Chile’s Maule region begins recovery after forest fires

"I was out there. I saw the flames creeping up the side of the bluff," recalls Frank Lee Smith, a resident of Klamath County in southern Oregon, who had to evacuate due to the Bootleg Fire, which continues to grow. "It's slowly sinking in that I got no place to go to and now I gotta figure things out." Whipped up by dry conditions and strengthening winds, the Bootleg Fire has already devoured more than 212,758 acres (86,000 hectares) - the equivalent of 120,000 soccer fields.

The massive fire raging in southern Oregon for the past 10 days is likely to continue due to unstable weather. A 'fire cloud' collapsed threatening firefighters with strong downdrafts and flying embers.

Residents and students attend a vigil at the gates of the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi to pay homage to Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian photographer Danish Siddiqui. The Reuters news agency photographer was killed covering fighting between Afghan security forces and the Taliban near a border crossing with Pakistan. The Reuters news agency photographer was killed Friday covering fighting between Afghan security forces and the Taliban near a border crossing with Pakistan. "Danish was a people's journalist... He used to narrate the sorrow and pain of our times through his camera," said one resident. His photos of protests in the neighbourhood against a controversial citizenship law last year were well-known among the residents here.

Fernando Karadima was a key figure in a sexual abuse case that sent shockwaves through the Catholic Church. Aged 90, he died of bronchopneumonia and kidney failure in a nursing home.

Workers at the world's biggest copper mine, Chile's Escondida, have approved a strike after rejecting the final contract offer proposed by multinational owners BHP. The workers are asking for a one-time bonus to recognize their work during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as education benefits for their children. Escondida workers staged a 44-day strike in 2017, the longest in the history of Chilean mining. The strike caused $740 million in losses for the company.

A wildfire rages through the village of Afidnes, north of Athens - a blaze that firefighters had hoped to control but which regained strength after already destroying large areas of pine forest. Dozens of blazes have torn through Greece this week in the country's worst heatwave for over three decades.

At a children's hospital in Santiago, Chile there is a flurry of excitement over a delegation of special visitors: a four-legged quartet has arrived to offer some reprieve from sickness and pain with their wagging tails and soulful eyes.

A forest fire in France's Var region, near the glitzy Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez, has left at least two dead and forced thousands of residents and tourists to flee. The flames have scorched some 5,000 hectares in a region known for its forests, vineyards and fauna since it broke out in the Plaine des Maures nature reserve on Monday evening.

Firefighters continue to battle a large wildfire in Juqueri State Park in Brazil, which caused soot to rain over Sao Paulo.

Chilean senate head and centre-left candidate, Yasna Provoste, meets with supporters in Santiago as the countdown to the presidential election in November begins. A handful of other rallies were also held in the capital.

The blaze continues to rage close to a popular Costa del Sol resort, fanned by strong winds and late summer temperatures.

Chile's opposition moves to impeach the country's president, Sebastian Pinera, for the controversial sale of a mining company through a firm owned by his children, which appeared in the Pandora Papers leaks, Congressman Tomás Hirsch says.