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Protesters in Moscow, volcano eruption and taekwondo match: World in Photos, July 29

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Riot police in Moscow, ash over Java, and a world champion defending his crown on the mat — the week’s biggest images landed in one reel.

ABC News’s “World in Photos” roundup for July 29, 2019, stitched together three stories that had nothing to do with each other except timing: a mass crackdown on election protesters in Moscow, a volcanic ash plume rising over Indonesia, and a taekwondo showdown between two of the sport’s biggest names. Together they made for one of the more visually jarring digests of the summer.

• Moscow police detained at least 1,373 people — including roughly 25 minors — outside Moscow City Hall on July 27, a record for a single opposition demonstration in the Russian capital.
• The protests were sparked by the exclusion of independent and opposition candidates from September’s Moscow City Duma elections.
• South Korea’s Lee Dae-hoon, a three-time world champion in the men’s -68kg division, was shown squaring off against Jordan’s 2016 Olympic gold medalist Ahmad Abughaush and Great Britain’s Bradley Sinden on the 2019 taekwondo circuit.

A Record Crackdown Outside Moscow City Hall

The images out of central Moscow on July 27 showed riot police moving through crowds gathered near City Hall, where demonstrators had assembled to protest the disqualification of opposition and independent candidates ahead of the September Duma vote. Independent monitors and rights groups tracking arrests that day counted at least 1,373 detentions — a number that stood out even by the standards of Russia’s history of mass opposition roundups. Among those swept up, monitors said, were around 25 minors.

At least 1,373 people were detained outside Moscow City Hall — a record for a single day of opposition protests in the Russian capital.

The scale of the detentions became the defining image of the unrest, feeding into wider scrutiny of how Russian authorities have handled political dissent in the run-up to local elections. The exclusion of opposition names from the ballot was the spark; the size of the police response is what made it national and international news.

Indonesia’s Volcano Sends Ash Skyward

Elsewhere in the reel, photographers captured plumes of ash and smoke rising from ongoing volcanic activity near Java, part of a run of dramatic natural-disaster imagery that ABC News folded into the same digest. Local authorities pushed evacuations in the surrounding area as the ash column climbed, a now-familiar scene for communities living near Indonesia’s chain of active volcanoes.

Readers who want the fuller catalogue of what makes eruptions like this one so unpredictable can dig into 15 Most Dangerous Natural Phenomena In The World, which breaks down why volcanic ash plumes rank among the hardest hazards to forecast.

Lee Dae-hoon’s Test Against Abughaush and Sinden

On the sporting side, the photo package turned to the mat, where Lee Dae-hoon — already a three-time world champion in the -68kg class — faced two of the toughest names on the 2019 circuit. Ahmad Abughaush, who became Jordan’s first-ever Olympic gold medalist at Rio 2016, and Great Britain’s Bradley Sinden gave Lee no easy path through the bracket.

The stills from that bout captured the kind of split-second scoring exchanges that decide taekwondo matches at this level — sensor-registered kicks, tight point margins, and the kind of composure under pressure that’s kept Lee among the sport’s elite for years. For a look at how physical the line between legitimate technique and theatrics can get in combat sports broadly, see Why Martial Arts Are Suddenly Being Exposed as Fake.

Lee’s next real test on the calendar is the kind of rematch taekwondo fans circle immediately: another crack at Abughaush or Sinden on the World Taekwondo circuit, with world ranking points and an eye toward Tokyo 2020 qualification riding on every exchange.