VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

This handout photo courtesy of BC Wildfire Service shows the Sparks Lake wildfire, British Columbia, seen from the air on Jun 29, 2021(Photo: AFP) - 

Ottawa prepared on Friday (Jul 2) to send military aircraft and other help to evacuate towns and fight more than 100 wildfires in western Canada fueled by a record-smashing heat wave.

According to wildfire officials, at least 143 fires were active in British Columbia, 77 of them sparked in the last two days. Most were caused by lightning strikes.

"We will be there to help," he told a news conference.

That will include military helicopters and possibly Hercules turboprop transport planes, Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan earlier told public broadcaster CBC.

"Canadian Forces are ready to support residents," he said in a Twitter message. 

About 1,000 people have already fled the wildfires in British Columbia, and authorities are searching for many who have gone missing.

The village of Lytton, 250km northeast of Vancouver, was evacuated Wednesday night because of a fire that flared up suddenly and spread quickly.

The fire came a day after the village set a Canadian record-high temperature on Tuesday of 49.6 degrees Celsius.

"Today our thoughts are mostly with families that are grieving, that are facing terrible loss," said Trudeau.

"But of course, we also have to reflect on the fact that extreme weather events are getting more frequent and climate change has a significant role to play in that."

Lytton resident Jeff Chapman told the CBC he witnessed his parents die in the fire that engulfed the town.

With only minutes to react, the elderly couple sought shelter from the smoke and flames in a trench in their backyard, as Chapman ran for safety at nearby rail tracks.

From that vantage, he said he saw the fires sweep across and destroy most of the town.

His distressed voice could be heard pleading for help over the crackling flames in a video on CBC. The ground, he said, was too hot to go back for his parents.

Meanwhile, a heat wave that stretched at the beginning of the week from the US state of Oregon to Canada's Arctic territories has started moving eastward, late Thursday touching parts of Ontario in central Canada.

British Columbia also warned Friday of flooding from melting mountain snow caps and glaciers under the heat dome, which occurs when hot air is trapped by high pressure fronts, heating the ground//CNA

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine - 

The United States will ship 4 million doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine to Indonesia as it battles a coronavirus outbreak, the US national security adviser told the Indonesian foreign minister on Friday (Jul 2).

In a call with Retno Marsudi, Jake Sullivan said the doses would be shipped via the COVAX global vaccine sharing program "as soon as possible", a White House statement said.

The two officials also discussed US plans to increase assistance for Indonesia’s broader COVID-19 response efforts, the statement said.

"Sullivan highlighted the importance the Biden-Harris administration places on Indonesia, Southeast Asia and ending the pandemic more broadly and pledged continued support and high-level engagement," the statement said.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country and has been battling one of the Asia's worst coronavirus outbreaks. The nation has recorded record new infections on eight of the past 12 days, including 25,830 cases on Friday, and a record 539 deaths.

Indonesia has relied mainly on the vaccine from China's Sinovac Biotech, but has been looking to diversify supply sources.

Penny K Lukito, the chief of Indonesia's food and drug agency, said earlier on Friday it authorised the Moderna vaccine for emergency use.

Washington has been competing with Beijing to deepen geopolitical clout through so-called vaccine diplomacy, although it has said it is not sharing vaccines to secure favors or extract concessions, but to save lives and end the pandemic.

The Biden administration pledged last month to share an initial 80 million US-made vaccines globally amid concern about the disparity in vaccination rates between advanced and developing countries.

It has already announced plans to provide vaccines to other Southeast Asian countries - the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Papua New Guinea, and Cambodia.

It has also said it will purchase 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to distribute to the African Union and 92 low and lower middle-income countries//CNA

Protesters holding National League for Democracy (NLD) flags raise three-finger salutes during flash protests against the military coup at Bahan township in Yangon, Myanmar, Friday, June 25, 2021. (AP Photo) - 

The Biden administration on Friday (Jul 3) hit 22 senior Myanmar officials and family members with sanctions over the government’s crackdown on democracy protests after the coup. 

The action was accompanied by the removal of sanctions on three Iranian industrial executives whom the Trump administration penalised for supporting Iran’s ballistic missile program.

“The military’s suppression of democracy and campaign of brutal violence against the people of Burma are unacceptable,” it said. 

"The United States will continue to impose increasing costs on Burma’s military and promote accountability for those responsible for the military coup and ongoing violence, including by targeting sources of revenue for the military and its leaders.”

Among the officials targeted are Minister for Information Chit Naing, Minister for Investment and Foreign Economic Relations Aung Naing Oo, Minister for Labor, Immigration and Population Myint Kyaing, Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Thet Thet Khine and three members of the State Administrative Council that the military set up after the coup.

The sanctions freeze any assets they or any companies they own may have in US jurisdictions and bar Americans from doing business with them.Treasury offered no explanation for the lifting of sanctions on the three Iranians, but administration officials have said previous similar removals were based solely on the targets no longer meeting the criteria for the penalties and were unrelated to indirect negotiations on salvaging the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which that former President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018.

Also Friday, Treasury issued a final rule revoking Trump-era sanctions against International Criminal Court prosecutors and staff. The rule, which will take effect on July 6 after its publication in the Federal Register, completes President Joe Biden's Apr 1 revocation of Trump's authorisation to impose sanctions on ICC officials involved in war crimes investigations into US citizens//CNA

Canadian warship HMCS Calgary by esquimalt mfrc - 

Canadian warship Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Calgary is making a visit to Jakarta from July 1-3 as it sails through the Indo-Pacific on Operation PROJECTION. 

In a release received by VOI RRI from the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta, Friday, the ship will conduct a cooperative deployment with the Indonesian Naval Ship KRI Bung Tomo on July 3 before heading to the coast of Australia where it will practice interoperability with Australian, American, and other regional partners during Exercise TALISMAN-SABRE. 

Canadian Ambassador to Indonesia, Cameron MacKay, accompanied by Canadian Ambassador to ASEAN, Diedrah Kelly, visited the ship at the Port of Tanjung Priok on Friday where they were both warmly welcomed by the ship’s crew who remained onboard the ship.

“The visit of the HMCS Calgary to Jakarta is a concrete demonstration of Canada’s growing partnership with Indonesia, and our joint commitment to peace, security, sustainability, and prosperity at home and abroad,” said Ambassador MacKay.  

“HMCS Calgary is very glad to have the opportunity to work with our Indonesian partners as we sail through the Indo-Pacific on Operation PROJECTION. Maintaining interoperability between our nations is important to ensuring regional peace and maritime security,” said Commander Mark O’Donohue, Commanding Officer HMCS Calgary.

HMCS Calgary has been deployed since February. On Operation PROJECTION they have so far visited Brunei, Vietnam, and Singapore and in the spring they travelled to Middle Eastern waters for the counter terrorism mission Operation ARTEMIS where they conducted maritime interdiction and security operations with the 34-nation coalition Combined Maritime Forces and Canadian-led Combined Task Force 150.

On Operation ARTEMIS, HMCS Calgary was incredibly successful and broke the record for largest heroin seizure, most amount of seizures, and most amount of illicit narcotics seized by any ship on a rotation in the history of the deployment. With the ending of Operation ARTEMIS, the ship is again on Operation PROJECTION.

HMCS Calgary’s deployment on Operation PROJECTION is a demonstration of Canada’s commitment to global peace and security and an opportunity to build ties and improve interoperability with partner nations. After Australia, the ship is scheduled to visit New Zealand and Fiji before returning to Canada in September//Release-VOI