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By Valentín DÌAZ The once bright green Andean forest where Maria Yadira Jimenez worked as a tour guide has been reduced to ashes. Since Monday, forest fires have been advancing on Nemocon, a rural area with beautiful landscapes about 60 kilometers (37 miles) outside the Colombian capital Bogota. Though usually cool, the mountains surrounding the town have become a hellscape, with the blazes driving out residents and wildlife. Distraught, Jimenez joined volunteers who — along […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon last month shattered the record for April, destroying more than 1,000 square kilometers of the world’s biggest rainforest, nearly double the previous high, according to official figures published Friday. The record — the third in four months — is the latest damning statistic on the accelerating loss of the Amazon under President Jair Bolsonaro. Satellite images show a total area of destroyed forest […]
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Europe endured record extreme weather in 2021, from the hottest day and the warmest summer to deadly wildfires and flooding, the European Union’s climate monitoring service reported Friday. While Earth’s surface was nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels last year, Europe saw an average increase of more than two degrees, a threshold beyond which dangerous extreme weather events become more likely and […]
Four people were reported dead and more than 180 injured as thousands of firefighters battled huge blazes spreading across the mediterranean resort regions of Turkey’s southern coast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvrMTg7zols
by Javier TOVAR Agence France-Presse SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — California firefighters battled the state’s largest ever inferno Thursday, as tens of thousands of people fled blazes up and down the US West Coast and officials warned the death toll could shoot up in coming days. At least eight people have been confirmed dead in the past 24 hours across California, Oregon and Washington, but officials say some areas are still impossible to reach, […]
by Holly ROBERTSON Agence France Presse SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australian officials issued fresh evacuation warnings Wednesday ahead of a forecast spike in the intensity of out-of-control bushfires that have devastated vast swathes of countryside and sent smoke clouds as far away as Brazil. Residents of Victoria state’s fire-ravaged east were urged to leave before another heatwave raises the bushfire danger Friday, while in South Australia state authorities began relocating people from a small […]
BRISBANE, Australia (AFP) — Novak Djokovic said Australian Open organizers should consider delaying the first Grand Slam of the year if haze from bush-fires raging around the country threatens players’ health. The opening major of 2020 is due to start at Melbourne Park on January 20 and the city was blanketed by smoke from blazes burning to the east on Saturday, compromising air quality. Djokovic, president of the ATP players council, said in the early […]
by Holly ROBERTSON / with Andrew Beatty and Glenda Kwek in Sydney Agence France-Presse BATEMANS BAY, Australia (AFP) — Skies turned black and ash rained down as fires raged across southeastern Australia on Saturday, threatening power supplies to major cities and prompting the call-up of 3,000 military reservists. Temperature records were smashed, and gale-force winds pounded fire-stricken coastal communities in the two most populous states New South Wales and Victoria. New South Wales Premier Gladys […]
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AFP) — Thousands of schools were shuttered across Malaysia and Indonesia Thursday, affecting at least 1.7 million pupils, officials said, as toxic haze from rampant forest fires sent air quality plummeting. Nearly 2,500 schools were ordered to shut their doors in Malaysia — including nearly 300 in the smog-hit capital Kuala Lumpur — over soaring health concerns sparked by toxic haze from out-of-control blazes in Indonesia’s Sumatra and Borneo islands. Indonesia […]
by Junus Nuh Agence France Presse JAMBI, Indonesia (AFP) — Huge fires are raging across vast swathes of Indonesia’s rainforests — some of the world’s biggest — with toxic smog shutting hundreds of schools in Southeast Asia, officials said Tuesday. Massive jungle areas in Sumatra and Borneo islands are ablaze as thousands of personnel battle to quell the fires, frequently started to clear land for crop plantations. Burning forests to make way for farming […]
by Dessy Sagita Agence France Presse PEKANBARU, Indonesia (AFP) — The number of blazes in Indonesia’s rainforests has jumped sharply, satellite data showed Thursday, spreading smog across Southeast Asia and adding to concerns about the impact of increasing wildfire outbreaks worldwide on global warming. Illegal blazes to clear land for agricultural plantations have been raging on Sumatra and Borneo islands, with Indonesia deploying water-bombing helicopters and thousands of security forces to tackle them. It is […]
by Carlos Fabal, with Allison Jackson in Rio de Janeiro Agence France Presse PORTO VELHO, Brazil (AFP) — President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday authorized the deployment of Brazil’s armed forces to help combat fires raging in the Amazon rainforest, as a growing global outcry over the blazes sparks protests and threatens a huge trade deal. Plumes of thick smoke rose into the sky above dense forest in the northwestern state of Rondonia, where bright […]
