The European Court of Human Rights has asked Poland and Latvia to help dozens of migrants trapped at their respective borders with Belarus.
 
Neither country is allowing the migrants in, and both Poland and the Baltic states have accused Belarus of using the migrants as a political tool for revenge, specifically over European Union sanctions imposed after the Belarusian government cracked down on protesters claiming an August 2020 presidential election was rigged.
 
Polish refugee charity Ocalenie Foundation said the migrants had no drinking water and had not eaten since Tuesday, Reuters reported.
 
According to the court, Polish and Latvian authorities should “provide all the applicants with food, water, clothing, adequate medical care and, if possible, temporary shelter.”
 
The court also clarified “that this measure should not be understood as requiring that Poland or Latvia let the applicants enter their territories.”
 
Some 3,000 migrants, some of them from Iraq and Afghanistan, have attempted to enter Poland from Belarus this month, The Associated Press reported. Poland is denying them entry, and it said Monday it would build a fence to keep them out.
 
The Polish government says it has provided tents, blankets and power generators to the migrants, who remain on Belarusian territory.
 
On Tuesday, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, called for Poland to provide medical and legal support to the migrants.
 
Poland’s prime minister said Tuesday that Belarus is purposely urging migrants from the Middle East to enter Poland to destabilize the European Union.
 
“Our eastern neighbor is trying systematically, and in an organized way, to destabilize the political situation,” Mateusz Morawiecki said during a visit to the eastern town of Kuznica.After the EU had imposed its sanctions, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko warned member countries that Belarus will no longer prevent unauthorized migrants from crossing into EU territories, Reuters news agency has reported.
 Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
 
…

Vesta Guerrier survived Haiti’s massive earthquake this month, but it flattened her home and she has since been living at a makeshift camp fearing she could be raped at any time. “We’re not safe,” she told Agence France-Presse, echoing the worry of other Haitian women all too aware of the sexual violence that has followed the disaster-plagued nation’s previous calamities.   Home for Guerrier, her husband and three children was a flimsy shelter made of sticks and plastic sheets at a sports center in the hard-hit town of Les Cayes, on the peninsula southwest of the capital Port-au-Prince. Vesta Guerrier, 48, poses for a portrait at a camp for people who lost their homes during the Aug. 14 earthquake, in Les Cayes, Haiti, Aug. 23, 2021.”Anything can happen to us,” said Guerrier, 48, “especially at night. Anybody can enter the camp.”  The 7.2-magnitude quake that struck August 14 killed over 2,200 people but also destroyed or heavily damaged tens of thousands of homes in a nation still recovering from a devastating quake in 2010. After the tremor 11 years ago, which killed over 200,000 people, some survivors spent years in makeshift shelters where victims were assaulted by armed men and gangs of youths who roamed the poorly lit, overcrowded camps after dark. More than 250 cases of rape were recorded in the roughly five months after the 2010 disaster, according to a 2011 Amnesty International report that noted many advocacy groups considered that a small fraction of the true number.  About 200 people were living at the same camp as Guerrier, where privacy is next to impossible. Because of her worries about being attacked, Guerrier does not entirely remove her clothing to bathe and always waits until dark to wash so that others cannot see her. When light does fall on her in the darkness of the camp, she is left wondering if it’s just one of her neighbors, or if it’s “someone who wants to do what he wants to do,” she added. There were no functioning toilets at the site, which makes Guerrier afraid and embarrassed because “people can see you from every direction.” “Only the girls can understand what I’m telling you. We women and the little ones who are here, we suffer a lot,” she said.  A woman and kids rest in the shade at a camp for people who lost their home during the Aug. 14 earthquake in Les Cayes, Haiti, Aug. 23, 2021.Other evacuees at the camp also revealed their fears.  “We are afraid. We are really afraid for our children. We need tents so we can go back to living at home with our families,” said Francise Dorismond, who is three months pregnant.  Another makeshift camp has popped up a short distance away from the main site due to the risks of attacks.  Pastor Milfort Roosevelt said “the most vulnerable” have been placed there.  “We protect the young girls. In the evening, we have set up a security team that patrols throughout the night and ensures that no young men commit violence against these women,” explained the 31-year-old.  In the ruins of a former nightclub destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, dozens of people were taking shelter in a tangle of sheets and tarps strung between walls.  In the middle of this maze, young mother Jasmine Noel tried to make a bed for her 22-day-old baby to sleep in.  “The night of the earthquake, I was going to sleep on the field next door, but they told me that with my baby, it was not right, so they welcomed me here,” Noel said.  “Some people always try to take advantage of these kinds of moments to do wrong,” she said, adding that her suffering makes it feel like she is no longer “really living.” “Our bodies are here, yes, but our souls are not,” said Noel, hoping her mother, a street vendor, would have made enough that day to buy food for them. 
 
…

Russia’s central regions on Wednesday battled “extreme” wildfires fueled by an unusual heatwave that comes after forest fires linked to climate change ravaged Siberia for most of the summer.    Authorities were fighting 15 wildfires in the Urals region of Sverdlovsk, the Emergencies Ministry said.    The region — which lies on the border of Europe and Asia — faced “extreme fire hazard” due to a heatwave, it added.    Images on social media Tuesday showed flames on either side of a federal highway between regional capital Yekaterinburg and the Urals city of Perm, forcing the road shut for most of the day, according to reports.   Fires had meanwhile grown so intense in Mordovia, a region southeast of Moscow, that firefighters were forced to escape from a “ring of fire,” the ministry said Wednesday.    And in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow, nine planes provided by the emergencies ministry, the Defense Ministry and the Russian National Guard had dropped 129 tons of water onto a large wildfire spreading to neighboring Mordovia.    Authorities had deployed 1,200 firefighters to put out the blaze, the emergencies ministry said.    President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to protect the country’s forests, saying the nation must learn from the “unprecedented” wildfires that engulfed swathes of Siberia.   In the country’s largest and coldest region of Yakutia, fires have burned through an area larger than Portugal.   The emergencies ministry said Wednesday that there were 50 forest fires now burning in the region.    Officials in hard-hit regions have called for resources and economic support from Moscow to deal with the damage.   Experts blame the huge fires that have ripped across Russia’s vast territory in recent years on climate change, negligence and underfunded forestry management services.   Russia’s forestry agency says fires this year have torn through more than 173,000 square kilometers (67,000 square miles), making it the second-worst season since the turn of the century.   A former sceptic of man-made climate change, Putin has called on authorities to do everything possible to help Russians affected by the gigantic fires. 
…

U.S. allies say they have no choice but to follow the American timetable and withdraw their troops from Afghanistan by August 31, despite fears that not everyone will get out in time.Several NATO allies are evacuating their citizens from Kabul airport, including eligible Afghans who worked alongside them and who are now desperate to flee. Britain, which holds the rotating presidency of the G-7 group of advanced economies, called an emergency virtual summit of the group Tuesday to discuss the crisis. Many G-7 leaders implored U.S. President Joe Biden to extend the August 31 deadline for the withdrawal of American troops. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
In this image provided by the US Marine Corps, a Marine guides families during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 23, 2021.The Taliban also said it will not allow any extension of the August 31 deadline. Therefore, U.S. allies say they are left with no choice but to follow that timetable.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said U.K. forces had already evacuated 9,000 people as of Tuesday. “We will go on right up until the last moment that we can. But you have heard what the president of the United States has had to say, you have heard what the Taliban have said. I think you have got to understand the context in which we’re doing this,” he told reporters after the summit. “We’re confident we can get thousands more out. But the situation at the airport is not getting any better, there are public order issues, it’s harrowing scenes for those who are trying to get out, and it’s tough for our military as well.”Johnson said G-7 leaders had agreed a common future approach. “We’ve got together, the leading Western powers, and agreed not just a joint approach to dealing with the evacuation, but also a road map for the way in which we’re going to engage with the Taliban, as it probably will be a Taliban government in Kabul.” Amid Fear, Criticism, Taliban Want International Recognition of ‘Representative’ RuleCritics cite reports of summary executions and restrictions on women in areas under Taliban controlThe G-7 has set conditions with safe passage for those who want to leave as the number one priority, Johnson told reporters. “Now, some of them will say that they don’t accept that and some of them, I hope, will see the sense of that because the G-7 has very considerable leverage, economic, diplomatic and political.”Several G-7 nations pledged for an increase in humanitarian aid and financial assistance for Afghanistan and its neighbors. In a press conference Tuesday, the European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc has conditionally set aside $1.2 billion for Afghanistan for the coming seven years for development aid.“I and many others stressed that the future development assistance has to be condition-based. It always is condition-based, linked to fundamental values, human rights, of course, women’s rights,” von der Leyen said. “This aid ($1.2 billion) is now frozen. And it is frozen until we have solid guarantees and credible actions on the ground that the conditions are being met.” Can Taliban Turn From Insurgency to Governing?The Taliban may discover that retaking Afghanistan may prove an easier task than ruling itThere are European concerns over the longer-term consequences of the Western withdrawal. Charles Michel, the European Council President, said the EU would not allow another migrant crisis.“We will work with the countries in the region, especially Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia, to address the different needs. International protection will be needed for those facing persecution and for other vulnerable Afghans. And EU member states will contribute to this international effort,” Michel told reporters. “Let’s be clear, let us not allow the creation of a new market for smugglers and human traffickers. And we are determined to keep the migratory flows under control and the EU’s borders protected.”The focus of the U.S. and its allies currently remains on the difficult and dangerous days ahead, as the evacuations continue amid the chaos at Kabul airport. But analysts say the abruptness of the U.S. withdrawal has also tested transatlantic alliances.“In the short term, certainly this will continue to add some of the friction. There are bridges that continually need to be rebuilt in the post-Trump era,” Indiana University’s Bell said. “But I think in the long term this won’t do much to significantly damage our (U.S.) relationship with our with our allies.”Some information for this report came from the Associated Press.
…

Garry Orelien, the judge named to oversee the investigation into the slaying of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, is being criticized as inexperienced and incapable of handling the case.     Orelien replaces Judge Mathieu Chanlatte, who resigned August 13, citing personal reasons. One of Chanlatte’s assistants died under unclear circumstances the day before his resignation, The Associated Press reported.  Moise was shot to death inside his home in a luxury suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince, in the early morning hours of July 7. His wife, Martine Moise, was injured and later transferred to Florida for treatment.  The Haitian National Police (PNH) has arrested dozens of people in connection with the case, including Haitian Americans, Colombians, members of the president’s security detail and police officers.  Orelien previously worked as a substitute judge in Saint Marc and Croix-des-Bouquets, Le Nouvelliste newspaper reported. He was moved to the Port-au-Prince court in December 2020.  Rockfeller Vincent, Haiti’s minister of justice and public security, tweeted Monday that he was making available all necessary resources to Judge Orelien to move forward with the case. “Let me be clear: All efforts will be made to arrest all individuals implicated in this crime,” he tweeted. Le MJSP a mis à la disposition du Juge d’instruction Gary Orélien tous les moyens nécessaires à la bonne conduite du dossier de l’assassinat du Président Jovenel MOÏSE. Que ceci soit clair : Tous les efforts seront déployés pour arrêter tout individu impliqué dans ce crime. 1/3— Rockfeller Vincent (@RockfellerVinc1) Haitian gang leader holds voodoo ritual for assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moise in Port-Au-Prince, July 27, 2021.In an exclusive interview with VOA Creole Monday, Marie Rosy Auguste Ducéna, a lawyer and human rights activist, alleged that the national police are deeply implicated in the killing.  She mentioned Joseph Felix Badio, a former Haitian Justice Ministry official who has a warrant out for his arrest, as having made at least two phone calls to Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Ducéna told VOA that Badio made the phone calls on the morning that Moise was killed.  “I’d like to underline that there are 647 police officers whose principal mission is to protect the president. We can say they failed, since the president was assassinated,” Ducéna told VOA. “Secondly, there were 63 agents detailed to provide security for the president, and they had backup agents whose responsibility it was to secure the perimeter of the president’s residence. However, they allowed the commandos to gain access to the home. Why? Because they had been paid off.”  The RNDDH report also alleges that PNH Director General Leon Charles received two urgent phone calls from Moise the day of his assassination, but the report says Charles never responded.  VOA Creole’s calls to Henry and Charles requesting comment were not answered.  In Washington, Ricardo Zuniga, U.S. special envoy for the Northern Triangle at the State Department’s Bureau for Western Hemisphere Affairs, told VOA that the United States is still assisting Haiti with the Moise investigation.    “What we have is a promise from the United States to contribute to and collaborate with the Haitian officials leading the investigation,” Zuniga, speaking Spanish, told VOA Monday. “What is important going forward is that this be a Haitian-led effort. So, the United States, along with our international partners, will continue to do whatever we can to help the Haitian officials move forward with the case.”     Asked by VOA if U.S. President Joe Biden plans to invite Henry to the White House for talks, Zuniga instead addressed the recent earthquake in Haiti, which killed more than 2,200 people.   “Right now, the focus of the new prime minister and the Biden administration is dealing with the current crisis,” Zuniga said of the post-earthquake recovery effort. “So, it’s clear that we need to collaborate in order to relieve the suffering of the Haitian people. That is our focus.”     Meanwhile, in Port-au-Prince, ordinary citizens are expressing doubt about whether Moise’s killer will ever be brought to justice.   Contributed to this report Cristina Caicedo Smit, Jacquelin Belizaire.      Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
…

Five members of an Afghan girls robotics team have arrived in Mexico after evacuating from their home country. The girls landed in Mexico City on Tuesday night and were welcomed at the airport by Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. “We received the first applicants for humanitarian status in Mexico from Afghanistan,” Ebrard tweeted late Tuesday. “They are part of a robotics team from that country and uphold a dream: a world with gender equality.”An Afghan woman, member of the Afghanistan Robotic team, is seen during a press conference after her arrival to Mexico after asking for refuge, at the Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City, on August 24, 2021.The robotics team made up of girls and women as young as 14 years old gained attention in 2017 when they traveled to the United States to take part in an international competition. Last year, they worked to develop an open-source, low-cost ventilator as hospitals in many countries faced shortages of equipment to help coronavirus patients. The Associated Press quoted one team member Tuesday saying the team was grateful to Mexico “for saving our lives.” She said that thanks to Mexico’s actions, “our story will not end in a sad way” because of the Taliban. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

The British government is considering plans to release beavers back into the wild across England some four centuries after the dam-building mammals became extinct in Britain. The proposals, described as a cautious step toward establishing a native beaver population, would see the animals allowed to be introduced if strict criteria were met along with an assessment of their impact on the surrounding land and other species. It comes after a successful five-year trial on the River Otter in Devon, a rural county in southwest England, concluded a family of beavers had a beneficial effect on the local ecology in what was the first legally sanctioned reintroduction to England of an extinct native mammal. “Today marks a significant milestone for the reintroduction of beavers in the wild,” environment minister George Eustice said on Wednesday at the start of a 12-week consultation on the plans. “But we also understand that there are implications for landowners, so we are taking a cautious approach to ensure that all potential impacts are carefully considered.” The government said beavers could play a hugely significant role in helping to restore nature, creating dams from trees, mud and rocks, which raise water levels and create wetland habitats that support the recovery of a wide range of native species. The semi-aquatic vegetarian mammals were hunted to extinction in Britain about 400 years ago because people wanted their meat, fur and castoreum, a secretion that was used in medicine and perfumes. The government said it also planned to make it an offense to capture, kill, disturb or injure beavers or damage their breeding sites. 
 
…

U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria say they are increasingly concerned about a wave of Turkish drone attacks against their commanders in northeast Syria.Turkey reportedly carried out dozens of airstrikes last week, including several with unmanned aerial vehicles, against positions belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led military alliance that has been a major U.S. partner in the fight against the Islamic State group, also known as IS or ISIS.Turkey views the SDF and its main element, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as an extension of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant group given a terrorist designation by Washington and Ankara. The U.S., however, makes a distinction between the two Kurdish groups.”Turkey has recently increased its drone attacks against our military points and commanders throughout northeast Syria, in places like Kobani, Tell Tamer and most recently in Qamishli,” said Shervan Darwish, a spokesperson for the SDF-affiliated Manbij military council.”The current political climate doesn’t help Turkey to wage a large-scale ground operation, so instead they use drones and airstrikes to expand their operations,” he told VOA.The SDF said a Turkish drone strike killed one of its high-ranking commanders near the city of Qamishli on Sunday. Several other SDF commanders were targeted last week in another reported Turkish drone attack on the SDF-held town of Tell Tamer.FILE PHOTO: A police officer stands next to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) during Teknofest airshow at the city’s new airport in Istanbul on Sept. 22, 2018.US ‘deeply concerned’On Monday, a U.S. State Department spokesperson told VOA on background that “the United States is deeply concerned about reports of increased military activity in northeast Syria,” adding that Washington supports the “maintenance of the current cease-fire lines and urge(s) all parties to de-escalate.”In a bipartisan letter addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month, 27 members of the U.S. Congress expressed concern over Turkey’s plans to develop its armed drone industry.Turkey’s use of drones “has destabilized multiple regions of the globe and threatens U.S. interests, allies, and partners,” the letter said.”Over the last year, Turkish drones have been deployed by Azerbaijan against Armenian civilians in Artsakh, Syria; against Kurdish forces that have partnered with the U.S. in the war against ISIS; and in Libya’s civil war,” it added.Seth Frantzman, author of the recent book Drone Wars, says drones are a weapon system that is “ideally suited” for the Middle East.”You can use drones over areas that are part of a conflict or contested area where maybe there is no governing authority,” he told VOA. “You can fly the drones, attack people, and then the drones go away. There’s no risk to your own pilots, and if you make a mistake, you can blame it on someone else. So a lot of countries in the region love drones.”Frantzman said Turkey’s drone campaign and overall posture in Syria also complicates ongoing counterterrorism efforts against remnants of IS in the war-torn country.”The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are fighting ISIS. Meanwhile, Turkey is trying to destabilize the same area by carrying out airstrikes and drone attacks on the SDF or groups linked to the SDF, and that destabilizes the region that may inadvertently or advertently end up helping the ISIS cells.”VOA’s Nike Ching, Saleh Damiger and Ezel Sahinkaya contributed to this story from Washington. 
…

Poland’s prime minister said Tuesday that Belarus was purposely encouraging migrants from the Middle East to enter Poland to destabilize the European Union.”Our eastern neighbor is trying systematically, and in an organized way, to destabilize the political situation,” Mateusz Morawiecki said during a visit to the eastern town of Kuznica.About 3,000 migrants, some of them from Iraq and Afghanistan, have attempted to enter Poland from Belarus this month, The Associated Press reported. Poland is denying them entry and on Monday said it would build a fence to keep them out.The Polish government said Tuesday that it had provided tents, blankets and power generators to the migrants, who remain on Belarusian territory.On Tuesday, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, called for Poland to provide medical and legal support to the migrants.Morawiecki said Belarus’ efforts would fail because “Poland’s border will be very well protected.”Other criticsPoland is not alone in accusing Belarus. Other Baltic states have also said Minsk is pushing migrants toward them. They say it is in retaliation for EU sanctions against Belarus following government crackdowns against those protesting the disputed reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko in August 2020. The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, said it was monitoring the situation.”We firmly reject attempts to instrumentalize people for political purposes,” spokesman Christian Wigand said in Brussels. “We cannot accept any attempts by third countries to incite or acquiesce in illegal migration” to the EU. Wigand called for “orderly border management” and “full respect for migrants’ fundamental rights.”According to a BBC report, the Belarusian president on Monday accused Poland of starting a “border conflict” and violating his country’s territory.Lukashenko has warned EU members that his country will no longer prevent unauthorized migrants from crossing into EU territories after the EU imposed its sanctions, Reuters news agency has reported.Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, BBC and Reuters.
…

Charlie Watts, the self-effacing and unshakeable Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock’s greatest rhythm sections and used his “day job” to support his enduring love of jazz, has died, according to his publicist. He was 80.Bernard Doherty said Tuesday that Watts “passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family.”“Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation,” Doherty said.Watts had announced he would not tour with the Stones in 2021 because of an undefined health issue.The quiet, elegantly dressed Watts was often ranked with Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and a handful of others as a premier rock drummer, respected worldwide for his muscular, swinging style as the Stones rose from their scruffy beginnings to international superstardom. He joined the band early in 1963 and remained over the next 60 years, ranked just behind Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as the group’s longest-lasting and most essential member.Watts stayed on, and largely held himself apart, through the drug abuse, creative clashes and ego wars that helped kill founding member Brian Jones, drove bassist Bill Wyman and Jones’ replacement Mick Taylor to quit and otherwise made being in the Stones the most exhausting of jobs.A classic Stones song like “Brown Sugar” and “Start Me Up” often began with a hard guitar riff from Richards, with Watts following closely behind, and Wyman, as the bassist liked to say, “fattening the sound.” Watts’ speed, power and time keeping were never better showcased than during the concert documentary, “Shine a Light,” when director Martin Scorsese filmed “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from where he drummed toward the back of the stage.The Stones began, Watts said, “as white blokes from England playing Black American music” but quickly evolved their own distinctive sound. Watts was a jazz drummer in his early years and never lost his affinity for the music he first loved, heading his own jazz band and taking on numerous other side projects.He had his eccentricities — Watts liked to collect cars even though he didn’t drive and would simply sit in them in his garage. But he was a steadying influence on stage and off as the Stones defied all expectations by rocking well into their 70s, decades longer than their old rivals the Beatles.Watts didn’t care for flashy solos or attention of any kind, but with Wyman and Richards forged some of rock’s deepest grooves on “Honky Tonk Women,” “Brown Sugar” and other songs. The drummer adapted well to everything from the disco of “Miss You” to the jazzy “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and the dreamy ballad “Moonlight Mile.”Jagger and Richards at times seemed to agree on little else besides their admiration of Watts, both as a man and a musician. Richards called Watts “the key” and often joked that their affinity was so strong that on stage he’d sometimes try to rattle Watts by suddenly changing the beat — only to have Watts change it right back.Jagger and Richards could only envy his indifference to stardom and relative contentment in his private life, when he was as happy tending to the horses on his estate in rural Devon, England, as he ever was on stage at a sold-out stadium.Watts did on occasion have an impact beyond drumming. He worked with Jagger on the ever more spectacular stage designs for the group’s tours. He also provided illustrations for the back cover of the acclaimed 1967 album “Between the Buttons” and inadvertently gave the record its title. When he asked Stones manager Andrew Oldham what the album would be called, Oldham responded “Between the buttons,” meaning undecided. Watts thought that “Between the Buttons” was the actual name and included it in his artwork.To the world, he was a rock star. But Watts often said that the actual experience was draining and unpleasant, and even frightening. “Girls chasing you down the street, screaming…horrible!… I hated it,” he told The Guardian newspaper in an interview. In another interview, he described the drumming life as a “cross between being an athlete and a total nervous wreck.”Author Philip Norman, who has written extensively about the Rolling Stones, said Watts lived “in constant hope of being allowed to catch the next plane home.” On tour, he made a point of drawing each hotel room he stayed in, a way of marking time until he could return to his family. He said little about playing the same songs for more than 40 years as the Stones recycled their classics. But he did branch out far beyond “Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” by assembling and performing with jazz bands in the second half of his career.Charles Robert Watts, son of a lorry driver and a housewife, was born in Neasden, London, on June 2, 1941. From childhood, he was passionate about music — jazz in particular. He fell in love with the drums after hearing Chico Hamilton and taught himself to play by listening to records by Johnny Dodds, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and other jazz giants.He worked for a London advertising firm after he attended Harrow Art College and played drums in his spare time. London was home to a blues and jazz revival in the early 1960s, with Jagger, Richards and Eric Clapton among the future superstars getting their start. Watts’ career took off after he played with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, for whom Jagger also performed, and was encouraged by Korner to join the Stones.Watts wasn’t a rock music fan at first and remembered being guided by Richards and Brian Jones as he absorbed blues and rock records, notably the music of bluesman Jimmy Reed. He said the band could trace its roots to a brief period when he had lost his job and shared an apartment with Jagger and Richards because he could live there rent-free.“Keith Richards taught me rock and roll,” Watts said. “We’d have nothing to do all day and we’d play these records over and over again. I learned to love Muddy Waters. Keith turned me on to how good Elvis Presley was, and I’d always hated Elvis up ’til then.”Watts was the final man to join the Stones; the band had searched for months to find a permanent drummer and feared Watts was too accomplished for them. Richards would recall the band wanting him so badly to join that members cut down on expenses so they could afford to pay Watts a proper salary. Watts said he believed at first the band would be lucky to last a year.“Every band I’d ever been in had lasted a week,” he said. “I always thought the Stones would last a week, then a fortnight, and then suddenly, it’s 30 years.”
…

The European Union and Britain are looking to Turkey to become a hub to process Afghan refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe. Turkey is rejecting the call.The Turkish government is dismissing calls from Europe for it to become a hub to process Afghan refugees. Government spokesman Omer Celik said Monday that with Turkey already hosting nearly five million refugees, mainly from the Syrian civil war, it can take no more.Celik says Turkey does not have a capacity to take in one more refugee. He said Turkey is not a refugee camp nor is it a transit point.Celik’s comments were in response to British media reports Sunday citing defense ministry sources, who said London was looking to countries like Turkey to create processing centers for Afghan refugees.Similar suggestions in the last few days were made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the president of the European Council, Charles Michel. Those Fleeing Afghanistan Struggle to Survive in TurkeyVOA reporters meet people who say the Taliban are killing government workers and other ‘enemies’ as they take over areas of Afghanistan Under a deal with the EU, Turkey is already hosting nearly four million Syrian refugees from the civil war in exchange for billions of dollars in aid. But analyst Asli Aydintasbas says Turkish public opinion is strongly against any new deal over Afghan refugees.”We have a situation in which Turkey and the EU (are) negotiating these sorts of large sums, as a refugee deal, in which Turkey gets to keep the refugees,” Aydintasbas said. “I think there is across-the-board resentment about Europe sort of using Turkey as a refugee camp on its borders, so to speak. People are upset about this.  But it’s a huge political cost for Turkey. People simply are questioning the government’s refugee policy.”Resentment over refugee presence exploded into violence earlier this month in a suburb of the capital, Ankara, where hundreds of people attacked the homes and shops of Syrian migrants. Ankara is now stepping up efforts to secure its Iranian border, the main transit route for Afghans seeking to enter Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the construction of a barrier on the frontier would be accelerated.Additional Turkish forces are being deployed on the nearly 300-kilometer-long Iranian border, equipped with the latest surveillance equipment. Hüseyin Ediz Tercanoglu, head of Turkish security on the Iranian border, said Monday the border would be secure against any refugee surge.Tercanoglu said Turkish forces are working in places where smuggling used to be common, adding that the entire area is monitored by 360-degree rotating thermal cameras. If there’s any movement, he said, troops can be dispatched there.Displays of such force are aimed primarily at a Turkish public fatigued by the presence of millions of refugees and Europe to send a message that Turkey will not be the host of another massive influx of refugees.
…

Many survivors of an earthquake that killed more than 2,200 people in southern Haiti are worried about providing for their children, with more than half a million minors feared to be at risk from the fallout.The August 14 quake hammered infrastructure, destroying or damaging some 130,000 homes, cutting off roads and pitching thousands of families in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country into an uncertain future.When the magnitude 7.2 quake struck, Lovely Jean was resting inside the general hospital of the southern city of Les Cayes, while her 3-day-old baby, Love Shaiska, was in the neonatal ward being treated for an infection.Les Cayes was one of the areas worst hit by the quake, and as the hospital walls trembled, Jean sent her husband, Pierre Alexandre, to grab the infant while she fled the building.”The earth was shaking, and I was crying, so scared of what was happening,” the 24-year-old said, cradling her child on the porch of their damaged home in a tiny village outside the town of Camp-Perrin, northwest of Les Cayes.The three survived, though the hospital suffered damage that forced some of its departments, including the neonatal ward, to operate outside for days after the disaster.But the problems were only beginning for Jean and her husband, a subsistence farmer.Alexandre’s fields were buried by landslides during the earthquake and rain unleashed by Tropical Storm Grace, which pummeled Haiti last Tuesday. His entire potato and yuca crops are unreachable, leaving the family with barely any food to eat.More than a dozen other parents who spoke to Reuters in the quake zone expressed similar concerns about how they would cope.More than half a million children were affected by the earthquake, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said.The temblor claimed the lives of at least 2,207 people, injured 12,268 more and left 344 missing, according to Haitian authorities.Still, there are a few encouraging developments. Late on Sunday, civil protection authorities said 24 people who had been reported missing, including four children, had been found and taken by helicopter to Camp-Perrin to be looked after.Recovery efforts have been impeded by flooding and damage to roads, feeding tensions in hard-hit areas. In the past few days, residents have looted aid trucks in several towns across the south, stirring concerns about security.Deep in the mountains of Haiti’s southern peninsula, in the department of Grand’Anse, near the town of Duchity, about a hundred farmers are living in slender tents of wooden poles and bedsheets they erected along the highway. The quake destroyed their homes, crops and the deep concrete-lined holes used to collect and store rainwater.Now, with scant food and water, many of the young children suffer from hunger, fevers and infections, said Evelya Michele, a mother of five living in the encampment.At least a dozen children had broken out in rashes.”The children are very vulnerable; there is no water so we can’t even wash them to keep them clean,” Michele said.Her older children had taken off earlier that morning, walking to a nearby village in search of food.”I didn’t send them; they just left without even asking me because they are hungry,” she said.
…

Turkish women gathered outside the Afghan consulate in Istanbul to show their solidarity with Afghan women and to condemn the Taliban’s treatment of women. VOA’s Umut Colak has filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.Camera: Umut Colak Produced by: Umut Colak 
…

A fire on an offshore platform operated by Mexican oil and gas giant Pemex has left at least five people dead, two missing and six injured, the state-run company said Monday.The blaze led to the suspension of work at more than 100 oil wells that rely on the platform for electricity and injections of natural gas, Pemex said.The accident occurred Sunday in the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico during maintenance work.One of the injured was in serious condition, Pemex chief Octavio Romero told a news conference.”The exhaustive search for the missing persons continues,” he said.The fire put 125 oil wells out of action, resulting in a production loss of 425,000 barrels a day, but they were expected to be restarted by Tuesday, Romero said.The company has been trying to arrest a steady decline in its oil production, which fell from an average of 3.4 million barrels a day in 2004 to 1.7 million bpd in 2020.Pemex said it had launched an investigation into the blaze, which it said was brought under control after an hour.Pemex is battling back from what it called the worst crisis in its history last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.The group lost about $23 billion in 2020 due to a slump in demand for energy that caused oil prices to briefly turn negative for the first time.A recovery in prices helped it make a profit of about $720 million in the second quarter of 2021.
…

Greece has completed the construction of a border fence along its frontier with Turkey, as European fears grow of an influx of refugees from Afghanistan. As Henry Ridgwell reports, memories of the 2015 European migrant crisis are still powerful, — but many analysts say that six years on, it is much tougher for migrants to reach Europe.Camera:  Henry Ridgwell 
…

With feather headdresses, grass skirts and body paint, thousands of indigenous demonstrators camped out in Brazil’s capital Monday to protest far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies and an initiative that could take away their ancestral lands.Pounding wooden tent poles into the ground, the protesters set up the “Fight for Life” camp outside the seat of power in Brasilia, near the trio of modernist buildings housing the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.The protest camp, which opened Sunday, will hold a week of demonstrations and other activities against what the organizers, the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), call Bolsonaro’s “anti-indigenous agenda,” seeking to exert pressure ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on native lands.”We’re living in a time of much oppression, of setbacks on the protections and laws the indigenous movement has fought so hard for all these years,” APIB representative Kleber Karipuna told AFP.A member of the Kayapo tribe carries bows and arrows at a protest camp in Brasilia, Brazil on Aug. 23, 2021.Indigenous groups in Brazil accuse Bolsonaro of systematically attacking their rights and trying to open their lands to agribusiness and mining.A similar protest in June erupted into clashes, with three indigenous demonstrators injured and three police wounded by arrows.The latest camp opened peacefully. Organizers said there were 4,000 indigenous protesters from 117 ethnic groups.’Case of the century’The tension has peaked with a Supreme Court case opening Wednesday on the issue of how indigenous lands are protected.The agribusiness lobby argues Brazil’s constitutional protection of indigenous lands should only apply to those whose inhabitants were present in 1988, when the current constitution was adopted.However, indigenous rights activists say native inhabitants were often forced off their ancestral lands, including under Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, which wanted to develop the Amazon rainforest.Having now returned, they should have the right to benefit from the protected status of official reservations, their lawyers argue.Indigenous men from the Krenak tribe perform a ceremony at a protest camp in Brasilia, Brazil on Aug. 23, 2021.The case centers on a reservation in the southern state of Santa Catarina but will set legal precedent for dozens of similar cases throughout Brazil.Protest organizers called it “the most important court case of the century.””If the Supreme Court accepts the so-called … ‘time frame’ argument in its ruling on land demarcation later this month, it could legitimize violence against indigenous peoples and inflame conflicts in the Amazon rainforest and other areas,” the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Francisco Cali Tzay, said in a statement.On the other hand, if the ruling goes in the indigenous groups’ favor, it could also deflate a bill before Congress that would enshrine the 1988 “time-frame argument” in law.That bill, which passed a lower house committee vote in June, is one of several that indigenous activists and environmentalists say Bolsonaro and his allies are trying to use to further the advance of agriculture and industry into Brazil’s rapidly disappearing forests.”It’s a very important case at a time when we are seeing numerous setbacks in terms of indigenous rights,” Juliana de Paula Batista, a lawyer with the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), told AFP.Surging deforestationBrazil is home to around 900,000 indigenous people. They make up less than 0.5% of the population of 212 million, but their reservations cover about 13% of the country.Environmentalists say protecting indigenous reservations is one of the best ways to stop the destruction of the Amazon, a critical resource in the race to curb climate change.Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has surged since Bolsonaro took office in 2019. In the 12 months through July, a total of 8,712 square kilometers (3,364 square miles), an area nearly the size of Puerto Rico, of forest cover was destroyed, according to official figures.
…

As the captain of Afghanistan’s wheelchair basketball team and a women’s rights activist, Nilofar Bayat fled when the Taliban took over, seeking safety in Spain where she hopes to soon be back on the court.  Speaking to reporters in the northern city of Bilbao days after arriving on a Spanish military plane, this 28-year-old athlete spoke of her shock at how quickly the Taliban swept into the capital Kabul and of her struggle to get out.  “I really want the U.N. and all countries to help Afghanistan … because the Taliban are the same as they were 20 years ago,” she said. “If you see Afghanistan now, it’s all men, there are no women because they don’t accept woman as part of society.” After a nerve-wracking escape, she and her husband, Ramesh, who plays for Afghanistan’s national basketball team, landed Friday at an airbase outside Madrid and are now starting a new life in Bilbao.   FILE – The captain of Afghanistan’s women’s wheelchair basketball team Nilofar Bayat, 2nd right, and her husband disembark from a Spanish evacuation airplane, that landed at the Torrejon de Ardoz air base, August 20, 2021.”When the Taliban came and I saw them around my home, I was scared and I started to think about myself and my family,” said Bayat after the insurgents swept into the capital on August 15.  “I’ve been in too many videos and spoken about the Taliban, about all I’ve done in basketball and working for women’s rights in Afghanistan. There can be a big case for the Taliban to kill me and my family,” she said. With the help of the Spanish embassy, she managed to secure a seat on a plane and set off for the airport where she saw the Taliban shooting and beating people to stop them from reaching the airport.  “It was a really difficult day … I’ve never seen this much danger in my country. I cried a lot, not because they beat me or my husband, but because of who had taken control of the country,” the former law student said. With the help of several German soldiers, they managed to get into the airport but spent two days there in the blazing Kabul sun with “nothing to sleep on … and not enough food” before being flown out on a Spanish military plane.  She’s acutely aware she is one of the lucky ones.  “I’m luckier than other Afghan people in that I’ve left and am here and can start a new life. But I’m just one person, others are still there,” she said.  When the Taliban were in power in the late 1990s, a rocket hit Bayat’s family home when she was 2 years old. In the attack, her brother was killed, her father was injured and she lost a leg. “They changed my life forever, they caused pain and something that I’ll carry forever in my life,” Bayat said. In a country where many people have been left with disabilities because of attacks or polio, Bayat became interested in wheelchair basketball after seeing men play, and she went on to play a key role in setting up an Afghan women’s team. “When I’m in the gym and playing basketball, I forget what’s happening in my country and also that I have a disability,” she said.She came to Spain with the help of a Spanish journalist friend and said she has received many offers to play with wheelchair basketball teams, including one from Bidaideak Bilbao BSR, with whom she hopes to start playing “as soon as possible.” 
 
…

U.S. officials are not alone in facing blame for miscalculating the speed of the Taliban offensive.  European leaders and their security advisers are also coming under mounting criticism for misjudging how rapidly events would play out in Afghanistan once President Joe Biden had decided on withdrawing American forces from the central Asian country. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his top ministers are being accused by lawmakers from their own party as well as by opposition politicians of failing to have evacuation plans ready ahead of a possible Taliban surge as U.S. and NATO troops were being withdrawn.With recriminations flying over the lack of apparent evacuation preparation and amid chaotic scenes at Kabul’s airport, a senior member of Johnson’s ruling Conservative party, Tobias Ellwood, a former British defense minister, complained Saturday of lack of coordination between NATO governments.Ellwood questioned the overall thinking which saw NATO forces being withdrawn before the evacuation of the Afghan civilians they needed to get out. “You don’t get your military out first, you get the civilians out, then you retreat yourselves?” he told “Times Radio,” a British station. “We’ve done it the other way round.””Incompetence. Poor judgment. Lack of preparedness. Untruths. Confusion. Complacency. Delay,” was the editorial judgement Sunday of Britain’s Observer newspaper on what has been unfolding at Kabul’s airport of continuing chaos.Pressure is mounting on Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to resign over the handling of Britain’s evacuation program with lawmakers infuriated that he remained on vacation with his family in Crete last week as the Taliban rolled into Kabul. Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, fumed to the BBC that Raab’s absence showed a “ministerial lack of urgency.” Keir Starmer, leader of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party, said Sunday that the response of Boris Johnson’s government has been characterized by “complete and utter complacency from start to finish.”Merkel under fire In Germany, too, which withdrew its last contingent of around 570 soldiers from Afghanistan in June, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is also facing a storm of criticism for not having finalized before the fall of Kabul evacuation plans for Afghans who worked with German forces.  German soldiers line up for the final roll call in front of a Bundeswehr Airbus A400M cargo plane after returning from Afghanistan at the airfield in Wunstorf, Germany, June 30, 2021. (Hauke-Christian Dittrich/Pool via Reuters)According to Der Spiegel magazine, top German officials started discussing in April what to do about local hires, including translators, drivers, and cooks, but for weeks disagreed about who deserved to be evacuated — whether it should be all 50,000 Afghans who had worked for the German military mission since 2013 — or only those who have worked the past two years.  There were months-long disputes about whether scheduled flights from Kabul should be used, with the evacuees paying their own way, or whether the German government should arrange charter flights, according to minutes of meetings seen by Der Spiegel.  At various times over the past two months, as more towns and districts fell to the Taliban in a quickening tempo and as the Islamists drew nearer the Afghan capital, appeals were made to Chancellor Merkel to intervene in the multi-agency disputes.   German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a protective mask during a news conference on the current developments in Afghanistan, at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany August 16, 2021 Odd Andersen/Pool via REUTERSFour weeks ago, when half of Afghanistan had already fallen under Taliban control, lawmakers, drawn from government and opposition parties, sent a joint letter to Merkel asking her to sort out evacuation plans. “We are appealing to you urgently and therefore publicly because time is very short and Germany is in danger of betraying its commitments to local hires in Afghanistan,” they wrote.  Miscalculations  The failure to finalize evacuation plans is being put down to a miscalculation — also made in Washington — at the speed of the Taliban offensive as well as misjudgments about when the Afghan government and army might give up. Like their American counterparts, European intelligence and security agencies thought they had more time.Two weeks ago, General Nick Carter, chief of Britain’s defense staff, wrote in an article in The Times newspaper that it was much too soon “to write off the country.” “There are increasing signs that the population is rallying in defiance,” he said. In late July, Germany’s intelligence service, commonly known by its German acronym BND, was also suggesting a much longer time frame for a Taliban victory, saying that it would take around three months, according to German media reports.German intelligence officials predicted Taliban fighters would besiege Kabul until the government surrendered. They did not reckon on the sudden flight of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Forty-eight hours before the Taliban seized Kabul with hardly a shot being fired, the BND changed its assessment but forecast the capital would not fall before September 11.   Intel failures  A key reason for the miscalculation is that the BND, like other Western intelligence agencies, apparently failed to pick up an infiltration strategy the Taliban had launched months earlier involving moving fighters stealthy into position in key cities ready to emerge when needed, concede some European military officials speaking, on the condition of anonymity, with VOA. In many towns, including Kabul, Taliban fighters were already on the ground.And in some cases, within the ranks of the Afghan National Army, says Ali Nazari, a spokesman for Ahmad Massoud, the son of a charismatic warlord assassinated by al-Qaida, who is forming a nascent anti-Taliban movement in the mountainous Panjshir region. He says the impression given by some Western reports of a Taliban blitzkrieg rolling across Afghanistan is wrong.FILE – Afghan National Army commando forces stand guard along a road amid ongoing fighting between Taliban and Afghan security forces in the Enjil district of Herat province, Aug. 1, 2021.“There were a lot of Taliban loyalists in the army, a lot of sympathizers and supporters,” he told VOA. They just surrendered to the Taliban. “There was a conspiracy inside the army itself,” he adds.Nor were Western intelligence agencies fully aware, officials say, of the quick progress the Taliban had been making in striking since May surrender deals with tribal elders and local warlords as well as some leaders of Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities, including the country’s Hazara, who have long faced violent persecution from the Taliban because of their ethnicity and Shi’ite Muslim adherence. Another factor was the failure to appreciate the hollowness of the Afghan government and the demoralization of the country’s national army, German foreign minister Heiko Maas admitted last week. “There is no talking this up. All of us — the federal government, intelligence services, the international community — misjudged the situation,” Maas told a press conference in Berlin.  Taliban are also surprised In the defense of Western officials, American and Europe, Taliban leaders also appear to have been taken aback by the ten days that shook the world. They, too, had not anticipated such quick success with their two-month-long outside-in military strategy, which saw them slowly tightening their grip on rural districts before securing regional capitals.  FILE – Taliban fighters display their flag on patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 19, 2021.“It is an unexpected victory,” Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the Taliban leaders, said in a video message last week. Taliban leaders had been negotiating with Afghan President Ghani for a transitional arrangement that would have delayed their entry into Kabul, notes Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, a research institution in Washington D.C.“The Taliban were keen on that as they didn’t think they had the capacity to immediately take control of the city,” Nasr, a former senior advisor to the U.S. State Department on Afghanistan, said during an online discussion hosted by the Asia Society, a global non-profit. 
…

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.
…

Migrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia are flooding the streets of Necoclí, a town in Colombia across the Gulf of Urabá from the Panamanian border. More than 11,000 migrants are stranded at the port as more arrive with plans to travel north to the United States. Jair Diaz filed this report from Necoclí, narrated by Cristina Caicedo Smits.Camera: Oscar Cavadia  
David Parra also contributed to this report.
…

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. 
…

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.
…