Russia for the first time on Monday directed its attacks against the Ukrainian agricultural sector towards a port on the Danube River, destroying several grain warehouses in Ukraine.. In turn, they have also attacked the Crimean peninsula and the Russian capital with drones, in what Moscow described as an “act of international terrorism.”

The attack took place against the port of Reni on the Danube River with some 15 Iranian Shahed-136 drones, according to the head of this community bordering Romania, Igor Plejov, quoted by the Reni-Odessa information portal. The shelling lasted almost four hours into the early morning, the Southern Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.

According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor's Office, at least four grain warehouses, oil and fuel storage depots, and an administrative building were damaged or destroyed.

The target: Danube ports

The head of the Military Administration of the Odessa region, Oleg Kiper, explained in turn that six people were injured, one of them in a relatively serious condition.

The Danube River is one of the alternative transport routes for Ukrainian cereals facing the Black Sea -turned back into a conflict zone after Russia canceled navigation guarantees-, although insufficient to compensate for the volumes that were sent through Turkey to other parts of the world.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Sunday that he was already preparing new aid packages with Western partners to improve the country's air defense and receive more artillery and long-range weapons. In addition, he announced the convening of a meeting on Wednesday of the NATO-Ukraine Council to discuss the steps to be taken to unblock the grain corridor in the Black Sea.

Attacks against Moscow and Crimea

Ukraine did not remain without a response to the Russian attacks and carried out two drone bombing attacks on Crimea and Moscow at dawn. The mayor of the Russian capital, Sergei Sobyanin, reported “drone attacks on two non-residential buildings” in the city.

The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have thwarted “an attempt by the kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack with two unmanned aerial devices against facilities in Moscow.” One of the drones landed in a central residential area where several buildings of the Military Intelligence Directorate are located, and another in a business center under construction.

At 17 Komsomolski Avenue, near a military university, the impact caused windows to break in at least two shops, one of them specializing in the sale of Crimean wines.

The last attacks against Moscow took place on July 4 and June 21, but the most notorious occurred in May against various residential buildings and, above all, against the Kremlin. According to the Ukrainian daily Ukrainska Pravda, the attack on the Russian capital was a special operation by Ukrainian Military Intelligence.

international terrorism

The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zajárova, described the attack as an “act of international terrorism”, while her counterpart in the Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, assured that Russia will continue the war in Ukraine until it achieves its objectives.

In parallel there was another attack with at least 17 drones against the annexed Crimean peninsula. Russia shot them down, but one hit an ammunition depot in the northern Dzhankoi region, Governor Sergei Axionov said.

The bombardment forced the temporary suspension of rail and automobile traffic in the area and the evacuation of the population of nearby villages within a 5-kilometre radius. Ukraine's Minister for Digital Transformation Mikhailo Fedorov confirmed the attacks on Crimea and Moscow, suggesting “there will be more”.

A congregation of Polish monks has received a grant of 210,000 euros to purchase a new truck to fight fires with the intention that in the future it will also serve to protect what will be the largest airport in Poland, which is still under construction.

For his part, the prior of the congregation, Janusz Kulak, has expressed his confidence that the new vehicle will become “the pride of the fire brigade” and that it will also serve to “encourage more novices” to join the congregation.

From the Niepokalanów Monastery, located about 40 kilometers west of Warsaw, these Franciscan monks have been part of Poland's National Fire and Rescue Unit (KSRG) since its founding in 1931 by Maksymilian Kolbe, one of these monks who would later be canonized for saving the life of a prisoner at Auschwitz.

The grant has been given to them by the state company CPK, which is dedicated to building an airport in central Poland, projected to be operational from 2028. “Due to its proximity to the airport under construction, the monk unit will act as the first line of help in case of emergency,” CPK announced.

Until the inauguration of the airport, the fire monks, who claim to be a unique case in the world, will dedicate themselves “not only to protecting the surrounding towns”, but also to protect “the security of CPK's investment”, according to the company's own statement.

This center will house one of the largest airports in Europe, several railway lines and will be located between Warsaw and Lódz. According to CPK, it will serve more than 6.5 million passengers from 2060, when it is expected to be fully operational.

At least one person has died from a storm that is affecting the northern Swiss canton of Neuchatel, bordering France. It also caused “numerous injuries”, according to the local police in La Chaux-de-Fonds, one of the main cities affected.

The deceased was hit by a crane knocked down by the strong winds of the storm, which affected the city and other surrounding areas around 11:30 a.m. local time (9:30 GMT). The cantonal police also reported “considerable” material damage to vehicles, roofs and urban furniture in other areas of the city and the canton.

The strong gusts of wind also caused the fall of several trees on the train tracks that have forced the cut of the connections between La Chaux-de-Fonds and the stations of La Ferrière, St-Imier, Les Hauts-Geneveys and Le Locle, as reported by the Swiss railway company CFF on its social networks.

The company assured that they are already creating alternative bus lines to cover some of these routes, after the national meteorological agency MétéoSuisse reported wind gusts of up to 217 km/h.

The fires that are raging on the Greek island of Rhodes have been photographed by a satellite of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), in images that show both the flames and the extensive burned area and the plume of smoke that they cause.

The image, distributed this Monday by ESA and taken this Sunday by Sentinel-2, was processed by combining bands of natural colors with shortwave infrared information to highlight the fire front.

The burned expanse, which can be seen in brown tones, in the central part of the island, has a preliminary estimate of 11,000 hectares lost at the time of image acquisition, the ESA reported.

At least 19,000 people, including some 6,000 tourists, have been evacuated to escape the huge forest fire, which remains out of control for the seventh day. The evacuations have affected five towns that are located near the western coast of the island, located in the southeast Aegean, close to the Turkish coast.

Thousands of firefighters work to extinguish the more than 60 fires declared only this Sunday throughout the country, in the midst of a heat wave, in which temperatures are reaching above 46 degrees in some areas, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country. In addition to Rhodes, Corfu or Athens also suffer fires.

In response to the fires, the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service was activated, which uses satellite observations to help civil protection authorities and, in disaster cases, the international humanitarian community, to respond to emergencies, ESA recalled.

The Sentinel-2 mission relies on a constellation of two identical satellites, each with an innovative high-resolution, broadband, multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands to monitor changes in Earth's land and vegetation.

The Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) has today definitively approved the law that annuls the doctrine of reasonableness, the first law of the legislative package of the controversial judicial reform promoted by the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu and that has caused a wave of demonstrations throughout the country for months.

The law has thus gone ahead with 64 votes in favor of all the deputies of the parties of the government coalition and zero against, since the 56 deputies of the opposition bloc have decided to be absent.

“We have taken the first step in the important historical process of correcting the legal system and restoring the powers that were taken from the government and the Knesset for many years,” Justice Minister Yariv Levin, the architect of judicial reform, said after the law was passed. Before the vote, Levin has indicated that this law “will restore the balance between government authorities and respect for the will of the voters.”

The doctrine of reasonableness, now annulled, allowed the Supreme Court to review and revoke government decisions or appointments and is seen by the protest movement as a fundamental democratic guarantee against abuses of power.

19 arrested in the protests

The law was voted on in a plenary session that began this Sunday, after more than 30 hours of tense debates between the government and the opposition.. At the same time, thousands of demonstrators have been camped out in front of the Knesset since Saturday night in protest against the reform, seen as a threat to democracy because it undermines the separation of powers and the independence of Justice.

For the moment, the mobilizations, the largest in the country's history, have resulted in 19 people being arrested “for violating public order” and 5 injured, who have already been transferred to the hospital.. The demonstrations, gathered in a nearby park near the parliament, have tried to block streets, block access to the Chamber and have caused some altercations with the Police, who have had to resort to water cannons and agents mounted on horseback to disperse those gathered.

“The general idea of the Police is to protect citizens, but here we see the opposite,” said Tomer Naveh, 52, an Army captain for more than 30 years and who was among the protesters this Monday and has criticized the harshness of the police repression.

Negotiation attempts

Given the strong division generated, in the last 48 hours there have been several attempts at negotiations, promoted by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, for the government and the opposition to reach a consensus agreement, but they have failed again. “Our main condition was to protect Israeli democracy, but with this government it is impossible to reach agreements that preserve Israeli democracy,” said Yair Lapid, the opposition leader.

“They want to destroy the State, destroy democracy, destroy Israel's security, the unity of the Israeli people and our international relations,” added Lapid, who has accused the government of being the “most irresponsible in history.”

Hours before the vote, Herzog once again appealed to the “understanding” and “responsibility” of the parties to reach a consensus in the face of what he has described as a “national emergency” in the face of the deep social fracture that the reform has caused.

Herzog thus met this Sunday separately with Netanyahu and with the opposition leaders to resume the negotiations that began in April, but which broke down in June when the government decided to go ahead unilaterally with the reform.

And it was this movement that precisely revitalized the protests, which have not ceased for seven months and have included massive demonstrations in recent weeks.. In total, more than 550,000 people have taken to the streets throughout the country for the approval of this reform. The opposition movement has also had strong social pressure on unions to call a general strike and more than 10,000 reservists refusing to volunteer for service.

Greece and its islands continue to burn uncontrollably. Thousands of firefighters work to extinguish the 63 fires declared throughout the country, which have forced the evacuation of more than 20,000 people on the islands of Rhodes -the hardest hit for more than a week-, Corfu and Euboea.

The fires come amid a heat wave that is suffocating the country with temperatures reaching 46.4 degrees in some areas, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country.. The extreme heat is expected to continue until Thursday, when a significant drop in temperature of between 5 and 7 degrees is expected, the National Weather Service reported Monday.

Evacuations on the rise in Rhodes

The worst is concentrated on the island of Rhodes, where dramatic scenes take place daily, with the largest evacuation due to fire in the country's history: some 30,000 people, including more than 15,000 tourists.. The Greek Emergency Corps warns of a new evacuation in Kalathos, the seventh town on the island that has been vacated due to the advance of the fire.

The town of Malonas has also been evacuated, with hundreds of volunteers and troops working to prevent the flames from reaching those evacuated towns. “We are in a war with fires,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in Parliament on Monday, stressing that in the face of nature's “fury” “no measure will be enough.”

Local media report that the conditions in which the battle is being fought are extremely difficult, with hurricane-force winds blowing in the area, and that firefighting planes and helicopters continue to engage in the extinguishing battle, even after sunset.

According to images released by the Greek media, many tourists are stranded at the island's airport. Those affected who are not there remain housed in sports halls, municipal structures and hotel convention centers.

The fire has so far burned more than 14,000 hectares of virgin forest, as well as several houses and some hotels, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).. The Greek government announces that since Sunday 1,489 people have been able to leave Rhodes on flights to the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy.

EasyJet repatriates British tourists

The low-cost airline EasyJet has indicated that it will begin to repatriate British tourists this Monday, with the shipment of transport planes. According to the British government, in Rhodes there are between 7,000 and 10,000 tourists from that country at the moment, although not all of them are in the area affected by the fires.

The Czech government, which speaks of “several thousand” tourists from that Central European country on the island, is also preparing to send two large transport planes in case of need to evacuate its compatriots.

Meanwhile, the German travel agency TUI announced on Monday that it will send six empty charter flights to the island to repatriate British and Germans, local media reports.

The Euboea fire leaves a missing person

On the island of Euboea, northeast of Athens, another fire is out of control around the coastal town of Karistos and one person, a herdsman, is missing.. The flames forced the evacuation of nine towns and reached the town of Platanistós and Potami, where several houses have been burned, according to regional authorities.

So far, nine towns have been evacuated, while the fire is difficult to contain, since strong winds blow in the area. “We hope to have a calm in the winds so that we can, with the ground forces, limit the extent of the disaster”, underlines the regional governor. Greek media ensure that the fronts of this forest fire are already close to 10 kilometers.

Neighbors, against the flames in Corfu

On the other hand, the situation on the island of Corfu (northwest), which had improved significantly during the morning of this Monday, suffered new revivals since the afternoon, with 18 towns evacuated and at least 2,500 people affected.

Among the evacuees were 2,000 tourists, who on Monday were able to return to the hotels where they are staying on the northeast coast of Corfu.. There, some 60 firefighters, with 21 vehicles, 2 helicopters and 2 tanker planes are fighting to contain the fire, after the evacuation of 18 towns.

Despite the evictions, the fire in Corfu has not yet damaged residential areas. According to the Greek daily Kathimerini, together with firefighters, civil protection men from the municipality of North Corfu, residents and volunteers are fighting the flames.

Another hundred troops also fight against a fourth fire on the Peloponnese peninsula, near the town of Agios, which forced the evacuation of several nearby towns yesterday and interrupted traffic on local roads.

Sudan lives in the midst of a civil war.. again. There are already eleven weeks of conflict and more than 3 million people have been displaced (inside or outside the country). The fighting has further complicated the fragile humanitarian situation in Sudan, already one of the countries in the region most affected by malnutrition.

According to the World Food Program (WFP), the violence has led the country to “record levels” of famine. Unicef has received credible reports of at least 435 children killed and 2,025 injured in the last 100 days, an average of more than one per hour.

How many dead and how many displaced?

Since it began on April 15, the conflict in Sudan has already killed more than 3,100 civilians and caused the internal and external displacement of more than 3.1 million people, according to the UN.. Before the current war, there were almost 3.8 million internally displaced people in Sudan, of whom 1.9 million were children.

How many have already left the country?

The number of refugees is now estimated at 737,801 people who have fled the violence in Sudan to other neighboring countries, according to the latest figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).. Egypt is the country that has hosted the most refugees, a total of 255,565, followed by Chad (238,218), South Sudan (160,798), Ethiopia (62,509), the Central African Republic (16,719) and Libya (2,992).

How many does the famine affect?

More than 19 million people will go hungry in Sudan because of the conflict, according to the United Nations WFP. There are already some 3.5 million children suffering from malnutrition and the agency's delegation in Sudan expects around 2.5 million people to go hungry “in the coming months.”

Serious violations of children's rights occur every hour.”

The UN estimates that around 24.7 million people (almost half of its estimated population) require humanitarian aid throughout the country.. Among them are 4 million children and pregnant or lactating women, who are severely malnourished.

The explanation for why so many millions of people depend on humanitarian aid lies in the increase in prices, frozen wages, increasingly scarce basic services and almost paralyzed supply chains.

How many children have died?

“Serious violations of children's rights occur every hour” in the African country, says Unicef. According to their data, at least 435 children have died and 2,025 have been injured since the start of the conflict.. Of the almost 3.8 million internally displaced persons in Sudan before the conflict, 1.9 million were children. The true number is likely to be much higher.

There are 4.2 million women and girls at risk of gender-based violence

“Another 1.7 million children have been driven from their homes and are now displaced within Sudan and across its borders, vulnerable to hunger, disease, violence and separation from their families.. Reports of kidnappings, recruitment of children by armed groups, selective ethnic violence and gender-based violence against women and girls are also on the rise, with 4.2 million women and girls at risk of gender-based violence,” says UNICEF.

What are the causes of famine?

The first, of course, is the civil war. The fighting has caused delays in planting crops, but also a lack of credit. In addition, it has triggered the prices of fertilizers, seeds and fuels. In the case of the latter, their price has tripled since the conflict began.

Farmers are faced with the challenge of repaying the loans obtained before the start of the war in order to obtain new funds and continue with the planting and harvesting cycle.. Of the nearly 49 million people in Sudan, 65% work in the agricultural sector, according to the FAO.

65% of its almost 49 million inhabitants work in agriculture

Things can get even worse because heavy rains expected this month could prevent planting. FAO has started to distribute emergency sorghum, millet and sesame seeds with the aim of covering the basic food needs of between 13 and 19 million people.

An added factor is the more technical farms, which produce most of the products that Sudan exports.. They are also in difficulties and if they do not produce they do not sell, which heralds an imminent lack of foreign currency with which to import food and essential products.

Who is facing the war?

Two military factions that together carried out a coup in 2021 are now fighting for power. The general who commands the Army, Abdel Fattah al Burhan, and his former number two, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, paramilitary chief of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), face each other.

They maintain armed clashes in various parts of Sudan, mainly in the capital, Khartoum, and in the Darfur region, in the southwest of the country and which borders Chad, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.. The war broke out in Khartoum and at the end of April it spread to West Darfur and then to South Darfur.

Between 2003 and 2008, Darfur was the scene of a bloody war of ethnic overtones. That conflict resulted in more than 300,000 deaths, according to the UN.

What is the origin of the conflict?

At the end of 2018, a series of riots due to the increase in food prices put the dictator Omar Al Bashir on the ropes. The popular mobilizations received the support of the Army, which tried to appropriate the demands and carried out a coup in 2019 that dethroned Al Bashir.

Then, a pact between the military and civil society agreed to a transition period. There were going to be 21 months of a military government and another 18 of a civilian one, after which free elections would come. But that was not what happened. The two military factions allied themselves and have remained in power…until last April. Since then, the Sudanese Army has been at war with the RSF paramilitaries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the midst of an armed conflict against Ukraine, signed a law on Monday that raises the age limit for citizens with military rank below that of officer to remain in the reserve by five years.

From now on, citizens with the rank of soldiers, sailors, sergeants, foremen, non-commissioned officers and marine guardsmen will be able to remain in the reserve for up to 40 years in the first category, up to 50 years in the second category and up to 55 in the third category.

The law also provides for the possibility of hiring a citizen with another nationality up to a maximum of 52 years, as well as those with a permanent residence permit in Russia.

The rule will enter into force on January 1, 2024.. However, until January 1, 2028, a transitional period is foreseen, during which citizens who are on the reserve will go into retirement in stages.

Two Ukrainian drones were shot down on Monday over Moscow with electronic combat means without causing casualties, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. It is “an act of international terrorism,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zajárova told RTVI television.

“During the morning of July 24, an attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack with two unmanned aerial devices against installations in the territory of Moscow was thwarted.. The two Ukrainian drones were inhibited with electronic fighting means and crashed,” Defense said in a statement. The department headed by Sergei Shoigu assured that, as a result of the “repressed terrorist attack” there were no victims.

The last attempted attack against Moscow occurred on July 4, when Defense claimed to have thwarted a terrorist attack with five drones launched by Ukraine against New Moscow, an administrative district of the Russian capital, and the Moscow region. Previously, Russia reported on June 21 the downing of three drones that were trying to attack facilities in the Moscow region.

Two of the most notorious attacks against the Russian capital that did succeed occurred in May, one against several apartment buildings that caused “minor damage” and another against the dome of the Senate Palace, which is part of the Kremlin complex in Red Square.

Likewise, the governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, has announced this Monday that the Russian air defense has intercepted eleven drones over the Crimean sky.. “There has been an impact on the ammunition depot in the Dzhankoy region. In addition, drone remnants have damaged a private house in the Kirovsky district,” Aksenov added.

Australia announced on Monday the purchase of 20 US-made C-130J Hercules aircraft, days before the visit of senior US representatives.. for a ministerial summit in the oceanic country.

The purchase, which will replace and expand the old fleet of 12 Hercules, is valued at 9,800 million Australian dollars (6,597 million US dollars or 5,924 million euros), announced Defense Minister Richard Marles.

The new planes will be used for the deployment of humanitarian personnel, equipment and supplies for search and rescue, natural disaster relief, and medical evacuations, according to a statement from Marles' office.

Delivery will begin in 2027

In addition, these devices manufactured by the US company Lockheed Martin will be deployed in future defense and peacekeeping operations in the region and globally, as has happened in recent decades in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other conflicts.

The announcement of the purchase of these planes, which will begin to be delivered at the end of 2027, comes a few days before the visit to Australia of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, for an annual ministerial meeting on July 28 and 29 in the northeastern city of Brisbane.

It also coincides with the biannual “Talisman Sabre” military exercises between the U.S.. and Australia, which began last Saturday and ends on August 4, in various parts of Australian territory and with the participation of more than 30,000 soldiers and 11 other countries, such as Germany, France or Japan, as guests.

The Secretary of Defense will take advantage of his visit to the oceanic country to witness, along with Marles, one of these combat simulation exercises in northern Australia, where a Chinese spy ship was detected last week, according to a photograph captured from an Australian patrol plane and published today by the public network ABC.

The military exercises come at a time when several Western countries are coming together to show unity in the face of China's more assertive expansion in the strategic Indo-Pacific region, traditionally linked to the United States and Australia.

In September 2021, Australia and the United States, together with their ally the United Kingdom, formed the AUKUS (for the acronym in English of the three countries) security pact, which includes the development of nuclear submarines for the oceanic country, in what has been interpreted as an attempt to counteract the advances of China.