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The closed-door trial of two leading Belarusian opposition figures began in Minsk on Wednesday over charges stemming from their calls for protests against the official results of last year’s widely discredited presidential election.Maryya Kalesnikava and Maksim Znak are accused of conspiring to seize power, calling for action to damage national security, and encouraging actions harmful to national security via media and the Internet.Kalesnikava and Znak’s relatives, friends, journalists, and supporters were prevented from entering the Minsk regional courthouse where the proceedings are taking place.Both are members of the opposition Coordination Council that was set up after the disputed election with the stated aim of facilitating a peaceful transfer of power.They have rejected the charges as politically motivated.The United States has called the charges “manufactured.”Russia’s Sputnik news agency posted a short video from the courtroom before the trial started in which Kalesnikava is seen dancing in the glass cage and displaying a “heart” sign with her hands.A day earlier, a candidate to succeed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Annalena Baerbock, demanded via Instagram that the trial be open to the public and independent observers “because, according to all that we know, a fair trial based on the rule of law is not going to be the case.”Kalesnikava was arrested on September 7 in downtown Minsk by masked men and taken to the Ukrainian border the next day, along with two associates. Ordered to cross the border, Kalesnikava refused, tearing up her passport instead. She was then taken back to Minsk and jailed.Znak, who was also arrested in September, was previously charged with public calls for actions aimed at harming the country’s security, sovereignty, territorial integrity, national security, and defense.Maxim Znak, Belarus’ opposition activist and lawyer of Maria Kolesnikova, attends a court hearing in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 4, 2021.Mass demonstrations engulfed the country after Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory and a sixth consecutive term in an August 2020 election.The opposition said its candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran for president after her husband was jailed while trying to mount a candidacy of his own, won the vote.Tsikhanouskaya left the country for Lithuania shortly after the election due to security concerns.Other opposition leaders have been forced from Belarus or jailed, and thousands of Belarusians, including dozens of journalists covering the protests, have been detained and hundreds beaten in detention and on the streets.Several protesters have been killed in the violence, and some rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used by security officials against some detainees.Lukashenka has denied any wrongdoing in the vote and issued promises of reform down the road in what the opposition has called stalling tactics. But he has refused to negotiate directly with the opposition over stepping down and holding new elections.The European Union, United States, Canada, and other countries have refused to recognize Lukashenko as the legitimate leader of Belarus and have slapped him and senior Belarusian officials with sanctions in response to the “falsification” of the vote and postelection crackdown. 
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Officials in the Czech Republic say three people are dead and at least 40 are injured after a high-speed express train traveling from Munich, Germany collided with a commuter train near the western village of Milavce early Wednesday.Police say the dead include both drivers of the trains and a passenger. Fire and rescue officials say at least four people were seriously injured and flown from the scene by helicopter to area hospitals.  They say most of the injuries were minor.From his Twitter account, Czech Transportation Minister Karel Havlicek said the Ex 351 train – the express train from Munich to Prague – had passed through a stop signal and collided with a passenger train providing regional service between the Czech towns of Plzen and Domazlice, about 140 kilometers southwest of Prague.Photographs of the scene show extensive damage to the fast train’s locomotive and the front part of the local train. Both trains remained upright on or near the tracksCzech Prime Minister Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis expressed his condolences to the families of those killed in the accident and called for an investigation.Czech police said from their Twitter account that because the accident involved a train from Germany, officers from the Czech Department of International Relations were at the scene, along with regional police.
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More than 500 firefighters struggled through the night to contain a large forest fire on the outskirts of Athens, which raced into residential areas Tuesday, forcing thousands to flee. It was the worst of 81 wildfires that broke out in Greece over the past 24 hours, amid one of the country’s most intense heatwaves in decades.Civil Protection chief Nikos Hardalias said the fire north of Athens was “very dangerous,” and had been exacerbated by strong winds and tinder-dry conditions thanks to the heat that reached 45 Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in the area.No severe injuries were reported, and authorities said several buildings had been damaged, but no detailed breakdown was available. The cause of the blaze was unclear.”We continue to fight hour by hour, with our top priority being to save human lives,” Hardalias said. “We will do so all night.””These are crucial hours,” Hardalias said. “Our country is undergoing one of the worst heatwaves of the past 40 years.”The wind dropped later Tuesday, and the regional governor for greater Athens, Giorgos Patoulis, said this could allow the fire to be tamed after water-dropping aircraft resume operations at first light Wednesday.”If the winds don’t grow, it can be brought under control by the early morning so the planes can provide the final solution,” he told state ERT TV.A firefighting plane drops water over a fire near holiday homes in Costa village in the Argolida region, in Southeastern Greece during a developing wild fire, July 20, 2015.The blaze sent a huge cloud of smoke over Athens, prompting multiple evacuations near Tatoi, 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) to the north and forcing the partial closure of Greece’s main north-south highway. Residents left their homes in cars and on motorcycles, often clutching pets, heading toward the capital amid a blanket of smoke.One group stopped to help staff from a riding school push their horses into trucks to escape the flames.Fire crews went house to house to ensure that evacuation orders were carried out, and 315 people were escorted to safety after calling for help. Authorities said nobody was listed as missing, and Greek media said six people required treatment for breathing complaints.As the heat wave scorching the eastern Mediterranean intensified, temperatures reached 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) in parts of the Greek capital. The extreme weather has fueled deadly wildfires in Turkey and blazes in Italy, Greece, Albania and across the region.Wildfires also raged in other parts of Greece, prompting evacuations of villages in Mani and Vassilitsa in the southern Peloponnese region, as well as on the islands of Evia and Kos, authorities said. A total 40 blazes were raging late Tuesday.The fires prompted Greek basketball star Giannis Antetokounmpo to cancel celebrations planned in Athens for the NBA championship he won recently with the Milwaukee Bucks.”We hope there are no victims from these fires, and of course we will postpone today’s celebration,” Antetokounmpo wrote in a tweet.Earlier, authorities closed the Acropolis and other ancient sites during afternoon hours. The site, which is normally open in the summer from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., will have reduced hours through Friday, closing between midday and 5 p.m.A Ch-47D Chinook helicopter is watched by a paddleboarder as it fills up with water while firefighting near Lambiri Beach at Patras on Aug. 1, 2021.The extreme heat, described by authorities as the worst in Greece since 1987, has strained the national power supply and fueled the wildfires.The national grid operator said the power supply to part of the capital was endangered after part of the transmission system, damaged and threatened by the fires, was shut down.Seven water-dropping planes and nine helicopters were involved in the firefighting effort near Athens, including an aircraft leased from Russia. They ceased operations after dark for safety reasons.The Greek Fire Service maintained an alert for most of the country for Tuesday and Wednesday, while public and some private services shifted operating hours to allow for afternoon closures.Hardalias appealed to the public for high vigilance.”Because the heatwave will continue in coming days, please avoid any activity that could spark a fire,” he said.
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The United Nations accused the government of Iraq of the widespread torture of detainees held in the country’s detention centers. A U.N. report covers conditions in the centers from July 1, 2019 to April 30, 2021.Torture and ill treatment are prohibited under international law. Iraq ratified the international convention against Torture in 2011 and since has enacted national laws criminalizing torture.The problem is the government has not implemented the procedural safeguards to prevent torture, and so the practice continues throughout the country. That assessment in a report released Tuesday by the U.N. human rights office and the U.N. assistance mission for Iraq is based on interviews that the authors conducted with 235 people deprived of their liberty.FILE – In this July 18, 2017 file photo, suspected Islamic State members sit inside a small room in a prison south of Mosul, Iraq. In some cells in Iraq, Iran, Syria and other countries in the Middle…U.N. human rights spokeswoman Marta Hurtado says more than half of those interviewed provided accounts of having been tortured or ill-treated while in custody. She says some detainees described beatings by officers with metal pipes, or of being shocked with exposed electrical wires. One inmate, she says, spoke of having his handcuffs hooked on a chain and hung from the ceiling.“The report states that legal procedures designed to bring interrogations and detention under judicial control within 24 hours of the initial arrest are not respected; and access to a lawyer is systematically delayed until after suspects have been interrogated by the security forces,” Hurtado said.Hurtado said torture is used to extract confessions and access to a lawyer is systematically delayed until after suspects have been interrogated by security forces. She said the location of 17 official detention sites remains opaque.“The report also raises concerns that the authorities ignore complaints and signs of torture and says that the systems established to address official complaints appear to be neither fair nor effective,” Hurtado said. “The report also says that the limited accountability for such failures on the part of the authorities suggests acquiescence and tolerance of these practices.”The report calls on Iraqi authorities to put the nation’s anti-torture legal framework fully in line with international human rights law, particularly the United Nations Convention against Torture.Commenting on the report, U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet says the prevention of torture, and not just on paper, would contribute to peace and stability in the long term. Bachelet adds such an outcome is in the interest of the state as well as the victims. 
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A court in Belarus convicted a journalist of insulting the president in messages in a deleted chat group and sentenced him to 1 1/2 years in prison, the Belarusian Association of Journalists said Monday. The verdict in the case against Siarhei Hardziyevich, 50, comes as part of a massive crackdown that Belarusian authorities have unleashed on independent media and human rights activists. Hardziyevich on Monday was found guilty of insulting the president and slandering police officers, according to the association. The court sentenced him to a prison term and a $1,600 fine. The charges against the journalist from Drahichyn, a city 300 kilometers (185 miles) southwest of Belarus’ capital of Minsk, were brought over messages in a chat group on the messaging app Viber which was deleted last year. Hardziyevich, who worked for a popular regional news outlet, The First Region, has maintained his innocence. His defense team demanded the charges be dropped due to a lack of evidence and because the crime was impossible to establish. “I have nothing to do with these crimes, I don’t consider myself guilty,” Hardziyevich said in his address to the court before the verdict. The Viasna human rights center declared Hardziyevich a political prisoner. Belarusian authorities have ramped up the pressure against non-governmental organizations and independent media in recent weeks, conducting more than 200 raids of offices and apartments of activists and journalists in July alone, according to Viasna.Authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has vowed to continue what he called a “mopping-up operation” against civil society activists whom he has denounced as “bandits and foreign agents.”Lukashenko faced months of protests triggered by his being awarded a sixth term in an August 2020 vote that the opposition and the West saw as rigged. He responded to demonstrations with a massive crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police.
A total of 29 Belarusian journalists remain in custody either awaiting trial or serving their sentences.
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Wildfires scorching some of Turkey’s most popular destinations have upended a nascent recovery in the country’s tourism sector hobbled for more than a year by the COVID-19 pandemic.Scenes of happy beachgoers flocking to coastal areas turned nightmarish as fires forced mass-evacuations of tourists and locals alike in cities such as Bodrum and Marmaris.Tuesday marked the seventh consecutive day Turkish firefighters battled the blazes, fueled by abnormally high summer temperatures and strong winds. The fires have been blamed for at least eight deaths and forced numerous residents, many of them farmers, to flee. 10,000 Flee Turkey Wildfires; Greece Power Grid Threatened At least 8 people have been killed in Turkey since Wednesday; EU sends firefighters Beyond physical destruction, the economic impact is already costly.“We are devastated,” said Huseyin Aydin of Bordum Tour, a travel agency that books boating excursions in the Mediterranean Sea. “All the routes for the boat tours have been canceled as of now, and they will also be canceled into next year because all the nature sightseeing parts of our tours are completely burned.”Aydin told VOA his business will have to shift to other tourist ventures or risk shutting completely.
 
Elsewhere in the country, things look less grim.Tourists visit the 150A.D Roman temple dedicated to Apollo the Greek and Roman god of music, harmony and light, in Antalya, southern Turkey, June 20, 2021In Istanbul, crowds of tourists can be seen strolling the streets after the Turkish government lifted almost all pandemic-related restrictions to boost economic activity and stimulate the country’s vital tourism sector.
 
“It’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience,” said Tania Nel, a resident of Qatar who has spent almost a month traveling Turkey.“It was a country that I could enter easily, with just a PCR [COVID test], and obtain a visa for online. I’ve always wanted to see Turkey and, with other countries being closed, it seemed like a very obvious choice,” she told VOA. “Things being comparatively cheap here also meant I could stay longer and see quite a lot of regions in the country.”Turkey sought to remain an international tourist destination throughout the pandemic, requiring only a negative COVID-19 test to enter the country and exempting foreigners from some restrictions, such as curfews and travel limitations within the country. Nel said ease of access drew her to Turkey.“I had originally planned to travel to South Africa in July to see my family, but they experienced a spike in cases and stricter restrictions, hence the decision to come to Turkey,” Nel said, who is originally from Cape Town, South Africa.Lagging recoveryTurkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism says incoming foreigners in June of this year barely topped 2 million, less than half the total recorded in June 2019 which saw over 5 million foreign visitors.That hits especially hard in Turkey, where tourism is a key contributor to the national economy. The Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation describes Turkey’s tourism economy as “one of Turkey’s most dynamic and fastest growing sectors,” accounting for more than two million jobs and more than 7% of total employment.Arriving tourists report receiving especially warm greetings by cash-strapped hospitality workers.“They welcomed all tourists like royalty,” Nel said.
 
Low tourism levels have capped the economic stimulation usually expected during the summer. Many businesses report continued and intense financial hardship.“We are in a really hard time economically at the moment,” said Turgay Karahan, who owns two gift shops in an area of Istanbul frequented by tourists.Foreign tourists visit Buyukada, the largest of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara, off Istanbul, Turkey, July 14, 2021. 
A lack of customers forced Karahan to let employees go and work longer hours for a fraction of pre-pandemic earnings.
 
“We’re working more but we’re also earning less. Most of the money we make is spent on taxes and rent. Therefore, as an employer I am in a very hard spot,” Karahan told VOA.Numerous cafes, restaurants, and bars in Istanbul and elsewhere have permanently closed since the pandemic first struck.  
 
Karahan spoke wistfully of the throngs of tourists that used to pack into his gift shops.“In the past, Turks felt like foreigners on this street because so many international tourists were here. Before the pandemic, you’d see tourists from England, Germany, France, Italy all crowding the streets in the summer. Nowadays, it’s not like this at all,” he said.  
 Lost earningsThe financial pain is also felt by Kuzey Yucehan, who owns a restaurant around the corner from Galata Tower, a top Istanbul tourist attraction.Staff at Kuzey Yucehan’s restaurant Art Smyrna are seen setting up freshly repainted tables to attract customers during an otherwise sluggish summer tourism season in Istanbul (VOA/ Salim Fayeq) 
“For months we were only operating for takeaway [orders], but the business that brought was not sustainable. Because of that, we have many problems with making ends meet and being profitable,” Yucehan told VOA, adding that many businesses have had to fend for themselves.
 
“Although in the media the government presented themselves as helpful and generous toward businesses in Turkey, we did not receive any financial relief as an independent business,” Yucehan said. “We hope that COVID passes and the world will get back to normal soon.”This report includes some information from Reuters.
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France hopes to secure more than $350 million in humanitarian aid for Lebanon’s crisis-battered population at a donors’ conference it co-hosts with the United Nations Wednesday — marking the year anniversary of Beirut’s deadly port blast. International pressure is growing for Lebanon’s fractious parties to unify and push through reforms.  Roughly 40 representatives of international institutions and heads of state were expected at this video conference, including U.S. President Joe Biden and Jordan’s King Abdullah.    FILE – French President Emmanuel Macron attends a donor teleconference with other world leaders concerning the situation in Lebanon following the Beirut blast, in Fort de Bregancon in Bormes-les-Mimosas, France, Aug. 9, 2020.It marks the third international meeting Paris has hosted this past year to support ordinary Lebanese, struggling under deepening poverty and spiraling inflation and unemployment. The World Bank calls Lebanon’s political and financial crisis since 2019 the world’s worst since the mid-19th century.    Co-hosted by the U.N. Wednesday’s virtual talks come exactly a year after the massive explosion of fertilizer stocked at Beirut’s port, which killed more than 200 people, injured thousands and devastated big chunks of the capital.    International frustration is growing over Lebanon’s squabbling political parties. Lebanon’s new prime-minister-designate, billionaire businessman Najib Mikati, said he was unable to form a new government before the blast anniversary. His predecessor, Saad Hariri, gave up efforts to do so.    FILE – Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati, speaks to journalists after his meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun, at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, July 26, 2021.Hasni Abidi, international relations professor at the University of Geneva, said France and other donor nations cannot invest in Lebanon in a sustainable way so long as there is no government willing to engage in real reforms demanded by the international community.   Apparently to ramp up pressure on Lebanon’s parties, the European Union announced it had adopted a legal framework for sanctioning individuals and entities seen as undermining the country’s rule of law and democracy.      Before the EU framework was announced, a European Union spokeswoman said it was too soon to talk about specifics in terms of sanctions.  Former colonial power France has played a leading role in mobilizing international backing for struggling Lebanese and in prodding the country’s politicians.FILE – French President Emmanuel Macron, center, visits the devastated site of the explosion at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, Aug.6, 2020.French President Emmanuel Macron was the first foreign leader to visit Beirut after the 2020 blast. Days later, he held a first international funding conference — and another, this past June, to support Lebanon’s financially strapped army.    Some critics suggest France has little to show for its efforts thus far and should have imposed tough sanctions against Lebanon’s political elite early on. Others say it is up to Lebanon’s politicians to act. Otherwise, they say, there is little the international community can do.      Sources: AFP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, AP, ESSEC-French business school webinar.   
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The British government’s scientific advisers have raised the prospect of fighting a forever war against the coronavirus saying the eradication of the virus “will be unlikely.” And they warn “there will always be variants.”They hold out the hope that the virus may evolve in such a way that it causes “much less severe disease,” but they caution that is unlikely to happen for some time. Preventive measures and restrictions will be needed in the meantime as there’s a “realistic possibility” that vaccine-resistant variants will emerge.And, chillingly, in a report released last week by Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, otherwise known as SAGE, the scientists do not discount the chance of a new variant arising with the deadliness of MERS, another coronavirus which has a case fatality rate of 35%.FILE – Critical care staff look after a COVID-19 patient on the Christine Brown ward at King’s College Hospital in London, Jan. 27, 2021.Report quietly releasedThe report on the possible long-term evolution of the virus was released late Friday, and opposition politicians in Britain have complained it was sneaked out without little fanfare by the government to try to avoid publicity so as not to undermine public confidence in the easing of British pandemic restrictions and the opening of the country’s borders to travelers from the United States and European Union.”This report should have sent shock waves through the UK Government,” Philippa Whitford, a Scottish Nationalist lawmaker and the vice-chair of an all-party parliamentary group on the pandemic, told local reporters.”It was instead quietly snuck out among a glut of reports during parliamentary recess. Recommendations and comments made by SAGE bring home the simple reality — that we have not yet ‘defeated’ this virus,” Whitford, a qualified surgeon, added.In the paper, the scientists outline the chances that a new variant will evade current vaccines, saying that is “almost certain” to happen. SAGE’s biggest fear is of “antigenic drift,” small changes in the genes of a virus that can lead to changes in its surface proteins. Most of the vaccines in current use target the surface proteins of the coronavirus. The scientists also worry about the possibility of variants recombining to become more infectious.Clinical epidemiologist Deepti Gurdasani  says the SAGE report “makes clear that the virus becoming less virulent is unlikely in the short term.”  She tweeted: “So for all those who suggest that we should live with it, and it’ll become like seasonal coronaviruses and benign, doesn’t look like that’s likely to happen anytime soon.”The report has caught the attention of governments in Europe, and officials in Berlin say it played into the decision announced Monday by the German government to offer vaccine booster jabs to people considered potentially vulnerable to developing COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus can trigger.After Another COVID Spike, Israel Launches Third Vaccine DoseHealth officials say decision to offer third dose follows evidence that effectiveness of two doses wanes over timeThird shotsStarting next month, Germany will start administering a booster of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine to people aged over 60, care-home residents and people with compromised immune systems. Also, a booster shot will be offered to Germans who received AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccines, whose efficacy against the Delta variant is thought to be weak. “We will be prepared for the fall,” said Klaus Holetschek, Bavarian health minister. “I am convinced that a booster shot is important and right based on prevention alone,” he added, speaking on behalf of the country’s 18 state health ministers.Israel, France and Hungary are already offering booster shots to some people, and Britain will offer booster jabs next month, too. British health officials say they want to maximize protection for the elderly and vulnerable ahead of the country’s winter season, when other seasonal respiratory viruses surge. Italy and Spain will also likely make additional jabs available later in the year, officials in Rome and Madrid have said. Britain to Offer COVID-19 Booster Shots This Fall The nation is also offering incentives to persuade younger adults to get vaccinatedIn the United States, officials are considering a request by vaccine-maker Pfizer for booster shots to be authorized, but so far has withheld permission. But the Biden administration has ordered 200 million more Pfizer vaccines, a move seen by observers as preparation for a regimen of booster shots.Speaking to broadcaster CNCB, Scott Gottlieb, a former head of the US Federal Drug Administration, said he believes vaccine booster shots will start to be given in the US by next month to older people and those with compromised immune systems. “I just think we’re on a slower path here,” he said.But some are criticizing the move by rich nations to start offering booster shots, saying the priority should be getting vaccines to poorer countries, who are lagging with inoculations because of scarce supplies. They say not only is this a moral issue but a practical one: vaccine-resistant variants are more likely to emerge as a result of widespread infections in poorer and developing nations, they say.”Vaccine resources need to be shared with the world to help end this COVID-19 pandemic,” the NGO Doctors Without Borders, tweeted Monday.
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A Belarusian activist was found dead in a park near his home in Kyiv early on Tuesday, a day after he was reported missing, Ukrainian police said. Vitaly Shishov, who led a Kyiv-based organization that helps Belarusians fleeing persecution, had been reported missing by his partner on Monday after not returning home from a run. Police said they had launched a criminal case for suspected murder but would investigate all possibilities including murder disguised as suicide. “Belarusian citizen Vitaly Shishov, who disappeared yesterday in Kyiv, was found hanged today in one of Kyiv’s parks, not far from his place of residence,” the police statement said. Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania have become havens for Belarusians during a crackdown by President Alexander Lukashenko following a disputed election last year. Shishov led the Belarusian House in Ukraine (BDU) group, which helps Belarusians find accommodation, jobs and legal advice, according to its website. The organization said on Monday it was not able to contact Shishov. It said Shishov had left his residence at 9 a.m. and was supposed to have returned an hour later. The Belarusian authorities have characterized anti-government protesters as criminals or violent revolutionaries backed by the West and described the actions of law enforcement agencies as adequate and necessary. 
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Huan Huan, a giant panda on loan to France, gave birth to twin cubs very early Monday, according to the Beauval zoo.  The twins, born around 1 a.m., are Huan Huan and her partner Yuan Zi’s second and third cubs, after the first panda ever born in France, Yuan Meng, in 2017. “The two babies are pink. They are perfectly healthy. They look big enough. They are magnificent,” said Rodolphe Delord, president of ZooParc de Beauval in Saint-Aignan, central France. WATCH: Using Pandas for DiplomacySorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 16 MB480p | 23 MB540p | 33 MB720p | 74 MB1080p | 134 MBOriginal | 725 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioPanda reproduction, in captivity or in the wild, is notoriously difficult. Experts say few pandas get in the mood or even know what to do when they do.  Further complicating matters, the window for conception is small since female pandas are in heat only once a year for about 24-48 hours. Huan Huan and her partner Yuan Zi — the star attractions at Beauval — thrilled zoo officials in March when they managed to make “contact,” as they put it, eight times in a weekend. Veterinarians also carried out an artificial insemination, just to be sure. Huan Huan’s first cub, Yuan Meng, now weighs more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and is to be sent this year to China, where there are an estimated 1,800 giant pandas living in the wild and another 500 in captivity. Huan Huan’s newborns will not be named for 100 days, with Peng Liyuan — the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping — set to choose what they will be called, the zoo said.  
 
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Every day sees more Afghan refugees reach Turkey after a grueling trek across Iran. As far as they’re concerned their journey is far from over — they want to get to the countries of the European Union — for them the Promised Land.
But it is a land that is unwilling to accept them and is making plans to deter them from arriving.
Around 2,000 Afghans a day are entering Turkey, and migration experts expect the numbers to surge as the Taliban seizes control of more of Afghanistan.
The Taliban is currently besieging three major cities in south and west Afghanistan to add to the rapid rural gains it has made in recent weeks in the wake of the decision by the Biden administration to withdraw US troops from the country. Almost all NATO troops will be gone by September. Few observers believe the Afghan government will be able to hold out and last week a Pentagon watchdog warned that the country’s government will likely face an “existential crisis.”
The Afghans making their way through Iran to Turkey are voting with their feet, fearful of what a Taliban future of strict Islamic rule will hold for them. Most arriving at the Turkish borders are single men, and many are uneducated, but hope to secure settlement in Europe and for their families to join them later, say migration groups.An Afghan migrant eats outside a bus terminal, as he and others struggle to find buses to take them to western Turkish cities, after crossing the Turkey-Iran border in April 11, 2018.Turkey the GatekeeperEuropean leaders are preparing for a new migration crisis and are negotiating another multi-year migration deal with Turkey to get Ankara to block Afghan and other asylum-seekers from heading their way. It would be a renewal of a five-year deal struck in 2016 that saw the EU pay Ankara billions of dollars to curb irregular migration towards Europe, improve the living conditions of refugees in Turkey, and foster legal migration through official resettlement schemes.
“The 2016 agreement had a significant impact on limiting the number of arrivals” in the EU, according to Daniele Albanese of Caritas Italiana, a non-profit and the charitable arm of the Italian Bishops Conference. “While nearly 861.630 people reached Greece in 2015, that number dropped to 36, 310 the following year,” she noted in a commentary for the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, a think tank.
But she warns that a “political approach that does not take into consideration the needs of the refugee population deserving a better life is far from a long-term, durable solution.”Afghans wait inside the passport office in Kabul, Afghanistan, June 30, 2021.No repeat of 2015For now, though, European governments are focused on the short-terms and are in no mood to see a return to the open-doors migration policy of 2015, one that in its wake roiled the continent’s politics and fueled the rise of populist nationalist parties. “Post-U.S. Afghanistan poses a severe migration problem, and we expect a rising number of people attempting to flee the Taliban,” a senior EU diplomat told VOA.
Around a million asylum-seekers from the Mideast, most of them Syrians, Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa arrived and settled in Europe in 2015-2016.
Asked last month at a press conference whether Germany should welcome Afghan refugees, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the architect of the 2015 open-doors policy, replied: “We cannot solve all of these problems by taking everyone in.” She called instead for political negotiations so “people can live as peacefully as possible in the country.”
Greek authorities are reporting that Afghans now make up the largest share of asylum-seekers who manage to navigate the Aegean from Turkey. Austria last week announced it is to deploy additional soldiers to its borders with Slovenia and Hungary so as to increase the number of border guards by 40 percent. The country’s interior minister Karl Nehammer said at a news conference that EU migration policies have proven ineffective against irregular migrants, and he said Austrian immigration authorities have already apprehended 15,768 migrants attempting to cross illegally the Austrian border this year, compared to 21,700 for the whole of 2020.
“In Austria we have one of the biggest Afghan communities in the whole of Europe,” Nehammer said. “It cannot be the case that Austria and Germany have to solve the Afghanistan problem for the EU,” Nehammer added.
Despite the advance of the Taliban, European countries have been continuing with deportations of Afghan asylum-seekers — only Finland, Sweden and Norway have announced temporary suspensions of forced returns to Afghanistan.
Turkey is already hosting anywhere from an estimated 200,000 to 600,000 Afghans and – unlike the more than three million Syrian refugees living in Turkey – they have few legal rights of protection and no access to public services. Turkish opposition parties have been seizing on migration as an issue to try to outmaneuver President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and last month jumped on remarks by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz that Turkey is “a more suitable place” for Afghans than his or other western European countries.
On Sunday, Devlet Bahçeli, chairman of the Nationalist Movement Party, MHP, told the Türkgün newspaper “there should be a limit on asylum seekers from going and settling wherever they want without the control [of authorities].”“It’s understood that an influx of refugees will reach our borders in the risky and dangerous period ahead. We must be on the alert,” he added.  
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A record number of migrants has crossed the English Channel from France to the United Kingdom this year in small boats. The British government is seeking to deter the migrants by making irregular migration a criminal offense.The migrants come from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Most are fleeing conflict or poverty.At its narrowest point, the English Channel is 30 kilometers wide. The migrants usually travel in overloaded inflatable dinghies across the busiest shipping lane in the world. British and French intelligence services say the crossings are coordinated by networks of people smugglers, who charge about $3,000 per person.French police patrol the coastline to intercept migrants, but say the coastline is too vast to prevent all departures. Once inside British waters, the migrants must be taken ashore under international law.A man thought to be a migrant who made the crossing from France is escorted along a walkway past dinghies after disembarking from a British border force vessel in Dover, south east England, July 22, 2021.A record 430 people made the crossing in a single day last month. The total for 2021 so far stands at around 8,500, according to data from PA Media, formerly the Press Association, that was collated from government statistics. That number is higher than all of 2020, when 8,461 people made the crossing.Speaking in parliament last month, Home Secretary Priti Patel said the government would take action to stop the migration.“We’re seeing right now is effectively people trafficking, smugglers, criminal gangs exploiting our asylum system to bring in economic migrants and people that, quite frankly, are circumventing our legal migration routes, coming to our country illegally,” she told lawmakers last month.“This is an evolving situation. The numbers of migrants attempting these crossings from France have increased considerably,” she said.The spike in arrivals has embroiled Britain’s revered sea rescue charity, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), into the controversy. Critics accuse the charity of providing a “taxi service” to Britain. The RNLI has defended its actions.“When our lifeboats launch, we operate under international maritime law, which states we are permitted, and indeed obligated, to enter all waters regardless of territories for search and rescue purposes. And when it comes to rescuing those people attempting to cross the channel, we do not question why they got into trouble, who they are or where they come from. All we need to know is that they need our help,” RNLI chief executive Mark Dowie said in a statement last month.A group of people thought to be migrants crossing from France, come ashore aboard the local lifeboat at Dungeness, southern England, July 20, 2021.The government argues that the migrants should seek asylum in the first safe country in which they arrive, rather than traveling to Britain. Its proposed legislation would sentence migrants who enter Britain without permission up to four years in prison.Bridget Chapman of Kent Refugee Action Network, a charity that supports migrants arriving across the English Channel, said retribution won’t deter the migrants.“It flies in the face of international law, you know. The Geneva Convention states that people have a right to seek asylum, and it can be in a country of their choosing. It feels very deliberately punitive. It feels like saber rattling. It feels like a lot of tough talk to make people feel that the U.K. is not a welcoming place. The fact is that that’s not going to stop people from coming,” she told VOA.A committee of British lawmakers last week condemned the living conditions for newly arrived migrants in the port of Dover. During a visit to a migrant reception center, women with babies and very young children were seen sleeping on thin mattresses on the floor.Meanwhile, Britain has given France $75 million to beef up policing of the northern French coastline to try to intercept migrants, on top of the $39 million it gave last year.France has called for the European Union to conduct reconnaissance flights over the English Channel.
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