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 The chaotic aftermath of Washington’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is being followed with a mix of trepidation and glee thousands of kilometers away — in Africa’s Sahel, where another foreign power, France, also vows to wind down its long-running counterinsurgency operation, at least in its present form.  As the United States continued to evacuate thousands of citizens and allies at Kabul’s airport this week, dozens of civilians and soldiers were killed in several Islamist attacks across a vast and dangerous three-border region that straddles Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. It was just another marker in a protracted fight that has killed thousands, displaced 2 million and — like Afghanistan — is considered by some as unwinnable.  FILE – French President Emmanuel Macron pays his respect in front of the flag-draped coffins of the thirteen French soldiers killed in Mali, during a ceremony at the Hotel National des Invalides in Paris, Dec. 2, 2019.If there many stark differences between America’s war in Afghanistan and France’s in the Sahel — from their size and nature to their Islamist targets — there are also haunting similarities, analysts say.  Both involve yearslong foreign involvement in countries with weak and  unstable governments.  Both operations have struggled against troop fatigue, casualties, and dwindling support at home. Both are against Islamist groups which, many say, are patiently confident they will outlast their enemy.  “If there’s any lesson to draw, it’s that indefinite military solutions aren’t sustainable,” said Bakary Sambe,  Senegal-based director of the Timbuktu Institute think tank. “Sooner or later, there’s got to be an exit,” he said.  Staying put  Unlike the U.S., France for now has no intention of withdrawing from the Sahel, a vast area below the Sahara. It will, however, soon begin decreasing its 5,100-troop Barkhane operation, the linchpin of a regional counterterrorist fight spanning five West and Central African countries.  FILE – French President Macron reacts during a joint press conference with Niger’s president in Paris, on July 9, 2021, following a video summit with leaders of G5 Sahel countries.Nor was the Sahel mentioned in French President Emmanuel Macron’s first major response to the Taliban’s swift victory. Rather, he warned against resurgent terrorism in Afghanistan and illegal migration to Europe.  Yet it may be hard to compartmentalize.   “I think the French cannot afford not to look at what’s going on in Afghanistan when preparing for the very gradual drawdown” of Barkhane forces, said University of Kent conflict expert Yvan Guichaoua.  Images of mayhem and anguish at Kabul’s airport and elsewhere “is something that certainly shocked French officials,” he said, “and maybe made them think about the circumstances in which they are going to leave.”  FILE – Taliban fighters display their flag on patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 19, 2021.Others are not so sure.  “I don’t think [the French] are drawing this kind of direct parallel,” between Afghanistan and the Sahel, said Jean-Herve Jezequel, Sahel Project director for the International Crisis Group policy group.“Maybe this is a mistake. But the French are downsizing, they’re not withdrawing. They’re still the biggest military force in the region,” he said. 
 Different — but also echoes of Afghanistan Macron announced in July France’s Barkhane operation would formally end early next year, with troops shrinking to up to half their current numbers and shifted to other anti-terrorist missions — notably forming backbone of the European Union’s fledgling Takuba force, currently aimed at helping Mali fight terrorism in the Sahel region. FILE – The France-led special operations logo for the new Barkhane Task Force Takuba, a multinational military mission in sub-Saharan Africa’s troubled Sahel region, is seen Nov. 3, 2020.Yet France’s revamped mission with its narrowed goals — counterterrorism and beefing up local forces rather than securing large tracts of territory — comes after mounting casualties, fading support at home, a spreading insurgency and growing anti-French sentiment in some Sahel nations.  Born in 2013, France’s military intervention in that region is half as old as the U.S. war in Afghanistan was, with a fraction of its scope and troop losses. Originally aimed to fight jihadist groups in Mali, it later expanded to four other vulnerable former colonies — Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania — that together now form a regional G5 Sahel counterinsurgency operation. Meanwhile, the jihadists are moving south, into parts of sub-Saharan Africa.   
While Paris pushes for greater governance and democracy — in June, Macron briefly suspended operations in Mali after its second coup in a year — the nation-building efforts seen in Afghanistan are not likely, Crisis Watch’s Jezequel said.  “It’s a failure,” he added. “But it’s a failure of the Sahel states.”  Today, some of those states, especially Mali, are watching Afghanistan’s swift unraveling with alarm, experts say, even as extremists celebrate.  The Sahel’s myriad jihadi groups lack the deep roots and experience of the Taliban, which held power in the 1990s. Yet, especially Western recognition of Afghanistan’s new rulers “will comfort the idea that the Islamist alternative is possible,” Sambe said. “It will galvanize radical Islamist groups—and that’s the fear,” he said. The European Union’s executive arm said Saturday it does not recognize the Taliban.  Moving forward For France, moving forward in the Sahel means focusing southward, where the insurgency has spread, and beefing up the Takuba Task Force. Nearly a dozen European countries, including Estonia, Italy, Denmark and non-EU-member Norway have joined or promised to take part in the military mission. But many others remain on the sidelines, including Germany. “The fear of many European countries is to commit troops and then be confronted with a fiasco or death of soldiers,” Guichaoua said.  However, he and others add, French persuasion, from raising fears of conflict-driven migration to Europe, to offering military support in other areas, appears to be working.  Not under French consideration, though, is any dialogue with extremists — an effort controversially tried with the Taliban that is earning support among some Sahel authorities, at least when it comes to homegrown groups.  “The French have considered this a red line,” Guichaoua said. “Because that would mean somewhat that French soldiers died for nothing. But it is on the agenda for Malian authorities.”  Local-level negotiations with jihadi groups have long taken place, he said — to gain access to markets, for example, or get hostages released — but not high-level ones, “and the main reason is France.” For their part, the Sahel’s extremists appear willing to wait, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Both, Guichaoua said, are convinced foreign powers will eventually leave, so time is on their side. 
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Seven people were killed near Kabul’s airport Saturday as thousands gathered in a desperate effort to leave the country as the Taliban take control, the British Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.The Taliban, after a 10-day offensive, entered the Afghanistan capital just a week ago, on August 15. Since then, the airport has been a chaotic site as thousands of people have tried to flee the country, fearing a return to the harsh interpretation of Islamic law practiced when the Taliban controlled the country 20 years ago.  “Conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to manage the situation as safely and securely as possible,” the British Defense Ministry said in a statement.FILE – Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2021.Temperatures on Saturday in Kabul reached 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit). The Associated Press reported that it wasn’t immediately clear whether those killed had been physically crushed, suffocated or suffered a fatal heart attack in the crowds.   A Sky News correspondent who was at the Kabul airport, however, said tens of thousands of Afghans turned up on Saturday with those at the front crushed against the barricades, Reuters reported. Also Saturday, U.S. citizens in Afghanistan who want to leave the country have been advised not to go to Kabul’s airport unless they have received “individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so.”  FILE – Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy leader and negotiator, and other delegation members attend the Afghan peace conference in Moscow, Russia, March 18, 2021. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool via Reuters)Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, returned to Afghanistan this week from Qatar, where he headed the group’s political office and oversaw peace negotiations with the Trump administration that culminated in the February 2020 deal that paved the way for U.S.-led allied troops to withdraw from nearly 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Biden delayed the May 1 withdrawal date that he inherited to August 31. But last week, Biden said during a national address from the White House that the U.S. may extend that deadline to evacuate Americans.   Abdullah Abdullah, coalition partner of the self-exiled President Ashraf Ghani, and former President Hamid Karzai have held repeated meetings with Taliban leaders over the past few days.     After a meeting Saturday, Abdullah said via Twitter that he and Karzai welcomed Taliban leaders at his residence.     “We exchanged views on the current security & political developments, & an inclusive political settlement for the future of the country,” Abdullah wrote.    Meanwhile, thousands of Afghans continued to swamp the Kabul airport in hopes of finding place on one of the flights the U.S. military and other countries are operating to evacuate foreign personnel and Afghans who served international forces in different capacities.    The White House said Saturday that in the last 24 hours, six U.S. military C-17s and 32 charter flights had departed the Afghan capital, evacuating about 3,800 passengers.    “Since the end of July, we have relocated approximately 22,000 people. Since August 14th, we have evacuated approximately 17,000 people,” it said.     Some information in this article came from The Associated Press, AFP and Reuters.
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For generations, residents in the north of the Greek island of Evia have made their living from the dense pine forests surrounding their villages. Tapping the ubiquitous Aleppo pines for their resin, the viscous, sticky substance the trees use to protect themselves from insects and disease, provided a key source of income for hundreds of families. But now, hardly any forest is left. A devastating wildfire, one of Greece’s most destructive single blazes in decades, rampaged across northern Evia for days earlier this month, swallowing woodland, homes and businesses and sending thousands fleeing.  The damage won’t just affect this year’s crop, resin collectors and beekeepers say, but for generations to come. “It’s all over. Everything has turned to ash,” said Christos Livas, a 48-year-old resin collector and father of four.  Resin has been used by humans since antiquity and is found today in a dizzyingly broad array of products, from paint and solvents to pharmaceuticals, plastics and cosmetics. The north of Evia, Greece’s second-largest island, accounted for around 80% of the pine resin produced in Greece, and about 70% of the pine honey, locals say.  Satellite imagery shows the wildfire destroyed most of the island’s north. The devastation is breathtaking. Tens of thousands of hectares of forests and farmland were reduced to a dystopian landscape of skeletal, blackened trees silhouetted against a smoke-filled sky. For trees to grow back to the point where resin can be extracted will take more than two decades, and probably twice as long for the production of pine honey. “In 10 years, the forest will become green again,” Livas said. “But for tapping, it will take 20, 25 years. For me, it’s all over. Even for a 30-year-old – what’s he going to do, find a job and then come back when he’s 50, 60 to tap pines? His legs won’t even hold him.” Livas walked through the still smoldering remnants of the forest on the outskirts of his mountain village of Agdines, puffs of white and grey ash rising from beneath his boots as he surveyed the damage. “This one, I remember since I was a young boy, from 15 years old,” he said, pointing to a blackened pine, the strip of peeled bark where resin had been extracted still visible. “This must have been tapped for 32, 33 years.”  Most of his livelihood has literally gone up in smoke, lost in a horrifying roar as the giant wildfire raced toward the village.  “You could hear a rumble. … It was like an earthquake,” Livas said. The flames moved fast, leaving no time to collect the thousands of plastic bags pinned to the trees to gather the precious resin. Instead, local residents turned their attention to the village, ignoring an evacuation order and staying to save their homes.  They managed. But they couldn’t save the forest. And the villagers’ anger — at the government for not sending more firefighters sooner, for ordering evacuations when they say locals could have helped fight the flames — is palpable. Livas had been extracting resin from about 3,000 trees, producing about 9-10 tons per year at 27 euro cents (32 cents) per kilogram. Of all the trees he was tapping, just one survived. He supplemented his income by farming olive trees, raising animals and occasionally logging. But there are no trees to log now, and most of the olive trees are gone, too.  “I have nowhere left. Everywhere I’ve been, everything is burnt,” he said.  With four young children to support, the eldest just 13, Livas said he’d look for new kinds of work. But with only a primary school education and unable to read or write, he seemed overwhelmed by the thought. The forest, farming, and collecting resin, which he’s been doing since he was 15, are all he’s ever known. “What will I do now?” he said, stumbling for words. “I’ll look for a job. What will I do? Do I know what to do now?” Others were even worse off, he said. Some had several family members collecting resin, gathering around 30-40 tons a year. There were entire villages in northern Evia working almost exclusively in resin collection.  Fellow villager Antonis Natsios felt the same. He started collecting resin at the age of 12, learning the technique from his father, who had learned it from his father before him.  Now 51 and with three children, two of them in college, Natsios is unsure how he’ll make ends meet. Some of his fig trees were singed but would probably survive and produce a new crop, he said, and about 20% of his olive trees remained. But of the pine trees, his main source of income, “zero. Not even a branch.” He sees few options. “Either the state, or God, if he helps. Or migration,” Natsios said. The government has vowed to compensate all those affected by the fire. But nothing can make up for the loss of the source of their livelihoods for decades to come, the residents of north Evia say.  “We’ve lost everything for the next 30-40 years,” said beekeeper Makis Balalas, 44, who relied on Evia’s forests for pine honey each year. The forest’s destruction, he said, was far worse than the loss of any beehives. “I can create new beehives,” he said. “But this that has been lost, you can’t create that again.” For Natsios, it’s the loss of the forest he grew up in that pains him the most. “It’s not the future, it’s what we see. When you’ve been living something for 50 years and now you see this thing, this charcoal…” he trails off. “Now I, who was born in this forest, I have to breathe this blackness.” 
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Thousands of Afghans, hoping for a better future, are trying to escape the country as the Taliban seize control. VOA’s Arif Aslan visited with 30 Afghan refugees whose long, perilous trek had taken them to eastern Turkey. This report is narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.Producer and camera: Arif Aslan.
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Hurricane Grace pummeled Mexico with torrential rain on Saturday, causing severe flooding and mudslides that killed at least eight people, authorities said. The storm was one of the most powerful to hit the country’s Gulf coast in years. Grace was whipping up maximum sustained winds of 201 kph (125 mph), a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, when it slammed ashore near the resort of Tecolutla in Veracruz state in the early morning.The state government said eight people were killed, including six from a single family. All but one of the victims died in the state capital, Xalapa, including a young girl killed by a mudslide that hit her home, the government said.Meanwhile, an adult was killed by a collapsed roof in the city of Poza Rica farther north in the state, Veracruz Governor Cuitlahuac Garcia told a news conference.”The state of emergency has not ended,” he added.Floating coffinsLocal television showed severe flooding in Xalapa, with coffins from a local business floating down a waterlogged street. The nearby River Actopan burst its banks, shutting down a local highway, state authorities said.Grace also caused power outages and brought down trees. Images posted on social media showed damage to buildings and cars submerged by the deluge of rain the storm brought.Garcia said several rivers in Veracruz would flood and urged the local residents to take cover.A tree, uprooted when Hurricane Grace slammed into the coast with torrential rains, fell on a house, in Tecolutla, Mexico, Aug. 21, 2021.Television footage also showed flooding in Ciudad Madero in the southern reaches of the state of Tamaulipas near the border of Veracruz. Mexican state oil firm Pemex’s Francisco Madero refinery is in Ciudad Madero.Mexico City’s international airport said some flights were canceled because of the hurricane. National power utility Comision Federal de Electricidad reported 565,000 electricity users were affected by outages. Grace weakened quickly as it moved across Mexico’s mountainous interior, and by 1 p.m. CDT (1800 GMT) it was a tropical storm, with top winds of 75 kph (45 mph).Up to 18 inches of rainThrough Sunday, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center forecast Grace would dump 15 to 30 cm (6 to 12 inches) of rain over swaths of eastern and central Mexico, and up to 45 cm (18 inches) in some areas. The heavy rainfall will likely cause areas of flash and urban flooding, it said.Veracruz and its waters are home to several oil installations, including Pemex’s port in Coatzacoalcos and its Lazaro Cardenas refinery in Minatitlan in the south. Grace hit land well to the north of these cities. Earlier in the week, Grace pounded Mexico’s Caribbean coast, downing trees and causing power outages for nearly 700,000 people, but without causing loss of life, authorities said. It also doused Jamaica and Haiti, still reeling from a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, with torrential rain.
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Tensions in Haiti were rising Saturday about a lack of aid to remote areas hardest hit by last week’s earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people in the impoverished Caribbean country. Many Haitians whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed by the magnitude 7.2 quake that struck on August 14 said they were unsure how to even start rebuilding. Exasperation over the time it is taking for aid to come through began to boil over Friday, with residents attacking aid trucks in several towns across the south of the nation. A confrontation also erupted after former President Michel Martelly visited a hospital in the city of Les Cayes, where one of his staff members left behind an envelope of money that set off a violent scramble. Former Haitian President Michel Martelly arrives at the OFATMA hospital to visit patients and medical personnel in Les Cayes, Haiti, Aug. 20, 2021.Another food delivery was cut short Saturday afternoon at a church near Les Cayes’ airport after a frustrated crowd turned hostile, prompting aid workers to abort the operation. “We are concerned about the deteriorating security situation that may disrupt our assistance to vulnerable Haitians,” said Pierre Honnorat, head of the U.N. World Food Program in Haiti. The official death toll from the earthquake stood at 2,189 people, with an estimated 332 people missing. Residents in towns across the southern rural countryside were still digging for bodies believed to lie underneath the rubble. Possible survivorOn Saturday morning, Haitian and Mexican rescue workers carefully removed layers of concrete debris from a collapsed house in Les Cayes in search of a person who might still be alive a full week after the quake. On Friday night, the team made an unlikely discovery using sonar equipment that showed signs of possible respiration or movement. “We’re hoping for a miracle,” said Luis Alva, one of the Mexican rescue workers with Rescate Internacional Topos. Tens of thousands of homes are in ruins, leaving many families with no option but to sleep outside despite torrential downpours at night. The hurricane season in the Caribbean runs until the end of November, and Prime Minister Ariel Henry has warned residents to brace for more storms. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Twitter that the USS Arlington naval vessel was heading to Haiti carrying helicopters, a surgical team and a landing craft to assist in the relief effort. Several countries, including the United States, have already dispatched aid and rescue teams. The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said its first shipment of 9.7 tons of medical and hygiene supplies and water arrived in the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Friday, and another 30 tons of supplies are expected to land in the coming days. Meanwhile, a search and rescue team from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) set off from Port-au-Prince on Saturday morning to help in the quake zone. Paths blockedReaching the worst-hit areas has been hindered by landslides and damage to a highway. Gang fighting has complicated travel between Port-au-Prince and southern parts of the country where crops and access to drinking water have been destroyed. Some animals kept for food were also killed. Officials and residents in small towns and rural areas continued to tally the dead and missing. For countless others, the earthquake has upended their lives in quieter but enduring ways. Manithe Simon, 68, stood in front of her collapsed home in Marceline on Friday, shocked at how quickly her honeymoon had turned into a nightmare. Only days before the quake, Simon and Wisner Desrosier had finally decided to marry in a service in the nearby Baptist church. They had been together 44 years and raised four children together. Now, the bedroom where she had posed for wedding photographs in a sleeveless white dress, flower petals decorating her bed, lay in a heap of rubble. “Our wedding was so beautiful, even though it was raining cats and dogs that day,” she said. “But now we have lost everything.” 
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Greece has erected a 25-mile fence and installed a new surveillance system on its border with Turkey as fears mount of a surge in Afghan refugees trying to reach Europe. Greece has faced recurring refugee crises since 2015, when more than a million mainly Syrian refugees swarmed through its land and sea borders to escape conflict in their homeland. Speaking from Checkpoint One, Greece’s key border post along the country’s rugged land frontiers with Turkey, Public Order Minister Michalis Chryssochoidis sounded what he called a clear and fair warning.
 
Our borders, he said, will remain safe and inviolable. And we will not allow any indiscriminate inflow of refugees.
 
The minister’s warning sounded as he toured the checkpoint and a soaring, 25-mile, steel fence completed in recent days amid fears of a deluge of Afghan refugees fleeing for their lives after the Taliban takeover.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 10 MB540p | 13 MB720p | 26 MB1080p | 50 MBOriginal | 159 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioAfghan Refugees in Turkey Terrified at Taliban TakeoverDefense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said the Greek fence along the shallow Evros river that separates the country from Turkey is just part of a bigger plan pieced together by authorities to further shield the country against a new migration crisis.
 
We are on alert, but Greece, he said, will continue to protect itself from any threat.
 
The defense minister said special surveillance systems, including a fleet of drones and night cameras, had been installed across the new fence to watch for illegal crossings. Army bulldozers were also seen plowing across stretches of the country’s northern frontier with Bulgaria, where military trucks were unloading barbed wired to erect more fences.
 
Greece has been on the front line of Europe’s migration woes since about 1.2 million refugees from Syria streamed through in 2015, sparking the biggest migration push to the European continent since the Second World War.
 
Greece has repeatedly complained to the European Union about doing too little to support hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees trapped in the country for six years, as neighboring states and other European nations, including Germany, turned a blind eye, sealing their borders to keep them away.
 
The United Nations is now making appeals for countries in the region to not do the same to fleeing Afghanis.  But the government in Athens says it won’t sit passively.In fact, in a surprise move. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis placed an urgent telephone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday trying to drum up support and a common strategy on how to deal with a potential migration crisis in the region.
 
Details of the meeting or any decision between the two men were not released. But no sooner had the call ended than Erdogan warned Europe he too would not allow Turkey to become what he called a refugee warehouse.
 
Turkey is already hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees and more than 300,000 Afghans.
 
In Greece, meanwhile, humanitarian groups, Afghan refugees and leftist parties are now up in arms about the border fence and the government’s controversial plan of deterrence.  Those groups say the plan completely disregards human rights and the right to asylum to those fleeing danger and bloodshed.
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European Union members will step up their advocacy of open access to the disputed South China Sea, a key world trade route, despite Chinese claims to nearly all of it as they discuss the issue with Southeast Asian countries, analysts believe.The 27 EU members, such as France and Germany, hope all countries can follow United Nations maritime rules in the South China Sea to ensure consistency with other world waterways and to protect a booming seaborne trade in goods with Asia, the experts say.China claims about 90% of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, including pieces of the U.N.-prescribed exclusive economic zones of four Southeast Asian states. Chinese officials point to maritime documents dating back to dynastic times to back their claim.EU leaders met in early August with the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations for discussions that touched on the South China Sea, and the two sides are due to convene again this quarter. The EU has met with the Southeast Asian association since 1977, part of the ASEAN’s series of dialogues with other major countries and regions.ASEAN is the EU’s third-largest trading partner outside Europe, after China and the United States, with more than $221 billion in trade in goods last year.About 60% of maritime trade by volume passes through Asia and about one-third goes through the South China Sea, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development estimates. The sea is a connector between East Asia and the Indian Ocean, which puts ships on their way to Europe.“The EU … has a big stake in the Indo Pacific region and has every interest that the regional architecture remains open and rules-based,” the European side said in a statement in April.However, it continued, “current dynamics in the Indo Pacific have given rise to intense geopolitical competition, adding to increasing pressure on trade and supply chains as well as in tensions in technological, political and security areas.”Neither the EU nor any of its member countries claim sovereignty over the South China Sea. ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam call parts of the sea their own, overlapping China’s own boundary line, and Taiwan claims almost all of it.France, Germany, and non-EU member Britain issued a joint note to the United Nations almost a year ago challenging China’s claims in the sea, which they view as a potential threat to international traffic.“That’s pretty clear, they want consistency,” said Carl Thayer, Asia-specialized emeritus professor from the University of New South Wales in Australia.“Why? Because the way you can do business. It lowers the risk,” he said.Some EU positions on the South China Sea echo that of its Western ally, the United States, which regularly sends warships to the waterway as warnings to China. The EU’s website says, for example, that its members and ASEAN uphold “principles of a rules-based international order.”EU nations have stepped up their own ship movements this year as well, but experts say they’re focused more on international law than with taking a pro-U.S. position.China’s Likely Responses to European and Indian Warships in Sea it Calls its OwnChinese authorities may tail foreign vessels, protest verbally and target other countries one by one, analysts suggest If South China Sea claimants violate the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, they would open the possibility for individual countries to control European seas, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. The convention sets up exclusive economic zones for maritime states, among other provisions aimed at sharing cross-border waterways.“Their primary interest is to maintain international law, maintain open freedom of navigation rather than siding with the United States in its strategic competition with China,” Vuving said.Southeast Asian countries with claims to the South China Sea oppose Beijing’s landfilling of small islets for military use and passing its vessels through their exclusive economic zones.However, they seldom use language that enrages China, a key Southeast Asia trade partner, and the EU backs that approach to the maritime dispute, Alan Chong, associate professor at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said. Both blocs look to China for trade as well.“They are coming along to ASEAN in part because they are aware that ASEAN’s game is probably the surest and safest way of maintaining this dual policy of both engagement and constraining China,” Chong said.Even the subtle language preferred by ASEAN is “enough to put Beijing on notice,” Chong said. China will probably avoid responding publicly but privately ask around for the meaning of any communiques that come out of the EU-ASEAN dialogue, he said.
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Career diplomat Oscar Maurtua was sworn in as Peru’s new foreign minister Friday to replace a leftist professor who resigned just weeks into the job over controversial comments he made before taking the role.Maurtua already served as foreign minister in the early 2000s under centrist President Alejandro Toledo, and will now serve the far-left administration led by Pedro Castillo, a former elementary school teacher.His appointment is crucial to Castillo’s political future, as his Cabinet will face a confirmation vote from the opposition-led Congress before the end of the month. He was sworn in during a ceremony at government headquarters that was broadcast on state television, without further government comment.Maurtua replaces Hector Bejar, who resigned under intense pressure because of comments he made before taking the minister job that resurfaced in recent days. He had said last year that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was partly responsible for the creation of Maoist rebel group Shining Path.Maurtua has also served as Peruvian ambassador to several countries, including Canada and Thailand.
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Haitians left hungry and homeless by a devastating earthquake swarmed relief trucks and in some cases stole desperately needed goods Friday as leaders of the poor Caribbean nation struggled to coordinate aid and avoid a repeat of their chaotic response to a similar tragedy 11 years ago. The attacks on relief shipments illustrate the rising frustration of those left homeless after the Aug. 14 magnitude 7.2 earthquake, which killed nearly 2,200 people, injured more than 12,000 and destroyed or damaged more than 100,000 homes.“I have been here since yesterday, not able to do anything,” said 23-year-old Sophonie Numa, who waited outside an international aid distribution site in the small city of Camp-Perrin, located in the hard-hit southwestern Les Cayes region. “I have other people waiting for me to come back with something.”Numa said her home was destroyed in the quake and that her sister broke her leg during the temblor.“The food would help me a lot with the kids and my sister,” she said. George Prosper was also in the large, anxious crowd awaiting aid. “I am a victim. I was removed from under the debris,” the 80-year-old Prosper said. “I don’t feel well standing up right now. I can barely hold myself up.” In the small port city of Les Cayes, an AP photographer saw people stealing foam sleeping pads from a truck parked at a Red Cross compound, while others stole food that was slated for distribution, said Jean-Michel Saba, an official with the country’s civil protection agency. Police managed to safely escort the food truck away, Saba said. He did not say how much was taken. People also stole tarps from a truck in a community outside Les Cayes.Similar thefts appeared to take place in the small town of Vye Terre near Les Cayes, where a second AP photographer witnessed a group of men pulling large sacks from a half-opened container truck. People then grabbed the sacks and rushed off. One man who made away with a parcel of food was immediately surrounded by others who tried to grab it from him as people nearby screamed.The frustration over the pace of aid has been rising for days and has been illustrated by the growing number of people crowding together at aid distribution sites. But Friday was the first time there had been such widespread stealing.Some of the trucks that were looted were part of the convoy of the United States-based nonprofit group Food For The Poor. The trucks were transporting cases of water, bags of rice and beans and cases of Vienna sausage.“Although this unfortunate situation took place, our drivers were able to remain safe and the trucks were not damaged” spokeswoman Soraya Louis said in a statement. “… Our staff members in Haiti are working on assessing the damage and figuring out how to continue the task at hand in reaching even the furthest of the localities in need.”Complicating aid matters, officials began restricting access to the bridge connecting Les Cayes to the small, quake-impacted port city of Jeremie, meaning aid distribution had to be delivered there by boat or plane. The quake wiped out many of the sources of food and income that the poor depend on for survival in Haiti, which is already struggling with the coronavirus, gang violence and the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Most of the devastation happened in Haiti’s already impoverished southwestern region.As of Wednesday, more than 300 people were estimated to still be missing, said Serge Chery, head of civil defense for the Southern Province, which includes the small port city of Les Cayes. In that community, a group of Mexican rescuers focused Friday night on a quake-damaged two-story home where equipment that allows them to detect sounds beneath the rubble caught noise.Pressure for coordinated aid efforts mounted this week as more bodies were pulled from the rubble and the injured continued to arrive from remote areas in search of medical care.International aid workers on the ground said hospitals in the areas worst hit by the quake are mostly incapacitated and that there is a desperate need for medical equipment. Prime Minister Ariel Henry on Friday asked international governments and aid groups to funnel all of their donations through the country’s civil protection agency, “which will specify the needs of each town, each village and each remote area not yet attended.”U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, on a two-day mission to Haiti, met with Henry on Thursday and also visited quake victims in the city of Les Cayes. She said Friday that she was “particularly impressed by the work” of Haiti’s civil protection agency, and that the agency “must be empowered to lead a coordinated response.” Henry said earlier this week that his administration will work to not “repeat history on the mismanagement and coordination of aid,” a reference to the chaos that followed the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, when the government was accused of not getting all of the money raised by donors to the people who needed it. Mohammed said doing things differently this time “will require investing in long-term development and supporting government leadership.”The Core Group, a coalition of key international diplomats from the United States and other nations that monitors Haiti, said in a statement Wednesday that its members are “resolutely committed to working alongside national and local authorities to ensure that impacted people and areas receive adequate assistance as soon as possible.”
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Despite earlier reports that Turkey had dropped plans to secure Kabul’s international airport, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey is ready to talk with the Taliban about what role, if any, Turkey would play in Afghanistan.“If there is a knock on our door, we will open it for dialogue,” Erdogan said Friday.Turkey has been involved in infrastructure efforts in Afghanistan, Erdogan added, and is still interested in providing such work.Turkey is also still interested in providing security at Kabul’s airport, Erdogan said Wednesday in a television interview, despite reports by Reuters Monday that plans to secure the airport had been dropped after the Taliban takeover.“Turkey’s military presence in Afghanistan will strengthen the new administration’s hand in the international arena,” Erdogan said in the interview, adding that Turkey is in contact with all sides in Afghanistan.As a NATO member, Turkey has about 600 troops in Afghanistan, and Turkish authorities do not view their presence as a combat force.In June, Turkey proposed to guard the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul after the withdrawal of NATO forces. The United States and Turkey had negotiated the details to keep the airport open as a safe passage for diplomatic missions in Afghanistan.In July, the Taliban warned Turkey against a military presence at the airport, calling the proposal “a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and against our national interests.”Taliban Threaten Turkish Troops with ‘Jihad’ if They Stay in Afghanistan Warning comes amid fresh battlefield moves that critics say show Taliban are planning military takeover of Afghanistan in defiance of their peace pledges’New picture’Erdogan said Wednesday that a new picture to maintain security at the airport emerged after the Taliban fighters took control of the country.“Now we are making our plans according to these new realities that were formed on the field, and we are continuing our talks accordingly,” Erdogan said.Some experts argue that Turkey would guard the airport if the Taliban requested it; however, NATO and the U.S. would not subsidize such a military presence in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.“What people overlooked is that in the initial agreement, Ankara wasn’t going to fight the Taliban,” Aaron Stein, the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told VOA. “Ankara was having indirect or perhaps even direct discussions with the Taliban via Doha, via Pakistan, to basically get the Taliban’s approval to stick around. They had to balance this with the official Afghan government.” EvacuationsTurkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the daily Hurriyet that it is too early to say whether Turkey has canceled its plans to secure the airport.“We work together with the United States and other countries on evacuations and other issues. Our priority is to evacuate our citizens who want to return,” Cavusoglu said.As of August 18, Turkey has evacuated 552 citizens from Afghanistan. OppositionOn the other hand, the Turkish opposition, including the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Iyi Party, is urging the government to evacuate the Turkish soldiers from Afghanistan.“What is left from Afghanistan? Why should our troops stay there? Stop talking nonsense to please the United States and withdraw our soldiers from this swamp,” Meral Aksener, the leader of the Iyi Party, tweeted on August 16.Çıkmış hâlâ, “Türk askeri Afganistan’da kalmalı.” diyorlar.Kardeşim; Afganistan kaldı mı da askerimiz kalsın?ABD’ye şirinlik peşinde abuk sabuk konuşmayı bırakın, askerimizi derhal o bataklıktan çekin! pic.twitter.com/jHqdwP39bN— Meral Akşener (@meral_aksener) August 16, 2021The CHP and Iyi parties also voiced concerns over the government’s Afghan policy, warning that it would cause large numbers of Afghan refugees to enter Turkey.“I am saying this once again: Erdogan, you are not going to sign an agreement that would bring more refugees (to Turkey),” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of main opposition CHP, tweeted on Tuesday. The tweet came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany should work closely with Turkey on a potential Afghan refugee influx.Earlier this month, in a Twitter thread, Kilicdaroglu claimed that Erdogan had an agreement with the U.S. to accept Afghan refugees into Turkey.It is also evident why a young interpreter from the Kavakci family is allowed to take part in the meeting instead of an official interpreter. Erdogan behaved so in order to conceal his decision.— Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (@kilicdarogluk) August 3, 2021The U.S. Embassy in Turkey denied this claim on Wednesday.The U.S. Embassy wishes to state that allegations regarding an “agreement” or “deal” between President Biden and President Erdoğan regarding Afghan refugees or migrants are completely without foundation.— U.S. Embassy Turkey (@USEmbassyTurkey) August 18, 2021Erdogan described the opposition’s stance on Afghan refugees as hate speech in a televised address following a Cabinet meeting late Thursday. He said that Turkey is home to 300,000 Afghan refugees, including unregistered ones.He also criticized the European countries for staying out of the refugee problem “by harshly sealing its borders to protect the safety and well-being of its citizens.”“Turkey has no duty, responsibility, or obligation to be Europe’s refugee warehouse,” Erdogan said.Erdogan announced that Turkey had reinforced its border with Iran with law enforcement units and that a wall along the Turkey-Iran border was almost completed.An increasing number of Afghan refugees have been crossing into Turkey from Iran, prompting the rise in anti-refugee rhetoric in the country.However, Aykan Erdemir, senior director of the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish parliament, said the Erdogan government views the Afghan refugee flow as a unique opportunity “to cut various deals to extract concessions from Brussels and Washington.”“This time around, however, the domestic political costs of instrumentalizing refugees in relations with the West appear to be much higher. Amid Turkey’s economic crisis, there has been a dramatic spike in nativist and anti-refugee sentiment, including violent attacks, undermining the popularity of Turkey’s ruling coalition,” Erdemir said.This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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The U.S. government on Friday once again extended a ban on nonessential travel across its land borders from Canada and Mexico, citing efforts to minimize the spread of the delta variant. The ban limits border crossings by land or ferry, though flights between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico remain unrestricted.The Department of Homeland Security has extended the travel restrictions on a monthly basis since the coronavirus pandemic began last year. The restrictions, set to end on August 21, have been extended through at least September 21.”In coordination with public health and medical experts, DHS continues working closely with its partners across the United States and internationally to determine how to safely and sustainably resume normal travel,” the department said on Twitter.Nonessential travel restrictions do not apply to U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, who have been permitted to enter Canada since August 9 upon presentation of proof of an approved vaccination. But the United States has not reciprocated for visitors from other countries. Members of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, have criticized the ongoing restrictions for separating binational families and hurting businesses reliant on cross-border tourism. Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican, recently introduced legislation to loosen nonessential travel restrictions for families and businesses.”The cost of President Biden’s inaction is devastating to North Country families, businesses, and communities hopeful that the United States would restore travel across the border,” Stefanik said in a Friday statement. “It is shameful that while the Canadian government has opened travel for fully vaccinated American travelers, President Biden would still deny northern border communities access to family, travel, and commerce.”Organizations such as Let Us Reunite have also been lobbying the federal government to loosen land border restrictions, pointing out discrepancies in the application of travel policies and citing a need to reconnect with family members across the border.Founder Devon Weber said that the group has attracted over 3,000 members and has held meetings with dozens of congressional offices about loosening travel restrictions since its inception last year.Weber, who has dual citizenship, moved from New York to Canada in February 2020. Because her French-Canadian husband doesn’t have a U.S. passport and they can’t afford multiple plane tickets, Weber has visited her family in New York only once during the pandemic.She described the lack of air travel restrictions as “classist” and said Let Us Reunite hopes to make it easier for binational families to visit each other by car and boat.”There’s just sort of this hodgepodge of closures with no rhyme or reason to them and that is very frustrating to folks,” Weber said. “It’s bureaucratic paralysis. The border closure is rolling over every 30 days, and there is no comment from the White House and nothing more than a tweet from DHS the day of the closure.”The Biden administration has provided few details on when or how the restrictions will end. It may require all foreign nationals entering the U.S. to be fully vaccinated, according to Reuters, but no official plans have been announced.Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have been on the rise domestically since the more transmissible delta variant took hold in July. Over 70% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and infections are occurring primarily among the unvaccinated. Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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Unidentified attackers on Thursday threw Molotov cocktails into the Netherlands home of journalist Willem Groeneveld.The motive for the attack, which took place in the city of Groningen around 2:45 a.m. local time, was not clear, but Groeneveld had previously been harassed over reporting on issues involving real estate and landlords.No one was injured in the assault, and the journalist was cited in reports as saying he woke to the sound of breaking glass and was able to put out the fire.Media organizations said they were troubled by the attack, which came just a month after veteran crime journalist Peter R. de Vries died after being shot in Amsterdam.“This is a very sad year for journalism. This attack on Willem with a firebomb could have ended very differently,” Thomas Bruning, head of the Dutch Association of Journalists, told local media.Thursday’s attack was not a first for Groeneveld, who founded the investigative website Sikkom and is a contributor to the daily regional newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden.In 2019, attackers threw stones through the windows of the journalist’s home, and on another occasion someone posted Groeneveld’s address and phone number on Facebook. In June, about 30 bicycles were left outside the journalist’s apartment after he reported that a businessman had been removing bikes from around the city, according to local reports.Police on Friday announced they had arrested two suspects on accusations of arson and attempted murder.  The Netherlands has one of the best records for press freedom, ranking 6th out of 180 countries, where 1 is freest, on the annual index by watchdog Reporters Without Borders.But recent attacks and July’s fatal shooting are concerning rights groups, including the International Press Institute and European Centre for Press and Media Freedom.The arson “represents another serious attack on media freedom in the Netherlands,” several press freedom groups said in a joint statement. “It is an attack on Willem Groeneveld, but also on the entire Dutch journalistic community.”The media groups called for a “rigorous investigation” into what is behind the increase in attacks on journalists.The Netherlands is not the only European Union member state to experience violence and fatal attacks on media this year.In April, Greek police reporter Giorgos Karaivaz was killed outside Athens, in what authorities have said they believe was a contract killing.The same month, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that police in Greece had arrested three people suspected of involvement in an alleged plot to kill investigative journalist Kostas Vaxevanis. 
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The United Nations warned Friday that desperation was growing among hundreds of thousands of Haitian earthquake survivors who have little or no access to the shelter, food, medical care and other essential relief they need.More than 2,000 people have died as a result of the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that hit southwestern Haiti a week ago. The United Nations estimated that more than 1 million people were affected by the latest crisis to hit the Caribbean island state. Tens of thousands of houses have been reduced to rubble, rendering their inhabitants homeless.Aid is slow to reach survivors of the disaster because roads are blocked by debris from the earthquake. Heavy rains and flooding from Tropical Storm Grace also have made it difficult for aid workers to reach people in need.A resident crawls away with a donated bag of rice after residents overtook a truck loaded with earthquake relief supplies, in Vye Terre, Haiti, Aug. 20, 2021.World Food Program official Marianela Gonzales said she was awakened by the earthquake Saturday inside her home in the capital, Port-au-Prince. In the few seconds it took her to realize what was happening, she said, hundreds of people died. Two days later, she headed for Les Cayes, one of the hardest-hit areas.”WFP was here, even before the earthquake, supporting over 200,000 people who cannot even afford any meal per day,” Gonzales said. “So the earthquake happened on the same people. The roof fell on the same people and Tropical Storm Grace rained on the same people for the next few days. … Definitely hard to be here today to enter these hospitals, to see people in the streets without a roof to sleep under, especially children.”Police stand guard near the entrance of a Red Cross center after people entered and took off with several foam mattresses, in Les Cayes, Haiti, Aug. 20, 2021, six days after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the area.The WFP estimated 215,000 people in earthquake-hit areas urgently need food assistance. The agency is using air, sea and road routes to transport essential supplies to the affected areas. And a U.N. Humanitarian Air Service helicopter managed by WFP is transporting staff, medical supplies and other essential needs. The agency said it needed $2.5 million for that operation.Other U.N. and private agencies are ramping up their relief efforts. The U.N. children’s fund estimated that children accounted for nearly half of the 1.2 million people affected by the earthquake. The director of the U.N. information service in Geneva, Alessandra Vellucci, said a UNICEF assessment found that 95 of 255 schools were either damaged or destroyed just weeks before classes were to start. “UNICEF is rushing lifesaving supplies including medicine, safe water, hygiene and sanitation material to points in the affected areas even as flooding and mudslides hamper relief efforts,” Vellucci said.UNICEF appealed for $15 million to assist 385,000 people over the next eight weeks.The World Health Organization warned of possible outbreaks of cholera, dengue, meningitis and other infectious diseases and the continued spread of COVID-19. This comes at a time when most hospitals, it said, are overwhelmed with patients and require emergency support and medical supplies and equipment.
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Britain and the United States imposed sanctions Friday on men they said were Russian intelligence operatives responsible for the poisoning one year ago of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.The two countries targeted seven Russians with sanctions and issued a joint statement warning Russia about chemical weapons.Washington separately imposed sanctions on another two men and four Russian institutes it said were involved in chemical weapons research or what it described as an assassination attempt against Navalny.Navalny was flown to Germany for medical treatment after being poisoned in Siberia on August 20, 2020, with what Western experts concluded was the military nerve agent Novichok.Moscow has rejected their findings and accused the West of conducting a smear campaign against it.”The sanctioned individuals are directly responsible for planning or carrying out the attack on Mr. Navalny,” a Foreign Office statement said.British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said the move was a warning to Russia.Call for investigation”We are sending a clear message that any use of chemical weapons by the Russian state violates international law, and a transparent criminal investigation must be held,” he said.The sanctions will affect those people named who have overseas assets.The British document listed Alexey Alexandrov, Vladimir Panyaev, Ivan Osipov, Vladimir Bogdanov, Kirill Vasilyev, Stanislav Makshakov and Alexei Sedov. It said they were all members of Russia’s FSB security service and were either directly or indirectly involved in the poisoning.The U.S. Treasury later said it was imposing sanctions on the same seven men and two additional Russian officials it said were involved in the poisoning: Konstantin Kudryavtsev and Artur Zhirov.It also targeted the FSB Criminalistics Institute, a lab where most of those implicated in the attack worked, and the Russian defense ministry’s State Institute for Experimental Military Medicine.The State Department also imposed sanctions on two other Russian military scientific institutes involved in chemical weapons, it said.Neither the Kremlin nor any of those named offered any immediate comment.Phone, travel records citedThe British government cited evidence including phone and travel records showing some of the operatives were present in the Siberian city of Tomsk at the time of the poisoning.For others it said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that, because of their positions in the intelligence service, they had “responsibility for, provided support for or promoted the actions of the operatives who carried out the operation.”Navalny was jailed for parole violations on what he said were politically motivated charges when he flew back to Russia earlier this year from Germany.”We call on Russia to comply fully with the Chemical Weapons Convention, including its obligations to declare and dismantle its chemical weapons program,” the joint U.S.-British statement said.”We remain determined to uphold the global norm against the use of chemical weapons.”
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel, scheduled to leave office later this year after nearly 16 years, is in Moscow for one final meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Before the two leaders met for talks in the Kremlin Friday, Merkel took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and viewed a military procession immediately after.German Chancellor Angela Merkel takes part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin Wall in central Moscow, Russia, Aug. 20, 2021.Later, at the Kremlin, Putin presented the German chancellor with a bouquet of flowers as they met for a photo opportunity before their talks.  In front of reporters, Merkel told Putin though they have deep differences, she feels it is important they meet for talks.  Merkel said the two leaders had much to discuss, including, among other issues, the situation in Afghanistan and Libya as well as bilateral relations.Putin and Merkel are likely to broach Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany, which is nearly complete. The U.S. has raised questions about the deal, as it represents a huge blow to ally Ukraine by bypassing the historic gas transit country.The two were scheduled to hold a joint news conference soon after their talks.Merkel is scheduled to visit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday.Some Information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and the French news agency, AFP.
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For Italy’s journalists, covering the mafia has always been dangerous. There have been attacks recently against some reporters and almost two dozen are currently under police protection because of threats. VOA’s Iacopo Luzi has more.   
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The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Tropical Storm Grace is back over open water after crossing Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and is likely to become a hurricane once again by late Friday, while in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Henri is likely to reach hurricane status Saturday.In its latest advisory, the hurricane center says Grace is in the Gulf of Mexico about 425 kilometers east of Tuxpan, Mexico with maximum sustained winds of 110 km/h.Forecasters expect the storm to continue strengthening in the warm waters and regain hurricane strength by the time it makes landfall later Friday.  Hurricane Grace Makes Landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan PeninsulaHeavy rainfall associated with Grace could trigger flash and urban flooding as well as mudslides throughout regionThe governor of the Yucatan state of Quintana Roo, Carlos Joaquín, told reporters that over 300 people were evacuated in the path of the storm, mainly from Carrillo Puerto and Tulum. He said the storm knocked out power in some areas of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, Puerto Aventura, and Tulum.  Emergency crews worked early Friday to clear downed trees from roadways and video from the area shows buildings damaged and boats driven onto land by the storm.Forecasters expect Grace to bring heavy rain to areas of Mexico Friday, with as much as 45 centimeters in isolated areas.Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Henri, at last report, was about 600 km off the coast of the southeastern U.S. state of North Carolina with maximum sustained winds of about 100 km/h.  While it is moving to the west-northwest, forecasters expect it will turn to the north Friday and move up the U.S. east coast.  The hurricane center expects Henri to gain strength as it accelerates north over the next 24 hours and reach hurricane strength by Saturday.  The forecasters say Henri is expected to approach the coast of southern New England on Sunday. It is likely to create swells along much of the east coast of the U.S. and Canada through the next two to three days.Some information in this report was provided by the Associated Press news service.
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A radio journalist was shot and killed in the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz Thursday, according to his station and state authorities.Jacinto Romero Flores was gunned down in the community of Potrerillo, in the township of Ixtaczoquitlan, according to Hugo Gutierrez Maldonado, the head of Veracruz state security agency, via Twitter. Gutierrez said state police were carrying out an operation in the area following the killing.Romero worked for Ori Stereo 99.3 FM. The station expressed its sadness for his death. “The media are not the cause nor the effect of violence in the country, but we do suffer the consequences for carrying out journalism and communication,” it said in a statement.The State Commission for Attention to and Protection of Journalists condemned the killing and called on the state prosecutor’s office to open a full investigation, including into what role if any Romero’s journalism played in his murder.Press freedom organization Article 19 said Romero had received threats. The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said via Twitter that it had “learned of and strongly condemns the murder of reporter Jacinto Romero in the state of Veracruz and urges authorities to undertake a swift, transparent and exhaustive investigation into the killing.”Veracruz has for years been one of Mexico’s most deadly states for reporters. Multiple organized crime groups operate within the state and have infiltrated local and state government. Journalists marched late Thursday in the port city of Veracruz to protest Romero’s killing.Press groups say nine journalists were killed in Mexico in 2020, making it the most dangerous country for reporters outside of war zones. Romero is at least the fifth journalist killed in Mexico this year.Earlier this month, the Jalisco New Generation cartel publicly threatened to kill a prominent television news anchor.
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The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on three senior Cuban officials, the latest in a series of actions in response to the crackdown on recent anti-government protesters on the island.The penalties targeted two top defense ministry officials for their role in suppressing the rare demonstrations in the communist-ruled nation, where hundreds were jailed, the Treasury Department said in a statement.Washington “will continue to hold accountable those who enable the Cuban government to perpetuate human rights abuse,” said Andrea M. Gacki, head of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.”Today’s action exposes additional perpetrators responsible for suppressing the Cuban people’s calls for freedom and respect for human rights.”After previously slapping sanctions on defense minister Alvaro Lopez Miera and the Cuban police, the latest move hits Roberto Legra Sotolongo and Andres Laureano Gonzalez Brito of the Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces.They also cover Abelardo Jimenez Gonzalez, who is in charge of prisons at the Interior Ministry.”Cuban security forces have detained more than 800 people in response to the protests, with many being held in ‘preventative jail,’ and the whereabouts of multiple people still unknown,” the statement said.Adding them to Treasury’s sanctions blacklist freezes any property they have in the United States and bars any transactions using the US financial system.President Joe Biden has warned Havana that more actions are possible, and Washington has called for the release of detained protesters, while trying to find ways to ensure internet access for the Cuban people.
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Afghan refugees in Turkey say they made the dangerous journey to escape living again under Taliban rule. VOA’s Arif Aslan reports from eastern Turkey, where some of the Afghans he spoke with arrived over the past few days as the Taliban were taking over the Afghan capital. Sirwan Kajjo narrates his report.Camera: Arif Aslan.
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Russia, once a thorn in China’s side, is backing Beijing in its disputes with third countries, including a maritime sovereignty flap in Southeast Asia, to counter Washington’s influence in Asia, scholars believe.With the world’s second strongest military, after the United States, Russia holds occasional military exercises with China – with at least four events publicized to date — sells arms to its giant neighbor to the south and joins it in criticizing the West.Officials in Moscow are trying now to boost Beijing’s claim to the contested South China Sea without overtly taking its side over five other Asian governments that vie with Chinese sovereignty in the same waterway, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii.China and Russia need each other to show the United States – former Cold War foe of both – along with its allies that neither is “alone,” he said.U.S. Navy ships regularly sail the South China Sea to keep Beijing in check. At least eight other Western-allied countries have indicated since late July plans to send navy vessels into the resource-rich South China Sea, which stretches from Hong Kong to Borneo Island, in support of keeping it open internationally rather than ceding it to Chinese control.“Basically, it’s more about a challenge to global U.S. power rather than Russia siding with China in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea,” Vuving said.FILE – A view shows a new S-400 “Triumph” surface-to-air missile system after its deployment at a military base outside the town of Gvardeysk near Kaliningrad, Russia, March 11, 2019.“The fact that they would actually share a joint portal for command and control actually means something,” Koh said. “They actually wanted to promote further interoperability.”In March, as both powers faced pressure from the West, they panned the United States in a joint statement after talks between their foreign ministers. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a March news conference that U.S. intentions had a “destructive nature” that were “relying on the military-political alliances of the Cold War era.”Scholars say Sino-Russian cooperation has its limits, however. As major powers, neither side wants the other to grow too powerful, said Wang Wei-chieh, South Korea-based politics analyst and co-founder of the FBC2E International Affairs Facebook page.“Russia and China, they are also worried about each other,” Wang said. “They don’t want any side to be the superior country.”Previously strong Sino-Russian relations faded in the 1960s when the two Communist parties split over ideology and border conflicts ensued. They call their military events today “interaction” rather than any kind of alliance, Koh noted.Russia maintains crucial political and economic ties with Vietnam, a rival to Beijing in the South China Sea dispute, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute called Russia the top arms supplier to Southeast Asia between 2010 and 2017 with combined sales of $6.6 billion. China fumed in 2013 when Russian oil company Rosneft was drilling, on behalf of Vietnam, in waters claimed by Beijing. Russia officially advocates neutrality in Southeast Asia, Vuving said.Russia could tell Vietnam today, if pressed, that its ties with China are just “symbolic,” Koh said.Russia does not claim any part of the sea, which is prized for fisheries and undersea fossil fuel reserves. China disputes maritime sovereignty instead with Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. China has irked the other claimants by landfilling islets for military installations and sending vessels into the exclusive economic zones of its rivals.China hopes Russia avoids sailing through the sea, where it Russia held a stronghold on the coast of Vietnam during the Cold War, at the risk of violating China’s claim to 90% of the waterway, Koh said.The latest joint military exercises may be aimed at deterring any threat from nearby Central Asia, Wang said. China has sought to clarify borders with Central Asian nations since the fall of the Soviet Union to promote peace in its own restive Xinjiang region, the Indian policy formulation group Observer Research Foundation said.Troops disembark from a Chinese military helicopter during joint war games held by Russia and China held in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwestern China, Aug. 13, 2021. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/Handout)Exercises last week, called Zapad/Interaction 2021, targeted terrorists by “seizing the high ground and trench[es] followed by “penetrating the enemy in depth,” the official Chinese Military Online website said August 5.The 2018 exercises sent “a message to the rest of the world and, in particular the United States” that the two countries were growing closer, the Swedish research and policy organization Institute for Security and Development wrote at the time.Future Sino-Russian military exercises will occur in places aimed at warning specific third countries with which China has disputes, Wang forecast. 
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The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Hurricane Grace made landfall in the predawn hours Thursday near the city of Tulum on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The Florida-based center said the storm came ashore about 15 kilometers south of Tulum with 130-kilometer-per hour winds and a dangerous storm surge of about one to two meters above normal tide levels. The heavy rainfall associated with Grace could trigger flash and urban flooding as well as mudslides throughout the region.Ahead of the storm, Quintana Roo State Governor Carlos Joaquín told reporters state and municipal civil protection officials will tour hotels in Tulum to evacuate those facilities unequipped to handle a Category One hurricane. A storm in that category has winds ranging from 119 kilometers to 153 kilometers per hour on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.Forecasters expect Grace to move across the Yucatan Peninsula Thursday, and over the southwest Gulf of Mexico late in the day or early Friday. It is expected to continue to weaken as it crosses the peninsula but regain some strength once it moves back over water. The forecasters also say they expect Grace to be a hurricane once it makes landfall over Mexico’s mainland coast. At last report, the hurricane center said Grace’s winds had dropped to 75 kilometers per hour.Meanwhile, forecasters continue to watch Henri, which, at last report, was about 845 kilometers off the coast of North Carolina and a very strong tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 110 kilometers per hour, approaching hurricane strength.Weather forecasters expect Henri to become a hurricane within the next 24 hours and take a turn to the north. Forecasters are advising people in the coastal northeastern United States and Canada to continue monitoring the progress of the storm as it is likely to affect those areas early next week. (Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press news agency.) 
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Thursday, the United States plans to ship 35,100 doses of Pfizer vaccine to Kosovo through COVAX, the United Nations vaccine-sharing mechanism, a White House official told VOA.The doses are part of the purchase of half a billion Pfizer doses secured by the Biden administration earlier this year.Kosovo is experiencing another spike in infection, largely due to the delta variant. There have been 120,862 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 2,295 deaths according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Fewer than 550,000 vaccine doses have been administered in the country.In addition to the $2 billion donated to COVAX, the Biden administration has pledged to purchase 500 million Pfizer vaccines and distribute them through the year to 92 low-income and lower middle-income countries that are members of COVAX and the African Union. It represents the largest purchase and donation of vaccines by a single country.Even with its large vaccine donation program, the U.S. is being criticized for announcing its plan to provide booster shots to all Americans beginning September 20 and starting eight months after an individual’s second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.“The inequitable rollout of vaccines globally is not just a moral stain on wealthy nations, it’s prolonging the pandemic for the entire world. The longer it takes to share vaccines globally, the more variants we’ll see and the more booster shots we’ll need,” the ONE Campaign, which works against poverty and preventable disease, said in a statement to VOA.So far, only 1.3% of people in poorer countries have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.President Joe Biden dismissed criticism that U.S. is turning a blind eye to the fact that many around the world still have not received even a single dose.“I know there’s some world leaders who say America shouldn’t get a third shot until other countries get their first shot. I disagree,” Biden said during remarks at the White House Wednesday.“We can take care of America and help the world at the same time. In June and July America administered 50 million shots here in the United States. And we donated 100 million shots to other countries. That means that America has donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country in the world combined,” he said. 
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