Firefighters in Spain, Portugal and Greece are battling fierce wildfires as scorching, dry, intense heat fuels blazes across the region, coinciding with major religious holidays, as global warming leaves its mark on Europe.
Spain faced 14 major fires on Friday, said Virginia Barcones, the emergency services chief, as temperatures were forecast to rise further over the weekend.
“Today will once again be a very tough day with an extreme risk of new fires,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned on Friday.
The State Meteorological Agency placed most of the country under extreme fire danger alerts, particularly in the north and west, where the largest blazes raged. The current heatwave, with temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on several days this month, is expected to linger until Monday.
In Galicia, fires shut down several highways and halted high-speed rail services to Madrid. The EU’s European Forest Fire Information System reported that wildfires in Spain this year have already burned 158,000 hectares (390,000 acres), an area the size of metropolitan London.
Friday marked the Feast of the Assumption in Spain and Portugal, a major Catholic holiday usually observed with family gatherings and processions. In Portugal, almost 4,000 firefighters battled seven active fires, as authorities extended a state of alert until Sunday. The government also sought European Union assistance under its civil protection mechanism.
A day earlier, Spain received two Canadair water bomber aircraft from the European Union, the first time it had ever activated the bloc’s emergency firefighting aid.
Elsewhere in Southern Europe, Greece continued to struggle with a major wildfire burning for four days on the island of Chios. Several overnight evacuations took place as flames spread through the island’s northern region. Two planes and two helicopters dropped water during calmer winds early on Friday.
After devastating fires earlier this week in western Greece, the fire service remained on high alert outside Athens and in southern areas, where strong winds and high temperatures heightened the danger.
Across the Balkans and Southern Europe, demand for the EU’s shared firefighting resources has soared this year. Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania have all called for help in recent days as the system has already been deployed as often as during the whole of last year’s fire season.
The Taliban’s leader has warned that Afghans ungrateful for its hardline rule will be severely punished by God in a statement marking the fourth anniversary of the group’s return to power.
The statement from Haibatullah Akhunzada was made in a social media post on Friday to commemorate “Victory Day”, four years on from the chaotic United States and NATO withdrawal from the country after more than 20 years of war as the Taliban retook the capital, Kabul.
The threat was a stark reminder of the sweeping restrictions and repression of rights, especially of women and girls, that has taken place under the Taliban’s rule, which is based on its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
In his statement, Akhunzada said Afghans had faced hardships for decades in the name of establishing religious law in the country, which he said had saved citizens from “corruption, oppression, usurpation, drugs, theft, robbery and plunder”.
“These are great divine blessings that our people should not forget and, during the commemoration of Victory Day, express great gratitude to Allah Almighty so that the blessings will increase,” his statement said.
“If, against God’s will, we fail to express gratitude for blessings and are ungrateful for them, we will be subjected to the severe punishment of Allah Almighty.”
He also advised government ministers to remove the word “acting” from their job titles, signalling the consolidation of his administration’s rule in the country amid a lack of internal opposition.
Victory Day
Four years on from its return to power, the Taliban government remains largely isolated in the international arena over the severe rights restrictions imposed under its rule although Russia became the first country to officially recognise the Taliban administration in early July.
It also has close ties with China, the United Arab Emirates and a number of Central Asian states although none of these officially recognises the Taliban administration.
Victory Day parades were planned in several Afghan cities on Friday, and in Kabul, helicopters were scheduled to drop flowers across the city. Photographs of an official ceremony in Kabul to open the commemorations showed a hall filled exclusively with male delegates.
A man shouts during a meeting of delegates that opens Victory Day celebrations at the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul [Siddiqullah Alizai/AP]
‘An open wound of history’
Rather than celebrating, members of the activist group United Afghan Women’s Movement for Freedom staged an indoor protest in the northeastern province of Takhar against the Taliban’s oppressive rule, The Associated Press news agency reported.
“This day marked the beginning of a black domination that excluded women from work, education and social life,” the group said in a statement to the agency.
“We, the protesting women, remember this day not as a memory, but as an open wound of history, a wound that has not yet healed. The fall of Afghanistan was not the fall of our will. We stand, even in the darkness.”
Afghan women also held an indoor protest in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, the agency reported.
Repression and death threats
The United Nations, foreign governments and human rights groups have condemned the Taliban for their treatment of women and girls, who are banned from most education and work, as well as parks, gyms and travelling without a male guardian.
Inspectors from the Vice and Virtue Ministry require women to wear a chador, a full-body cloak covering the head, while a law announced a year ago ordered women not to sing or recite poetry in public and for their voices and bodies to be “concealed” outside the home.
Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Akhunzada and the country’s chief justice on charges of committing gender-based persecution against women and girls.
ICC judges said the Taliban had “severely deprived” girls and women of the rights to education, privacy, family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion.
At least 1.4 million girls have been “deliberately deprived” of their right to an education by the Taliban government, a UN report from August 2024 found.
Among the restrictions imposed on women is a ban on working for nongovernmental groups, among other jobs. A UN report this month revealed that dozens of Afghan women working for the organisation in the country had received direct death threats.
The report said the Taliban had told the UN mission that its cadres were not responsible for the threats and a Ministry of Interior Affairs investigation is under way. An Interior Ministry spokesman, Abdul Mateen Qani, later told The Associated Press news agency that no threats had been made.
Hurricane Erin has formed in the Atlantic Ocean as it approaches the northeast Caribbean, as forecasters warn of possible flooding and landslides in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The storm is expected to remain over open waters, although tropical storm watches were issued for Anguilla and Barbuda, St Martin and St Barts, Saba and St Eustatius and St Maarten.
Heavy rains were forecast to start late on Friday in Antigua and Barbuda, the US and British Virgin Islands, and southern and eastern Puerto Rico. Up to 10cm (four inches) are expected, with isolated totals of up to 15cm (six inches), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Forecasters also warned of dangerous swells.
The storm was located about 835km (520 miles) east of the Northern Leeward Islands. It had maximum sustained winds of 110km/h (70mph) and was moving west-northwest at 28km/h (17mph).
Erin is forecast to become a major Category 3 storm late this weekend.
The hurricane centre noted that “there is still uncertainty about what impacts Erin may bring to portions of the Bahamas, the east coast of the United States, and Bermuda in the long range.”
Fifth named storm
Dangerous surf and rip currents are expected to affect the US East Coast next week, with waves reaching up to five metres (16.4 feet) along parts of the North Carolina coast that could cause beach erosion, according to Accuweather.
“Erin is forecast to explode into a powerful Category 4 hurricane as it moves across very warm waters in the open Atlantic. Water temperatures at the surface and hundreds of feet deep are several degrees higher than the historical average,” Alex DaSilva, Accuweather’s lead hurricane expert, was quoted by The Associated Press news agency.
Erin is the fifth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30.
Four years have passed since Hanifa Girowal fled Afghanistan on a US evacuation flight. But every August, her mind returns to the same place.
Like many Afghans evacuated amid the August 15 Taliban takeover of Kabul, Girowal, who worked in human rights under the former Afghan government, still remains stuck in “legal limbo” in the United States. She is steadfastly pursuing a more stable status in the US, even as the political landscape surrounding her, and thousands of other Afghans in similar situations, shifts.
“I somehow feel like I’m still stuck in August 2021 and all the other Augusts in between, I can’t remember anything about them,” Girowal told Al Jazeera.
She often recalls the mad dash amid a crush of bodies at the crowded Kabul International Airport: people shot in front of her, a week of hiding, a flight to Qatar, then Germany and then finally, the US state of Virginia.
Followed by the early days of trying to begin a new life from the fragments of the old.
“Everything just comes up again to the surface, and it’s like reliving that trauma we went through, and we have been trying to heal from since that day,” she said.
The struggle may have become familiar, but her disquiet has been heightened since US President Donald Trump took office on January 20. His hardline immigration policies have touched nearly every immigrant community in the US, underscoring vulnerabilities for anyone on a precarious legal status.
There is a feeling that anything could happen, from one day to the next.
“I have an approved asylum case, which gives a certain level of protection, but we still don’t know the future of certain policies on immigration,” Girowal said. “I am very much fearful that I can be subjected to deportation at any time.”
Unheeded warnings
Four years after the US withdrawal, much remains unclear about how Trump’s policies will affect Afghans who are already in the US, estimated to total about 180,000.
They arrived through a tangle of different avenues, including 75,000 flown in on evacuation flights in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal, as the administration of US President Joe Biden undertook what it dubbed “Operation Allies Welcome“. Thousands more have since sought asylum by making treacherous journeys across the world to traverse the US southern border.
Some have relocated via so-called Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), reserved for individuals who worked directly with the US military in Afghanistan, under a notoriously backlogged programme.
Others have been resettled through a special State Department programme, known as Priority 1 (P1) and Priority 2 (P2), launched by the administration of President Biden, meant for Afghans who face persecution for having worked in various capacities on behalf of the US government or with a US-based organisation in Afghanistan.
Adam Bates, a supervisory policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Programme, explained that some of those pathways, most notably the SIV and refugee programmes, provide a clear course towards US residency and, eventually, citizenship.
But, he clarified, others do not – a fact that advocates have warned leaves members of the population subject to perpetual uncertainty and political whims.
“A lot of the advocacy to the Biden administration officials was about finding more permanent legal pathways for Afghans,” Bates told Al Jazeera. “That was with one eye towards the potential of giving the Trump administration this opportunity to really double down and target this community.”
Pressure on Afghans in the US
During Trump’s new term, his administration has taken several concrete – and at times contradictory – moves that affect Afghans living in the US.
It ended “temporary protected status” (TPS) for Afghans already in the country at the time of the Taliban takeover, arguing the country shows “an improved security situation” and “stabilising economy”, a claim contradicted by several human rights reports.
At the same time, the Trump administration added Afghanistan to a new travel ban list, restricting visas for Afghans, saying such admissions broadly run counter to US “foreign policy, national security, and counterterrorism”.
These actions underscore that “the situation in Afghanistan seems to be whatever it needs to be, from the Trump administration’s perspective,” according to Bates.
Trump has offered his contradictory messaging, criticising the Biden administration on the campaign trail for its handling of the withdrawal, and as recently as July, pledging to “save” evacuated Afghans subject to deportation from the United Arab Emirates.
Meanwhile, the administration terminated a special status for those who entered the US via the CBP One app in April, potentially affecting thousands of Afghans who entered via the southern border.
Advocates warn that many more Afghans may soon be facing another legal cliff. After being evacuated in 2021, tens of thousands of Afghans were granted humanitarian parole, a temporary status that allowed them to legally live and work in the US for two years, with an extension granted in 2023. That programme is soon set to end.
While many granted the status have since sought other legal avenues, most often applying for asylum or SIVs, an unknown number could be rendered undocumented and subject to deportation when the extension ends. Legislation creating a clearer pathway to citizenship has languished in Congress for years.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has not publicly released how many evacuated Afghans remain in the US on humanitarian parole, and did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for the data.
Evacuated Afghans’ unease has been compounded by Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, which has increasingly seen those without criminal histories targeted for deportations and permanent residents targeted for their political advocacy.
“It’s just an escalation across the board and a compounding of fear and instability in this community,” Bates said. “It’s hard to make life decisions if you aren’t sure what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week or in a year”.
‘Pulled the rug out’
Meanwhile, for the thousands of Afghans continuing to seek safety in the US from abroad, pathways have been severely constricted or have become completely blocked.
The Trump administration has paused asylum claims at the US southern border, citing a national emergency. It has almost completely suspended the US Refugee Program (USRAP), allowing only a trickle of new refugees in amid an ongoing legal challenge by rights groups.
Advocates say the special P1 and P2 programme created for Afghan refugees appears to have been completely halted under Trump. The administration has not published refugee admission numbers since taking office, and did not reply to Al Jazeera’s request for data.
“It feels as if we have pulled the rug out from many of our Afghan allies through these policy changes that strip legal protection for many Afghans in the US and limit pathways for Afghans who are still abroad to come to the US safely,” Kristyn Peck, the chief executive officer of the Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, told Al Jazeera.
She noted that the SIV pipeline has continued to operate under Trump, although there have been some limitations, including requiring those approved for relocation to pay for their own travel.
Meanwhile, resettlement agencies like Lutheran have been forced to seriously curtail their operations following a stop-work order from the administration on January 24. As of March, Peck said, the organisation has been forced to let go of about 120 of its staff.
Susan Antolin, the executive director of Women for Afghan Women, a non-profit organisation that offers mental health, legal and social support to Afghans in the US, said organisations like hers are also bracing for sustained uncertainty.
“We are diversifying our funding and trying very hard, as so many other organisations are, to find other avenues to bring in that funding to continue to support our programmes,” she told Al Jazeera. “As organisations that deal with this kind of work, we have to step up. We have to do 10 times more, or 100 times more, of the work.”
‘No more a priority for the world’
The unstable situation in the US reflects a broader global trend.
The Taliban government, despite promising reforms in a push for international recognition, has continued to be accused of widespread human rights abuses and revenge killings. Still, it has upgraded diplomatic ties with several governments in recent years, and in July, Russia became the first country to formally recognise the group as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
At the same time, the governments of Pakistan and Iran have accelerated expulsions of Afghans back to Afghanistan, with more than 1.4 million Afghans either being expelled or leaving Iran alone from January to July of 2025, according to UNHCR.
The Reuters news agency also reported in July that the UAE had notified Washington that it had begun returning evacuated Afghans.
Germany, too, has begun deporting Afghans back to Afghanistan, in July, it conducted its second deportation flight since the Taliban came to power, despite continuing not to recognise or maintain diplomatic ties with the group.
The collective moves send a clear message, evacuee Girowal said: “We know that Afghanistan is no more a priority for the world.”
Still, she said she has not abandoned hope that the US under Trump’s leadership will “not forget its allies”.
“I know the resilience of our own Afghan community. We are trained to be resilient wherever we are and fight back as much as we can,” she said.
For the first time in nearly two decades, Bolivia is on the precipice of a rightward shift.
Voters in the South American nation will go to the polls on August 17 to choose the next president, as well as members of Congress.
But schisms within Bolivia’s long-dominant left have opened the door to a possible right-wing victory, with candidates like businessman Samuel Doria Medina and former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga leading the race.
Bolivia has been unsettled by political and economic turmoil in recent years, including high inflation and dwindling currency reserves.
That, in turn, has fuelled public dissatisfaction with the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS) party, which has been in power almost continuously since 2006. Candidates like Medina and Quiroga are hoping to capitalise on that disillusionment to oust MAS from the presidency.
But tensions in the country remain high, and polls show a close race that may not produce a clear winner in the first round of voting.
Who are the figures shaping the race, what issues are top of mind for voters, and how could this election shape Bolivia? We answer those questions and more in this explainer.
When is the election?
The first round of voting will take place on Sunday, August 17.
Will there be a second round of voting?
Possibly. To avoid a run-off, the top presidential candidate must either earn more than 50 percent of the vote or garner 40 percent of the vote and have a 10-point lead over the second-place contender.
But that scenario is unlikely, given the tight race between candidates like Medina and Quiroga.
The presidential race is expected to proceed to a second round of voting on October 19.
Are there other races on the ballot?
Yes. In addition to voting for a president and vice president, Bolivians will cast ballots for 36 Senate seats and 130 positions in the Chamber of Deputies.
Bolivia has a population of approximately 12 million, of which more than seven million are eligible voters.
Bolivian presidential candidate Jorge ‘Tuto’ Quiroga campaigns in La Paz, Bolivia, on August 7 [Juan Karita/AP Photo]
Who are the main presidential candidates?
A total of 10 presidential candidates registered to race in Sunday’s election, but so far, no single contender has decisively broken into the lead.
“This is the first national election in two decades without a dominant party or a clear frontrunner,” said Glaeldys Gonzalez Calanche, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, a research nonprofit.
Two closely watched candidates, however, are both conservatives who struggled to make an impression in past elections.
They now appear to have a shot at success, a development that underscores the implosion of the once-formidable Bolivian left.
One of the candidates is a politician and businessman named Samuel Doria Medina. An entrepreneur who made his fortune in cement, Medina now owns hotels and Burger King restaurant franchises in Bolivia.
In the 1990s, he also served as a minister of planning under President Jaime Paz Zamora.
The founder of the right-of-centre National Unity Front, Medina previously made three failed attempts to run for president: in 2005, 2009 and 2014.
He likely faces his stiffest competition from fellow also-ran, the right-wing Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga.
Like Medina, Quiroga has been a presidential candidate three times before: in 2005, 2014 and 2020. But he briefly ascended to the presidency himself after being elected as the country’s youngest vice president in 1997.
He shared a ticket at the time with the country’s former military dictator Hugo Banzer, whose government in the 1970s was associated with abuses such as torture and enforced disappearances.
As president, Banzer decided to leave office in 2001 after he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and Quiroga served the final year of Banzer’s term.
Bolivian Senate President Andronico Rodriguez waves to supporters at a rally in La Paz, Bolivia, on May 10 [Juan Karita/AP Photo]
Are there any contenders on the left?
Yes, but they have not been polling as strongly as their conservative counterparts.
Andronico Rodriguez is the leading left-wing candidate, running as an independent. The president of the Senate, Rodriguez boasts roots in Bolivia’s rural coca-growing regions, which tend to be strongholds for the governing MAS party.
Rodriguez, however, split from the MAS party this year as Bolivia’s leftist coalition fractured.
Outgoing president and MAS member Luis Arce has been blamed for Bolivia’s slumping economy, and MAS founder Evo Morales has been locked in a feud with both Arce and Rodriguez as he seeks to regain the presidency himself.
The official MAS candidate in the 2025 election, former minister Eduardo del Castillo, has barely made a ripple in the polls.
What do the polls say?
A poll aggregator compiled by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas shows conservatives Samuel Doria Medina and Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga vying for the lead.
But the polls note that a significant number of voters are either undecided or intent upon casting null votes, adding a wild-card element to Sunday’s race.
Three polls taken between early June and late July show Medina in the lead, with between 19.6 and 24.5 percent support.
Quiroga, meanwhile, garnered between 16.6 percent and 22.9 percent in the polls.
And Andronico Rodriguez, the left-wing candidate, earned between 6 percent and 13.7 percent support among the survey respondents.
What issues are top of mind for voters?
The country’s economic turbulence and cost of living crisis are among the highest-profile issues for voters this election cycle.
“Bolivia is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a generation,” said Gonzalez Calanche, the analyst with the International Crisis Group.
She pointed out that the national currency has lost more than half of its value. While Bolivia has vast stores of natural gas and oil, its production has tumbled, leading to an economic shortfall.
The country has been forced to import fuel rather than exporting it amid shortages.
A survey in May found that voters identified rising prices as their top concern, followed by other economic issues such as fuel shortages, shrinking dollar reserves and unemployment.
Bolivian President Luis Arce gives a news conference alongside his Minister of Government Roberto Rios on June 11 [Juan Karita/AP Photo]
Why isn’t the current president running?
President Luis Arce announced in May that he would not seek re-election, as the country’s economic crisis and a feud with former mentor Evo Morales sent his popularity plummeting.
The final months of Arce’s five-year term have been defined largely by tumult. In 2023 and 2024, the country saw its currency reserves shrink, and its natural gas industry suffered.
Morales, meanwhile, began to position himself as a critic of Arce’s government. Under Arce’s leadership, Bolivia’s judicial system barred Morales from seeking a fourth term as president, and an arrest warrant was issued against Morales for statutory rape.
Tensions rose in June 2024, when a general stormed the presidential palace and appeared to attempt a coup d’etat. Arce blamed Morales’s supporters, and Morales claimed Arce had staged the coup to rescue his popularity.
What role is Evo Morales playing?
Bolivia’s election is notable for the absence of one of the country’s most influential figures: MAS founder Evo Morales.
As a three-term president from 2006 until 2019, Morales oversaw a period of substantial economic growth that made him popular in Bolivia and across the Latin American left.
But in 2019, Morales sought a controversial fourth term in office. Though official results showed he won, protests, threats and claims of vote tampering forced Morales to leave the country.
Some have described his exile as a coup, driven by the military and the political right.
When Arce, his former finance minister, was elected president in 2020, Morales was able to return to Bolivia.
But the two leaders have fallen out, in part as a result of their rivalry for the presidency, and Morales has rallied his supporters to his side in a split that has fractured the Bolivian left.
In May, a constitutional court upheld a ruling that Morales could not run again, due to term limits imposed since he left office.
But Morales has continued to press for a fourth term in office, and he has urged his supporters to cast null ballots to protest Sunday’s election.
Polls estimate the combined number of undecided voters and protest votes could amount to between 25 and 34 percent of voters.
Morales’s supporters have also led demonstrations in protest of the former president’s exclusion from the election. Some have blocked roads. Others have erupted into clashes that left police and protesters dead.
How long is a presidential term?
Presidents are elected in Bolivia for a term of five years. In recent years, the country’s courts have limited presidents to two consecutive terms in office.
This has been a source of consternation for Morales, who served three consecutive terms and hopes to gain a fourth.
Why is this election important?
Bolivia’s left is likely on track for its first defeat in a presidential race in nearly two decades. That would send shockwaves throughout Latin America, where Bolivia has been a left-wing stronghold for much of the 21st century.
“The left has been weakened by schisms and personal disputes between Morales and Arce,” analyst Gonzalez Calanche said.
She explained that those schisms will be reflected in the ballot box, as trade unions and other left-leaning organisations struggle to unite behind a candidate.
With tensions high, economic conditions deteriorating, and no consensus candidate to lead the country, Gonzalez Calanche fears Bolivia could be heading into a period of uncertainty as it approaches a possible second round of voting.
