Ankara — Firefighters in Turkey have brought under control two large forest fires that had been burning for three days, with several other wildfires across the country expected to be put out soon, the Forestry Minister said on Sunday.

The blazes in Turkey’s western coastal province of Izmir and northern province of Bolu started late on Thursday and firefighters have been working to contain them since then.

Speaking in Izmir’s Karsiyaka district, Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said cooling efforts were under way to fully extinguish the fires. A small fire that started in Izmir’s Urla district on Saturday was also under control, he said.

More forest fires in Izmir’s Menderes district and in the western provinces of Aydin, Manisa and Usak as well as the northern province of Karabuk were still burning. Planes, helicopters and other vehicles had been brought in to douse the flames and all were “close to being contained.”

Turkish authorities warned of a high risk of further wildfires in northern and western Turkey for the next couple of days due to high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds.

Several parts of Turkey, especially its coastal regions, have been ravaged by wildfires in recent years as summers have become hotter and drier, which scientists attribute to climate change. 
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Berlin — At least 23 people were injured when two gondolas of a Ferris wheel caught fire at a music festival near Leipzig in eastern Germany, news agency dpa reported Sunday. 

The fire started in one gondola and then spread to a second one on Saturday night, police said. Four people suffered burn injuries and one suffered injuries from a fall. Others, including first responders and at least four police officers, were to be examined in the hospital for possible smoke inhalation, dpa reported. 

The accident took place at the Highfield Festival at Stoermthaler Lake near Leipzig. Police are still investigating what caused the fire. 

On Sunday morning, police were still unable to provide any concrete information about the condition of those injured. The exact number of casualties had also not been determined, dpa reported. 

The operator of the Ferris Wheel told dpa that no passengers were sitting in the gondola in which the fire started. 
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paris — French actor Alain Delon, who melted the hearts of millions of film fans whether playing a murderer, hoodlum or hitman in his postwar heyday, has died, French media reported on Sunday. He was 88.

Delon had been in poor health since suffering a stroke in 2019, rarely leaving his estate in Douchy, in France’s Val de Loire region.

With his striking blue eyes, Delon was sometimes referred to as the “French Frank Sinatra” for his handsome looks, a comparison Delon disliked. Unlike Sinatra, who always denied connections with the Mafia, Delon openly acknowledged his shady pals in the underworld.

In a 1970 interview with The New York Times, Delon was asked about such acquaintances, one of whom was among the last “Godfathers” of the underworld in the Mediterranean port of Marseille.

“Most of them, the gangsters I know … were my friends before I became an actor,” he said. “I don’t worry about what a friend does. Each is responsible for his own act. It doesn’t matter what he does.”

Delon shot to fame in two films by Italian director Luchino Visconti, Rocco and His Brothers in 1960 and The Leopard in 1963.

He starred alongside venerable French elder Jean Gabin in Henri Verneuil’s 1963 film Melodie en Sous-Sol (Any Number Can Win) and was a major hit in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 Le Samourai (The Godson). The role of a philosophical contract killer involved minimal dialogue and frequent solo scenes, and Delon shone.

Delon became a star in France and was idolized by men and women in Japan, but never made it as big in Hollywood despite performing with American cinema giants, including Burt Lancaster when the Frenchman played apprentice-hitman Scorpio in the eponymous 1973 film.

In the 1970 film Borsalino, he starred with fellow French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, playing gangsters who come to blows in an unforgettable, stylized fight over a woman.

Crowning moments also included 1969 erotic thriller La Piscine (The Swimming Pool), where Delon paired up with real-life lover Romy Schneider, in a sultry French Riviera saga of jealousy and seduction.

Troubled man

Born just outside Paris on November 8, 1935, Delon started life on the back foot: he was put in foster care at age 4 after his parents divorced.

He ran away from home at least once and was expelled several times from boarding schools before joining the marines at 17 and serving in then-French-ruled Indochina. There, too, he got into trouble over a stolen jeep.

Back in France in the mid-50s, he worked as a porter at the Paris wholesale food market Les Halles and spent time in the red-light Pigalle district before migrating to the cafes of the bohemian St. Germain des Pres area.

There he met French actor Jean-Claude Brialy, who took him to the Cannes Film Festival, where he attracted the attention of an American talent scout who arranged a screen test.

He made his film debut in 1957 in Quand la femme s’en mele (Send a Woman When the Devil Fails).

Sulphurous friends

Delon was a businessman as well as an actor, leveraging his looks to sell branded cosmetics and dabbling in racehorses with old underworld friends. He invested in a racehorse stable with Jacky “Le Mat” Imbert, a notorious figure in a thriving Marseille crime scene.

Delon’s more louche friendships exploded to the surface when a former bodyguard-cum-confidant, a young Yugoslav called Stefan Markovic, was found dead in a bag, with a bullet in his head, discarded in a rubbish dump near Paris.

The actor was interrogated and cleared by police but the “Markovic Affair” snowballed into a national scandal.

The man police charged with the Markovic murder — he was later acquitted — was Francois Marcantoni, a Corsican cafe owner and friend of Delon who thrived in the hustle and bustle of the Pigalle district in the aftermath of World War II.

Outspoken

Delon was outspoken offstage and courted controversy when he did so — notably when he said he regretted the abolition of the death penalty and spoke disparagingly of gay marriage, which was legalized in France in 2013.

He publicly defended the far-right National Front and telephoned its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, an old friend, to congratulate him when the party did well in local elections in 2014.

Delon’s lovers included Schneider and German model-turned-singer Nico, with whom he had a son. In 1964, he married Nathalie Barthelemy and fathered a second son before ending the marriage and embarking on a 15-year relationship with Mireille Darc. He had two more children with Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen.

In a January 2018 interview, Delon told Paris Match he was fed up with modern life and had a chapel and tomb ready for him on the grounds of his home near Geneva, and for his Belgian shepherd dog, called Loubo.

“If I die before him, I’ll ask the vet to let us go together. He will give the dog an injection so he can die in my arms.”

Delon’s last major public appearance was to receive an honorary Palme d’or at the Cannes film festival in May 2019.

In his last years, Delon was the center of a family feud over his care, which made headlines in French media.

In April 2024 a judge placed Delon under “reinforced curatorship,” meaning he no longer had full freedom to manage his assets. He was already under legal protection over concerns over his health and well-being.
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WARSAW, Poland — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Saturday reacted to reports that revived questions about who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, saying the initiators of the gas pipeline project should “apologize and keep quiet.” That comment came after one of his deputies denied a claim that Warsaw was partly responsible for its damage.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Ukrainian authorities were responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022, a dramatic act of sabotage that cut Germany off from a key source of energy and worsened an energy crisis in Europe.

Germany was a partner with Russia in the pipeline project. Poland has long said its own security interests have been harmed by Nord Stream.

“To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologize and keep quiet,” Tusk wrote on the social media portal X Saturday.

Tusk appeared to be reacting specifically to a claim by a former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, BND, August Hanning, who told the German daily Die Welt that the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines must have had Poland’s support. Hanning said Germany should consider seeking compensation from Poland and Ukraine.

Hanning, who retired from his spy chief job, did not provide any evidence in support of his claim. Some observers noted that he served under former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who went on to work later for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream.

Krzysztof Gawkowski, a deputy Polish prime minister and the minister of digital affairs, strongly denied reports that Poland and Ukraine had damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline in an interview Friday on the Polsat broadcaster.

Gawkowski alleged that the comments of the former member of the German intelligence service were “inspired by Moscow” and were aimed at destabilizing NATO countries.

“I believe that this is the sound of Russian disinformation,” he added.

On Wednesday, Polish prosecutors confirmed that they had received a warrant for a Ukrainian man wanted by Germany as a suspect in the pipeline attack, but that he left the country before he could be arrested.

The Nord Stream project, with its two pipelines created to carry gas from Russia to Europe along the Baltic Seabed, went ahead despite opposition from Poland, the U.S. and Ukraine.

They allowed Russia to send gas directly to Western Europe, bypassing Poland and Ukraine. With all gas previously going over land, Warsaw and Kyiv feared losing huge sums in transit fees and political leverage that came with controlling the gas transports.

The Wall Street Journal said in its report published Thursday that it spoke to four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who either participated in or had direct knowledge of the plot. All of them said the pipelines were a legitimate target in Ukraine’s war of defense against Russia. Ukrainian authorities are denying the claims.

Nord Stream 1 was completed and came online in 2011. Nord Stream 2 was not finished until the fall of 2021 but never became operational due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 
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moscow — A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia’s far-eastern Kamchatka Peninsula early Sunday morning local time, according to the regional earthquake monitoring service.

The local emergencies ministry said tremors were felt along the coast including in the region’s capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

“Operational teams of rescuers and firefighters are inspecting buildings,” the regional branch of Russia’s emergencies ministry in the Kamchatka region said on Telegram.

The earthquake struck at a depth of nearly 50 kilometers just after 7 a.m. local time, some 90 kilometers east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the United States Geological Survey reported.

The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center had initially issued a tsunami threat, but later said the threat had passed. Local authorities never issued a tsunami alert.

Several aftershocks were recorded after the initial quake, but of lower intensity, the Kamchatka branch of Russia’s Unified Geophysical Service reported on its website.

“Most of the aftershocks are imperceptible,” the regional emergency authority said on Telegram.

The peninsula lies on a seismically active belt surrounding most of the Pacific Ocean known as the “Ring of Fire,” and is home to more than two dozen active volcanoes. 
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Istanbul — Wildfires raged across western Turkey for a third straight day Saturday, exacerbated by high winds and warm temperatures, authorities said. 

More than 130 fires have erupted across the country in the past week, according to Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate. Most have been brought under control, but eight major fires continued in the provinces of Izmir, Aydin, Manisa, Karabuk and Bolu. 

Thousands of firefighters were tackling the blazes on land and from the air, with dozens of aircraft and hundreds of vehicles aiding in the emergency response. 

Thousands of people have been evacuated from the affected areas, but there have been no reported casualties, according to Agriculture and Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli, who spoke to reporters Saturday as he toured the affected provinces. 

Yumakli cited low humidity, high winds and high temperatures as exacerbating factors. The General Directorate of Forestry warned people not to light fires outside for the next 10 days because of the weather conditions across western Turkey, warning of a 70% greater risk of wildfires. 

Meanwhile, authorities detained four people in Bolu in connection with the fires, two of whom were arrested and two released. 

In June, a fire spread through settlements in southeast Turkey, killing 11 people and  leaving dozens of others requiring medical treatment. 
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Helsinki, Finland — Western officials and analysts are suspicious of Beijing’s admission this week that a Chinese container ship damaged the Balticconnector — a vital Baltic Sea gas pipeline linking Estonia and Finland — in October.

The South China Morning Post reported August 12 that the Chinese government notified Finland and Estonia 10 months after the incident that it was caused by a Hong Kong-registered ship called Newnew Polar Bear, but blamed a storm for what it called the accident.

In an interview August 13 with Estonia’s public radio, ERR, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said he was skeptical of China’s claim that a storm caused the incident.

“Personally, I find it very difficult to understand how a ship’s captain could fail to notice for such a long time that its anchor had been dragging along the seabed, but it is up to the prosecutor’s office to complete the investigation,” he said.

Markku Mylly, the former director of the European Maritime Safety Agency, told local media in Helsinki there were no storms in the Gulf of Finland at the time. The Finnish newspaper Iltalehti consulted data from the Finland Meteorological Institute and confirmed that Mylly’s memory was correct.

Pevkur told ERR that Estonia would not give up claims against China for compensation.

The Baltic Sea oil and gas pipeline, which was built with EU assistance, was commissioned in 2019 at a total cost of around $331 million, to wean Finland and the three Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — off their dependence on Russia for natural gas.

The pipeline was the source of almost all of Estonia’s natural gas supply after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine sparked European restrictions on the import of Russian gas.  After the damage, Estonia had to temporarily rely on Latvia for natural gas.

The pipeline was reopened for commercial operations in April after repairs that cost about $38 million, a senior vice president at Gasgrid Finland told The Associated Press. A few telecoms cables were also damaged in the incident.

Finnish and Estonian investigative agencies recovered the ship’s 6-ton anchor from the sea floor near the damaged pipeline after the incident and tracked it to the ship, which they tried to contact; it refused to respond.

The damage occurred at a time of heightened tension between Europe and Russia over sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, and critics suspected it was a deliberate act of sabotage by Russia or its ally China.

After the damage to the pipeline, the Newnew Polar Bear first sailed to St. Petersburg and Arkhangelsk in Russia and later docked in China’s port of Tianjin. 

Eoin Micheal McNamara, a global security expert at the Finland Institute of International Affairs, told VOA that Finnish people doubt Beijing’s claim that the ship’s damage to the pipeline was an accident.

“Undersea infrastructure elsewhere in the wider Nordic-Baltic region has also been damaged by ‘manmade activity’ in recent years. There was the Nord Stream sabotage in 2022 and the severing of a data cable between Norway and its Arctic island of Svalbard before that,” McNamara said. “As geopolitical tensions rise, more targeted sabotage is being expected.”

German media reported this week that investigators asked Poland to arrest a Ukrainian diving instructor for allegedly being part of a team that blew up the Baltic Sea’s Nord Stream gas pipelines, which supplied Russian gas to Europe. Russia blamed Britain, Ukraine and the United States for the sabotage, which they denied.

McNamara said there are suspicions that Russia was involved in the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline. “Plausible deniability is a key tenet for hybrid interference. There are suspicions that use of a Hong Kong-registered vessel was a tactic to gain this plausible deniability,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year dismissed the idea that Russia could have been behind an attack on the pipeline as “rubbish.”

Estonia and Finland are still jointly investigating the ship, which China’s NewNew Shipping Company owns.

The Estonian prosecutor’s office, which oversees the investigation, said under international law, China’s statement acknowledging the ship caused the damage as an “accident” cannot be used as evidence in a criminal investigation because China has not invited Estonian criminal investigators to participate in Beijing’s own investigation.

VOA contacted the Chinese Foreign Ministry about the matter but was referred to the Chinese shipping departments.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a news briefing on August 13 said, “China is advancing the investigation in accordance with the facts and the law and is in close communication with relevant countries. It is hoped that all parties will continue to promote the investigation in a professional, objective and cooperative manner, and jointly ensure that the incident is handled in a sound manner.”

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told VOA in an email, “We are constantly cooperating with China and exchanging information regarding this matter, but we will not go into details because the investigation is still ongoing.”

The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, or NBI, which is investigating the case, told VOA that the Finnish and Estonian authorities have been cooperating with the Chinese authorities on the matter. The NBI said it will publish the findings with the Estonian side as early as this fall.

“Based on the evidence collected and information analyzed during the investigation, it can be stated that the course of events is considered clear and there are sufficient reasons to suspect that the container vessel Newnew Polar Bear is linked to the damages. The cause for the damages seems to be the anchor and anchor chain [struck] the mentioned vessel.”

The NBI added, “It must be stated that the investigation is still ongoing and final conclusions, what was behind these incidents (technical failure — negligence, poor seamanship — deliberate act), can be made only after all necessary investigative measures have been finalized, and this will still take some time.”

VOA’s Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report. Some information was provided by Reuters.
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LONDON — A fire broke out Saturday at Somerset House, a large arts venue on the River Thames in central London.

Smoke billowed from the building and flames could be seen coming from the roof as firefighters on tall ladders showered it with water.

The cause of the fire was not yet known, the London Fire Brigade said. Fifteen engines and about 100 firefighters were deployed.

Somerset House said all staff and the public were safe and the site was closed. The venue had been scheduled to host a breakdancing event.

The neoclassical building, which is nearly 250 years old, houses the Courtauld Gallery that features works by Van Gogh, Manet and Cezanne.
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MOSCOW — Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Ukraine used Western rockets, likely U.S.-made HIMARS, to destroy a bridge over the Seym River in the Kursk region, killing volunteers trying to evacuate civilians.

“For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by Western-made rocket launchers, probably American HIMARS,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said late Friday on the Telegram messaging app.

“As a result of the attack on the bridge over the Seym River in the Glushkovo district, it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed,” she said.

There was no indication of how many volunteers were killed in Friday’s attack.

Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Kyiv’s forces had advanced between 1 and 3 kilometers (up to 1.8 miles) in some areas in the Kursk region on Friday, 11 days since beginning an incursion into the western Russian territory.

Kyiv claimed to have taken control of 82 settlements over 1,150 square kilometers (444 square miles) in the region since August 6.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, cited by the Interfax news agency, said on Saturday that Russian forces repelled several Ukrainian attacks in the Kursk region, but it did not report recapturing any territory.

It said Ukrainian forces had unsuccessfully attempted to advance towards the villages of Kauchuk and Alekseyevskiy, which lie roughly halfway between the Ukrainian border and the Kursk nuclear power plant.

In a separate statement, the ministry accused Ukraine of planning to attack the plant in a false flag operation.

Reuters could not independently verify either side’s battlefield accounts.

Russia has accused the West of supporting and encouraging Ukraine’s first ground offensive on Russian territory and said that Kyiv’s “terrorist invasion” would not change the course of the war.

The U.S. HIMARS rockets provided to Ukraine have a range of up to about 80 kilometers (50 miles).

The United States, which has said it cannot allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the war he launched in February 2022, so far deems the surprise incursion a protective move that justifies the use of U.S. weaponry, according to officials in Washington.
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kyiv, Ukraine — Ukraine’s air defenses shot down all 14 Russian drones fired in an overnight attack, the Ukrainian air force said Saturday. The air force said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that the Shahed drones were downed over six Ukrainian regions in the south and center of the country.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign ministry said Ukraine had used Western rockets, likely U.S.-made HIMARS, to destroy a bridge over the Seym river in the Kursk region, killing volunteers trying to evacuate civilians.

“For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by Western-made rocket launchers, probably American HIMARS,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, said late Friday on the Telegram messaging app.

“As a result of the attack on the bridge over the Seym River in the Glushkovo district, it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed.”

Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Friday that Kyiv’s forces were advancing between 1 and 3 kilometers in some areas in the Kursk region, 11 days since beginning an incursion into Russia. Kyiv has claimed to have taken control of 82 settlements over an area of 1,150 square kilometers in the region since August 6.

Reuters could not independently verify either side’s battlefield accounts.

Russia has accused the West of supporting and encouraging Ukraine’s first ground offensive on Russian territory and said Kyiv’s “terrorist invasion” would not change the course of the war.

The United States, which has said it cannot allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the war he launched in February 2022, so far deems the surprise incursion a protective move that justifies the use of U.S. weaponry, officials in Washington said. 
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ISTANBUL — Firefighters were tackling blazes across Turkey on Friday as dry, hot and windy weather conditions led to a series of fires, including one that threatened World War I memorials and graves at the Gallipoli battle site.

At the peninsula where an Allied landing was beaten back by Ottoman troops in a yearlong campaign in 1915, the flames reached Canterbury Cemetery, where soldiers from New Zealand are interred.

Images of the site in northwest Turkey showed soot-blackened gravestones in a scorched garden looking out over the Aegean Sea.

The fire was brought under control by Friday. Officials said it was started by a spark from electricity lines that spread through forested areas.

Elsewhere, however, the continuous work of emergency crews stretched over days and nights.

On the west coast, a fire threatened houses on the outskirts of Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, where a blaze broke out in woods Thursday night. Residents fled their homes as ash fell around them.

“The fire in the Dogancay region unfortunately reached residential areas due to the wind. We want our citizens living in the region to evacuate their homes as soon as possible,” District Mayor Irfan Onal posted on social media.

In Manisa Province, a fire was burning for the third day in Gordes, a rural wooded district in Turkey’s northwest. Nearly 80 homes were evacuated and most buildings in the village of Karayakup suffered severe fire damage, the Demiroren News Agency reported.

Meanwhile, in nearby Bolu, firefighters were working for a second day to put out a blaze.

Turkey has mobilized dozens of aircraft, hundreds of vehicles and thousands of personnel to fight the fires. Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli warned of a heightened risk of wildfires over the weekend due to low humidity, high winds and high temperatures.

“Our intervention capability and capacity is limited to a certain point,” he told journalists. “It is not possible to emerge victorious from this struggle without the support of our citizens. Therefore, I request high-level sensitivity especially in these three days.”

The General Directorate of Forestry warned people not to light fires outside for the next 10 days due to the current weather conditions across western Turkey, warning of a 70% greater risk of wildfires.

Earlier this week, firefighters in neighboring Greece fought a fire that burned an area almost twice the size of Manhattan. The fire north of Athens gutted scores of homes before it was contained Tuesday. One person was killed.

In June, a fire spread through settlements in southeast Turkey, killing 11 people and leaving dozens of others requiring medical treatment.
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