The European Union added 10 more countries Thursday to its list granting free entry to international travelers. 

EU governments agreed to add Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Canada, Jordan, Montenegro, Qatar, Moldova and Saudi Arabia to the bloc’s free travel list, said the European Council, the EU institution representing member states.

In addition, free entry was granted for travelers from Kosovo, which is officially categorized as “other entities and territories” since not all EU states recognize it as a state.

The decision updated the list already featuring Australia, Albania, Lebanon, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Rwanda, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Serbia, Thailand and the US as well as China in case of reciprocity.

Residents of these countries can visit the EU for non-essential purposes regardless of their vaccination status.

The travel list applies to the 27 EU member states plus countries taking part in the Schengen cooperation, namely Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

The free travel list is considered a recommendation for EU states and governments are allowed to make exceptions and allow visitors from other non-EU countries.

The bloc decided to restrict the entry of non-EU nationals to its territory last March in order to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic./aa

As discussions continue over the discovery of unmarked graves at three residential schools in Canada for Indigenous children, there are now claims that the bodies of some children were burned at Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford, Ontario. 

A march was organized by the Brantford Regional Indigenous Support Centre for children who lost their lives while enrolled in the church boarding schools.

Thousands of Canadians gathered in the garden of the Brantford Community Center and marched to the former residential school.

One of the marchers, Doug Enhug, told Anadolu Agency that his father was a student at the Mohawk boarding school.

Asked if there were also unmarked graves at the school, Enhug said nothing would be found, as he had heard from a survivor of the school that the bodies of children were burned there.

Enhug added that the survivor said they saw them burning a body at a crematorium.

Rebecca Wilson, director of the Brantford Regional Indigenous Support Centre, who also organized the march, said there was a crematorium in the building and she had heard many stories of them destroying their “garbage” there.

Three motorcycle groups with the biggest memberships in the region also supported the march, where local police took precautions./aa

Tens of thousands of Canadians exchanged the traditional Canada Day colors of red and white to don orange shirts Thursday in a show of mourning for child victims of Indian residential schools. 

An estimated 10,000 people gathered in London, Ontario and marches took place in Montreal, Thunder Bay and other cities.

The term ‘genocide’ has been used by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to describe what was done to Indigenous children starting in the 1820s. In all, 139 Indian residential schools were set up across the country -- the last one closed in 1996 -- and 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their parents and forced to attend the schools. The goal was to instill white culture in the "savages."

There was a litany of horror at the schools, with abuse rampant and children often buried in unmarked graves -- 1,148 have been discovered at three of the former schools in the past five weeks, leading to Thursday's protests.

Traditional Canada Day celebrations were muted or cancelled in many communities, and Trudeau said in a statement obtained by Anadolu Agency that for some, July 1 is "not yet a day of celebration."

"The horrific finding of the remains of hundreds of children at the sites of former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan has rightfully pressed us to reflect on our country's historical failures and the injustices that still exist for Indigenous peoples and many others in Canada," he said. "We as Canadians must be honest with ourselves about our past."

Trudeau met Thursday with Phyllis Webstad, a survivor of St. Eugene's Mission School in British Columbia, where 182 unmarked graves were revealed this week. She is the founder of the Orange Shirt Society and Orange Shirt Day. Webstad wore an orange top on the first day at the school, and it was stripped from her and she never saw it again. She was six years old.

She founded the Orange Shirt movement and tours the country, telling of her horror story as a little child at the school.

The meeting between the two was closed to the media./agencies

Turkey’s presidential communications director on Thursday unveiled YouTube's hypocrisy of banning his speech he made at an exhibition in the memory of Turkish diplomats martyred by Armenian terrorist organizations.

"I regret to say that the speech I made at the Martyr Diplomats Exhibition was censored by YouTube. This speech supposedly contained hate speech," Fahrettin Altun said on Twitter.

Accusing YouTube of practicing "double standards and hypocrisy," he said: "YouTube, which ignores hate speeches against Islam and Muslims and easily opens up space for the terrorist organizations’ smear campaign, considers what we said about the murderous terrorists who martyred our Turkish diplomats as a hate crime!"

"Like it or not, we will keep saying on all occasions that terrorism has no language, religion or race," he went on to say.

"We have seen once again that we need indigenous and national platforms in the field of media and communication, as we need in every field."

On April 24, Altun delivered a speech at The Martyr Diplomats Exhibition, which was held simultaneously at Istanbul's Sirkeci Station and in Los Angeles.

It was dedicated to Turkish diplomats who continued their duties despite the threats and attacks by Armenian terrorist groups between 1973 and 1984, and lost their lives for this purpose./aa

The Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) David Beasley said that their first food shipment to Venezuela arrived on Thursday.

The first batch marks the beginning of a foreign aid program that has the goal to feed 1.5 million children in Venezuela by end of the 2022-2023 school year.

According to Beasley, the shipment contains roughly 40,000 food packages for school children under the age of 6.

These food packages "will be distributed in the first month of the operation," said the World Food Programme in a statement released earlier in the day.

Beasley also noted that the packages will be given as “take-home rations” because schools in Venezuela remain closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“On the move in Venezuela: the first delivery of WFP food has arrived in country! 42,000 packages of take-home rations for school children under 6 years old has just been received at our logistics base. Distributions to families taking place soon,” Beasley wrote on Twitter.

According to the World Food Programme, these food packages include rice, lentils, and vegetable oil, among other basic items.

This initiative was first announced in April in a deal with the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro that would allow the World Food Programme to manage the distribution of the food packages.

"The WFP will manage its own supply chain, from food purchasing to school distribution," said the World Food Programme.

The initiative is aimed at mitigating the unprecedented humanitarian crisis that is taking place in the Latin American country.

The World Food Programme estimated in fall 2019 that one in three people in Venezuela is "food insecure and needs assistance."/aa

Foreign tourists coming to France from next week will have to pay for the PCR and antigen tests to declare they are not infected with COVID-19, a government spokesperson said.

In an interview with Les Echos newspaper, Gabriel Attal said from July 7 foreign tourists will have to shell out up to €49 ($58) for PCR test and €29 ($34) for antigens.

Earlier, in order to boost tourism and encourage travelers to visit the country, senior ministers had announced free tests. However, in an about-turn, the government has changed its decision on the principle of "reciprocity."

"It is a question of reciprocity knowing the French have to pay for these tests in most countries they travel," Attal said, defending the decision. The COVID-19 tests are free for French citizens; however, within Europe, conducting the tests can cost anywhere between €50-300 ($60-364).

According to the government's travel guidelines, vaccinated travelers entering France from countries classified in the "red list": Afghanistan, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraguay, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Uruguay, Namibia, Russia, and Seychelles, are required to conduct an antigen test on arrival at the airport./aa

Hundreds of so-called “undocumented” migrants in Belgium are seriously ill as they continue a hunger strike for more than a month, with some “stitching their mouths shut” to signal there is no going back.

Nearly 150,000 migrants have been living in the country for years without legal residency or working papers.

About 400 have been living in a church and a university campus in the center of Brussels for six months to make their voices heard by the government.

Migrants, who have been on a hunger strike for 40 days, are demanding the government make legal arrangements for them to be given legal status.

The situation of the undocumented population who came to Belgium from Algeria, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and many African countries has been a topic of discussion for years.

The undocumented previously staged hunger strikes in 2000 and 2009 and their demands to be legally included in the system were met by authorities.

Migrants, who are making the same demands and taking support from socialist and environmentalist political parties, are facing major obstacles this time as the current government follows a very strict attitude and strongly rejects their demands.

The hunger strikers have not given up on their demands.

Ahmed, a spokesman for the hunger strikers, said that a suitable solution must be found and immigration laws must be rearranged according to the current political and economic reality in Belgium.

"We have been working in Belgium for many years, but there is not any law that protects us from work accidents. We do not have social security," he told Anadolu Agency./aa

South Africa on Thursday reported 21,584 new COVID-19 infections, the highest daily figures in six months, health authorities said, bringing the overall caseload to over 1.9 million.

A further 382 COVID-19 related deaths pushed the total number of fatalities to 61,029, according to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD).

The country, currently undergoing a third wave of infections, reported 19,506 cases and 383 deaths on Wednesday.

The NICD said most of the new cases are from Gauteng province, which includes the capital Pretoria and largest city Johannesburg, accounting for 59% of infections, followed by the Western Cape province with 11% and the North West province with 7%.

South Africa, with a population of nearly 60 million, has the highest COVID-19 caseload and death toll on the continent.

More than 3.02 million people in the country have received their first doses, while nearly 480,000 have been fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data, a tracking website affiliated with Oxford University./aa

An intense heatwave has swept Pakistan, with temperatures reaching above 40 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit) in many cities on Thursday.

According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department, the maximum temperature of 48˚C (114.8 to 118.39 degrees Fahrenheit) was recorded in Jacobabad, a district in southern Sindh province.

The province's Kashmore, Qambar Shahdadkot, Shikarpur, Larkana, Sanghar, and Shaheed Benazirabad districts recorded average temperatures ranging from 44˚C to 46˚C (111.20 to 114.80 degrees Fahrenheit).

Temperatures in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province's Dera Ismail Khan district reached 47˚C (116.6 degrees Fahrenheit), followed by Peshawar and Bannu districts, where mercury remained 46˚C (115 degrees Fahrenheit).

People in Punjab and Balochistan provinces are also facing scorching heat.

The Met department said the current heat spell will end on Friday, with rain and wind expected in Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad, and parts of Punjab and Balochistan provinces./aa

The Amsterdam municipality became the first Dutch state institution on Thursday to apologize for the city’s historical role in the slave trade.

“It is time to engrave the great injustice of colonial slavery into our city’s identity. With big-hearted and unconditional recognition,” said Mayor Femke Halsema during a ceremony in Oosterpark.

Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren also attended the Keti Koti ceremony -- the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in its former colonies of Suriname and the Dutch Antilles.

DENK party’s representative on the city council, Eduard Mangal, who has campaigned for the apology for years, argued that the apology set an example for other state institutions, including the government.

But Numan Yilmaz, Turkish-Dutch representative from DENK on the council, noted the Dutch government does not want to face the country’s role in the slave trade.

Underlining that slavery played an essential role in the Netherlands’ current level of prosperity, Yilmaz said the government avoids making a formal apology in order not to pay compensation.

In 2020, two of the four coalition parties, D66 and Christen Unie, urged the government to take a stand but then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte said a formal apology risked increased polarization.​​​​​​​/aa