Iranian forces boarded a tanker in international waters in the Gulf of Oman, using a helicopter and two ships to take over the vessel for several hours, US officials said.
They also posted grainy black-and-white footage of the helicopter hovering low over the vessel and special forces personnel fast-roping onto the deck.
"Today in international waters, Iranian forces, including two ships and an Iranian "Sea King" helicopter, overtook and boarded a ship called the 'Wila'," the US Central Command said in a tweet on Wednesday.
A US defence official said the Iranians released the vessel, a Liberian-flagged oil and chemicals tanker, after holding it for four to five hours.
The incident occurred in international waters of the Gulf of Oman, just 32 kilometres (20 miles) off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.
"Iranian special forces fast roped from the Sea King on to the ship," the official told AFP on Thursday.
"A coalition ship monitored the event but did not receive a distress call from M/T Wila."
Bloomberg said the vessel had been floating off the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates for the past month but that it appeared to have picked up a shipment in July near the Iraqi oil terminal of Al-Basra.
The waters where the ship was boarded, near the Strait of Hormuz, are a chokepoint for a third of the world's seaborne oil.
Iran and its arch enemy the United States have traded barbs in the past year over a spate of incidents in the sensitive waters of the Gulf.
The escalation of Iran-US tensions last year saw ships mysteriously attacked, drones downed and oil tankers seized in the strait.
In July 2019, Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero in the waterway for allegedly ramming a fishing boat and released it two months later.
The Guards seized at least six other ships last year over alleged fuel smuggling.
Tensions have escalated since 2018 when US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from a multinational accord that froze Iran's nuclear programme, and reimposed crippling sanctions on its economy.
On Wednesday, The Daily Beast reported that a pair of Florida men who used a scam "church" to push people to drink bleach as a COVID-19 cure, have been arrested in Colombia.
"The father and son duo, Mark and Joseph Grenon, were arrested in Santa Marta for allegedly selling their 'Miracle Mineral Solution' across Colombia, the United States, and Africa," reported Madeline Charbonneau. "U.S. authorities conducted a raid in July on the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, of which Mark Grenon is the leader, after Mark, Joseph, Jonathan, and Jordan Grenon were accused of selling the same bleach product as a coronavirus cure. The locations of Jonathan and Jordan Grenon remain unknown."
Miracle Mineral Solution, which is a highly toxic bleaching agent, is promoted by the "church" as transcending modern medicine and delivering divine healing directly from God.
"U.S. prosecutors say the church was created as a way of avoiding government regulation to sell their 'Miracle Mineral Solution,' which they have insisted is a cure to diseases including HIV and cancer," continued the report. "Federal authorities have evidence that drinking the solution has sent several to the hospital, and may have killed people."
In July, the Grenons were charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and deliver misbranded drugs by the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of Florida.
A former senior Saudi intelligence officer in exile filed a lawsuit in a US court last week accusing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of plotting to kill him. The allegations, including using children as bargaining chips, have sparked calls for President Donald Trump, in the thick of a difficult campaign season, to intervene on moral grounds.
In September 2017, a former top Saudi intelligence officer living in exile was desperately trying to get his two children safely out of the Gulf kingdom. Picking up his iPhone, Saad Aljabri got on WhatsApp and contacted the most powerful man in his homeland, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The WhatsApp communication between Aljabri and MBS – as the Saudi crown prince is widely known – is detailed in a lawsuit filed last week in a US court.
While the allegations have not yet been verified in court, the lawsuit makes for a jaw-dropping and yet disconcertingly familiar read.
“Tell me what you want in person,” texted MBS, according to the lawsuit, which includes a screen shot of the exchange in Arabic with an English translation.
“I hope that you will consider what I have already sent you, because this issue regarding the children is very important to me,” replied Aljabri.
Two minutes later, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler once again urged the former intelligence official in exile to return home. “I definitely need you here,” said bin Salman.
Before Aljabri could reply, the crown prince added a terse, “24 hours!”
A crown prince falls, a crackdown begins
Four months earlier, Aljabri, a close advisor to bin Salman’s arch rival, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, had fled Saudi Arabia for Turkey. He was still in Turkey in June 2017, when his ex-boss, bin Nayef – a longtime former Saudi interior minister – was stripped of his latest post as the kingdom’s crown prince and replaced by MBS.
File photo taken in September 2016 of Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.REUTERS - Ahmed Jadallah
In his new position as crown prince, the brash, young MBS had begun a crackdown against his rivals and opponents in the kingdom. As a right-hand man of Saudi Arabia’s former interior minister, Aljabri was a key link between Saudi and Western intelligence services and privy to highly sensitive information on the kingdom’s rulers.
Bin Salman wanted him back in Saudi Arabia “where he could be killed”, the lawsuit alleges.
Days after the Whatsapp exchange with MBS granting him "24 hours", Aljabri left Turkey for Canada. But two of his eight children, Omar and Sarah, were trapped in Saudi Arabia and are still being used as “human bait” to lure their father home, according to the lawsuit.
The Saudi strategy failed to entice Aljabri back. Instead it caught the attention of US lawmakers who called on President Donald Trump to act.
US senators remind Trump of a ‘moral obligation’
Last month, four US senators on both sides of the aisle urged Trump to help secure the release of Omar, 21, and Sarah, 20, calling it a “moral obligation” to help the former Saudi intelligence official in exile.
In a letter to the White House, Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic senators, Patrick Leahy, Tim Kaine and Chris Van Hollen, described Aljabri as a “highly valued partner” of US intelligence and State Department agencies “who has been credited by former CIA officials for saving thousands of American lives by discovering and preventing terrorist plots”.
The children’s fate also pushed their father, a 62-year-old former government official with nearly four decades of experience in the secretive world of national security and counterterrorism, to take the unusually public step of filing a civil lawsuit in a US court.
‘Tiger Squad’ on a campaign to kill
The lawsuit filed last week at US District Court for the District of Columbia alleges that bin Salman launched a state campaign to kill Aljabri that “has worked to achieve that objective over the past three years”.
Aljabri bases his claim on two US laws: the Torture Victim Protection Act, which bans extrajudicial killing; and the Alien Tort Statute, which allows victims – including non-US citizens or residents – of such illegal operations to sue in US courts.
The 170-page document details chilling but as yet unverified plots to target Aljabri. They include the arrival at a Canadian airport of a Saudi “Tiger Squad” hit team – similar to the one used to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey – to target Aljabri.
The complaint also sheds light on the moves by global intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain some of bin Salman’s human rights excesses on foreign soil. In October 2018, for instance, just weeks after Khashoggi’s brutal killing, vigilant Canadian authorities stopped and questioned Tiger Squad members who arrived separately at Ontario airport, the lawsuit claims. Most of the team were sent back home to Saudi Arabia.
MBS, the lawsuit alleges, had warned Aljabri that he would use “legal measures as well as other measures that would be harmful to you”.
But the Saudi crown prince’s attempts to use "legal measures" were stymied at Interpol, the global law enforcement agency based in the French city of Lyon, the US court document reveals.
In a July 4, 2018 decision taken months before Khashoggi’s killing sparked an international furor, the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF) found Saudi Arabia’s arrest and extradition request for Aljabri was “politically motivated rather then strictly juridical”. While any person has the right to request Interpol data about them, the CCF decision on the Aljabri case was not publicly known before the lawsuit was filed last week.
‘In the business of assassinating people’
The Aljabri case once again casts a spotlight on Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations at home and against its citizens abroad.
“It’s a lawsuit containing accusations that are not yet proved, but these are serious accusations against the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, which is a very powerful country. If the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is in the business of assassinating people, it’s very important,” said Rami Khoury, a journalism professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, in an interview with FRANCE 24.
The crown prince's role in Khashoggi’s assassination has been a public relations nightmare for the oil-rich Gulf kingdom. While MBS has acknowledged that men working for him killed the Washington Post columnist inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, he denies involvement in the murder.
His denials are widely disbelieved. In June 2019, an investigation into Khashoggi’s killing by UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard found “credible evidence, warranting further criminal investigation”, of the involvement of top Saudi officials, including bin Salman.
The latest Aljabri allegations – which names bin Salman and several Saudi officials implicated in Khashoggi’s murder, such as Saud “Mr. Hashtag” al-Qahtani, as defendants – are strikingly similar to the slain journalist’s case.
But the Khashoggi investigations so far have been impeded by political and diplomatic challenges.
As a UN special rapporteur, Callamard works as a volunteer, not UN staffer, and her office is independent of UN institutions. The fiery French human rights lawyer has publicly criticised UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for failing to act on her investigation findings to set up a panel of criminal experts.
Meanwhile the Trump administration has been stonewalling Congressional attempts to enforce accountability for Khashoggi’s murder while a Turkish trial on the case lacks international credibility, given the weaknesses of the Turkish justice system.
‘Lost in the world of the rule of law’
Aljabri’s extraordinary recourse in a US court of law opens the gates to a level of transparency that could, depending on the court proceedings, be damning for the crown prince, some experts believe.
“The accusations against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will be adjudicated in a US court using the instruments of the rule of law,” said Khoury. “This is being put into the public light. If a crown prince or ruler of a country is convicted as a criminal, that’s very important.”
Khoury, like every Saudi expert, does not expect the crown prince to appear before a US court. Unlike criminal cases, civil suits pursue compensations, not prison sentences. On Friday, August 7, the US district court issued summons, or an official notice of a lawsuit given to defendants being sued. Saudi authorities have not responded so far to media organisations about the case.
It’s an unfamiliar terrain for Saudi authorities accustomed to petrodollar diplomacy, including the use of top lobby groups during crises. “The Saudis aren’t used to it, they’re totally lost in the world of the rule of law. They operate on personal relations and don’t know how to deal with this shift into the chambers of Congress and into the chambers of courts,” explained Khoury.
Kushner-Saudi way of doing business
The Saudi way of doing diplomatic business found a perfect partner in Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who developed a personal relationship with MBS.
“Trump and Kushner, both used to shady real estate deals, adapted quickly to Saudi Arabia’s system of patronage and clientelism: unwavering support from the Trump administration for the promise of weapons sales and other business deals,” noted Mohamad Bazzi, a New York University journalism professor, in a Guardian column.
But the Saudis are keenly aware that in the US – unlike in their conservative country of glacial or paternalistic reforms – the winds of change can swerve abruptly.
The Aljabri case filing comes barely three months before the November US presidential election, with the Saudis bracing for a potential change in the White House. Historically, a confluence of oil and business interests makes a Republican US president a better fit for Saudi interests.
Joe Biden, the centrist, septuagenarian Democratic presidential candidate, is not expected to bring radical change if he wins the November 3 election. But unlike Trump, who protected MBS in the fallout of Khashoggi’s killing, Biden is unlikely to give the crown prince’s human rights violations a pass. “Joe Biden is more inclined to obey international law and follow public opinion and pressure from senators,” noted Khoury.
The pressure is expected to mount as Aljabri's unusual lawsuit winds its way through US court proceedings before and after the 2020 presidential election.
More than 2,500 new coronavirus cases were registered in France in 24 hours in the sharpest increase since May, government data showed on Wednesday, as officials said indicators were "clearly worsening".
Of 600,000 tests over the past week, more than 11,600 were positive, the health ministry's DGS public health division said.
At 2.2 percent, the weekly rate of positives was up from 1.6 percent the week before, confirming "increased viral circulation", it added.
"Indicators used for tracking the epidemic on French territory have clearly worsened in recent days," the DGS said.
With August traditionally a month when many French people take weeks of summer holiday, "it's imperative that we keep up our efforts to avoid the epidemic picking up again, individually and collectively, everywhere and at all times", the DGS said.
Health officials have identified 18 new virus clusters in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 896 nationwide – although the number of patients in intensive care dropped slightly to 379, a level relatively steady since late July.
The government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday that France will gradually ramp up police checks to ensure people wear face masks where it is mandatory and respect social distancing amidst a new surge of Covid-19 infections. "We're at a tipping point [...] We're going to mobilize police forces to make checks," Attal said.
This came after the new Prime Minister Jean Castex warned on Tuesday that Covid-19 could get out of hand if people do not take precautions: "If we don't act collectively, we expose ourselves to the heightened risk that the rebound in the epidemic becomes hard to control," he said during a visit to an intensive care ward in southern France.
On Monday, face masks became mandatory in Paris tourist hotspots as authorities try to curb the number of new infections. The order covers busy outdoor areas in the French capital including the banks of the River Seine and the iconic Montmartre area in Paris’s far north – although other renowned tourist hotspots such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Élyseés were not listed. Anybody aged 11 faces a €135 ($159) fine if caught without a mask where one is required.
The latest uptick in Covid-19 cases has been most marked in Paris but some other cities including Nice, Toulouse, Biarritz, Marseille and Lille have already ordered people to wear masks in busy outdoor areas. Several coastal towns popular with tourists – including Le Touquet in the Calais region, Saint-Malo on Brittany’s northern coast, and La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast – have done the same.
Almost 30,400 people have died of coronavirus in France since the epidemic began, the third-heaviest toll in Europe after Britain and Italy.
A State Department report on New York Jets owner Woody Johnson’s conduct as ambassador to the United Kingdom was released to the public Wednesday. It concludes that Johnson “sometimes made inappropriate or insensitive comments on topics generally considered Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)-sensitive, such as religion, sex, or color.” Johnson denied the findings in the report and even went as far as to ask the State Department to not publish this section of the report, according to The New York Times. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report does not cover Johnson’s reported attempt to s...
A species of frog from the Brazilian rainforest has become the first amphibian shown to live in a harem, where one male mates with two females who remain loyal to him.
So-called polygny is thought to be the most common mating system among animals and has previously been found in bony fishes, reptiles, mammals, birds, and even some invertebrates, Fabio de Sa, a zoologist at Universidade Estadual de Campinas, told AFP.
De Sa was the first author of a new paper that appeared in Science Advances on Wednesday which now shows that polgyny is present in all tetrapods, or four-legged animals.
Animal mating systems exist on a continuum between polygamy -- which is associated with an earlier stage in evolution -- and monogamy, which arises when the young of a species require intense parental investment.
Polygny tends to occur when males are forced to compete with one another for females and for patchy environmental resources such as water and food.
De Sa and colleagues decided to investigate whether Thoropa taophora, a species of frog found in Brazil's Atlantic rainforest that is known to be polygamous in areas of plenty, might exhibit polygny under the right circumstances.
- Thumb combat -
These frogs favor rocks and have a reddish-brown coloration that helps them blend in with their surroundings.
The males have long spines that are attached to their thumbs which they use in combat.
The team recorded the frogs at rocky outcrops on the edge of the rainforest where there are relatively few freshwater breeding sites or "seeps" available to them and they are more exposed to the Sun.
Sure enough, the resource-poor setting had an impact.
Males patrolled their breeding sites and emitted aggressive calls to ward off intruders, and remained close to their eggs and tadpoles to protect them.
When other male invaders ignored their warnings, they pounced on them with jump attacks, kicks, and used their thumb spines to grapple and throw their opponents.
- Long term relationship -
The team found that the males bred with only two females -- mostly with one dominant but also with a secondary.
The dominant females would try to induce mating by responding to male courtships calls with their own vocalizations.
They would also approach males and position themselves under them, simulating amplexus or the mating position of frogs where the male grasps the female from behind.
While this was going on, secondary females stood aside motionless.
Females sometimes also triggered mating by cannibalizing some of the male's eggs.
Most of the time the male would chase the female away to stop her, but sometimes, if she was a dominant female, he would also mate with her, which would lead to the creation of new eggs carrying her genes.
The team confirmed what they saw in the video by studying the genetic material from the seeps, finding that the tadpoles were all half-siblings from the same father and one of either two mothers -- though the dominant females bred far more.
The presence of much older tadpoles from the same parents confirmed that the mating relationships were long term.
The arrangement seemed to have clear advantages for both sexes.
The males need to prevent other males from using their hard-to-come-by breeding sites, and it is advantageous to diversify the gene pool by having multiple mates.
"The advantage for the female is it's better to have a good quality male and a good quality breeding site sharing it with another female -- rather than being exposed and not finding another frog or finding a lower quality frog," added De Sa.
The setting also elicited female-female competition, which is rare among frogs: the dominant females actually responded to male calls, and seemed to push out the secondary females during courtship.
Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a bill targeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that sought to block candidates under indictment from forming a future government.
In a vote that highlighted the fragility of the premier's coalition, Wednesday's bill, proposed by opposition leader Yair Lapid, was defeated 53-37. Members of the Blue and White party, who are part of the coalition, abstained.
Talk of a snap election is already widespread, just three months after the current government was formed.
Netanyahu is on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He denies wrongdoing.
Israeli law does not force a prime minister to step down after being indicted.
Lapid argues that the only reason no such law exists is because it was previously inconceivable that a prime minister facing criminal charges would insist on remaining in office.
The opposition asked Blue and White, led by defence minister and alternate premier Benny Gantz, to support its proposal.
Gantz, who challenged Netanyahu in three straight elections before joining him in a unity government, campaigned aggressively against Netanyahu's alleged corruption.
"Our fundamental position on the subject hasn't changed and won't change," Blue and White said in a statement on the propriety of an indicted premier in office.
But it described Lapid's decision to introduce the measure as "simply and purely an attempt to destabilize the entire political system".
Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party had said that Blue and White's support for the bill would sink the coalition.
"If Blue and White votes for this law, there will be elections," Likud lawmaker Miki Zohar said this week.
Ahead of the vote, the prospect of a fourth Israeli election in less than two years was met with widespread condemnation.
"In the throes of one of the most severe crises in the nation's history (caused by the coronavirus pandemic) we are choosing to do everything to prevent elections," Blue and White said.
Gantz's refusal to back the opposition bill has neutralised one threat to the coalition's survival, but an unresolved budget impasse could still force another election.
Gantz has demanded that the government agree a two year budget to provide stability, as outlined in his coalition agreement with Netanyahu.
The prime minister says he prefers a one year budget, given the difficulty of long-term planning during an unprecedented pandemic.
A deadline of August 25 had been set to agree a budget or dissolve the government, but a proposal to extend that deadline by 100 days passed a preliminary reading in parliament on Wednesday.
It must pass three more readings before becoming law.
Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai on Wednesday told his reporters to "fight on" following his dramatic arrest, as China widens its crackdown against critics in the semi-autonomous business hub.
The clampdown has gathered pace since Beijing imposed a sweeping security law on Hong Kong in June, with opposition politicians disqualified and activists arrested for social media posts.
The moves have provoked outrage in the West and deepened fears for millions who last year took to the streets to protest communist China's tightening grip on the city.
In one of the most dramatic days of the crackdown, Lai was among 10 people detained under the new law on Monday as around 200 police officers searched the newsroom of his Apple Daily tabloid, which is unapologetically critical of Beijing.
The 71-year-old was cheered by staff and handed a bouquet on Wednesday as he returned to the newsroom following a late night release on bail after 40 hours in custody.
In images broadcast live on Facebook by his own reporters, he told staff to continue filing the kind of unvarnished dispatches that have infuriated China and pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong.
"Fight on! Let's fight on," he said. "We have the support of the Hong Kong people. We can't let them down."
He told staff it was becoming "increasingly difficult" to run a media business in Hong Kong.
"Luckily I was not sent back to the mainland," he quipped in a characteristic display of dark humour.
China has declared it will have jurisdiction over especially serious national security crimes, toppling the legal firewall between the mainland's party-controlled courts and Hong Kong's independent judiciary.
- Sweeping new law -
Beijing imposed the new national security law in response to huge and often violent pro-democracy protests last year.
It has described the law -- its contents kept secret until it was enacted on 30 June -- as a "sword" hanging over the heads of opponents in Hong Kong.
It officially criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces.
But the broadly worded provisions outlawed certain political speech overnight, such as advocating sanctions, and greater autonomy or independence for Hong Kong.
Similar laws are used on the authoritarian mainland to snuff out opposition.
The most serious crimes under the Hong Kong law -- which is not supposed to be retroactive -- carry up to life in jail.
Police have given limited details of their alleged case against Lai and those arrested on Monday.
They say the group were involved in lobbying for foreign sanctions before the security law was passed and that they continued to operate in some form once the legislation came in.
Among those arrested were two of Lai's sons, senior Apple Daily executives and three members of now disbanded pro-democracy party Demosisto -- including 23-year-old Agnes Chow, a prominent activist.
- Regional media hub -
Critics believe the security law has ended the key liberties and autonomy that Beijing promised Hong Kong could keep after its 1997 handover by Britain.
The US has declared Hong Kong no longer autonomous from the mainland and deployed sanctions in response.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described Lai's arrest as "further proof" that Chinese authorities had "eviscerated Hong Kong's freedoms and eroded the rights of its people".
Britain has said it will ramp up efforts to allow Hong Kongers to relocate there.
Western criticism sparked fury in Beijing, which has responded with sanctions against US officials.
Hong Kong is a major media hub with a vibrant local press and multiple international news outlets operating regional headquarters in the city.
Both China and Hong Kong's government vowed the security law would keep press freedoms in tact. But the police operation against Lai sparked denunciations of plunging press freedoms.
The city's ranking on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index has already fallen from 18th in 2002 to 73rd in 2019.
The New York Times announced plans to move a third of its employees from its Hong Kong newsrooms to South Korea as a result.
Local media reported that a new unit has been set up in Hong Kong's immigration department to vet visa applications for foreign journalists.
The Immigration Department has declined to comment on the reports.
Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corp said Tuesday it was launching a stand-alone streaming service for its news and business channels that would be available in 20 countries by year's end.
Fox, which is a streamlined company formed after it sold much of its film and TV entertainment operations to Disney, said the new subscription service would include on-demand content from Fox News and Fox Business Network.
The Fox News International service priced at $6.99 per month will debut in Mexico on August 20 followed by Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom on September 17.
It will be in 20 countries by the end of the year, according to the company's Fox News Media unit.
The streaming service will offer content from Fox News, which has been the most-watched cable news channel in recent years and a favorite of President Donald Trump, online without the need for a cable or satellite subscription.
The service will be available on several platforms include iPhone, Android, Apple TV and Android TV, with Amazon Fire TV and Roku expected later.
The move comes amid a polarisation of news audiences in the United States in recent years, with many conservatives turning to Fox and others to rivals CNN and MSNBC.
Murdoch, the 89-year-old media mogul, remains chairman of Fox Corp. with his son Lachlan serving as chief executive. The family also separately controls News Corp. which includes the Wall Street Journal and media outlets in Britain and Australia.
Fox is the latest in a line of media companies to turn to streaming to reach a wider, global audience and viewers without pay TV packages. A similar service is available to US audiences known as Fox Nation.
The Murdochs concluded a deal last year selling its 21st Century Fox studios and cable channels to Disney while maintaining the Fox broadcast network and news channels.
Venice may be famed for Saint Mark's Square or the Bridge of Sighs, but the Italian city has another jewel that is often overlooked: its lagoon.
Once home to a rich variety of fish and birds, mankind's meddling has raised the water's salt content dramatically.
However, an environmental project aims to restore it to its former glory, by introducing more fresh water.
"The idea is to recreate an environment that has been lost over time, because rivers were diverted out of the lagoon," Rossella Boscolo Brusa, the project's leader, told AFP.
The diversions were done to clean up swampy areas and combat malaria, said Brusa, a researcher at the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (Ispra).
But the move had an unforeseen consequence.
"It led to increasingly salty water and drop in the number of reeds, a very precious habitat for protected species, or species of commercial interest," she said.
It is peaceful out on the lagoon -- the only noise comes from the occasional tourist boat or the calls of a lapwing, sandpiper or egret.
Expert Adriano Sfriso, of the Ca Foscari University in Venice, said that over half the lagoon used to be reedbeds and salt marshes -- some 17,000 hectares (around 42,000 acres).
The city's Cannaregio district was even named after the plants -- "canna" being the Italian for "reed".
Today, only 34 hectares remain, he said.
- 'Refresh' -
The reeds tolerate some salinity.
But in the inner part of the lagoon, where the water should be between zero and 15 on the salinity scale, it is 30 -- not far off the amount found in seawater.
Dubbed "Life Lagoon Refresh", the project, launched in 2017, diverts a freshwater flow from the Sile River into the lagoon.
A man-made canal, operational since May, allows the flow of water to be modulated according to the project's needs or high tides.
Barriers made of biodegradable coconut fibres contain the fresh water in the target area and help the reeds develop.
In total, the project aims to restore about 20 hectares of reeds, Sfriso said.
Replanters Carlo Marchesi and Adriano Croitoru meticulously uproot reeds, taking care not to disturb the birds, before punting a few kilometres away to replant the clods.
"We're going to rebuild the lagoon as our great-grandfathers knew it, much richer in fish and birds," says Marchesi, 56.
Local fishermen and bird hunters are also roped in to help transplant seagrasses that will speed up the return of aquatic plants.
- 'Our world' -
"The lagoon is our life, our world," said Massimo Parravicini, head of the main amateur fishermen and hunters' association.
"If we preserve it, we will be able to enjoy it as much as possible, and pass it on to our sons," said the 58-year old, who regularly volunteers with the project, which he describes as "fundamental to the ecosystem".
The salinity is continuously monitored, as is the water quality, vegetation and fauna.
A large net is dragged vertically through the water as per the seine fishing method.
A team is tasked with tallying the species.
Some, such as the grass goby, are protected, while others, including the sea bream, mullet, flounder or branzino, are important for small-scale fishing, Luca Scapin, also a researcher at the Ca Foscari University, said.
The project, supported by the European Commission, also aims to draw birds such as the purple heron.
The results will be shared with sites with similar issues, from Hyeres in France, to Albufera in Spain, and the Nestos Delta and Porto Lagos in Greece.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has said it is a "lie" that fires are ravaging the Amazon rainforest, despite data from his own government showing the number of blazes is rising.
The far-right leader has faced international condemnation for presiding over huge fires and rising deforestation in the Amazon -- criticism he took issue with in a speech to a video conference of countries that share the world's biggest rainforest.
"Tropical rainforest doesn't catch fire. So this story that the Amazon is burning is a lie, and we have to fight it with real numbers," he said Tuesday.
Yet satellite data from Brazil's national space agency, INPE, show the number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon last month rose 28 percent from July 2019, to 6,803.
Experts say the fires are typically not sparked naturally, but set by humans to clear land illegally for farming and ranching.
Last year, huge fires devastated the Amazon from May to October, sending a thick haze of black smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, thousands of kilometers away.
The fires triggered worldwide alarm over a forest seen as vital to curbing climate change.
Experts warn this year's dry season, which is just getting started, could see even more fires.
The scrutiny is pressuring Bolsonaro, who has called for protected Amazon lands to be opened up to mining and agriculture.
He has deployed the army to the Amazon basin, 60 percent of which is in Brazil, to fight fires and deforestation, declared a ban on agricultural fires and launched a task force to combat the problem.
He said that was producing results, pointing to a more than 25-percent reduction in deforestation year-on-year last month.
"We are making big, enormous efforts to fight fires and deforestation, but even so, we are criticized," he told the meeting of the Leticia Pact, a group launched last year to protect the Amazon.
His government has been accused of cherry-picking data by trumpeting the July drop in deforestation.
Despite the one-month decline, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon set a new record high in the first seven months of the year, according to INPE data.
China has eased entry restrictions for nationals from 36 European countries, months after thousands were left stranded when the country closed its borders and slashed flights to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Almost all foreign nationals were forbidden from entering the country when Beijing imposed the measures in March, even those with Chinese work or residence permits or family living in the country.
But this week China said it would relax some of the bureaucratic requirements for Europeans hoping to re-enter.
The new rules will allow European passport holders from 36 countries –- including France, Germany and the UK -– with a valid residence permit to apply for a Chinese visa without an invitation letter, according to a notice by the Chinese embassy in Berlin published Wednesday.
Everyone returning to China has to reapply for their visa, since travel documents issued before the pandemic have been nullified.
Previously, China had allowed only a small number of skilled foreign workers to return with special official invitation letters -- a process which proved slow.
China's foreign ministry said in a statement published Monday that European passport holders who qualify will now be allowed to "apply for a Chinese visa free of charge".
Anyone coming from abroad is still subject to COVID-19 tests and a 14-day quarantine -- and will still have to find a plane ticket, after Beijing ordered a drastic reduction in international air links at the end of March, and prices soared.
Some of these strict flight quotas are also being lifted, with Air France allowed to operate three weekly flights between China and France from the end of August.
China has largely brought the spread of COVID-19 under control after the disease first emerged there late last year, but there has been a series of local clusters in recent months.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will be a guinea pig for a controversial Russian coronavirus vaccine, his spokesman said on Wednesday, as the Southeast Asian nation emerged as a frontrunner for overseas clinical trials.
Moscow says it has developed the world's first vaccine offering "sustainable immunity" against the virus and is in the final stage of tests involving 2,000 people.
However, Western scientists have previously raised concerns about the speed of development of Russian vaccines, suggesting researchers might be cutting corners.
But despite the scepticism, Manila has accepted Russia's offer to participate in clinical trials, vaccine supply and production of the drug, and Philippine health authorities said they are meeting the Russian drug developer Gamaleya on Wednesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the drug was safe and that one of his own daughters had received the inoculation, dubbed "Sputnik V" after the pioneering 1950s Soviet satellite.
Duterte has also expressed "huge trust" in Russia's efforts to stop the contagion.
"I believe the vaccine that you have produced is really good for humanity," Duterte said, praising Putin.
"I will be the first one to be experimented on," he said on Monday.
Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque said that the president -- known for making controversial remarks -- was not joking.
"He's old. He can sacrifice his life for the Filipino people," Roque said.
- 27 million in lockdown -
A government technical working group was meeting officials of the Moscow-based Gamaleya research institute to discuss the scope and protocols of the clinical trials in the Philippines, health undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said.
The country of around 107 million people is scrambling to contain coronavirus infections. There have been more than 143,000 cases -- the highest in Southeast Asia after Indonesia -- and the death toll is now over 2,400.
More than 27 million people have been under strict stay-at-home orders since last week to contain the spread of the virus in the capital Metro Manila and nearby areas.
Officials have said an extension of the two-week lockdown is unlikely as the government struggles to provide aid for the country's poorest.
Vaccine confidence remains an issue in the country.
The Philippines in 2016 was the first nation to use dengue vaccine Dengvaxia in a mass programme, but a botched rollout led to claims several dozen children had died after being vaccinated.
Duterte last year banned the drug after a nationwide panic among parents, although a government-commissioned investigation found no conclusive proof that Dengvaxia was to blame and the drug's manufacturer Sanofi has always denied the claims.
The World Health Organization said 20 countries have licensed the dengue vaccine for widespread use.
