A report released Thursday by the nonprofit conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said the world’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 68% in just four decades, with human consumption behind the decline.FILE – In this Nov. 23, 2019 photo, a burned area of the Amazon rainforest is seen in Prainha, Para state, Brazil.However, wildlife populations are not the only ones who are in danger as a result of species decline and deforestation. Scientists say that the rapid destruction of the environment plays a dramatic role in the spread of zoonotic diseases, which are passed from animals to humans, such as COVID-19.Forests act as buffers to keep zoonotic diseases away from humans, environmentalists say, and the more that are destroyed, the greater the risk of exposure for people.’Russian roulette'”The longer the wildlife stay in supply chains with other humans and people, the greater the risk of spillover of a wildlife disease to humans,” said Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at WWF. “We are playing Russian roulette with the threat of pandemics, and in the end, we will lose … big. And COVID-19 is only the beginning.”The authors of the report say that regions of Latin American and the Caribbean faced the biggest impacts, with an average decline of 94% in wildlife populations in the area. Price believes large-scale commercial production of palm oil, soy and beef in the area has contributed substantially to the drop.FILE – A truck transporting cut trees sits parked for inspection at a government checkpoint for environmental control, customs and migration in Chepo, Panama, Oct. 7, 2019.Environmentalists say conserving existing forests and restoring damaged ones reduces the risk of flooding, helps limit global warming by storing more carbon, and protects biodiversity. As of 2019, data from Global Forest Watch, a real-time monitor of forests worldwide, indicates that tropical rainforests are disappearing at a rate of 12 million hectares a year as a result of deforestation.Experts say that while climate change is not yet the biggest cause of biodiversity loss, in the coming years, climate change will become a key driver of species decline.Stronger commitmentsIn their report, WWF members called for stronger commitments by governments and corporations around the world to make global supply chains more sustainable. Experts say that consumers, too, must understand the impacts of their purchasing habits on nature.Researchers at the University of Oxford said Thursday that climate change solutions must go beyond tree planting and greenhouse gas removal. They recommended nature-based interventions, such as restoring forests and mangroves. These have been shown to alleviate approximately 60% of climate-related pressures, such as flooding and a loss of food production, in areas around the world.
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“I didn’t lie,” U.S. President Donald Trump bluntly responded at a White House news conference Thursday after a reporter asked him, “Why did you lie to the American people?”  The question from ABC News White House correspondent Jon Karl came in the wake of audio released by journalist and author Bob Woodward, to whom Trump acknowledged early this year he wanted to play down the threat from the coronavirus.  “I don’t want to jump up and down screaming, ‘Death. Death,’ ” Trump replied to justify intentionally misleading the country about the severity of COVID-19.  He called Karl’s question disrespectful and took queries from only two other reporters before abruptly departing the briefing room.  FILE – Bob Woodward attends the 2019 PEN America Literary Gala at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, May 21, 2019.The president also sought to calm the uproar about revelations from the 18 interviews he gave to Woodward, which appeared in Woodward’s new book, Rage. Trump said if Woodward thought his comments on the coronavirus were so bad, “he should have immediately gone out publicly,” instead of waiting many months to release the tapes.  “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump is heard saying on the recording about the coronavirus, taped on March 19.  The next day, in response to a White House reporter’s question during a live news conference, Trump denied that his minimizing of the risk was giving Americans a false sense of security.  Fewer lives would have been lost, according to Democratic Party politicians and many public health officials, if the president had emphasized early on the seriousness of the coronavirus. Trump repeatedly claimed early in the year that the coronavirus was no worse than influenza, that it would soon go away and that the federal government had the situation under control.   Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., participates in a roundtable discussion at Florida Memorial University during a campaign stop in Miami Gardens, Fla., Sept. 10, 2020.Trump is engaged “in reckless disregard of the lives and health and well-being” of the American people, Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, said Thursday at an event in Florida. “I find it so outrageous.” COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus for which vaccines are currently under development, had killed 191,727 people in the United States as of Thursday evening EDT, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center — the largest number reported by any country. Nearly 6.4 million infections of the 28 million worldwide are in the United States.  FILE – National security adviser Robert O’Brien speaks at the State Department in Washington, Aug. 11, 2020.According to Woodward’s book, as the virus started to sweep from China throughout the world, national security adviser Robert O’Brien told Trump in a January 28 White House meeting, “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency. This is going to be the roughest thing you face.” Woodward, a Washington Post associate editor, said deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger agreed with O’Brien’s assessment.  Yet Trump publicly minimized the threat. Ten days after the White House meeting, he called Woodward and said he thought the situation was far more frightful.  “You just breathe the air, and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a February 7 call. “And so, that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”  “This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.  Reaction from BidenThe revelations came less than eight weeks before the November 3 presidential election between Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden.  Biden, on a campaign trip to the Midwestern political battleground state of Michigan on Wednesday, assailed Trump’s performance in dealing with the coronavirus.  Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks with reporters before boarding a plane at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Detroit, Sept. 9, 2020.”He knowingly and willingly lied to the American public about the threat posed to the country for months. … He failed to do his job on purpose,” Biden said. “It’s beyond despicable.”    Trump made a campaign speech in Michigan on Thursday evening, telling a large crowd that was not socially distanced, “With or without the vaccine, we’re rounding the turn” in the fight against the coronavirus.  Political ammunition Political management professor Todd Belt at George Washington University said revelations from the book about Trump’s response to the coronavirus could provide political ammunition for both Republicans and Democrats.   “Of course, the Republicans will say, ‘Look, he was providing leadership. He didn’t want people to panic,’ ” Belt told VOA. “Whereas the Democrats will say, ‘Look, this was a poor decision, and it made the problem worse.’ So, I think people will probably interpret this part through the same partisan lenses.”  Woodward is best known in American journalism for joining Post reporter Carl Bernstein in uncovering the Watergate political corruption scandal in the 1970s that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.  The new Woodward book tracks the Trump administration’s missteps in dealing with the pandemic and touches on numerous other controversies during Trump’s nearly four years as president.  FILE – Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 31, 2020.”Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states” to deal with the pandemic, Woodward wrote. “There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.”  Woodward said infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, often the administration’s public face answering questions about the COVID-19 disease, at one point told others that Trump “is on a separate channel” and unfocused in meetings, with “rudderless” leadership. Ken Bredemeier and Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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Dual British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, jailed for five years in Iran on spying charges, will face a new trial in the coming days. Her sentence was to expire next April but she has been hit with new charges that have not been made public. The charity worker and her young daughter were detained at Tehran’s airport in 2016 after visiting her family. She strongly denies all the charges against her. As Henry Ridgwell reports, her family believes she is being used as a bargaining chip in a dispute over payment for tanks purchased before the Iranian Revolution but never delivered.
 
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A video that appears to show Mozambican security forces torturing and possibly killing militants is prompting calls for investigations, as well as denials from government officials.Amnesty International obtained five videos and three photos it says were taken in the restive Cabo Delgado region. The images have been analyzed by the group’s Crisis Evidence Lab, which believes they are authentic and were taken in the first six months of 2020.Brian Castner, Amnesty International’s senior crisis adviser for arms and military operations, told VOA that one video shows soldiers cheering while bound detainees are kicked and beaten with rifle butts.“In one case, one of the soldiers cuts the ear off one of the detainees, presents it to him while people cheer,” Castner said. “In another case, they threaten to light the body on fire or light the person on fire here while they’re still alive.”Security forces in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique filmed themselves torturing, beheading, and mutilating the bodies of opposition fighters. Some of the worst videos I’ve ever seen. My colleagues and I verified them as legit: https://t.co/5jHrhOMOdF— Brian Castner (@Brian_Castner) September 9, 2020On Thursday, Omar Saranga, the spokesperson for Mozambique’s defense ministry, said that the images should be viewed with skepticism. The military attire in these videos and images “should not be taken for certain and are [not] accurate,” he told reporters, speaking in Portuguese at a press conference in Maputo.The assailants appear to be from the Mozambique Armed Defense Forces (FADM) and the Mozambique Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR), based on their uniforms, Amnesty said.Saranga said that extremist groups and insurgents seek to discredit security forces by wearing their attire.“One of the tactics used by terrorists in their macabre incursions against the population is to pretend to be elements of the defense and security forces in an attempt to confuse or mislead national and international public opinion,” he said.The rights group’s researchers didn’t take “the nature of the reductionist propaganda” into account, Saranga said, adding that  the aim of the terrorist groups is “to denigrate the image of the defense and security forces.”Outside investigationDespite the government’s stance, Amnesty believes it is essential for an impartial body to conduct a thorough investigation.“The next step is that the government does need to do a real investigation and not a whitewash investigation, an immediate denial, not calling it ‘fake news’ or whatever else. They need to do a real investigation,” Castner said. “And that doesn’t mean the police and the army investigating themselves, but an outside office and outside investigative arm of the government.”The motive for the attacks appears to be retaliation, Castner added. In one of the videos, a soldier appears to refer to his deployment to the region, saying, “I’m here because of you.”“They’re not asking any questions,” Castner said. “This is not an interrogation. It definitely seems to be punishment in at least one of the videos.”The region in northern Mozambique is home to some of the largest liquid natural gas extraction projects on the continent. It has also become extremely violent in recent years, with 1,854 deaths from organized violent attacks since 2017, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.Is IS Gaining Foothold in Mozambique?

        A recent attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) terror group in a northern province in Mozambique signals a growing presence of extremist groups in the southeast African country, experts contend. 

IS claimed responsibility for an attack May 28 in the Cabo Delgado region, where a gunfight between government soldiers and Islamist militants left at least 16 people dead and a dozen wounded.

Mozambican officials have declined to comment on the incident. 
Since 2017, Islamist insurgents have carried out…
One of the most prominent insurgent groups is al-Shabab and has links to the Islamic State group, though it is made up of mostly local youth. It has orchestrated attacks on Mozambican forces as well as foreign mercenaries.Are DRC, Mozambique Insurgencies a Real IS Threat? As terror groups in southern and central Africa commit deadly attacks and pledge allegiance to Islamic State, experts try to determine how big a threat they pose to the region and the wider worldIn March, the armed group launched a series of attacks and took over a major town in the region, Mocimboa da Praia, in addition to other nearby towns. In April and May, government forces launched an offensive and retook these towns. Amnesty believes the torture seen in the videos took place during this time.David Matsinhe, a human rights researcher with Amnesty International Southern Africa, said that while much attention and focus of news coverage has been about understanding the links between insurgents and foreign extremist groups, they are actually local people with local grievances. After gold, rubies, graphite and natural gas were discovered in the region, locals lost access to key resources.“The tipping point appears to have been the expropriation of the land on which people have depended for centuries to provide for food, water, sanitation, all those basic necessities,” Matsinhe said.Increased susceptibilityThis loss of land made young people more susceptible to radicalization, Matsinhe said.”It was easier for a radical preacher who may have come in to convince the young people, because 80% of radicalization had been accomplished by the material conditions, through the relationships between the community and the government,” Matsinhe said.The Mozambican government has called for a stronger response to the issue of militants and instability in the region. During a meeting between southern African leaders in May, Filipe Nyusi, Mozambique’s president, said forming a unified force to tackle the issue of extremism in the region was the best way forward.Southern African Leaders Meet on Mozambique’s Deteriorating Security Insurgents killed nearly 1,000 people and displaced tens of thousandsBut Matsinhe said that without addressing internal abuses from security forces and without holding attackers to account, it will be difficult for the government to win back the support of locals.“The way the country is continuing, it’s not sustainable,” he said. “We do not want to see Mozambique in ashes because of violence and violations of human rights.”VOA Portuguese service’s Ramos Miguel contributed to this report from Maputo and Amancio Vilanculos contributed from Washington.
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Bob Woodward, facing widespread criticism for only now revealing President Donald Trump’s early concerns about the severity of the coronavirus, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he needed time to be sure that Trump’s private comments from February were accurate.
 
In Woodward’s upcoming book on Trump, “Rage,” the president is quoted saying the virus was highly contagious and “deadly stuff” at a time he was publicly dismissing it as no worse than the flu. Woodward, the celebrated Washington Post journalist and best-selling author, spoke with Trump more than a dozen times for his book.  
“He tells me this, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, but is it true?’ Trump says things that don’t check out, right?” Woodward told the AP during a telephone interview. Using a famous phrase from the Watergate era, when Woodward’s reporting for the Post helped lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation, Woodward said his mission was to determine, “What did he know and when did he know it?”Trump Knew of COVID Danger But Downplayed It, Book Recounts Journalist Bob Woodward says US leader was warned in early 2020 of deadly nature of disease, but in recorded interview said, ‘I wanted to always play it down’On Twitter and elsewhere online, commentators accused Woodward of valuing book sales over public health. “Nearly 200,000 Americans have died because neither Donald Trump nor Bob Woodward wanted to risk anything substantial to keep the country informed,” wrote Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce.  
The issue of daily journalists presenting newsworthy information in books isn’t new. The competition for attention is intense, and headlines help boost sales and guest shots for interviews. Reporter Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times recently attracted attention for his book, “Donald Trump v. The United States,” by reporting new details on an unannounced visit by Trump to Walter Reed military hospital in November 2019. Schmidt reported that Vice President Mike Pence was put on alert that he might have to briefly assume the powers of the presidency if the president had to undergo a procedure that required anesthesia.
Pence later said he didn’t recall being put on standby for the Reed visit, which the White House has said was part of the president’s routine annual physical. But Schmidt’s book renewed speculation about Trump’s health.
Political figures with book deals also have been chastised for holding back timely material. Former national security adviser John Bolton, whose scathing memoir “The Room Where It Happened” came out in June, declined discussing Trump’s actions towards Ukraine while the impeachment hearings were being held earlier this year.
Woodward’s book, which comes out next week, draws from 18 conversations with Trump between December and July. During his AP interview, Woodward said Trump called him “out of the blue” in early February to “unburden himself” about the virus, which then had few cases in the U.S. But Woodward said that only in May was he satisfied that Trump’s comments were based on reliable information and that by then the virus had spread nationwide.  
“If I had done the story at that time about what he knew in February, that’s not telling us anything we didn’t know,” Woodward said. At that point, he said, the issue was no longer one of public health but of politics. His priority became getting the story out before the election in November.
“That was the demarcation line for me,” he said. “Had I decided that my book was coming out on Christmas, the end of this year, that would have been unthinkable.”
Asked why he didn’t share Trump’s February remarks for a fellow Post reporter to pursue, Woodward said he had developed “some pretty important sources” on his own.  
“Could I have brought others in? Could they have done things I couldn’t do?” he asked. “I was on the trail, and I was (still) on the trail when it (the virus) exploded.”
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The global aviation industry says now is the time to begin planning “the mission of the century”: delivering a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine to billions of people in some of the most remote parts of the world.
 
The International Air Transport Association said in a statement Thursday that shipping a single dose of the vaccine to 7.8 billion people will require the use of the equivalent of 8,000 Boeing 747 cargo aircraft.
 
IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac said such an undertaking “will be the mission of the century for the global air cargo industry. But it won’t happen without careful advance planning.”
 
“We urge governments to take the lead in facilitating cooperation across the logistics chain so that the facilities, security arrangements and border processes are ready for the mammoth and complex task ahead,” de Juniac said.
 
The multinational effort to develop and produce a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19, which as now killed over 900,000 people around the world out of a total of 27.8 million cases, received a setback this week when British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca suspended its final global trials of its experimental vaccine after a volunteer participant became ill.
 
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the volunteer, based in Britain, was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections. But The Times said it is unknown whether it is directly linked to the AZD1222 vaccine.   
 
This is the second time AstraZeneca has paused large-scale testing of its experimental vaccine after a volunteer became ill after being inoculated. The scientific journal Nature says the trial was halted in July after another participant in Britain also developed symptoms of transverse myelitis. The individual was eventually diagnosed with an “unrelated neurological illness.”  
 
Many nations are experiencing a surge in the number of new COVID-19 infections, forcing them to order a new round of strict restrictions that were first imposed at the start of the outbreak.
 
Anies Baswedan, the governor of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, said Wednesday the government had no choice but to “pull the emergency brake” on the easing of coronavirus restrictions with the city’s hospitals nearing full capacity as they see thousands of new coronavirus cases daily. Jakarta has nearly 50,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 1,300 deaths, making up the bulk of Indonesia’s 207,203 total cases and 8,456 deaths.
 
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Asian markets finished mostly higher Thursday as investors reacted favorably to Wall Street’s recovery from a three-day selloff.The Nikkei index in Tokyo closed 0.8% higher. Sydney’s S&P/ASX index was up 0.5%. The KOSPI index in Seoul finished 0.8% higher, while the TSEC in Taipei was up 0.6%.Shanghai’s Composite index fell 0.6%.In late afternoon trading, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 0.3%, while Mumbai’s Sensex was up 1.2%.Meanwhile, all three major European indices were trading lower at the start of their trading day.In commodities trading, gold was selling at $1,952.60 an ounce, down 0.1%. U.S. crude oil was selling at $37.61 per barrel, down 1.1%, and Brent crude oil was selling at $40.46 per barrel, down 0.8%.All three major U.S. indices were slumping in futures trading.
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The third phase of human trials for a vaccine against the coronavirus is underway in Peru.On Wednesday, Chinese pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm began testing about two dozen people, with the long-term goal of vaccinating a total of 6,000 people between the ages of 18 and 75.The participants will receive one of three injections, consisting of a virus strain from Wuhan, China; a Beijing strain; or a saline water placebo.The Associated Press reports the Peruvian government is in talks with six laboratories to determine the best course to buy the vaccine.Peru is one of the hardest-hit countries by the coronavirus in Latin America, with more than 696,000 COVID-19 infections and more than 30,000 deaths.So far, Sinopharm has given 30,000 doses to volunteers and another 10,000 participants have received double doses in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Additional testing is planned for Morocco and Argentina.
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Deadly windblown wildfires raging across the Pacific Northwest destroyed hundreds of homes in Oregon, the governor said Wednesday, warning it could be the greatest loss of life and property from wildfire in state history.The blazes from the top of the state to the California border caused highway closures and smoky skies and had firefighters struggling to contain and douse flames fanned by 80-kph wind gusts. Officials in some western Oregon communities gave residents “go now” orders to evacuate, meaning they had minutes to flee their homes.Fires were burning in a large swath of Washington state and Oregon that rarely experiences such intense wildfire activity because of the Pacific Northwest’s cool and wet climate.Flames trapped firefighters and civilians behind fire lines in Oregon and leveled an entire small town in eastern Washington. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown warned that the devastation could be overwhelming from the fires that exploded Monday during a late-summer windstorm.”Everyone must be on high alert,” Brown said. The blazes were thought to be extremely destructive around Medford, in southern Oregon, and near the state capital of Salem.”This could be the greatest loss of human life and property due to wildfire in our state’s history,” the governor said.At least two people were killed in Oregon fires, along with a small child in a Washington state blaze. Brown said some communities were substantially damaged, with “hundreds of homes lost.”A horse stands in a stall under smoky skies on the Oregon State Fairgrounds, Sept. 9, 2020, in Salem, Ore. Hundreds of horses have been brought to the fairgrounds in Salem by people fleeing the fires.The precise extent of damage was unclear because so many of the fire zones were too dangerous to survey, said Oregon Deputy State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple.”Quite frankly, we are not even able to get into these areas,” she said.In Washington, a 1-year-old boy died after his family was apparently overrun by flames while trying to flee a wildfire in the northeastern part of the state, Okanogan County Sheriff Tony Hawley said Wednesday.The child’s injured parents were discovered in the area of the Cold Springs Fire, which is burning in Okanogan and Douglas counties, Hawley said. They were transported to a Seattle hospital with third-degree burns.KOIN reported a boy and his grandmother died in a wildfire near Lyons, Oregon. Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast confirmed two fatalities but had no other details. He said they would likely “not be the only ones.” Lyons is in Marion County.Another wildfire hit Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast, where residents were being evacuated to a community college to the south.”The fire is in the city,” said Casey Miller, spokesman for Lincoln County Emergency Management. He said some buildings had been burned but had no details.The department imposed mandatory evacuation for the northern half of the city of roughly 10,000 residents, which stretches alongside U.S. Highway 101.The Pacific Northwest scenes of lines of vehicles clogging roads to get away from the fires were similar to California’s terrifying wildfire drama, where residents have fled fires raging unchecked throughout the state. But Northwest officials said they did not recall so many destructive fires at once in the areas where they were burning.A water-drop helicopter flies Sept. 9, 2020, near a wildfire burning in Bonney Lake, Wash., south of Seattle.Sheriff’s deputies, traveling with chain saws in their patrol cars to cut fallen trees blocking roads, went door to door in rural communities 64 kilometers south of Portland, telling people to evacuate. Since Tuesday, as many as 16,000 people have been told to abandon their homes.”These winds are so incredible and are spreading so fast, we don’t have a lot of time,” said Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.”I’ve been through hell and high water but nothing like this. I’ve been shot down and shot at, but this – last night, I’m still not over it,” said Lloyd Dean Holland, a Vietnam veteran who barely escaped his home in Estacada on Tuesday night.Holland said Oregon State Police had warned him to leave earlier in the day, but the fire seemed far away and he decided to stay. Around 10 p.m., he said, his landlord came pounding on the door screaming at him to go.Fires were burning in seven Oregon counties and rural and suburban homes miles away from Portland were under preliminary orders to prepare for possible evacuations. Three prisons were evacuated late Tuesday, and Brown called the state’s blazes unprecedented.The Northwest is no stranger to wildfires, but most of the biggest ones until now have been in the eastern or southern parts of the region – where the weather is considerably hotter and drier and the vegetation more fire-prone than it is in the region’s western portion.Fires in 2017 and 2018 crested the top of the Cascade Range – the long spine that divides dry eastern Oregon from the lush western part of the state – but never before spread into the valleys below, said Doug Grafe, chief of Fire Protection at the Oregon Department of Forestry.A family arrives with their two dogs and other precious belongings at an evacuation center that has been set up at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem, Ore., on Sept. 8, 2020.”We do not have a context for this amount of fire on the landscape,” he said.Fire crews were focusing on trying to keep people out of harm’s way and preventing houses from burning on Wednesday, with officials saying that containing the fires was a secondary priority.After a 30-minute tour of the fire area south of Seattle in Sumner, Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee said the blaze is “just one example of probably the most catastrophic fires we’ve had in the history of the state.”He said that in the past couple of days, more than 194,424 hectares burned.”This is an extraordinary series of events we have suffered,” Inslee said.About 80% of the small eastern Washington farming town of Malden was leveled by flames from a fast-moving fire on Monday.In Sumner helicopters flew over a ridge, dropping water on smoldering areas. Bud Backer, fire chief for East Pierce Fire & Rescue, told Inslee that the recent winds were “like a blowtorch.”Bonney Lake Police Chief Bryan Jeter said that about 2,500 homes in the area were given evacuation orders.In Oregon, at least four major fires were burning in Clackamas County, a suburban county in Oregon that’s a bedroom community of Portland. The entire county of nearly 420,000 people was put on notice to be ready to evacuate late Tuesday amid winds gusting up to 48 kph.Another major fire in southern Oregon prompted evacuation orders in much of Medford, a city of about 80,000 residents near the California border.And several huge blazes burning in Marion County, southeast of the state’s capitol city of Salem, merged overnight – turning the sky blood red in the middle of the day. 
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A U.S. government decision Tuesday to sanction two former Lebanese government ministers is the latest unprecedented campaign against Hezbollah, with some observers saying the move dramatically increases the risk for Lebanese politicians to engage with the U.S.-designated terror group.The Trump administration said it blacklisted former Minister of Transportation and Public Works Yusuf Finyanus and former Minister of Finance Ali Hassan Khalil because they had helped Hezbollah bypass U.S. sanctions and profit from multimillion-dollar government contracts.Firas Maksad, an adjunct professor and researcher on Lebanon at George Washington University, said that Lebanon’s economy is highly dollarized, giving Washington a “tremendous leverage” to use sanctions to deter Lebanon’s political groups from cozying up to the Iran proxy when the country is trying to form a new government.“In the past when the U.S. Treasury had moved to designate Lebanese banks, those banks would fall within 24 hours,” Maksad told VOA by phone. “These sanctions, in particular, are different and of a more significant caliber because it’s the first time that they target two former ministers.”“Lebanese political and business actors are now much more cognizant of the risks working together with Hezbollah,” he added.Khalil is a member of the Shiite Amal Movement, and Finyanus is a member of Christian political party Marada Movement. Both groups have denounced the designations, calling them a U.S. attack “targeting Lebanon and its sovereignty,” according to Reuters.While announcing the sanctions, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement accused Hezbollah of exploiting Lebanon’s political system to spread “its malign influence.”“The United States stands with the people of Lebanon in their calls for reform and will continue to use its authorities to target those who oppress and exploit them,” Mnuchin said.Power sharingSince its independence from France in 1943, Lebanon has practiced a complicated parliamentary system called “consociationalism” to divide power among the country’s three main groups, the Sunnis, Shiites and Maronite Christians.As such, the country’s president has been a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni and the parliament speaker a Shiite.Unlike many Mideast countries, Lebanon is not an oil-rich nation, and more than 80% of its GDP comes from service sectors such as banking, tourism and construction. The U.S. Treasury says Hezbollah owns companies that are deeply involved in Lebanon’s economy.‘Internal dissent’The August 4 blast, caused by nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a highly populated civilian area, has led to the resignation of government and calls for deep political reform in the former French colony.French President Emmanuel Macron, who has visited Lebanon twice since the explosion, is leading an international effort to help Lebanon achieve economic recovery and political reform.While no one expects the powerful influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah to disappear anytime soon, experts say international pressure is key to bringing about radical change in Lebanon.“Hezbollah is still holding out,” said Phillip Smyth, a scholar on Shiite political movements at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Within the Lebanese government, they have strong allies and a very strong position. However, I would say they are facing internal dissent from a number of directions.”He added, “Following the blast, Hezbollah, with its dominant position, has become the face of the very corruption which spans across the Lebanese government.”Next week, Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib is expected to form a new Cabinet. Some observers say the recent U.S. sanctions are likely to influence the direction of the new government.“If the French president’s approach to Lebanon’s ruling class was too soft, the American mode included heavy sticks,” said Sam Bazzi, the founder of Hezbollah Watch blog.“This will hopefully break the stalemate in the country and create the opportunity for Adib to form the deliverance government that Lebanon desperately needs,” Bazzi said.Mehdi Jedinia contributed to this story from Washington.
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An Istanbul court on Wednesday handed multiple prison sentences to five reporters convicted of violating the law on coverage of Turkey’s spy agency but ordered their release pending appeals.Six journalists faced up to 20 years in prison on charges of exposing state secrets and violating the Turkish Intelligence Agency (MIT) law.The closely watched trial concerned a news report alleging that a Turkish intelligence officer was killed in Libya in February.All six journalists were acquitted of the state secrets charge.But the court sentenced Aydin Keser, Ferhat Celik and Murat Agirel, who work for the pro-Kurdish Yeni Yasam daily, to four years and eight months in jail on the MIT law charges.It sentenced OdaTV editor-in-chief Baris Pehlivan and reporter Hulya Kilinc to three years and nine months on the same charges, while acquitting OdaTV news director Baris Terkoglu.They were all released pending appeals, one of the defense lawyers, Serkan Gunel, told AFP.Pehlivan, Kilinc and Agirel had been in jail since March.”What I have done is only journalism,” Kilinc told the judge earlier in her defense. “I have been a journalist for 20 years. I have no intention to commit a crime.”OdaTV reported in March that the intelligence officer had been quietly buried in his hometown of Manisa in western Turkey.The report also featured photos from the funeral and identified the officer by his first name and the initial of the last name.Turkey, whose government is under fire from rights groups for clamping down on press freedom, is ranked 154th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom list.
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