Authorities in Madagascar have arrested several people they believe were part of a plot to kill President Andry Rajoelina.

The attorney general’s office issued a statement Thursday saying the suspects were part of a conspiracy to undermine the island nation’s security, including “the elimination and neutralization” of a number of people.

The suspects include both foreign nationals and Madagascar-born citizens.

The statement said the investigation is still ongoing.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and AFP. 
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Asian countries are reporting record COVID-19 waves this year compared to 2020, as vaccination drives fall short and governments lose hope that mass closures and border controls can keep the coronavirus away, observers in the region say.

Spread of the delta variant from India, infections among airline personnel and citizens who brought back the virus from trips spread COVID-19 in parts of Asia with recent outbreaks. Containment measures had relaxed in some spots after months of low caseloads while domestic travel picked up.

Officials from Bangkok to Taipei sidelined vaccine procurement last year while Western countries were preparing to make shots so widespread that England is now 87% vaccinated and in the United States just about any adult can get shots from a local drugstore.

Many Asian countries held back the respiratory disease in 2020 by barring foreign tourists and shutting down places where people gather. Manufacturing-reliant Asian economies held up economically last year for lack of long-term work stoppages.

“I call this a complacency curse,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

“Thailand did so well during virus stage last year that it sat on its laurels and got behind the curve on vaccine procurement,” he told VOA.

Thailand has fully vaccinated just 5% of its population, with Vietnam at around 1%, according to the Our World in Data research website. Vietnam hit a one-day coronavirus infection record of 5,926 on July 18, while Thailand posted its own record of 11,397 the same day.

In Taiwan, which reported its first major COVID-19 wave in May, just 0.5% of people had received two shots as of mid-July and 20% had gotten one shot.

In the Philippines, which has battled COVID-19 steadily for more than a year, daily caseloads have held at around 5,000 after an earlier spike. Malaysia touched a one-day record of 13,215 cases on July 15. Both have strict community quarantine rules.

Asian countries are fighting now to get vaccines because Western pharmaceutical companies are busy filling orders in other parts of the world, governments in Asia are slow to grant permits for domestic drug firms, and their citizens worry about side effects, news reports say. Cold storage has run short in some spots.

Many have turned to donations or rush orders from China, Japan and the United States. Taiwan and Vietnam aim to release domestically produced vaccines to augment supplies. Japan offered Vietnam $1.8 million as well for vaccine cold storage, the Vietnam Insider news website said in May.

“I think slowly [Vietnam] will recover as people are doing in Europe and in the U.S.,” said Phuong Hong, 40, a travel sector worker in Ho Chi Minh City who spends 95% of her time at home with four family members as they all await text messages from the government telling them when they qualify for vaccines.

“It should be faster, but I think the distribution channel — they also need to understand how to store the vaccine,” she said.

In Indonesia, the government has accepted vaccines from China and other sources, but the country’s full vaccination rate is just 6%. On July 15, Indonesia hit a record daily caseload of 56,757.

Citizens have a list of misgivings, said Paramita Supamijoto, an international relations lecturer at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta. They might believe vaccines are not halal, according to Islamic rules about what a person should ingest, or that COVID-19 itself is a “hoax,” she said. Indonesians with possible symptoms tend to avoid hospitals, she added, in part because they’re full.

“It’s really complicated here in Indonesia, in general,” Supamijoto said. “You don’t know whether the people who stand next to you or sit next to you [are] healthy or not.”

Much of 660 million-population Southeast Asia now faces new rounds of economic inactivity triggered by business closures and stay-home orders to contain the virus. The Asian Development Bank said this month it had downgraded Southeast Asia’s 2021 economic growth forecast to 4.0% from 4.4% “as some countries reimpose pandemic restrictions.”

“Countries have been significantly impacted quite a lot in terms of their economies and the impact is increasing, so that’s I would say quite a contrast to what’s happening say in the U.S. and Europe, where things have improved quite a lot,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit.

A surge in delta variant cases brought from India by frequent travel has added to Southeast Asia’s woes, Biswas added. He said, though, that most Asian countries are shunning the “total lockdowns” of last year because of the economic impacts.

Asian governments say vaccine supplies should surge in the second half of the year. Thai officials said in June they would fill an earlier pledge for doses by the end of this month, while Taiwan’s president set a target of vaccinating 25% of the island’s population by July 31.

Vietnam anticipates providing 110 million doses by December, though still short of its goal of 150 million doses for 75% of the population, Vietnam Insider reports.

Economic slowdowns are “not permanent,” said Song Seng Wun, an economist in the private banking unit of Malaysian bank CIMB, adding, “we will get back once the vaccine rollout comes.”  
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A senior Chinese health official said Thursday he was shocked by the World Health Organization’s plan for the second phase of a COVID-19 origins study.

National Health Commission Vice Minister Zeng Yixin dismissed the lab leak theory as a rumor running counter to common sense.

The head of the WHO acknowledged last week that it was premature to rule out a potential link between the pandemic and a leak of the coronavirus from a Chinese lab.

Zeng said that the lab in the city of Wuhan has no virus that can directly infect humans.

He said that China has made repeated clarifications and does not accept the WHO plan. 
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California power company Pacific Gas and Electric, whose equipment has caused multiple destructive wildfires over several years, said Wednesday that it would bury 16,000 kilometers of power lines in high-risk fire zones as a safety measure.

The utility, which called the project a multiyear initiative, said it maintains more than 40,000 kilometers of overhead distribution power lines in zones at highest risk for fires, or more than 30% of its total distribution overhead system.

The move by PG&E came days after it said its equipment might have been involved in the start of a recent wildfire in Sierra Nevada, according to a filing by the utility to regulators, published on the internet by a San Francisco Chronicle journalist.

The company emerged from bankruptcy last year. It had sought protection from creditors after wildfires sparked by its equipment in 2017 and 2018 drove the utility’s potential liabilities into tens of billions of dollars.

“Following the devastating October 2017 Northern California wildfires and the 2018 Camp Fire, PG&E began to evaluate placing overhead power lines underground as a wildfire safety measure,” the company said Wednesday.

As part of PG&E’s exit from bankruptcy, California officials established a six-step oversight process to hold the utility accountable if it was deemed to be falling short on safety measures.

Failure on tree trimming

In April, however, the officials voted to toughen oversight of PG&E, saying the utility had largely failed to perform required tree-trimming work near power lines in areas with the highest risk of wildfires.

PG&E, which announced the new safety initiative in Butte County, serves more than 16 million people across more than 180,000 square kilometers in Northern and Central California.

Burying power lines lessens the need for public safety power shutoffs, which are a last resort during dry, windy conditions to reduce the risk of trees touching live power lines and sparking a wildfire.

In 2020, California suffered its most damaging wildfire season on record in terms of acreage burned. As of May, California authorities documented over 1,000 more wildfires across the state this year than had erupted by the same time last year.

U.S. President Joe Biden said last month that the country was behind in preparing for what could be a record number of forest fires this year because of drought and high temperatures.
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An off-duty Drug Enforcement Administration agent posed for photographs in which he flashed his DEA badge and firearm outside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 riot, according to a court filing Tuesday following the agent’s arrest. 

A video posted on the internet also showed Mark Sami Ibrahim carrying a flag bearing the words “Liberty or Death” outside the Capitol, about 12 minutes before a mob of people pulled apart a nearby set of barricades, authorities said. 

Ibrahim, of Orange County, California, was a probationary employee of the DEA and was on personal leave from the agency when he traveled to Washington on January 6. Several weeks before the riot, he had given notice of his intention to resign. 

Ibrahim wasn’t working as a law enforcement officer at the Capitol on January 6, but he told investigators after the riot that he was there to help a friend who had been asked to document the event for the FBI. 

The friend denied that, however, and told investigators that Ibrahim had concocted the false story, according to a case summary signed by a senior special agent with the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. 

“According to Ibrahim’s friend, Ibrahim went to the rally in order to promote himself,” the OIG agent wrote. “Ibrahim had been thinking about his next move after leaving the DEA and wanted the protests to be his stage for launching a ‘Liberty Tavern’ political podcast and cigar brand.” 

Ibrahim acknowledged that he was at the Capitol on January 6 but denied that he displayed or exposed his DEA badge and firearm there, despite the photographic evidence to the contrary, authorities say. 

Ibrahim was arrested Tuesday in Washington on charges that included entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm and making a false statement when he denied displaying his badge or firearm. 

He is scheduled to make his initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui. 

A DEA spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to an email seeking comment. Court records didn’t immediately list a defense attorney for Ibrahim. 

The DEA had declined for months to say whether any of its agents attended the rally, saying it could not comment on “specific personnel matters.” 

“If we receive information indicating an employee engaged in misconduct, DEA’s policy is to promptly refer the case to the appropriate authorities for review,” the agency told The Associated Press in January. 

Ibrahim has denied breaking any laws, telling Fox News in March that he “never even set foot on the stairs of the Capitol building.” He said he went to the rally with his brother, an FBI agent, who faced “no adverse action” for attending. 

“When the crowd began to be hostile toward law enforcement, me being law enforcement myself, I started to document everything,” Ibrahim told host Tucker Carlson, adding he later gave the materials to the FBI “so those criminals could face justice.” 

“I wanted to aid law enforcement that day as best I could. I really didn’t think anything of it,” he said. 

After flying back to Los Angeles, Ibrahim said, he was stripped of his badge and gun and “fired after being suspended for two months for performance issues.” 

“They got it wrong,” he said of his termination. “Me and my brother both served in the Army. I followed him into federal law enforcement. My sister is a Navy veteran. My mom was in the Pentagon on 9/11.” 

“The saddest part about this,” Ibrahim added, “is I can’t serve my country anymore.” 

In a WhatsApp group chat with at least five other law enforcement officers, Ibrahim posted a photo of himself standing near barricades that had been pulled apart by the mob several minutes earlier, the OIG agent wrote. He also posted video in the chat that showed Ashli Babbitt, a woman fatally shot inside the Capitol, being taken from the building to an ambulance by emergency workers, the agent said. 
 
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Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Khadhimi has fired security officials after 34 people were killed and over 50 others wounded, according to Iraqi media, in an explosion Monday night. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack which Iraqi security officials say was committed by a suicide bomber.

A crowd of mostly women shoppers ran for cover amid screaming and yelling, following the explosion at a crowded clothing market in Baghdad’s mostly Shi’ite Sadr City. It was the third such attack in Iraq this year. Another attack in Sadr City in January left around 30 dead.

A group of young men dressed in black loaded coffins onto vehicles in preparation for burial Tuesday morning. A middle-aged woman dressed in black bewailed some of the young victims of the explosion.

A young man with a yellow cap complained on social media that attacks on markets targeting civilians are all too common in Iraq before major religious holidays, like Eid al-Adha, which began Tuesday.

He said that this kind of thing always happens to us before elections and before the Eids. Most of the victims, he points out, were women and children.

Iraqi TV’s correspondent in Sadr City reported that the explosive vest worn by the suicide bomber contained nails and ball bearings to increase the number of victims, according to eyewitnesses.

Prime Minister Mustafa Khadhimi fired security officials responsible for the area in Sadr City where Monday’s explosion took place.

Hours before the blast, Khadhimi said in an interview he hoped Muqtada Sadr, a top Shi’ite political leader, many of whose followers live in Sadr City, would reverse his decision not to participate in the upcoming October parliamentary elections.

Khadhimi said that we must encourage Muqtada Sadr to reverse his decision not to participate in the elections. Other political forces were trying to make his group pay for its mistakes, but everyone in Iraq, Khadhimi insists, must be held responsible for his mistakes.

Khattar Abou Diab, who teaches political science at the University of Paris, tells VOA that internal political tensions between Prime Minister Khadhimi and various political groups could be behind the recent activities of Islamic State.

He questions whether under the banner of Islamic State, there aren’t in reality various Iraqi political forces that are battling Khadhimi, given that the centralized Islamic State group in its former incarnation no longer exists.

Abou Diab also points out that Khadhimi’s destitution of top security officials following the explosion indicates internal tensions within those forces, with some of those officials loyal to other political leaders.

Paul Sullivan, a Washington-based Middle East analyst, tells VOA that the “nightmarish attack on the market in Sadr City as people were shopping for the Eid has the hallmarks of [the Islamic State group],” and he thinks the attack was meant “to fuel the flames of sectarian strife in Iraq and split [the country].”

Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV reported that Islamic State has been active in blowing up electricity pylons, attacking Iraqi security forces and carrying out three suicide attacks since January.

 
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American businessman Jeff Bezos is set to become the second billionaire to self-fund a trip to space this month when he blasts off Tuesday morning from a remote desert launch site in Texas.   

The 57-year-old founder of e-commerce giant Amazon and three companions will fly into space aboard the New Shepard rocket built by his company Blue Origin, which he founded in 2000 with the goal of creating permanent space colonies where people will live and work.   

New Shepard, named after Alan Shepard, America’s first astronaut, is scheduled to blast off shortly after sunrise (300 GMT, 7 a.m. Washington time) and travel at three times the speed of sound before the capsule separates from the rocket and floats above the Earth for three to four minutes, allowing Bezos and his three crewmates to experience weightlessness. The capsule will then re-enter the atmosphere and make a parachute landing near the launch site, while the rocket will make an automated vertical landing several miles away.   

Bezos will be joined by his brother, Mark, plus 82-year-old aviation pioneer Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, making them the oldest and youngest persons to fly into space.  

Funk was one of the so-called Mercury 13, the first group of women to train for the U.S. space program in the 1960s but were denied a chance to become astronauts because of the gender. 

The Dutch-born Daemen was a last-minute addition to the crew after the anonymous winner of a $28 million auction for a seat on New Shepard dropped out, citing a scheduling conflict. Daemen’s father was a runner-up in the auction, which makes the young astronaut Blue Origin’s first paying customer. 

Bezos hopes New Shepard will reach an altitude of 106 kilometers above the Earth, past the so-called Karman line (100 kilometers above Earth), which is recognized by international aviation and aerospace federations as the threshold of space. It will also surpass the 85 kilometer mark reached by British billionaire Richard Branson on July 11 when he and five crewmates flew aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket-powered space plane.   

Bezos, a fervent space enthusiast since watching the Apollo lunar missions in his youth, is heading into space on the 52nd anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing.   

During a television interview Monday, Bezos insisted that his goal was not about competition with Branson, but “about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things in space.” 

Blue Origin’s first manned mission comes after 15 test flights of the New Shepard vehicle. Bob Smith, the company’s chief executive officer, says two more manned missions aboard New Shepard are planned by the end of this year if Tuesday’s flight is successful.   

The company is also building a larger rocket, New Glenn — named after John Glenn, the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth — that will send both manned and unmanned vehicles into space. 
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The threat of thunderstorms and lightning has prompted officials in fire-ravaged Oregon to ask for help from outside the Pacific Northwest to prepare for additional blazes as many resources are already devoted to a massive fire in the state that has grown to a third the size of Rhode Island. 

The 1,391-square-kilometer (537-square-mile) Bootleg Fire is burning 483 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of Portland in and around the Fremont-Winema National Forest, a vast expanse of old-growth forest, lakes and wildlife refuges. Evacuations and property losses have been minimal compared with much smaller blazes in densely populated areas of California. 

But given how the Bootleg Fire — fueled by extreme weather — keeps growing by miles each day, officials with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southwest Oregon are asking for more outside crews to be ready should there be a surge in fire activity there. 

“Although the lightning activity predicted for early this week is expected to occur east of us, we are prepared for the worst, and hoping for the best,” Mike McCann, an assistant fire staff, said Monday in a statement released by the national forest. 

The worry is that dry conditions, a drought and the recent record-breaking heat wave in the region have created tinderbox conditions, so resources like fire engines are being recruited from places like Arkansas, Nevada and Alaska. 

A rural state 

Meanwhile, the Bootleg Fire’s jaw-dropping size contrasted with its relatively small impact on people underscores the vastness of the American West and offers a reminder that Oregon, which is larger than Britain, is still a largely rural state, despite being known mostly for its largest city, Portland. 

If the fire were in densely populated parts of California, “it would have destroyed thousands of homes by now,” said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University’s College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires. “But it is burning in one of the more remote areas of the lower 48 states. It’s not the Bay Area out there.” 

At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and another 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have gone up in flames. Thick smoke chokes the area where residents and wildlife alike have been dealing with months of drought and extreme heat. No one has died. 

Pushed by strong winds from the southwest, the fire is spreading rapidly to the north and east, advancing toward an area that’s increasingly remote. 

Evacuation orders on the fire’s southern edge, closer to more populous areas like Klamath Falls and Bly, have been lifted or relaxed as crews gain control. Now it’s small, unincorporated communities like Paisley and Long Creek — both with fewer than 250 people — and scattered homesteads that are in the crosshairs. 

But as big as the Bootleg Fire is, it’s not the biggest Oregon has seen. The fire’s size so far puts it fourth on the list of the state’s largest blazes in modern times, including rangeland fires, and second on the list of infernos specifically burning in forest.  

These mega fires usually burn until the late fall or even early winter, when rain finally puts them out. 

The largest forest fire in modern history was the Biscuit Fire, which torched nearly 2,000 square kilometers (780 square miles) in 2002 in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon and northern California.  

The Bootleg Fire is now about 25% contained. 

On Monday, flames forced the evacuation of a wildlife research station as firefighters had to retreat for the ninth consecutive day because of erratic and dangerous fire behavior. Sycan Marsh hosts thousands of migrating and nesting birds and is a key research station on wetland restoration in the upper reaches of the Klamath Basin. 

Fires across the West 

The Bootleg Fire was one of many fires burning in a dozen states, most of them in the U.S. West. Sixteen large uncontained fires burned in Oregon and Washington state alone on Monday. 

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. 

And in Northern California, authorities expanded evacuations on the Tamarack Fire in Alpine County in the Sierra Nevada to include the mountain town of Mesa Vista. That fire, which exploded over the weekend and forced the cancellation of an extreme bike ride, was 93 square kilometers (36 square miles) in size with no containment. 

Thunderstorms expected to roll through Monday night could bring winds to fan the flames and lightning that could spark new ones, the National Weather Service said. 
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The leader of the Taliban said Sunday that his movement is committed to a political settlement to end decades of war in Afghanistan, even as the insurgents battle in dozens of districts across to country to gain territory. 

The statement by Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada came as Taliban leaders were meeting with a high-level Afghan government delegation in the Gulf state of Qatar to jump-start stalled peace talks. The Kabul delegation includes the No. 2 in the government, Abdullah Abdullah, head of Afghanistan’s national reconciliation council. 

The talks resumed Saturday, ahead of the four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which in many parts of the world is expected to start Tuesday. A second session took place Sunday afternoon. 

Washington’s peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who is in Qatar, previously expressed hope for a reduction in violence and possibly a cease-fire over Eid al-Adha. 

Akhundzada said that “in spite of the military gains and advances, the Islamic Emirate strenuously favors a political settlement in the country, and every opportunity for the establishment of an Islamic system.”  

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is what the Taliban called their government when they ruled the country for five years, until their ouster by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001. 

Still, there are few signs of a political agreement on the horizon. Battles between the Taliban and government forces are continuing in dozens of provinces, and thousands of Afghans are seeking visas in hopes of leaving the country. Most are frightened that the final withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops after nearly 20 years will plunge their war-ravaged nation into deeper chaos. With the U.S. withdrawal more than 95% complete, Afghanistan’s future seems uncertain. 

Militias with a brutal history have been resurrected to fight the Taliban but their loyalties are to their commanders, many of them U.S.-allied warlords with ethnic-based support. 

This has raised the specter of deepening divisions between Afghanistan’s many ethnic groups. Most Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns and in the past there have been brutal reprisal killings by one ethnic group against another. 

In a sign of how little progress has been made in negotiations, both sides are still haggling over terminology, unable to agree on the name for the nation. The Taliban are insisting on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Kabul wants the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. 

Meanwhile Akhunzada’s statement demanded an Islamic system without explaining what that meant. 

He promised to support education, but for girls he said the “Islamic Emirate will … strive to create an appropriate environment for female education within the framework of sublime Islamic law.” 

He didn’t say how that differed from the educational institutions that have been created during the last 20 years and whether women would be allowed the freedom to work outside their home and move freely without being accompanied by a male relative. 

He said the Taliban have ordered their commanders to treat civilians with care and to protect institutions and infrastructure. Yet, reports have emerged from areas coming under Taliban control that schools have been burned, women have been restricted to their homes and some government buildings have been blown up. 

The Taliban have denied reports of such destruction, saying that the footage being shown is old and accused the government of being engaged in disinformation and propaganda. 
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Hundreds of Jewish pilgrims visited a contested Jerusalem holy site under heavy police guard on Sunday, shortly after Muslim worshippers briefly clashed with Israeli security forces at the flashpoint shrine.

No injuries were reported, but the incident again raised tensions at the hilltop compound revered by Jews and Muslims. Heavy clashes at the site earlier this year helped spark an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Jews revere the site as the Temple Mount, where the biblical Temples once stood. It is the holiest site in Judaism. Today, it is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Tensions at the compound have frequently spilled over into violence over the years.

The Jews were visiting to mark Tisha B’Av, a day of mourning and repentance when Jews reflect on the destruction of the First and Second Temples, key events in Jewish history.

The Islamic Waqf, which administers the site, said that about 1,500 Jews entered the compound — a number much higher than on typical days. It accused Israeli police of using heavy-handed tactics and said some visitors violated a long-standing status quo agreement barring Jews from praying at the site.

Ahead of the visit, Israeli police said a small group of Muslim youths threw rocks at security forces who quickly secured the area. Amateur video showed police firing what appeared to be rubber bullets, a common crowd-control tactic, and Muslim worshippers were barred from entering the compound for several hours.  

In a statement, the Wafq accused Israel of “violating the sanctity” of the mosque by allowing “Jewish extremists to storm the mosque, make provocative tours and perform public prayers and rituals.”  

It said the area “is a purely Islamic mosque that will not accept division or partnership.”

The visit came days before Muslims celebrate the festival of Eid al-Àdha, or Feast of the Sacrifice.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel of “dragging the region into a religious war.”

Jordan, which serves as the custodian over Muslim sites in Jerusalem, said it had sent a letter of protest to Israel and urged it to respect the status quo.

“The Israeli actions against the mosque are rejected and condemned,” said Daifallah al-Fayez, spokesman for Jordan’s Foreign Ministry.

Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, praised police for their handling of the visit and vowed to protect “freedom of worship” for Jews and Muslims at the site.

His comments raised speculation that Israel might be trying to change the norms of the site to allow Jewish prayer.

But Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev told Channel 13 that Israel remains committed to the status quo and that Jewish prayer at the site is “against the law.”

 
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More than 100,000 people protested Saturday across France against the government’s latest measures to push people to get vaccinated and curb rising infections by the delta variant of the coronavirus.

In Paris, separate protest marches by the far right and the far left wound through different parts of the city. Demonstrations were also held in Strasbourg in the east, Lille in the north, Montpellier in the south and elsewhere.

Thousands of people answered calls to take to the streets by Florian Philippot, a fringe far-right politician and former right hand of Marine Le Pen who announced earlier this month that he would run in the 2022 presidential election. Gathered a stone’s throw from the Louvre Museum, protesters chanted “Macron, clear off!” and “Freedom,” and they banged metal spoons on saucepans.

While Philippot has organized small but regular protests against the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, Saturday’s demonstration drew a larger and more diverse crowd of people broadly disaffected with politics: yellow vest activists angry over perceived economic injustice, far-right supporters, medical staff and royalists.

A shot? ‘Never’

They denounced the government’s decision on Monday to make vaccines compulsory for all health care workers, and to require a “health pass” proving people are fully vaccinated, have recently tested negative or have recovered from the virus in order to access restaurants and other public venues. President Emmanuel Macron’s government is presenting a draft law Monday to enshrine the measures.

“I will never get vaccinated,” Bruno Auquier, 53, a town councilor who lives on the outskirts of Paris. “People need to wake up,” he said, questioning the safety of the vaccine.

While France requires several vaccinations to enter public school, Auquier pledged to take his two children out of school if the coronavirus vaccine became mandatory.

“These new measures are the last straw,” Auquier said.

The government warned of the continued spread of the delta variant, which authorities fear could again put pressure on hospitals if not enough people are vaccinated against the virus. The pandemic has cost France more than 111,000 lives and deeply damaged its economy.

During a visit to a pop-up vaccination center in the southwest, Prime Minister Jean Castex exhorted the French to stick together in order to overcome the crisis.

“There is only one solution: vaccination,” he said, stressing it “protects us, and will make us freer.”

At the Paris protest, a manual worker in his 60s expressed bitterness about jobs in his sector being sent offshore. A 24-year-old royalist said he was there to demand “the return of God and the king.”

‘Going too far’

Lucien, 28, a retail shop manager, said he wasn’t anti-vaccine, but thought people should be able to do as they please with their own bodies.

“The government is going too far,” he said. His friend Elise, 26, said, “I am vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and polio. But the COVID vaccine is just too experimental.”

While a majority of French health care workers have had at least one vaccine dose, some are resisting the government’s decision to make vaccination compulsory for all staff in medical facilities.

At Saturday’s Paris protest, a 39-year-old green party supporter and hospital laboratory worker said she might resort to buying a fake vaccination certificate to avoid losing her job. A health care worker dressed as the Statue of Liberty called it “act of violence” to force people to get vaccinated.

In Montpellier, more than 1,000 people marched to the train station, chanting “Liberty!” and carrying signs reading “Our kids aren’t guinea pigs.” Security officials closed the main entrance to travelers and a dozen police officers took posts in front.

The Interior Ministry said 114,000 people took part in protests nationwide.

Overnight on Friday, vandals ransacked a vaccination center in the southeast. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin asked prefects and police chiefs to reinforce security for elected officials, after several complained they had received threats in recent days over the latest anti-COVID measures.

Vaccine hesitancy is considered widespread in France, though it appears to have faded somewhat as 36 million French people have gotten coronavirus vaccine doses in recent months. Millions more have gotten injected or signed up for vaccinations since Monday’s announcement.

French health care workers have until September 15 to get vaccinated. The requirement for COVID passes for all restaurants, bars, hospitals, shopping malls, trains, planes and other venues is being introduced in stages starting Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the French government announced tightened border controls starting Sunday, but also said it would allow in travelers from anywhere in the world who have been fully vaccinated.

That now includes people who received AstraZeneca’s Indian-manufactured vaccine. The move came after a global outcry because the European Union’s COVID-19 certificate recognizes only AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in Europe.
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Martine Moise, the wife of Haiti’s assassinated president who was injured in the July 7 attack at their private home, returned to the Caribbean nation on Saturday following her release from a Miami hospital.

Her arrival was unannounced and surprised many in the country of more than 11 million people still reeling from the assassination of Jovenel Moise in a raid authorities say involved Haitians, Haitian Americans and former Colombian soldiers.

Martine Moise disembarked the flight at the Port-au-Prince airport wearing a black dress, a black bulletproof vest and a black face mask. Her right arm was in a black sling as she slowly walked down the steps of what appeared to be a private plane. She was greeted by interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and other officials.

Earlier this week, she tweeted from the Miami hospital that she could not believe her husband was gone “without saying a last word. This pain will never pass.”

On Friday, government officials announced that Jovenel Moise’s funeral would be on July 23 in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien and that his wife was expected to attend.

Group: Let chosen PM form government

Earlier Saturday a key group of international diplomats issued a statement urging Ariel Henry, the designated prime minister, to form a government following Moise’s killing.

Joseph has been leading Haiti with the backing of police and the military even though Moise had announced Joseph’s replacement a day before he was killed.

Joseph and his allies argue that Henry was never sworn in, though he pledged to work with him and with Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s inactive Senate.

The statement was issued by the Core Group, which is made up of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

The group called for the creation of “a consensual and inclusive government.”

“To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government,” the group said.

U.S. officials could not be immediately reached for comment. A U.N. spokesman declined comment except to say that the U.N. is part of the group that issued the statement. An OAS spokesman said: “For the moment, there is nothing further to say other than what the statement says.”

Henry and spokespeople for Joseph did not immediately return messages for comment.

Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said the statement was very confusing, especially after the U.N. representative had said that Joseph was in charge.

The question of who should take over has been complicated by the fact Haiti’s parliament has not been functioning because a lack of elections meant most members’ terms had expired. And the head of the Supreme Court recently died of COVID-19.
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Raul Castro was among thousands who attended a government-organized rally in Havana on Saturday to denounce the U.S. trade embargo and reaffirm their support for Cuba’s revolution, a week after unprecedented protests rocked the communist-run country.

Government supporters gathered on the city’s seafront boulevard before dawn to wave Cuban flags and photos of late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. The latter retired as Communist Party leader in April but promised to continue fighting for the revolution as a “foot soldier.”

The rally was a reaction to demonstrations that erupted nationwide last Sunday amid widespread shortages of basic goods, demands for political rights and the island nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

The government admitted some shortcomings this week but mostly blamed the protests on U.S.-financed “counter-revolutionaries” exploiting economic hardship caused by U.S. sanctions.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who also heads the Communist Party, told the crowd that Cuba’s “enemy has once again thrown itself into destroying citizens’ sacred unity and tranquility.”

He said it was no small matter to call a rally as the country saw increasing numbers of COVID cases: “We convened you to denounce once more the blockade, the aggression and terror.”

‘Revolution will continue’

Authorities said similar rallies were held nationwide.

“This revolution will continue for a long time,” said Margaritza Arteaga, a state social worker who attended the rally in Havana.

Workers had been convened by neighborhood block committees, known as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, she said, and a state bus had picked her up at 4 a.m.

Shortly before the rally in Havana officially began, authorities removed a man shouting anti-government slogans including “freedom” from the crowd.

The number of those detained during or after protests has grown as new reports trickle in amid irregular outages in internet and messaging applications on the island, where the state has a monopoly on telecommunications.

The latest tally from exiled rights group Cubalex put those detained at 450, although some have since been released. Activists have accused authorities of repression as some videos have emerged on social media of police beating protesters.

The government has not yet given official figures for those detained although it has said it arrested those it suspected of instigating unpatriotic unrest or of carrying out vandalism. State television has broadcast images of people looting Cuba’s controversial dollar stores and overturning empty police cars.
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Temple elephants in southern India’s Kerala state began their monthlong wellness camp at Vadakkunnathan temple, Saturday, July 17. 

Eating fruits, rice sweet balls, and other items, the elephants were seen happily interacting with people. 

The elephants are ritualistically relieved from daily chores for a monthlong restorative treatment called Aanayoottu, beginning from Saturday. 

Aanayoottu means feeding the elephants with specially prepared food, which is known for its high medicinal value. This medicinal concoction is regarded as vital for enhancing the well-being of elephants. 

The formulation is administered to the animals to protect and improve their health during the monsoon months when they are not taken for any temple processions, of which they are an essential part, and are provided with full rest. 

(Reuters)  
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Forces in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have released about 1,000 government soldiers captured during recent fighting, the head of its ruling party said, as both sides prepared for a showdown over contested land in the west of the region.

Debretsion Gebremichael, leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), told Reuters by satellite phone late Friday they have released 1,000 low-ranking soldiers. “More than 5,000 [soldiers] are still with us, and we will keep the senior officers who will face trial,” he said.

He said the soldiers had been driven to Tigray’s southern border with the Amhara region on Friday, but he did not say who received them or how the release was negotiated.

Reuters could not independently confirm his account. A military spokesman said he was not immediately available to comment Saturday, and the spokesman for the Amhara regional administration said he had no information on the release.

Officials in Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office and a government taskforce on Tigray did not answer calls seeking comment.

Fighting broke out in Tigray in November when the government accused the TPLF of attacking military bases across the region, which the party denied. The government declared victory three weeks later when it took control of the regional capital, Mekelle, but the TPLF kept fighting.

In a dramatic turn, the TPLF retook Mekelle and most of Tigray at the end of June, after the government pulled out its soldiers and declared a unilateral cease-fire.

The TPLF vowed to keep fighting, however, until it had regained control of disputed territory in the south and west of Tigray that was seized during the fighting by the government’s allies from Amhara.

Abiy said this week that the military would repel any TPLF threat, effectively abandoning the self-declared truce. Amhara and three other regions said they were mobilizing forces to support the national army in its fight against the TPLF.

Thousands of people have died in the fighting; around 2 million have been displaced and more than 5 million rely on emergency food aid.

On Friday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing aid groups of arming rebels.

“Some aid agencies have been actively engaged in a destructive role. We have also confirmed that they have been using aid as a cover and are arming the rebel groups to prolong the conflicts,” it said.

The statement did not identify the groups and there was no immediate response from the agencies that operate in Tigray. The United Nations humanitarian organization OCHA did not respond to a request for comment.

The U.N. has said desperately needed aid is being blocked at checkpoints as convoys travel through government-held territory. Ethiopian authorities say the aid needs to be checked.
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Issues in the News moderator Kim Lewis talks with VOA Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson and correspondent for Marketplace Kimberly Adams about the ongoing battle between Democrats and Republicans over voting rights legislation, what’s next after Senate Democrats agree to a $3.5 trillion human infrastructure package, the impact of the crises in Haiti and Cuba on the Biden Administration, and much more.
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Rescue workers searched flood-ravaged parts of western Germany for survivors on Saturday as water levels remained high in many towns and houses continued to collapse in the country’s worst natural disaster in half a century.

At least 133 people have died in the flooding, including some 90 people in the Ahrweiler district south of Cologne, according to police estimates on Saturday. Hundreds of people are still missing.

Around 700 residents were evacuated late on Friday after a dam broke in the town of Wassenberg near Cologne, authorities said.

Over the past several days the floods, which have mostly hit the states of Rhineland Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, have cut off entire communities from power and communications.

The flooding has also hit parts of Belgium and the Netherlands. At least 20 people have died in Belgium.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Armin Laschet, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, were scheduled to visit Erftstadt, one of the hardest hit towns, on Saturday.

Laschet is ruling CDU party’s candidate in September’s general election. The devastation of the floods could intensify the debate over climate change ahead of the vote.

Scientists have long said that climate change will lead to heavier downpours. But determining its role in these relentless downpours will take at least several weeks to research, scientists said on Friday. 
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Pope Francis cracked down Friday on the spread of the old Latin Mass, reversing one of Pope Benedict XVI’s signature decisions in a major challenge to traditionalist Catholics who immediately decried it as an attack on them and the ancient liturgy.

Francis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass that Benedict relaxed in 2007 and went further to limit its use. The pontiff said he was acting because Benedict’s reform had become a source of division in the church and been exploited by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church and its liturgy.

Critics said they had never witnessed a pope so thoroughly reversing his predecessor. That the reversal concerned something so fundamental as the liturgy, while Benedict is still alive and living in the Vatican as a retired pope, only amplified the extraordinary nature of Francis’ move, which will surely result in more right-wing hostility directed at him.

Francis, 84, issued a new law requiring individual bishops to approve celebrations of the old Mass, also called the Tridentine Mass, and requiring newly ordained priests to receive explicit permission to celebrate it from their bishops, in consultation with the Vatican.

Under the new law, bishops must also determine if the current groups of faithful attached to the old Mass accept Vatican II, which allowed for Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin. These groups cannot use regular churches; instead, bishops must find alternate locations for them without creating new parishes.

In addition, Francis said bishops are no longer allowed to authorize the formation of any new pro-Latin Mass groups in their dioceses.

Francis said he was taking action to promote unity and heal divisions within the church that had grown since Benedict’s 2007 document, Summorum Pontificum. He said he based his decision on a 2020 Vatican survey of all the world’s bishops, whose “responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene.”

The pope’s rollback immediately created an uproar among traditionalists already opposed to Francis’ more progressive bent and nostalgic for Benedict’s doctrinaire papacy.

“This is an extremely disappointing document which entirely undoes the legal provisions,” of Benedict’s 2007 document, said Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales.

While Latin celebrations can continue, “the presumption is consistently against them: bishops are being invited to close them down,” Shaw said, adding that the requirement for Latin Masses to be held outside a parish was “unworkable.”

“This is an extraordinary rejection of the hard work for the church and the loyalty to the hierarchy which has characterized the movement for the Traditional Mass for many years, which I fear will foster a sense of alienation among those attached to the church’s ancient liturgy,” he said.

Benedict had issued his document in 2007 to reach out to a breakaway, schismatic group that celebrates the Latin Mass, the Society of St. Pius X, and which had split from Rome over the modernizing reforms of Vatican II.

But Francis said Benedict’s effort to foster unity had essentially backfired.

The opportunity offered by Benedict, the pope said in a letter to bishops accompanying the new law, was instead “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”

Francis said he was “saddened” that the use of the old Mass was accompanied by a rejection of Vatican II itself “with unfounded and unsustainable assertions that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’”

Christopher Bellitto, professor of church history at Kean University, said Francis was right to intervene, noting that Benedict’s original decision had had a slew of unintended consequences that not only created internal divisions but temporarily roiled relations with Jews.

“Francis hits it right on the head with his observation that Benedict’s 2007 loosening of regulations against the Latin rite allowed others to use it for division,” he said. “The blowback proves his point.”

The blowback was indeed fierce, though it’s also likely that many will simply ignore Francis’ decree and continue as before with sympathetic bishops. Some of these traditionalists and Catholics already were among Francis’ fiercest critics, with some accusing him of heresy for having opened the door to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

Rorate Caeli, a popular traditionalist blog run out of the U.S., said Francis’ “attack” was the strongest rebuke of a pope against his predecessors in living memory.

“Francis HATES US. Francis HATES Tradition. Francis HATES all that is good and beautiful,” the group tweeted. But it concluded: “FRANCIS WILL DIE, THE LATIN MASS WILL LIVE FOREVER.”

Messa in Latino, an Italian traditionalist blog, was also blistering in its criticism.

“Mercy always and only for sinners (who are not asked to repent) but no mercy for those few traditional Catholics,” the blog said Friday.

For years, though, Francis has made known his distaste of the old liturgy, privately labeling its adherents self-referential naval gazers who are out of touch with the needs of the church. He has cracked down on religious orders that celebrated the old Mass exclusively and frequently decried the “rigidity” of tradition-minded priests who prioritize rules over pastoral accompaniment.

Traditionalists have insisted that the old liturgy was never abrogated, and that Benedict’s 2007 reform had allowed it to flourish.

They point to the growth of traditionalist parishes, often frequented by young, large families, as well as new religious orders that celebrate the old liturgy. The Latin Mass Society says the number of traditional Masses celebrated each Sunday in England and Wales had more than doubled since 2007, from 20 to 46.

But for many, the writing was on the wall as soon as Francis stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica after his 2013 election without the ermine-trimmed red velvet cape that was preferred by Benedict and is a symbol of the pre-Vatican II church.

The restrictions went into immediate effect with its publication in Friday’s official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. 
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