Category World News

Wildfires have engulfed a historic lodge, destroying it and dozens of other structures along the Grand Canyon’s North Rim in the state of Arizona in the southwestern United States, park officials say.

Rangers were forced to close access to that part of the Grand Canyon National Park on Sunday. Superintendent Ed Keable said the Grand Canyon Lodge was consumed by flames.

He said a park visitor centre, petrol station, wastewater treatment plant, administrative building and employee housing were also among the 50 to 80 structures lost.

Two wildfires are burning at or near the North Rim. They are known as the White Sage Fire and the Dragon Bravo Fire. The latter is the one that destroyed the lodge and other structures.

Started by lightning on July 4, the Dragon Bravo Fire was initially managed by authorities with a “confine and contain” strategy. However, due to hot temperatures, low humidity and strong winds, it grew to 20 square kilometres (7.8 square miles), fire officials said.

No injuries have been reported so far.

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs urged the federal government late on Sunday to investigate the National Park Service’s response to the wildfire.

“They must first take aggressive action to end the wildfire and prevent further damage,” she said in a post on X. “But Arizonans deserve answers for how this fire was allowed to decimate the Grand Canyon National Park.”

I am incredibly saddened by the destruction of the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, and my heart goes out to every person impacted by the Dragon Bravo Fire near the Grand Canyon’s North Rim.

Thank you to every firefighter and first responder taking action to combat the flames.

Millions of people visit the park annually with most going to the South Rim. The North Rim is open seasonally. It was evacuated on Thursday because of the wildfire and will remain closed for the rest of the season, the park said in a statement.

The Grand Canyon Lodge was often the first prominent feature that visitors would see, even before viewing the canyon.

“It just feels like you’re a pioneer when you walk through [the lodge],” said Tim Allen, an Arizona resident and yearly visitor to the Grand Canyon. “It really felt like you were in a time gone by.”

Caren Carney, another visitor to the park evacuated with her family, said she was heartbroken to hear that such a “magical place” had burned down.

Firefighters at the North Rim and hikers in the inner canyon were also evacuated on Saturday and Sunday. The park said that beside the fire risk, they could also potentially be exposed to chlorine gas after the treatment plant burned.

Aramark, the company that operated the lodge, said all employees and guests were safely evacuated. “As stewards of some of our country’s most beloved national treasures, we are devastated by the loss,” spokesperson Debbie Albert said.

One of the greatest wonders of the natural world, the Grand Canyon is the result of the Colorado River eating away at layers of red sandstone and other rock for millions of years, leaving a gash up to 30km (18 miles) wide and more than 1.6km (1 mile) deep.

A United States Senate inquiry into an attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump at a campaign rally last year has blamed the Secret Service for “inexcusable” failures in its operations and response and called for more serious disciplinary action.

The report, released on Sunday, a year after a 20-year-old gunman opened fire on Trump, accused the presidential protection service of a pattern of negligence and communications breakdowns in planning and executing the rally.

On July 13, 2024, a gunman shot the then-Republican Party presidential candidate during a campaign rally in the town of Butler in the state of Pennsylvania, grazing his ear.

One bystander was killed and two people in addition to Trump were wounded before a government sniper killed the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks.

“What happened was inexcusable and the consequences imposed for the failures so far do not reflect the severity of the situation,” said the report released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The shooting energised Trump’s bid to return to the White House as his campaign used a photo of him bloodied and pumping his fist as he was hurried offstage to woo voters.

‘Complete breakdown’

The report did not shed new light on the gunman’s motive, which still remains a mystery, but accused the Secret Service of “a cascade of preventable failures that nearly cost President Trump his life”.

“The United States Secret Service failed to act on credible intelligence, failed to coordinate with local law enforcement,” said the committee’s Republican chairman, Rand Paul.

“Despite those failures, no one has been fired,” he added.

“It was a complete breakdown of security at every level – fuelled by bureaucratic indifference, a lack of clear protocols and a shocking refusal to act on direct threats.

“We must hold individuals accountable and ensure reforms are fully implemented so this never happens again.”

The Secret Service identified communications, technical and human errors and said reforms were under way, including improving coordination between different law enforcement bodies involved in security at events and establishing a division dedicated to aerial surveillance.

Six unidentified staff have been disciplined, according to the agency. The punishments ranged from 10 to 42 days of suspension without pay, and all six were put into restricted or nonoperational positions.

Days before the assassination attempt’s anniversary, Trump said “mistakes were made” but he was satisfied with the investigation.

On Sunday, Trump told reporters, “God was protecting me,” adding that he did not like to think “too much” about the assassination attempt.

“It’s a little bit of a dangerous profession being president, but I really don’t like to think about it too much,” he said.

The European Union has delayed retaliatory tariffs on exports from the United States as officials scramble to reach a trade deal with Washington ahead of US President Donald Trump’s August 1 deadline.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said on Sunday that the bloc would extend its suspension of countermeasures as it continued negotiations with the Trump administration.

“At the same time, we will continue to prepare for the countermeasures, so we’re fully prepared,” von der Leyen said during a news conference in Brussels.

“We have always been very clear that we prefer a negotiated solution,” she added.

“This remains the case, and we will use the time that we have now until the 1st of August.”

The EU’s announcement comes after Trump on Saturday unveiled plans to slap a 30 percent tariff on European and Mexican exports from August 1.

The EU in March announced retaliatory tariffs on 26 billion euros ($30bn) of US exports in response to Trump’s duties on steel and aluminium.

The bloc paused the measures for 90 days the following month after Trump announced he would delay the implementation of his so-called “reciprocal tariffs”.

The EU’s pause had been due to expire at midnight on Monday.

EU trade ministers are scheduled to convene in Brussels on Monday to discuss options for responding to Trump’s latest tariff threats.

On Sunday, White House Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett said that Trump was not happy with the “sketches of deals” presented by US trade partners so far and that their offers would “need to be better”.

“These tariffs are real if the president doesn’t get a deal that he thinks is good enough, but, you know, conversations are ongoing, and we’ll see where the dust settles,” Hassett told ABC News’s This Week.

Taken together, EU member countries are the US’s largest trading partner.

Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, who is 92 years old, has announced plans to run for an eighth term in this year’s presidential election on October 12.

Biya, who is the world’s oldest serving head of state, made the announcement in posts on X on Sunday in both French and English.

“I am a candidate in the presidential election,” he wrote. “Rest assured that my determination to serve you matches the urgency of the challenges we face.”

Biya, who is seeking a new term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100, came to power more than four decades ago in 1982, when his predecessor, Ahmadou Ahidjo, resigned.

His health is the subject of frequent speculation, most recently last year when he disappeared from public view for 42 days. His re-election bid had been widely anticipated but not formally confirmed until Sunday’s social media post.

Biya had been posting regularly on his verified X handle in the buildup to the announcement.

In 2018, in a first, he also used social media to announce his candidacy for that year’s presidential contest, marking a rare direct engagement with the public on digital platforms.

Members of the governing Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) and other supporters have since last year publicly called for Biya to seek another term.

But opposition parties and some civil society groups argue his long rule has stifled economic and democratic development. Two former allies have quit the governing coalition and announced plans to separately run in the election.

“President Biya’s announcement to run again is a clear sign of Cameroon’s stalled political transition. After over 40 years in power, what the country needs is renewal – not repetition. Cameroonians deserve democratic change and accountable leadership,” Nkongho Felix Agbor, a human rights advocate and lawyer, told The Associated Press news agency.

Sunday’s announcement is sure to revive debate over Biya’s fitness for office. He seldom makes public appearances, often delegating responsibilities to the powerful chief of staff of the president’s office.

Last October, he returned to Cameroon after a 42-day absence, which had sparked speculation he was unwell. The government claimed he was fine but banned any discussion of his health, saying it was a matter of national security.

Biya scrapped term limits in 2008, clearing the way for him to run indefinitely. He won the 2018 election with 71.28 percent of the vote, though opposition parties alleged widespread irregularities.

The cocoa- and oil-producing Central African nation, which has had just two presidents since independence from France and the United Kingdom in the early 1960s, is likely to face a messy succession crisis if Biya were to become too ill to remain in office or die.

Besides Biya, several opposition figures have also declared their intention to run, including 2018 runner-up Maurice Kamto of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, Joshua Osih of the Social Democratic Front, lawyer Akere Muna and Cabral Libii of the Cameroon Party for National Reconciliation.

All have criticised Biya’s long period as head of state and called for reforms to ensure a fair vote in 2025.

United States President Donald Trump has said he will send Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine as his administration signals growing disillusionment with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to negotiate an end to Moscow’s invasion.

“We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday.

“Putin really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening,” Trump said.

“So, there’s a little bit of a problem there. I don’t like it.”

Trump said he had not decided on the number of Patriot batteries he would send to Ukraine, but “they’re going to have some because they do need protection”.

Trump’s comments come after he last week confirmed that his administration had decided to sell weapons to NATO allies in Europe for them to pass on to Kyiv.

Trump is set to meet NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte this week for discussions expected to focus on his plans to supply weapons to Kyiv.

Rutte’s trip to Washington, DC comes as Trump has teased that he will make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday.

On Sunday, Axios, citing two unnamed sources, reported that Trump’s announcement would include “offensive weapons” for Ukraine.

After campaigning on a promise to bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine, Trump has expressed growing frustration with Putin’s refusal to agree to a peace deal.

While Putin has agreed to brief pauses in fighting, he has knocked back US proposals for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.

Russia has argued that the proposal, which has been accepted by Ukraine, would give Kyiv a chance to remobilise its troops and rearm.

In some of his strongest criticism yet of Putin, Trump on Tuesday accused the Russian leader of throwing a lot of “b******” at the US.

“He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” Trump said.

After returning to the White House in January, Trump moved to scale back support for Kyiv, casting Washington’s aid as a drain on the US taxpayer and accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being an obstacle to peace.

While Ukraine continued to receive weaponry through funds allocated during the tenure of former US president Joe Biden, Trump had declined to approve new arms shipments to help Kyiv repel Moscow’s invasion.

Following months of unsuccessful efforts to broker a peace between Moscow and Kyiv, Trump on July 7 announced that he would begin approving shipments to Ukraine comprised mostly of “defensive weapons”.

Asked on Sunday if his upcoming announcement on Russia would involve sanctions against Moscow, Trump declined to answer but repeated that he was disappointed with Putin.

“I am very disappointed with President Putin. I thought he was somebody that meant what he said,” Trump said.

“And he’ll talk so beautifully, and then he’ll bomb people at night. We don’t like that.”

Earlier on Sunday, US Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine in Congress, unveiled a bipartisan sanctions bill that he said would provide Trump with a “sledgehammer” to end the war.

“This congressional package that we’re looking at would give President Trump the ability to impose 500 percent tariffs on any country that helps Russia and props up Putin’s war machine,” Graham told CBS News’s Face the Nation.

Here is how things stand on Monday, July 14:

Fighting:

• Russian drone attacks killed a 53-year-old Ukrainian man in Ukraine’s Sumy region and left parts of the city of Sumy without power, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing local authorities.
• Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service said it killed several Russian secret service agents during an operation to arrest them in the Kyiv region on Sunday. The SBU said it believed the agents were behind the killing of its colonel, Ivan Voronych, in Kyiv on Thursday.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces have captured the villages of Mykolaivka and Myrne in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
• The United Nations’s nuclear watchdog reported hearing hundreds of rounds of small arms fire late on Saturday at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is occupied by Russian forces. The agency described the shots as unusual and said that it was seeking further information about the incident.

Weapons

• United States President Donald Trump said Washington would send Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine, without specifying how many, just two weeks after Washington said it would pause some arms deliveries for Kyiv. “I haven’t agreed on the number yet, but they’re going to have some because they do need protection,” he told reporters.
• Top Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally, told the CBS News broadcaster that he expects an influx of US weapons shipments to Ukraine to begin soon. “The game… is about to change,” he said. “I expect, in the coming days, you will see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves.”

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his government is preparing to receive Trump’s special envoy, Keith Kellogg, in Kyiv on Monday and said: “We count on the United States fully understanding what can be done to compel Russia to peace.”
• Zelenskyy also said Russian forces launched more than 1,800 long-range drones, more than 1,200 glide bombs and 83 missiles of various types at Ukraine in the past week.
• Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing on Sunday and “discussed relations with the United States and prospects for resolving the Ukrainian crisis”, according to Moscow.
• French President Emmanuel Macron called for a massive boost to France’s defence spending, saying that freedom in Europe is facing a greater threat than at any time since the end of World War II.