The International Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor has been universally ratified. The International Labor Organization said this is the first time in its history that all 187 of its member states have ratified an International Labor Convention.An estimated 152 million children are in child labor. Seventy-three-million are involved in hazardous work that the International Labor Organization defines as the worst forms of child labor.International Labor Organization Director-General Guy Ryder attends a news conference after a meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Oct. 1, 2019.ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said the universal ratification of the convention means that children now will benefit from critical legal protection against the worst forms of child labor.“In the past, it has too often been the lot of children to be used to fight in armed conflict, to be sold as slaves, forced into work in the drug trade or in the production of child sexual abuse material or exposed to hazardous substances and long hours,” Ryder said. “In every country, now these practices have been condemned, and clear legal prohibitions against them have been established everywhere.”However, Ryder warns against complacency. He said countries must do more to end impunity for violators and for violations of children’s right to be free from child labor. He said governments must implement and enforce the provisions in the convention.UN Ratifies First Unanimous Treaty on Child Labor The legally binding convention prohibits exploitation of children and forced laborSince the ILO convention was adopted in 1999, the incidence of child labor and its worst forms dropped nearly 40% by 2016. However, progress has slowed in recent years, particularly among children five to 11 years of age, and in some geographical areas.Africa is the region with both the highest absolute number of child laborers and the highest prevalence. Ryder tells VOA the situation in Africa is very worrying.“Just over 72 million African children are in child labor. Of those, 31.5 million in hazardous work,” Ryder said. “The prevalence rate then is nearly 20%. Nearly one in five of all African children are in child labor. … Progress seems to have stalled in Africa, and child labor in absolute terms actually increased in sub-Saharan Africa from 2012 to 2016.”The ILO chief fears years of progress in reducing child labor are at risk of being reversed by COVID-19. He notes the pandemic has caused global unemployment to skyrocket. As more and more people lose their livelihoods and means of survival, he said the danger and temptation to push children back into the labor market will grow.   
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A court in the West African nation of Cape Verde has approved extradition of Colombian businessman Álex Saab to the United States, where he faces charges involving money laundering on behalf of Venezuela’s socialist government.The court made its decision Friday but did not inform the defense team until Monday evening, João do Rosário, an attorney on Saab’s legal team, told VOA’s Portuguese service.Rosário said the defense team would appeal Saab’s extradition to Cape Verde’s Supreme Court. He said it has 10 days from the date of notification to take such action. “We will necessarily have to appeal this decision,” Rosário said, adding that it was “not properly grounded.”He said the legal team also is considering an appeal to the country’s Constitutional Court. Saab, a 48-year-old Colombian lawyer and businessman, was arrested on the island of Sal on June 12, when his private plane stopped for refueling en route from Venezuela to Iran. The United States requested Saab’s extradition within days of his arrest. Venezuela’s government protested Saab’s arrest, contending he was on a “humanitarian mission” to get food and medical supplies, according to The Associated Press. Saab is considered a possible front man for the family of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The United States and other countries blame Maduro’s socialist policies for a political and economic crisis threatening regional stability. Saab and another Colombian businessman were indicted in July 2019 in U.S. federal court in Miami for their alleged participation in an illegal bribery scheme from late 2011 through at least September 2015, according to a U.S. Justice Department news release last year.  The men allegedly laundered money from bank accounts in Venezuela “to and through bank accounts located in the United States,” a U.S. Justice Department news release said when the indictment was issued.   In September, Saab was among three individuals targeted by the U.S. Treasury Department for allegedly enabling Maduro “and his illegitimate regime to corruptly profit from imports of food aid and distribution in Venezuela,” a U.S. Treasury Department news release said at the time.  This account originated in VOA’s Portuguese service, with Eugenio Teixeira reporting from Cape Verde and Alvaro Andrade from Washington.. 
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A top European Union diplomat has called for a delay in the vote to choose the Inter-American Development Bank’s new president, a closely watched election that has sparked controversy over the first-ever U.S. candidate.
In a July 30 letter seen by Reuters, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell cited the coronavirus pandemic and the nomination of President Donald Trump’s hawkish Latin America adviser Mauricio Claver-Carone as reasons to postpone the planned Sept. 12 vote until after March.
“This postponement is more advisable if we consider the submission, without precedent, of a candidacy to preside the Bank by the United States Government,” Borrell wrote in the letter to Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya.
 
Some U.S. lawmakers and former ministers and presidents in Latin America have publicly voiced their opposition to Claver-Carone, although he is favored to win the Sept. 12 election and has support from at least 15 countries.
 
Two Argentine government officials told Reuters the country, which has its own candidate, would favor postponing the IDB election. But with just over 11% of the voting power, they would need the support of other countries to delay the vote.
 
Claver-Carone dismissed the idea that Europe would oppose his candidacy in an interview last week, saying he was already in touch with European leaders about future plans.
 
“Do you think Europe is going to look at the majority of region which has already come out publicly in support of our candidacy and say, ‘Oh, we’re going to go with one country in the region versus the overwhelming majority of the region?’ The optics of that would be horrible,” Claver-Carone said.
 
A senior U.S. administration official told Reuters the EU was not party to the IDB as an entity, and all member states had agreed to the virtual September election.
 
“Any effort by a minority of countries, let alone by non-regional countries, to hijack the election process would be an affront to the region and be challenged,” the official said.
 
Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, also pushed back in a tweet on Sunday: “The region is independent, sovereign and can maturely make its own decisions.”
  
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The Bahamas begins a two-week national lockdown Tuesday due to a spike in coronavirus cases. Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis announced the restriction in a national address Monday night, saying the decision was based on the advice of health experts. Minnis said, officials will evaluate the impact of the lockdown after two weeks and the decision to relax or extend the lockdown will be made in part by the cooperation of the people living on the islands. Minnis said, citizens who break their quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus will be fined. Travel for essentials such as food, water, medicines is restricted to Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 7 am to 5 pm for the general public and essential workers have an additional day on Saturday from 7am to 1 pm. Minnis said, the onus is on the Bahamians and residents to work together and control the spread of COVID-19. The prime minister added that health care services and accommodations are being overwhelmed because of the rapid increase in coronavirus cases mostly among people 20 to 40 years old. The Bahamas confirmed the vast majority of the 679 COVID-19 cases occurred in the past month. So far, there are 14 coronavirus deaths.  
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A group of entrepreneurs believe their mobile crematorium is the solution to Bolivia’s surge in coronavirus deaths. Carlos Ayo, an environmental engineer, who is part of the group said, there are instances when dozens of bodies piled up in the street in Bolivia because families do not have the resources or aren’t finding places to bury or cremate the bodies of  loved ones and they end up throwing them in the streets to avoid contaminating themselves. Ayo says the mobile crematory represents a way of giving something back to his homeland. The group hauls the furnaces to communities that do not have the resources to meet the increasing demands brought on the COVID-19 pandemic. The Associated Press said, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, one of the hard-hit cities, bodies were placed in the streets because of a break down in funeral services.      So far, more than 3,200 people have died of the coronavirus in Bolivia and more than 81,000 people have been infected with the virus. 
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Poland reported on Tuesday a record daily increase in coronavirus cases for the fourth time in a week, with more than a third of them found in the southern Silesia region, which has been grappling with another outbreak among coal miners.
The latest tally of 680 new infections and six deaths comes as Poland considers introducing stricter restrictions, including mandatory testing for travelers returning to Poland and quarantine for those coming from certain countries.
More than 220 cases were reported in Silesia, where a rapid spread of infections led to a temporary reduction of coal output and work in 12 mines in June. The situation then stabilized, but has now deteriorated again.
Last week new cases were detected in three mines, including Chwalowice, which was among those where work was cut back to a minimum in June. The state assets ministry said all 2,700 miners in Chwalowice would be tested on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Sanitary services said last week the resurgence of COVID-19 among miners was a result of easing restrictions and of the working conditions in the mines, where it is difficult to enforce social distancing.
Currently 1,043 coal miners are infected, mostly from Poland’s biggest coal producer PGG, data cited by state-run news agency PAP showed on Tuesday.
The pandemic has added to numerous problems faced by the coal industry. The government, PGG representatives and trade unions have agreed to work out a restructuring plan by the end of September.
Poland now has a total of 48,149 recorded coronavirus cases and 1,738 deaths.
Sittings of the upper and lower houses of parliament have been pushed back, with the lower house meeting moving from Aug. 7 to Aug. 14, after one senator tested positive on Saturday.
Members of parliament and senators have since undergone testing for COVID-19.
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A group of entrepreneurs believe their mobile crematorium is the solution to Bolivia’s surge in coronavirus deaths. Carlos Ayo, an environmental engineer, who is part of the group said, there are instances when dozens of bodies piled up in the street in Bolivia because families do not have the resources or aren’t finding places to bury or cremate the bodies of  loved ones and they end up throwing them in the streets to avoid contaminating themselves. Ayo says the mobile crematory represents a way of giving something back to his homeland. The group hauls the furnaces to communities that do not have the resources to meet the increasing demands brought on the COVID-19 pandemic. The Associated Press said, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, one of the hard-hit cities, bodies were placed in the streets because of a break down in funeral services.      So far, more than 3,200 people have died of the coronavirus in Bolivia and more than 81,000 people have been infected with the virus. 
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After the United States, Brazil has the world’s highest number of COVID-19 deaths and confirmed cases — turning the South American nation into a coronavirus hotspot. Despite this grim situation, Brazil’s biggest cities — São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro — have decided to reopen businesses, even as epidemiologists warn that the rising death toll from the pandemic could grow exponentially. For VOA, Edgar Maciel reports from Sao Paulo.
Camera: Edgar Maciel, Courtesy TV Brasil  Produced by: Rod James 
 
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Spain’s former monarch, Juan Carlos I, is leaving Spain to live in another, unspecified, country amid a financial scandal, according to a letter published Monday on the royal family’s website. The letter from Juan Carlos to his son, King Felipe VI, said: “I am informing you of my considered decision to move, during this period, out of Spain.” Juan Carlos, in the letter, said he made the decision against the backdrop of “public repercussions of certain episodes of my past private life.” He said he wanted to ensure he doesn’t make his son’s role difficult, adding that “my legacy, and my own dignity, demand that it should be so.” Juan Carlos’ current whereabouts were not known. Spain’s prime minister recently said he found the developments about Juan Carlos – including investigations in Spain and Switzerland – “disturbing.” FILE – Former Spain’s King Juan Carlos sits in a car as he leaves Quiron Hospital one week after a heart surgery in Madrid, Spain, August 31, 2019 in this still image taken from a video obtained by Reuters.Since Spain’s Supreme Court opened its probe earlier this year, Spanish media outlets have published damaging testimony from a separate Swiss investigation into millions of euros (dollars) that were allegedly given to Juan Carlos by Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah.  Juan Carlos allegedly then transferred a large amount to a former companion in what investigators are considering as a possible attempt to hide the money from authorities. The companion, Corinna Larsen, is a Danish-German businesswoman long linked by Spanish media to the former king. Spanish prosecutors have asked her to provide testimony in the case in September in Madrid. The 82-year-old former king is credited with helping Spain peacefully restore democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.  But marred by scandals in the later years of his reign, Juan Carlos in 2014 abdicated in favor of his son Felipe VI, losing the immunity from prosecution Spain’s Constitution grants to the head of state. After media reports claimed Felipe was a beneficiary of an offshore account holding an alleged 65 million-euro ( $76 million) gift from Saudi Arabia to Juan Carlos, Felipe renounced any future personal inheritance he might receive from the former king. Felipe also stripped his father of his annual stipend of 194,232 euros ($228,000). FILE – Spain’s King Felipe, Queen Letizia, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofia arrive to a state tribute in memory of Spain’s COVID-19 victims at Royal Palace in Madrid, Spain, July 16, 2020.The royal house has denied that Felipe had any knowledge of his father’s alleged financial irregularities. The royal website said in a statement that Felipe respected his father’s decision. Felipe acknowledged the historic importance of his father’s reign, the statement said, but also “reaffirmed the principles and values on which it stood, in the framework of our Constitution and the rest of our legal system.” A statement from Spain’s general prosecutor’s office in June said it was investigating whether Juan Carlos received millions of dollars in kickbacks from Saudi Arabia during the construction of a high-speed railway there by a Spanish consortium.  It called the probe one of “undeniable technical complexity.” The Supreme Court investigation centers on developments after mid-2014. That covers the second phase of the 2011 contract for the bullet train between the Saudi cities of Medina and Mecca — the so-called “AVE of the desert” in reference to the acronym for high-speed trains in Spain. The date marks the moment when Juan Carlos, struggling amid several scandals, passed on the throne to his son after holding it for nearly four decades. Though Juan Carlos’ finances have been questioned in Spanish media for years, there have so far been no legal implications for him. Spanish lawmakers have rejected at least two proposals since the first allegations emerged to open parliamentary investigations. The decision to leave Spain means Juan Carlos will vacate the 17th-century Zarzuela palace in Madrid, his home for more than 50 years. He moved there after marrying the former queen, Sofia, in 1963. “I think he didn’t have any other choice than to leave,” said Carmen Torras, a 66-year-old Barcelona resident. “I hope justice can follow its course.” In Madrid, Nadia Rodriguez, 33, welcomed the former king’s decision. “It’s better that he just goes,” said Rodriguez, a sports teacher. “The truth is that he hasn’t been giving a very good image of Spain.” 
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Press groups called for justice Monday after unidentified gunmen in southern Mexico killed a journalist along with a police officer assigned to protect him after a 2016 attack. Pablo Morrugares was the fifth journalist to be killed in Mexico this year, in attacks that are increasingly killing police guards assigned to the victims. More than 140 journalists have been killed in the past 20 years. The prosecutors’ office in Guerrero state said Morrugares and a state police officer were at a restaurant Sunday when they were killed in a hail of bullets. Authorities found 55 shell casings from assault rifles at the scene in the city of Iguala. The killers apparently opened fire from a passing vehicle. Morrugares was director of the P.M Noticias Guerrero website, which frequently reports on the gang violence that plagues the region. Local media reported that threats against Morrugares had been displayed in the past on banners hung by roadsides, a tactic frequently used by drug gangs in Mexico. On Monday, the Inter American Press Association called on authorities to investigate the crime. It said Morrugares and his wife had survived a previous attack in 2016, when attackers opened fire on their car. The group called on Mexican authorities to provide better funding and protection for journalists registered in a government protection program. While the Mexican government has sometimes assigned police bodyguards for threatened journalists, killers have increasingly been gunning down both the journalists and their guards. In May, gunmen killed the owner of a newspaper and one of the policemen who had been assigned to protect him in northern Sonora state, following earlier threats. 
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With a rainbow as a backdrop, Italy’s president inaugurated a replacement bridge Monday in Genoa, but families of those killed when the Morandi Bridge collapsed boycotted the ceremony along with the firefighters who pulled many of the 43 dead from smashed cars and trucks.  Two years ago this month, a stretch of the Morandi Bridge suddenly gave way in a violent rainstorm, sending vehicles plunging to the dry riverbed below. The new structure — a key artery for the northwestern Italian port city — was erected thanks to round-the-clock construction, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Rain drenched the new bridge, stopping just before the ceremony, which started with a recitation of the names of those who died. Renowned architect Renzo Piano designed the bridge to evoke a ship’s bow, to honor his native city’s proud maritime history. The span has 43 lamps in memory of the collapse victims.Traffic will start crossing San Giorgio Bridge, named after St. George, popular in Genoa, on Wednesday. “We are suspended between grief” over the tragedy and “pride for the construction of the new bridge,” Piano told his fellow Genoese in a speech. Renzo Piano walks along the new San Giorgio Bridge in Genoa, Italy, August 3, 2020.The families of the dead are upset that the company that maintained Morandi Bridge will still run the new structure for a while more — even though poor maintenance is being investigated as a possible cause of the collapse. “No one can give us back our dead,” Egle Possetti, who leads an association of the bridge victims’ families, told Italian news channel Sky TG24. Possetti, who lost a sister and other family members in the collapse, said she hoped attention would stay focused on the ongoing criminal investigation into the collapse. Speaking before the ceremony with relatives of the people killed in the collapse, President Sergio Mattarella said he agreed with their decision to meet with him privately and not during the ceremony on the bridge.  The replacement bridge doesn’t cancel out what happened in Genoa, Mattarella said.  “On the contrary, I see it, in good part, as a kind of memorial stone that recalls the victims,” he said.The president added that he shared the families’ quest for justice. “Responsibility isn’t generic. It always has a first name and surname,” Mattarella said, calling for “severe, precise, rigorous action to ascertain responsibility.”FILE – A general view of the collapsed Morandi Bridge in the port city of Genoa, Italy, February 7, 2019.During the ceremony, Mayor Marco Bucci had words for those who lost loved ones in the collapse. “This must never happen again,” the mayor said. Nine Italian air force jets flew in formation over the bridge, trailing smoke in the red, white and green colors of the country’s flag.  Firefighters who extracted survivors and bodies from tons of twisted metal two years ago also boycotted the ceremony in solidarity with the families, Sky TG24 reported.  Prosecutors are probing what caused Morandi Bridge to collapse on August 14, 2018, on the eve of Italy’s biggest summer holiday. Riccardo Morandi, the engineer who designed the bridge built in the 1960s, had recommended continual maintenance to remove rust, especially from the corrosive effect of sea air in the Mediterranean port city, and pollution’s toll on concrete.  Prosecutors have said they are investigating to see whether proper maintenance was consistently carried out over the years on the heavily used span. Earlier this summer, the Italian government forged a deal in which the Benetton fashion family agreed to exit Autostrade per l’Italia, the company that manages and maintains many of Italy’s highways and bridges. Its highway concession had included Morandi Bridge. But that exit will take some time, as Autostrade becomes a public company under the deal and pays 3.4 billion euros ($4 billion) in compensation.   
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Norway says it will stop all cruise ships with more than 100 people on board from disembarking at Norwegian ports after a coronavirus outbreak on a vessel left 41 people infected.  Health Minister Bent Hoie announced the ban Monday, saying the new rules will apply for the next 14 days. He said ships that have already departed will be able to offload passengers and crew at Norwegian ports but that no new journeys can take place.   “The pandemic is not over,” Hoie told a news conference. Norway’s Hurtigruten cruise line apologized Monday following the outbreak on one of its ships, the MS Roald Amundsen. “We have failed,” CEO Daniel Skjeldam told a news conference. “I apologize strongly on behalf of the company.” He said the company would suspend its cruises until further notice and that it is “now in the process of a full review of all procedures.” The cruise line was one of the first companies to resume sailing during the pandemic. Four crew members on board the MS Roald Amundsen were hospitalized on Friday when the ship arrived at Tromsoe, north of the Arctic Circle. They were later diagnosed with the infection along with another 31 crew members. Passengers aboard the ship were allowed to disembark before anyone had been diagnosed, sending local officials scrambling to locate them. At least five passengers have now tested positive and hundreds more have been told to self-isolate for 10 days. The cruise ship industry has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, with ships worldwide shutting down in March after several high-profile outbreaks at sea.  
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Emma Gaya winces with pain as the nurse at her local clinic inserts a swab deep into her nose.Gaya had been suffering from a fever and fears she may have been infected with the coronavirus. Her hometown of Sant Sadurni d’Anoia is one of several in Spain’s northeast Catalonia region to see a rise in infections.The public health clinic is conducting around 25 tests each day and has detected a dozen cases in the past two weeks, a rate considered high by epidemiologists.“It pains me that we could go right back where we started,” Gaya said, fearing she may pass the virus on to her 70-year-old mother. “I think we had done well. Now, I don’t know if we are doing it well.”A healthcare worker uses a swab to collect a sample from a man testing for the novel coronavirus COVID-19 at a primary health care center in Barcelona on Aug. 3, 2020.Following the rise in infections that began more than two weeks ago, Catalonia’s semi-autonomous government reimposed restrictions on some public gatherings. Those measures are slowly being eased, as authorities say infection rates are falling again.That has not stopped several European states from imposing travel restrictions. Britain is enforcing a 14-day quarantine on all people returning from Spain, a painful blow to the already battered Spanish economy. Tourism makes up 12% of Spain’s GDP, and some 18 million Britons visited the country last year.Spain is not alone. Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Germany are among European nations seeing an uptick in infection rates, as fears grow of a second wave of infections.A sign reading “wearing a mask is mandatory” is seen in a street amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Antwerp, Belgium, July 27, 2020.The city of Antwerp is at the center of Belgium’s outbreak, accounting for roughly half of all new cases. Local officials say the government lifted the nationwide lockdown too soon in May, ignoring localized hot spots like Antwerp.“If you don’t respect physical distancing, this infection spreads around very easily,” said Pierre Van Damme, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Antwerp.“And then again, it (requires) major measures to start controlling it again.”Such measures have been reimposed in three cities in northern Britain, where members of different households are banned from gathering indoors. The government said Friday there are an estimated 4,900 new infections every day across the country.It is vital that governments take swift action to contain these outbreaks, Dr. Peter Drobac of the University of Oxford told VOA on Monday. “If countries are responding, slowing down their reopening, making targeted changes to slow the spread of the virus, hopefully we can keep things in check before it escapes onto that exponential growth pathway.”Customers eat at restaurant next to signs indicating discounts off food, in central London, Aug. 3, 2020.A wider easing of lockdown measures across Britain has been put on hold, with theaters, casinos and bowling alleys among businesses forced to remain closed.“We’re going to have to make difficult choices as societies about the things we value the most,” Drobac said. “If, for example, our priority is to get our kids back in school in September, it may mean that we really don’t want to have people in pubs and indoor restaurants right now.”Germany has also seen an uptick in infections. In Berlin, around 20,000 people gathered Saturday to protest lockdown measures. Authorities are prosecuting the protesting organizers for breaking hygiene and social distancing rules.Meanwhile in some parts of Europe, including Greece and Italy, infection rates remain low, and tourists are returning.“The coronavirus is not something that greatly concerns us,” said Athens resident Thanassis Yanellis, as he prepared to board a ferry at the Port of Piraeus on Saturday bound for the Greek island of Aegina. “We mostly look forward to relaxing and resting.”
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Irish politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume has died at 83, his family said Monday.Hume is best known for fashioning an agreement to end violence in his native Northern Ireland. A Catholic leader of the moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) of Northern Ireland, Hume shared the 1998 Nobel with David Trimble, the first minister of Northern Ireland at the time, for their roles securing the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.The agreement ended three decades of violence that left at least 3,500 people dead.Hume was born in 1937 in Northern Ireland’s second city, Derry, or Londonderry to Irish nationalists and British unionists, respectively. Before his political career, he trained for the priesthood and was an advocate of nonviolence throughout his life.Hume saw the decline of the nationalist movement in Northern Ireland and pushed for self-government for the British-ruled province, with input from all parties. He had hoped eventually to achieve a union with the Irish Republic. Though he believed in equal representation in what was then a Protestant-ruled state, he condemned the Irish Republican Army (IRA)’s violent actions.“Ireland is not a romantic dream. It is not a flag. It is 4.5 million people divided into two powerful traditions,” Hume said. “The solution will be found not on the basis of victory for either, but on the basis of agreement and a partnership between both. The real division of Ireland is not a line drawn on the map but in the minds and hearts of its people.”Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson extended his condolences to Hume’s family on Monday, calling the late Nobelist a “political giant.”John Hume was quite simply a political giant. He stood proudly in the tradition that was totally opposed to violence and committed to pursuing his objectives by exclusively peaceful and democratic means.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) August 3, 2020Hume announced his complete retirement from politics on Feb. 4, 2004. His death Monday came after years of ill health, his family acknowledged. 
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Pipe by precious pipe, the organ that once thundered through Notre Dame Cathedral is being taken apart after last year’s devastating fire.The mammoth task of dismantling, cleaning and re-assembling France’s largest musical instrument started Monday and is expected to last nearly four years. It will take six months just to tune the organ, and its music isn’t expected to resound again through the medieval Paris monument until 2024, according to the state agency overseeing Notre Dame’s restoration.Amazingly, the 8,000-pipe organ survived the April 2019 fire that consumed the cathedral’s roof and toppled its spire. But the blaze coated the instrument in toxic lead dust that must now be painstakingly removed.And while the organ didn’t burn, it did suffer damage from a record heatwave last summer and has been affected by other temperature variations it’s been exposed to since the 12th-century cathedral lost its roof, the agency said.Experts started removing the organ’s keyboards Monday and will then take out its pipes in a dismantling process that will last through the end of this year, according to the restoration agency. The pieces will be placed in special containers inside the huge cathedral, where the cleaning and restoration will take place.The general who leads the agency said the organ, which dates from 1733, will next play again on April 16, 2024, marking five years since the fire.President Emmanuel Macron hopes the cathedral can reopen in time for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. But it’s taken more than a year to clear out dangerous lead residue and scaffolding that had been in place before the fire for a previous renovation effort, and reconstruction of the landmark has yet to begin. 
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Italian Firefighters, civil protection volunteers, and Alpine troops are working around the clock in trying to put out the fires that have engulfed the hundreds of hectares of woodland around the city of L’Aquila in the eastern region of Abruzzo. The fires were still burning for the third day Sunday, after the area was set ablaze by an act of arson. L’Aquila’s Mayor posted a statement on his Facebook page, saying that four Canadair aircraft, three helicopters and more than 150 people were participating in an operation to put the flames under control. Firefighters have also been using drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras to locate the origin of the fires. 
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Mexican police and armed forces arrested the leader of the violent Santa Rosa de Lima gang who have terrorized the north-central region of the country. Authorities in the state of Guanajuato announced the arrest of José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, widely known by his Spanish nickname “El Marro,” which means “The Sledgehammer.” The Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the Jalisco cartel have been engaged in a bloody turf battle for years in the industrial hub of Guanajuato, home to many foreign auto plants and parts suppliers, turning it into the most violent state in Mexico. 2,293 people have been murdered in the first half of this year alone in the Guanajuato state.   Some observers say the Santa Rosa gang, which is not a drag cartel but a powerful violent group, is responsible for killing 27 men during an attack in July on a drug rehabilitation center in the city of Irapuato. However, Mexico’s top civilian security official, Alfonso Durazo, said El Marro would be charged with organized crime and fuel theft, but not murder. The Santa Rosa de Lima gang is accused of stealing fuel from government pipelines and refineries and robbing freight from trains in north-central Guanajuato state. 
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In southern Chile a confrontation between Mapuche indigenous protesters and residents turned violent Sunday. Several government buildings in the Araucanía region were damaged as the violence erupted. Local media reported that residents tried to force the Mapuche protesters out of the municipality buildings, before burning and overturning vehicles belonging to them. Chilean police intervened to evict the protesters and prevent other violent acts.  Interior Undersecretary Juan Galli said that authorities arrested 48 people during such “absolutely condemnable” unrest. The Mapuche protesters had occupied local government buildings for several days in a show of support for one of their leaders, Celestino Córdova, who is on a hunger strike in prison, and other Mapuche individuals whom they consider political prisoners.   The native Mapuche population, most of whom live in poverty, have been in conflict with authorities since the Spanish conquistadors forced them into Araucanía in the late 19th century after some 300 years of conflict. 
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Just two years after part of Genoa’s Morandi bridge collapsed killing 43 people, a new structure opens in its place Monday, an achievement in stark contrast to stalled infrastructure projects elsewhere in Italy.
 
The new kilometer-long bridge, designed by star architect Renzo Piano, replaces the old motorway viaduct that broke apart in the port city Aug. 14, 2018, in one of Italy’s worst civil disasters in decades.
 
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who will attend the inauguration of the new Genova-San Giorgio viaduct said it would be a “symbol of a new Italy rising up again.”
 
The accident laid bare years of mismanagement and poor maintenance and set off an acrimonious battle between the government and Atlantia’s Autostrade per l’Italia, the private concession holder controlled by the powerful Benetton family that ran the bridge.
 
Several former and current executives of Autostrade and transport ministry officials have been placed under investigation by prosecutors and, after months of wrangling, Atlantia is set to lose control of its lucrative subsidiary.
 
For the mayor of Genoa and state-appointed commissioner for bridge reconstruction, Marco Bucci, the case is both an example of decades-long failures in Italy’s transport infrastructure and a demonstration of what the country is capable of accomplishing.
 
“There’s a feeling of both regret for what happened and pride in the work that’s been done,” he told Reuters. “We’ve worked and shown Italian excellence.”
 
For years, Italy’s economy has suffocated under a mix of poor governance made worse by corruption and a thicket of vested interests and bureaucracy that have stifled innovation and fostered the kind of neglect that led to the bridge disaster.
 
Genoa itself, surrounded by rugged hills that constrain road transport, has seen a motorway bypass project held up for decades.
 
With the coronavirus crisis still unfolding and billions of euros set to come to Italy from Europe’s newly agreed recovery fund, addressing such failures has gained a new urgency.
 
As well as the shocking human toll, the collapse of the Morandi bridge dealt a severe economic blow to Genoa, costing the city an estimated 6 million euros ($7.06 million) a day in lost revenues and additional costs, Bucci said, with freight traffic interrupted for months.
 
Under heavy pressure to address the neglect that caused the disaster, the government pushed through an emergency decree to sweep aside red tape.
 
Between demolishing the remainder of the old structure in February 2019 to opening the new bridge 18 months later, the speed of the project has been breakneck in a country with crumbling roads and tunnels and development plans gathering dust.
 
While the circumstances behind the bridge collapse were unique, much rides on repeating that momentum elsewhere.
 
Trust and clear project goals, two things that have often been lacking in big infrastructure projects, were vital, said Roberto Carpaneto, head of RINA Consulting, who worked with the construction consortium led by Italian infrastructure groups Webuild and Fincantieri.
 
“Being able to say what was going to happen, when and why allowed us to build this relation of trust,” he said.   
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The Mexican Army and state security forces have captured Jose Antonio Yepez, a prominent drug gang leader blamed for helping to fuel a major surge in violence in the country in recent years, authorities said on Sunday.Widely known as “El Marro” (The Mallet), Yepez was captured in an operation carried out early on Sunday morning, according to the federal government and authorities in the central state of Guanajuato, a principal flashpoint of gang violence.Yepez, boss of the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, a Guanajuato-based gang, has been engaged in a bloody struggle for criminal control of the state with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of the country’s most powerful and violent outfits.The Guanajuato attorney general’s office said security forces captured Yepez with five other people and rescued a kidnapped local businesswoman during the operation. An “arsenal” of weapons was also secured during the raid. 
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Opposition groups in Argentina organized a protest at the central Buenos Aires Obelisk Saturday to voice their objections to justice reform plans announced by President Alberto Fernández.Fernández announced his justice reform project Wednesday, saying his goal was a more agile judiciary, “independent of political power” and greater transparency.Opponents believe his actual intention is to protect from prosecution former president, and now vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is being investigated for crimes that allegedly occurred while she was in office between 2007 and 2015.”They’re trying to protect the former president (Fernández de Kirchner), the most corrupt former president on the planet Earth,” said Marina Rios Flores, a protester. “This is the pact that they’ve made with the President Alberto Fernández that before he leaves office he would declare the pardon on her.”A female protester was holding a banner with a photo of Fernández de Kirchner reading in Spanish “Watch out Supreme Court. Imprison Cristina now!””The Peronist (ruling) party has never been republican, it will never be,” said a protester who gave him name only as Sergio. “It’s an organization formed to steal.”Fernández de Kirchner is being investigated for alleged money laundering and criminal association.She is also accused of covering up the role of Iranians alleged to be connected to a terrorist van bomb attack at a Buenos Aires Jewish center on July 18, 1994, that killed 85 people. 
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Protesters took to the street in cities across Russia on Saturday in support of jailed Khabarovsk former governor Sergei Furgal.Russian federal police detained protesters in the cities of Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Moscow.The demonstrations come as thousands of people marched in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk for the fourth weekend Saturday, angered by the arrest of the region’s popular governor and his replacement with a Kremlin favorite.The situation in the Khabarovsk region has become a problem for the Kremlin as demonstrations in support of protesters there are spreading elsewhere in the country.Furgal, 50, a medical doctor by training, was arrested by Russian federal law enforcement in early July on charges related to multiple murders in 2004 and 2005. He was flown to Moscow, where he was ordered jailed for two months and is being held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison.Russian President Vladimir Putin replaced Furgal with a young State Duma deputy, Mikhail Degtiarev, with no ties to the region, to serve as acting governor of the Khabarovsk region.Many people in Khabarovsk believe the charges leveled against Furgal, and his replacement last week, are politically motivated. Furgal was elected in 2018, defeating a candidate from Putin’s party, United Russia.Braving the heavy rain beneath umbrellas Saturday, protesters were chanting “Freedom!” and “Putin resign!” outside a government building, while a banner read “Russia without Putin!” At times protesters also chanted “We came here of our own will.”Many in Khabarovsk, a city on the border with China, see the charges against Furgal as unsubstantiated and politically motivated. They are demanding that his trial take place in his home city, not Moscow.Protests in the city, about 8,000 kilometers east of Moscow, erupted July 11. Since then, protesters have been demanding the release of Furgal and an open and fair trial for him. 
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A former Spanish prime minister once described the rock of Gibraltar, which Spain ceded to Britain in 1713, as a stone in the shoe of Anglo-Spanish relations. But Gibraltar currently isn’t the only source of Spanish irritation with the British.Last week’s abrupt decision by London to require Britons returning from vacation in Spain to quarantine for 14 days has angered a Spanish government desperate to salvage something from the wrecked summer tourism season. And it augurs badly for Britain’s ongoing, fraught negotiations with the European Union for a post-Brexit free-trade deal.The two governments have been at loggerheads since Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisers abruptly reintroduced the quarantine measures six days ago — to howls of protests not only from the Spanish government but also from Britain’s struggling airlines and Spanish hoteliers trying to stave off bankruptcy.Johnson’s official spokesman warned “no travel is risk-free during this pandemic.” Since then, Luxembourg has been added to Britain’s list of risky countries to visit.The Spanish government has been lobbying Downing Street to change its mind, pointing out that large parts of Spain, including the tourist hotspots of the Canary and Balearic Islands, are safer than Britain and have much lower coronavirus infection rates.In an interview last week with the Telecinco TV network, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said his government was “talking with British authorities to try to get them to reconsider.” He said Britain had made an error by lumping all of Spain together and not taking a more clinical and sophisticated regional approach.He noted nearly 65 percent of Spain’s new cases are occurring in two regions — Catalonia in the northeast and neighboring Aragón. Britain’s quarantine requirement is “not well adjusted” to the epidemiological situation, he said. The Spanish point out that other European countries, notably France and Germany, have only advised their citizens against visiting Catalonia.Under relentless pressure from Madrid, the British government says it will review in 10 days’ time the quarantine requirement, which has prompted tens of thousands of would-be vacationers to cancel their travel plans. Low-cost airlines have halted flights to Spain. The review gives some hope to Spain that Britain may reverse its decision.But Britain’s quarantine decision is prompting a fierce backlash on the Iberian Peninsula that risks significant impact on Brexit talks.Spanish ministers are fuming. They were given no warning by London. The Spanish see the move as a stab in the back. Britons account for more than a fifth of the 80 million tourists who visit Spain in average every year. Nearly half a million Britons own vacation homes in Spain. The Spanish tourism association has offered to pay for British travelers to take virus tests in Spain.The dispute is threatening to reignite tensions between the two countries over the fate of Gibraltar, analysts say. Spanish politicians, goaded by the country’s tabloid press, are warning that they won’t do Britain any favors in the deadlocked negotiations over Britain’s relationship with the EU. A key stumbling block in the negotiations is over fishing rights in Britain’s waters.Gibraltar could well be sued to further complicate Brexit negotiations. The current government in Madrid has dropped pushing Spain’s sovereignty claim to Gibraltar, but it might revive it under pressure from Spain’s parliament.Gibraltar is desperate to ensure it will be able to benefit from a free-trade pact, if one is ever concluded, between Britain and the EU. Spain could wield a veto over that happening, shutting Gibraltar out of any easy relationship with the rest of the EU. Spain’s EU Affairs Minister Juan Gonzalez-Barba warned last month, before the current spat, that talks over Gibraltar’s future relationship with Spain and the EU “will not be easy.”And he hinted Spain could revive sovereignty ambitions. Ninety-six percent of Gibraltar’s voters opposed Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum.Spain’s Iberian neighbor, Portugal, also is in dispute with Britain. Portugal was not included on Britain’s safe-last of countries, which was first published last month. The country’s foreign ministry blasted the exclusion, noting that 28 times more people had died from COVID-19 in Britain than in Portugal. An infuriated António Costa, the prime minister, tweeted a graph illustrating it was safer in the tourist hotspot the Algarve, favored by British sun-seekers, than it was in Britain.While Portugal has enjoyed centuries of good relations with Britain, Anglo-Spanish relations have been more uneasy, stretching back to Tudor times when Henry VIII offended Spain by ditching and humiliating his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. British piracy during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the “Spain Main” off the coastline of the Americas and in the Caribbean Sea set the scene for Spain’s bid to invade England. But the Spanish Armada was defeated by legendary English seadogs like Sir Francis Drake.   
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Thousands of people marched in the Russian far eastern city of Khabarovsk on Saturday for a fourth consecutive weekend in protest at President Vladimir Putin’s handling of a local political crisis.Residents of Khabarovsk, around 3,800 miles (6,110 km) and seven time zones east of Moscow, are unhappy about the July 9 detention of Sergei Furgal, the wider region’s popular governor, who was arrested on murder charges he denies.His detention, which his supporters say was politically motivated, has triggered weeks of street protests, creating a headache for the Kremlin, which is trying to tackle a sharp drop in real incomes as a result of the coronavirus outbreak and keep a lid on unrest as the economy stutters.Sheltering from sporadic rain beneath umbrellas, protesters chanted “Freedom!”One banner read “Russia without Putin” while protesters chanted “Putin resign!” outside a government building.City authorities estimated around 3,500 people had taken part in the march. Some local media put the number above 10,000, but said the crowds were smaller than those of previous weeks.The protests have highlighted anger among some in the far east over what they see as policies emanating from detached Moscow-based authorities who have neglected them for years.”The government doesn’t think of us as people. We’re scum to them,” one female pensioner protester told Reuters.”We live at the edge of the world. This is the richest country … but we live in poverty and we pensioners have to work.”Supporters of Furgal, who is a member of the nationalist LDPR party, say he is being punished for defeating a candidate from the ruling pro-Putin United Russia party in 2018. The Kremlin says Furgal has serious charges to answer.Sustained demonstrations are unusual for Russia’s regions, as is a lack of response from the authorities to break them up.
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