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Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya pushed Tuesday for the United States to apply pressure to the government of President Alexander Lukashenko, including through the use of sanctions. 

“Sanctions is not silver bullet, but they can help to stop violence in Belarus and to make representatives of the regime to start dialogue with civil society,” Tsikhanouskaya told VOA. 

She spoke outside the White House after talks with U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, one of a series of meetings this week with officials from the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress. 

“I asked the U.S. to be the guarantors of our independence, that they will stand for our independence if it is under the threat. Because our independence is the highest value for Belarusians,” Tsikhanouskaya told VOA. 

She said she asked that the United States provide more support for civil society groups in Belarus, and that it is up to democratic countries to “support those who are fighting now.” 

Tsikhanouskaya was the main challenger to Lukashenko in an August 2020 election that the opposition and many Western governments considered rigged. Lukashenko denies the allegation. She fled the country after the election as Lukashenko’s government cracked down on protests. 

“The United States, together with partners and allies, will continue to hold the Lukashenka regime accountable for its actions, including through the imposition of sanctions,” U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said in a statement about Tuesday’s meeting.

State Department spokesman Ned Price, speaking to reporters at a Tuesday briefing, said sanctions are “a powerful tool,” and that the United States supports the aspirations of the people of Belarus “for a democratic, free and prosperous future.” 

“We are committed to close coordination with likeminded allies and partners on next steps, just as we have been in demonstrating our response to the crackdown, to the outrageous actions in recent weeks of the Lukashenko regime,” Price said. “We support international efforts to independently look into Belarus’s flawed election, its human rights abuses surrounding the election, and the crackdown that followed.” 

VOA Russian service’s Mykhailo Komadovsky contributed to the report.  
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Ecologists in a vast region of wetlands and forest in remote Oregon have spent the past decade thinning young trees and using planned fires to try to restore the thick stands of ponderosa to a less fire-prone state. 

This week, the nation’s biggest burning wildfire provided them with an unexpected, real-world experiment. As the massive inferno half the size of Rhode Island roared into the Sycan Marsh Preserve, firefighters said the flames jumped less from treetop to treetop and instead returned to the ground, where they were easier to fight, moved more slowly and did less damage to the overall forest. 

The initial assessment suggests that the many years of forest treatments worked, said Pete Caligiuri, Oregon forest program director for The Nature Conservancy, which runs the research at the preserve. 

“Generally speaking, what firefighters were reporting on the ground is that when the fire came into those areas that had been thinned … it had significantly less impact.” 

The reports were bittersweet for researchers, who still saw nearly 51.7 square kilometers of the preserve burn, but the findings add to a growing body of research about how to make wildfires less explosive by thinning undergrowth and allowing forests to burn periodically — as they naturally would do — instead of snuffing out every flame. 

The Bootleg Fire, now 1,569 square kilometers in size, has ravaged southern Oregon and is the fourth-largest fire in the state’s modern history. It’s been expanding by up to 6 kilometers a day, pushed by gusting winds and critically dry weather that’s turned trees and undergrowth into a tinderbox. 

Fire crews have had to retreat from the flames for 10 consecutive days as fireballs jump from treetop to treetop, trees explode, embers fly ahead of the fire to start new blazes, and in some cases, the inferno’s heat creates its own weather of shifting winds and dry lightning. Monstrous clouds of smoke and ash have risen up to 9.6 kilometers into the sky and are visible for more than 185.2 kilometers. 

The fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest merged with a smaller nearby blaze Tuesday, and it has repeatedly breached a perimeter of treeless dirt and fire retardant meant to stop its advance.  

More evacuations were ordered Monday night, and a red flag weather warning signifying dangerous fire conditions was in effect through Tuesday. The fire is 30% contained. 

“We’re in this for as long as it takes to safely confine this monster,” Incident Commander Rob Allen said Tuesday. 

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 already been dealing with months of drought and extreme heat. No one has died. 

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

Historically, wildfires in Oregon and elsewhere in the U.S. West burned an area as big or bigger than the current blaze more frequently but much less explosively. Periodic, naturally occurring fire cleared out the undergrowth and smaller trees that cause today’s fires to burn so dangerously. 

Those fires have not been allowed to burn for the past 120 years, said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University’s College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires. 

The area on the northeastern flank of the Bootleg Fire is in the ancestral homeland of the Klamath Tribes, which have used intentional, managed fire to keep the fuel load low and prevent such explosive blazes. Scientists at the Sycan Marsh research station now work with the tribe and draw on that knowledge. 

Climate change is the catalyst for the worsening wildfire seasons in the West, Johnston said, but poor forest management and a policy of decades of fire suppression have made a bad situation even worse. 

“My colleagues and I have been predicting a massive fire in that area for years. It’s an area that’s exceptionally prone to catastrophic fire,” said Johnston, who is not affiliated with Sycan Marsh. “It’s dry. It’s fire-prone and always has been. But what’s changed over the past 100 years is an extraordinary amount of fuel buildup.” 

Other fires

Elsewhere, fire crews were engaged in other daunting battles. 

In Northern California, authorities expanded evacuations for the Tamarack Fire in Alpine County in the Sierra Nevada to include the mountain town of Mesa Vista late Monday. That fire, which exploded over the weekend was 158 square kilometers with no containment. 

On the western side of the Sierra, the Dixie Fire has scorched 163 square kilometers, threatening tiny communities in the Feather River Valley region. 

Meteorologist Julia Ruthford told a briefing that a surge of monsoonal moisture from the Southwest increased atmospheric instability Sunday and Monday, creating plumes topping 9.6 kilometers — so big that the fire generated a thunderstorm over itself, hurling lightning bolts and whipping up gusty winds. 

For the past two days in Oregon, the fire has danced around Sycan Marsh, where researchers raced to protect buildings with sprinklers and fire lines. The 121.7 square kilometer habitat attracts migrating and nesting birds and offers a unique location to research forest and fire ecology. 

The nonprofit operates its own fire engines and maintains federal firefighting certification. It now has three of its own engines and seven firefighters on the blaze, and more people are arriving from North Carolina and Florida to try to save the preserve. 

“It’s an amazing place,” Caligiuri said. “It’s very hard to watch it all happening, and seeing all of that work being threatened by this fire is a lot to process.” 
 
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Canadian officials announced that fully vaccinated American citizens and permanent residents can enter Canada for what is being called “discretionary travel” beginning August 9. 

Those wanting to cross the 8,891-kilometer border by land or air into Canada will have to arrive asymptomatic and provide proof of full vaccination as well as a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of arrival. 

The required documentation must be uploaded to the ArriveCAN app ahead of the trip, and travelers will need to have the paper version physically available. 

Canada’s easing of entry restrictions will extend to travelers from all other countries starting September 7, with identical requirements.   

The U.S.-Canada border has been closed to nonessential travel since March of last year. Canadians, however, have been able to fly into the United States with only a negative COVID-19 test. 

Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham, is not surprised by Ottawa’s decision.  

“I think that is a natural next step to allow Americans coming from the United States to Canada who are fully vaccinated for any trip purpose to be exempt,” Trautman said.

“So I’m glad to see there’s a date. I’m glad to see there’s a plan.” 

For Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, the announcement is good for commerce — and people’s outlook on both sides of the border.   

“When you think about it, what we have been through as human beings over the last 16-17 months or so is not natural, and what’s natural for people is to interact with each other,” Hyder said.

“To celebrate events, to mourn events, to, you know, meet our customers, to take vacations — all of these things are part of being a human being. And those are the things that we sacrificed for the last 16-17 months.” 

Perrin Beatty, the president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, welcomes the reopening, particularly for the tourism sector and other businesses that rely on cross-border travel with the United States.

One concern he has going forward is potential delays at the border for checking health documents.   

“And the government is going to need to look for ways of speeding that up,” Beatty said. “Otherwise, we’ll have massive traffic jams with people trying to cross the border at peak times. And that’s why it’s so important for us to have digital secure vaccination certification.”   

Beatty also said the Canadian government should eliminate the requirement to have a negative COVID-19 test.  

In making the announcements at a virtual press conference, Canadian Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair said he talked with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the changes.

Blair said the current restrictions that expire on the 21st of July are expected to continue for travelers going by land into the United States. 

“They are obviously considering additional measures and data,” Blair said. “But at the present time, they have not indicated a plan to make any changes in their current border restrictions that are in place.” 

Residents of the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon will also be allowed into Canada for nonessential travel on Aug. 9. 

Earlier, the Canadian government shortened the ban on cruise ships docking in the country to Nov. 1, four months earlier than it originally planned. 

The Canada Border Services Agency staffs 117 legal crossing points along the Canada-U.S. border and 13 international airports.  
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An official at Mali’s presidency said Tuesday that interim leader Assimi Goita was “safe and sound” after armed men attacked him during a religious ceremony in the capital Bamako.  

The official added that Goita had arrived at the military camp of Kati, outside Bamako, “where security has been reinforced”. 

Two armed men, including one who wielded a knife, attacked Goita in the great mosque in the capital Bamako, an AFP journalist saw.   

The attack took place during prayers for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.  

Religious Affairs Minister Mamadou Kone told AFP that a man had “tried to kill the president with a knife” but was apprehended.  

Latus Toure, the director of the Great Mosque, said an attacker had lunged for the president but wounded someone else.  

AFP was not immediately able to confirm the accounts. 

Mali has been struggling to contain a jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north of the country in 2012, and has since spread to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.  

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.  

The conflict has also been mirrored by political instability in the capital.  

Colonel Goita led a coup last August, ousting elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita after weeks of mass protests over corruption and the long-running jihadist conflict. 

In May, he ousted a transitional government that had been entrusted with the task of leading the country back to civilian rule in February 2022. 

He was then named transitional president, but has pledged to keep to the goal for returning to civilian government. 
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Bushra Shah, a 35-year-old Pakistani, says she is realizing a childhood dream by making the great pilgrimage to Mecca, and under new rules she’s doing it without a male guardian.

The hajj ministry has officially allowed women of all ages to make the pilgrimage without a male relative, known as a “mehrem,” on the condition that they go in a group.

The decision is part of social reforms rolled out by de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is trying to shake off the kingdom’s austere image and open its oi reliant economy.

Since his rise to power, women have been allowed to drive and to travel abroad without a male guardian, even against a backdrop of a relentless crackdown against critics of his rule, including women’s rights activists.

“It’s like a dream come true. My childhood dream was to make the hajj,” Shah told AFP, before setting off from her home in Jeddah, the major port city in western Saudi Arabia.

The hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is a must for able-bodied Muslims with the means to do so at least once in their lifetime.

For the young mother, making the pilgrimage with her husband and child would have been a distraction that would have prevented her from “concentrating completely on the rites.”

Shah is one of 60,000 pilgrims chosen to take part in this year’s hajj, which has been dramatically scaled down for the second year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Only citizens and residents of Saudi Arabia, chosen in a lottery, are taking part. Officials have said that 40% of this year’s pilgrims are women.

“Many women will also come with me. I am very proud that we are now independent and do not need a guardian,” Shah said.

Her husband, Ali Murtada, said he “strongly encouraged” his wife to make the trip alone, after the government’s decision to ban children from participating in the hajj this year.
He will stay in Jeddah to look after their child.

“We decided that one of us should go. Maybe she will be pregnant next year or maybe the children will still not be allowed to participate,” the 38-year-old said.

It was unclear when the hajj ministry lifted the restriction, and some women have reported that travel agencies are still reluctant to accept women travelling without a male companion for the hajj.

Some even posted advertisements ruling out groups of unaccompanied women, in a sign of how the dizzying social changes are meeting some resistance in the deeply conservative kingdom.

Authorities previously required the presence of a male guardian for any woman pilgrim younger than 45, preventing many Muslim women around the world from making the hajj.

That was the case for Marwa Shaker, an Egyptian woman living in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

“Hajj without a guardian is a miracle,” the 42-year-old, who works for a civil society organization, told AFP.

Now travelling to Mecca with three of her friends, the mother of three had tried several times to make the pilgrimage before the pandemic. But she was unable to because her husband had already been and was not permitted to go again so soon.

“I feel enormously joyful. God has called me despite all the obstacles,” she said.

For Sadaf Ghafoor, a British-Pakistani doctor, travelling without a male guardian was the “only option.”

“We couldn’t leave the children alone,” the 40-year-old said of her three youngsters.  

Her husband decided to stay behind, and Ghafoor headed to Mecca with a neighbor.

“It was not easy to take the decision to go alone … but we took this opportunity as a blessing,” she said.
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Russia has asked the U.N. Security Council to vote Thursday on its proposal to abolish the post of international high representative for Bosnia and the office that goes with it by July 2022, diplomats told Agence France-Presse.    

The vote was requested for Thursday afternoon, said one of the diplomats on condition of anonymity.  

It is now up to France, which holds the presidency of the Security Council this month, to confirm the vote. 

The subject has been controversial for years and has come back on the radar in recent weeks. It pits Russia against the West, and in particular against Germany, which is due to have a former minister take up the post on August 1. 

Submitted to the Security Council last week, the Russian draft resolution, co-sponsored by China, “welcomes and agrees” to the designation of German politician Christian Schmidt as successor to current high representative Valentin Inzko of Austria.    

But the draft, obtained by AFP, goes on to say that it “supports the appointment of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (…) until 31 July 2022 with closure of the Office of the High Representative.” 

According to Western diplomats, Moscow and Beijing may not garner the minimum nine out of 15 votes necessary to approve the resolution, without one of the five permanent members of the council resorting to their veto power to block it.    

The five permanent members are Russia, China, the United States, France and Britain. 

At the end of June, Russia said it “categorically refused” the appointment of Schmidt, a former German minister of agriculture.  

The United States replied that the appointment was a “closed matter” and that the U.N. had nothing to do with the appointment of the high representative, which is decided by the Peace Implementation Council of the 1995 Dayton agreement, which is made up of 55 countries.  

After 12 years as high representative, Inzko, who was rejected by Russia over what it saw as bias against the Bosnian Serbs, resigned from his post.  

The job has no term limits attached to it. According to a Western diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity, Russia’s draft resolution has no other objective than to “undermine the institution” represented by the Office of the High Representative.  

“It is absolutely crystal clear that this does not need any kind of endorsement by the Security Council,” the diplomat said. 
…

Ben & Jerry’s said Monday it was going to stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem, saying the sales in the territories sought by the Palestinians are “inconsistent with our values.”

The announcement was one of the strongest and highest-profile rebukes by a well-known company of Israel’s policy of settling its citizens on war-won lands. The settlements are widely seen by the international community as illegal and obstacles to peace.

The move by the Vermont-based ice cream company drew swift reproach from Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former leader of the West Bank settlement movement who called it “an immoral decision, and I believe that it will turn out to be a business mistake, too.”

The company informed its longstanding licensee — responsible for manufacturing and distributing the ice cream in Israel — that it will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of next year, according to a statement posted on the Vermont-based company’s website.

The Ben & Jerry’s statement cited “the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners.”

The company did not explicitly identify those concerns, but last month, a group called Vermonters for Justice in Palestine called on Ben & Jerry’s to “end complicity in Israel’s occupation and abuses of Palestinian human rights.”

“How much longer will Ben & Jerry’s permit its Israeli-manufactured ice cream to be sold in Jewish-only settlements while Palestinian land is being confiscated, Palestinian homes are being destroyed, and Palestinian families in neighborhoods like Sheik Jarrah are facing eviction to make way for Jewish settlers?” the group’s Ian Stokes said in a June 10 news release.

In a Monday statement, the group said Ben & Jerry’s actions did not go far enough.

“By maintaining a presence in Israel, Ben & Jerry’s continues to be complicit in the killing, imprisonment and dispossession of Palestinian people and the flaunting of international law,” said the Vermont group’s Kathy Shapiro.

The Israeli foreign ministry called Ben & Jerry’s decision “a surrender to ongoing and aggressive pressure from extreme anti-Israel groups” and said the company was cooperating with “economic terrorism.”

“The decision is immoral and discriminatory, as it singles out Israel, harms both Israelis and Palestinians and encourages extremist groups who use bullying tactics,” the ministry said in a statement. It called on Ben & Jerry’s to withdraw its decision.

While Ben & Jerry’s products will not be sold in the settlements, the company said it will stay in Israel through a different arrangement. But doing so will be difficult. Major Israeli supermarket chains, the primary distribution channel for the ice cream maker, all operate in the settlements.

Founded in Vermont in 1978 but currently owned by consumer goods conglomerate Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s has not shied away from social causes. While many businesses tread lightly in politics for fear of alienating customers, the ice cream maker has taken the opposite approach, often espousing progressive causes.

Ben & Jerry’s took a stand against what it called the Trump administration’s regressive policies by rebranding one of its flavors Pecan Resist in 2018, ahead of midterm elections.

The company said Pecan Resist celebrated activists who were resisting oppression, harmful environmental practices and injustice. As part of the campaign, Ben & Jerry’s said it was giving $25,000 each to four activist entities.

Aida Touma-Sliman, an Israeli lawmaker with the Joint List of Arab parties, wrote on Twitter that Ben & Jerry’s decision Monday was “appropriate and moral.” She added that the “occupied territories are not part of Israel” and that the move is an important step to help pressure the Israeli government to end the occupation.

The West Bank and east Jerusalem were captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the two territories — roughly 500,000 in the occupied West Bank and 200,000 in east Jerusalem.

Israel treats the two areas separately, considering east Jerusalem as part of its capital.

Meanwhile, Israel considers the West Bank as disputed territory whose fate should be resolved in negotiations. However, the international community considers both areas to be occupied territory. The Palestinians seek the West Bank as part of a future independent state, with east Jerusalem as their capital.

Israel in recent years has become a partisan issue in Washington, with many Democrats — particularly of the party’s progressive wing — growing increasingly critical about a number of Israeli policies, including settlement construction, and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close ties with former President Trump. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been an outspoken critic of Israel.

The BDS movement — shorthand for a grassroots, Palestinian-led movement that advocates boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli institutions and businesses — applauded Ben & Jerry’s decision as “a decisive step towards ending the company’s complicity in Israel’s occupation and violations of Palestinian rights” but called upon the company to do more.

“We hope that Ben & Jerry’s has understood that, in harmony with its social justice commitments, there can be no business as usual with apartheid Israel,” a statement read.

The Israeli government says the BDS movement masks a deeper aim of delegitimizing or even destroying the entire country.

The Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing the roughly 500,000 Israelis living in West Bank settlements, said “there’s no need to buy products from companies that boycott hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens because of the place they choose to live.” It said Ben & Jerry’s decision “brought a bad spirit to such a sweet industry” and called on Israelis to buy locally produced ice cream this summer.

Ben & Jerry’s move on Monday may not be the final chapter in the saga. Airbnb announced in 2018 that it would stop advertising properties in Israeli settlements.

Several months later, after coming under harsh criticism from Israel and a federal lawsuit by Israeli Americans who owned property in the settlements, the company reversed its decision.
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STAMFORD, Conn. — Michael Phelps will be part of NBC’s Olympics coverage as a correspondent and swimming commentator, the network announced Monday. 

Phelps — who has won the most medals (28) and gold medals (23) in Olympic history — will call selected swimming events with Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines and contribute features as a correspondent during primetime coverage. Phelps, who swam in five Games from 2000-16, did some work for NBC during its coverage of last month’s U.S. swimming trials. 

“I know he’s going to offer some incredible insight on especially those races that he has won so many gold medals in,” Gaines said during a teleconference. 

A three-part retrospective on Phelps’ career is streaming on NBC’s Peacock platform. 
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More than half of the Kenyan capital’s nearly five million people live in slums, where many young people are lured by drugs and crime. In one neighborhood, a group is using the game of chess to help transform the lives of young people.  

We are in Mukuru Kwa Njenga an informal settlement that is about thirteen kilometers from Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Among the youth here practicing chess, who number about twenty, is Sarah Momanyi.  At 15, she’s a teen sensation in the sport, but her start wasn’t easy.  

“When I first started playing chess, it was hard because I was like the only girl, and my grandmother, she never supported me, because of playing with boys. It was really hard,” she said. 

It’s been five years since a sports outreach ministry introduced chess to this informal settlement to help keep young people away from drugs and crime.  

Every Saturday, the students here practice the game for five hours. The sport has provided a safe avenue for Momanyi and other young residents to hone and perfect their skills.  

The chess initiative has drawn about 800 students from various schools within Mukuru Kwa Njenga, which has a population of about half a million people.  

Josephat Owila is a national chess instructor and head coach with the Sports Outreach Ministry.  
 
“Socially they are good because they can be able to coexist with others in the society also in their schools, their respective schools. They are performing well, which means that they are critical thinkers and are creative also,” he said.     

John Mukabi, the head of Chess Kenya, the national body that manages the sport, told VOA the sport faces challenges in the country.  

“For these informal settlement areas, like here in Mukuru Kwa Njenga, they don’t have internet connection, they need laptops and things like that and also chessboards,” he said.  

Still, the young residents play the game despite obstacles. As for Momanyi, she continues to practice every day and hopes to one day become a grand master.  

 
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As the annual Hajj reached its peak, some 60,000 masked and socially distant Muslims gathered Monday at Saudi Arabia’s Mount Arafat to pray and call for a quick end to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the second year, the pilgrimage was limited to Saudi citizens and residents age 18-65 who have been fully vaccinated or have recovered from the virus. Normally, the Hajj draws more than 2 million people.

Mount Arafat is believed to be where the Prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon.

“It is an indescribable feeling that I got selected among millions of people to attend the Hajj,” Um Ahmed, a Palestinian pilgrim who lives in Riyadh, said in an interview with Reuters. “I pray for God to put an end to these hard times the whole world has gone through under the coronavirus.”

Pilgrims typically climb the 70-meter hill after noon prayers. There, they seek to atone for their sins and recite from the Koran.

After sunset, they move on to Muzdalifah to spend the night under the stars. The next day, they gather stones to throw at columns symbolizing the devil.

Arafat and Muzdalifah are a few kilometers east of Mecca.

“The first prayer is to ask God to lift this pandemic, this curse and this grief for all humanity and for Muslims so in the next years, they are able to attend Hajj and for millions to refill these holy sites,” Maher Baroody, a Syrian pilgrim, told Reuters.

Some information in this report comes from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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The corruption trial of former South African President Jacob Zuma resumes with a hearing Monday, following several days of deadly riots linked to his imprisonment in a separate case.  

Zuma is expected to appear virtually when the proceedings begin at Pietermaritzburg High Court in the former president’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal.  He is charged with multiple counts of corruption, fraud and racketeering in connection with a massive 1999 arms deal involving French defense giant Thales when he served as deputy president.  The company has also been charged with corruption and money laundering. 

The 79-year-old Zuma surrendered to authorities in his home province nearly two weeks ago to begin serving a 15-month prison sentence handed down by the Constitutional Court in late June.  The sentence was for failing to appear before an inquiry into corruption during his nine-year presidency which ended in 2018.   

His surrender triggered angry protests in KwaZulu-Natal which soon evolved into rioting, looting and arson that spread into Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city and economic hub.  More than 200 people were killed in the violence before security forces were deployed to restore order.  Over one thousand people have been arrested for theft and vandalism.   

Zuma’s lawyers will argue that chief prosecutor Billy Downer should recuse himself from the case during Monday’s hearing, arguing that Downer is biased against their client. 
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Ethiopia has nearly completed the filling of a huge dam on the Blue Nile River for a second year, state media reported on Monday, a move that has already angered Egypt.

Addis Ababa says the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a $4 billion hydropower project, is crucial to its economic development and to provide power.

But is has caused concern over water shortages and safety in Egypt and Sudan, which also depend on the Nile’s waters.

“The second filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be completed in few minutes,” the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) reported on Monday.

Egypt said last month it had received official notice from Ethiopia that it had begun filling the reservoir for a second time and said it rejected the move.

Egypt views it as a grave threat to its Nile water supplies, on which it is almost entirely dependent. Sudan has also expressed concern about the dam’s safety and the impact on its own dams and water stations.

Long-running diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute between the three countries have yielded little success.

The United States has also said Ethiopia’s filling of the dam had the potential to raise tensions and has urged all parties to refrain from any unilateral actions.
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Several prominent Egyptian activists and journalists were released from custody on Sunday following months of detention on charges including joining or aiding a terrorist group and spreading false news, lawyers representing them said.

Egyptian authorities have in recent months released detainees ahead of major Muslim holidays. Sunday’s releases come two days ahead of Eid al-Adha, one of the two most important festivals of the Islamic calendar.

Esraa Abdelfattah, an activist and journalist who was among the organizers of Egypt’s January 2011 revolution that ended the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, was released from custody in Cairo early Sunday, more than 21 months after her arrest, her lawyer Ahmed Ragheb told Reuters.

“I spoke to her, she is doing very well. Her spirits are high, and she is surely very happy with this decision, in order to resume her life,” Ragheb said adding that the case remains open and investigations are ongoing despite her release.

Activist and lawyer Mahienour el-Masry, journalist Moataz Wednan, leftist columnist Gamal al-Gamal, leftist politician Abdel Nasser Ismail and journalist Mostafa al-Asar were also freed, a lawyer representing them and a judicial source said. The charges against them are still pending, the lawyer added.

Egyptian authorities did not comment on the release of the activists and journalists. Egypt’s state information service confirmed their release but said no government statements on the matter were immediately available.

Abdelfattah was a co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, which has been banned by the Egyptian government for years, and was arrested shortly after small, scattered demonstrations in Egypt in September 2019.

Wednan was arrested in 2018 after interviewing former anti-graft chief Hisham Genena who was working to elect a former military chief-of-staff in an apparent challenge to President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in elections that year. 
 
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Tens of thousands of vaccinated Muslim pilgrims circled Islam’s holiest site in Mecca on Sunday but remained socially distanced and wore masks as the coronavirus takes its toll on the hajj for a second year running.

The hajj pilgrimage, which once drew about 2.5 million Muslims from all walks of life around the globe, is now almost unrecognizable. It is being scaled back for the second year in a row because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The pared-down hajj prevents Muslims from outside Saudi Arabia from fulfilling an Islamic obligation and causes financial losses to Saudi Arabia, which in pre-pandemic years took in billions of dollars as the custodian of the holy sites.

The Islamic pilgrimage lasts about five days, but traditionally Muslims begin arriving in Mecca weeks ahead of time. The hajj concludes with the Eid al-Adha celebration, marked by the distribution of meat to the poor around the world.  

This year, 60,000 vaccinated citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia have been allowed to perform the hajj because of continued concerns around the spread of the coronavirus. Last year’s largely symbolic hajj saw fewer than 1,000 people from within the kingdom taking part.

It’s unclear when Saudi Arabia will play host again to millions of Muslims. The kingdom has no clear standard for a vaccine passport, vaccination rates are uneven in different countries and new variants of the virus are threatening the progress made in some nations.

The kingdom’s Al Saud rulers have staked their legitimacy in large part on their custodianship of hajj sites, giving them a unique and powerful platform among Muslims around the world. The kingdom has gone to great lengths to ensure the annual hajj continues uninterrupted, despite changes caused by the pandemic.  

Robots have been deployed to spray disinfectant around the cube-shaped Kaaba’s busiest walkways. The Kaaba is where the hajj pilgrimage begins and ends for most.  

Saudi Arabia is also testing a smart bracelet this year in collaboration with the government’s artificial intelligence authority. The touchscreen bracelet resembles the Apple Watch and includes information on the hajj, a pilgrim’s oxygen levels and vaccine data and has an emergency feature to call for help.  

International media outlets already present in the kingdom were permitted to cover the hajj from Mecca this year, but others were not granted permission to fly in as had been customary before the pandemic.

Cleaners are sanitizing the vast white marble spaces of the Grand Mosque that houses the Kaaba several times a day.  

“We are sanitizing the floor and using disinfection liquids while cleaning it two or three times during (each) shift,” said Olis Gul, a cleaner who said he has been working in Mecca for 20 years.  

The hajj is one of Islam’s most important requirements to be performed once in a lifetime. It follows a route the Prophet Muhammad walked nearly 1,400 years ago and is believed to ultimately trace the footsteps of the prophets Ibrahim and Ismail, or Abraham and Ishmael as they are named in the Bible.

The hajj is seen as a chance to wipe clean past sins and bring about greater unity among Muslims. The communal feeling of more than 2 million people from around the world — Shiite, Sunni and other Muslim sects — praying together, eating together and repenting together has long been part of what makes hajj both a challenging and a transformative experience.

There are questions around whether the hajj will be able to again draw such large numbers of faithful, with male pilgrims forming a sea of white in white terrycloth garments worn to symbolize the equality of mankind before God and women forgoing makeup and perfume to focus inwardly.  

Like last year, pilgrims will be drinking water from the holy Zamzam well in plastic bottles. They were given umbrellas to shield them from the sun. They have to carry their own prayer rugs and follow a strict schedule via a mobile app that informs them when they can be in certain areas to avoid crowding.  

“I hope this is a successful hajj season,” said Egyptian pilgrim Aly Aboulnaga, a university lecturer in Saudi Arabia. “We ask God to accept everyone’s hajj and for the area to be open to greater numbers of pilgrims and for a return to an even better situation than before.”

The kingdom, with a population of more than 30 million, has reported over half a million cases of the coronavirus, including more than 8,000 deaths. It has administered nearly 20 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, according to the World Health Organization. 
 
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China will send 431 athletes to the Tokyo Games as part of a 777-member delegation, its largest at an Olympics outside China, the official Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday. 

The team includes 298 female athletes, more than twice the 133 male competitors. They range in age from 14-year-old female diver Quan Hongchan to 52-year-old male equestrian rider Li Zhenqiang, Xinhua said. 

“This is the largest ever Olympic delegation China has sent overseas,” Gao Zhidan, deputy director of China’s State General Administration of Sport, was quoted as saying. 

The delegation to the Beijing Games in 2008 was larger, with 1,099 people including 639 athletes. 

China expects to win gold medals in table tennis, badminton, gymnastics, weightlifting, shooting and diving, Xinhua said. 

The Tokyo Olympics, delayed by one year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, open in nine days on July 23.
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Michael Phelps reached for his mother’s hand through a chain-link fence near the pool. The 19-year-old swimmer had just won his first Olympic medal — gold, of course — at the 2004 Athens Games, and he wanted to share it with the woman who raised him on her own.

That kind of moment between loved ones won’t be happening at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics.

No spectators — local or foreign — will be allowed at the vast majority of venues, where athletes will hang medals around their own necks to protect against spreading the coronavirus. No handshakes or hugs on the podium, either.

“I like to feed off of the crowd,” defending all-around champion gymnast Simone Biles said, “so I’m a little bit worried about how I’ll do under those circumstances.”

Catching sight of familiar faces during competition can bolster an athlete on a big stage. It helped Matthew Centrowitz at the U.S. track trials, where fans were allowed.

“Seeing my family in the crowd and hearing them gave me a little sense of comfort, and what I needed to hear and see to calm my nerves a little bit,” said Centrowitz, the defending Olympic 1,500-meter champion.

The youngest athlete on the U.S. team in Tokyo calls it “weird” that her family won’t be in the stands.

“They’re usually at all my meets,” said Katie Grimes, a 15-year-old swimmer from Las Vegas.

Katie Hoff was the same age as Grimes when she was the youngest member of the U.S. team in Athens. Nerves got to her in her first event, and Hoff hyperventilated and vomited on the pool deck.

“I hope us older swimmers can show them the ropes a little bit and create that family environment,” three-time Olympian Katie Ledecky said. “We will make sure we stay in touch with our families and keep them connected to what we’re doing.”

The decision to prohibit fans was made for health and safety concerns. The Games will be held during a state of emergency in Tokyo, with rising coronavirus infections in a country where 16.8% of the population is fully vaccinated. Variant strains of the coronavirus are emerging around the world, too.

Those reaction shots of excited, shocked or crying family members in the stands? Forget it. Singing, chanting and cheering among flag-waving fans at the venues? TV producers will have to look elsewhere. Phelps’ son, Boomer, who was 3 months old at the time, became an adorable sight at the Olympic pool in 2016. No kids allowed this time.

The people who raised them, comforted them, financed them, and encouraged them through injury and defeat will have to be content to keep up with their athletes through calls, texts and video chats, when they’re not watching the competition on various devices.

“She said, ‘On TV, I can see it better anyway,'” Dutch swimmer Kira Toussaint said of her mother, Jolanda de Rover, a gold medalist swimmer at the 1984 Olympics.

Building support and camaraderie among athletes who usually compete individually has taken on new importance for coaches during the pandemic. They’re turning to veterans to inform and reassure younger first-timers.

“We’re going to have to rely on each other a lot more than we would have to if our loved ones were able to come to Tokyo to watch,” said Lindsay Mintenko, national team director for the American swimmers. “The bond might be stronger because we don’t have that outlet.”

American high jumper Vashti Cunningham will have her coach, Randall Cunningham, who is also her father, on hand. But she’ll be missing the rest of the family.

“It just feels good to go and eat with them, for them to be at the Bible studies with me, just everything, going to the stores,” she said. “But it doesn’t really matter to me if there are fans or not. I’m just really excited to go out there and jump. I do wish that our families could come and watch, though.”

American discus thrower Mason Finley is prepared to hunker down at the athletes village with his Nintendo Switch for endless gaming while his pregnant wife and two dogs wait at home.

“I’m just going to kind of nest in there and stay entertained,” he said.

Some athletes’ families will host watch parties back home. Biles’ mother, Nellie, won’t attend.

“I will be home watching gymnastics by myself,” she said. “I just get too nervous.”

The family of swimmer Chad le Clos is flying to the United States to watch on TV because the competition will air at 3 a.m. in their native South Africa.

“It must be terrible to watch me at 3 in the morning,” Le Clos said. “Then what do you do afterwards?”

Caeleb Dressel, the world’s dominant male swimmer, barely gets to see, let alone spend time, with his wife and family at major meets.

“It’s not something I’m dependent on,” he said. “I know they will be back home and you can feel that energy, and I can text or FaceTime whenever I need to.”

Nellie Biles and her husband run a gymnastics training center in Spring, Texas, so she knows about COVID-19 protocols and restrictions. Still, she thinks having spectators in the 12,000-seat venue in Tokyo would have worked.

“We could social distance and not see each other. That’s how huge their complex is, their venues are,” she said. “It’s hard for me to understand that they cannot make accommodations. Of course, that’s just me being selfish. This will be one gymnastics event that I will never forget because I will not be present.” 
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A rapidly growing wildfire south of Lake Tahoe jumped a highway, prompting more evacuation orders and the cancellation of an extreme bike ride through the Sierra Nevada on Saturday as critically dangerous wildfire weather loomed in the coming days.

The Tamarack Fire, which was sparked by lightning on July 4, exploded overnight to at least 26 square kilometers (10 square miles) and was threatening Markleeville, a small town close to the California-Nevada state line. It has destroyed at least three structures, authorities said, and was burning toward the Alpine County Airport after jumping a highway.

A notice posted on the 165-kilometer (103-mile) Death Ride’s website said several communities in the area had been evacuated and ordered all riders to clear the area. The fire left thousands of bikers and spectators stranded in the small town, racing to get out.

Kelli Pennington and her family were camping near the town Friday so her husband could participate in his ninth ride when they were told to leave. They had been watching smoke develop over the course of the day but were caught off guard by the fire’s quick spread.

“It happened so fast,” Pennington said. “We left our tents, hammock and some food, but we got most of our things, shoved our two kids in the car and left.”

Saturday’s ride was supposed to mark the 40th Death Ride, which attracts thousands of cyclists to the region each year to ride through three mountain passes in the so-called California Alps. It was canceled last year during the coronavirus outbreak.

Afternoon winds blowing at 32 to 48 kph (20 to 30 mph) fanned the flames as they chewed through bone-dry timber and brush. Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather through at least Monday in both California and southern Oregon, where the largest wildfire in the U.S. continued to race through bone-dry forests.

The Bootleg Fire grew significantly overnight Saturday as dry, windy conditions took hold in the area, but containment of the inferno more than tripled as firefighters began to gain more control along its western flank. The fire was still burning rapidly and dangerously along its southern and eastern flanks, however, and authorities expanded evacuations in a largely rural area of lakes and wildlife refuges.

Larger than NYC

The fire grew to 1,137 square kilometers (439 square miles) in size, or more than 259 square kilometers (100 square miles) larger than the area of New York City.

“This fire is large and moving so fast, every day it progresses four to five miles,” said Incident Commander Joe Hassel. “One of the many challenges that our firefighters face every day is working in new country that can present new hazards all the time.”

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves tied to climate change are making 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, experts say.

In southern Oregon, fire crews are dealing with dangerous and extreme fire conditions, including massive “fire clouds” that rise up to 10 kilometers (six miles) above the blaze. The Bootleg Fire has destroyed at least 67 homes and 117 outbuildings.

The conflagration has forced 2,000 people to evacuate and is threatening 5,000 buildings, including homes and smaller structures in a rural area just north of the California border.

The National Weather Service warned of possible thunderstorms stretching from the California coast to northern Montana on Sunday and said that “new lightning ignitions” were likely because of extremely dry fuels across the West.

Firefighters said in July that they were facing conditions more typical of late summer or fall.

The fires were just two of numerous fires burning across the drought-stricken U.S. West, as new fires popped up or grew rapidly in Oregon and California.

70 blazes

There were 70 active large fires and complexes of multiple fires that have burned nearly 4,297 square kilometers (1,659 square miles) in the U.S., the National Interagency Fire Center said. The U.S. Forest Service said at least 16 major fires were burning in the Pacific Northwest alone.

A fire in the mountains of northeast Oregon was also growing rapidly and was 44 square kilometers (17 square miles) in size Saturday. The Elbow Creek fire started Thursday and has prompted evacuations in several small, rural communities around the Grande Ronde River about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Walla Walla, Washington.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act to mobilize more firefighters and equipment to help fight that fire.

The Dixie Fire in California, near the 2018 site of the deadliest fire in the U.S. in recent memory, was 5% contained and covered 39 square miles Saturday. The fire was in the Feather River Canyon, northeast of the town of Paradise, California, and survivors of that horrific fire that killed 85 people watched warily as the new blaze burned.

“We’re prepared,” said Mike Garappo, a retired military veteran. “We’ve dealt with fires living in the mountains forever. We know there’s a chance it may not hit here, but we’re ready to go in case.”
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