World

LAURINBURG, US — For several months, Yampiere Lugo has been going door to door, urging young people in North Carolina to vote in November.

With Joe Biden's withdrawal from the race and Kamala Harris's arrival atop the Democratic ticket, the party activist says his generation, a key voting bloc, is fired up.

"I've talked to a lot of people around my age who have sort of all expressed the same sentiment,  that they're just so much more excited to have someone who's just younger, more energetic," Lugo told AFP.

The 25 year old, who works as an administrative assistant at a local school, says even people he thought might skip the election altogether have said the vice president has their support.

The enthusiasm marks a sharp contrast with the situation Lugo was facing just over a month ago, when he was canvassing for Biden in Laurinburg, the seat of Scotland County, not far from the border with South Carolina.

At the time, the activist admitted to AFP that young voters were "frustrated" with their options, facing a choice between the 81year old Biden and Donald Trump, the 78 year old Republican former president.

Now, Lugo believes Harris, 59, can win North Carolina, one of a handful of swing states likely to play a pivotal role in the race for the White House.

Winning here will be an uphill battle, the southern state has not voted for a Democrat in the presidential election since Barack Obama in 2008. 

"North Carolina is going to have something to say in November," said Zach Finley, the president of the Young Democrats of North Carolina.

But for Harris to turn the state Democratic blue, the party needs to campaign "the right way, turning out the folks we need to", added Finley, who is also 25.

Excited

On a national level, voters between the ages of 18 and 39 favoured Biden over Trump in 2020 by a margin of about 20 per centage points, according to the Pew Research Centre.

Finley says the party needs to "turn out young people who, especially in the last couple of years, have been really disincentivised" by the political process.

Democrats are getting out the vote the old-fashioned way in Scotland County, knocking on doors and talking to people.

The rural area is one of the most hotly contested political battlefields in the country, Hillary Clinton bested Trump here in 2016, but the Republican bounced back to defeat Biden in 2020, by just 287 votes.

In November, "It's all about turnout," says Garland Pierce, a Democratic state representative and a Baptist pastor.

"That's what everybody's really depending on, is the young voters to really go to the polls.

The lawmaker says Harris's somewhat surprise breakthrough into the race has galvanised voters in North Carolina.

"It appears that young people are really excited" about her candidacy, he said, adding that the economy will be a key issue in the contest.

Cost of things

Pierce's prediction about the economy is shared by a number of young voters AFP met in the streets of Laurinburg, which is home to 15,000 residents.

"Everything used to be cheaper," laments Donnie Leviner, an 18 year old student with his own home renovation business.

Before Biden won the White House, "gas prices used to be way lower", said Leviner, who added that he would vote for Trump in his first ever trip to a presidential voting booth. 

For Lucas Wylie, a 26-year-old engineer having a coffee at an outdoor cafe with his dog, young voters are "very focused on the cost of things and affordability".

Wylie cited expensive housing and high interest rates as evidence of soaring prices, and said both would be important to him in November.

Finley agreed.

"There's just a lot of pent-up anxiety being a young person in this country, not even being able to afford a home," he said. "It's almost out of reach, especially in North Carolina."

Finley said Democrats need to reassure young voters that they are attuned to their concerns, and ready to deliver solutions.

Harris will need to convince young people that they will ultimately be able to "achieve some form of the American dream”, and offer the same thing to the next generation, Finley said.

MOSCOW — A helicopter with 22 people aboard, most of them tourists, has gone missing in Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East, regional authorities said Saturday.

"Today at about 16:15 (4:15 GMT) communication was lost with a Mi-8 helicopter, which had 22 people on board, 19 passengers and three crew members," Kamchatka Governor Vladimir Solodov said in a video posted on Telegram.

Rescue teams in helicopters have been searching into the night for the missing aircraft, focusing on a river valley that the helicopter was due to fly along, Russian authorities said.

The Mi-8 is a Soviet-designed military helicopter that is widely used for transport in Russia.

The missing helicopter had picked up passengers near the Vachkazhets ancient volcano in a scenic area of the peninsula known for its wild landscapes and active volcanoes.

A source in the emergency services told TASS news agency that the helicopter disappeared from radar almost immediately after taking off and the crew did not report any problems.

The local weather service said that there was poor visibility in the area of the airport.

Accidents involving planes and helicopters are very frequent in Russia's far eastern region, which is sparsely populated and where there is often harsh weather.

In August 2021, a Mi-8 helicopter with 16 people on board including 13 tourists crashed into a lake in Kamchatka due to poor visibility, killing eight.

In July the same year, a plane crashed as it came in to land on the peninsula, with 22 passengers and 6 crew aboard, all of whom were killed.

Moscow — The Kremlin warned France on Thursday not to turn a criminal case against Telegram founder Pavel Durov into "political persecution”.

Russia, which has led an unprecedented crackdown on political opponents during its Ukraine offensive, has painted Durov's surprise arrest in Paris earlier this week as politically motivated. 

France has charged Russian-born Durov — who also has French citizenship — on several counts of failing to curb extremist and illegal content on the popular social media platform. 

"The main thing is for what is happening in France not to run into political persecution," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. 

"Of course we consider him a Russian citizen and as much as possible we will be ready to provide assistance," he added. 

"We will be watching what happens next." 

Durov was granted conditional release against a bail of five million euros and on the condition he must report to a police station twice a week as well as remain in France, French prosecutors said. 

Telegram is one of Russia's most popular messaging apps. 

Russian officials have rushed to defend Durov since he was arrested last weekend at a Paris airport.

LONDON — Britain's Labour government is planning "a major surge" in returns of irregular migrants to countries including Iraq, an official said on Thursday, as it tries to clear an asylum backlog.

The interior ministry has posted a contract seeking commercial partners to support the "reintegration" of people with no right to live in the UK in their home countries.

The contract, worth £15 million over three years, was published last week and first reported by the Financial Times on Thursday.

The advert says the ministry is seeking "to identify appropriate reintegration delivery providers" to help migrants return from the UK to 11 different countries.

The countries are Albania, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Jamaica, Nigeria, Pakistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

Contractors will help with provision of food packs, assist the tracing of family members and provide support with accessing job markets among other things, according to the bid notice.

Interior minister Yvette Cooper announced last week that the government aims over the next six months to achieve the highest rate of deportations of failed asylum seekers in five years.

The goal is to remove more than 14,000 people by the end of the year, according to UK media reports.

 "The government is planning to deliver a major surge in immigration enforcement and returns activity to remove people with no right to be in the UK and ensure the rules are respected and enforced," a ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

"Continued international cooperation with partner nations plays a critical role in this, and we will be working closely with a number of countries across the globe as part of the mission to end irregular migration."

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, elected to office early last month, has also pledged to "smash the gangs" of people smugglers bringing irregular migrants to Britain on small boats sailing across the Channel.

More than 20,000 migrants have arrived in the UK after crossing from France on rudimentary vessels so far this year, according to the latest figures.

That is marginally up on last year's data for the same period, but down on 2022.

Refugee charities have urged the government to create more safe routes to deter people from making the perilous journey.

Official figures released last week showed that almost 119,000 people were waiting for a decision on their asylum application at the end of June 2024.

OITA, Japan — One of Japan's strongest typhoons in decades dumped torrential rain across southern regions on Thursday, with one person missing and authorities warning of life-threatening flooding and landslides.

Typhoon Shanshan packed gusts of up to 252 kilometres per hour as it smashed into Japan's main southern island of Kyushu early Thursday, making it the most powerful storm this year and one of the strongest at landfall since 1960.

The storm then weakened, with maximum gusts of 162 kph at 5:00 pm (0800 GMT), the weather office said, but it was still dumping heavy rain across Kyushu and beyond as it moved slowly towards the main island of Honshu.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) warned that "the risk of a disaster due to heavy rain can rapidly escalate in western Japan as Friday approaches".

Even before Shanshan hit, precipitation pummelled large parts with three members of the same family killed in a landslide late Tuesday in Aichi prefecture around 1,000 kilometres from Kyushu.

Authorities issued their highest alert in places, with more than five million people advised to evacuate, although it was unclear how many did.

Kunisaki city in the Oita region of Kyushu warned inhabitants to "evacuate to a safe place or higher place such as the second floor of your houses" because of the risk of flooding.

One person was missing on Thursday -- reportedly a man on a small boat -- and two people were seriously injured, chief government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said.

Rains turned rivers into raging torrents while winds smashed windows and blew tiles off roofs. TV images showed flooded roads and power lines being repaired.

The coastal city of Miyazaki, littered with debris from nearly 200 damaged buildings, reported 25 injuries -- including some from a tornado. 

Some parts of Miyazaki prefecture saw record rains for August, with the town of Misato recording a staggering 791.5 millimetres in 48 hours, the JMA said.

Worried student Aoi Nishimoto, 18, said he had called his family in Miyazaki to see if they were safe.

"Our home is fine, but there was a tornado in Miyazaki and power went out in some places," he told AFP in Kyushu's main city of Fukuoka.

"This year, I am away from my parents' home for the first time. So it's a bit scary being all alone," fellow student Rio Ohtsuru, 19, told AFP.

"Maybe I will look for a flashlight in case of a power outage," she said.

Kyushu's utility operator said 187,010 houses were without power elsewhere on the island.

Climate change 

Shanshan comes in the wake of Typhoon Ampil, which dumped heavy rain that disrupted hundreds of flights and trains this month but caused only minor injuries and damage.

Typhoons in the region have been forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change, according to a study released last month.

Another released by World Weather Attribution (WWA) on Thursday said that climate change turbocharged Typhoon Gaemi, which killed dozens of people across the Philippines, Taiwan and China this year.

In the city of Usa, retiree Fukashi Oishi looked forlornly at an old tree opposite his house that was already mature when he was a child but had snapped and fallen on the road.

"Oh, it's so sad," he told AFP.

Toyota halt 

Auto giant Toyota suspended production at all 14 of its factories in Japan. 

Nissan and Honda also halted operations at their Kyushu plants, as did chipmakers including Tokyo Electron, reports said.

Kyushu is a hub for the semiconductor industry, with chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company opening a plant there in February.

Japan Airlines and ANA cancelled more than 1,000 domestic flights and four international flights for Thursday and Friday, affecting more than 44,000 passengers.

Rail operators suspended most Shinkansen bullet trains between Kyushu's Hakata and Tokyo, and said services would be disrupted elsewhere on Friday.

BRAZZAVILLE — The African Union's health watchdog on Wednesday said it was close to securing almost one million mpox vaccine doses, urging manufacturers to share the vaccine-making technology to battle the disease.

Africa is on the front line of the fight against mpox, with the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring an international emergency earlier this month over the viral disease's spread.

"We are moving towards securing nearly a million doses," of mpox vaccines, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Director-General Jean Kaseya told a WHO regional meeting in Congo-Brazzaville.

Several countries have promised to send vaccines to African countries hit by outbreaks, with Spain alone pledging 500,000 doses.

Kaseya said 215,000 vaccine doses had already been "secured" from Danish manufacturer Bavarian Nordic, but urged it to share the know-how needed for the vaccines to be made locally.

"We told Bavarian Nordic that we need a transfer of technology towards African manufacturers," he said, adding that he believed mpox vaccines would be made in Africa "very soon".

Formerly known as monkeypox, mpox is a viral disease transmitted from animals to humans that can also be passed from human to human, causing fever, muscle pain and skin lesions.

Its resurgence and the detection in Central Africa of a new strain, dubbed Clade 1b, prompted the WHO to declare its highest international alert level on August 14.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, where the new strain was first detected, has borne the brunt of the epidemic with 90 percent of 2024's reported mpox cases, according to the WHO.

Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda have also been affected.

Kaseya said that there were 22,863 suspected cases and 622 deaths as of August 27 linked to the various mpox strains on the continent.

The director-general was reticent to give details about confirmed cases as "we still have countries with a testing rate of less than 30 percent and we still have countries facing a number of challenges in terms of quality and transport".

According to the WHO, Africa had 5,281 confirmed cases of mpox from the beginning of 2024 up till August 25.

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian bombardments on the eastern Ukraine region of Donetsk killed six people on Wednesday, the governor of the region said, as Moscow announced it had taken another village in the area.

The industrial region has suffered the worst fighting. The Kremlin claimed to have annexed it alongside three other territories in 2022. 

"In the morning the Russians killed four people and destroyed a house in Izmailivka," the regional official Vadym Filashkin said on social media. 

He added that two more people were killed in separate attacks near Chasiv Yar that damaged more than a dozen homes.

Russia's defence ministry announced on Wednesday that Russian forces had taken another settlement, some 20 kilometres from the logistics hub of Pokrovsk.

Regional authorities have recently ordered large-scale mandatory evacuations with Russian forces advancing towards Pokrovsk, once home to around 60,000 people.

Filashkin said that 2,718 people, including 392 children, had been evacuated from frontline areas on Tuesday.

He later said on state media that some 30,000 people remained in Pokrovsk and surrounding villages and that banks would shutter in the town by Sunday.

"This also applies to all other institutions that provide services to the public. So if people evacuate as soon as possible and save their lives, everything will be fine," he said.

An employee of a government services centre in Pokrovsk told AFP by phone that it was unclear whether the facility would remain open, as Russian forces approach.

"I can't tell you what will happen in the future -- in a day, in two days, next week," the employee said.

"Everything in our city is closing. Everything. No shops will be open. Nothing. Most of them are closing."

Kyiv urged residents of the region, which has been partially controlled by Russian proxy forces since 2014, to evacuate after the Kremlin invaded Ukraine.

NOUAKCHOTT — Mauritania and Spain have agreed to strengthen cooperation to combat people smuggling and promote legal migration, during a visit by Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose country is facing a surge of migrant arrivals.

The two countries expressed "their commitment to work together to promote safe, orderly and regular migration" and guarantee "the fair and humane treatment of migrants", in a joint declaration signed Tuesday evening.

During a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, Sanchez said a key aim of the declaration was to combat human trafficking, Mauritania's national news agency reported.

Nearly every day, Spain's coastguard rescues a boat carrying dozens of African migrants towards the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa.

The Atlantic route is perilous due to the strong currents, with thousands of deaths and disappearances every year on overloaded, often unseaworthy boats.

Spain and Mauritania also signed a memorandum of understanding on "circular migration", in which Spain will make its labour needs known to the West African country which will select candidates for work.

The "pilot project" will initially last one year, with a particular focus on young people and women.

Sanchez arrived in Mauritania's capital Nouakchott on Tuesday, marking the start of a three-day trip that also takes in The Gambia and Senegal, three key countries in the migration crisis.

Madrid estimates there are some 200,000 people in Mauritania waiting to make the crossing to the Canaries.

Between January 1 and August 15 this year, 22,304 migrants reached the Islands, compared with 9,864 in the same period in 2023, an increase of 126 per cent, according to interior ministry figures.

Across all of Spain, there were 31,155 arrivals up to mid-August, a 66.2-per cent increase on the 18,745 a year earlier.

Immigration is not a problem

On Tuesday evening, Sanchez stressed the importance of fighting against illegal people smugglers and managing migration in a "humane, safe and orderly way".

"Not so long ago, Spain was also a country of migrants," he said, adding that "immigration is not a problem, but a necessity that comes with certain problems".

"We must fight against the mafias that trade in human beings and play with human lives," and those who "take advantage of the terrible conditions and desperation of those who resort to irregular migration", Sanchez said, as reported by Mauritania's news agency.

Since 2014 at least 4,857 people have died or disappeared while trying to reach the Canary Islands, according to the UN's International Organisation for Migration.