RHODES, Greece: Greece sweltered in intense heat Wednesday while crews scrambled to douse deadly wildfires that have also struck nations around the Mediterranean and killed dozens.
Thousands of people have evacuated in the region this week as fires also flared in Croatia and Italy, and flames killed 34 in Algeria in extreme heat that has left landscapes tinder dry.
“Back home, there is nothing left and not even a sheep survived,” Taous Timizar, a survivor of the blaze in northeast Algeria, told AFP.
Witnesses described fleeing walls of flames that raged “like a blowtorch,” and TV footage showed charred cars, burnt-out shops and smoldering scrubland.
Scientists from the World Weather Attribution group said this week the heatwaves that have hit parts of Europe and North America this month would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change.
The European Union’s climate observatory Copernicus on Wednesday said smoke emissions from wildfires in Greece have been the highest for this period of time in the last 21 years.
Greece has battled over 600 fires in the past 12 days, the government said Wednesday.
Temperatures were expected to hit between 43-46 degrees Celsius (109-115 degrees Fahrenheit) in central and southern Greece, according to the national meteorological service.
“Today is the most difficult day in terms of the heat, complicating the fight against existing fires and making new fire outbreaks more likely,” fire department spokesman Ioannis Artopios told Skai radio.
Storms are forecast for Thursday.
Greece is used to summer heatwaves, but is experiencing one of the longest ones in recent years, according to experts.
The civil protection ministry has warned of an extreme danger of fire in six of the country’s 13 regions on Wednesday.
Wildfires, which have been burning in several parts of the country for more than 10 days, were ravaging the tourist islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Evia.
The EU crisis management commissioner’s office on Wednesday said over 490 firefighters and seven planes had been deployed to different areas in Greece under the bloc’s civil protection mechanism.
At least 100 firefighters were working to contain the flames on Evia, where on Tuesday two pilots were killed when their water bomber aircraft crashed.
The body of a third victim was also found on Evia.
Authorities have evacuated tens of thousands of people from fire areas in Greece, including many tourists.
The severe heatwave in Greece has also been reflected across much of southern Europe and northern Africa.
In Italy, firefighters spent the night battling wildfires in Sicily, one of which approached so close to Palermo airport that it shut down for several hours Tuesday morning.
Italy’s civil protection department on Tuesday reported “extensive fires” across the south.
In the north, a 16-year-old girl on a camping trip was among two people killed by falling trees during violent storms.
Dozens of firefighters were battling a wildfire near Croatia’s picturesque southern city of Dubrovnik, authorities said Wednesday, with water-bombing planes dispatched to help contain the blaze.
Around 130 firefighters were working to contain the flames that had been spread by strong winds on Tuesday.
Local media reported the fire also triggered land mines to explode in the area.
During the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Dubrovnik was besieged and shelled by Serb forces, leading several areas in the city to be damaged while swaths of its outskirts are still contaminated by land mines.
Mediterranean nations fight heat and deadly fires
https://arab.news/bj587
Mediterranean nations fight heat and deadly fires
- Witnesses described fleeing walls of flames that raged “like a blowtorch“
- TV footage showed charred cars, burnt-out shops and smoldering scrubland
US bars five Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints online
WASHINGTON: The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure US tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.
The Europeans, characterized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “radical” activists and “weaponized” nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States.
“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” Rubio posted on X. “The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”
The five Europeans were identified by Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, in a series of posts on social media. They include the leaders of organizations that address digital hate and a former European Union commissioner who clashed with tech billionaire Elon Musk over broadcasting an online interview with Donald Trump.
Rubio’s statement said they advanced foreign government censorship campaigns against Americans and US companies, which he said created “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US
The action to bar them from the US is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions.
The five Europeans named by Rogers are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index; and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for digital affairs.
Rogers in her post on X called Breton, a French business executive and former finance minister, the “mastermind” behind the EU’s Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep Internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech.
She referred to Breton warning Musk of a possible “amplification of harmful content” by broadcasting his livestream interview with Trump in August 2024 when he was running for president.
Breton responded Tuesday on X by noting that all 27 EU members voted for the Digital Services Act in 2022. “To our American friends: ‘Censorship isn’t where you think it is,’” he wrote.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France condemns the visa restrictions on Breton and the four others. Also posting on X, he said the DSA was adopted to ensure that “what is illegal offline is also illegal online.” He said it “has absolutely no extraterritorial reach and in no way concerns the United States.”
Most Europeans are covered by the Visa Waiver Program, which means they don’t necessarily need visas to come into the country. They do, however, need to complete an online application prior to arrival under a system run by the Department of Homeland Security, so it is possible that at least some of these five people have been flagged to DHS, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details not publicly released.
Other visa restriction policies were announced this year, along with bans targeting foreign visitors from certain African and Middle Eastern countries and the Palestinian Authority. Visitors from some countries could be required to post a financial bond when applying for a visa.
