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Turkey’s decision to convert the ancient Hagia Sophia monument back into a mosque has sparked a war of words between Athens and Ankara. However, as Greece intensifies its diplomatic scramble to slap sanctions on Turkey, Greek businesses have launched a campaign to boycott goods and services from the neighboring country.Vassilis Korkidis, a leading representative of commerce in Greece, is blunt about the need, as he puts it, to strike back at Turkey.We recognize the ongoing works and efforts of the government to counter the recasting of Hagia Sophia, he said. However, until that materializes into something concrete, Korkidis said, Greek businesses should waste no time in boycotting trade with their Turkish partners.Even on a personal level, he says, consumers should follow suit. They can do so immediately, he said, boycotting Turkish goods, which bear the numbers 868 and 869 on the barcodes of imported products.Despite age-old animosity between the two countries, trade relations have grown substantially in recent years. Greece’s annual exports to Turkey total about $1.6 billion, significantly more than the $1.2 billion in imports from Turkey.Whether Greeks will heed the trade boycott remains unclear, especially as the economy here has been thrown into chaos by the COVID-19 pandemic.However, the anger, sadness and resentment toward the Hagia Sophia recast weighs heavily in this largely Eastern Orthodox country — so much in fact, that experts say any short-lived trade gain is offset by bigger losses.In this Presidential Press Office handout picture, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends Friday prayers at Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul, July 24, 2020.Korkidis explained, “We may enjoy a generous trade surplus, he says, but when you factor in the resources that Greece has to pull together to fend off continued flows of illegal migration from Turkey, and the huge military costs now racking up to safeguard against Turkish provocations — well all of that wipes out any semblance of a surplus.”The issue of Hagia Sophia is just the latest of a string of crises Greece is facing from its fellow NATO member, Turkey. Relations have been aggravated for years over land and sea rights in the Aegean, as well as thousands of illegal migrants continuing to stream into Greece from Turkey. In recent weeks, also, tensions have soared as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to begin drilling for oil and gas in waters Greece considers its own. Greek business associations say they are already reaching out to partner organizations across Europe to institute build an even broader boycott against Turkey.It is clear that the West is becoming increasingly unnerved by the actions of Turkey, Korkidis said. It is high time, he said, that Erdogan’s government stops using cultural issues to advance its political agenda.The trade boycott is just one of many grassroots movements and protests, swelling in Greece.On Sunday, alone, church bells tolled anew across the nation while tens of thousands of people packed into houses of prayer, singing hymns in honor of the Hagia Sophia, the seat of Eastern Christianity for about a thousand years before Ottoman Turks conquered its host city, then known as Constantinople.Protesters burn a Turkish national flag outside of a church during a gathering in Thessaloniki, July 24, 2020, against turning the historic Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to a mosque after serving for more than 80 years as museum.In more worrying signs, though, teams of far-right nationalists fanned out across a city in northern Greece, torching a Turkish flag. The Greek government condemned the move. Still, it stoked nationalist and patriotic passions with a fresh round stinging remarks against the country’s age-old foe by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.He said Turkey is a troublemaker threatening peace and security in the region, he says, but we have shown, that we can defend our borders, the European Union’s frontiers.Greece believes the Hagia Sophia conversion is part of a bigger plan by Turkey to reassert itself as a regional and energy superpower.Turkey says Greece is significantly overreacting. Even so, Greece insists it is not taking any chances, keeping its forces on code-red alert, ready to wage war if further provoked on any front. 
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Pakistan and China have refuted as “absurd” and “fabricated” media reports that the two close allies are jointly conducting secret research to develop biological weapons in breach of global treaties. 
 
An Australian publication, The Klaxon, alleged in its investigative report last week that Beijing and Islamabad have entered a covert three-year deal “to expand potential bio-warfare capabilities, including running several research projects related to the deadly agent anthrax.” 
 
The report quoted multiple intelligence sources as saying that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology had “lent all financial material and scientific support” to set up the secret facility in Pakistan. “The Wuhan lab was providing “extensive training on manipulation of pathogens and bio-informatics” to Pakistani scientists “to help Pakistan develop its own virus collection database,” it said.  
 
“It is a politically motivated and fake story, composed of distortion of facts and fabrications that quote anonymous sources,” said a Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement issued Sunday. 
 
It insisted that “there is nothing secret” about the facility referred to in the report, saying the laboratory is being used for research and development on emerging health threats, surveillance and diseases outbreak investigation.  
 
The ministry noted that Pakistan has been “strictly” abiding by its international obligations and has been sharing information about the laboratory in question with states parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The international treaty forbids member nations from developing, producing and stockpiling biological agent or toxin. 
 
“The attempt to cast aspersions about the facility is particularly absurd against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the need for better preparedness in the areas of disease surveillance and control and international collaborations in that regard,” the Pakistani statement lamented. 
 
The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan also denounced as “fabricated” the Australian media report.  
 
“It is totally irresponsible, vicious-intentioned to smear China and Sino-Pak relations. As a responsible nation, China always lives up to its obligations to BWC,” the diplomatic mission tweeted Sunday.  
 
Pakistan and China have traditionally maintained close political, economic and defense relations. The two neighboring countries have over the past six years further cemented bilateral ties, with Beijing investing billions of dollars in major infrastructure and energy development projects in Pakistan. 
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Hurricane Hanna battered the south Texas coast with blistering winds and crashing waves into the early hours of Sunday, leaving a large area already badly hit by COVID-19 bracing for torrential downpours and potential flash floods. Hanna came ashore on Padre Island on Saturday afternoon as a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, and later made a second landfall in Eastern Kennedy County, Texas. Weakening as it headed west over land, Hanna was a tropical storm by Sunday morning, with its center about 40 miles (65 km) from Mcallen, Texas and about 65 miles (105 km) from Monterrey, Mexico, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. Two men stand near a seawall as Hurricane Hanna makes landfall, July 25, 2020, in Corpus Christi, Texas.At 0400 CDT (0900 GMT), Hanna’s top sustained winds were around 60 miles per hour (95 kph), it said. It was forecast to further lose steam as it moved across Texas and northeastern Mexico. The center canceled storm surge warning it had issued for the Texas coast but said Hanna could dump upward of 18 inches (45 cm) of rain in the area through Monday. “This rain will produce, life-threatening flash flooding, rapid rises on small streams, and isolated minor to moderate river flooding,” the NHC said. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said during a Saturday briefing that the storm was especially challenging as it was sweeping through an area of the state that has been the worst hit by the coronavirus. He issued a disaster declaration for 32 counties in Texas that were in the storm’s path. The storm was not expected to affect offshore oil and gas production. Energy companies have not evacuated workers or shut down production from their Gulf of Mexico platforms because of Hanna. The Texas area struck by Hanna has struggled to contain outbreaks of COVID-19 in recent weeks. Cases along the state’s coast have soared into the tens of thousands. More than 400 people in Corpus Christi were hospitalized with the illness on Friday, according to city data. 
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French authorities have charged a Rwandan church volunteer who confessed to setting the 15-century Nantes cathedral on fire.The local prosecutor’s office said that the 39-year-old asylum-seeker who has lived in France for several years, was detained Saturday for a second time.  He had been held for a day, questioned and released immediately after the fire on July 18.Prosecutor Pierre Sennès, said the suspect admitted being responsible for the fire that started in three different places at the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul after initially denying it.Sennès said in a statement that the man has been charged with “destruction and damage by fire,” and faced up to 10 years in prison and $175,000 in fines. French authorities have not identified the man and gave no motive for the arson.His lawyer, identified in the media as Quentin Chabert, said his client bitterly regretted his acts. 
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At least one person has died after someone shot into a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the southwestern U.S. city of Austin, Texas.Emergency services officials say they are looking for other victims following the Saturday night shooting.Police say they are treating the incident as a homicide.
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For Shelly Hutchinson, a Georgia state representative, the message of Stone Mountain, the nation’s largest Confederate monument, is personal.The 250-meter-high mountain of quartz monzonite bears the largest bas-relief carving in the world, featuring the likenesses of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, in a grandiose piece of art plainly visible from a nearby highway.This homage to the Civil War – the war Americans fought at least in part over the right to own slaves — is located in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, where more than one-third of the population is black. And U.S. census numbers show that the village of Stone Mountain, within sight of the huge carving, has a population that is nearly three-quarters black.“Kids (are) molded by their environment,” Hutchinson said in a recent phone interview. “If you have schoolchildren who drive past that memorial or any other Confederate memorial, the message is that the Confederacy means more than you do.”Yet, there are others, like Martin O’Toole of Atlanta’s Sons of Confederate Veterans, who say getting rid of Confederate monuments would be akin to trying to erase history, and discussion of their significance is normal.“Diversity of opinion on these matters is essential,” he said in an email to VOA.Since 1915, the mountain has been a gathering place for the white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan, and other groups like it. For decades, the Klan met annually at the site, with the blessing of the family who owned it. Even now that the mountain is state property, historic Confederate flags fly at the site, and some visitors bring their own.This July 20, 2020, photo shows the statue of General Robert E. Lee at Antietam battlefield in Maryland. The National Park Service covered it after it was vandalized July 16, 2020. (M. Melton/VOA)Not only would it be difficult to destroy or alter a gigantic memorial literally carved in stone, but it is also protected by Georgia state law. When lawmakers removed Confederate imagery from the Georgia state flag in 2003, they added a compromise: a provision that Stone Mountain’s tribute to the Confederacy remain, as is, in perpetuity. Hutchinson has introduced legislation to get that changed – in fact, to outlaw Confederate memorials outright on Georgia public land, all of which are now protected by a law passed last year in Georgia’s Legislature.Georgia is not alone in passing laws to protect its monuments. A number of other Southern states – North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and until recently Virginia — had similar laws. They apply to all historical monuments, not just those related to the Civil War. They protect the even the most controversial of monuments from being hastily taken down.Hutchinson said the effort to hang on to Confederate symbols indicates, to her, that it is motivated by more than reverence for history. “This is a passive-aggressive way of saying, ‘We still have the upper hand,’” she said.Similarly, O’Toole questions the motivation of those who say the monuments are upsetting and should be taken down.“What monuments are agreed upon by all Americans?” he said. “What the censors are demanding is either destruction of the monuments they disagree with or ‘contextualization’ markers to promote their own viewpoints.”He suggested providing contextualization markers for all monuments, “not just Confederate or traditional American memorials.”Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a House subcommittee held a hearing on what to do about Confederate memorials on public lands – specifically, several in Washington, D.C., and a statue of General Lee at a Civil War battlefield in Maryland, all of which have been vandalized recently by supporters of Black Lives Matter.An image stating ‘No America Without Black America’ is projected on to the pedestal of the statue of confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue, July 22, 2020, in Richmond, Va.Robert W. Lee, a North Carolina pastor and descendant of General Robert E. Lee, told lawmakers that he supports removal of the statue of his ancestor in Maryland and the many others like it across the South.He read quotes from General Lee’s own congressional testimony, in which the Confederate general stated plainly that he did not believe Blacks were as capable of learning or of voting intelligently as whites.Following those comments with his own, Robert W. Lee said, “For us to continue to celebrate a man who questioned the education, disparaged the right to vote … and had previously fought for the continued enslavement of Africans on the North American continent, is an affront to those now suffering under the continued weight of oppression.”At that same hearing, Joseph Loconte of the Heritage Foundation criticized those who vandalized the monuments, saying, “This is not the way to bind up the nation’s wounds.”Loconte also said historians like himself study the past “in order for … history to speak its truths and warnings and lessons into our present reality,” he said. “In the history of the world, that is quite a story – a story worth remembering and defending.”Meanwhile, the times keep changing.Late Thursday, the state of Virginia swiftly and quietly removed all Confederate memorials from its state Capitol building in the city of Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy. And Fairfax County, Virginia, just announced it will change the name of its Robert E. Lee High School to that of John R. Lewis, a Black civil rights leader and longtime U.S. congressman who died last week. 
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Seattle police declared a riot Saturday following large demonstrations in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and deployed flash bangs and pepper spray to try to clear an area near where weeks earlier people had set up an “occupied protest zone” that stretched for several blocks.Via Twitter, police said they had made multiple arrests and were “investigating a possible explosive damage” to the walls of the city’s East Precinct police station. Authorities said rocks, bottles and mortars were thrown at officers as they attempted to clear the area.Earlier, protesters in Seattle broke through a fence where a youth detention facility was being built, with some people setting a fire and damaging a portable trailer, authorities said.Thousands of protesters had initially gathered peacefully near downtown Seattle on Saturday in a show of solidarity with fellow demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, where tensions with federal law enforcement have boiled over during protests stemming from the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police.Initially there was no sign of law enforcement near the Seattle march. Later, Seattle Police said via Twitter that about a dozen people breached the construction site for the King County youth detention facility. Also, police said protesters broke out windows at a King County court facility.Protesters march near the King County Juvenile Detention Center, July 25, 2020, in Seattle in support of Black Lives Matter and against police brutality and racial injustice.Earlier this week King County Executive Dow Constantine, in response to long-standing demands by community activists, said he would work to eliminate youth detention centers in the county by 2025.After the fire at the construction site authorities said they had ordered people to leave a different area, in a section of Capitol Hill, near downtown, where the East Precinct is.Earlier this month police cleared the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” zone after two fatal shootings. A group had occupied several blocks around a park for about two weeks following standoffs and clashes that were part of the nationwide unrest over Floyd’s death.Prior to Saturday’s protests Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best had announced officers would be armed with pepper spray and other weapons, promising officers would not use tear gas and urging demonstrators to remain peaceful.”In the spirit of offering trust and full transparency, I want to advise you that SPD officers will be carrying pepper spray and blast balls today, as would be typical for events that carry potential to include violence,” Best said.At an emergency hearing on Friday night, U.S. District Judge James Robart granted a request from the federal government to block Seattle’s new law prohibiting police from using pepper spray, blast balls and similar weapons.The temporary restraining order halts the law that the Seattle City Council passed unanimously last month after confrontations that have largely been peaceful but were occasionally marked by violence, looting and highway shutdowns. The law intended to deescalate tensions between police and demonstrators was set to take effect on Sunday.But the U.S. Department of Justice, citing Seattle’s long-standing police consent decree, successfully argued that banning the use of crowd control weapons could actually lead to more police use of force, leaving them only with more deadly weapons. 
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