World

LONDON — Britain’s ruling Conservatives on Friday held the former seat of ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but saw hefty majorities in two other constituencies evaporate as voters responded to scandals during his tenure and high inflation.

Rishi Sunak had been expected to become the first prime minister in decades to lose three parliamentary seats in one day. He was spared that humiliation thanks to a narrow victory in the northwest London seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

That result, driven by opposition to Labour mayor Sadiq Khan’s contentious expansion of a vehicle pollution tax to outer London, offered the embattled Tory leader some relief.

But the erasure of his party’s 19,000 majority in the Somerton and Frome seat in southwest England, and its 20,000 majority in the Selby and Ainsty constituency in the northeast, represent bitter blows ahead of an expected general election in 2024.

“By-elections midterm for an incumbent government are always difficult, they rarely win them,” Sunak told reporters on Friday morning, while visiting Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

“The message I take away is that we’ve got to double down, stick to our plan and deliver for people... and earn people’s trust for the next election.”

But his Conservatives face defeat nationally next year if Thursday’s results are repeated.

Labour took the seat of Selby and Ainsty by 16,456 votes to 12,295, in what its leader Keir Starmer said was the biggest-ever swing to the party in its history.

“We hear that cry for change away from the chaos, away from those rising bills, the crumbling public services,” he told supporters during a victory visit there on Friday.

‘Stunning’ 

Ex-Tory MP Nigel Adams had prompted the vote when he quit after failing to be nominated for a peerage last month.

In Somerton and Frome, the Liberal Democrats comfortably won with an even bigger shift from the Conservatives, the latest in a series of by-election wins in recent years.

The contest was held after its former Tory MP David Warburton stood down after admitting cocaine use.

The Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election was triggered after the scandal-tarred Boris Johnson also resigned as a lawmaker last month.

He quit after learning that a cross-party parliamentary committee had concluded he had deliberately lied to lawmakers about lockdown-breaking parties during the COVID pandemic, and recommended a 90-day suspension.

Sunak’s Tories had been expected to lose his seat, but won by less than 500 votes, delivering a blow to Starmer and Khan.

Winning candidate Steve Tuckwell said the “number one” issue had been the mayor’s expansion of the tax on polluting vehicles.

Labour MPs in similar seats “will now be panicking”, he said.

Election experts were sceptical, however.

“It would seem unwise for Tory MPs to draw any conclusion other than that their party is still in deep electoral trouble,” Strathclyde University’s John Curtice wrote in an analysis for the BBC.

Sunak struggles 

The heavy defeats in the other two contests leave Sunak increasingly vulnerable, with parliament’s six-week summer break starting on Friday providing welcome relief.

Labour is currently enjoying double-digit poll leads and is poised to retake power for the first time in over a decade.

Sunak became prime minister following the disastrous 44-day tenure of predecessor Liz Truss and initially succeeded in stabilising financial markets panicked by her radical tax-slashing agenda.

But the 43-year-old former finance minister has struggled to reverse his party’s declining fortunes, which first set in during the so-called “Partygate” scandal under Johnson.

Sunak’s turnaround efforts have in part been hobbled by persistently high inflation, which in recent months has spooked the markets once again.

With interest rates at their highest in 15 years, pushing mortgage and other borrowing costs ever higher, the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation is showing few signs of abating.

Sunak kicked off the year by making five key vows to voters, including halving inflation, growing the economy and cutting waiting times at the overstretched National Health Service.

He has made little headway on most of the pledges, and there are persistent fears the UK will tip into recession this year as the high interest rates constrain spending.

Sunak’s net favourability has fallen to its lowest level (-40) since he entered Downing Street, with two-thirds of Britons saying they have an unfavourable view of him, according to YouGov.

PARIS — Struck by near-record temperatures and wildfires during this week's heatwave, the Mediterranean region is ranked as a climate-change "hot spot" by scientists.

The beaches, seafood and heritage sites in the region spanning parts of southern Europe, northern Africa and western Asia are under threat.

Here are five key threats to the region flagged by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its reports are the most comprehensive summary of scientific knowledge on global warming.

Deadly heatwaves 

Like parts of the United States and Asia, the Med has been hit by extreme heat in recent weeks. The Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily are forecast to possibly top a continent-wide record of 48.8ºC.

"Heatwaves are increasing due to climate change in the Mediterranean, and are amplified in cities due to urbanisation practices," causing illness and death, the IPCC said in its 2022 report on impacts of climate change and how to adapt to them.

One study published in 2010 led by scientists at the University of Bern calculated that the intensity, length and number of heatwaves in the eastern Mediterranean had increased by about six or seven times since the 1960s.

Wheat and olives 

A drought in North Africa has left farmers bracing for a terrible harvest. "We've never seen a drought this bad," Tunisian wheat farmer Tahar Chaouachi told AFP. "It's been dry for the last four years but we expected some rain this season. Instead, it's become worse."

With hotter weather drying up groundwater for irrigating farms, the IPCC said that with global warming of more than 1.5C olive yields could fall by a fifth in the northern Mediterranean. The world has warmed more than 1.1C since the 19th century.

Researchers at Stanford University found “the Mediterranean experiencing significant adverse impacts on most crops”.

Water and politics 

A drought in Spain has raised political tensions over water management ahead of a general election on July 23. The European Drought Observatory said groundwater tables across half the Mediterranean region were running low already in June.

The IPCC report warned climate change will worsen water shortages “in most locations” in the region. Lakes and reservoirs are expected to decline by up to 45 per cent this century, and surface water availability by up to 55 per cent in North Africa.

Meanwhile “terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems are impacted by climate change in the Mediterranean, resulting in loss of habitats and biodiversity”, it added.

The sea level in the Mediterranean basin has risen 2.8mm a year over recent decades, threatening shorelines and cities such as Venice, which regularly suffers tidal floods.

“Sea level rise already impacts extreme coastal waters around the Mediterranean and it is projected to increase coastal flooding, erosion and salinisation risks,” said the IPCC.

“These impacts would affect agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, urban development, port operations, tourism, cultural sites and many coastal ecosystems.”

Invasive species 

As well as its cherished beaches, climate change threatens the Mediterranean sea and the food produced by its fisheries.

“A shift in Mediterranean marine ecosystems, characterised by biodiversity decline and invasive species, has occurred since the 1980s” due to climate change and other human impacts, the IPCC said.

With global warming of more than 1.5ºC, more than 20 per cent of exploited fish and invertebrates in the Eastern Mediterranean could become locally extinct by 2060 and fishing revenues could decrease up to 30 per cent by 2050, it said.

KABUL — Security officials shot into the air and used firehoses to disperse dozens of Afghan women protesting in Kabul on Wednesday against an order by Taliban authorities to shut down beauty parlours, the latest curb to squeeze them out of public life.

Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban government has barred girls and women from high schools and universities, banned them from parks, funfairs and gyms, and ordered them to cover up in public.

The order issued last month forces the closure of thousands of beauty parlours nationwide run by women — often the only source of income for households — and outlaws one of the few remaining opportunities for them to socialise away from home.

“Don’t take my bread and water,” read a sign carried by one of the protesters on Butcher Street, which boasts a concentration of the capital’s salons.

Public protests are rare in Afghanistan — and frequently dispersed by force — but AFP saw around 50 women taking part in Wednesday’s gathering, quickly attracting the attention of security personnel.

Protesters later shared videos and photos with journalists that showed authorities using a firehose to disperse them as shots could be heard in the background.

“Today we arranged this protest to talk and negotiate,” said a salon worker, whose name has not been published by AFP for security reasons.

“But today, no one came to talk to us, to listen to us. They didn’t pay any attention to us and after a while they dispersed us by aerial firing and water cannon.”

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan condemned the protest breakup.

“Reports of the forceful suppression of a peaceful protest by women against the ban on beauty salons - the latest denial of women’s rights in #Afghanistan - are deeply concerning,” it said in a tweet.

“Afghans have the right to express views free from violence. De facto authorities must uphold this.”

In late June the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice gave salons a month to close down, saying the grace period would allow them to use up stock.

It said it made the order because extravagant sums spent on makeovers caused hardship for poor families, and that some treatments at the salons were un-Islamic.

Too much make-up prevented women from proper ablutions for prayer, the ministry said, while eyelash extensions and hair weaving were also forbidden.

A copy of the order seen by AFP said it was “based on verbal instruction from the supreme leader” Hibatullah Akhundzada.

Beauty parlours mushroomed across Kabul and other Afghan cities in the 20 years that United States-led forces occupied the country.

They were seen as a safe place to gather and socialise away from men and provided vital business opportunities for women.

A report to the UN’s Human Rights Council last month by Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur for Afghanistan, said the plight of women and girls in the country “was among the worst in the world”.

“Grave, systematic and institutionalised discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, which also gives rise to concerns that they may be responsible for gender apartheid,” Bennett said.

Akhundzada, who rarely appears in public and rules by decree from the Taliban’s birthplace in Kandahar, said last month Afghan women were being saved from “traditional oppressions” by the adoption of Islamic governance and their status as “free and dignified human beings” restored.

He said in a statement marking the Eid Al Adha holiday that steps had been taken to provide women with a “comfortable and prosperous life according to Sharia”.

Women have also mostly been barred from working for the UN or NGOs, and thousands have been sacked from government jobs or are being paid to stay at home.

SEOUL — US soldier Travis King was believed to be in North Korean custody Wednesday after crossing the border during a tourist trip to the Joint Security Area in the Demilitarised Zone.

The US-led United Nations Command has said it is working with Pyongyang’s military to “resolve this incident” but with relations between Pyongyang and Washington at one of their lowest points in years, it’s unclear what will happen.

AFP takes a look at what we know:

What happened?

Private second class Travis King was on a tour of the DMZ in the Panmunjom truce village. Shouting “ha ha ha”, according to an eyewitness, he ran off and crossed the border into North Korea “willfully and without authorisation”, US officials said.

Most of the border between the two Koreas is heavily fortified. But at Panmunjom, also known as the Joint Security Area (JSA), the frontier is marked only by a low concrete divider and is relatively easy to cross, despite soldiers on both sides.

The soldiers on both sides have not been armed since a 2018 deal and the North has significantly scaled back its presence at the JSA since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even so, under armistice protocols, South Korean or US personnel could not run across the border to retrieve King and he is now believed to be in North Korean custody.

Why did he do it?

Police and media reports said King had had repeated run-ins with the law during his time in the South, a key US security ally that hosts some 27,000 US troops. He was released on July 10 from a two-month stint in prison on assault charges.

King was being escorted home to the United States for disciplinary reasons but managed to leave the airport and join the tour group, US media said.

His mother said she was shocked to learn her son had crossed into the communist, nuclear-armed North, which has no formal diplomatic ties with its “arch enemy” the United States.

“I can’t see Travis doing anything like that,” Claudine Gates told ABC News, adding that she had last heard from him a few days ago when he told her he was coming back to his base in Fort Bliss.

Gates said she just wants “him to come home”.

Former South Korean national security official Choi Gi-il told AFP that it looked like King had carried out his border crossing “impulsively”. It “took the US completely off guard”, he said.

What does North Korea think?

Pyongyang has a long history of detaining Americans and using them as bargaining chips in bilateral ties.

“The North could see this situation as something they can take advantage of in its dealing with Washington amid ongoing tensions,” Choi said.

One of the last US citizens to be detained by the North was student Otto Warmbier, who was held for a year-and-a-half before being released in a coma to the United States. He died six days later.

Such a case “indicates that the North could handle this issue over the long haul rather than take immediate actions now with the intention of waiting to see how the US will respond to it”, Choi said.

Is this a problem for the US?

In short, yes.

America is now “faced with a dilemma between protecting its citizen and strengthening extended deterrence against North Korea”, said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

“Given the current, turbulent relationship between the US and North Korea, coming up with any meaningful outcome to solve this issue is expected to take a considerable amount of time,” Yang told AFP.

The only possible silver lining could be that if Washington turns to Beijing — North Korea’s friend and main trading partner — to help mediate, it could “have a positive impact on the resolution of the ongoing US-China conflict”, Yang said.

What’s next?

King “possesses certain propaganda value for North Koreans”, said Vladimir Tikhonov, professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo.

However, after questioning him, North Korea might realise King lacks the personality and motivation to be an effective propagandist, Tikhonov said, at which point Pyongyang “will try to ‘sell’ him back to the US”.

“He is an important bargaining chip,” he told AFP, adding that it was likely King would not be harmed.

North Korea has yet to reopen after sealing its borders at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This, plus the fact King seems to have gone to North Korea to escape his criminal problems and not due to romantic ideas about Pyongyang’s regime, means “it is likely that the North will deport him”, Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Centre for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute, told AFP.

ROME — Swathes of Europe baked on Tuesday in a heatwave trailed by wildfires and health warnings, as parts of Asia and the United States also suffered under extreme weather.

Firefighters battled blazes in parts of Greece and the Canary Islands, Spain issued heat alerts while some children in Italy's Sardinia were warned away from sports for safety reasons.

"You can't be in the street, it's horrible," said Lidia Rodriguez, 27, in Madrid.

From California to China, authorities have warned in recent days of the health dangers of the extreme heat, urging people to drink water and shelter from the sun.

Several local temperature records were broken in southern France, the weather service said.

Meteo France said a record 29.5ºC had been reached in the Alpine ski resort of Alpe d'Huez, which sits at an altitude of 1,860 metres, while 40.6ºC had been recorded for the first time in Verdun in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

In a stark reminder of the effects of global warming, the UN's World Meteorological Agency (WMO) said the trend of heatwaves "shows no signs of decreasing".

"These events will continue to grow in intensity, and the world needs to prepare for more intense heatwaves," John Nairn, a senior extreme heat adviser at the WMO told reporters in Geneva.

Wildfires and 

scorching heat 

Northwest of the Greek capital Athens, columns of smoke loomed over the forest of Dervenohoria, where one of several fires around the capital and beyond was still burning.

Fire spokesman Yannis Artopios called it "a difficult day," with another heatwave on the horizon for Thursday, with expected temperatures of 44ºC.

Still burning was a forest fire by the seaside resort of Loutraki, where the mayor said 1,200 children had been evacuated Monday from holiday camps.

In the Canary Islands, some 400 firefighters battled a blaze that has ravaged 3,500 hectares of forest and forced 4,000 residents to evacuate, with authorities warning residents to wear face masks outside due to poor air quality.

Temperatures were unforgiving in Italy and in Spain, where three regions were put under hot weather red alerts.

The Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily have been on watch to possibly surpass a continent-wide record of 48.8ºC, recorded in Sicily in August 2021.

Many throughout Italy sought escape by the sea, including outside Rome, where the midday heat hit 40ºC.

“Certainly it’s better at the beach, you can at least get a little wind from the sea. It’s not even possible to remain in the city, too hot,” said Virginia Cesario, 30, at the Focene beach near the capital.

Climate change impact 

The heatwaves across Europe and the globe are “not one single phenomenon but several acting at the same time”, said Robert Vautard, director of France’s Pierre-Simon Laplace climate institute.

“But they are all strengthened by one factor: Climate change”.

Health authorities in Italy issued red alerts for 20 cities, from Naples in the south to Venice in the north.

At Lanusei, near Sardinia’s eastern coast, a children’s summer camp was restricting beach visits to the early morning and forbidding sports, teacher Morgana Cucca told AFP.

In the Sardinian capital of Cagliari, pharmacist Teresa Angioni said patients were complaining of heat-related symptoms.

“They mainly buy magnesium and potassium supplements and ask us to measure their blood pressure, which is often low,” Angioni said.

Heat record in China 

In parts of Asia, record temperatures have triggered torrential rain.

Nearly 260,000 people were evacuated in southern China and Vietnam before a typhoon made landfall late Monday, bringing fierce winds and rain, but weakening to a tropical storm by Tuesday.

China reported on Monday a new mid-July high of 52.2ºC in the north-western Xinjiang region’s village of Sanbao, breaking the previous high of 50.6ºC set six years ago.

The record-setting heat came as US climate envoy John Kerry met with Chinese officials in Beijing, as the world’s two largest polluters revive stalled diplomacy on reducing planet-warming emissions.

Speaking on Tuesday at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi, Kerry called for “global leadership” on climate issues.

LAHORE — More than 14,000 people and their cattle were evacuated from villages in eastern Pakistan, authorities said Tuesday, following the arrival of monsoon rains across South Asia.

The summer monsoon brings South Asia 70-80 per cent of its annual rainfall between June and September and is vital for the livelihoods of millions of farmers in a region of around two billion people.

But it also brings landslides and floods, and scientists have said climate change is making seasonal rains heavier and more unpredictable.

Rising water levels inundated at least 15 riverside villages and submerged large swathes of agricultural land, destroying crops such as corn, in Kasur district, close to the city of Lahore in Pakistan's most populous province of Punjab.

“We had been warned that there could be a flood. But it all happened very suddenly,” villager Ashfaq Bhatti told AFP. 

“My family all made it out in time, but we have lost our livelihood. All our crops are now sitting underwater.”

The provincial disaster management agency said people were being evacuated to 11 relief sites.

It said the floods were worsened by India’s decision to release more water into downstream areas in Pakistan after torrential monsoon rains that killed more than 90 people.

“We want to go home and start fixing the damage. But they keep telling us that more rains are coming,” Muhammad Farooq, another villager who had been evacuated, told AFP.

At least 50 people have died in weather-related incidents across Pakistan since the end of June. 

Pakistan is struggling to recover from the devastating floods that inundated nearly one-third of the country in 2022, affecting more than 33 million people.