Jasper wildfire: ‘Heartbreaking’ damage as Canadian Armed Forces ordered to respond to Alberta blazes
(NEW YORK) — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau authorized the Canadian Armed Forces to respond on Thursday to wildfires raging in Alberta.
Trudeau said he was sending “resources, evacuations support, and more emergency wildfire resources to the province immediately — and we’re coordinating firefighting and airlift assistance.”
More than 400 firefighters from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Africa are also on their way to help fight the wildfires in Alberta, he said.
“Alberta, we’re with you,” Trudeau said in a social media post.
The town of Jasper and Jasper National Park in Alberta have closed and were evacuated due to active wildfires in the park.
Since the two wildfires were initially reported on Monday near Jasper, the wildfire situation “remains out of control,” Jasper National Park said Thursday.
Wildfires reached the town of Jasper on Wednesday evening, the park said, as firefighters worked to combat multiple structural fires and protect critical infrastructure.
“Today has been an exceptionally difficult day for Jasperites, incident personnel, and everyone who loves Jasper,” Jasper National Park said in an update Wednesday night. “As the pictures and videos circulating online show, significant loss has occurred within the townsite.”
Park officials were unable to provide an update on the extent of damage in the area.
“As the heartbreaking images from Jasper emerge, I want to thank the brave first responders who are in Alberta right now, fighting to save every home and every community they can,” Trudeau said Thursday.
There have been no reported injuries due to the wildfires, Jasper National Park said in an update Thursday morning.
More than 25,000 people were ordered to evacuate from the park and areas nearby this week due to the wildfires, officials said.
The evacuation impacted 15,000 people who were visiting and staying in the park when the order was issued, as well as about 10,000 people in the town of Jasper, including seasonal workers, according to the Alberta Emergency Management Agency.
“The Town of Jasper and Parks Canada’s priority is the safety of our staff, residents and visitors,” Jasper National Park said in a statement on Tuesday. “We acknowledge this is a stressful time and appreciate patience as this is an evolving and complex situation.”
Thousands of residents and visitors already evacuated Monday into Tuesday, as two wildfires burned in Jasper National Park, the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies, the park said.
Parks Canada mobilized additional firefighting resources and aircraft to assist in battling the blazes, according to Jasper National Park.
“Our priority is to protect the town and community of Jasper, limiting wildfire growth towards town, Highway 16 and critical infrastructure,” Jasper National Park said.
Reservations through Aug. 6 in Jasper National Park have been canceled. A reopening date has not yet been announced.
Alberta is experiencing “extreme wildfire conditions,” with more than 170 wildfires burning across the province, according to the government of Alberta.
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — In one of the largest exchanges of drone attacks since the Russia-Ukraine war began, dozens were shot down in Russia and Ukraine in overnight assaults, officials in both countries said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said Wednesday they shot down more than 50 Ukrainian long-range drones over various regions, including nearly a dozen around Moscow.
The drones over Moscow were shot down Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, local time, according to Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin.
Unverified videos published online showed explosions in the sky over Russia. Sobyanin said some of the drones were destroyed in the region surrounding Moscow, brought down by the city’s layered air defense.
Ukrainian authorities have not yet commented on the attack in Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces shot down 50 Shahed drones and subdued 16 others in a prolonged attack — the longest drone assault since the start of the full-scale — officials in Ukraine said.
Ten drones were shot down around Kyiv, according to Maj. Gen. Anatoliy Barhylevych, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces. The drone assault lasted for 16 hours, from 10 p.m. Tuesday till 2 p.m. Wednesday local time, he said.
Russian authorities have not yet commented on the attack in Ukraine.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv warned in an alert Wednesday to American citizens in Ukraine that “during the next several days and through the weekend there is an increased risk of both nighttime and daytime Russian drone and missile attacks.”
The alert said the threat was tied to Ukraine’s upcoming Independence Day and did not suggest it was connected to any Ukrainian military activities inside Russian territory.
(NEW YORK) — Over 1,100 flights have been canceled and 2,867 delayed in the U.S. as private and public sector industries continue to be impacted by the the CrowdStrike outage around the world more than a day after it began. While many businesses appear to have recovered, the issue has not yet been fully resolved.
The outage impacted 8.5 million Windows devices, according to Microsoft, sparking global chaos with airline, bank and other disruptions. Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm, is not owned by Microsoft but still operates largely on their systems.
“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” Microsoft said in a post.
The outage came from a faulty software update sent to computers running Microsoft Windows by CrowdStrike, causing flights to be grounded, disruptions to financial services and hospital systems to be knocked offline.
Rebooting systems multiple times worked for some agencies while others continue to be impacted, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency report reviewed by ABC News.
Multiple U.S. government facilities have reported not being able to operate because they do not have access to multiple Microsoft 360 applications. Election related and voting registration databases in Arizona, South Dakota, Texas and Washington state were impacted by the outage as well, according to the report.
While American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Airlines issued a global ground stop on Friday due to communications issues, TSA systems were not impacted, according to the report. There are at least 1,143 cancelled flights in the U.S. on Saturday, far fewer than the over 3,200 cancelations on Friday.
Delta continues to be the airline most impacted by the outage and Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International Airport continues to see the highest number of delays and cancellations on Saturday.
American Airlines said it has “fully recovered” and canceled less than 1% of flights today — 43 flights.
Emergency 911 systems that were affected by the outage switched to fully operational backup systems, according to the DHS report.
It was early Friday when reports started coming in that a tech outage was beginning to knock services offline across the globe, a cascading effect that would impact millions.
In an update Friday night, the company said they were “actively working with customers impacted” by the issue.
Hospital systems like Mass General Brigham, who halted elective and non-emergency surgeries yesterday, said they would be working through the night and expect to be fully operational on Saturday.
“We are doing everything possible to restore the electronic systems that support our patient care delivery across our system. Our teams will continue to work throughout the night to implement solutions and, at this time, we expect to be operational on Saturday, July 20, 2024,” Mass General Brigham said in a statement late Friday.
-ABC News’ Ayesha Ali and Luke Barr contributed to this report
(PARIS) — Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is the target of controversy over her gender and sex after Italian boxer Angela Carini abandoned their Olympics bout on Thursday after only 46 seconds.
Shortly after the match, reports falsely surfaced saying that Khelif is a transgender woman; however, she is not and was assigned female at birth, according to the IOC.
“The Algerian boxer was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, has a female passport,” the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said in a press conference on Friday.
The Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee (COA) and the IOC are speaking out about the misinformation on Khelif’s gender and sex.
The COA denounced what it called “malicious” and “unethical” attacks directed at Khelif.
“These attempts at defamation, based on lies, are totally unfair, especially at a crucial time when she is preparing for the Olympic Games, the peak of her career,” said the COA in a translated statement.
At the center of controversy around her participation in Paris is her disqualification from the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi.
In a new statement, the IBA claims she failed to meet the unspecified eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition and was disqualified while in the midst of the international contest.
This disqualification has sparked false rumors that she is transgender, or assigned male at birth.
According to the IBA, Khelif did not undergo a testosterone examination, but was instead subject to “a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential.”
The IBA does not state the nature of the test and why they were concerned. However, the IBA stated that Khelif and one other boxer from Taiwan, Lin Yu-ting, “were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.”
According to the IBA, neither athlete successfully appealed their disqualification and the decisions are legally binding.
At the time of the decisions, Khelif told Algerian Ennahar TV: “This is a conspiracy and a big conspiracy, and we will not be silent about it.”
Both Khelif and Lin had previously competed in a host of IBA championships and tournaments in the years prior to the disqualification.
They also competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Neither Khelif nor Lin took home a medal.
According to the COA, Khelif has 50 fights under her belt, including 37 wins and nine losses.
According to the meeting minutes in which the test results were discussed, the two failed to meet “one of the eligibility criteria.” The organization’s president, Umar Kremlev, told the Russian state-owned news agency Tass that the two women had XY chromosomes, however, ABC News has not independently confirmed this.
It is possible for women to have XY chromosomes, according to major medical and health organizations. For example, people with differences in sexual development (DSD) – sometimes referred to as intersex – often have atypical genes, hormones, and reproductive organs “that differ from expectations generally associated with male and female bodies,” according to the NHS and the CDC.
It is unknown whether a chromosomal test was the basis for the disqualifications or if either Khelif or Lin has this condition.
An example of DSD noted by the NHS states: “You or your child may have sex chromosomes (bundles of genes) usually associated with being female (XX chromosomes) or usually associated with being male (XY chromosomes), but reproductive organs and genitals that may look different from usual.”
This means even though someone may genetically be born with the “XY” typical male chromosomes, their body may not produce or respond to testosterone and they would develop more closely to a typical “XX” female.
Estimates show that there may be up to 1.7% of people who are born with intersex traits, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Every person has the right to practice sport without discrimination,” the IOC said in a Thursday statement on the controversy surrounding the athletes. “The IOC is saddened by the abuse that the two athletes are currently receiving.”
The IOC slammed the IBA’s 2023 decision in its recent statement. The organization argued that eligibility rules should not be changed during competition and rules should be based on scientific evidence.
“These two athletes were the victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA,” the statement read. “The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years.”
As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the IOC states that the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passports.
According to the IOC, Olympic athletes must comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations set by the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit.
The same rules have been applied at the boxing tournaments of the 2023 European Games, Asian Games, Pan American Games and Pacific Games, the ad hoc 2023 African qualifying tournaments in Dakar and two world qualifying tournaments held in Busto Arsizio and Bangkok in 2024 among others.
The IBA criticized the IOC for allowing the two athletes to play and defended its position, asserting that Khelif and Lin do not belong in the women’s category.
“The IBA will never support any boxing bouts between the genders, as the organization puts the safety and well-being of our athletes first,” said the IBA. “We are protecting our women and their rights to compete in the ring against equal rivals, and we will defend and support them in all instances.”
After Italian boxer Angela Carini and Khelif exchanged a few punches on Thursday in this year’s Paris games, Carini quit the competition due to pain in her nose within 50 seconds in the ring, according to a report from NBC News – sparking further concerns about Khelif’s participation.
“I am not here to judge or pass judgment,” Carini told reporters after the match, according to NBC. “If an athlete is this way, and in that sense it’s not right or it is right, it’s not up to me to decide.”
The IBA and IOC have been at odds since roughly 2019, when the IOC suspended the IBA over concerns about financial transparency, the integrity of its policies for referees and judges, and the organizational culture.
Recognition of the group was officially withdrawn in 2023, meaning that the IOC took over the management of boxing at the Olympic level and is currently looking for a different international federation to represent and host boxing at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
The IBA condemned the move, claiming that the IBA had ended the “toxic and corrupt culture that was allowed to fester under the IOC for far too long.”
“We have made the International Boxing Association new, transparent, clean, and our successes were publicly acknowledged by international independent experts and there is only one organization that has no interest in recognizing our tremendous progress,” said Kremlev, the IBA’s president. “We accepted the process and the rules, but in the end, we were not assessed fairly. Now, we are left with no chance but to demand a fair assessment from a competent court.”
In a March 2024 profile by UNICEF, Khelif recalled being bullied by boys for excelling at football in her rural village in Tiaret in western Algeria when she was a teen. The article notes that dodging punches from the local boys led her to boxing.
However, her father didn’t approve of boxing for girls so Khelif and her mother reportedly sold scrap metal for recycling and her mother sold couscous to pay for bus tickets to get to boxing lessons in a nearby village.
ABC News has reached out to both Khelif and Lin’s Olympic teams for comment.