Starting this Saturday, Portugal will impose controls on the border with Spain due to the visit of Pope Francis, a measure decreed on the occasion of World Youth Day (WYD) in Lisbon, which will be limited to the “strictly necessary minimum”, and will be in force until August 7.

Travelers who cross through one of the 21 border crossings with the neighboring country will have to show an identity document to enter between midnight this Saturday and until August 7. The Spanish consulate in Lisbon has recommended that minors also go with a valid ID or passport.

Some of the border crossings are located in Valença-Viana do Castelo, Vila Verde da Raia-Chaves, Quintanilha-Braganza, Vilar Formoso-Guarda, Marvão-Portalegre, Caia-Elvas, Vila Verde de Ficalho-Beja, Castro Marim and Monção.

Likewise, you can cross through Barrancos, Rio de Onor, Melgaço, Montalegre, Tourém, Vinhais, Ponte da Barca, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Pomarão, Termas de Monfortinho-Castelo Branco, Miranda do Douro and Mourão.

The Internal Security System of Portugal has assured in a statement that “it will not close the borders”, but that the controls will be “selective and directed, based on information and risk analysis”.. The Foreigners and Borders Service, together with other State security forces and services, will be in charge of implementing the measure.

The control will be carried out according to the “principle of proportionality” and will be limited to the “strictly necessary minimum to respond to possible threats to public order and internal security”, says the resolution of the Council of Ministers.

The Portuguese government has justified the measure by the “dimension, characteristics and complexity of the event”, its “media visibility”, the “enormous flow of people expected” and the “current context of threat”.

For this reason, it considers it necessary to prevent “the entry into national territory of citizens or groups whose behavior may be likely to compromise the security of national and foreign citizens who participate in the event.”

It is not the first time that Portugal has taken a measure of this level, as it carried out a similar practice during the visit of Pope Francis in 2017, on the occasion of the centenary of the apparitions of the Virgin in Fatima, according to Catholic tradition.

World Youth Day will be held in Lisbon and neighboring municipalities between August 1 and 6 with a forecast of one million participants, but Pope Francis will arrive in Portuguese territory on Wednesday the 2nd, where he will stay until August 6 and will also visit Fátima.

Greece and Italy continue this weekend on red alert for extreme heat as their populations prepare for almost unparalleled highs in official records in the middle of next week.

The island of Sardinia, for example, will register this coming Monday 48ºC, less than a degree of difference from the national record of 48.8ºC registered two years ago in Sicily. Two days later, some Greek towns will reach 47ºC, in the midst of the numerous forest fires that started last Monday near Athens, the capital, still active.

“The difficult days are not over yet,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned on Thursday, in permanent contact with other European leaders in case it is necessary to ask for more international help.

Multiple high-pressure fronts are bringing extreme heat across the planet's northern hemisphere, from California's Death Valley to Turpan in western China.. These heat waves are becoming more intense and prolonged as fossil fuel emissions warm the planet.

The Greek authorities have, for the time being, asked people with health problems to work from home and public services to show flexibility in working hours. Officials in outdoor activities have been told to stop serving after noon.

For its part, Italy's Health Ministry has warned of emergency conditions in 19 major cities, including Rome, Naples and Cagliari.

Heat is increasing energy demand in southern Europe. Spain has been forced to use all its gas plants to cope with rising electricity demand on Wednesday, as people turned to air conditioning to cope, according to the industry association Sedigas, in a report collected by Bloomberg.

While the Mediterranean suffocates, northern Europe will stay cool for the next ten days. The temperature in London will remain this Saturday 5.5 °C below the average this Saturday, according to Maxar Technologies Inc., while capitals such as Oslo (Norway) will maintain this Saturday the 9.5º C of Friday.

A girl has been rescued after showing a poster that read the phrase “help me” while she was kidnapped in a car in the state of California, in the United States.

The victim, a 13-year-old girl, was allegedly abducted on July 6 at a bus stop in the state of Texas, when she was forced into a vehicle at gunpoint, the Long Beach Police Department reported in a statement.

On July 9, Long Beach officers responded to a 911 emergency service call in which bystanders had seen the victim in a parked vehicle holding a piece of paper with the word “help me” written on it, prompting officers to the scene to find the victim “visibly emotional and distressed.”

The Police were able to locate and arrest the suspect, a 61-year-old man who was in a nearby laundromat washing the kidnapped woman's clothes, a moment that she took advantage of to prepare the poster.. The agents found in the car the firearm used for the kidnapping, a black BB gun “that looked like a semi-automatic pistol”, and a pair of handcuffs.

The alleged kidnapper was transported to the Long Beach City jail, where he was booked for kidnapping, lewd acts with a child and fugitive from justice with a bail of 100,000 dollars (about 90,000 euros) and was released into custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on July 11.

Residents of the coastal town of Green Head, in western Australia, woke up on Saturday to a large, unidentified metal object lying on the sand on the beach.

Quickly, the Australian Space Agency traveled to the place advising the population to avoid coming into contact with the object and not to move it because “the origin is unknown.”

The police have launched an investigation to try to find out where it came from and what it is about, while the Australian Space Agency is working with other agencies to resolve the issue.

So far, “the object is most likely a solid rocket motor casing,” but was initially believed to be “a foreign space launch vehicle,” the Australian Space Agency said on its Twitter account.

The massive object, which appears to have been man-made, is in appalling condition: damaged at one end and covered in barnacles, having been in the sea for a long time.

As for its size, “taller than a human”, it measures approximately 2.5 meters wide and almost three meters long.

Internet users' theories

Internet users have given free rein to the imagination and some theories about the mysterious object are already circulating. The most commented, that the metal has fallen from space and comes from a plane.

Another theory, in line with its origin in space, is that the object was part of the Boeing 777 that disappeared nine years ago during the MH370 flight, but has been ruled out.

On the other hand, the engineer of the European Space Agency, Andrea Boyd, has explained that according to experts the object comes from an Indian rocket that was launching a satellite: “based on the shape and size, it is an upper stage engine of an Indian rocket that is used for many different missions.”

That Indian rocket could be the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket and the Indian Defense Research Wing has already claimed the object as their own.

The Consul General of Spain in La Paz, Guillermo Gil, visited the Spanish activist Amparo Carvajal this past Thursday, who has been holding a vigil for 50 days for the recovery of the headquarters of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia (APDHB), taken over by a group related to the ruling party.

Amparo Carvajal? Who is this Spaniard that the consul is visiting and what fight is she carrying out in Bolivia? For many Bolivians, she is a hero, to the point that some citizen platform has requested the Nobel Peace Prize for her.

From Riano to La Paz

Amparo Carvajal was born in 1939 in Riaño (León) in a family with 13 siblings.. She was already 32 years old when she arrived in Bolivia in November 1971 as a Mercedarian missionary from Bérritz.. Nine years later, in March 1980, she left the congregation (the rest of her companions left the country).. And yet, they keep calling her “madrecita”.

“She is still here, dedicated to a coherent fight in favor of human rights, regardless of the government in power, military or civilian, right or left,” the Jesuit priest, linguist, researcher and Spanish anthropologist, Xavier Albó (died in Cochabamba on January 20 of this year) wrote of her in 2016.

She is still here, dedicated to a coherent fight in favor of human rights, whatever the government in power”

Since 1971 Bolivia lived in the midst of the dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer, who had carried out a coup. In 1974, Carvajal was one of the co-founders of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia (APDHB), which replaced the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace, dependent on the Catholic Church, dismantled by the dictator (for telling the truth of the Valle Massacre in detail: the Army dispersed the peasant crowd with bursts of machine guns and shots).

APDHB, a combative organization

The APDHB is ecumenical and, therefore, freer from episcopal control. In this way, it has been able to denounce the repression of the military dictatorships. Already in democracy, it has been a center of protest against neoliberal policies. At that point there were internal divisions.

“In the last decade, Amparo has had to face a delicate situation due to the division of the APDHB, a division that began when Sacha Llorenti was its executive director, years before the time of Evo Morales, but which has hardened with the MAS,” said Albó, a specialist in the study of nations and indigenous peoples and rural Bolivian populations.

The MAS (Movement to Socialism) is the political party founded in 1997 by Morales, which has governed Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, and then, in November 2020, with the victory of Luis Arce. The divisions within the APDHB became more palpable during the MAS governments, but also with the fall of Morales in 2019.

As Albó says, “it is quite common everywhere that human rights organizations handle themselves more easily in the face of a clear enemy (for example, a military dictatorship) than when the abuses come from a democratic government”. A few weeks ago Amparo Carvajal was re-elected president of the APDHB.

It's already 50 days of vigil

However, the Spanish company has lost the headquarters of its organization: it has been occupied. On June 2, a group led by Édgar Salazar, affiliated with MAS, the government party, took over the headquarters of the APDHB. This coming, the octogenarian has completed 50 days of vigil in order to recover the property and has been equipped on the roof for ten days. “I, until I die, I'm going to stay here. I don't have access to a bathroom, I don't have anything. Many years ago, someone told me: Amparo, Bolivia has nice laws, but they are not enforced and that is what happened with this freedom action,” said Carvajal.

“They seek to silence the voices of protest, corruption, violation of human rights, but it has the purpose of not having opposition. The Government has been systematically selecting who it is going to imprison, persecute (…). It has learned the lesson of the dictators to appease and close the mouth and the attitudes of struggle and submission, voices of protest, voices of denunciation,” says the former leader of the Bolivian Central Obrera, Lucio Gonzáles Alanes, to the newspaper Los Tiempos.

Physical and psychological torture

Voices critical of the MAS assure that Carvajal has resorted to pressure from related groups and the Police, with the aim of removing her from the House of Human Rights and restricting her activities in defense of fundamental rights.. In the case of the Spanish woman, “systematic torture” has been denounced, despite the existence of a judicial resolution to stop the “psychological violence and threats” by Salazar.

It is about physical and psychological torture against Amparo sponsored by the same Government because it has guarded the offices of the Assembly and does not allow access to anyone “

Lawyer Eusebio Vera explained that all the actions carried out by the organization's parallel leadership are like a process of “systematic torture by the MAS government in order to gain control of the APDHB.”. Vera maintains that “it is physical and psychological torture against Amparo sponsored by the same government because it has guarded the offices of the Assembly and does not allow access to anyone.”

No solution to the conflict

In a summit that brings together ombudsmen from 22 countries in Cochabamba, the second deputy of the Ombudsman of Spain, Patricia Bárcena, has preferred not to refer to the extreme situation of Carvajal. “We cannot supervise or give lessons to other States (on the defense of human rights) or refer to any particular case,” Bárcena said.

The Bolivian Ombudsman has ruled in favor of Carvajal. He has presented a report to a La Paz judge to order the execution of the resolution he issued last week to protect the human rights of the activist. However, there is no solution to the conflict.

“His health is at risk, he does not have access to hygienic services, any mishap that happens is the responsibility of the Government,” the president of the Apdhb of La Paz, Javier Quisberth, told Efe. Carvajal, according to the agency, “is out in the open and wears diapers because he can't use the bathroom at the headquarters that is taken over by Salazar's group.”

The Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, has assured this Friday that the counteroffensive is advancing more slowly than expected, since the operation began later than initially planned.. This was due to the fact that at first they did not have enough weapons or ammunition, as confirmed by the Aspen Security Forum.

“We had plans to start in the spring, but we didn't because, frankly, we didn't have enough ammunition and weapons, nor enough properly trained brigades.”. As a consequence, the Ukrainian president has assured that he gave Russia time to prevent the attack.

“Because we started a little late, it can be said, and it is the truth, shared by all the experts, for Russia it was an opportunity to mine all our land and build several lines of defense,” he explained.

Continuing with his explanations, Zelenski has assured that this extra time that the Russian troops had to prepare has produced a clear situation.. “They had more time to prepare, that's why they built all those lines. This caused a slower pace of our counteroffensive actions,” he concluded.

However, Zelensky has stated that, despite the difficulties, his troops are making progress.. “We are approaching a time when relevant actions can be accelerated,” he said.

The Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Vadim Pristaiko, has been removed from office days after releasing a statement in which he criticized the “bad sarcasm” of the President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky, to some comments from London.

Last week, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace advised the Ukrainian authorities to be more grateful to the Western powers for the steady supplies of arms and financial support sent since the outbreak of the war.

In response, Zelensky questioned what exactly Wallace wanted, sarcastically noting that he would give thanks to the British representative every morning.. “We can thank the minister personally every morning,” he said.

Pristaiko then considered that this exchange of statements was counterproductive to the interests of Ukraine, even more so considering that London has been one of kyiv's main allies since February 2022, when Moscow began the invasion.

Pristaiko has represented Ukrainian interests in London for the past three years. Before that he had held the post of Deputy Prime Minister as well as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

The German Defense Minister, Boris Pistorius, has assured this Friday that Berlin will support the defense of Poland in the event of an attack on its eastern border by mercenaries of the Wagner Group based in Belarus.

“We are all together, always in the closest coordination, not only when we meet physically at the level of defense ministers, but also in another way.. Wherever our Polish friends need support, in the worst case, they will have it,” he said during a press conference in Prague.

Pistorius has not only guaranteed Germany's support for Polish security, but has also ensured in his statements that he could say “with confidence” that the two NATO allies will be “prepared” in the event of an attack.

After staging an attempted rebellion, led by Yevgeni Prigozhin, the Wagner Group mercenaries were sent by Russia to Belarus, where they are now even participating in the training of the Belarusian Armed Forces.

Thus, given the presence of paramilitaries near its borders, Poland has ordered to redouble security on the eastern flank in the face of a possible threat from Belarus.