World

MADRID — Spain was on Monday in the grips of a heatwave expected to reach "extreme" levels with France set to follow suit as meteorologists blame the unusually high seasonal temperatures on global warming.

The "unusual" temperatures in the first-half of June come after Spain experienced its hottest May in at least 100 years, Ruben del Campo, spokesman for the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet) said.

He told AFP that the current heatwave would bring "extreme temperatures" and "could last until the end of the week".

Temperatures are forecast to rise above 40ºC in the centre and south of the country on Monday, and even climb as high as 43ºC in the southern Andalusia region, especially in the cities of Cordoba or Seville, according to Aemet.

The heatwave is also set to spread elsewhere in Europe, such as France, in the next few days, del Campo warned.

France's weather service said the heatwave would hit southern regions from late Tuesday, worsening a drought across much of the country that is threatening farm harvests.

From Wednesday, much of France will swelter in temperatures that could reach 38ºC or even 40ºC — "extremely early" for the season — forecaster Frederic Nathan of Meteo-France told AFP.

Water use restrictions are already in place in around a third of France — and utilities are urging farmers, factories and public service providers to show "restraint" in their water use.

'Not normal' 

In Portugal, hot weather began last Friday, prompting the civil protection authority to raise the alert level over the risks of forest fires.

Portugal was among several European nations to have faced fierce fires last summer, which climate scientists warn will become increasingly common due to manmade global warming.

In 2017, fires killed dozens of people in Portugal.

Recent science has shown beyond any doubt that climate change has already increased the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, and that worse is on the horizon no matter how quickly humanity draws down carbon pollution.

Earth has already warmed 1.1ºC since pre-industrial times.

The decade from 2011 to 2020 was the warmest on record, and the last six years the hottest ever registered.

Spain has experienced four episodes of extreme temperatures in the last 10 months.

A heatwave last August set a new record, with the temperature hitting 47.4ºC in the southern city of Montoro.

“This extreme heat is not normal at this time during the spring,” del Campo said, attributing it to global warming.

Temperatures were also “exceptionally high” between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Since the pre-industrial era, Spain has seen temperatures rise by 1.7ºC on average, del Campo said.

Not only have temperatures become more extreme, he said, but periods of heat have become more frequent.

Summers in Spain, he added, “are a bit hotter every year and getting longer and longer. A summer lasts one month longer than in the 1980s.”

Apart from the consequences on human health, he warned of the environmental impact, with a high risk of drought and water supply problems, and more fires.

In September, a huge wildfire raged for seven days in the Sierra Bermeja area, killing a firefighter and forcing 2,600 people from their homes as it burned through some 10,000 hectares of land.

Turkey, meanwhile, braced for strong rains, wind and flash floods in the north and centre of the country on Monday, after a weekend of flooding left five people dead, authorities said on Monday.

Greece, too, saw widespread flooding at the weekend.

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Ukraine said on Monday its forces had been pushed back from the centre of key industrial city Severodonetsk, where President Volodymyr Zelensky described a fight for "literally every metre".

The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are separated by a river, have been targeted for weeks as the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the eastern Lugansk region.

Regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said Monday Russian forces were "gathering more and more equipment" to "encircle" Severodonetsk.

Moscow's troops had "pushed our units from the centre and continue to destroy our city", he said.

Severodonetsk had been "de facto" blocked off after Russian forces blew up the "last" bridge connecting it to Lysychansk on Sunday, Eduard Basurin, a representative for pro-Russian separatists, said on Monday.

Ukrainian forces in the area had two choices, he said, "to surrender or die".

The capture of Severodonetsk would open the road for Moscow to Slovyansk and another major city, Kramatorsk, in their push to conquer the whole of Donbas, a mainly Russian-speaking region partly held by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014.

Ukrainian forces were fighting for “every town and village where the occupiers came”, Zelensky said on Monday in a message to mark the eighth anniversary of the liberation of Mariupol in the earlier conflict.

In May, Russian troops captured the port city in southern Ukraine after a weeks-long siege.

“We are once again fighting for it and all of Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

‘War crimes’ 

On Monday, Amnesty International accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying that attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv — many using banned cluster bombs — had killed hundreds of civilians.

“The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes,” the rights group said in a report on Ukraine’s second biggest city.

In Bucha, a town near Kyiv synonymous with war crimes allegations, local police said Monday they had discovered another seven bodies in a grave.

“Several victims had their hands tied and knees bound,” Kyiv regional police chief Andriy Nebytov said on Facebook.

Dozens of bodies in civilian clothing were found in the town in April after Russian troops withdrew from the area following a month-long occupation.

Elsewhere in northern Ukraine on Monday, Russian rocket strikes hit the town of Pryluky, local authorities said.

Pryluky, which lies about 150 kilometres east of the capital, is home to a military airfield.

In Lysychansk, Russian bombardments killed three civilians in the last 24 hours, including a six-year-old boy, Lugansk governor Gaiday said on Monday.

While in the city of Donetsk, separatist authorities said three people were killed and four wounded in Ukrainian shelling on a market in the Budonivskyi district of the city.

Weapons call 

Russia’s invasion of its neighbour has prompted Finland and Sweden to give up decades of military non-alignment and seek to join the NATO alliance.

In terms of security, Sweden was “in a better place now than before it applied”, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday, even though its application is in limbo with Turkey currently withholding its approval.

In a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, Stoltenberg said NATO was working “hard and actively” to resolve Ankara’s concerns “as soon as possible” ahead of a meeting on June 15.

It was at the summit in Brussels that Kyiv said Monday it was hoping for a decision on further Western arms deliveries to support its war effort.

“Being straightforward — to end the war we need heavy weapons,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter.

Podolyak listed items he said the Ukrainian army requires, including hundreds of howitzers, tanks and armoured vehicles.

Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in the town of Chortkiv in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons.

The strike — a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine — left 22 people injured, regional governor Volodymyr Trush said.

WTO meeting 

Away from the battlefield, World Trade Organisation(WTO) members gathered in Geneva on Sunday, with the threat posed to global food security by Russia’s war top of the agenda.

Tensions ran high during a closed-door session, in which around three dozen delegates “walked out” before a speech by Russia’s deputy economic development minister Vladimir Ilichev, WTO spokesman Dan Pruzin told journalists.

On a farm near the southern Ukrainian city Mykolaiv, the harvest has been delayed by the need to undo the damage done by Russian troops that passed through the area in March.

“We planted really late because we needed to clear everything beforehand,” including bombshells, Nadiia Ivanova, 42, told AFP.

The farm’s warehouses currently hold 2,000 tonnes of last season’s grain but there are no takers.

The railways have been partially destroyed by the Russian army, while any ship that sails faces the threat of being sunk.

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of US senators on Sunday proposed steps to curb gun violence following devastating mass shootings in Texas and New York, but the limited measures fall far short of the president's calls for change.

The shootings in May — one at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 young children and two teachers, and another at a New York supermarket that left 10 Black people dead — have piled pressure on politicians to take action.

But Republicans lawmakers, who have repeatedly blocked tougher measures, are still resisting major changes to gun regulations, instead pointing to mental health issues as the root of the problem.

The new proposals include tougher background checks for gun buyers under 21, increasing resources for states to keep weapons out of the hands of people deemed a risk, and adding domestic violence convictions and restraining orders to the national background check database.

"Today, we are announcing a commonsense, bipartisan proposal to protect America's children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country," the group of 20 lawmakers said in a statement.

"Our plan increases needed mental health resources, improves school safety and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can't purchase weapons."

President Joe Biden praised the proposals and urged lawmakers to quickly turn them into legislation, while saying the measures do not go far enough.

"Obviously, it does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades," he said in a statement.

"With bipartisan support, there are no excuses for delay, and no reason why it should not quickly move through the Senate and the House."

Both Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell — the top Democrat and Republican in the US Senate — expressed support for the bipartisan effort, signalling that legislation based on the proposals could make it through the upper house.

Biden had pushed for more substantive reforms, including a ban on assault rifles — which were used in both the Texas and New York shootings — or at least an increase in the age at which they can be purchased.

He had also urged lawmakers to ban high-capacity magazines, mandate safe storage of firearms, and allow gun manufacturers to be held liable for crimes committed with their products.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a broad package of proposals this month that included raising the purchasing age for most semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.

But the party does not have the requisite 60 votes to advance it in the Senate, leaving the bipartisan deal as the only hope for federal legislation to address firearms violence.

Frequent mass shootings have led to widespread outrage in the United States, where a majority of people support tighter gun laws, but opposition from many Republican lawmakers and voters has long been a hurdle to major changes.

A strong opponent of tougher measures is the National Rifle Association (NRA), which has been weakened by scandals and was hit by a lawsuit from New York State’s attorney general, but still wields considerable influence.

“The media, leftist politicians and gun-hating activists are bullying NRA members and gun owners because they want us to give up. We won’t bend a knee,” the lobby tweeted on Saturday.

That day, thousands of people took to the streets across the United States to push for action on gun violence, which has killed more than 19,400 people in the country so far this year, more than half of them suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

“The will of the American people is being subverted by a minority,” 63-year-old protester Cynthia Martins said during a demonstration in the US capital on Saturday. “Hand wringing is not going to do anything — you have to make your voice heard.”

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Russian forces said on Sunday they had struck a site in western Ukraine storing large amounts of weapons supplied by the United States and European countries, as the battle intensified for the key eastern city of Severodonetsk.

The strike on the town of Chortkiv, a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine, left 22 people injured, the regional governor said.

Meanwhile, the situation in Severodonetsk was "extremely difficult", after the Russian army destroyed a second bridge into the city and was heavily bombarding the last one, regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said.

Away from the battlefield, the head of the European Commission on Saturday promised it would provide a clear signal by the end of next week on Ukraine's bid to become a candidate to join the European Union.

"Ukraine has achieved a lot in the past ten years and much still needs to be done. Our opinion will reflect this carefully," Ursula von der Leyen said after a surprise trip to the capital Kyiv.

Despite reservations among some member states, EU leaders are expected to approve the bid at a summit later this month, although with strict conditions attached.

"The challenge will be to come out of the [EU] council with a united position, which reflects the enormity of these historic decisions," von der Leyen said as she travelled back to Poland.

Ukraine's geopolitical vulnerability has been laid bare by Russia's February 24 invasion, which has killed thousands, sent millions fleeing and reduced swathes of the country to rubble.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that it was a "decisive time".

"Russia wants to ruin European unity, wants to leave Europe divided and wants to leave it weak. The entirety of Europe is a target for Russia. Ukraine is only the first stage in this aggression," he said.

The United States and EU have sent weapons and cash to help Ukraine fend off the Russian advance, alongside punishing Moscow with unprecedented economic sanctions.

Russia’s defence ministry said the strike on Chortkiv destroyed a “large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and European countries”.

Regional Governor Volodymyr Trush said that four missiles fired from the Black Sea had partially destroyed a military installation in the town, about 140 kilometres from the border with Romania, on Saturday evening.

Residential buildings were also damaged and 22 people were hurt, all of them — including seven women and a 12-year-old — taken to hospital, he said in a Facebook post.

It was a rare attack in western Ukraine, with the east and south of the country having borne the brunt of Russian firepower.

The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which are separated by a river, have been targeted for weeks as the last areas still under Ukrainian control in the region of Lugansk.

“The situation in Severodonetsk is extremely difficult,” said Lugansk governor Gaiday on Sunday, adding that by attacking the bridges, Russian forces wanted to cut off the city completely.

“Most likely, today or tomorrow, they will throw all reserves to capture the city and also possibly in other directions to cut and fully control the road” southwest to Bakhmut.

He said the Azot chemical plant was being shelled, with fighting around the area.

About 800 civilians have taken refuge in the plant’s bunkers, according to the tycoon whose company owns the facility.

Crisis and famine 

The war has caused a spike in the global prices of energy — Russia is a major producer of oil and gas — and basic food stuffs.

Before the war, Russia and Ukraine produced 30 per cent of the global wheat supply, but grain is stuck in Ukraine’s ports and Western sanctions have disrupted exports from Russia.

Addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore on Saturday, Zelensky warned of an acute food crisis, adding that the “shortage of foodstuffs will inexorably lead to political chaos”.

Also Saturday, Gaiday cited reports of Russians loading trucks with Ukrainian wheat and taking it to Russian-controlled areas.

At the summit, Zelensky urged international pressure to end the blockade, speaking to delegates including Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe, who on Sunday reiterated Beijing’s position on the crisis.

“On the Ukrainian crisis, China has never provided any material support to Russia,” he said, adding that it supported peace negotiations and hoped “NATO will have talks with Russia”.

Delicious 

The sanctions against Moscow have hit the Russian economy, and also caused major Western brands to leave the country, with US fast-food chain McDonald’s selling its businesses there.

Its iconic restaurant on Moscow’s Pushkin Square — where the very first McDonald’s opened its doors to long queues and great fanfare in January 1990 — was set to reopen Sunday under new ownership.

It was named “Vkusno i tochka” (“Delicious. Full Stop”), Oleg Paroyev, the boss of the new group, told a press conference.

Separately, Ukrainian nuclear operator Energoatom announced that the connection between the Zaporizhzhia plant, now part of Russian-held territory in the south, and the UN’s nuclear watchdog had been restored after a month-and-a-half.

The Russian shelling of the plant — the largest in Europe — had sparked international outrage and fears over Ukraine’s 15 operational reactors.

Energoatom said the Russians had cut off the mobile phone operator at the site on May 30, but the connection with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had finally been restored on Friday.

The IAEA said this week it was planning to visit the Zaporizhzhia plant to carry out essential safety work.

However, Energoatom said that such a trip would legitimise Russia’s control of the site, and said a visit would only be possible once Ukraine regained control.

LONDON — The UK’s government on Sunday came under pressure to win the release of a Moroccan man who has been sentenced to death alongside two Britons by a pro-Russian court in Ukraine.

The court in Donetsk, one of two self-proclaimed statelets in eastern Ukraine, last week ordered the death penalty for the trio after they were captured by Russian troops.

Brahim Saadoun along with UK nationals Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner were said to have surrendered in April after fighting with Ukrainian forces in the besieged port city of Mariupol.

British cabinet minister, Brandon Lewis, told Sky News the government was “fully engaged” with Ukrainian authorities in trying to help Aslin and Pinner after their “sham trial”.

The Britons were legal combatants serving with Ukraine’s armed forces and fully entitled to protection for prisoners of war under the Geneva convention, Lewis said.

The UK should also intervene on Saadoun’s behalf, his friend Zina Kotenko told Sky from her new home in northern England, after fleeing Russia’s invasion.

Kotenko said she had first met the 21-year-old Saadoun in a Kyiv nightclub, described him as a “kind”, “open-minded” and “cheerful” person.

Kotenko said he had been accepted into the Ukrainian army after several attempts, being found previously by recruiters to be underweight.

“Please care about people who care about democracy,” she urged the UK government.

“People are the voice, people are the face of the government, now the face of the government is sitting in prison... please save [Saadoun].”

Morocco’s government has not commented on the case. Saadoun’s father has told local media that his son was a student in Ukraine before legitimately signing up to fight.

Dmytro Khrabstov, 20, is another friend who met Saadoun on Kyiv’s pre-war party scene and is campaigning for his release with the social media hashtag #SaveBrahim.

The Moroccan joined the Ukrainian military last year, telling friends he wanted to “die as a hero”, according to Khrabstov.

He is a “bright and enthusiastic guy, dreaming about the technology of the future and how he could change things”, the friend told Britain’s PA news agency.

Both the Britons have been living in Ukraine since 2018 and signed up to fight when Russia invaded, according to their families, denying that they were mercenaries as alleged by the court.

Pinner, 48, is married to a Ukrainian woman, and Aslin, 28, is engaged to a local.

Pinner’s family on Saturday said they were “devastated” at the court’s verdict, and that “our hearts go out to all the families involved in this awful situation”.

“We sincerely hope that all parties will cooperate urgently to ensure the safe release or exchange of Shaun,” they said.

Ukraine’s ambassador in London, Vadym Prystaiko, said Friday that the British pair was likely to be traded for pro-Russian lawmakers held by Ukraine.

“It will be a swap,” he told the BBC. “The important question is what will be the price for this.”

BEIJING — Most children in Beijing will not return to school next week as originally planned, Chinese officials said on Saturday, after an emerging COVID-19 outbreak prompted authorities to partly reverse a decision to resume in-person teaching.

China is the last major economy still committed to a zero-COVID strategy, stamping out new cases with a combination of targeted lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines.

But virus clusters in recent months have put that approach under strain. The megacity of Shanghai was forced into a gruelling months-long lockdown and in the capital Beijing, schools were shuttered and residents were ordered to work from home.

Authorities in Beijing eased many curbs earlier this week, but dozens of infections linked to a bar have led authorities to tighten some restrictions again.

Most primary and middle school students will "continue to study online at home" from Monday, city government spokesperson Xu Hejian said at a press briefing on Saturday.

The announcement partly walked back a previous decision to send younger pupils back to school in phases, starting next week.

Some 115 cases have been linked to the bar cluster so far, municipal health official Liu Xiaofeng said at the briefing.

The new outbreak was "at a rapidly developing stage ... and at a relatively high risk of spreading", Liu said.

More than 20 million people in Shanghai began a mass testing drive on Saturday that local governments said would take place under temporary lockdown conditions.

The move comes less than two weeks after the eastern economic hub lurched out of a harsh lockdown that was punctuated by food shortages and isolated protests from irate residents.

Officials have maintained a shifting patchwork of restrictions in Shanghai, wary of a virus resurgence after finally containing the country's worst outbreak in two years.

China recorded 138 domestic infections on Saturday, including 61 in Beijing and 16 in Shanghai, according to the National Health Commission.

SYDNEY — Australia unveiled a substantial compensation deal with French submarine maker Naval Group on Saturday, ending a contract dispute that soured relations between Canberra and Paris for almost a year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the French firm had agreed to a "fair and an equitable settlement" of 555 million euros (US$584 million) for Australia ending a decade-old multi-billion-dollar submarine contract.

The agreement drew a line under a spat that caused leader-level recriminations and threatened to torpedo talks on an EU-Australia trade agreement.

"It permits us to turn a page in our bilateral relations with Australia and look to the future," said French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu.

Albanese said he would travel to France soon to "reset" a relationship beset by "pretty obvious" tensions.

The tussle began in September 2021, when Australia's then-prime minister Scott Morrison abruptly ripped up a long-standing contact with the French state-backed Naval to build a dozen diesel-powered submarines.

He also stunned Paris by revealing secret talks to buy US or British nuclear-powered submarines, a major shift for a country with little domestic nuclear capability.

The decision drew fury from French President Emmanuel Macron, who publicly accused Morrison of lying and recalled his ambassador from Australia in protest.

Relations were on ice until this May when Australia elected centre-left leader Albanese.

Since coming to office, he has rushed to fix strained relations with France, New Zealand, and Pacific Island nations, who objected to the previous conservative government's foot-dragging on climate change.

"We are re-establishing a better relationship between Australia and France," Albanese said, after speaking to Macron about the settlement.

"I'm looking forward to taking up President Macron's invitation to me to visit Paris at the earliest opportunity."

Speaking on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore, Lecornu said France valued its “friendship” with Australia.

“Just because a government in the past did not keep its word, it does not mean we have to forget our strategic relationship,” he said.

“Australia has a new team in power, we are happy to be able to work with them.”

Arms race 

The submarine contract had been the centrepiece of Australia’s race to develop its military capabilities, as it fears the threat from a more bellicose China under President Xi Jinping.

In total, the failed French submarine contract will have cost Australian taxpayers $2.4 billion, Albanese said, with almost nothing to show for it.

The promised nuclear-powered submarines are likely to cost many billions more, but would give Australia the ability to operate more stealthily and — armed with sophisticated cruise missile capabilities — pose much more of a deterrent to Beijing.

But there remains deep uncertainty about how quickly they can be built.

The first US or British submarines likely will not be in the water for decades, leaving a long capability gap as Australia’s existing fleet ages.

The choice of contractor will have a significant economic impact and strategic implications, closely enmeshing the Australian navy with that of the chosen nation.

Former defence minister and now opposition leader Peter Dutton said this week that he had decided to source the submarines from the United States, an unusual revelation given the sensitivity of ongoing talks.

The current government has insisted no decision has yet been reached and has vowed to remain a close partner of the United States.

Meanwhile, Albanese has also made tentative steps to conduct the first ministerial-level talks with China in more than two years, after a range of bitter political and trade disputes.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said in Singapore Saturday said Australia wanted “respectful” relations with all countries in the region, adding: “This includes China.”

“Australia values a productive relationship with China. China is not going anywhere. And we all need to live together and, hopefully, prosper together,” he said.

Marles, however, rejected a pointed question from a Chinese military official who asked if the so-called AUKUS deal with the United States and Britain to supply submarine technology was a new defence alliance.

“AUKUS is not a mini-NATO,” Marles said. “It’s not an alliance.”