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 Swapping sirens for bells and equipped with voracious appetites, Barcelona’s newest firefighting recruits began delicately picking past hikers and cyclists in the city’s largest public park earlier this year. The four-legged brigade – made up of 290 sheep and goats – had just one task: to munch on as much vegetation as possible.

Their arrival turned Barcelona into one of the latest places to embrace an age-old strategy that’s being revived as officials around the world face off against a rise in extreme wildfires.

While Tehran and Washington are set on pursuing diplomacy, the highly contentious sticking points are:

URANIUM TRACES

    Iran insists the nuclear pact can only be salvaged if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drops its claims about Tehran's nuclear work. Washington and other Western powers view Tehran's demand as outside the scope of reviving the deal.

    In June, the U.N. nuclear watchdog's 35-nation Board of Governors overwhelmingly passed a resolution, drafted by the United States, France, Britain and Germany, which criticised Iran for failing to explain uranium traces found at three undeclared sites.

    Iran reacted by further expanding its underground uranium enrichment by installing cascades of more efficient advanced centrifuges and also by removing essentially all the IAEA's monitoring equipment installed under the 2015 deal, a move described by the IAEA chief Rafael Grossi as potentially a "fatal blow" to reviving the agreement. 

    The IAEA has not had access to the data collected by such cameras, which remains with Iran, for more than a year. Grossi said more than 40 IAEA cameras would keep operating as part of the core monitoring in Iran that predates the 2015 deal.

Western powers are increasingly worried Iran is getting closer to being able to sprint towards making a nuclear bomb. Iran denies any such ambition.

"expand [its] comprehensive and constructive bilateral relations" with North Korea, said its President Vladimir Putin.

In a letter sent to his counterpart Kim Jong un on Pyongyang's liberation day, Mr Putin said the move would be in both countries' interests.

In turn, Mr Kim said friendship between both nations had been forged in World War II with victory over Japan.

He added that their "comradely friendship" would grow stronger.

According to a report by North Korean state media outlet KCNA, Mr Putin said the expanded bilateral relations would "conform with the interests of the two countries".

 

In his letter, Mr Kim said the Russia-North Korea friendship "forged in the anti-Japanese war" had been "consolidated and developed century after century".

It added "strategic and tactical cooperation, support and solidarity" between the two countries "had been put on a new high stage, in the common front for frustrating the hostile forces' military threat and provocation".

Pyongyang did not identify the hostile forces by name, but the term has been used repeatedly by North Korea to refer to the US and its allies.

The Soviet Union was once a major ally of North Korea, offering economic co-operation, cultural exchanges and aid.

But the relationship suffered since the collapse of the Iron Curtain, only gradually picking up somewhat after Russia's gradual estrangement from the West since the early 2000s.

In July, North Korea was one of the few countries to officially recognise two Russian-backed separatist states in eastern Ukraine, after Russia signed a decree declaring them as independent.

In retaliation, Ukraine, which is fighting off a Russian invasion of its territory, cut off all diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.

The idea is simple: wildfire-prone areas are handed over to grazing animals, who chomp and trample over dry vegetation that could otherwise accumulate as fuel for fires. Whether the animals are semi-wild or overseen by a shepherd who is usually compensated for their efforts, a job well done usually leaves behind a landscape dotted with open spaces that can act as firebreaks.

Controlled grazing begins on the Barcelona side of the Collserola natural park. Photograph: Ajuntament de Barcelona

It’s a nod to how wildfires were warded off in the past. “We’re not inventing anything new here,” said Guillem Canaleta of the Pau Costa Foundation, a Catalan non-profit that has been implementing the strategy since 2016 in the province of Girona, near Barcelona. “What we’re doing is recovering something that already existed and that was disappearing.

Nearly two months after he was convicted and handed a 30-year prison sentence in New York on charges of federal racketeering and sex- trafficking, disgraced musician R. Kelly is set to return to court for a second federal trial, this time on charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice, in his hometown of Chicago.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in a case that stems from the complaints of several women who allege that Kelly, 55, lured them into sex acts while they were underage. At least two are expected to testify, according to court documents.

 

This trial is expected to resurface accusations brought against Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, 14 years ago in a state trial on charges of child pornography for which he was eventually acquitted.

Illinois federal prosecutors allege that Kelly obstructed justice in that 2008 criminal trial in Cook County, which involved a video recording of Kelly allegedly sexually abusing a minor.

The singer will be tried alongside his former business manager, Derrel McDavid, and associate, Milton “June” Brown, who are both accused of conspiring with Kelly to intimidate and bribe witnesses and cover up evidence in the 2008 trial, according to the federal charges against them.

Salman Rushdie is “on the road to recovery,” his agent confirmed Sunday, two days after the author of “The Satanic Verses” suffered serious injuries in a stabbing at a lecture in upstate New York.

The announcement followed news that the lauded writer was removed from a ventilator Saturday and able to talk. Literary agent Andrew Wylie cautioned that although Rushdie’s “condition is headed in the right direction,” his recovery would be long. Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and in an eye that he was likely to lose, Wylie had previously said.

The Taliban was condemned on Sunday for beating women at a demonstration on the eve of the one-year anniversary of their seizure of power.

As Afghanistan marks a year since the West's chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, fears that the Taliban would roll back women’s rights gained during two decades of Western intervention appear to have been justified.

On Saturday a group of 40 women marched in front of the education building in Kabul chanting "bread, work and freedom".

Some defied the strict dress code by refusing to wear face veils.

Taliban militants dispersed the crowd by firing into the air before chasing after the protesters and beating them with rifle butts.

The women shouted 'bread, work, freedom' as they marched through Afghanistan's capital of Kabul on Saturday CREDIT: Nava Jamshidi

The fighters seized the protesters’ mobile phones and ripped up their banners as they cracked down on the first women’s rally in months.

Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, on Sunday condemned the latest curbs: "The EU is particularly concerned by the fate of Afghan women and girls who have seen their freedoms, rights and access to basic services such as education being systematically denied.

Meanwhile, in Britain, Priti Patel hailed the Government’s much-criticised evacuation operation a year ago.

In a video to mark the first anniversary of Operation Pitting, the Home Secretary described the UK effort as "seismic" and a demonstration of the country's "bond of trust" with those Afghans who had helped UK forces.

Ms Patel said 21,000 refugees had been brought to Britain, adding that the government had stood by the pledges it made to Afghans who stood by Britain for the decades of western occupation of the country.

Her remarks were in stark contrast to a highly critical report earlier this year by the cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee at Westminster.

It criticised Dominic Raab, the former foreign secretary, and the department’s most senior official for not returning from their summer holidays as the Afghan government crumbled.

“Though his life changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty & defiant sense of humour remains intact,” Rushdie’s son Zafar Rushdie said in a statement Sunday that stressed that the author remained in critical condition. The family statement also expressed gratitude for the “audience members who bravely leapt to his defence,” as well as police, doctors and “the outpouring of love and support.”

Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty Saturday to attempted murder and assault charges in what a prosecutor called “a targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack” at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat center.

The attack was met with global shock and outrage, along with praise for the man who, for more than three decades — including nine years in hiding under the protection of the British government — has weathered death threats and a $3 million bounty on his head over “The Satanic Verses.”

“It’s an attack against his body, his life and against every value that he stood for,” Henry Reese, 73, told The Associated Press. The cofounder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum was on stage with Rushdie and suffered a gash to his forehead, bruising and other minor injuries. They had planned to discuss the need for writers’ safety and freedom of expression.

Authors, activists and government officials cited Rushdie’s bravery and longtime championing of free speech in the face of such intimidation. Writer and longtime friend Ian McEwan labeled Rushdie “an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world,” and actor-author Kal Penn called him a role model “for an entire generation of artists, especially many of us in the South Asian diaspora toward whom he’s shown incredible warmth.”

with his insight into humanity, with his unmatched sense for story, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced — stands for essential, universal ideals,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday. “Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear.”

Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim family and has lived in Britain and the U.S., is known for his surreal and satirical prose, beginning with his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel “Midnight’s Children,” in which he sharply criticized then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Infused with magical realism, 1988′s “The Satanic Verses” drew ire from some Muslims who regarded elements of the novel as blasphemy.

They believed Rushdie insulted the Prophet Muhammad by naming a character Mahound, a medieval corruption of “Muhammad.” The character was a prophet in a city called Jahilia, which in Arabic refers to the time before the advent of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula. Another sequence includes prostitutes that share names with some of Muhammad’s nine wives. The novel also implies that Muhammad, not Allah, may have been the Quran’s real author.