — were imitated by many fans.  TV magnate Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian premier, mourned Carrà’s passing, calling her “one of the symbols of Italian television, perhaps the most beloved personality.” In a post on Facebook, Berlusconi said that with her TV programs, “she knew how to speak to various different generations, having the ability to always remain current with the times and without ever descending into vulgarity.” “She was the lady of Italian television,” Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said. President Sergio Mattarella recalled Carrà as the “face of television par excellence — she transmitted, with her talent and her likeability, a message of elegance, kindness and optimism.” In one of her last interviews, Carrà told an Italian magazine that “Italian women found me greatly likable because I am not a man-eater — you can have sex appeal together with sweetness and irony.” FILE – Italian singer Raffaella Carra, center, performs during the Italian State RAI TV program “The Voice of Italy”, in Milan, Italy, May 28, 2014.She scandalized conservative TV viewers with her 1971 hit song Tuca, Tuca, a playful corruption of the Italian words “touch, touch,” which she sang while moving her hands up and down various men’s bodies. She performed the number many times with different stars, including one classic version with comedian Alberto Sordi. A 1980s TV show she starred in, Fantastico, drew 25 million viewers, nearly a half of what was then Italy’s population.  But it was the 1970s TV variety program Canzonissima — roughly, “full of song” — that sealed her reputation as a star. Italians would be glued to their black-and-white TV sets every Saturday night to enjoy the musical variety show, which launched hit songs year after year.  FILE – English actress Joan Collins, right, and Italian TV star Raffaella Carra record a new TV show in Milan, Italy, Jan. 23, 1988.Affectionately known as Raffa, Carrà was born Raffaella Maria Roberta Pelloni in Bologna on June 18, 1943. She started her career as a singer, dancer, TV presenter and actress when still a child.  Later shows included a noon talk program called Pronto Raffaella (Hello, Raffaella). Some shows were tailor-made for her exuberant performing style, including Carramba! Che Sorpresa, (Carramba! What a Surprise) which debuted in 1995 and whose title played off her name and her years of being a presenter in Spain.  Carrà became popular in Spain and Latin America in the mid-1970s, especially because of translations of some of her catchy hits — Fiesta and Caliente, Caliente, among others, that she recorded in Spanish. With a fondness for tight dresses and jumpsuits, the singer brought a breath of fresh air to Spanish television sets with novel choreography to disco beats at a time when the heavily Catholic country was just emerging from four decades of a strict conservative dictatorship. That’s when Carrà made her Spanish debut with a 10-minute performance in a musical program called Ladies and Gentlemen! (Señoras y señores!), enough for the Italian singer to seduce many Spaniards with her spontaneity. Carrà wasn’t married. She had no children, but a former companion, TV director and choreographer Sergio Japino, quoted her as often saying, “I didn’t have children, but I had thousands of them,” according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper. That referred to the 150,000 needy children over the years that she helped generate financial sponsors for through one of her TV programs called Amore (Love). 
 
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France’s champagne industry group on Monday blasted a new Russian law that forces foreign producers to add a “sparkling wine” reference to their bottles of Champagne, and called for the halting of exports of the bubbly drink to Russia. The law, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, requires all foreign producers of sparkling wine to describe their product as such on the back of the bottle — though not on the front — while makers of Russian “shampanskoye” may continue to use that term alone. The French Champagne industry group called on its members to halt all shipments to Russia for the time being and said the name “Champagne,” which refers to the region in France where the drink comes from, had legal protection in 120 countries. “The Champagne Committee deplores the fact that this legislation does not ensure that Russian consumers have clear and transparent information about the origins and characteristics of wine,” Maxime Toubart and Jean-Marie Barillere, the group’s co-presidents, said in a statement. French Trade Minister Franck Riester said he was tracking the new Russian law closely, and was in contact with the wine industry and France’s European partners. “We will unfailingly support our producers and French excellence,” he said on Twitter. Moet Hennessy, the LVMH-owned French maker of Veuve Clicquot and Dom Perignon Champagnes, said on Sunday it would begin adding the designation “sparkling wine” to the back of bottles destined for Russia to comply with the law. FILE – Bottles of French Veuve Clicquot champagne are offered at a supermarket of Swiss retail group Coop in Zumikon, Switzerland, Dec. 13, 2016.LVMH shares were down around 0.2% on Monday afternoon, underperforming the Paris bourse, which was up 0.34%. Shares in Russian sparkling wine maker Abrau-Durso were up more than 3% after rising as much as 7.77% in early trading. Pavel Titov, the president of Abrau-Durso, told Radio France Internationale on Saturday his firm does not have sparkling wines that would be called “Champagne” in its portfolio and said he hoped the issue would be resolved in favor of global norms and standards. “It is very important to protect the Russian wines on our market. But the legislation must be reasonable and not contradict common sense … I have no doubts that the real Champagne is made in the Champagne region of France,” he said. The European Commission said the legislation in Russia regarding spirits and wine would have a considerable impact on wine exports and would do all it could to express its disagreement and concern. “We will do everything necessary to protect our rights and take the necessary steps if this law enters into force,” European Commission spokeswoman Miriam Garcia Ferrer said. Asked what counter-measures the European Union could take in response to the Russian law, she said it was premature to discuss such a situation.  
 
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The United Nations’ special rapporteur to Belarus likened the country to a totalitarian regime Sunday. Anais Marin urged authorities to release over 500 people whom right groups consider political prisoners. Marin cited the case of jailed journalist Raman Pratasevich, whose Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania in May had been diverted to land in Minsk, where he was immediately arrested.Belarus Joins Long List of Regimes Targeting Exiled CriticsBelarus diverting a passenger plane to arrest a blogger is an extreme but not isolated case of authoritarian regimes grabbing critics living in exileSpeaking to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, Marin said the incident “illustrates the desire of authorities to end all forms of dissidence by purging society of elements it considers undesirable.””It is a form of purge that recalls those practiced by totalitarian states,” she went on. In August, protests broke out over a controversial election in which longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko declared victory.  More than 35,000 people have been jailed since Lukashenko’s election, with opposition candidates either in hiding outside the country or in jail, according to the U.N. Many countries’ representatives at the council also denounced Belarus’ human rights abuses, with the United States hinting at more sanctions. “Such contempt for international norms cannot go unanswered,” Benjamin Moeling, the U.S. delegate, said, adding that the U.S. “will consider further actions as necessary.” The U.S. has enacted multiple rounds of sanctions against Belarus, including as recently as two weeks ago. European Union foreign ministers also announced late last month a fresh raft of sanctions against the Belarusian government, this time targeting 86 officials and state-owned entities, closely following Pratasevich’s arrest.EU Announces More Sanctions on Belarus European Union foreign ministers were due to announce Monday a fresh raft of sanctions against the Belarusian government, this time targeting 78 officials and at least seven state-owned entitiesSo far, Western sanctions imposed on Belarus have had little effect in persuading Lukashenko to pull back from his crackdown on dissent. Belarusian authorities have detained and tortured thousands of protesters, according to rights groups. Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
 
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LGBT campaigners in Georgia have canceled a planned Pride march after opponents attacked activists and journalists and the government and church spoke out against the event.Hundreds of violent counter-protesters took to the streets of Tbilisi against the Pride march scheduled for the evening.At least 15 journalists were attacked by mobs at different locations, including two RFE/RL reporters, while covering the Tbilisi Pride events.Videos showed anti-LGBT groups waving Georgian flags scaling the Tbilisi Pride headquarters, tearing town pride flags, and ransacking the office.In a statement announcing the march had been called off, Tbilisi Pride accused the government and church of emboldening a “huge wave of hate” against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community and failing to protect citizens’ rights.Earlier on July 5, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said it was inappropriate to hold a Pride march, arguing that it would create confrontation and was “unacceptable for a large segment of the Georgian society.”He also claimed that the “radical opposition” led by exiled former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement was behind the march and sought to create “unrest.”The Georgian Orthodox Church had also called on supporters to gather against the Pride march. Videos of the mobs showed some priests joining the protests.Opponents of the march push a man as they block off the capital’s main avenue to an LGBT march in Tbilisi, Georgia, July 5, 2021.Tbilisi Pride organizers said that although they could not go out “in a street full of violence” supported by the government and church, they would continue to advocate for LGBT rights.
“We would like to tell the supporters clearly that the fight for dignity will continue, this is an indispensable process that despite the hate groups, the Patriarchate and the government’s resistance, will not stop,” they said.Condemning the violence, the U.S. and EU diplomatic missions in Georgia, as well as the embassies of 16 other countries, issued a joint statement calling on the Georgian government to protect people’s constitutional right to gather peacefully.”We condemn today’s violent attacks on the civic activists, community members, and journalists, as well as the failure of the government leaders and religious officials to condemn this violence,” the joint statement said. Rights groups also condemned the violence and accused the government of supporting hate groups.”Violent far-right crowds supported by Church & emboldened by incredibly irresponsible statement of PM @GharibashviliGe gathered in Tbilisi center to prevent Pride March, attacking journalists & breaking into Pride office,” wrote Giorgi Gogia, the associate director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch. 
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Euro zone businesses expanded activity at the fastest rate in 15 years in June as the easing of more coronavirus restrictions brought life back to the bloc’s dominant service industry, a survey showed on Monday.
 
But that surge in growth has come at a cost as inflationary pressures mounted due to labor shortages and disruptions to supply chains caused by the pandemic.
 
IHS Markit’s final composite Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), seen as a good gauge of economic health, jumped to 59.5 last month from May’s 57.1, its highest level since June 2006.
 
That was ahead of the 59.2 “flash” estimate and well above the 50 mark separating growth from contraction.
 
“The index was at its 15-year high, confirming that the recovery in bloc’s economy is well underway. At the same time, backlogs and producer price pressures show no signs of abating,” said Mateusz Urban at Oxford Economics.
 
“The services PMI sub-index posted an increase. This indicated that the sector has benefited from easing of restrictions and increased consumer optimism on the back of advancing vaccination campaign.
 
An acceleration in vaccination programs on the continent has meant governments have allowed more of the services industry to re-open and the sector’s PMI soared to its highest reading since July 2007.
 
Activity in Germany’s service industry grew in June at its fastest pace since March 2011 while in France the sector boomed following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
 
Meanwhile, in Britain – outside the euro zone and the European Union – the post-lockdown bounce-back for services firms eased only slightly in June but price pressures jumped by the most on record.
 
World stocks clung close to record highs on Monday as worries about the Delta variant of COVID-19 offset the positive sentiment from surging euro zone business activity.
 Price riseA PMI covering euro zone manufacturers, released last week, showed factory activity expanded at its fastest pace on record in June but that they faced the steepest rise in raw materials costs in well over two decades.
 
Those inflationary pressures were also felt by the services industry and the composite input prices index bounced to the highest in nearly 21 years.
 
Although inflation risks are skewed to the upside the European Central Bank was expected to maintain its loose monetary policy and look through higher inflation expectations for a while before it acts, a Reuters poll found last month.
 
With demand surging, and amid hopes of further easing of restrictions leading to a more normal way of life, optimism about the coming year improved. The services business expectations index climbed to 72.7 from 71.2, its highest since August 2000.
 
Investor morale in the euro zone rose for the fifth month in a row in July, its highest level since February 2018, lifted by reopening restaurants and retailers as well as tourism as coronavirus cases fall, another survey showed on Monday.  
  
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Pope Francis was spending his first morning convalescing on Monday in a Rome hospital following intestinal surgery under general anesthesia and reportedly doing well. The Vatican has given scant details about the operation Sunday evening in Gemelli Polyclinic, a major Catholic hospital in the Italian capital.An Italian cardinal told reporters he had been informed that the pope was doing well. “Our prayer and our closeness are very great,” Cardinal Enrico Feroci said at Rome’s airport where he was catching a flight. The Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying that he had heard earlier in the morning from another cardinal, Angelo De Donatis, “and he told me that the pope is well.” De Donatis is the vicar of the Rome diocese.Francis is staying in special, 10th floor suite that the hospital keeps available for use by a pontiff, after Pope John Paul II stayed there several times for various medical problems.He is expected to stay hospitalized for several days.Twice daily updates on Pope Francis’ condition are expected to be issued by the Vatican, with the first coming later Monday morning.The Vatican said late Sunday that Francis, 84, responded well to the surgery on the lower part of his colon.But it didn’t say just what the surgery entailed or how long it lasted.Francis had developed a diverticular stenosis, or narrowing, of the sigmoid portion of the large intestine.The Vatican has said the surgery was planned, although it only announced the hospitalization after Francis had checked into Gemelli.Doctors not connected to the pope’s hospitalization have said it is common to perform a re-sectioning of the affected part of the bowel in such cases.Get-well messages continued to arrive for the pope. Italian Premier Mario Draghi’s office said the leader “expresses affectionate wishes for a rapid convalescence and quick healing.”
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From scanning residents’ faces to let them into their building to spotting police suspects in a crowd, the rise of facial recognition is accompanied by a growing chorus of concern about unethical uses of the technology.A report published on Monday by U.S.-based researchers showing that Russian facial recognition companies have built tools to detect a person’s race has raised fears among digital rights groups, who describe the technology as “purpose-made for discrimination.”Developer guides and code examples unearthed by video surveillance research firm IPVM show software advertised by four of Russia’s biggest facial analytics firms can use artificial intelligence (AI) to classify faces based on their perceived ethnicity or race.There is no indication yet that Russian police have targeted minorities using the software developed by the firms — AxxonSoft, Tevian, VisionLabs and NtechLab — whose products are sold to authorities and businesses in the country and abroad.But Moscow-based AxxonSoft said the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s enquiry prompted it to disable its ethnicity analytics feature, saying in an emailed response it was not interested “in promoting any technologies that could be a basis for ethnic segregation.”The IPVM findings — seen exclusively by the Thomson Reuters Foundation — have sparked concern among civil rights groups, who say racial profiling is common in the country and note that authorities have already used AI to identify and detain anti-government protesters.“The findings underline the ugly racism baked into these systems,” said Edin Omanovic, advocacy director at Privacy International, a rights charity based in London.“Far from being benign security tools which can be abused, such tools are deeply rooted in some of humanity’s most destructive ideas and purpose-made for discrimination.”The Russian interior ministry and NtechLab did not reply to requests for comment.The other three companies expressed skepticism about their technology’s current capacity to enable abuse, but said they are aware of ethical concerns related to its use.Vadim Konushin, CEO of Tevian, also known as Video Analysis Technologies, denied current uses of its tool by police could entrench discrimination, and VisionLabs said its ethnicity analytics software was developed for internal research purposes only.Ethnicity analytics  Race detection is part of a broadening range of analytics offered by facial recognition companies that allow clients to detect physical features like hair color and facial expressions, and deduce information such as a person’s age, gender and emotions.The software developed by AxxonSoft, Moscow-based Tevian and VisionLabs, a Russia-founded firm headquartered in the Netherlands, all categorize people walking past their cameras into roughly the same groups: Asian, Black, white and Indian.The categories for Axxonsoft’s Face Intellect tool included the outdated and offensive terms “Mongoloid” and “Negroid,” which the company put down to a translation error. The terms have now been removed from the company literature.NtechLab, which is partially funded and owned by the Russian government, lists “race” among the features its software can detect.The findings come as facial recognition firms are feeling increased pressure across the globe over the technology’s potential to undermine human rights and civil liberties.In June, a group of 50 investors managing more than $4.5 trillion in assets urged companies to make sure their facial recognition products are developed and used in an ethical way.That same month, more than 170 rights groups signed an open letter calling for a global ban on the use of facial recognition and remote biometric recognition tools that enable mass and discriminatory targeted surveillance.While ethnicity analytics are developed by dozens of firms worldwide — most prominently in China — Russian companies have a significant presence in the facial recognition market, with reported revenues of up to $40 million and expansion abroad, according to IPVM.Rights removed  The potential for facial recognition technology to cause harm has come to the fore in China, where AI firms have developed tools that can detect, track and monitor Muslim minority Uyghurs, said Matt Mahmoudi, AI and human rights researcher at Amnesty International.United Nations officials have said China is transforming the Xinjiang region, where many Uyghurs live, into a “massive internment camp,” with the tracing tech seen by rights groups as key to the crackdown.The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., has said cameras operating in public places in Xinjiang did not “target any specific ethnicity” and authorities have said the camps in the region provide vocational training and help fight extremism.In Russia, where rights groups say migrants, particularly from Central Asia, are often subjected to racial profiling, arbitrary detentions and violence, authorities’ potential use of race-detection was worrying, said Mahmoudi.“Minorities who might have been equated with a level of deviance or criminality may fall subject to having their rights, for example their freedom to assemble, removed as a result of the extensive usage of this technology,” he said.A spokesperson for Moscow’s Department of Technology, which manages the city’s surveillance system, said via email that video analytics were used to improve safety and find offenders.They did not reply to questions on race detection software, only saying the city uses algorithms from various independent developers.‘Frightful’ future   AxxonSoft, which is known as ITV in Russia, and Tevian said law enforcement agencies used their products for criminal investigations, usually to find suspects based on descriptions.NtechLab’s website says its FindFace software underpins Moscow’s facial recognition system, which authorities say has helped cut crime and enforce coronavirus lockdown restrictions.Some of the Russian firms said they were aware of how their tech could be used to lead to discrimination.Anton Nazarkin, global sales director at VisionLabs, said that while the tool was marketed on the firm’s website, the company has never licensed it because of ethical and legal concerns, as it might contravene European data protection laws.Azret Teberdiev, head of marketing for AxxonSoft, whose website says it has more than 2 million cameras installed worldwide, said ethnicity analytics were included in its product “inadvertently” when integrating third-party software.The company has pledged to disable the feature after being contacted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.“We consider such functionality as not aligning with the ethical standards of our company,” Teberdiev said.Tevian’s Konushin said while facial recognition technology is still too rudimentary to target specific ethnic minority groups, its potential is worrisome.“What frightens (me) the most is a theoretical use case, when all people are automatically being racially profiled, and law enforcement officers are signalled to check up on ethnic minorities,” he said.“If algorithms improve a lot, it could theoretically become possible — which is frightful.”
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A strong explosion shook the Caspian Sea area where Azerbaijan has extensive offshore oil and gas fields and a column of fire rose late Sunday, but the state oil company said none of its platforms were damaged.  The cause of the blast was not immediately determined, but state oil company SOCAR said preliminary information indicated it was a mud volcano.The Caspian Sea has a high concentration of such volcanoes, which spew both mud and flammable gas.  SOCAR spokesman Ibrahim Ahmadov was quoted by the Azerbaijani news agency APA as saying the blast took place about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Umid gas field, which is 75 kilometers (45 miles) off the coast of the capital, Baku.
 
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A car with wings recently completed a test flight in Slovakia. Its designers say the successful journey brings us one step closer to flying cars, but experts aren’t so sure that’s happening any time soon. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.Produced by:  Arash Arabasadi
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The Vatican says Pope Francis has gone to a Rome hospital for scheduled surgery for a stenosis, or restriction, of the large intestine. The brief announcement Sunday afternoon didn’t say when the surgery would be performed but it said there would be announcement when the surgery is complete. Just three hours earlier, Francis had cheerfully greeted the public in St. Peter’s Square in keeping with a Sunday tradition and told them he will go to Hungary and Slovakia in September. A week earlier, Francis, 84, had used the same traditional appearance to ask the public for special prayers for the pope, which, in hindsight might have been hinting at the planned surgery at Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic. 
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Four people were found dead as a huge fire raged for a second day in Cyprus, razing tracts of forest in a blaze one official called the worst on record.The blaze, fanned by strong winds, affected at least 10 communities over an area of 50 square kilometers in the foothills of the Troodos mountain range, an area of pine forest and densely vegetated shrubland.The victims, thought to be Egyptian nationals, were found dead close to the community of Odou, a mountainous community north of the cities of Limassol and Larnaca.”All indications point to it being the four persons who were missing since yesterday,” Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said.The EU’s executive, the European Commission, said firefighting planes had departed from Greece to battle the fire and Italy was also planning to deploy aerial firefighters.The EU’s emergency Copernicus satellite was also activated to provide damage assessment maps of the affected areas, the Commission said in a statement.”It is the worst forest fire in the history of Cyprus,” Forestries Department Director Charalambos Alexandrou told Cyprus’s Omega TV.Attempts were being made to prevent the blaze from crossing the mountains and stop it before reaching Machairas, a pine forestland and one of the highest peaks in Cyprus.The cause of the fire, which started around midday on Saturday, was unclear. Cyprus experiences high temperatures in the summer months, with temperatures in recent days exceeding 40 Celsius. Police said they were questioning a 67-year-old person in connection with the blaze. 
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The European Union on Saturday deployed aerial assistance to help Cyprus contain a huge forest fire raging north of the cities of Limassol and Larnaca, a blaze one official called the worst on record.The blaze, fanned by strong winds, affected at least six communities in the foothills of the Troodos mountain range, an area of pine forest and densely vegetated shrubland.The EU’s executive body, the European Commission, said firefighting planes had departed from Greece to battle the fire and Italy was also planning to deploy aerial firefighters.The EU’s emergency Copernicus satellite was also activated to provide damage assessment maps of the affected areas, the Commission said in a statement.”It is the worst forest fire in the history of Cyprus,” Forestries Department Director Charalambos Alexandrou told Cyprus’s Omega TV.Attempts were being made to prevent the blaze from crossing the mountains and stop it before reaching Machairas, a pine forestland and one of the highest peaks in Cyprus.Alexandrou said the perimeter of the fire was “at least 40 kilometers.”Dozens of properties were damaged, but no injuries were reported. There were widespread power cuts in the area. Plumes of smoke were visible in the capital Nicosia, some 75 kilometers away.Officials said that in addition to Greece’s assistance with two aircraft, help was also expected from Israel.”This is a very difficult day for Cyprus. All of the state’s mechanisms are in gear, and the priority is for no loss of life,” Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades tweeted.Israel accepted Nicosia’s plea for help, a statement from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, and will send firefighting aircraft to Cyprus on Sunday.The cause of the fire, which started around midday, was unclear. Cyprus has experienced a heatwave this week, with temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius. Police said they were questioning a 67-year-old person in connection with the blaze.”It passed through like a whirlwind, it destroyed everything,” said Vassos Vassiliou, the community leader of Arakapas, one of the communities affected.
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A Vatican judge on Saturday indicted 10 people, including a once-powerful cardinal, on charges including embezzlement, abuse of office, extortion and fraud in connection with the Secretariat of State’s 350 million-euro investment in a London real estate venture.The president of the Vatican’s criminal tribunal, Giuseppe Pignatone, set July 27 as the trial date, though lawyers for some defendants questioned how they could prepare for trial so soon given they hadn’t yet formally received the indictment.The 487-page indictment request was issued following a sprawling, two-year investigation into how the Secretariat of State managed its vast asset portfolio, much of which is funded by donations from the faithful. The scandal over its multimillion-dollar losses has resulted in a sharp reduction in donations and prompted Pope Francis to strip the office of its ability to manage the money.Five former Vatican officials, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu and two officials from the Secretariat of State, were indicted, as well as the Italian businessmen who handled the investment.Vatican prosecutors accuse the main suspects of bilking millions of euros from the Holy See in fees, bad investments and other losses related to financial dealings that were funded in large part by Peter’s Pence donations to the pope for works of charity. The suspects have denied wrongdoing.One of the main suspects, Italian broker Gianluigi Torzi, is accused of having extorted the Vatican of 15 million euros to turn over ownership of the London building in late 2018. Torzi had been retained by the Vatican to help it acquire full ownership of the building from another indicted money manager who had handled the initial investment in 2013, but lost millions in what the Vatican says were speculative, imprudent deals.Vatican prosecutors allege Torzi inserted a last-minute clause into the contract giving him full voting rights in the deal.The Vatican hierarchy, however, signed off on the contract, with both the pope’s No. 2, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and his deputy approving it. Neither was indicted. In addition, Francis himself was aware of the deal and Torzi’s involvement in it.Vatican prosecutors say the Vatican hierarchy was hoodwinked by Torzi and aided in part by an Italian lawyer — who was also indicted Saturday — into agreeing to the terms. The Secretariat of State intends to declare itself an injured party in the case.Torzi has denied the charges and said the accusations were due to a misunderstanding. He is currently in London pending an extradition request by Italian authorities, who are seeking to prosecute him on other financial charges. His representatives said they had no immediate comment Saturday since they hadn’t yet seen the indictment.Cardinal indictedAlso indicted was a onetime papal contender and Holy See official, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who helped engineer the initial London investment when he was chief of staff in the Secretariat of State.Francis fired him as the Vatican’s saint-making chief last year, apparently in connection with a separate issue: Becciu’s 100,000-euro donation of Holy See funds to a diocesan charity run by his brother.Becciu had originally not been part of the London investigation but was included after it appeared that he was behind the proposal to buy the building, prosecutors say, alleging that he also interfered in the investigation.In a statement Saturday issued by his lawyers, Becciu insisted on the “absolute falsity” of the accusations and denounced what he said was “unparalleled media pillory” against him in the Italian press.”I am the victim of a plot hatched against me. And I have been waiting for a long time to know any accusations against me, to allow myself to promptly deny them and prove to the world my absolute innocence,” he said.One of Becciu’s proteges, self-styled intelligence analyst Cecilia Marogna, was indicted on separate embezzlement charges. Becciu had hired Marogna as an external consultant after she reached out to him in 2015 with concerns about security at Vatican embassies in global hot spots. Becciu authorized hundreds of thousands of euros of Holy See funds to her to free Catholic priests and nuns held hostage in Africa, according to WhatsApp messages reprinted by Italian media.Her Slovenian-based holding company, which received the funds, was among the four companies also ordered to stand trial.Marogna says the money was compensation for legitimate intelligence work and reimbursements. Prosecutors say she spent the money on luxury purchases that were incompatible with the humanitarian scope of her company.In a statement Saturday, her legal team said Marogna had been prepared for months to “provide a full accounting of her work and fears nothing about the accusations made against her.”Also indicted were the former top two officials in the Vatican’s financial watchdog agency, for alleged abuse of office. Prosecutors say by failing to stop the Torzi deal, they performed a “decisive function” in letting it play out.The lawyer for the former office director, Tommaso di Ruzza, said he had only seen the Vatican press statement about the allegations but insisted that his client “has always acted in the most scrupulous respect of the law and his office duties, in the exclusive interest of the Holy See.”The former head of the office, Rene Bruelhart, defended his work and said his indictment was a “procedural blunder that will be immediately clarified by the organs of Vatican justice as soon as the defense will be able to exercise its rights.”A former Secretariat of State official, Monsignor Mauro Carlino, expressed shock at his indictment on alleged extortion and abuse of office charges, saying his only involvement in the deal was after he was ordered by his superiors to negotiate Torzi down from a 20 million-euro fee to 15 million euros.”It seems incomprehensible that a worthy act … that brought him no personal advantage and had on the contrary provided a significant savings for the Secretariat of State could lead to an indictment,” said a statement from his lawyer, Salvino Mondello.
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Ukrainian authorities found themselves buried in controversy Friday after official pictures showed women soldiers practicing for a parade in heels.Ukraine is preparing to stage a military parade next month to mark 30 years of independence following the Soviet Union’s breakup, and the defense ministry released photographs of fatigue-clad women soldiers marching in mid-heel black pumps.”Today, for the first time, training takes place in heeled shoes,” cadet Ivanna Medvid was quoted as saying by the defense ministry’s information site ArmiaInform.”It is slightly harder than in army boots, but we are trying,” Medvid added in comments released on Thursday.The choice of footwear sparked a torrent of criticism on social media and in parliament, and led to accusations that women soldiers had been sexualized.”The story of a parade in heels is a real disgrace,” commentator Vitaly Portnikov said on Facebook, arguing that some Ukrainian officials had a “medieval” mindset.Another commentator, Maria Shapranova, accused the defense ministry of “sexism and misogyny.””High heels is a mockery of women imposed by the beauty industry,” she fumed.Several Ukrainian lawmakers close to Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko showed up in parliament with pairs of shoes and encouraged the defense minister to wear high heels to the parade.”It is hard to imagine a more idiotic, harmful idea,” said Inna Sovsun, a member of the Golos party, pointing to health risks.She also said that Ukraine’s women soldiers — like men — were risking their lives and “do not deserve to be mocked”.Ukraine has been battling Russian-backed separatists in the country’s industrial east, in a conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014.Olena Kondratyuk, deputy speaker of the legislature said authorities should publicly apologize for “humiliating” women and conduct an enquiry. Kondratyuk said that more than 13,500 women had fought in the current conflict.More than 31,000 women now serve in the Ukrainian armed forces, including more than 4,000 of whom are officers.
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One of Sweden’s biggest supermarket chains said Saturday it had to temporarily close around 800 stores nationwide after a cyberattack blocked access to its checkouts.”One of our subcontractors was hit by a digital attack, and that’s why our checkouts aren’t working any more,” Coop Sweden, which accounts for around 20 percent of the sector, said in a statement.”We regret the situation and will do all we can to reopen swiftly,” the cooperative added.Coop Sweden did not name the subcontractor or reveal the hacking method used against it beginning on Friday evening.But the attack comes as a wave of ransomware attacks has struck worldwide, especially in the United States.Ransomware attacks typically involve locking away data in systems using encryption, making companies pay to regain access.Last year, hackers extorted at least $18 billion using such software, according to security firm Emsisoft.US IT company Kaseya on Friday urged customers to shut down servers running its VSA platform after dozens were hit with ransomware.In recent weeks, such attacks have hit oil pipelines, health services and major firms, and made it onto the agenda of US President Joe Biden’s June meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
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French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is facing stinging criticism for making her party too mainstream, dulling its extremist edge, and ignoring grassroots members, with voices from inside and outside warning this could cost her votes in next year’s presidential race.The rumblings grew louder after the National Rally’s failure a week ago in regional elections and come just ahead of this weekend’s party congress.Le Pen is the anti-immigration party’s unquestioned boss, and her fortunes aren’t expected to change at the two-day event in the southwestern town of Perpignan, hosted by local Mayor Louis Aliot — Le Pen’s former companion and, above all, the party’s top performer in last year’s municipal elections. But there could be an uncomfortable reckoning, just as Le Pen is trying to inject new dynamism into the National Rally.Critics say Le Pen has erased her party’s anti-establishment signature by trying to make it more palatable to the mainstream right. As part of the strategy, she softened the edges and strove to remove the stigma of racism and antisemitism that clung to the party after decades under her now-ostracized father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. She even changed the name from National Front, as it was called under her father, who co-founded the party in 1972 and led it for four decades.“The policy of adapting, of rapprochement with power, even with the ordinary right, was severely sanctioned,” said Jean-Marie Le Pen. “(That) was a political error and translates into an electoral failure, and perhaps electoral failures,” he added, referring to the regional election result and the 2022 presidential vote.The defiant patriarch, now 93, was expelled in the effort to boost the party’s respectability, but his criticism reflects that of more moderate members who say his daughter has muddled the message.Her goal is to reach the runoff in the presidential race in 10 months with greater success than in 2017, when she reached the final round but lost to centrist Emmanuel Macron.National Rally candidates — including several who originally hailed from the mainstream right — failed in all 12 French regions during elections last Sunday marked by record-high abstention with only one in three voters casting ballots. Polls had suggested the party, which has never headed a region, would be victorious in at least one. Instead, it lost nearly a third of its regional councilors, in voting regarded as critical to planting local roots needed for the presidential race — a task that some say has been neglected.“It’s local elections that are the launch pad for the rocket” that could take Marine Le Pen to the presidential palace, Romain Lopez, mayor of the small southwest town of Moissac, said in an interview. “Today, we look like eternal seconds. That can … demobilize the National Rally electorate for the presidential elections.”Some local representatives have resigned in disgust since the regional elections defeat, among them the delegate for the southern Herault area, Bruno Lerognon.’Losing strategy’In a bitter letter to Le Pen, posted on Facebook, Lerognon blasted his boss’ strategy to lure voters from other parties as “absurd.” He said members of the party’s local federation were “odiously treated” — removed from running in the regional elections in favor of outsiders. Cronyism had “rotted” the local far-right scene, he wrote, alluding to long-standing criticism of power clans within the National Rally whose voices are decisive. Le Pen replaced him a day later.In western France, all four members of a small local federation resigned between rounds of the regional elections. None of the four was represented on local electoral lists — “pushed aside,” as they claimed, by higher-ups elsewhere. They bemoaned a “losing strategy” born at the Lille party congress in 2018, when Le Pen first proposed changing the party’s name and severed remaining ties with her father.A party figure with a national reputation, European Parliament lawmaker Gilbert Collard, has criticized the strategy of opening up as “a trap.” He said he won’t attend the congress.Lopez, the mayor of Moissac, will be there, hoping that he and others with complaints will be heard.Lopez, 31, is a proponent of Le Pen’s outreach to other parties and credits his own broad appeal to voters for his election last year, in an upset for the previously leftist town.But the party hierarchy is disconnected from its scarce, albeit vital local bases, Lopez said. National officials treat local representatives like children “and impose everything, how to communicate, build a local campaign,” Lopez said. “And by imposing everything from the top, you have a national strategy … disconnected from the reality of each town or region.”He is unsure whether the party will give local officials like himself speaking time, beyond his five minutes at a roundtable, but hopes to be heard.“When you’re in self-satisfaction, when you refuse to look at imperfections, you go straight into the wall,” he said. 
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The U.S. government is aware of reports that Belarus has closed its border with neighboring Ukraine, a senior administration official said on Friday, vowing that Washington would continue to hold the government of President Alexander Lukashenko accountable for its actions.”It appears the Lukashenko regime is once again seeking to deflect attention away from its campaign of repression against its people,” the official said. “We will continue to stand with the Belarusan people and hold the regime accountable.”Lukashenko on Friday ordered the full closure of the country’s border with Ukraine, seeking to block what he called an inflow of weapons to coup-plotters detected by his security services, according to the BelTA state news agency.Washington this week banned ticket sales for air travel to and from Belarus, acting after Minsk forced a Ryanair flight to land and arrested a dissident journalist aboard.It was not immediately clear what further actions might be taken in response to Lukashenko’s harsh crackdown against months of pro-democracy protests over his alleged rigging of an August 2020 election. The longtime ruler denies election fraud.
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The United Nations’ political chief urged Tigrayan forces in northern Ethiopia on Friday to “immediately and completely” endorse a cease-fire declared by the government so that food aid can reach a growing number of starving people in the embattled region.”The cease-fire announcement provides an opportunity that all parties to the conflict, including the TPLF, must seize and build upon,” Rosemary DiCarlo said, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.”As of today, the TDF has yet to agree to the cease-fire,” she said, referring to the Tigray Defense Forces, the group’s fighters.The U.N. appealed for calm so aid workers could reach starving people, particularly in remote areas.Hunger crisis has worsenedActing humanitarian chief Ramesh Rajasingham said that in the two weeks since he had last briefed council members on the food crisis, it has “worsened dramatically.” During that briefing, he said 350,000 people were in faminelike conditions.”More than 400,000 people are estimated to have crossed the threshold into famine, and another 1.8 million people are on the brink of famine,” he said Friday. “Some are suggesting that the numbers are even higher.”Overall, of the 6 million people who live in Tigray, the U.N. says 5.2 million need some level of food assistance. In the past two months, it has reached about 3.7 million of them.Rajasingham said it is urgent to start reaching people as the rainy season takes hold, food supplies become depleted, and risks grow from flooding and waterborne diseases.”The lives of many of these people depend on our ability to reach them with food, medicine, nutrition supplies and other humanitarian assistance,” he said. “And we need to reach them now. Not next week. Now.”He appealed to armed actors to provide guarantees for safe passage along roads for aid workers and supplies in and out of Tigray, as well as to remote areas of the region, and for aid flights to resume.On Monday, the Ethiopian government announced an immediate unilateral humanitarian cease-fire after nearly eight months of fighting with Tigrayan forces. Tigrayan fighters reclaimed control of the regional capital Mekelle after Ethiopian government forces withdrew.”The government must now demonstrate that it truly intends to use the cease-fire to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Tigray,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.She and several other council members called for a permanent cease-fire, inclusive dialogue and reconciliation, unhindered and safe access for humanitarians, and accountability for atrocities committed by all sides in the conflict.Friday’s meeting was the Security Council’s first public discussion of the situation, following six closed-door meetings since hostilities erupted in November.Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said holding an open session could further destabilize the country and politically weaken the Ethiopian government.”The situation in Tigray must remain a domestic issue of Ethiopia, and we believe interference by the Security Council in solving it is counterproductive,” he said.But Ireland’s envoy, who has been active in bringing the issue to the council, disagreed, saying that “it is clear a catastrophe is unfolding” and council action is overdue.”The council’s voice matters on this issue,” Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason said. “Today, finally, we meet publicly, and all council members have an opportunity to send a clear message to the parties on the ground: This conflict must end. Humanitarian needs must be urgently addressed.”The three African members of the council — Kenya, Niger and Tunisia — along with the Caribbean nation St. Vincent and the Grenadines, called on the council to act responsibly and to listen to Africa when it comes to African issues.”In our view, dialogue is strength, and it is at the core of the African identity,” Kenyan Ambassador Martin Kimani said on behalf of the group. “Embrace it and save the precious lives of the people of Tigray to protect your national peace and once again be an anchor of regional security.”Ethiopia’s envoy Taye Atske-Selassie told the council his government had made a “difficult political decision” to suspend the military operation in favor of protecting the state. But now it believes it has created the conditions for unhindered humanitarian assistance and for farmers to plant this season.Fighting between the Ethiopian federal government and the TPLF broke out in November, leaving thousands of civilians dead and forcing more than 2 million people from their homes. Some 60,000 refugees crossed to neighboring Sudan.Troops from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s neighbor to the north, and Amhara, a neighboring region to the south of Tigray, also entered the conflict in support of the Ethiopian government.  The U.N. said Friday that the Eritreans had withdrawn to the border and the Amhara regional force remained in place despite advances by the Tigrayan forces. 
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A ransomware attack paralyzed the networks of at least 200 U.S. companies on Friday, according to a cybersecurity researcher whose company was responding to the incident. The REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attack, said John Hammond of the security firm Huntress Labs. He said the criminals targeted a software supplier called Kaseya, using its network management package as a conduit to spread the ransomware through cloud service providers. Other researchers agreed with Hammond’s assessment. “Kaseya handles large enterprise all the way to small businesses globally, so ultimately, [this] has the potential to spread to any size or scale business,” Hammond said in a direct message on Twitter. “This is a colossal and devastating supply chain attack.” Such cyberattacks typically infiltrate widely used software and spread malware as it updates automatically. It was not immediately clear how many Kaseya customers might be affected or who they might be. Kaseya urged customers in a statement on its website to immediately shut down servers running the affected software. It said the attack was limited to a “small number” of its customers. Brett Callow, a ransomware expert at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, said he was unaware of any previous ransomware supply-chain attack on this scale. There have been others, but they were fairly minor, he said. “This is SolarWinds with ransomware,” he said. He was referring to a Russian cyberespionage hacking campaign discovered in December that spread by infecting network management software to infiltrate U.S. federal agencies and scores of corporations. Cybersecurity researcher Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec, said he was already working with six companies hit by the ransomware. It’s no accident that this happened before the Fourth of July weekend, when IT staffing is generally thin, he added. “There’s zero doubt in my mind that the timing here was intentional,” he said. Hammond of Huntress said he was aware of four managed-services providers — companies that host IT infrastructure for multiple customers — being hit by the ransomware, which encrypts networks until the victims pay off attackers. He said thousand of computers were hit. “We currently have three Huntress partners who are impacted with roughly 200 businesses that have been encrypted,” Hammond said. Hammond wrote on Twitter: “Based on everything we are seeing right now, we strongly believe this [is] REvil/Sodinikibi.” The FBI linked the same ransomware provider to a May attack on JBS SA, a major global meat processor. The White House and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not immediately return messages seeking comment. 
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The U.N. Security Council is set to hold its first public discussion of the situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region on Friday, as humanitarian groups attempt to resume and expand aid deliveries to millions of people in dire need in the embattled area.The 15-nation Security Council will meet later Friday (7pm GMT) to be briefed on developments by the U.N.’s department of political and peacebuilding affairs and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ethiopia’s envoy is also expected to participate in the meeting.On Monday, the Ethiopian government announced an immediate, unilateral cease-fire, after nearly eight months of fighting with Tigrayan forces. Tigrayan forces reclaimed control of Mekelle after Ethiopian government forces withdrew.The French ambassador to the United Nations Nicolas de Riviere talks to reporters before a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Jan. 3, 2020.“It’s a significant change, so it may be the beginning of a different phase,” said France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere, who is president of the council this month.The U.N. said following the truce that an unpredictable calm had taken hold in major towns including the regional capital Mekelle, as well as Adigrat, Adwa, Axum and Shire. There were unconfirmed reports of clashes in the southern and northwestern zones. “Electricity and telecommunications are still cut off throughout the region,” Eri Kaneko, a U.N. spokesperson, told reporters on Thursday. “There are no flights or road transportation in or out of the region.”Getting aid inMeanwhile, aid organizations trying to reach millions of people in dire need of food aid have had their operations blocked or halted by fighting and armed actors who have not allowed them to pass. The U.N. said two critical bridges over the Tekeze river connecting the Western Zone and the rest of Tigray were destroyed on Thursday and were unusable.In a situation report Friday, the U.N. humanitarian office said its partners “are currently assessing the implications of recent events with the view of resuming relief operations as soon as possible, particularly in hard-to-reach areas that would have become more accessible.”Some six million people live in the Tigray region. The United Nations says more than five million of them are in need of emergency food assistance, and another 350,000 are coping with faminelike conditions after of eight months of fighting.On Tuesday, USAID official Sarah Charles told U.S. lawmakers that the number of people in faminelike conditions is closer to one million, and warned that without scaled-up aid deliveries, “we will likely see widespread famine in Ethiopia this year.” Despite the continuing challenges, some limited assistance has gotten through.The U.N. said as of June 22 it had reached about 3.7 million people in Tigray with food aid, out of a targeted 5.2 million.   For its part, the World Food Program said Friday it has resumed operations in Tigray after suspending them due to fighting on June 24. On Thursday the food agency reached 13,000 displaced people in two areas, many of whom are suffering from malnutrition. WFP hopes to reach 30,000 more people in northwest Tigray in the coming two days.“We have the teams on ground, trucks loaded and ready to go to meet the catastrophic food needs in the region,” said Tommy Thompson, WFP’s Emergency Coordinator in Mekelle. “What we need now is free, unfettered access and secure passage guaranteed by all parties to the conflict so we can deliver food safely.”Overall, WFP says it is targeting 2.1 million people with emergency food assistance in the northwestern and southern zones of Tigray. So far aid has reached 1.7 million people in two rounds of deliveries.The United Nations has appealed for $854 million to assist 5.2 million people until the end of this year, with almost $200 million needed before the end of July.Fighting between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) broke out in November, leaving thousands of civilians dead and forcing more than 2 million people from their homes.Troops from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s neighbor to the north, and Amhara, a neighboring region to the south of Tigray, also entered the conflict in support of the Ethiopian government.  
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