Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) penned a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urging the Pentagon to provide additional support to Greece as the country battles devastating wildfires.
State of play: Dozens of wildfires broke out in Greece last week after the country suffered its worst heatwave in decades. They have continued to rage unabated and forced hundreds to evacuate.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Sunday that he will discuss COVID-19 vaccines during a phone call with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, Reuters reports.
Driving the news: López Obrador hinted that more coronavirus vaccines could be donated from the U.S. to Mexico as the latter battles a spike in cases driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.
The U.S. women's indoor volleyball team beat Brazil in three straight sets to win their Olympic final game and clinch Team USA the Tokyo Games' top spot for gold medals on Sunday.
Of note: The 25-21, 25-20, 25-14 win marked the first ever Olympic gold medal for the U.S. women's indoor volleyball team.
Team USA's Jennifer Valente won the Olympic gold medal in the women's cycling omnium event on Sunday.
The big picture: Japan's Yumi Kajihara won silver and the Netherlands' Kirsten Wild took bronze. It was Valente's second Tokyo Games medal, after winning bronze Tuesday in the team pursuit.
Germany's modern pentathlon national team coach Kim Raisner was disqualified from the Tokyo Olympic Games Saturday for punching a horse during competition.
Driving the news: The International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM) said in a statement the sport's governing body gave Kim Raisner a "black card" that rules her out of the remainder of the Olympics, after officials viewed video footage from Friday's showjumping round of the women's modern pentathlon event.
A fishing fleet of around 300 boats is fast approaching the World Heritage Site off the Ecuadorian coast where biodiversity inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Why it matters: Over 20% of the marine species in the Galápagos archipelago’s reserve are found only there.
The former commander of the Colombian army will be charged with murder this week, per prosecutors, making him the highest-ranking military officer to face a possible prison sentence over extrajudicial killings.
Details:U.S.-trained Gen. Mario Montoya is accused of overseeing 104 cases in which civilians, five of them children, were kidnapped, killed and disguised as “guerrilla casualties” by armed forces between 2007 and 2008.
Canadian border agents reached a tentative deal on Saturday after 36 hours of negotiations as the country plans to reopen to fully vaccinated U.S. residents and permanent residents starting Aug. 9.
Driving the news: Two labor unions, the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Customs and Immigration Union, said union members have worked without a contract for three years in a toxic work environment.
The head of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology People said that people around the world should be prepared to coexist with different variants of the coronavirus as it continues to mutate, the South Morning China Post reports.
What she's saying: "As the number of infected cases has just become too big, this allowed the novel coronavirus more opportunities to mutate..." top virologist Shi Zhengli said, per the English-language paper in Hong Kong. "New variants will continue to emerge."
The Winter Games are just six months away, kicking off in Beijing on Feb. 4.
Why it matters: Beijing will become the first city that has hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympics, and it will do so when the virus that originated in China will still be wreaking havoc on the world.
Nearly half of Americans say China shouldn't be allowed to host the Winter Games in 2022 because of its record of human rights abuses, a new Axios/Momentive poll finds.
Why it matters: These results suggest that, in addition to facing public health challenges over the continued spread of COVID, the Beijing Games will be politically divisive for a large segment of the American audience.
Thai police on Saturday fired water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of anti-government protesters calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha over his handling of the coronavirus, AP reports.
Driving the news: Demonstrators, who were part of the student protest group Free Youth, threw rocks, bottles and shot fireworks during the confrontation at an army base where Prayuth lives, per AP.
The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan on Saturday urged all U.S. citizens to leave the country "immediately," adding that they should "not plan to rely on U.S. government flights."
The big picture: The warning comes as the Taliban capture their second provincial capital, Sheberghan in Jowzjan Province, in two days.
