World

NIAMEY — West African leaders deferred a crisis meeting due on Saturday on dealing with the coup in Niger after approving the deployment of a "standby force to restore constitutional order" as soon as possible.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc had approved a military force to reinstate elected President Mohamed Bazoum, who was ousted by members of his guard on July 26.

Chiefs of staff from member states of the West African bloc were scheduled to attend a meeting on Saturday in the Ghanaian capital Accra but later indefinitely suspended it for "technical reasons".

Sources said the meeting was originally set up to inform the organisation's leaders about "the best options" for activating and deploying the standby force.

"The military option seriously envisaged by ECOWAS is not a war against Niger and its people but a police operation against hostage takers and their accomplices," Niger's Foreign Minister Hassoumi Massaoudou said on Saturday.

ECOWAS is determined to stop the sixth military takeover in the region in just three years and has severed financial transactions and electricity supplies and closed borders with landlocked Niger, blocking much-needed imports to one of the world's poorest countries. 

Thousands of coup supporters rallied in the Niger capital Niamey on Friday to protest against the ECOWAS plan to send troops.

'Down with ECOWAS' 

Protesters gathered near a French military base on the outskirts of Niamey shouting "Down with France, down with ECOWAS".

Niger's new leaders have accused former colonial power France, a close Bazoum ally, of being behind the hardline ECOWAS stance.

Many protesters brandished Russian and Niger flags and shouted their support for the country's new strongman, General Abdourahamane Tiani.

“We are going to make the French leave! ECOWAS isn’t independent, it’s being manipulated by France,” said one demonstrator, Aziz Rabeh Ali.

France has around 1,500 troops in Niger as part of a force battling an eight-year extremist insurgency.

It is facing growing hostility across the Sahel, withdrawing its anti-extremist forces from neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso last year after falling out with military governments that ousted elected leaders.

Niger’s new leaders scrapped defence agreements with France last week, while a hostile protest outside the French embassy in Niamey on July 30 prompted Paris to evacuate its citizens.

Fears for Bazoum 

The European Union and the African Union joined others in sounding the alarm for Bazoum on Friday.

UN rights chief Volker Turk said Bazoum’s reported detention conditions “could amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of international human rights law”.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned that the “coup plotters must face harsh consequences should anything happen” to Bazoum or his family.

Top US diplomat Antony Blinken said he was “dismayed” by the military’s refusal to release Bazoum’s family as a “demonstration of goodwill”.

A source close to Bazoum said: “He’s OK, but the conditions are very difficult.” The coup leaders had threatened to assault him in the event of military intervention.

Human Rights Watch said it had spoken to Bazoum earlier this week. The 63-year-old described the treatment of himself, his wife and their 20-year-old son as “inhuman and cruel”, HRW said.

“I’m not allowed to receive my family members [or] my friends who have been bringing food and other supplies to us,” the group quoted him as saying.

“My son is sick, has a serious heart condition, and needs to see a doctor,” he was quoted as saying. “They’ve refused to let him get medical treatment.”

Under pressure to stem a cascade of coups among its members, ECOWAS had previously issued a seven-day ultimatum to the coup leaders to return Bazoum to power.

But the generals defied the deadline, which expired on Sunday without any action being taken.

The coup leaders have since named a new government, which met for the first time on Friday.

URDUKAS CAMP, Pakistan — Under mountains that dagger the sky, a misfit caravan of Pakistani porters trudge towards K2 toting live chickens and lawn furniture for adventurers seeking an audience with the world's second-highest peak.

It's a dozen-day round trip, some 270,000 burdened steps in lopsided plastic loafers, tie-dye headbands and leopard-print pyjamas, climbing to a glacial perch under one of the most awing sights on Earth — the apex of the Karakorams 8,611 metres above.

Pakistan's dragging economy spurs them in this risk, even as it drains the rewards. The wilderness is shrinking with the creeping advance of roads, promising safer routes but less work. The mountains romance their souls, even as the peaks and troughs punish their bodies.

Seven decades after K2's first summit, the hardscrabble lives of the men shouldering expeditions up to such great heights are at a crossroads.

"I love the mountains," says 28-year-old Yasin Malick, tasked with ferrying a crate of 180 eggs for a tour group joined by AFP journalists.

"My paternal grandfather, maternal uncle, father were all in this line of work," he explains. "Now it's my turn."

Yet, in the same breath he pledges the tradition won't pass to younger generations: "I will carry loads till the day I die but I will not let them carry it."

'Different worlds' 

Tour operators typically quote between $2,000 and $7,000 for the trip starting in Askole — a village in Pakistan's northeastern Gilgit-Baltistan region where jeeps end their muddling journeys and spill trekkers sporting neck pillows and parasols, as well as more hardbred mountain-climbers.

Porters — doing the dogsbody work carting luggage, dining tents and pantries of provisions — make something like 30,000 to 40,000 rupees ($105 to $140) each trip in the four-month summer season, less than the price of high-end hiking trousers one firm recommends clients wear.

Over the past year the purchasing power of that meagre wage has ebbed, with inflation standing at 28 per cent in July, as Pakistan came to the cusp of default before an IMF intervention offered some paltry relief.

"Now with this job I'm finding it difficult to pay for household necessities," said 42-year-old Sakhawat Ali. "I don't have a choice but to come here and work hard."

But his tone lifts irresistibly as he describes the mountains. "They each have different colours which allows me to witness different worlds," he says.

Porters — all male, spread from young adulthood to pensionable age — report carrying up to 35 kilogrammes on the 2,000 metre ascent, much crammed in blue chemical storage drums lashed to metal backpack frames.

On the odyssey to Basecamp hikers take a sauntering pace, pausing for picnics, as porters power ahead at sunrise on spartan diets of chai and chapati after a night under plastic sheet shelters.

Mules also carry a large share of the cargo and their desiccated corpses litter the half-formed trails.

"Sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's raining, sometimes the weather is harsh," said porter Khadim Hussain.

"Young age has no match," the 65-year-old says. "I wasn't afraid of anyone, anything — there was no fear."

"My age is not the same now: My age has passed."

Fake fruit at altitude 

Nowadays K2 Basecamp has bowls of fake plastic fruit, wine glasses and fairy lights — a sign the "savage mountain" has been tamed by commercial forces riding the backs of porters who are "the lifeline for the mountaineers" according to Alpine Club of Pakistan President Abu Zafar Sadiq.

But those small luxuries have not trickled down to the porters, who must pester tourists for crude medical treatment, head torch batteries and mobile phone power banks.

Fresh routes are being blasted across valleys and hacked through the ice, promising to make their lives easier and safer. But the porters are uneasy about how it will affect job prospects.

In Urdukas — an eagle's nest campsite above the Baltoro Glacier, a rippled and restless maze of ice and stone which must be negotiated for five days — a plaque pays tribute to three porters killed by rockfall while "serving the cause of tourism" in 2011.

But here the porters stage a celebratory song-and-dance session, taking turns to whirl to a jerrycan drumbeat on a stomach-wrenching overhang.

"My connection with the mountains is like a small child's connection with his mother," says 42-year-old head porter Wali Khan.

"It's like a craze," he says. "A lot of our climbers have been buried under the snow up here. They also knew they would die some day, but they'd still go."

"Their hearts were attached," he says. "The way your heart gets attached to a beloved."

KAHULUI — The death toll from a fast-moving wildfire that turned a historic Hawaiian town to ashes has risen to 36 people, officials said Wednesday, after desperate residents jumped into the ocean to escape the fast-moving flames.

The fires began burning early Tuesday, putting homes, businesses and utilities at risk, as well as more than 35,000 people on the island of Maui, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said in a statement.

The fires have burned more than 800 hectares of land, it said.

"As the firefighting efforts continue, 36 total fatalities have been discovered today amid the active Lahaina fire," the Maui county government said in a statement.

"High, gusty winds and dry conditions put much of Hawaii under a Red Flag Warning that ended late Wednesday, and more fires were burning on the Big Island and Maui," according to the state emergency agency.

US Coast Guard officers pulled at least a dozen people from the water as emergency services were overwhelmed by a disaster that appeared to have erupted almost without warning.

More than 270 buildings have been damaged or destroyed in the seriously affected town of Lahaina, officials said earlier on Wednesday.

"Much of Lahaina on Maui has been destroyed and hundreds of local families have been displaced," said Governor Josh Green of the 12,000-resident historic town, which is popular with tourists.

Video posted on social media showed blazes tearing through the heart of the beachfront town and sending up huge plumes of black smoke. 

“People are jumping into the water to avoid the fire,” US Army Major General Kenneth Hara, the state adjutant general, told Hawaii News Now.

Stranded travellers, federal aid 

Visitors to Maui were asked by county officials to leave the island “as soon as possible,” with buses organized to shuttle travelers from a hotel to Kahului Aiport in trips that started Wednesday afternoon, according to a statement on the County of Maui’s official Facebook page.

“Due to limited resources in this time of crisis, visitors with vehicles or any means of transportation are being asked to leave Lahaina and Maui as soon as possible,” the county said.

But many travelers were stranded at the Kahului Airport late Wednesday, due to canceled and delayed flights, with some seen by an AFP journalist left sleeping on the floor.

The US military has deployed three helicopters to help fight the fires, and others to assist search and rescue operations, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.

Military helicopters aiding firefighting efforts dropped about 570,000 litres of water in Maui County on Wednesday, state adjutant general Hara told a news conference, according to CNN.

“The primary focus is to save lives, and then to prevent human suffering, and then to mitigate great property loss,” Hara told reporters.

Authorities were working to restore cellular communications across the island and distribute water, he added.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved a state request for federal funding to fight the wildfires, the state emergency management agency said.

The FEMA aid allows for “federal reimbursement of up to 75% of the eligible firefighting costs,” it said.

‘People didn’t get out’ 

Lahaina resident Claire Kent said she had seen her neighborhood razed less than an hour after she fled.

“The flames had moved all the way down to the end of the neighborhood,” she told CNN.

“We were pulling out... onto the highway, you look back and there’s cars with flames on both sides of the road, people stuck in traffic trying to get out,” Kent said, describing the dangerous scene as “something out of a horror movie.

“I know for a fact people didn’t get out,” she said, adding that homeless people and those without access to vehicles seemed to have been trapped.

A first responder who was in the town after the blaze swept through described a scene of devastation.

“As you drive down the road... either way you look, it’s honestly just rubble,” the person told AFP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press.

“It’s ash and smoke and buildings just toppled over,” they said.

“With how much charred materials there were... I don’t think much is alive in there.”

Chrissy Lovitt told the Hawaii News Now that every boat in Lahaina Harbor had burned.

“It looks like something out of a movie, a war movie,” Lovitt said. “The water was on fire from the fuel in the water.”

Sylvia Luke, the state’s lieutenant governor, said the fires were caused by dry conditions and fanned by powerful winds from Hurricane Dora, which was churning hundreds of miles south of the islands, but not expected to make landfall.

Almost 11,000 people were without power on Maui as of late Wednesday, according to tracking website PowerOutage.us.

BEIJING — Thirty-three people have been confirmed dead and 18 are still missing after Beijing's heaviest rains on record, officials said on Wednesday.

China's capital has been hit by record downpours in recent weeks, damaging infrastructure and deluging swaths of the city's suburbs and surrounding areas.

Floods in China's south-western Sichuan province also killed seven people on Wednesday, state media reported.

Authorities in the capital said on Wednesday that 33 had died in the recent bad weather in Beijing, mainly by flooding and buildings collapsing, almost three times the figure given by officials on Tuesday last week.

"I would like to express my deep condolences to those who died in the line of duty and the unfortunate victims," Xia Linmao, Beijing's vice mayor, told a news conference, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Scores have died in the floods across northern China, with Beijing officials saying on Friday 147 deaths or disappearances last month were caused by natural disasters.

Of those, 142 were caused by flooding or geological disasters, China's Ministry of Emergency Management said.

In Hebei province, which neighbours Beijing, 15 were reported to have died and 22 were missing.

And in northeastern Jilin, 14 died and one person was reported missing on Sunday.

Further north in Heilongjiang, state media reported dozens of rivers had water levels rise above "warning markers" in recent days.

"I still feel scared when I recall the recent flooding," Zheng Xiaokang, a police officer from the province's Jiangxi village, told the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

"In the face of the persistent downpour and rising river water, the consequences would have been devastating had we not managed to timely evacuate the villagers," Zheng said.

Millions of people have been hit by extreme weather events and prolonged heatwaves around the globe in recent weeks, events that scientists say are being exacerbated by climate change.

CCTV said seven people died in Sichuan on Wednesday and four others were rescued from the water, adding that “local public security, fire and other departments are continuing to carry out search and rescue efforts”.

The incident occurred at about 10am near an embankment southwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, where “more than 10” people were swept away by an unexpected tide of water, state media said.

The victims, who were reportedly taking pictures when the torrent struck, were tourists visiting a popular site.

Video shared by CCTV showed several people struggling to keep their heads above water as a powerful torrent pushed them downstream and bystanders shouted from the water’s edge.

The cause of the deluge of water was not immediately clear.

Meteorological authorities in the nearby city of Qionglai continued to issue a yellow warning for rain at 10:40am on Wednesday, anticipating possible precipitation of “more than 50mm” over the next six hours in certain parts of the administrative district.

WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he would travel to Vietnam “shortly” as part of an effort to improve ties with Hanoi, as Washington seeks to counter China’s influence in the region.

“I’m going to be going to Vietnam shortly because Vietnam wants to change our relationship and become a partner,” Biden said during remarks in New Mexico.

“We find ourselves in a situation where all these changes around the world are taking place at a time we have an opportunity... to change the dynamic,” he added.

The United States and Vietnam have increasingly close trade links, while both share concern over China’s growing strength in the region.

Friction has been increasing for years between Beijing and Southeast Asian nations, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines, over China’s sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Washington and Hanoi pledged in April to upgrade diplomatic ties when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stopped over on his way to a Group of Seven (G-7) foreign ministers’ meeting in Japan.

“We think this is an auspicious time to elevate our existing partnership,” Blinken told reporters during the visit with Vietnamese leaders.

“We’ve had for the last 10 years this comprehensive partnership that has created an incredibly strong foundation of cooperation across many different areas. As a result, we think this is a good moment to go even further.”

Blinken also attended a ground-breaking for a new US embassy in Hanoi.

And in March, Biden spoke with the head of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong.

Washington has, however, bristled over human rights concerns in Vietnam, with Blinken saying he continued “to underscore how future progress on human rights is essential to unleashing the full potential of the Vietnamese people”.

The South China Sea, the longtime center of tensions between China and Vietnam, is seen as a powder keg, and many fear a miscalculation or accident could ignite a military conflict.

Analysts say Hanoi may be more reluctant to elevate relations with Washington, wary of upsetting Beijing — an important economic partner — despite rival claims in the South China Sea.

The United States has no territorial claim over the waters, but has persisted in conducting its own patrols there, angering Beijing.

Washington says this is to ensure what it terms “freedom of navigation” in the sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade passes annually.

The United States has also sought to improve relations with China in recent months, with Blinken visiting in June after a previous trip was cancelled when an alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down by a US warplane after traversing the country earlier this year.

WASHINGTON — Much of the eastern United States was lashed by intense storms Monday, leaving at least two people dead, hundreds of thousands without power and thousands of flights cancelled or delayed.

Millions of people were under severe weather alerts, including tornado watches, as rain, strong winds and hail swept east along nearly the entire eastern seaboard, from Alabama to New York. 

The National Weather Service (NWS) had predicted a “moderate risk” of hazardous storms, with gusts up to 130 kilometers per hour. 

“Stay weather aware and make sure you have multiple ways to receive warnings,” the NWS in Baltimore and Washington said on social media earlier in the day.

As much of the severe weather danger subsided into the late evening, some areas faced flood threats as rain continued to fall.

The NWS issued flash flood warnings for Washington and the cities of Arlington and Alexandria in neighbouring Virginia until 2:45am Tuesday (0645 GMT).

Hail as large as 11.5 centimetres in diameter was recorded in Virginia, the NWS said.

In Alabama, a 28-year-old man died after being struck by lightning in an industrial park parking lot, a local ABC station reported.

And in South Carolina, a 15-year-old was killed when he was hit by a falling tree outside his grandparents’ house, according to a local CBS station. 

By early Tuesday, nearly 600,000 customers were without power along the East Coast, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, according to tracking website PowerOutage.us.

Local media and government agencies in Maryland released images of downed power lines strewn across streets, and trees that fell into homes and across roads and rail lines.

Other southern states experienced similar storm damage, with Georgia Power releasing photos of fallen trees that pulled down power lines due to high winds, hail and heavy rain.

“Our crews are working safely and as quickly as possible to get the lights back on,” the electric utility said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

More than 1,700 US flights were cancelled on Monday and more than 8,000 delayed as the severe weather loomed, website FlightAware said.

In Washington, federal agencies sent employees home early at 3:00pm Monday in anticipation of the weather.

BEIJING — China renewed calls on Tuesday for the Philippines to remove an ageing ship from a reef that Manila uses to press its stake in the Spratly Islands in defiance of Beijing’s claim to nearly the entire South China Sea.

The move comes after the Philippines accused the China coast guard of firing water cannon against boats on a resupply mission to its garrison stationed on the grounded vessel at the weekend.

The BRP Sierra Madre — deliberately grounded in 1999 in an effort to check the advance of China in the hotly contested waters — has long been a flashpoint between Manila and Beijing.

The handful of Philippine marines deployed on the crumbling vessel depend upon resupply missions to survive their remote posting.

The Philippine military and coast guard accused the China Coast Guard of breaking international law by blocking and firing water cannon at the resupply mission, preventing one of the charter boats from reaching the shoal.

Beijing has defended its actions as “professional” and accused Manila of “illegal delivery of construction materials” to the grounded ship.

“The Philippine side has repeatedly made clear promises to tow away the warship illegally ‘stranded’ on the reef,” a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

“Twenty-four years have passed, the Philippine side has not only failed to tow away the warship, but also attempted to repair and reinforce it on a large scale to achieve permanent occupation of the Ren’ai Reef,” they said, using the Chinese term for the Second Thomas Shoal.

“The Chinese side once again urges the Philippines to immediately tow away the ‘stranded’ warship from the Ren’ai Reef and restore the status of no one and no facilities on the reef,” they said.

The Philippine foreign ministry said Tuesday the “permanent station” on Second Thomas Shoal was in response to China’s “illegal occupation” of nearby Mischief Reef in 1995.

“The deployment of a Philippine military station in its own areas of jurisdiction is an inherent right of the Philippines and does not violate any laws,” the ministry said.

‘Illegal activities’ 

Second Thomas Shoal is about 200 kilometres from the Philippine island of Palawan and more than 1,000 kilometres from China’s nearest major landmass, Hainan Island.

China’s coast guard and navy vessels routinely block or shadow Philippine ships patrolling the contested waters, Manila says.

The Philippines has issued more than 400 diplomatic protests to Beijing since 2020 over its “illegal activities” in the South China Sea, the foreign ministry said.

China appeared to be “trying to gauge our commitment to supply our troops” at the shoal, National Security Council spokesman Jonathan Malaya told reporters on Monday.

“For the record, we will never abandon Ayungin Shoal,” Malaya added, using the Philippine name for Second Thomas Shoal.

Saturday’s “David and Goliath” incident showed the Chinese had established what appeared to be a “blockade” of the shoal, Malaya said.

Philippine military spokesman Col. Medel Aguilar dismissed on Monday the China coast guard’s request for Manila to tow away the BRP Sierra Madre.

“Who is China Coast Guard to tell us what to do?” Aguilar said.

Manila and Beijing have a long history of maritime disputes over the South China Sea but former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was seen as cosying up to China in the hope of attracting investment.

Since succeeding Duterte, President Ferdinand Marcos has insisted he will not let China trample on his country’s maritime rights, seeking to strengthen defence ties with former colonial ruler and longtime ally the United States.

LISBON — Hundreds of firefighters were on Tuesday battling a wildfire that has burned for four days in Portugal, which, like neighbouring Spain, is sweltering in a heatwave that has triggered widespread weather alerts.

The Iberian Peninsula is bearing the brunt of climate change in Europe, witnessing increasingly intense heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.

The temperature rose to 46.4ºC  in Santarem, central Portugal, on Monday — a record for 2023 — according to provisional data from the meteorological office.

Some areas of Portugal were forecasts to hit 40ºC on Tuesday.

The met office in Spain said the heat there was expected to top 44ºC on Tuesday and Wednesday, which is predicted to be the fiercest day of this heatwave, the third this year.

On Tuesday, around 900 firefighters backed by 10 water-bomber planes were battling a blaze that has already burned thousands of hectares in Odemira, south-western Portugal, near the southern tourist mecca of the Algarve.

Portugal’s civil protection authority said the perimeter of the wildfire had been “stabilised” overnight on Monday but there were still “two critical points” that required “a lot of effort”.

Some 20 inland villages and a number of rural tourist sites were evacuated on Monday, bringing the number displaced since Saturday to 1,500.

Around 40 people, including 28 fire officers, have been given emergency medical treatment.

Heatwave alerts 

A separate wildfire that has already destroyed around 7,000 hectares  in Leiria, central Portugal, calmed somewhat overnight on Monday.

Across the country, nearly 2,800 firefighters and 16 water-bombers were in action on Tuesday.

Weather warnings remained in place in both Portugal and Spain.

Much of the southern half of Spain was on orange alert on Tuesday.

The Spanish met office issued maximum red alerts for parts of Andalusia in the south, the Madrid region in the centre and the Basque Country in the far north.

More than 1,000 hectares of land were destroyed by flames in Spain over the weekend.

A fourth large wildfire broke out on Monday in Estremadura, central Spain, near the border with Portugal. Firefighters were unable to contain it overnight.

In total, wildfires have destroyed 100,000 hectares of land across the Iberian Peninsula this year, according to preliminary estimates. This is on top of the record 400,000 hectares destroyed last year.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s count of its Indigenous population rose by 89 per cent from 2010 to 2022, to nearly 1.7 million people, though the rapid growth was attributed partly to new methodology, according to census results released Monday.

Under the new count, Indigenous people make up 0.83 per cent of the South American country’s total population of 203 million, up from 0.47 per cent at the previous census, said the national statistics institute, IBGE.

However, IBGE noted “limits” in comparing the 2010 and 2022 Indigenous figures, because it had sent census-takers to more Indigenous reservations and used a new methodology, asking people in all native communities if they self-identified as Indigenous.

Brazil’s overall population grew by 6.5 per cent from 2010 to 2022, to 203.1 million.

The country’s more than 700 Indigenous reservations are home to 689,000 people, IBGE said.

The largest, the Yanomami reservation in the Amazon rainforest, has 27,000 inhabitants.

The figures come as a divisive debate rages in Brazil over Indigenous lands.

The supreme court is currently hearing a so-called “trial of the century” over whether new Indigenous reservations can be created on land where native communities were not present in 1988, when Brazil’s current constitution was ratified.

The lower house of Congress passed a bill in May to codify that restriction.

But activists say that violates Indigenous people’s rights, given that many were forced from their ancestral lands, including under the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who took office this year, began creating new Indigenous reservations in April, after a hiatus under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally who pushed to open protected Indigenous lands to mining and industry, argued that Brazil’s Indigenous reservations — covering 11.6 per cent of the national territory — amount to “too much land for too few Indians”.

Scientists, however, say that ensuring native people’s land rights is one of the best ways to stop the destruction of the Amazon and other forests, key resources against climate change.