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ATHENS, Greece (AFP) — Scores of firefighters backed by water-dropping aircraft battled a forest fire that broke out early Monday on the southern part of Greece’s Evia island, less than two weeks after an inferno decimated its northern part. The fire was burning near the village of Fygia where two neighborhoods have been evacuated and was moving toward the coastal tourist village of Marmari, where authorities were preparing boats to evacuate people if needed, according […]
JERUSALEM, Undefined (AFP) — Israeli firefighters battled flames for a second day Monday in the hills west of Jerusalem, forcing the evacuation of five communities and prompting the government to ask for international help. “The Greek foreign minister already said he will help as much as possible,” Foreign Minister Yair Lapid wrote on Twitter. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told AFP Greece and Cyprus had agreed to send firefighting planes to Israel. Italy, France and […]
Spain saw its highest temperature on record on Saturday as a heatwave on the Iberian peninsula drove the mercury to 47.4 degrees Celsius (117.3 Fahrenheit), according to provisional data from the state meteorological agency. The temperature peaked around five pm local time in the southern town of Cordoba, the agency said, passing the previous record set at the same measuring station in July 2017 by one-tenth of a degree. “If confirmed, it would be the […]
Japan braced for further downpours on Sunday as rescuers sifted through flood and landslide damage after record rain that left at least three dead. Residents returned to check on their mud-covered homes in the southwest, where nearly two million people were advised to urgently seek shelter Saturday as rivers overflowed. “So many logs tumbled down and crashed into this area” from nearby mountains, an elderly resident of Kanzaki in Saga prefecture told public broadcaster NHK. […]
A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Saturday, the United States Geological Survey said, prompting a tsunami alert and damaging buildings in the west of the disaster-plagued Caribbean nation. The epicenter of the quake, which shook homes and sent people scrambling for protection, was about 100 miles (160 kilometers) by road from the center of the densely populated capital Port-au-Prince. “Lots of homes are destroyed, people are dead and some are at the hospital,” Christella […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said the scale of natural disasters that have hit Russia this year has been “absolutely unprecedented”. Speaking at a video conference with officials on the effects of Siberia’s record-setting forest fires, he said it was “important” to work on the climate agenda “systematically.” While Siberia sees an annual wildfire season each summer, the fires have burned with an increasing intensity in recent years, which Russian […]
by Charlotte VAN OUWERKERK ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AFP) — They are best known for bike-riding, but the climate-vulnerable Dutch are leading the way for electric cars with the largest number of charging stations in Europe. Teslas and other vehicles can be seen plugged in on practically every street corner thanks to a network of some 75,000 stations — nearly a third of the entire EU total. Investing to put enough charging stations in the reach of […]
by Camille CAMDESSUS HURON, United States (AFP) — Crushed by a devastating drought and new water restrictions, Daniel Hartwig had no choice but to pull thousands of precious, fragrant almond trees from his California farm. “It breaks your heart,” he sighed as he surveyed the once vibrant landscape before him — curled, yellowed leaves covering the shrunken husks that would have been this year’s crop of almonds, had the water arrived. Their exposed roots are […]
by Hamza Mekouar FARWA, Libya (AFP) — Once famed for its exceptional wildlife, Libya’s Farwa island risks becoming just another victim of lawlessness in the war-ravaged North African nation, activists struggling to save it warn. An uninhabited 13-kilometer-long (eight mile) sandbar cut off at high tide in far western Libya, Farwa appears picture-postcard idyllic, with scattered date palms on white sandy beaches and ringed by the sparkling Mediterranean Sea. The International Union for Conservation of […]
by Alfred Acenas (EBC Hawaii-Pacific) HONOLULU (Eagle News) – At the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting on Friday, August 6, US President Joseph R. Biden commended his foreign counterparts and pledged America’s support to the said region in overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic and in raising global ambition to tackle climate change. “This pandemic has taken a heavy toll and the lives lost can never ever be replaced,” said President Biden through videoconferencing. “The economic impacts […]
“You’ve got too many farmers pumping all around,” complained Raul Atilano. This octogenarian resident of Corcoran, the self-proclaimed farming capital of California, was struggling to make sense of the strangest of phenomena: his already suffering town is sinking, ever so gradually, into the ground. A constant stream of trucks carrying tomatoes, alfalfa or cotton outside this town of 20,000 shows just how inextricably Corcoran’s fate is tied to the intensive farming practiced here. To irrigate […]
Hundreds of firefighters fought fires that have devoured record numbers of woodlands in Greece on Saturday and left hundreds of families homeless, but heavy rains brought respite to hard-hit Turkey. More than 1,450 Greek firefighters backed by at least 15 aircraft were battling the blazes, with reinforcements arriving from abroad, the fire service said. In Pefkofyto, in the north of Athens, pensioner Tasos Tsilivakos struggled to contain his tears. “This is a horrible disaster,” he […]
