World

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron met leaders of all of France's political parties on Wednesday, including his most bitter opponents, outside Paris in a bid to break the deadlock of a hung parliament.

Deprived of an absolute majority in the national assembly lower house since last year's parliamentary elections, Macron said he wanted a "frank, honest and direct discussion" aimed at "acting together" for the benefit of voters.

In a letter inviting party bosses from the hard left to far right, Macron vowed to work together on writing new laws and "if need be" organising referendums — a rare political tool that has previously backfired.

"We're here with no illusions, but with determination," said Manuel Bompard, coordinator of the hard-left France Unbowed, as he and other left-wing leaders from the NUPES alliance arrived on Wednesday afternoon.

"Any time we can come and make concrete proposals, we'll do it," added Socialist chief Olivier Faure.

Jordan Bardella, head of the far-right National Rally (RN), told reporters on Wednesday marked "an opportunity for a frank discussion", saying he wouldn't be "the most lenient" with Macron.

The talks are set to unfold behind closed doors with participants surrendering their phones.

One idea under discussion is the government organising what has been dubbed a "preferendum" — a non-binding public consultation that would offer voters multiple choice questions on issues such as immigration or education.

Traditional one-question, yes-or-no referendums have in the past seen voters seek to censure the president himself, tripping up Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac on European issues in 1992 and 2005.

"By asking several questions, people may vent on one of them and respond on the issues on all the others," government spokesman Olivier Veran told broadcaster BFMTV on Monday.

Conservatives and the far right have already called for referendums on immigration while the NUPES alliance of left parties wants voters to have a direct say on Macron’s already-passed controversial pension changes.

Macron’s Renaissance party would prefer a referendum with “between three and five questions”, including on institutional reform.

“It’s a way to regain legitimacy if people vote yes,” one senior Renaissance MP said.

On the other hand, “if this new ‘democratic innovation’ is a damp squib, Emmanuel Macron will have no levers available to save his second term from getting bogged down,” the daily Le Monde commented.

Constitutional lawyers have also raised doubts, with expert Bertrand Mathieu telling Le Monde the idea amounts to “a never-before-seen procedure, a kind of life-size poll organised by the state”.

“Nothing would bind the legislative and executive branches afterwards, and no-one would be able to call on the Constitutional Council to insist the ballot box is respected,” he added.

The political leaders are meeting in Saint-Denis just outside Paris, a poor suburb hit by riots in late June and early July over the police shooting of a teenager of Algerian origin during a traffic stop.

Two roundtables will cover international affairs and possible institutional reforms, with a later dinner covering the problems highlighted by the riots: Education, integration, inequality and “authority”, the president’s Elysee Palace office said.

Macron’s centrist minority government appears to have run out of road with its strategy of bill-by-bill alliances and use of an unpopular mechanism to ram laws through without a vote, especially to pass contested pension changes earlier this year.

Now the president “wants to avoid blockages by any means available”, a senior member of his entourage told AFP.

Macron “wants to see where there are disagreements, and if they cannot be overcome, see what subjects French voters could decide on” in a referendum.

KYIV — Ukraine said on Wednesday that its recapture of Robotyne village this week was a strategic victory paving the way for its forces to push deeper into Russian positions in the south towards Crimea.

The foreign minister's comments published early Wednesday came as Kyiv announced two people had been killed in the "most powerful" aerial attack in weeks and Russia reported a drone strike on military aircraft in its northwest.

Kyiv launched a counteroffensive in June after stockpiling Western-supplied weapons and building up assault battalions.

Progress has been costly and staggered but Ukrainian forces announced they had pushed through key Russian defensive lines with the capture of the hamlet in the Zaporizhzhia region this week.

"Having entrenched on the flanks of Robotyne, we are opening the way to Tokmak and, eventually, Melitopol and the administrative border with Crimea," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said during an earlier official visit to Paris.

The Kremlin has downplayed the offensive and Yevgeny Balitsky, its official in charge of the Zaporizhzhia region — which Russia claims as its own, warned territory beyond Robotyne would be a "mass grave for Ukraine's armed forces".

In Kyiv, an AFP reporter heard at least three explosions at around 5:00am (02:00 GMT) as part of the country-wide barrage of 28 cruise missiles and 16 attack drones.

“We heard explosions, and we could see the flashes through the window,” Oksana Soloviuk, who lives next to one building hit by debris told AFP.

Yevgen Ananenko and his father ran downstairs when they heard the blasts and metal fragments cut into the side of their building.

“If it had fallen straight into the house, I doubt we would have survived,” he said.

Military officials described the attack as “the most powerful” to hit the city since the spring, and authorities said two employees of an infrastructure facility were killed by falling debris in the Shevchenkivsky district.

Russian forces launched groups of Iranian-made Shahed drones at the capital from different directions, and launched missiles from aircraft, the Kyiv city military administration said.

The Russian defence ministry said it had targeted Ukrainian operational and intelligence centres and that all the assigned targets had been hit.

Drone wave 

Ukraine has meanwhile stepped up drone attacks inside Russia.

It launched a wave of strikes overnight, targeting an airport near the Estonian border and the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea, Russian authorities said.

The attack on Pskov airport, roughly 700 kilometres from the border with Ukraine, marks the latest strike far from Ukraine’s borders since Kyiv vowed to “return” the conflict to Russia in July.

Governor Mikhail Vedernikov, who said he was at the scene of the attack, posted a video online of a massive fire, with the sounds of explosions and sirens in the background.

Authorities were assessing the damage but there were no casualties, he said.

State news agency TASS, citing emergency services, said that four Ilyushin Il-76 heavy transport planes were damaged in the attack in Pskov, but there was no immediate comment from the defence ministry.

Black Sea tensions 

The Pskov region was previously targeted by drones in May.

Authorities in Bryansk region near the Ukraine border, southern Oryol region and Kaluga and Ryazan regions, southwest and southeast of Moscow, all reported drones had been destroyed or downed.

Air defences also destroyed a drone “heading for Moscow”, the city’s mayor wrote on social media, adding there were no casualties or damage caused. TASS reported that Moscow’s Domodedovo and Vnukovo airports had been temporarily closed.

Moscow and other Russian regions have been targeted by almost daily drone strikes since Kyiv vowed this summer to “return” the conflict to Russia.

The Kremlin said in response to Wednesday’s attacks that military experts were studying routes used by Ukrainian drones with the aim of preventing future attacks.

Tensions have also been building on the Black Sea since Moscow exited a deal allowing maritime exports from Ukraine, and threatened to attack cargo ships using Ukrainian ports.

Russia’s defence ministry said Wednesday its fighter jets had destroyed several high-speed military boats in the Black Sea around midnight Moscow time.

It said the vessels were carrying Ukrainian special forces and claimed several dozen personnel had been killed, without giving details on exactly where in the Black Sea the incident took place.

Early Wednesday, Russian defences also repelled a “seaborne drone attack” near Sevastopol in Crimea, TASS cited the Moscow-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhayev as saying.

Sevastopol is the base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Both Ukraine and Russia have ramped up activity around the strategic waterway after the United Nations-brokered deal to ensure safe navigation for grain ships collapsed last month.

STEINHATCHEE, United States — Hurricane Idalia slammed into northwest Florida as an "extremely dangerous" Category 3 storm early Wednesday, buffeting coastal communities with cascades of water as officials warned of "catastrophic" flooding in parts of the southern US state.

Authorities described Idalia and its potentially deadly high surging waters as a once-in-a-lifetime event for the area most affected, ordering mass evacuations.

The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said Idalia, which earlier raked western Cuba, was packing maximum sustained winds of approximately 215 kilometres per hour when it made landfall around 7:45am (11:45 GMT) in Florida’s marshy Big Bend area.

The NHC said the storm came ashore near the community of Keaton Beach, as an “extremely dangerous Category 3 Hurricane, and warned of a possible disastrous storm surge of up to about five metres in some coastal areas.

Though Idalia lost strength as it moved inland towards Georgia, becoming a Category 1 storm, authorities warned residents of the aftermath, and the dangers of high tide.

Unlike most other coastal regions in the state, Big Bend — a marshy area along the Gulf of Mexico — does not have barrier islands.

The NHC said water levels were more than six feet above normal in Cedar Key, a string of islands jutting into the Gulf, and warned that waters along the coast were “rising rapidly”.

Resident Shely Boivin, who manages the community’s Beach Front Motel, fled before the storm’s arrival, telling CNN that “everything is floating”.

“Everything is flooded. I’ve seen pictures of the tide coming in, the water is just — it’s everywhere,” she said, noting that high tide was still yet to come.

In the small coastal town of Steinhatchee about 32 Kilometres south of Idalia’s landfall, streets were mostly deserted and the main road was totally flooded.

Patrick Boland, 73, who was out for a walk surveying the damage, said: “It was a little windy, the trees were coming down in my front yard, but other than that, the house is fine.”

In the Tampa Bay area — a major metropolitan zone of some 3 million people — streets were submerged and flood waters swept across yards.

With the area still at low tide, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told CNN that “the flooding that we’re experiencing now is nothing compared to what we’re going to see in a few hours”.

Just north in the city of Tarpon Springs, people waded, or even canoed, to safety as homes and apartments were inundated.

More than 278,000 customers in Florida and 52,000 in Georgia were without electricity as of 11:30am, according to tracking website PowerOutage.us.

US President Joe Biden was due to deliver remarks later in the day on Idalia.

The White House said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had prepositioned emergency personnel and resources.

Airports, ports closed 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had urged residents of 23 counties along Florida’s Gulf coast to evacuate and head to shelters or hotels outside the danger zones.

The US presidential candidate had warned the hurricane was on track to be the strongest to impact the region in more than a century.

Meteorologists are also pointing to a rare blue supermoon which could further raise tides above normal levels just as Idalia pounds the coastline.

Tampa International Airport and other regional airports closed, while flights were disrupted along the US East Coast as another hurricane, Franklin, churns in the Atlantic.

Several Florida ports were closed to vessel traffic as of Tuesday night, according to the US coast guard.

‘Marine heat wave’ 

In Cuba, the storm flooded several communities including parts of the capital Havana and knocked out power to about 200,000 people but there were no deaths reported.

The storm then moved out over the Gulf of Mexico, which scientists say is experiencing a “marine heat wave” — energising Idalia’s winds as it raced towards Florida.

Record-breaking temperatures off the Florida coast are expected to amplify Atlantic storms this season, with scientists blaming human-caused climate change for the overall warming trend.

In July, a buoy off the state’s southern tip recorded an alarming peak temperature of 38.4ºC, a possible new world record.

Hotter sea surfaces impart more energy on the air above them, packing more punch into the winds of passing storms.

Almost 150 people were killed last year when Hurricane Ian slammed Florida’s west coast as a Category 4 storm, bringing ocean surges and strong winds that downed bridges and swept away buildings.

LIBREVILLE — Rebel officers in Gabon announced on Wednesday they had seized power following disputed elections in which President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family has ruled the oil-rich state for more than 55 years, had been declared winner.

The claimed takeover sparked condemnation from the African Union (AU) and alarm from Nigeria over “contagious autocracy” in a continent where the military have seized power in five other countries since 2020.

Bongo, 64, who took over from his father Omar in 2009, was placed under house arrest and one of his sons arrested for treason, the coup leaders said.

In a dramatic pre-dawn address, a group of officers declared “all the institutions of the republic” had been dissolved, the election results cancelled and the borders closed.

“Today, the country is going through a serious institutional, political, economic and social crisis,” according to the statement read on state TV.

It was read by an officer flanked by a group of a dozen army colonels, members of the elite Republican Guard, regular soldiers and others.

The elections “did not meet the conditions for a transparent, credible and inclusive ballot so much hoped for by the people of Gabon”, the statement said.

“Added to this is irresponsible and unpredictable governance, resulting in a continuing deterioration in social cohesion, with the risk of leading the country in chaos.”

“We — the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions [CTRI] on behalf of the people of Gabon and as guarantors of the institutions’ protection — have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime,” it said.

TV images later showed the head of the Republican Guard, Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema, being carried in triumph by hundreds of soldiers, to cries of “Oligui president”.

Bongo’s son and close adviser Noureddin Bongo Valentin, his chief of staff Ian Ghislain Ngoulou as well as his deputy, two other presidential advisers and the two top officials in the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) “have been arrested”, a military leader said.

They are accused of treason, embezzlement, corruption and falsifying the president’s signature, among other allegations, he said.

A worried-looking Bongo, in a video from an unidentified location, appealed to “all friends that we have all over the world... to make noise” on his behalf.

“My son is somewhere, my wife is in another place and I’m at the residence and nothing is happening. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m calling you to make noise.”

Bongo was first elected in 2009 following the death of his father Omar, who had ruled the country for 41 years, reputedly amassing a fortune en route.

The coup announcement came just moments after the national election authority declared Bongo had won a third term in Saturday’s election with 64.27 per cent of the vote.

Gabon’s main opposition, led by university professor Albert Ondo Ossa, had angrily accused Bongo of “fraud” and demanded that he hand over power “without bloodshed”.

The authorities at the weekend imposed an overnight curfew and shut down the Internet nationwide. The Internet was restored on

Wednesday morning after the TV address.

Gabon’s 2016 elections were marked by deadly violence after Bongo edged out rival Jean Ping by just 5,500 votes, according to the official tally.

In 2018, Bongo suffered a stroke that sidelined him for 10 months and fuelled accusations that he was medically unfit to hold office.

The central African country of 2.3 million people has been ruled by the Bongos for more than 55 out of its 63 years since independence from France in 1960.

The AU said it “strongly condemns” the claimed takeover as a violation of its charter.

In Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country, President Bola Tinubu said he was in contact with other African heads over the “contagious autocracy we have seen spread across our continent”.

“Power belongs in the hands of Africa’s great people and not in the barrel of a loaded gun,” Tinubu said through his spokesman.

Since 2020 there have been military takeovers in Mali, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Niger.

In France, whose loss of Bongo would mark a further blow to its clout in Africa, the government said it “condemns the coup that is underway” in Gabon and reiterated its desire “to see the results of the election respected, once they are known”.

Russia said it was “deeply concerned” over the situation, while China called for “all sides” in Gabon to guarantee Bongo’s safety, “resolve differences through dialogue, [and] restore normal order as soon as possible”.

NEW DELHI — Indian officials preparing for the G-20 summit next week have hired teams of "monkey-men" and erected primate cutouts to deter marauding monkeys from munching on the floral displays laid out for global leaders.

New Delhi's city council has hired more than 30 "monkey wallahs", or "monkey-men", who mimic the hoots and screams of the aggressive langur monkey — the natural enemy of the smaller rhesus macaque primates who wreak havoc in the capital's leafy government areas.

"We can't remove the monkeys from their natural habitat, so we have deployed a team of 30-40 men who are trained to scare away monkeys," Satish Upadhyay, the vice chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Council, told AFP on Wednesday.

"We will deploy one man each at the hotels where the delegates would be staying, as well as in places where monkey sightings have been reported."

Though revered in the majority Hindu nation, monkeys are a major menace, often trashing gardens, office and residential rooftops and even viciously attacking people for food.

The Delhi metropolitan area, home to around 30 million people, has been on an intense beautification drive since India assumed the G-20 presidency last year.

Police have readied a near-shutdown of the centre of the capital for the September 9-10 summit, with roads blocked and a holiday declared with businesses shut.

But worries that troops of monkeys may charge in front of the conveys of cars ferrying presidents and prime ministers from the Group of 20 nations meant the council turned to the forest department for a plan.

Life-size cutouts of the langur have also been set up in a bid to scare away the monkeys, and the city will also move them around to convince the macaques that they are real.

For decades, Delhi's streets were patrolled by men with trained langurs, but that practice ended when a court ruled that keeping them in captivity was cruel.

In other parts of the city, watchmen use slingshots and sticks to ward off the animals.

The monkeys also become wise quickly — when a plastic langur was set up, playing recorded sounds of the animals, it lasted only three days before monkeys tore it to pieces.

Some have questioned how effective the monkey policy will be.

The Times of India asked Wednesday: "How many langur cutouts does it take to change a monkey's mind?"

PARIS — Climate change has sharply boosted the risk of fast-spreading wildfires, according to a Californian study published on Wednesday that offers lessons for prevention after recent disasters in Canada, Greece and Hawaii.

Scientists at the Breakthrough Institute, a non-profit research centre, found that human-caused warming increased the frequency of “extreme” wildfires by 25 per cent on average compared to the pre-industrial era, in a study in the journal Nature.

Examining a series of blazes from 2003 to 2020, they used machine learning to analyse the link between higher average temperatures, dryer conditions and the fastest-spreading blazes — ones that burn more than 10,000 acres a day.

The impact of climate change varied from fire to fire.

In certain partly dry conditions, global warming pushed the area beyond key thresholds, making extreme fires much more likely. In very dry conditions, the impact was less.

“This means that we should pay the closest attention to the places and times that historically have experienced conditions just on the moist side of these thresholds, but which are being pushed over these thresholds onto the dry side by background warming,” lead author Patrick Brown told AFP.

Fierce wildfire season 

The researchers calculated that the risk could increase on average by 59 per cent by the end of the century under a “low-emissions” scenario where global warming is limited to 1.8ºC above preindustrial levels, and up to 172 per cent in an unbridled high-emissions scenario.

Earth’s surface has already warmed 1.2ºC.

Using data from recorded fires, the researchers measured the probability of a given blaze turning into an “extreme” one. Then they used computer models to calculate how far the post-industrial rise in temperatures had increased that risk.

The study controlled for variables such as precipitation, wind and absolute humidity and the researchers warned that changes in these could make the risk from global warming even worse.

California has suffered a string of extreme wildfires in recent years.

In 2020, more than 30 people died and 4 million acres were devoured by flames in some of the biggest fires in the state’s history. The November 2018 “Camp Fire” killed 86 people.

The study’s publication followed a summer of wildfires that killed at least 115 people in Hawaii and forced 200,000 from their homes in Canada.

Greece is battling what EU officials called the bloc’s biggest wildfire on record along a 10-kilometre front. It has killed 20 people.

A 2022 United Nations Environment Programme report on wildfires said they are becoming more common due to hotter, dryer conditions caused by climate change, including in regions not traditionally prone to them.

Fire prevention 

Nature study author Brown said the insights into dryness thresholds could aid prevention measures, for example by indicating the best spots for thinning and prescribed burning of vegetation to reduce the dry natural matter that wildfires feed on, known as “hazardous fuel”.

“We are finding that under most conditions, the impact of hazardous fuel reductions can completely negate the impact of climate change,” he said.

“It is plausible to have a future of much less wildfire danger despite climate change if we conduct these fuel treatments at scale.”

He said the findings could also inform precautions regarding power lines and indicate where monitoring and awareness campaigns should be focussed, and firefighting resources deployed.

Other wildfire experts said awareness of fire risks will become increasingly important for authorities and even holidaymakers.

In a separate briefing by wildfire specialists on Wednesday not related to the study, Andrew Sullivan of Australia’s national science agency CSIRO said expenditure was typically “skewed” towards responding to wildfires with not enough money allocated for preventing them.

He said there was a “global need to rebalance expenditure to improve risk mitigation” measures such as managing vegetation and fire-danger forecasting.

LONDON — Britain’s government on Tuesday ordered a review after the country’s air traffic control system suffered its worst disruption in almost 10 years, stranding thousands of passengers.

Flights departing and arriving in the UK continued to be cancelled, one day after air traffic control systems were temporarily hit by a technical fault.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper said there would be an independent review into the worst incident of its kind for “nearly a decade” that is expected to last well into the week.

“This was a technical fault. We do not think this was a cybersecurity incident,” he told GB News.

The last Monday of August — a public holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland — traditionally sees large numbers of passengers returning from summer vacations.

“I know people will be enormously frustrated by the disruption that’s impacting them,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told British broadcasters.

“Thankfully things like this are rare and the issue itself was fixed in a matter of hours, but the disruption obviously is continuing and will last for a little while longer.”

The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said it “identified and remedied” a technical issue which forced it to impose traffic flow restrictions.

NATS said the issue meant flight plans had to be processed manually, while it indicated to AFP that hundreds of flights had been affected and that it would take “several days” for the situation to return to normal.

London’s main airports were the worst hit, with Heathrow and Gatwick cancelling dozens of flights on Tuesday.

British Airways was the worst affected airline.

Frustration 

Aviation analytics company Cirium said 790 departures and 785 arrivals were cancelled across all UK airports on Monday.

That was equivalent to just over one quarter of planned flights, dealing a blow to the sector following its recent strong recovery from the Covid shutdown.

The boss of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, said the no-frills carrier had to cancel about 250 flights, affecting some 40,000 passengers.

“Last night [Monday] we had 20 aircraft that couldn’t get back to their home bases so they’re out of place for today,” he said from Dublin.

“Today, unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to cancel about another 70 flights,” he added, hoping that the situation would return to normal by Wednesday.

At Heathrow, passengers voiced frustration at the delays, which also saw planes diverted, adding hours to journey times.

George McHugh returned from a weekend wedding in Spain on Tuesday morning but his friends were still stuck in Madrid after being due to fly back on Monday.

“Once they got to the airport it was absolute chaos, everything was cancelled,” he told AFP. “So we were stuck up in hotels and things like that.

“I’m probably just lucky that I got there this morning instead of yesterday when it all happened,” he added.

On social media, angry passengers said airlines could have done better in providing support and communicating with passengers.

Rory Boland, travel editor at consumer advice publication Which?, said carriers were obliged to offer “timely rerouting” or provide overnight accommodation.