Six In The Morning Sunday 8 August 2021

 

Taliban captures Kunduz, third provincial capital in three days

Armed group says its forces are in control of Kunduz as fighting rages in several cities across Afghanistan.

The Taliban has captured the city of Kunduz, the armed group said, the third provincial capital it has taken over in the last three days.

A Taliban statement on Sunday said it has captured the police headquarters, the governor’s compound and the prison in the city.

Local sources and journalists in Kunduz confirmed to Al Jazeera that Taliban fighters are present in the capital.

HelpTurkey hashtag under investigation for ‘spreading fear’ about wildfires

Stung by claims of a bungled response to devastating fires, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says criticism is orchestrated by foreign powers

Agence France-Presse

Sun 8 Aug 2021 05.21 BST

Prosecutors in Turkey have launched an investigation into a social media hastag critical of the government’s allegedly bungled response to the country’s devastating wildfires, accusing it of spreading “anxiety and fear”.

The hashtag HelpTurkey exploded when rightwing president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was pictured on a tour of the damaged region under heavy police escort, tossing bags of tea to locals out of a moving bus in the middle of the night while a megaphone announced his presence.

“Help us!!!!!” Turkish comedian Enis Arikan tweeted hours after Erdoğan’s visit in a typical HelpTurkey post. “We need planes urgently. We only have one world.”

Lukashenko's Reign of Fear Hits the Olympics and Beyond

The spectacular defection of Belarusian Olympic sprinter Kristina Timanovskaya shows how great the fear of the country's dictator Alexander Lukashenko has become. Particularly after a mysterious death in Kiev.

By Anne Armbrecht, Markus Becker, Alexander Chernyshev, Christian Esch, Christina Hebel und Katja Lutska

The athlete is sitting on the right, a lithe young woman with dyed-red streaks in her hair whose gaze drops to the floor when she’s not speaking. Her name is Kristina Timanovskaya, the Belarusian sprinter who flew from Tokyo to Warsaw via Vienna after being kicked off her country’s Olympics team. Now, she is a refugee and could face difficulties if she were to return home. Sitting on the left is Pavel Latushko, an exiled politician who stands in opposition to Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Timanovskaya insists that her case has nothing to do with politics, as though that might help her out of the situation in which she finds herself. But the man sitting next to her, along with the numerous microphones and cameras – not to mention the very fact that she is here – would indicate the contrary.

Rwandan troops help Mozambique recapture key port held by jihadists

 

Rwandan forces deployed last month to help Mozambique's army battle jihadists said Sunday they had recaptured control of the key northern port of Mocimboa da Praia from the extremist militants.

"The port city of Mocimboa da Praia, a major stronghold of the insurgency for more than two years has been captured by Rwandan and Mozambican security forces," the Rwandan Defence Forces said in a tweet.

Force spokesman colonel Ronald Rwivanga confirmed this to AFP, saying "yes (Mocimboa da Praia) has fallen".

The port town, from where the first Islamist attacks were staged in October 2017, has since last year become the de-facto headquarters of the Islamic State-linked extremists, locally referred to as Al-Shabab.

'A Band-Aid over a gaping hole': Booster shots for the rich world won't end the pandemic, experts warn

By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN

Updated 0202 GMT (1002 HKT) August 8, 2021

The war against Covid-19 is changing, putting into stark relief the deepening divide between countries that have the weapons to fight the virus and those that don't.

As concerns mount over the highly contagious Delta variant, wealthy nations are tightening their grip on vaccine arsenals, while desperate people elsewhere in the world are dying due to a lack of shots.

Teetering on the edge of a dreaded new wave of coronavirus infections, the United States and Europe are deploying a barrage of monetary incentives and mandates to convince vaccine holdouts to get off the fence, and momentum is building to dole out booster shots for vulnerable groups.

North Korea: Kim Jong-un calls for relief in flood-hit areas

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called on the military to carry out relief work in areas recently hit by heavy rains, state media report.

More than 1,000 homes were damaged and about 5,000 people evacuated after the ensuing flooding, state television reported earlier this week.

The move comes amid concerns over an economic crisis and food shortages.

Agricultural land has been damaged, and Kim Jong-un said in June the country faced a "tense" food situation.