Greece tackles last of wildfire near Athens, assesses damage

Greece tackles last of wildfire near Athens, assesses damage
A firefighter tries to extinguish the flames at a business during a fire in northern Athens, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, as hundreds of firefighters tackle a major wildfire raging out of control on fringes of Greek capital. (AP)
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Updated 14 August 2024
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Greece tackles last of wildfire near Athens, assesses damage

Greece tackles last of wildfire near Athens, assesses damage
  • Government inspectors were assessing damaged buildings and state infrastructure on Wednesday
  • Some fire-stricken residents returned to their scorched properties, hoping to find some belongings amidst the debris

ATHENS: Firefighters battled on Wednesday to extinguish the remnants of a wildfire near Athens that killed a woman, torched buildings, devoured woodland and forced thousands of people to flee their homes.
Most of the fronts had eased three days after the inferno had first taken hold, but officials warned against complacency as firefighters were still battling sporadic flare-ups.
“It is a vast area and forces are trying to ensure day and night that there won’t be any rekindlings,” Nikos Lavranos, head of the Greek federation of fire service employees, told Reuters.
Government inspectors were assessing damaged buildings and state infrastructure on Wednesday. Some fire-stricken residents returned to their scorched properties, hoping to find some belongings amidst the debris, while others were trying to overcome the shock.
State TV ERT said that some fire-stricken areas were still suffering from power cuts.
“The fire started very far from here... and in no time it burned everything,” said 78-year old Giannis Tsiminis as he took stock of the damage he had suffered.
“All the air condition units are burned, as well as the window shades, the insect screens and the window glasses are broken. And a big power generator that I had, it also burned.” .
Hundreds of firefighters assisted by dozens of aircraft have been tackling the blaze since Sunday as it barrelled from a forest off the town of Varnavas, 35 km (22 miles) from the capital, into Athens’ northern suburbs.
Greece’s National Observatory said the fire had damaged around 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of land. The cause of the blaze has not yet been determined.
Greece is on high fire alert until Thursday, with temperatures forecast to hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) raising concern about possible flare ups. Winds are also expected to pick up on Thursday.
Wildfires have been a common feature of Greek summers for years, but climate change has brought hotter weather and less rain, heightening the risk.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the military airport of Elefsina to thank firefighing aircraft pilots.
“This is an effort we all make during a great climate cris is,” he said. “We must constantly improve.”
Mitsotakis also said that Greece would need to wait another three years before the arrival of seven firefighting aircraft it has purchased from Canada.
The conservative government, which has announced compensation and relief measures for those impacted by the disaster, has been criticized by opposition parties over the current number of firefighters and the aircraft it deployed for the latest blaze.
The country, which has recently tightened penalties for arson, has dealt with over 3,500 fires since May, a nearly 50 percent increase from the same period in 2023 when it recorded 2,300 blazes, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said.
Sunday’s fire broke rapidly across several fronts reaching within hours the seaside area of Nea Makri and areas around the historic town of Marathon.
By Tuesday, it had reached suburbs on the slopes of Mount of Penteli, which is considered one of Athens’ last green lungs.
A woman was found dead inside a burned business in the suburb of Vrilissia, about 10 km from central Athens, on Monday.
Some experts said the fire had managed to spread so fast because of a phenomenon called spotting, where wind whirls transfer burning matter across long distances. That led to the constant creation of new fronts which later merged.
“That is more evident in recent years. Conditions have changed and it’s becoming more usual,” Lavranos said.


Appeal of Vietnam death row tycoon to begin in separate case

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Appeal of Vietnam death row tycoon to begin in separate case

Appeal of Vietnam death row tycoon to begin in separate case
Property developer Truong My Lan was found guilty of swindling money from Saigon Commercial Bank in April 2024
Lan appealed that verdict, and the court determined there was no basis to reduce her sentence

HANOI: The appeal of a Vietnamese property tycoon convicted of money laundering will begin next week, state media said on Saturday, three months after losing her appeal against the death penalty in a separate case.
Property developer Truong My Lan was found guilty of swindling money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) in April 2024 and sentenced to death for fraud totalling $27 billion.
Lan appealed that verdict, and the court determined there was no basis to reduce her sentence, but said she could still escape the death penalty if she returned three quarters of the stolen assets.
Now, she is appealing the verdict from a second trial in October, in which she was sentenced to life in prison for three crimes.
The appeal is scheduled to begin on Tuesday and last until April 21, and Lan will be defended by eight lawyers, state-run news site VNExpress said Saturday.
The 68-year-old was found guilty of laundering $17.7 billion and illegal cross-border trafficking of $4.5 billion.
She was also found guilty of bond fraud to the tune of $1.2 billion.
Twenty-seven others will also appeal their sentences, state media said.
During her first trial in April, Lan was found guilty of embezzling $12.5 billion, but prosecutors said the total damages caused by the scam amounted to $27 billion — equivalent to around six percent of the country’s 2023 GDP.
Lan owned just five percent of shares in SCB on paper, but at her trial, the court concluded that she effectively controlled more than 90 percent through family, friends and staff.
Tens of thousands of people who had invested their savings in the bank lost money, shocking the communist nation and prompting rare protests from the victims.


Property developer Truong My Lan was found guilty of swindling money from Saigon Commercial Bank in April 2024 and sentenced to death for fraud totalling $27 billion.
(AP/File)

Heathrow resumes operations as global airlines scramble after shutdown

Heathrow resumes operations as global airlines scramble after shutdown
Updated 22 March 2025
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Heathrow resumes operations as global airlines scramble after shutdown

Heathrow resumes operations as global airlines scramble after shutdown
  • Some flights were canceled or delayed as the travel industry scrambled to reroute passengers and fix battered airline schedules
  • Operations were normal on Saturday morning, but airlines were still dealing with the aftermath, said the airport’s chief executive

LONDON: London’s Heathrow Airport resumed full operations on Saturday, a day after a fire knocked out its power supply and shut Europe’s busiest airport, causing global travel chaos.
Some flights were canceled or delayed as the travel industry scrambled to reroute passengers and fix battered airline schedules after the huge fire at an electrical substation serving the airport.
Resumed flights had begun on Friday evening, but the shuttering of the world’s fifth-busiest airport for most of the day left tens of thousands searching for scarce hotel rooms and replacement seats while airlines tried to return jets and crew to bases.
Operations were normal on Saturday morning, but airlines were still dealing with the aftermath, said the airport’s chief executive, Thomas Woldbye.
“We don’t expect any major amount of flights to be canceled or delayed. There are some cancelations and there are some delays. We are handling them in the same way as we would normally do,” Woldbye told BBC radio.
The vast majority of scheduled morning flights departed successfully on Saturday morning, with a handful of delays and cancelations, Heathrow’s departures website showed.
British Airways, whose main hub is Heathrow, said it expected around 85 percent of its schedule of almost 600 departures and arrivals to proceed on Saturday.
“We are planning to operate as many flights as possible to and from Heathrow on Saturday, but to recover an operation of our size after such a significant incident is extremely complex,” the airline said in a statement.
“It is likely that all traveling customers will experience delays as we continue to navigate the challenges posed by Friday’s power outage at the airport.”
A Heathrow spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the airport had “hundreds of additional colleagues on hand in our terminals and we have added flights to today’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers traveling through the airport.”
The travel industry, facing the prospect of a financial hit costing tens of millions of pounds and a likely fight over who should pay, questioned how such crucial infrastructure could fail without backup.
“It is a clear planning failure by the airport,” said Willie Walsh, head of global airlines body IATA, who, as former head of British Airways, has for years been a fierce critic of the crowded hub.
Police said that after an initial assessment they were not treating the incident as suspicious, although enquiries remained ongoing. London Fire Brigade said its investigations would focus on the electrical distribution equipment.
The airport had been due to handle 1,351 flights on Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers, but planes were diverted to other airports in Britain and across Europe, while many long-haul flights returned to their point of departure.
Woldbye, asked on Friday who would pay for the disruption, said there were “procedures in place,” adding “we don’t have liabilities in place for incidents like this.”
Restrictions on overnight flights were temporarily lifted by Britain’s Department of Transport to ease congestion, but British Airways Chief Executive Sean Doyle said the closure was set to have a “huge impact on all of our customers flying with us over the coming days.”
Virgin Atlantic said it expected to operate “a near full schedule” with limited cancelations on Saturday but that the situation remained dynamic and all flights would be kept under continuous review.
Airlines including JetBlue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Delta Air Lines, Qantas, United Airlines, British Airways and Virgin were diverted or returned to their origin airports in the wake of the closure, according to data from flight analytics firm Cirium.
Shares in many airlines fell on Friday.
Aviation experts said the last time European airports experienced disruption on such a large scale was the 2010 Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that grounded some 100,000 flights.
They warned that some passengers forced to land in Europe may have to stay in transit lounges if they lack the paperwork to leave the airport.
Prices at hotels around Heathrow jumped, with booking sites offering rooms for 500 pounds ($645), roughly five times the normal price levels.
Police said after an initial assessment, they were not treating the incident at the power substation as suspicious, although enquiries remained ongoing. London Fire Brigade said its investigations would focus on the electrical distribution equipment.
Heathrow and London’s other major airports have been hit by other outages in recent years, most recently by an automated gate failure and an air traffic system meltdown, both in 2023.


At least 44 civilians killed in extremist attack in Niger, authorities say

At least 44 civilians killed in extremist attack in Niger, authorities say
Updated 22 March 2025
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At least 44 civilians killed in extremist attack in Niger, authorities say

At least 44 civilians killed in extremist attack in Niger, authorities say
  • The Interior Ministry says the attack took place on Friday afternoon in the village of Fambita

DAKAR: An attack by a extremist group on a village in western Niger has killed 44 civilians, the country’s Interior Ministry said.
The attack took place on Friday afternoon in the village of Fambita in the rural commune of Kokorou, near the tri-state border with Mali and Burkina Faso, the ministry said in a statement. It blamed the attack on the Islamic State in the Great Sahara, or EIGS.
The Associated Press was not able to reach out to the EIGS for comment.
“Around 2 p.m., while Muslim worshippers were performing Friday prayers, these heavily armed terrorists surrounded the mosque to carry out their massacre of rare cruelty,” the statement read. The gunmen also set fire to a market and houses before retreating, it added.
The provisional death toll is at least 44 civilians, with 13 severely injured, the ministry said. It declared three days of national mourning
Niger, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Mali, has for over a decade battled an insurgency fought by extremist groups, including some allied with Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group.
Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russia’s mercenary units for security assistance. The three countries have vowed to strengthen their cooperation by establishing a new security alliance, the Alliance of Sahel States.
But the security situation in the Sahel, a vast region on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, has significantly worsened since the juntas took power, analysts say, with a record number of attacks and civilians killed both by Islamic militants and government forces.


Arrests follow mass protests in defiance of Turkiye’s Erdogan

Arrests follow mass protests in defiance of Turkiye’s Erdogan
Updated 22 March 2025
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Arrests follow mass protests in defiance of Turkiye’s Erdogan

Arrests follow mass protests in defiance of Turkiye’s Erdogan
  • Imamoglu was to appear before prosecutors Saturday in graft and terror probes
  • The 53-year-old Istanbul mayor was arrested just days before the CHP was to name him their candidate for the 2028 presidential race

ISTANBUL: After his third night in custody, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was to appear before prosecutors Saturday, just hours after hundreds of thousands hit the streets across Turkiye in a massive show of defiance.
It was the third straight night that protesters had rallied against the arrest of Imamoglu — the biggest political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose arrest early Wednesday sparked Turkiye’s biggest street protests in more than a decade.
After an evening of clashes in Istanbul, Ankara and the western city of Izmir between protesters and riot police, who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse them, the security forces arrested 97 people, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.
And media reports said police had raided scores of homes overnight, although there was no immediate confirmation of the number detained.
The 53-year-old mayor, who was arrested just days before the CHP was to name him their candidate for the 2028 presidential race, was speaking to police on Saturday morning in connection with the “terror” probe, party sources told AFP.
He was then expected to appear before prosecutors at Caglayan courthouse at 1800 GMT to be questioned in both the graft and the terror probes, they said.
Already named in a growing list of legal probes, Imamoglu — who was resoundingly re-elected last year — has been accused alongside six others of “aiding and abetting a terrorist organization” — namely the banned Kurdish militant group PKK.
He is also under investigation for “bribery, extortion, corruption, aggravated fraud, and illegally obtaining personal data for profit as part of a criminal organization” along with 99 other suspects.
He was questioned by police for six hours Friday about the graft allegations, the party said.
“Mr Imamoglu denies all the charges against him,” one of his lawyers, Mehmet Pehlivan said.
“The detention was aimed at undermining Mr.Imamoglu’s reputation in the eyes of society,” he wrote on X early on Saturday, saying both probes were “based on untrue allegations” and “a violation of the right to a fair trial.”
Demonstrators across the country were due to rally again on Saturday night.
In a message on X sent via his lawyers, Imamoglu said he was “honored and proud” of the demonstrators who hit the streets in more than 50 of Turkiye’s 81 provinces, saying they were “protecting our republic, our democracy, the future of a just Turkiye, and the will of our nation.”
Addressing the crowds outside City Hall in Istanbul on Friday night, Ozgur Ozel, who heads the main opposition CHP, said 300,000 people had joined the demonstration in defiance of a protest ban and a sharp warning from Erdogan that Turkiye would not tolerate “street terror.”
As he spoke, the crowd cheered and applauded, waving flags and banners and chanting slogans like: “Don’t stay silent or it will be you next.”
The move against Imamoglu has hurt the Turkish lira and financial markets, with the stock exchange’s BIST 100 index closing down nearly eight percent on Friday.


Last of six foreign hikers missing in Philippines rescued

Last of six foreign hikers missing in Philippines rescued
Updated 22 March 2025
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Last of six foreign hikers missing in Philippines rescued

Last of six foreign hikers missing in Philippines rescued
  • Four foreign hikers who had been missing for days in a mountainous area of the central Philippines were rescued Saturday, local authorities said, a day after their two companions were found safe

MANILA: Four foreign hikers who had been missing for days in a mountainous area of the central Philippines were rescued Saturday, local authorities said, a day after their two companions were found safe.
The six-man group, which included German, British, Russian and Canadian nationals, had set out on Wednesday for what was to be a four-hour excursion in an area of Negros Oriental province officials said was hit by a downpour.
“The army rescuers found them in the vicinity of the Silab hydropower plant,” said Jose Lawrence Silorio, a rescue official in the municipality of Amlan, near the province’s Balinsasayao Twin Lakes Natural Park.
Police identified the men as Germans Aldwin Fink, 60, and Wolfgang Schlenker, 67; Russian Anton Chernov, 38; and 50-year-old Canadian Terry De Gunten.
Philippine Army personnel found the hikers in a mountainous area thick with vegetation, said investigator Leo Gil Villafranca.
“They told the army they got lost due to the fog,” he said, adding all the hikers were residents of the province.
The four were discovered at 9:44 am (0144 GMT), according to local authorities.
“Overall, they are OK, but they had minor abrasions. We wrapped one of them in a blanket because he was feeling cold. But he was eventually able to stand up on his own,” Silorio said.
“They told us they survived by eating edible plants in the forest,” he added.
Silorio said the group was found about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from where fellow hikers Torsten Martin Groschupp, 58, and Alexander Radvanyi, 63, were discovered Friday morning.
An image posted to a police Facebook page showed De Gunten, his legs bloodied, talking to rescuers inside an ambulance while Chernov lay on a stretcher wrapped in a blanket.
Police said Friday that the weather had likely played a role in the group’s becoming lost on what they said was a “difficult” trail in a mountainous area the men were tackling without a guide.
“It was rainy at the time and that led to zero visibility,” said Valencia police officer Henry Japay, adding there was no cell phone reception in the area.
“There’s a big possibility that they stopped and took shelter when it started raining.”