B.C. #wildfire triggers state of emergency on Vancouver Island. The City of Port Alberni has declared a state of local emergency in response to a fast-moving wildfire that has burned more than 21.5 square kilometres of forest and triggered evacuations south of the Vancouver Island community.

The Mount Underwood wildfire continued to burn out of control Wednesday afternoon, closing the main access road between Port Alberni and Bamfield.

“This is unusual fire behaviour for wildfires on Vancouver Island,” the B.C. Wildfire Service said in an update. “We are in the midst of a severe drought and the island has seen very little rain since the end of June.”

#Qatar sentences the country’s Baha’i leader to 5 years for social media posts. The leader of the small Baha’i community in Qatar was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for social media posts that allegedly “cast doubt on the foundations of the Islamic religion,” according to court documents obtained by an international Baha’i organization monitoring the case.

A three-judge panel of Qatar’s Supreme Judiciary Council issued the verdict against Remy Rowhani, 71, who has been detained since April, according to documents provided to The Associated Press by the Baha’i International Community office in Geneva, Switzerland.

The judges rejected a defense request for leniency on grounds that Rowhani suffered from a heart condition, according to the documentation.

Saba Haddad, the Geneva office’s representative to the United Nations, depicted the verdict as “a serious breach and grave violation of the right to freedom of religion or belief and an attack on Remy Rowhani and the Baha’i community in Qatar.”

Haddad’s office, in a post on X, called on the international community “to urge Qatar’s government to uphold international law and ensure Mr. Rowhani’s immediate release.”

There was no immediate response from Qatar’s International Media Office to AP’s queries about the case.

The verdict came just two weeks after a group of U.N. human rights experts expressed “serious concern” about Rowhani’s arrest and detention, which they depicted as “part of a broader and disturbing pattern of disparate treatment of the Baha’i minority in Qatar.”

“The mere existence of Baha’is in Qatar and their innocuous presence on X cannot be criminalized under international law,” they said.

Rowhani -- former head of Qatar’s Chamber of Commerce -- had been arrested once previously, accused of offenses such as routine fundraising related to his leadership of Qatar’s Baha’i National Assembly.

The latest charges, filed in April, involve the Baha’i community’s X and Instagram accounts, which contain posts about Qatari holidays and Baha’i writings.

According to the documentation provided by the Geneva office, Qatari prosecutors alleged that these accounts “promoted the ideas and beliefs of a religious sect that raises doubt about the foundations and teachings of the Islamic religion.”

Rowhani’s daughter, Noora Rowhani, who lives in Australia, said via email that the five-year verdict is “so unfortunate and so shocking.”

“My eye condition is deteriorating and in five years, even if I meet, him I will most probably not be able to see him anymore,” she added.

The Baha’i faith -- a small but global religion with an interfaith credo -- fits comfortably into the religious spectrum of most countries but in several Middle East nations, Baha’i followers face repression that is drawing criticism from rights groups.

The abuse is most evident in Iran, which bans the faith and has been widely accused of persecuting Baha’i followers, human rights advocates say. They also report systemic discrimination in Yemen, Qatar and Egypt.

Advocates say Iran’s government has pressed for repression of the Baha’i followers in countries where it holds influence, such as Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels control the northern half of the country, and Qatar, which shares with Iran the world’s largest natural gas field.

The Baha’i faith was founded in the 1860s by Baha’u’llah, a Persian nobleman considered a prophet by his followers. Muslims consider the Prophet Muhammad the highest and last prophet.

From the Baha’i faith’s earliest days, Shiite Muslim clerics have denounced its followers as apostates. That repression continued after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, when many Baha’i followers were executed or went missing.

There are less than 8 million Baha’i believers worldwide, with the largest number in India.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

David Crary, The Associated Press

As #octopuses dwindle in Spanish waters, suppliers look to imports and farming despite concerns.

#GALICIA, Spain — At a humming factory in the Spanish town of O Carballino, workers sling dozens of limp octopuses into a metal cauldron, wincing as strings of slime splatter their aprons. Nearby, others slice tentacles and pack them into vacuum-sealed bags destined for restaurants and retailers across Europe, Asia and the United States — part of a growing global appetite for an animal that’s become increasingly scarce in its native waters.

Though O Carballino proudly calls itself Spain’s octopus capital — complete with a towering bronze octopus statue, streets lined with the pulperias that offer them up to diners and an annual octopus festival that draws tens of thousands — the century-old factory hasn’t sourced a single animal from local waters in 10 years.

“Here in Galicia, octopus has become really, really variable and scarce,” said Carlos Arcos, export manager of Frigorificos Arcos SL. “If you’re industrializing a process like we do, you need to guarantee your customers regularity of supply.”

Today, 100 per cent of the company’s octopus comes from Mauritania and Morocco.

While octopus numbers fluctuate naturally from year to year, scientists and fishers say Spain’s long-term trend is downward and surging international demand is only tightening the squeeze. That’s prompted some companies to explore farming the animals in tanks to ensure a long-term supply — a prospect that’s drawn pushback from animal welfare groups.
Pressure forces closure of Spain’s octopus fishery

This summer, that pressure reached a breaking point. Spain’s octopus fishery closed for three months — an unusually long pause meant to give it time to recover.

“The population has only just come back, but once the season opens, we’ll destroy it all in two weeks,” said Juan Martínez, a fisherman of more than four decades. Beside him, hundreds of octopus traps sat idle, stacked along the dock in his home port of Cangas. “This used to be a sustainable industry, but now we’ve broken an entire ecosystem.”

Octopus populations in Galicia also depend heavily on nutrient-rich upwelling — deep ocean water rising to the surface and bringing food for octopuses — said Ángel González, a research professor at the Spanish National Research Council. While upwelling naturally fluctuates, climate change is altering wind patterns, ocean stratification and nutrient delivery, making those cycles less predictable and, in some years, less productive. “When that weakens due to changing oceanographic and atmospheric conditions, numbers drop regardless of fishing.”

In response to growing demand and shrinking wild stocks, some companies in Spain are attempting to farm octopus in captivity — a move they say could ease pressure on the oceans. Grupo Profand is developing a research hatchery in Galicia focused on overcoming the biological challenges of breeding octopus. Meanwhile, seafood giant Nueva Pescanova is pursuing a full-scale industrial farm that would raise up to a million octopuses a year for slaughter.

Grupo Profand did not respond to an interview request. A spokesperson for Nueva Pescanova declined to comment.
Animal welfare groups say octopus shouldn’t be farmed

Animal welfare groups have condemned the proposed project as inhumane, citing plans to kill octopuses by submerging them in ice slurry and to confine the often-cannibalistic animals at high densities. They also warn it would pollute nearby waters with discharged waste, worsen overfishing of wild fish used for feed and inflict suffering on one of the ocean’s most complex creatures.

“Farming wild animals is cruel, but especially with octopuses given their solitary nature and extremely high intelligence,” said Helena Constela, head of communications at Seaspiracy, a group that advocates against industrial fishing. Keeping them confined together in tanks, she said, is “basically torture in slow motion.”

Michael Sealey, senior policy advisor at Oceana Europe, said aquaculture should focus on species with lower environmental costs, such as oysters and mussels, which require no fish feed. “We recognize that aquaculture has a role to play in feeding the world,” said Michael Sealey, senior policy advisor at Oceana Europe. “But we need to prioritize low-impact farming — not systems that rely on feeding wild fish to carnivorous species.”

Widespread concerns have already prompted action in the United States. Washington became the first state to ban octopus farming in 2024, followed by California, which also outlawed the sale of farmed octopus. Lawmakers in more than half a dozen other states have proposed similar bans, and a bipartisan federal bill to prohibit both farming and imports of farmed octopus is under consideration in Congress.

Though no commercial farms currently operate in the U.S., these preemptive measures reflect mounting unease over projects moving ahead in Europe, Asia and parts of Central and South America — unease fueled in part by the 2020 Oscar-winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher,” which showcased the animals’ intelligence and emotional complexity to millions on Netflix.
The arguments in favor of farming

“They have a real brain. They’re able to do things other animals cannot,” said González of the Spanish National Research Council. “But please — don’t cross the line. It’s an animal, it’s an invertebrate. We can’t extrapolate these kinds of things. Personality is linked to persons.”

González, who is working with Grupo Profand on their research hatchery, believes farming could help restore wild stocks by raising juvenile octopuses in captivity for release back into the sea — an approach animal welfare groups argue could pave the way for industrial-scale farming.

Javier Ojeda, national aquaculture representative at APROMAR, Spain’s aquaculture business association, said aquatic animals can play a key role in food security and may be more efficient to raise than livestock. “Octopuses grow extremely fast and efficiently — they’re not fighting gravity and they don’t spend energy heating their bodies," he said. He acknowledged welfare concerns but argued they should not block scientific progress.

“Farming octopus is something that cannot be stopped,” said Ojeda. “We’ve been eating them for a long time. Now we need to try to find best practices.”

#Poland expels 63 Ukrainians, Belarusians over concert troubles. The individuals were behind “disturbances, aggressive behaviour and certain provocations” at a Warsaw performance on Saturday by Belarusian rapper Max Korzh, Tusk told reporters.

The 57 Ukrainians and six Belarusians “will have to leave the country voluntarily or by force”, Tusk said, adding that everyone must respect the law no matter their nationality.

Poland “cannot allow anti-Ukrainian sentiments to be stirred up,” added Tusk, whose country has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

“A conflict between Poland and Ukraine would certainly be a gift for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”

Footage shared online showed spectators storming the arena during Saturday’s rap show at the national stadium. Local media reported there were 70,000 people there.

Police said in a statement that “officers detained 109 people for numerous offenses and crimes such as drug possession, assaulting security personnel, possession and carrying of pyrotechnic devices, and trespassing on the grounds of a mass event.”

Social media images appeared to show a concert-goer waving the flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a guerilla group that aligned itself with Nazi Germany. The symbol is banned under Polish law.

“We saw that various flags and symbols were displayed there,” police spokesman Robert Szumiata told independent news channel TVN24. “We collected all this evidence and sent it to the prosecutor’s office.”

Top officer says #Canada’s laws are ‘inadequate’ to fight cross-border crime. Thomas Carrique, president of the Association of Chiefs of Police, said police would have been in a better place to “disrupt” transnational crime, if the federal government had listened to his group in 2001, when it last proposed legislative changes.

“Across Canada, police are confronting the domestic fallout of international disorder, but we are being asked to do so using tools, and authorities built for a different era, guided by outdated and inadequate legislation that was never designed to address today’s criminal landscape,” he said on Tuesday.

Carrique said “geopolitical instability and social unrest” around the world are driving what he called “a new wave of public safety threats” as Canadian police confront transnational organized crime, extremism, drug trafficking and exploitation through the internet.

“Whether it’s human smuggling as well as illicit exportation and importation of drugs, precursors, and firearms, organized crime groups are taking advantage of systematic blind spots, outdated statues, and digital platforms to victimize Canadians,” he said.

While geopolitics and social unrest might be beyond the control of Canadians and their government, their level of preparation and response is not, he said.

The current Strong Borders Act legislation proposed by the federal governments gives police many -- but not all necessary -- tools to confront globalized crime, he said.

The government said the bill would help authorities combat transnational organized crime, stop the flow of fentanyl, crack down on money laundering and bolster police response to criminal networks.

Carrique, who’s the commissioner of Ontario Provincial Police, made the comments during a news conference in Victoria, where the association is holding its annual conference.

He said the federal government’s legislation aligns closely with several resolutions the group has passed during the conference this week.

Carrique said there are a “number of loopholes” that must be closed to reflect the realities of 21st century crime, such as the inability of police to get a search warrant for any Canada Post package under 500 grams.

“So, a judge cannot even issue a search warrant for a package of that size that may contain enough fentanyl to kill a number of people.”

Carrique also repeated calls for bail reform.

“The federal government has promised a crime bill this fall, introducing tougher bail sentencing provisions,” he said. “This will be critical.”

Victoria Police Chief Del Manak agreed on the need for tougher release conditions.

Manak said police made 16 arrests during a two-day-long project to disrupt disorder in the city’s downtown core.

“But what was telling was the number of rearrests that we made,” he said.

An individual arrested in one block was re-arrested the next day not far from his first arrest following his release on conditions, Manak added.

“What we’re really asking for here is the criminal justice system to be strengthened,” Manak said. “There must be consequences, and a deterrence for those that are carrying out criminal activity every single day,” Manak said.

Carrique acknowledged 2024 statistics that show crime rates trending down. The Crime Severity Index, for example, dropped by 4.1 per cent in 2024.

“We attribute that to some amazing work being done by police officers across the country, as well as other social services,” Carrique said.

“But we need to balance that against the perception of crime, and it doesn’t do us any good as police leaders in building trust, and confidence, or legitimacy, when we simply cite statistics to say, ‘property crimes are down five per cent, or the homicide rate dropped 10 per cent,’ because there are still people being victimized,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 12, 2025.

#Indian police arrest fake police running ‘crime bureau’ . The “International Police and Crime Investigation Bureau”, run from an office decorated with “police-like colours and logos”, was located in New Delhi satellite city Noida, police said in a statement late Sunday.

The accused forged documents and certificates and ran a website where they sought “donations” from victims, police said.

They also claimed they had an “affiliation with Interpol” and other international crime units.

“The perpetrators presented themselves as public servants,” the police said.

Police recovered several mobile phones, chequebooks, stamp seals and identity cards.

The arrests come just weeks after a man was arrested for allegedly running a fake embassy from a rented house near New Delhi and duping job seekers of money with promises of employment abroad.

The accused was operating an illegal “West Arctic embassy” and claimed to be the ambassador of fictional nations including “West Arctica, Saborga, Poulvia, Lodonia.”

#Scientists find 74-million-year-old mammal fossil in Chile. Scientists have discovered the fossil of a tiny mouse-sized mammal that lived in the time of the dinosaurs in Chilean Patagonia.

“Yeutherium pressor” weighed between 30 and 40 grams (about one ounce) and lived in the Upper Cretaceous period, about 74 million years ago.

It is the smallest mammal ever found in this region of South America, dating back to the era when it was part of a continental land mass known as Gondwana.

The fossil consists of “a small piece of jaw with a molar and the crown and roots of two other molars,” said Hans Puschel, who led the team of scientists from the University of Chile and Chile’s Millennium Nucleus research centre on early mammals.

The discovery was published this month in the British scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Researchers found the fossil in the Rio de las Las Chinas Valley in Chile’s Magallanes region, about 3,000 kilometres (1,864 miles) south of Santiago.

Despites its similarity to a small rodent, “Yeutherium pressor” was a mammal that must have laid eggs, like the platypus, or carried its young in a pouch like kangaroos or opossums.

The shape of its teeth suggests that it probably had a diet of relatively hard vegetables.

Just like the dinosaurs with whom it co-existed, the tiny mammal abruptly went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago.

#Trump’s new congressional map in Texas still stymied as Gavin Newsom urges president to give up

Israel targets and kills Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif as toll worsens on Gaza journalists.

#JERUSALEM — Israel’s military targeted an Al Jazeera correspondent with an airstrike Sunday, killing him, another network journalist and at least six other people, all of whom were sheltering outside Gaza City’s largest hospital complex.

Officials at Shifa Hospital said those killed included Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qreiqeh. The strike also killed four other journalists and two other people, hospital administrative director Rami Mohanna told The Associated Press. The strike also damaged the entrance to the hospital complex’s emergency building.

Both Israel and hospital officials in Gaza City confirmed the deaths, which press advocates described as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza. Israel’s military later Sunday described al-Sharif as the leader of a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Sharif had previously dismissed as baseless.

The incident marked the first time during the war that Israel’s military has swiftly claimed responsibility after a journalist was killed in a strike.

It came less than a year after Israeli army officials first accused al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a July 24 video, Israel’s army spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’ military wing.
Al Jazeera calls strike ‘assassination’

Al Jazeera called the strike “targeted assassination” and accused Israeli officials of incitement, connecting al-Sharif’s death to the allegations that both the network and correspondent had denied.

“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people,” the Qatari network said in a statement.

Apart from rare invitations to observe Israeli military operations, international media have been barred from entering Gaza for the duration of the war. Al Jazeera is among the few outlets still fielding a big team of reporters inside the besieged strip, chronicling daily life amid airstrikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.

The network has suffered heavy losses during the war, including 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.

Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the six that Israel accused of being members of militant groups last October.
Funeral-goers call to protect journalists

Hundreds of people, including many journalists, gathered Monday to mourn al-Sharif, Qureiqa and their colleagues. The bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital complex. Ahed Ferwana of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said reporters were being deliberately targeted and urged the international community to act.

Al-Sharif reported a nearby bombardment minutes before his death. In a social media post that Al Jazeera said was written to be posted in case of his death, he bemoaned the devastation and destruction that war had wrought and bid farewell to his wife, son and daughter.

“I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” the 28-year-old wrote.

The journalists are the latest to be killed in what observers have called the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times. The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Sunday that at least 186 have been killed in Gaza, and Brown University’s Watson Institute in April said the war was “quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters.”

Al-Sharif began reporting for Al Jazeera a few days after war broke out. He was known for reporting on Israel’s bombardment in northern Gaza, and later for the starvation gripping much of the territory’s population. Qureiqa, a 33-year-old Gaza City native, is survived by two children.

Both journalists were separated from their families for months earlier in the war. When they managed to reunite during the ceasefire earlier this year, their children appeared unable to recognize them, according to video footage they posted at the time.

In a July broadcast al-Sharif cried on air as woman behind him collapsed from hunger.

“I am taking about slow death of those people,” he said at the time.

Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers raided its offices in the occupied West Bank last year, ordering them closed.

Al-Sharif’s death comes weeks after a UN expert and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Israel had targeted him with a smear campaign.

Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, on July 31 said that the killings were “part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Sunday that it was appalled by the strike.

“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” Sara Qudah, the group’s regional director, said in a statement.

Magdy reported from Cairo.

Sam Metz And Samy Magdy, The Associated Press

Ukrainian drone strike kills 1 in as fighting rages ahead of a planned Trump-Putin summit. Nizhny Novgorod Gov. Gleb Nikitin said in an online statement that drones targeted two “industrial zones” that caused unspecified damage along with the three casualties.

A Ukrainian official said at least four drones launched by the country’s security services, or SBU, struck a plant in the city of Arzamas that produced components for the Khinzal 32 and Khinzal 101 missiles.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operations, said the Plandin plant produces gyroscopic devices, control systems and on-board computers for the missiles and is an “absolutely legitimate target” because it is part of the Russian military-industrial complex that works for the war against Ukraine.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses intercepted and destroyed a total of 39 Ukrainian drones overnight and Monday morning over several Russian regions as well as over the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.

The summit, which U.S. President Donald Trump will host in Alaska later this week, sees Putin unwavering on his maximalist demands to keep all the Ukrainian territory his forces now occupy but also to prevent Kyiv from joining NATO with the long-term aim to keep the country under Moscow’s sphere of influence.

Putin believes he enjoys the advantage on the ground as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold back Russian advances along the 1,000-kilometre (600-mile) front.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insists he will never consent to any Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory nor give up his country’s bid for NATO membership. European leaders have rallied behind Ukraine, saying peace in the war-torn nation can’t be resolved without Kyiv.

Meanwhile on the front lines, few Ukrainian soldiers believe there’s an end in sight to the war, other than a brief respite before Moscow resumes its attacks with even greater might.

The Associated Press