«Абсолютно всі в світі мають реагувати негайно, щоб вигнати окупантів з Запорізької АЕС»
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Wildfires continued to spread through France, Spain and Portugal on Thursday as record-breaking heat waves plague Europe, prompting the head of the European Space Agency to demand immediate action on climate change.
A “monster” wildfire has destroyed thousands of hectares in the Gironde area of southwestern France just two weeks after another fire tore through the same region.
More than 1,000 firefighters have struggled to bring the conflagration, which has forced about 10,000 people from their homes, under control.
About 79% of the 250,000 firefighters in France are volunteers, according to data from the French Fire Fighter Service. And 10,000 of them are deployed across the country to battle wildfires, including the Gironde blaze, which has been exacerbated by drastic heat waves and fierce winds.
Similar to France, firefighters in Portugal are on their sixth day of fighting a wildfire that has destroyed about 10,500 hectares in the central Covilha region, as well as part of the Serra da Estrela national park.
Extreme weather and climate change are widely blamed for the increasingly common heat waves, melting glaciers, and flooding.
The head of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, reported that these extreme climatological events have begun taking a toll on agriculture and other vital industries.
“It’s pretty bad. We have seen extremes that have not been observed before,” Aschbacher said to Reuters.
Extreme drought conditions have also taken a toll elsewhere in the European Union, with France and Germany feeling the effects through slow agricultural production and water shortages.
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Satellite pictures released Thursday showed devastation at a Russian air base in Crimea, hit days earlier in an attack that suggested Kyiv may have obtained new long-range strike capability with potential to change the course of the war.
Pictures released by independent satellite firm Planet Labs showed three near-identical craters that had precisely struck buildings at Russia’s Saki air base. The base, on the southwest coast of Crimea had suffered extensive fire damage with the burnt-out husks of at least eight destroyed warplanes clearly visible.
Russia has denied aircraft were damaged and said explosions seen at the base Tuesday were accidental.
Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility for the attack or said exactly how it was carried out.
“Officially, we are not confirming or denying anything; there are numerous scenarios for what might have happened… bearing in mind that there were several epicenters of explosions at exactly the same time,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters in a message.
Western military experts said the scale of the damage and the apparent precision of the strike suggested a powerful new capability with potentially important implications.
Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014, uses the peninsula as the base for its Black Sea fleet and as the main supply route for its invasion forces occupying southern Ukraine, where Kyiv is planning a counter-offensive in coming weeks.
“I’m not an intel analyst, but it doesn’t look good,” Mark Hertling, a former commander of U.S. ground forces in Europe, wrote on Twitter, linking to an image of the devastation at the Russian base.
“I am. It’s very good,” replied his fellow retired four-star American general, Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency.
Exactly how the attack was carried out remains a mystery. Some Ukrainian officials have been quoted suggesting it may have been sabotage by infiltrators. But the near identical impact craters and simultaneous explosions appear to indicate it was hit by a volley of new long-range weapons, capable of evading Russian defenses.
The base is well beyond the range of advanced rockets that Western countries acknowledge sending to Ukraine so far, but within the range of more powerful versions that Kyiv has sought. Ukraine also has its own surface-to-ship missiles which could theoretically be used to hit targets on land.
New phase
The war in Ukraine is expected to enter a new phase in coming weeks. Ukraine drove Russian forces back from the capital, Kyiv, in March and from the outskirts of the second-largest city, Kharkiv, in May. Russia captured more territory in the east in huge battles that killed thousands of troops on both sides in June.
Since then, front lines have been largely static, but Kyiv says it is preparing a big push to recapture the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the main slice of territory captured since the Feb. 24 invasion held by Moscow.
Russia has reinforced those regions, but its defense depends on being able to control supply lines to stock its troops with the thousands of shells a day that its artillery-heavy forces are accustomed to firing.
Kyiv hopes the arrival last month of U.S. rocket systems capable of hitting Russian targets behind the front line could tip the balance in its favor. But so far, the West had held off on providing longer-range rockets that could strike deep in Russia itself or hit Moscow’s many bases in annexed Crimea.
Russia says its “special military operation” is going to plan, to protect Russian speakers in the south and east, where it recognizes separatists as independent. Ukraine and its Western allies say the invasion failed in an initial bid to overthrow the government in Kyiv, and Moscow now aims to solidify its grip on as much territory as possible with the ultimate goal of extinguishing Ukraine as an independent nation.
Tens of thousands of people have died; millions have fled and cities have been destroyed since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.
Bombardment
Although there have been few major advances on either side in recent weeks, intense skirmishes are still under way.
Ukraine reported Russian bombardment along the entire front line, from the area around Kharkiv in the northeast, across eastern Donetsk province, and on the banks of the wide Dnipro River in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and adjacent provinces.
Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Valentyn Reznychenko said three people were killed and seven wounded by shelling in Nikopol on the right bank of the Dnipro, which was hit by 120 Grad rockets.
“The enemy is concentrating its efforts on establishing full control over the territories of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions,” Ukraine’s General Staff said in an early Thursday report, citing more than 60 settlements and military targets.
Russian-backed separatists claimed to have captured Pisky, a small town on the outskirts of separatist-held Donetsk city, which has seen fighting in recent days.
“It’s hot in Pisky. The town is ours but there remain scattered pockets of resistance in its north and west,” separatist official Danil Bezsonov said on Telegram.
Ukrainian officials denied that the town had fallen. Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield accounts.
Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said in an interview posted on YouTube that Russian “movement into Pisky” had been “without success.”
Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of killing at least 13 people and wounding 10 with rockets fired from the vicinity of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in the knowledge it would be risky for Ukrainian forces to return fire.
“The cowardly Russians can’t do anything more, so they strike towns ignobly hiding at the Zaporizhzhia atomic power station,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said on social media.
Ukraine says about 500 Russian troops are at the plant, where Ukrainian technicians continue to work. The Group of Seven major industrialized countries on Wednesday told Russia to hand back the plant to Ukraine, after the U.N. atomic energy watchdog sounded the alarm over the possibility of a nuclear disaster.
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Like other countries in Europe, Britain is experiencing a labor shortage due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But for thousands of Ukrainians fleeing war in their homeland, the deficiency provides crucial opportunities as they resettle in their new homes. For VOA, Tommy Walker reports from Newcastle upon Tyne in England.
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«Цей останній транш військової підтримки дозволить Збройним силам України продовжувати захищатися від російської агресії та невибіркового використання далекобійної артилерії»
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У заяві Сейму дії Росії в Україні названі «цілеспрямованим геноцидом проти українського народу»
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У липні торгове судно пройшло Босфор шляхом із сирійського порту Тартус і прибуло до Новоросійська, на ньому було щонайменше 11 одиниць військової техніки, стверджує агентство
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At the end of a dusty track in southwest England where the River Thames usually first emerges from the ground, there is scant sign of any moisture at all.
The driest start to a year in decades has shifted the source of this emblematic English river several miles downstream, leaving scorched earth and the occasional puddle where water once flowed.
It is a striking illustration of the parched conditions afflicting swaths of England, which have prompted a growing number of regional water restrictions and fears that an official drought will soon be declared.
“We haven’t found the Thames yet,” said Michael Sanders, on holiday with his wife in the area known as the official source of the river.
The couple were planning to walk some of the Thames Path that stretches along its entire winding course — once they can find the waterway’s new starting point.
“It’s completely dried up,” the IT worker from northern England told AFP in the village of Ashton Keynes, a few miles from the source, noting it had been replaced by “the odd puddle, the odd muddy bit.”
“So hopefully downstream we’ll find the Thames, but at the moment it’s gone,” he said.
The river begins from an underground spring in this picturesque region at the foot of the Cotswolds hills, not far from Wales, before meandering for 350 kilometers (215 miles) to the North Sea.
Along the way it helps supply fresh water to millions of homes, including those in the British capital, London.
‘So arid’
Following months of minimal rainfall, including the driest July in England since the 1930s, the country’s famously lush countryside has gone from shades of green to yellow.
“It was like walking across the savanna in Africa, because it’s so arid and so dry,” David Gibbons said.
The 60-year-old retiree has been walking the length of the Thames Path in the opposite direction from Sanders — from estuary to source — with his wife and friends.
As the group members reached their destination, in a rural area of narrow country roads dotted with stone-built houses, Gibbons recounted the range of wildlife they had encountered on their journey.
The Thames, which becomes a navigable, strategic and industrial artery as it passes through London and its immediate surroundings, is typically far more idyllic upstream and a haven for bird watching and boating.
However, as they neared the source, things changed.
“In this last two or three days, [there’s been] no wildlife, because there’s no water,” Gibbons said. “I think water stopped probably 10 miles away from here; there’s one or two puddles,” he added from picturesque Ashton Keynes.
Andrew Jack, a 47-year-old local government worker who lives about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the village, said locals had “never seen it as dry and as empty as this.”
The river usually runs alongside its main street, which boasts pretty houses with flower-filled gardens and several small stone footbridges over the water.
But the riverbed there is parched and cracked, the only visible wildlife were some wasps hovering over it, recalling images of some southern African rivers during the subcontinent’s dry season.
‘Something’s changed’
There will be no imminent respite for England’s thirsty landscape.
The country’s meteorological office on Tuesday issued an amber heat warning for much of southern England and eastern Wales between Thursday and Sunday, with temperatures set to reach the mid-30s Celsius.
It comes weeks after a previous heat wave broke Britain’s all-time temperature record and breached 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time.
Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heat waves and other such extreme weather events.
Local authorities are reiterating calls to save water, and Thames Water, which supplies 15 million people in London and elsewhere, is the latest provider to announce forthcoming restrictions.
But Gibbons was sanguine.
“Having lived in England all my life, we’ve had droughts before,” he said. “I think that it will go green again by the autumn.”
Jack was more pessimistic as he walked with his family along the dried-up riverbed, where a wooden measuring stick gauges nonexistent water levels.
“I think there are lots of English people who think, ‘Great, let’s have some European weather,’ ” he said. “But we actually shouldn’t, and it means that something’s changed and something has gone wrong.
“I’m concerned that it’s only going to get worse and that the U.K. is going to have to adapt to hotter weather as we have more and more summers like this.”
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A British man accused of being part of an Islamic State (IS) kidnap-and-murder cell known as the “Beatles” was arrested Wednesday when he returned to the UK, media reports said.
Aine Davis, 38, was arrested after landing at Luton airport on a flight from Turkey, where he had been serving a prison sentence for terrorism offenses, according to BBC News and other U.K. outlets.
He is suspected to be a member of the IS cell, which held dozens of foreign hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015 and was known to their captives as the “Beatles” because of their British accents.
The Metropolitan Police, which leads anti-terror investigations in the U.K., said in a statement that officers had arrested a man at Luton airport.
But the London force, which does not name suspects until they are charged with a crime, did not name the person being held.
“The 38-year-old man was arrested this evening after he arrived into the UK on a flight from Turkey,” the statement said.
The Met said the man was arrested under several different sections of British anti-terrorism laws and taken to a south London police station “where he currently remains in police custody.”
The interior ministry said in a statement that a British national had been deported from Turkey to the U.K.
“It would be inappropriate to comment further while police enquiries are ongoing,” it added.
The four members of the “Beatles” are accused of abducting at least 27 journalists and relief workers from the United States, Britain, Europe, New Zealand, Russia and Japan.
They were all allegedly involved in the murder of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
The quartet allegedly tortured and killed the four American victims, including by beheading, and IS released videos of the murders for propaganda purposes.
Alexanda Kotey, a 38-year-old former British national extradited from the U.K. to the U.S. in 2020 to face charges there, pleaded guilty to his role in the deaths last September and was sentenced to life in prison in April.
El Shafee Elsheikh, 34, another former British national also extradited to the U.S. at the same time, was found guilty of all charges in April, and will be sentenced next week.
The fourth “Beatle,” Mohamed Emwazi, was killed by a U.S. drone in Syria in 2015.
Elsheikh and Kotey were captured in January 2018 by a Kurdish militia in Syria and turned over to U.S. forces in Iraq before being sent to Britain.
They were eventually flown to Virginia in 2020 to face charges of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.
Davis served a 7½-year sentence in Turkey for membership in the terrorist group, according to reports.
In 2014, his wife, Amal El-Wahabi, became the first person in Britain to be convicted of funding IS jihadists after trying to send 20,000 euros, worth $25,000 at the time, to him in Syria.
She was jailed for 28 months following a trial in which Davis was described as a drug dealer before he went to Syria to fight with IS.
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U.S. teens have left Facebook in droves over the past seven years, preferring to spend time at video-sharing venues YouTube and TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey data out Wednesday.
TikTok has “emerged as a top social media platform for U.S. teens” while Google-run YouTube “stands out as the most common platform used by teens,” the report’s authors wrote.
Pew’s data comes as Facebook-owner Meta is in a battle with TikTok for social media primacy, trying to keep the maximum number of users as part of its multibillion-dollar, ad-driven business.
The report said some 95% of the teens surveyed said they use YouTube, compared with 67% saying they are TikTok users.
Just 32% of teens surveyed said they log on to Facebook — a big drop from the 71% who reported being users during a similar survey some seven years ago.
Once the place to be online, Facebook has become seen as a venue for older folks with young drawn to social networks where people express themselves with pictures and video snippets.
About 62% of the teens said they use Instagram, owned by Facebook-parent Meta, while 59% said they used Snapchat, researchers stated.
“A quarter of teens who use Snapchat or TikTok say they use these apps almost constantly, and a fifth of teen YouTube users say the same,” the report said.
In a bit of good news for Meta’s business, its photo and video sharing service Instagram was more popular with U.S. teens than it was in the 2014-2015 survey.
Meanwhile, less than a quarter of the teens surveyed said they ever use Twitter, the report said.
The study also confirmed what casual observers may have suspected: 95% of U.S. teens say they have smartphones, while nearly as many of them have desktop or laptop computers.
And the share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has nearly doubled to 46 percent when compared with survey results from seven years ago, researchers noted.
The report was based on a survey of 1,316 U.S. teens, ranging in age from 13 years old to 17 years old, conducted from mid-April to early May of this year, according to Pew.
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