Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy opened the Crimean Platform summit in Kyiv Monday to build pressure on Russia over its annexation of the Crimea territory, which is viewed as illegal by most of the world.Officials from 46 countries and blocs are taking part in the two-day summit, including representatives from each of the 30 NATO members. The U.S. delegation is headed up by Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014, following the revolution in Ukraine that saw former president and Russian ally Viktor Yanukovych ousted and the government overthrown. The annexation prompted the United States and the European Union to impose sanctions on Russia.The goal of the conference is to discuss ways of returning the Crimean Peninsula to Ukrainian government control.Speaking at the start of the conference, Zelenskiy said Crimea had turned into “a territory where most basic rights and freedoms of humans are regularly violated.”He also said the region, once a popular recreation area for Ukrainians, had become a “military base and lodgment area of Russian Federation influence on the Black Sea region.” The Ukrainian president said the occupation of Crimea casts doubt on the ability of the international community to uphold security, principles of territorial integrity and inviolability of borders. “Without restoration of confidence, any country couldn’t be sure if its territory would not be occupied,” he said.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced the summit as an “anti-Russian event.” Moscow says an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to become part of Russia in a 2014 referendum, wanting protection from what the Kremlin cast as an illegal coup in Kyiv.
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Scores of firefighters backed by water-dropping aircraft battled a forest fire that broke out early Monday on the southern part of Greece’s Evia island, less than two weeks after an inferno decimated its northern part.   The fire was burning near the village of Fygia where two neighborhoods have been evacuated and was moving toward the coastal tourist village of Marmari, where authorities were preparing boats to evacuate people if needed, according to Athens News Agency.   Forty-six firefighters were battling flames fanned by high winds — assisted by 20 fire engines, three water-dropping airplanes and two helicopters, the Greek fire brigade said.    Authorities have boats on standby off Marmari. Evia is northeast of the capital Athens.   The civil protection authorities had announced on Sunday a “very high risk” of fire for many areas of Greece on Monday.  Wildfires since July have ravaged the islands of Evia and Rhodes as well as forests to the north and southeast of Athens, and parts of the Peloponnese peninsula. Three people have died as a result of the fires. The government has blamed the disaster on the worst heatwave the country has seen in decades.   Climate scientists warn extreme weather and fierce fires will become increasingly common due to man-made global warming, heightening the need to invest in teams, equipment and policy to battle the flames. 
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Josephine Baker, the famed French American dancer, singer and actress who fought in the French resistance during WWII and later battled racism, will later this year become the first Black woman to enter France’s Pantheon mausoleum.Baker will be the sixth woman to join about 80 great national figures of French history in the Pantheon after Simone Veil, a former French minister who survived the Holocaust and fought for abortion rights, entered in 2018.Baker will be honored on November 30 with a memorial plaque, one of her children, Claude Bouillon-Baker, told AFP.”Pantheonisation is built over a long period of time,” an aide to President Emmanuel Macron told AFP on Sunday, confirming a report in the Le Parisien newspaper.Jennifer Guesdon, part of a group campaigning for Baker’s induction that includes one of her sons, said they met with Macron on July 21.”When the president said yes, (it was a) great joy,” she said.The Baker family has been requesting her induction since 2013, with a petition gathering about 38,000 signatures.”She was an artist, the first Black international star, a muse of the cubists, a resistance fighter during WWII in the French army, active alongside Martin Luther King in the civil rights fight,” the petition says.The campaign has “made people discover the undertakings of Josephine Baker, who was only known to some as an international star, a great artist,” Guesdon said.But “she belongs in the Pantheon because she was a resistance fighter,” she added.From Missouri to ParisBaker, who was born in Missouri in 1906 and buried in Monaco in 1975, came from a poor background and was married twice by the age of 15. She ran away from home to join a vaudeville troupe.She quickly caught the eye of a producer who sent her to Paris, where at the age of 19 she became the star of the hugely popular “La Revue Negre,” which helped popularize jazz and African American culture in France.She became the highest-paid performer in the Paris music hall scene during the 1920s.On November 30, 1937, she married Jean Lion, allowing her to get French nationality. She would go on to divorce him and remarry twice more, adopting 12 children along the way.In 1939, she joined the French resistance, passing on information written on her musical scores.She later went on a mission to Morocco, toured the resistance movement and was appointed a lieutenant in the French air force’s female auxiliary corps.She was awarded the Croix de Guerre, a Resistance medal, and was named a Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur.”I only had one thing in mind … to help France,” she told INA archives.The Pantheon is a memorial complex for the legendary national figures in France’s history from politics, culture and science.Only the president can decide on moving personalities to the former church, whose grand columns and domed roof were inspired by the Pantheon in Rome.
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 The chaotic aftermath of Washington’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is being followed with a mix of trepidation and glee thousands of kilometers away — in Africa’s Sahel, where another foreign power, France, also vows to wind down its long-running counterinsurgency operation, at least in its present form.  As the United States continued to evacuate thousands of citizens and allies at Kabul’s airport this week, dozens of civilians and soldiers were killed in several Islamist attacks across a vast and dangerous three-border region that straddles Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. It was just another marker in a protracted fight that has killed thousands, displaced 2 million and — like Afghanistan — is considered by some as unwinnable.  FILE – French President Emmanuel Macron pays his respect in front of the flag-draped coffins of the thirteen French soldiers killed in Mali, during a ceremony at the Hotel National des Invalides in Paris, Dec. 2, 2019.If there many stark differences between America’s war in Afghanistan and France’s in the Sahel — from their size and nature to their Islamist targets — there are also haunting similarities, analysts say.  Both involve yearslong foreign involvement in countries with weak and  unstable governments.  Both operations have struggled against troop fatigue, casualties, and dwindling support at home. Both are against Islamist groups which, many say, are patiently confident they will outlast their enemy.  “If there’s any lesson to draw, it’s that indefinite military solutions aren’t sustainable,” said Bakary Sambe,  Senegal-based director of the Timbuktu Institute think tank. “Sooner or later, there’s got to be an exit,” he said.  Staying put  Unlike the U.S., France for now has no intention of withdrawing from the Sahel, a vast area below the Sahara. It will, however, soon begin decreasing its 5,100-troop Barkhane operation, the linchpin of a regional counterterrorist fight spanning five West and Central African countries.  FILE – French President Macron reacts during a joint press conference with Niger’s president in Paris, on July 9, 2021, following a video summit with leaders of G5 Sahel countries.Nor was the Sahel mentioned in French President Emmanuel Macron’s first major response to the Taliban’s swift victory. Rather, he warned against resurgent terrorism in Afghanistan and illegal migration to Europe.  Yet it may be hard to compartmentalize.   “I think the French cannot afford not to look at what’s going on in Afghanistan when preparing for the very gradual drawdown” of Barkhane forces, said University of Kent conflict expert Yvan Guichaoua.  Images of mayhem and anguish at Kabul’s airport and elsewhere “is something that certainly shocked French officials,” he said, “and maybe made them think about the circumstances in which they are going to leave.”  FILE – Taliban fighters display their flag on patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 19, 2021.Others are not so sure.  “I don’t think [the French] are drawing this kind of direct parallel,” between Afghanistan and the Sahel, said Jean-Herve Jezequel, Sahel Project director for the International Crisis Group policy group.“Maybe this is a mistake. But the French are downsizing, they’re not withdrawing. They’re still the biggest military force in the region,” he said. 
 Different — but also echoes of Afghanistan Macron announced in July France’s Barkhane operation would formally end early next year, with troops shrinking to up to half their current numbers and shifted to other anti-terrorist missions — notably forming backbone of the European Union’s fledgling Takuba force, currently aimed at helping Mali fight terrorism in the Sahel region. FILE – The France-led special operations logo for the new Barkhane Task Force Takuba, a multinational military mission in sub-Saharan Africa’s troubled Sahel region, is seen Nov. 3, 2020.Yet France’s revamped mission with its narrowed goals — counterterrorism and beefing up local forces rather than securing large tracts of territory — comes after mounting casualties, fading support at home, a spreading insurgency and growing anti-French sentiment in some Sahel nations.  Born in 2013, France’s military intervention in that region is half as old as the U.S. war in Afghanistan was, with a fraction of its scope and troop losses. Originally aimed to fight jihadist groups in Mali, it later expanded to four other vulnerable former colonies — Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania — that together now form a regional G5 Sahel counterinsurgency operation. Meanwhile, the jihadists are moving south, into parts of sub-Saharan Africa.   
While Paris pushes for greater governance and democracy — in June, Macron briefly suspended operations in Mali after its second coup in a year — the nation-building efforts seen in Afghanistan are not likely, Crisis Watch’s Jezequel said.  “It’s a failure,” he added. “But it’s a failure of the Sahel states.”  Today, some of those states, especially Mali, are watching Afghanistan’s swift unraveling with alarm, experts say, even as extremists celebrate.  The Sahel’s myriad jihadi groups lack the deep roots and experience of the Taliban, which held power in the 1990s. Yet, especially Western recognition of Afghanistan’s new rulers “will comfort the idea that the Islamist alternative is possible,” Sambe said. “It will galvanize radical Islamist groups—and that’s the fear,” he said. The European Union’s executive arm said Saturday it does not recognize the Taliban.  Moving forward For France, moving forward in the Sahel means focusing southward, where the insurgency has spread, and beefing up the Takuba Task Force. Nearly a dozen European countries, including Estonia, Italy, Denmark and non-EU-member Norway have joined or promised to take part in the military mission. But many others remain on the sidelines, including Germany. “The fear of many European countries is to commit troops and then be confronted with a fiasco or death of soldiers,” Guichaoua said.  However, he and others add, French persuasion, from raising fears of conflict-driven migration to Europe, to offering military support in other areas, appears to be working.  Not under French consideration, though, is any dialogue with extremists — an effort controversially tried with the Taliban that is earning support among some Sahel authorities, at least when it comes to homegrown groups.  “The French have considered this a red line,” Guichaoua said. “Because that would mean somewhat that French soldiers died for nothing. But it is on the agenda for Malian authorities.”  Local-level negotiations with jihadi groups have long taken place, he said — to gain access to markets, for example, or get hostages released — but not high-level ones, “and the main reason is France.” For their part, the Sahel’s extremists appear willing to wait, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Both, Guichaoua said, are convinced foreign powers will eventually leave, so time is on their side. 
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Seven people were killed near Kabul’s airport Saturday as thousands gathered in a desperate effort to leave the country as the Taliban take control, the British Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.The Taliban, after a 10-day offensive, entered the Afghanistan capital just a week ago, on August 15. Since then, the airport has been a chaotic site as thousands of people have tried to flee the country, fearing a return to the harsh interpretation of Islamic law practiced when the Taliban controlled the country 20 years ago.  “Conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to manage the situation as safely and securely as possible,” the British Defense Ministry said in a statement.FILE – Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2021.Temperatures on Saturday in Kabul reached 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit). The Associated Press reported that it wasn’t immediately clear whether those killed had been physically crushed, suffocated or suffered a fatal heart attack in the crowds.   A Sky News correspondent who was at the Kabul airport, however, said tens of thousands of Afghans turned up on Saturday with those at the front crushed against the barricades, Reuters reported. Also Saturday, U.S. citizens in Afghanistan who want to leave the country have been advised not to go to Kabul’s airport unless they have received “individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so.”  FILE – Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy leader and negotiator, and other delegation members attend the Afghan peace conference in Moscow, Russia, March 18, 2021. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool via Reuters)Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, returned to Afghanistan this week from Qatar, where he headed the group’s political office and oversaw peace negotiations with the Trump administration that culminated in the February 2020 deal that paved the way for U.S.-led allied troops to withdraw from nearly 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Biden delayed the May 1 withdrawal date that he inherited to August 31. But last week, Biden said during a national address from the White House that the U.S. may extend that deadline to evacuate Americans.   Abdullah Abdullah, coalition partner of the self-exiled President Ashraf Ghani, and former President Hamid Karzai have held repeated meetings with Taliban leaders over the past few days.     After a meeting Saturday, Abdullah said via Twitter that he and Karzai welcomed Taliban leaders at his residence.     “We exchanged views on the current security & political developments, & an inclusive political settlement for the future of the country,” Abdullah wrote.    Meanwhile, thousands of Afghans continued to swamp the Kabul airport in hopes of finding place on one of the flights the U.S. military and other countries are operating to evacuate foreign personnel and Afghans who served international forces in different capacities.    The White House said Saturday that in the last 24 hours, six U.S. military C-17s and 32 charter flights had departed the Afghan capital, evacuating about 3,800 passengers.    “Since the end of July, we have relocated approximately 22,000 people. Since August 14th, we have evacuated approximately 17,000 people,” it said.     Some information in this article came from The Associated Press, AFP and Reuters.
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For generations, residents in the north of the Greek island of Evia have made their living from the dense pine forests surrounding their villages. Tapping the ubiquitous Aleppo pines for their resin, the viscous, sticky substance the trees use to protect themselves from insects and disease, provided a key source of income for hundreds of families. But now, hardly any forest is left. A devastating wildfire, one of Greece’s most destructive single blazes in decades, rampaged across northern Evia for days earlier this month, swallowing woodland, homes and businesses and sending thousands fleeing.  The damage won’t just affect this year’s crop, resin collectors and beekeepers say, but for generations to come. “It’s all over. Everything has turned to ash,” said Christos Livas, a 48-year-old resin collector and father of four.  Resin has been used by humans since antiquity and is found today in a dizzyingly broad array of products, from paint and solvents to pharmaceuticals, plastics and cosmetics. The north of Evia, Greece’s second-largest island, accounted for around 80% of the pine resin produced in Greece, and about 70% of the pine honey, locals say.  Satellite imagery shows the wildfire destroyed most of the island’s north. The devastation is breathtaking. Tens of thousands of hectares of forests and farmland were reduced to a dystopian landscape of skeletal, blackened trees silhouetted against a smoke-filled sky. For trees to grow back to the point where resin can be extracted will take more than two decades, and probably twice as long for the production of pine honey. “In 10 years, the forest will become green again,” Livas said. “But for tapping, it will take 20, 25 years. For me, it’s all over. Even for a 30-year-old – what’s he going to do, find a job and then come back when he’s 50, 60 to tap pines? His legs won’t even hold him.” Livas walked through the still smoldering remnants of the forest on the outskirts of his mountain village of Agdines, puffs of white and grey ash rising from beneath his boots as he surveyed the damage. “This one, I remember since I was a young boy, from 15 years old,” he said, pointing to a blackened pine, the strip of peeled bark where resin had been extracted still visible. “This must have been tapped for 32, 33 years.”  Most of his livelihood has literally gone up in smoke, lost in a horrifying roar as the giant wildfire raced toward the village.  “You could hear a rumble. … It was like an earthquake,” Livas said. The flames moved fast, leaving no time to collect the thousands of plastic bags pinned to the trees to gather the precious resin. Instead, local residents turned their attention to the village, ignoring an evacuation order and staying to save their homes.  They managed. But they couldn’t save the forest. And the villagers’ anger — at the government for not sending more firefighters sooner, for ordering evacuations when they say locals could have helped fight the flames — is palpable. Livas had been extracting resin from about 3,000 trees, producing about 9-10 tons per year at 27 euro cents (32 cents) per kilogram. Of all the trees he was tapping, just one survived. He supplemented his income by farming olive trees, raising animals and occasionally logging. But there are no trees to log now, and most of the olive trees are gone, too.  “I have nowhere left. Everywhere I’ve been, everything is burnt,” he said.  With four young children to support, the eldest just 13, Livas said he’d look for new kinds of work. But with only a primary school education and unable to read or write, he seemed overwhelmed by the thought. The forest, farming, and collecting resin, which he’s been doing since he was 15, are all he’s ever known. “What will I do now?” he said, stumbling for words. “I’ll look for a job. What will I do? Do I know what to do now?” Others were even worse off, he said. Some had several family members collecting resin, gathering around 30-40 tons a year. There were entire villages in northern Evia working almost exclusively in resin collection.  Fellow villager Antonis Natsios felt the same. He started collecting resin at the age of 12, learning the technique from his father, who had learned it from his father before him.  Now 51 and with three children, two of them in college, Natsios is unsure how he’ll make ends meet. Some of his fig trees were singed but would probably survive and produce a new crop, he said, and about 20% of his olive trees remained. But of the pine trees, his main source of income, “zero. Not even a branch.” He sees few options. “Either the state, or God, if he helps. Or migration,” Natsios said. The government has vowed to compensate all those affected by the fire. But nothing can make up for the loss of the source of their livelihoods for decades to come, the residents of north Evia say.  “We’ve lost everything for the next 30-40 years,” said beekeeper Makis Balalas, 44, who relied on Evia’s forests for pine honey each year. The forest’s destruction, he said, was far worse than the loss of any beehives. “I can create new beehives,” he said. “But this that has been lost, you can’t create that again.” For Natsios, it’s the loss of the forest he grew up in that pains him the most. “It’s not the future, it’s what we see. When you’ve been living something for 50 years and now you see this thing, this charcoal…” he trails off. “Now I, who was born in this forest, I have to breathe this blackness.” 
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Thousands of Afghans, hoping for a better future, are trying to escape the country as the Taliban seize control. VOA’s Arif Aslan visited with 30 Afghan refugees whose long, perilous trek had taken them to eastern Turkey. This report is narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.Producer and camera: Arif Aslan.
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Greece has erected a 25-mile fence and installed a new surveillance system on its border with Turkey as fears mount of a surge in Afghan refugees trying to reach Europe. Greece has faced recurring refugee crises since 2015, when more than a million mainly Syrian refugees swarmed through its land and sea borders to escape conflict in their homeland. Speaking from Checkpoint One, Greece’s key border post along the country’s rugged land frontiers with Turkey, Public Order Minister Michalis Chryssochoidis sounded what he called a clear and fair warning.
 
Our borders, he said, will remain safe and inviolable. And we will not allow any indiscriminate inflow of refugees.
 
The minister’s warning sounded as he toured the checkpoint and a soaring, 25-mile, steel fence completed in recent days amid fears of a deluge of Afghan refugees fleeing for their lives after the Taliban takeover.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 10 MB540p | 13 MB720p | 26 MB1080p | 50 MBOriginal | 159 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioAfghan Refugees in Turkey Terrified at Taliban TakeoverDefense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said the Greek fence along the shallow Evros river that separates the country from Turkey is just part of a bigger plan pieced together by authorities to further shield the country against a new migration crisis.
 
We are on alert, but Greece, he said, will continue to protect itself from any threat.
 
The defense minister said special surveillance systems, including a fleet of drones and night cameras, had been installed across the new fence to watch for illegal crossings. Army bulldozers were also seen plowing across stretches of the country’s northern frontier with Bulgaria, where military trucks were unloading barbed wired to erect more fences.
 
Greece has been on the front line of Europe’s migration woes since about 1.2 million refugees from Syria streamed through in 2015, sparking the biggest migration push to the European continent since the Second World War.
 
Greece has repeatedly complained to the European Union about doing too little to support hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees trapped in the country for six years, as neighboring states and other European nations, including Germany, turned a blind eye, sealing their borders to keep them away.
 
The United Nations is now making appeals for countries in the region to not do the same to fleeing Afghanis.  But the government in Athens says it won’t sit passively.In fact, in a surprise move. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis placed an urgent telephone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday trying to drum up support and a common strategy on how to deal with a potential migration crisis in the region.
 
Details of the meeting or any decision between the two men were not released. But no sooner had the call ended than Erdogan warned Europe he too would not allow Turkey to become what he called a refugee warehouse.
 
Turkey is already hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees and more than 300,000 Afghans.
 
In Greece, meanwhile, humanitarian groups, Afghan refugees and leftist parties are now up in arms about the border fence and the government’s controversial plan of deterrence.  Those groups say the plan completely disregards human rights and the right to asylum to those fleeing danger and bloodshed.
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European Union members will step up their advocacy of open access to the disputed South China Sea, a key world trade route, despite Chinese claims to nearly all of it as they discuss the issue with Southeast Asian countries, analysts believe.The 27 EU members, such as France and Germany, hope all countries can follow United Nations maritime rules in the South China Sea to ensure consistency with other world waterways and to protect a booming seaborne trade in goods with Asia, the experts say.China claims about 90% of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, including pieces of the U.N.-prescribed exclusive economic zones of four Southeast Asian states. Chinese officials point to maritime documents dating back to dynastic times to back their claim.EU leaders met in early August with the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations for discussions that touched on the South China Sea, and the two sides are due to convene again this quarter. The EU has met with the Southeast Asian association since 1977, part of the ASEAN’s series of dialogues with other major countries and regions.ASEAN is the EU’s third-largest trading partner outside Europe, after China and the United States, with more than $221 billion in trade in goods last year.About 60% of maritime trade by volume passes through Asia and about one-third goes through the South China Sea, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development estimates. The sea is a connector between East Asia and the Indian Ocean, which puts ships on their way to Europe.“The EU … has a big stake in the Indo Pacific region and has every interest that the regional architecture remains open and rules-based,” the European side said in a statement in April.However, it continued, “current dynamics in the Indo Pacific have given rise to intense geopolitical competition, adding to increasing pressure on trade and supply chains as well as in tensions in technological, political and security areas.”Neither the EU nor any of its member countries claim sovereignty over the South China Sea. ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam call parts of the sea their own, overlapping China’s own boundary line, and Taiwan claims almost all of it.France, Germany, and non-EU member Britain issued a joint note to the United Nations almost a year ago challenging China’s claims in the sea, which they view as a potential threat to international traffic.“That’s pretty clear, they want consistency,” said Carl Thayer, Asia-specialized emeritus professor from the University of New South Wales in Australia.“Why? Because the way you can do business. It lowers the risk,” he said.Some EU positions on the South China Sea echo that of its Western ally, the United States, which regularly sends warships to the waterway as warnings to China. The EU’s website says, for example, that its members and ASEAN uphold “principles of a rules-based international order.”EU nations have stepped up their own ship movements this year as well, but experts say they’re focused more on international law than with taking a pro-U.S. position.China’s Likely Responses to European and Indian Warships in Sea it Calls its OwnChinese authorities may tail foreign vessels, protest verbally and target other countries one by one, analysts suggest If South China Sea claimants violate the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, they would open the possibility for individual countries to control European seas, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. The convention sets up exclusive economic zones for maritime states, among other provisions aimed at sharing cross-border waterways.“Their primary interest is to maintain international law, maintain open freedom of navigation rather than siding with the United States in its strategic competition with China,” Vuving said.Southeast Asian countries with claims to the South China Sea oppose Beijing’s landfilling of small islets for military use and passing its vessels through their exclusive economic zones.However, they seldom use language that enrages China, a key Southeast Asia trade partner, and the EU backs that approach to the maritime dispute, Alan Chong, associate professor at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said. Both blocs look to China for trade as well.“They are coming along to ASEAN in part because they are aware that ASEAN’s game is probably the surest and safest way of maintaining this dual policy of both engagement and constraining China,” Chong said.Even the subtle language preferred by ASEAN is “enough to put Beijing on notice,” Chong said. China will probably avoid responding publicly but privately ask around for the meaning of any communiques that come out of the EU-ASEAN dialogue, he said.
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Despite earlier reports that Turkey had dropped plans to secure Kabul’s international airport, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey is ready to talk with the Taliban about what role, if any, Turkey would play in Afghanistan.“If there is a knock on our door, we will open it for dialogue,” Erdogan said Friday.Turkey has been involved in infrastructure efforts in Afghanistan, Erdogan added, and is still interested in providing such work.Turkey is also still interested in providing security at Kabul’s airport, Erdogan said Wednesday in a television interview, despite reports by Reuters Monday that plans to secure the airport had been dropped after the Taliban takeover.“Turkey’s military presence in Afghanistan will strengthen the new administration’s hand in the international arena,” Erdogan said in the interview, adding that Turkey is in contact with all sides in Afghanistan.As a NATO member, Turkey has about 600 troops in Afghanistan, and Turkish authorities do not view their presence as a combat force.In June, Turkey proposed to guard the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul after the withdrawal of NATO forces. The United States and Turkey had negotiated the details to keep the airport open as a safe passage for diplomatic missions in Afghanistan.In July, the Taliban warned Turkey against a military presence at the airport, calling the proposal “a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and against our national interests.”Taliban Threaten Turkish Troops with ‘Jihad’ if They Stay in Afghanistan Warning comes amid fresh battlefield moves that critics say show Taliban are planning military takeover of Afghanistan in defiance of their peace pledges’New picture’Erdogan said Wednesday that a new picture to maintain security at the airport emerged after the Taliban fighters took control of the country.“Now we are making our plans according to these new realities that were formed on the field, and we are continuing our talks accordingly,” Erdogan said.Some experts argue that Turkey would guard the airport if the Taliban requested it; however, NATO and the U.S. would not subsidize such a military presence in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.“What people overlooked is that in the initial agreement, Ankara wasn’t going to fight the Taliban,” Aaron Stein, the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told VOA. “Ankara was having indirect or perhaps even direct discussions with the Taliban via Doha, via Pakistan, to basically get the Taliban’s approval to stick around. They had to balance this with the official Afghan government.” EvacuationsTurkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the daily Hurriyet that it is too early to say whether Turkey has canceled its plans to secure the airport.“We work together with the United States and other countries on evacuations and other issues. Our priority is to evacuate our citizens who want to return,” Cavusoglu said.As of August 18, Turkey has evacuated 552 citizens from Afghanistan. OppositionOn the other hand, the Turkish opposition, including the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Iyi Party, is urging the government to evacuate the Turkish soldiers from Afghanistan.“What is left from Afghanistan? Why should our troops stay there? Stop talking nonsense to please the United States and withdraw our soldiers from this swamp,” Meral Aksener, the leader of the Iyi Party, tweeted on August 16.Çıkmış hâlâ, “Türk askeri Afganistan’da kalmalı.” diyorlar.Kardeşim; Afganistan kaldı mı da askerimiz kalsın?ABD’ye şirinlik peşinde abuk sabuk konuşmayı bırakın, askerimizi derhal o bataklıktan çekin! pic.twitter.com/jHqdwP39bN— Meral Akşener (@meral_aksener) August 16, 2021The CHP and Iyi parties also voiced concerns over the government’s Afghan policy, warning that it would cause large numbers of Afghan refugees to enter Turkey.“I am saying this once again: Erdogan, you are not going to sign an agreement that would bring more refugees (to Turkey),” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of main opposition CHP, tweeted on Tuesday. The tweet came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany should work closely with Turkey on a potential Afghan refugee influx.Earlier this month, in a Twitter thread, Kilicdaroglu claimed that Erdogan had an agreement with the U.S. to accept Afghan refugees into Turkey.It is also evident why a young interpreter from the Kavakci family is allowed to take part in the meeting instead of an official interpreter. Erdogan behaved so in order to conceal his decision.— Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (@kilicdarogluk) August 3, 2021The U.S. Embassy in Turkey denied this claim on Wednesday.The U.S. Embassy wishes to state that allegations regarding an “agreement” or “deal” between President Biden and President Erdoğan regarding Afghan refugees or migrants are completely without foundation.— U.S. Embassy Turkey (@USEmbassyTurkey) August 18, 2021Erdogan described the opposition’s stance on Afghan refugees as hate speech in a televised address following a Cabinet meeting late Thursday. He said that Turkey is home to 300,000 Afghan refugees, including unregistered ones.He also criticized the European countries for staying out of the refugee problem “by harshly sealing its borders to protect the safety and well-being of its citizens.”“Turkey has no duty, responsibility, or obligation to be Europe’s refugee warehouse,” Erdogan said.Erdogan announced that Turkey had reinforced its border with Iran with law enforcement units and that a wall along the Turkey-Iran border was almost completed.An increasing number of Afghan refugees have been crossing into Turkey from Iran, prompting the rise in anti-refugee rhetoric in the country.However, Aykan Erdemir, senior director of the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish parliament, said the Erdogan government views the Afghan refugee flow as a unique opportunity “to cut various deals to extract concessions from Brussels and Washington.”“This time around, however, the domestic political costs of instrumentalizing refugees in relations with the West appear to be much higher. Amid Turkey’s economic crisis, there has been a dramatic spike in nativist and anti-refugee sentiment, including violent attacks, undermining the popularity of Turkey’s ruling coalition,” Erdemir said.This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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Unidentified attackers on Thursday threw Molotov cocktails into the Netherlands home of journalist Willem Groeneveld.The motive for the attack, which took place in the city of Groningen around 2:45 a.m. local time, was not clear, but Groeneveld had previously been harassed over reporting on issues involving real estate and landlords.No one was injured in the assault, and the journalist was cited in reports as saying he woke to the sound of breaking glass and was able to put out the fire.Media organizations said they were troubled by the attack, which came just a month after veteran crime journalist Peter R. de Vries died after being shot in Amsterdam.“This is a very sad year for journalism. This attack on Willem with a firebomb could have ended very differently,” Thomas Bruning, head of the Dutch Association of Journalists, told local media.Thursday’s attack was not a first for Groeneveld, who founded the investigative website Sikkom and is a contributor to the daily regional newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden.In 2019, attackers threw stones through the windows of the journalist’s home, and on another occasion someone posted Groeneveld’s address and phone number on Facebook. In June, about 30 bicycles were left outside the journalist’s apartment after he reported that a businessman had been removing bikes from around the city, according to local reports.Police on Friday announced they had arrested two suspects on accusations of arson and attempted murder.  The Netherlands has one of the best records for press freedom, ranking 6th out of 180 countries, where 1 is freest, on the annual index by watchdog Reporters Without Borders.But recent attacks and July’s fatal shooting are concerning rights groups, including the International Press Institute and European Centre for Press and Media Freedom.The arson “represents another serious attack on media freedom in the Netherlands,” several press freedom groups said in a joint statement. “It is an attack on Willem Groeneveld, but also on the entire Dutch journalistic community.”The media groups called for a “rigorous investigation” into what is behind the increase in attacks on journalists.The Netherlands is not the only European Union member state to experience violence and fatal attacks on media this year.In April, Greek police reporter Giorgos Karaivaz was killed outside Athens, in what authorities have said they believe was a contract killing.The same month, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that police in Greece had arrested three people suspected of involvement in an alleged plot to kill investigative journalist Kostas Vaxevanis. 
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Britain and the United States imposed sanctions Friday on men they said were Russian intelligence operatives responsible for the poisoning one year ago of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.The two countries targeted seven Russians with sanctions and issued a joint statement warning Russia about chemical weapons.Washington separately imposed sanctions on another two men and four Russian institutes it said were involved in chemical weapons research or what it described as an assassination attempt against Navalny.Navalny was flown to Germany for medical treatment after being poisoned in Siberia on August 20, 2020, with what Western experts concluded was the military nerve agent Novichok.Moscow has rejected their findings and accused the West of conducting a smear campaign against it.”The sanctioned individuals are directly responsible for planning or carrying out the attack on Mr. Navalny,” a Foreign Office statement said.British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said the move was a warning to Russia.Call for investigation”We are sending a clear message that any use of chemical weapons by the Russian state violates international law, and a transparent criminal investigation must be held,” he said.The sanctions will affect those people named who have overseas assets.The British document listed Alexey Alexandrov, Vladimir Panyaev, Ivan Osipov, Vladimir Bogdanov, Kirill Vasilyev, Stanislav Makshakov and Alexei Sedov. It said they were all members of Russia’s FSB security service and were either directly or indirectly involved in the poisoning.The U.S. Treasury later said it was imposing sanctions on the same seven men and two additional Russian officials it said were involved in the poisoning: Konstantin Kudryavtsev and Artur Zhirov.It also targeted the FSB Criminalistics Institute, a lab where most of those implicated in the attack worked, and the Russian defense ministry’s State Institute for Experimental Military Medicine.The State Department also imposed sanctions on two other Russian military scientific institutes involved in chemical weapons, it said.Neither the Kremlin nor any of those named offered any immediate comment.Phone, travel records citedThe British government cited evidence including phone and travel records showing some of the operatives were present in the Siberian city of Tomsk at the time of the poisoning.For others it said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that, because of their positions in the intelligence service, they had “responsibility for, provided support for or promoted the actions of the operatives who carried out the operation.”Navalny was jailed for parole violations on what he said were politically motivated charges when he flew back to Russia earlier this year from Germany.”We call on Russia to comply fully with the Chemical Weapons Convention, including its obligations to declare and dismantle its chemical weapons program,” the joint U.S.-British statement said.”We remain determined to uphold the global norm against the use of chemical weapons.”
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel, scheduled to leave office later this year after nearly 16 years, is in Moscow for one final meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Before the two leaders met for talks in the Kremlin Friday, Merkel took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and viewed a military procession immediately after.German Chancellor Angela Merkel takes part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin Wall in central Moscow, Russia, Aug. 20, 2021.Later, at the Kremlin, Putin presented the German chancellor with a bouquet of flowers as they met for a photo opportunity before their talks.  In front of reporters, Merkel told Putin though they have deep differences, she feels it is important they meet for talks.  Merkel said the two leaders had much to discuss, including, among other issues, the situation in Afghanistan and Libya as well as bilateral relations.Putin and Merkel are likely to broach Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany, which is nearly complete. The U.S. has raised questions about the deal, as it represents a huge blow to ally Ukraine by bypassing the historic gas transit country.The two were scheduled to hold a joint news conference soon after their talks.Merkel is scheduled to visit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday.Some Information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and the French news agency, AFP.
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For Italy’s journalists, covering the mafia has always been dangerous. There have been attacks recently against some reporters and almost two dozen are currently under police protection because of threats. VOA’s Iacopo Luzi has more.   
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Afghan refugees in Turkey say they made the dangerous journey to escape living again under Taliban rule. VOA’s Arif Aslan reports from eastern Turkey, where some of the Afghans he spoke with arrived over the past few days as the Taliban were taking over the Afghan capital. Sirwan Kajjo narrates his report.Camera: Arif Aslan.
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Russia, once a thorn in China’s side, is backing Beijing in its disputes with third countries, including a maritime sovereignty flap in Southeast Asia, to counter Washington’s influence in Asia, scholars believe.With the world’s second strongest military, after the United States, Russia holds occasional military exercises with China – with at least four events publicized to date — sells arms to its giant neighbor to the south and joins it in criticizing the West.Officials in Moscow are trying now to boost Beijing’s claim to the contested South China Sea without overtly taking its side over five other Asian governments that vie with Chinese sovereignty in the same waterway, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii.China and Russia need each other to show the United States – former Cold War foe of both – along with its allies that neither is “alone,” he said.U.S. Navy ships regularly sail the South China Sea to keep Beijing in check. At least eight other Western-allied countries have indicated since late July plans to send navy vessels into the resource-rich South China Sea, which stretches from Hong Kong to Borneo Island, in support of keeping it open internationally rather than ceding it to Chinese control.“Basically, it’s more about a challenge to global U.S. power rather than Russia siding with China in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea,” Vuving said.FILE – A view shows a new S-400 “Triumph” surface-to-air missile system after its deployment at a military base outside the town of Gvardeysk near Kaliningrad, Russia, March 11, 2019.“The fact that they would actually share a joint portal for command and control actually means something,” Koh said. “They actually wanted to promote further interoperability.”In March, as both powers faced pressure from the West, they panned the United States in a joint statement after talks between their foreign ministers. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a March news conference that U.S. intentions had a “destructive nature” that were “relying on the military-political alliances of the Cold War era.”Scholars say Sino-Russian cooperation has its limits, however. As major powers, neither side wants the other to grow too powerful, said Wang Wei-chieh, South Korea-based politics analyst and co-founder of the FBC2E International Affairs Facebook page.“Russia and China, they are also worried about each other,” Wang said. “They don’t want any side to be the superior country.”Previously strong Sino-Russian relations faded in the 1960s when the two Communist parties split over ideology and border conflicts ensued. They call their military events today “interaction” rather than any kind of alliance, Koh noted.Russia maintains crucial political and economic ties with Vietnam, a rival to Beijing in the South China Sea dispute, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute called Russia the top arms supplier to Southeast Asia between 2010 and 2017 with combined sales of $6.6 billion. China fumed in 2013 when Russian oil company Rosneft was drilling, on behalf of Vietnam, in waters claimed by Beijing. Russia officially advocates neutrality in Southeast Asia, Vuving said.Russia could tell Vietnam today, if pressed, that its ties with China are just “symbolic,” Koh said.Russia does not claim any part of the sea, which is prized for fisheries and undersea fossil fuel reserves. China disputes maritime sovereignty instead with Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. China has irked the other claimants by landfilling islets for military installations and sending vessels into the exclusive economic zones of its rivals.China hopes Russia avoids sailing through the sea, where it Russia held a stronghold on the coast of Vietnam during the Cold War, at the risk of violating China’s claim to 90% of the waterway, Koh said.The latest joint military exercises may be aimed at deterring any threat from nearby Central Asia, Wang said. China has sought to clarify borders with Central Asian nations since the fall of the Soviet Union to promote peace in its own restive Xinjiang region, the Indian policy formulation group Observer Research Foundation said.Troops disembark from a Chinese military helicopter during joint war games held by Russia and China held in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwestern China, Aug. 13, 2021. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/Handout)Exercises last week, called Zapad/Interaction 2021, targeted terrorists by “seizing the high ground and trench[es] followed by “penetrating the enemy in depth,” the official Chinese Military Online website said August 5.The 2018 exercises sent “a message to the rest of the world and, in particular the United States” that the two countries were growing closer, the Swedish research and policy organization Institute for Security and Development wrote at the time.Future Sino-Russian military exercises will occur in places aimed at warning specific third countries with which China has disputes, Wang forecast. 
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Thursday, the United States plans to ship 35,100 doses of Pfizer vaccine to Kosovo through COVAX, the United Nations vaccine-sharing mechanism, a White House official told VOA.The doses are part of the purchase of half a billion Pfizer doses secured by the Biden administration earlier this year.Kosovo is experiencing another spike in infection, largely due to the delta variant. There have been 120,862 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 2,295 deaths according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Fewer than 550,000 vaccine doses have been administered in the country.In addition to the $2 billion donated to COVAX, the Biden administration has pledged to purchase 500 million Pfizer vaccines and distribute them through the year to 92 low-income and lower middle-income countries that are members of COVAX and the African Union. It represents the largest purchase and donation of vaccines by a single country.Even with its large vaccine donation program, the U.S. is being criticized for announcing its plan to provide booster shots to all Americans beginning September 20 and starting eight months after an individual’s second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.“The inequitable rollout of vaccines globally is not just a moral stain on wealthy nations, it’s prolonging the pandemic for the entire world. The longer it takes to share vaccines globally, the more variants we’ll see and the more booster shots we’ll need,” the ONE Campaign, which works against poverty and preventable disease, said in a statement to VOA.So far, only 1.3% of people in poorer countries have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.President Joe Biden dismissed criticism that U.S. is turning a blind eye to the fact that many around the world still have not received even a single dose.“I know there’s some world leaders who say America shouldn’t get a third shot until other countries get their first shot. I disagree,” Biden said during remarks at the White House Wednesday.“We can take care of America and help the world at the same time. In June and July America administered 50 million shots here in the United States. And we donated 100 million shots to other countries. That means that America has donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country in the world combined,” he said. 
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One of Malta’s wealthiest businessmen, Yorgen Fenech, has been indicted for the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, prosecutors said in court documents filed on Wednesday. No date for the trial has yet been set. Fenech has been under arrest since November 2019, accused of complicity to murder. He has since been undergoing a pre-trial compilation of evidence where he pleaded not guilty. Caruana Galizia was blown up by a car bomb as she drove out of her residence on Oct. 16, 2017, in a killing that shocked Europe and raised questions about the rule of law in the European Union’s smallest member state. Fenech headed a business empire with a range of interests including property, imports and a car dealership. He also headed a consortium which was controversially awarded a government contract for the building of a power station. Caruana Galizia was investigating possible corruption in the contract when she was killed. Three men accused of actually planting and setting off the bomb were arrested in December 2017. One has since pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain and been jailed for 15 years. The other two are awaiting trial. The murder plot’s self-confessed middleman, Melvin Theuma, turned state evidence and was granted a pardon. He has pointed to Fenech as having tasked him with organizing the assassination. The prosecutors are pushing for a life sentence for Fenech, court officials said. Fenech was arrested on Nov. 20, 2019, when his yacht was just off Malta in what police say was an attempt to flee the island. Malta’s then-prime minister, Joseph Muscat, announced his resignation within days of Fenech’s arrest after close links were found between the businessman and senior government officials. Muscat himself has always denied wrongdoing. An independent inquiry into the murder of Caruana Galizia said last month that the state had to bear responsibility for the killing after creating a “culture of impunity.” 
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The interior ministers from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, comprising the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, held a conference call Wednesday to discuss how to coordinate safe and legal migration routes for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.British officials said most of the focus was on the immediate security and logistical challenges of extracting Afghan officials and others, mainly civilians, who have worked with Western security forces during the 20 years of the NATO deployment in Afghanistan.The meeting came hours after French President Emmanuel Macron promised not to abandon Afghans who had served or partnered with French forces in Afghanistan. But he added Europe needs to “anticipate and protect itself from a wave of migrants.”“Europe alone cannot assume the consequences of the situation,” he said in a primetime televised address, which attracted criticism from rights groups and some French opposition leaders on the left. They said his remarks were at best inappropriate when juxtaposed with what is unfolding in Afghanistan, with desperate Afghans mobbing Kabul airport and clinging to the wheels of evacuation planes.Hundreds of people run alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug.16. 2021.Macron was accused of pandering to the far right ahead of next year’s presidential election, where he’s expected to face a strong challenge from Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-migrant National Rally.“But why these words? Is this what politics has become, the tactical and icy at the same time, again and again, no matter what the distressing circumstances?” said Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, a former French minister during François Hollande’s presidency, in a Twitter post.Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who also faces an election, has adopted a different tone from Macron. He has said he’s “absolutely horrified” by the heartbreaking scenes coming from Kabul and vowed Sunday to continue the evacuation alongside allies.Canada has said it will take in 20,000 Afghans, although that figure includes interpreters who worked alongside Canadian forces. Canada’s interior minister told the Five Eyes meeting that it is unlikely that the 20,000 would all be admitted in the next 12 months and the time span would be longer, British officials told VOA. Hundreds of people gather outside the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 17, 2021.Since April, Australia has admitted 430 Afghans who worked with Australian forces, along with their families. But Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Wednesday his government expects to provide only around 3,000 visas for Afghan applicants this year. Morrison said Australia has “no clear plans” to operate a program comparable to Canada’s or Britain’s. “Australia is not going into that territory. What we’re focused on is right here and right now,” he said. Earlier in the week, Morrison admitted Australia would not be able to rescue all its former interpreters and staff that assisted in its 20-year mission in Afghanistan. New Zealand officials say they will try to evacuate Afghans who worked with New Zealand deployments and their families and have identified about 200 eligible people. But has made no public commitment about a dedicated program for other Afghan asylum-seekers.Greece has also made clear it is not prepared to accept an influx of Afghan asylum-seekers. Notis Mitarachi, Greece’s migration minister, said his country “will not and cannot be the gateway of Europe for the refugees and migrants who could try to come to the European Union.”“The solution needs to be common, and it needs to be a European solution,” he told state broadcaster ERT.Taliban fighters patrol in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 18, 2021.Germany and the Netherlands were among the group saying they wanted to continue with forced deportations, but then backtracked and announced they were suspending involuntary deportations of Afghans, joining Finland, Norway and Sweden, which announced they were halting any involuntary returns.Britain’s interior minister, Priti Patel, who led the Five Eyes conference call Wednesday, has urged European neighbors to offer sanctuary to Afghans fleeing the Taliban. She announced Britain would grant asylum to 20,000 Afghan refugees.Writing in the Telegraph newspaper, Patel said Britain would prioritize women and girls and religious and other minorities who face “tyranny and oppression” under Taliban rule. “The U.K. Government will always stand by those who have had the lights switched off on their liberties,” wrote Patel. She said Europe must help. “The U.K. is also doing all it can to encourage other countries to help. Not only do we want to lead by example, we cannot do this alone,” she added.But Patel came under fire from British opposition politicians and from some lawmakers from the ruling Conservative party Wednesday for the numbers the British government is planning to accept. The 20,000 will be spread over five years, with a maximum of 5,000 resettled this year.Demonstrators, including former interpreters for the British Army in Afghanistan, hold placards as they protest opposite the Houses of Parliament in London, Aug. 18, 2021.Patel said Britain “cannot accommodate 20,000 people all in one go.” However, critics say more Afghans should be admitted this year, otherwise they might not be alive by next year. David Davis, a former Conservative minister, said Britain has a “moral responsibility to do more” and said the British government should be thinking of welcoming “north of 50,000” refugees from Afghanistan.Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the British parliament’s defense committee, dubbed Patel’s plan “a woefully inadequate response given the scale of the refugee crisis we are about to face as a direct response to our withdrawal from Afghanistan.” Ellwood, a former British army captain who served in Afghanistan, told local media: “The Government really needs to see the bigger picture here and grasp the scale of the crisis we created.”The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has called on the Taliban to allow safe and unhindered access for humanitarian assistance to Afghan women, men and children in need, including hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people.“The EU calls on the Taliban to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law in all circumstances,” he said. But Borrell stopped short of making any migration pledges on behalf of the bloc. “The EU will also support Afghanistan’s neighbors in coping with negative spillovers, which are to be expected from an increasing flow of refugees and migrants,” he said.
 
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Pope Francis says people who get the coronavirus vaccine would be committing “an act of love” towards their fellow men and women. The pontiff made the personal appeal in a filmed public service message that was released Wednesday online and on television.  “Thanks to God’s grace and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from Covid-19,” Pope Francis said in the message, which he made on behalf of the U.S.-based nonprofit group the Ad Council. He said the vaccines “bring hope to end the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we collaborate with one another.” The pontiff added that getting vaccinated “is a simple yet profound way to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable.”   Church officials in North and South America also appeared in the three-minute message, including Archbishop José Horacio Gómez of the United States, Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes of Mexico and Cardinal Carlos Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras.   New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed Wednesday that a 58-year-old man who became the first to test positive for COVID-19 since February was infected with the highly contagious delta variant. The news was announced on the first day of a strict three-day nationwide lockdown imposed by Ardern. Auckland, the country’s largest city, and the coastal town of Coromandel, where the infected man also visited, will be shut down for a full week. New Zealand has been praised for imposing a strict lockdown in the early days of the pandemic that has led to just 2,937 confirmed infections and just 26 deaths among its five million citizens. But only about 20% of all New Zealanders have been fully vaccinated, the lowest rate among all 38-member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD. Ten people have now tested positive in this new outbreak, according to the New Zealand Herald, and Ardern warned that the numbers would continue to grow. She said genomic testing has linked the outbreak to the one that began in Australia’s New South Wales state and its capital, Sydney, which was first detected back in June.   New South Wales posted a new single-day record of 633 confirmed new COVID-19 infections Wednesday, breaking the previous record of 478 cases posted just on Monday. Three deaths were also confirmed Wednesday, bringing the total number of COVID-19 fatalities in this new outbreak to 60.   Like New Zealand, Australia had boasted of success in containing the spread of COVID-19 in the initial months of the pandemic, with just 40,774 total infections and 970 deaths, but with only 20% of its citizens fully vaccinated due to a sluggish vaccination campaign, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.   Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.  
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America’s NATO allies are scrambling to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan amid the U.S. military withdrawal from the country and the collapse of the Afghan government. Many European officials have voiced fears that the Taliban takeover will increase the risk of terrorism and renew an influx of refugees into Europe.  Britain and other NATO allies began evacuating their citizens from Afghanistan on Sunday, along with hundreds of Afghan citizens who worked alongside them. France, Germany, Spain and Italy are also operating evacuation flights after U.S. troops reasserted control of the airport Monday, following chaotic scenes over the weekend. Several European states are to outline soon their emergency asylum programs for interpreters and other Afghan nationals who worked alongside NATO troops and civilians over the past two decades. They are now seen as particularly at risk of Taliban reprisals.  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE – NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference at a NATO summit in Brussels, June 14, 2021.In a press conference Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg blamed the country’s political leadership for the capitulation to the Taliban.  “What we have seen in the last few weeks was a military and political collapse at a speed which had not been anticipated. Part of the Afghan security forces fought bravely, but they were unable to secure the country because ultimately, the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up to the Taliban and to achieve the peaceful solution that Afghans desperately wanted. This failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today,” Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels. The failure to build a democratic state in Afghanistan could have wider implications for NATO, said Natasha Lindstaedt, a U.S. foreign policy analyst at Britain’s University of Essex. “I think NATO might return to more limited aims, of just trying to maintain stability and deter rather than to engage in these grand interventions,” she told VOA. Britain’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace blamed the collapse of the Afghan government on the 2020 deal struck with the Taliban by former U.S. President Donald Trump. FILE – Britain’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace walks outside Downing Street in London, Britain, Feb. 3, 2021.”It was done directly to the Taliban. It didn’t involve the Afghan government — so (it) fatally potentially undermined the government of that day. We, as international partners, found it uncomfortable because we had deployed through a U.S. framework. We hadn’t deployed in a unilateral manner. So, when they pulled that framework, we had to leave,” Wallace told the BBC. However, many European officials have also criticized the manner of the U.S. withdrawal. “It was very abrupt, and it wasn’t coordinated, and there wasn’t much consultation at all from Biden and his administration with its NATO allies,” Lindstaedt said. “(NATO allies) couldn’t really stay there because they were dependent upon the U.S. military power providing that type of support.” Meanwhile, European leaders are also wary of the longer-term consequences of the Taliban takeover. French President Emmanuel Macron gave a televised address Monday evening. “An historic turning point is underway in Afghanistan, far from our borders, but with major consequences for the entire international community, for Europe and for France,” Macron said. “Afghanistan’s destabilization risks causing irregular migration to Europe. France, as I’ve said, has and will continue to do its duty for those who are most threatened. … Europe cannot be the only ones to take on consequences of the current situation,” he added. French President Emmanuel Macron speaks in Bormes-les-Mimosas, France, August 17, 2021.Macron also warned of the increased terror threat. “Terrorist groups are present in Afghanistan and seek to profit from the destabilization. The United Nations’ Security Council will have to come up with a common and united answer,” the French president said. That threat extends beyond the region and has implications for the global fight against terrorism, said analyst Raffaello Pantucci of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “I think there’s going to be an undoubted sense of wind of victory blowing through the sails of jihadists around the world as they say, ‘Look, victory is attainable. This isn’t a hopeless struggle. Keep to the fight, stick to your beliefs, and 20 years later, you can end up winning this war.’ And I think that narrative will carry them forward for some time into the future,” Pantucci told Agence France-Presse. “I think it remains to be seen the degree to which Afghanistan will become a base once again for international terrorist groups to launch attacks outside. I think certainly al-Qaida will be rejuvenated by this and will strengthen itself,” he added. Afghan migrants demonstrate against the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, August 16, 2021.Several thousand Afghan asylum-seekers remain stranded on the Greek island of Lesbos, having fled to Europe in recent years. Several hundred staged a protest Monday against the Taliban takeover. Among them was Elena, who did not wish to give her full name, fearing reprisals for family members in Afghanistan. “What will happen now in Afghanistan for (the) young generation? For children? For women’s rights? Everything is destroyed by the Taliban,” she told Reuters. Those questions remain unanswered, as Western nations rush to leave Afghanistan, and the Taliban retakes the reins of power. Some material from this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.  
 
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America’s NATO allies are scrambling to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan following the U.S military withdrawal from the country, and the collapse of the Afghan government. Many European officials have voiced fears that the Taliban takeover will increase the risk of terrorism and cause a renewed influx of refugees. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.Camera: Henry Ridgwell    
 
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Afghanistan’s leadership was responsible for the rapid collapse of the Afghan military but noted the alliance should learns lessons on how it conducts military training. “This failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today,” Stoltenberg said after a NATO meeting to discuss the security effects of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.The speed with which Afghan troops weakened during the Taliban’s offensive  “was a surprise,” said Stoltenberg, who also admitted “there are lessons that need to be learned” at NATO.In its reaction to the Taliban’s victory, Russia, which declared the Taliban a terrorist group in 2003, said it would not immediately recognize the new government.Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow was “in no rush to recognize” the Taliban government and called for an “inclusive national dialogue with the involvement of all political … forces in Afghanistan.”Taliban officials arrange a Taliban flag, before a press conference by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, at the Government Media Information Center, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 17, 2021.For its part, Turkey is negotiating with the Taliban and all other parties in Afghanistan and has favorable views of Taliban messages that were conveyed since taking control, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday.“We are keeping up dialogue with all sides, including the Taliban,” Cavusoglu said at a news conference in Jordan. “We view positively the messages that the Taliban has given so far, whether to foreigners, to diplomatic individuals or its own people. We hope to see these in action as well.”China encouraged the Taliban Tuesday to pursue “moderate and steady” religious policies and to establish an “open and inclusive” political structure involving all parties in the country.At a televised news conference, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, also criticized the U.S. for its role in the South Asian country. “In Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, we have seen that wherever the U.S. military went, turmoil, division, and destruction of homes and deaths have been left behind,” she said.At the White House on Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden said televised scenes of Afghan civilians trapped in the embattled country were “gut-wrenching” and acknowledged the Taliban had seized control of the country much more quickly than his administration had expected.Some information for this report came from Associated Press and Reuters.
 
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Officials in Turkey said Monday the death toll from flooding in the country’s northwestern Black Sea provinces rose to 77 as rescue crews continued to search for dozens of people still reported missing.The flooding began last week after torrential rains, demolishing buildings and bridges and damaging roads and electricity infrastructure.Disaster and emergency officials said more than 30 villages remained without power on Monday.The dead included 62 people in Kastamonu province, 14 in Sinop and one in Bartin, according to the Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate.AFAD said since the flooding began, more than 2,000 people have been evacuated from those areas.Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
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