Oven 95 dead after torrential rain brings flash flooding to Spain

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Written by Super User

Category: Europe

Published: 31 October 2024

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MADRID - Flash floods turned streets into rivers, destroyed homes, and killed at least 95 people in Spain’s worst natural disaster in recent memory.

Torrential rainstorms hit southern and eastern parts of the country, including the Costa del Sol region, where the city of Malaga is located, and Valencia in the east.

Rescuers waded through mud-coloured water while cars and vans appeared stranded. More than 1,000 soldiers from Spain’s emergency response units have been deployed to the worst-hit areas.

A 71-year-old British man is confirmed to be among the victims. He died in hospital hours after being rescued from his home on the outskirts of Alhaurin de la Torre in Malaga.

“He was suffering from hypothermia and died after suffering several cardiac arrests,” said Juanma Moreno, president of the Andalusia region. “A hug to your family.”

Carlos Mazon, the regional leader of Valencia, said many people remained trapped in inaccessible locations as searches continued for those who remain unaccounted for.

Spain’s state weather agency AEMET declared a red alert in Valencia, with some areas, such as the towns of Turis and Utiel, recording 7.9 inches of rainfall.

Ricardo Gabaldon, the mayor of Utiel, told national broadcaster RTVE: “We were trapped like rats. Cars and trash containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to three metres.”

Javier Berenguer, 63, escaped his bakery in Utiel when the water threatened to overwhelm him. He said it rose to 2.5 metres (8.2ft) inside his premises, and he fears that his livelihood has been destroyed.

“I had to get out of a window as best I could because the water was already coming up to my shoulders. I took refuge on the first floor with the neighbours, and I stayed there all night,” he said. “It has taken everything. I have to throw everything out of the bakery – the freezers, ovens, everything.”

Maria Carmen Martinez, another Utiel resident, witnessed a harrowing rescue. “It was horrible, horrible. There was a man there clinging to a fence, who was falling and calling people for help,” she said. “They couldn’t help him until the helicopters came and took him away.”

In the town of Paiporta, near Valencia, mayor Maribel Albalat said more than 30 people had died, including six residents of a nursing home. Television pictures showed elderly residents in wheelchairs as the water rose over their knees.

In the village of Letur in the neighbouring Castilla-La Mancha region, mayor Sergio Marin Sanchez said six people were missing.

Trains to the cities of Madrid and Barcelona have been cancelled because of the flooding, and schools and other essential services were closed in the worst-hit areas.

Spain’s central government set up a crisis committee to help coordinate the rescue efforts.

Although rain had subsided in Valencia by late Wednesday morning, more storms were forecast.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said: “For those who are looking for their loved ones, all of Spain feels your pain. Our priority is to help you. We are putting all the resources necessary [in place] so that we can recover from this tragedy.”

He added: “We mustn’t let our guard down, because the weather front is still wreaking havoc and we can’t say that this devastating episode is over.”

It is the worst flood-related catastrophe in Spain since at least 1996, when 87 people died and 180 were injured in a flash flood near Biesca in the Pyrenees.

Scientists say extreme weather events in the region are becoming more frequent as a result of climate change. Meteorologists think the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe.

New world order is forming, Putin tells growing Brics summit

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Written by Super User

Category: Europe

Published: 24 October 2024

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KAZAN, RUSSIA - Vladimir Putin has proclaimed the start of a new “world order” as his allies rushed to sign up to a Kremlin-led economic club at a summit in Russia.

The Russian president will more than double the size of the Brics bloc by the time he leaves Kazan, in central Russia, on Thursday evening, creating an economic bloc to challenge the West.

“The process of forming a multipolar world order is underway, a dynamic and irreversible process,” Putin said on Wednesday on the second day of the three-day summit, which will expand the Brics grouping to up to 22 members.

On Tuesday, Putin held bilateral meetings with visiting foreign leaders and hosted an informal dinner followed by a concert in Kazan’s ornate 19th-century town hall.

Police had flanked roads through the city centre and blocked off streets as Putin dined with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, as well as the leaders of Iran, India, South Africa, Egypt, the UAE, Ethiopia and Egypt.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, cancelled his trip to Russia after injuring his head in a fall.

The Kremlin has used its dominant position around global grain supplies, space, nuclear power, and oil and gas exports to build up support for its war in Ukraine over the past couple of years.

Many of the 36 countries that have travelled to Kazan to take part in the Brics summit are also allies of the West, including Azerbaijan which supplies gas to the EU and is a major BP production hub.

Up to 12 countries are expected to apply to join Brics, which currently has 10 members.

Hanna Notte, a senior associate at the Center of Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Kremlin was using the leaders who had travelled to Russia to score diplomatic points.

“This will reinforce the impression that Russia’s war against Ukraine has become the ‘new normal’ and that Putin is not considered a pariah outside Western capitals,” she said.

And for the first time, the Kremlin has overtly linked Brics to the war in Ukraine.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top aide, told Russian media that “the Ukraine issue had been touched on” during Tuesday’s informal dinner hosted by the Russian leader.

A final Brics communique on Thursday is expected to establish a joint position for members on the war in Ukraine.

Antonio Guterres, UN general secretary, flew into Kazan on Wednesday in a widely criticised move. His office has defended his attendance, saying that Brics now represents half the world’s population and that attending large international meetings was “standard practice”.

The Kremlin has framed the summit as “one of the international political events of the year” and ordered officials to beautify Kazan, an ancient city with a renowned fortress set above the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka rivers.

Russian military recruitment adverts for its war in Ukraine have been replaced by bright-coloured banners for the event.

At Kazan’s enlarged international airport, border guards speak English to Bricsdelegates, while plain-clothed FSB officers smile and wish attendees “a good stay”.

Putin returns to world stage hosting 36 leaders at Brics summit in Russia

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Written by Super User

Category: Europe

Published: 23 October 2024

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KAZAN, RUSSIA - Vladimir Putin, ostracised by the west and labelled a possible war criminal by the international criminal court, has played host to 36 world leaders from nations including China, India and Iran as part of a summit of the Brics group designed to display Moscow as anything but isolated.

One of the main aims of the summit will be to speed up ways to reduce the number of dollar transactions, and so mitigate the US ability to use the threat of sanctions to seek to impose its political will.

The spokesperson for the UN secretary general confirmed António Guterres would attend the summit as he did last year. His decision infuriated many in the west, including the Ukrainian foreign ministry, since the international criminal court issued warrants for Putin’s arrest in March 2023 over the abduction of children. The UN said Guterres would repeat his view that the invasion of Ukraine is in breach of the UN charter.

Moscow said the representatives from 36 countries were attending parts of the three-day meeting, making it the largest international gathering hosted by Putin since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia is this year’s chair of the group.

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, greeted Putin in Kazan as his dear friend, praising the “profound” friendship between the two countries. He said: “The world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, and the international situation is chaotic and intertwined.”

China-Russia ties have “injected strong impetus into the development, revitalisation and modernisation of the two countries,” the Chinese leader said.

Putin said he wanted to strengthen ties with China to bring greater global stability. “We intend to further increase coordination in all multilateral platforms to ensure global security and a just world order,” he told Xi.

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, said he wanted the Ukraine conflict resolved quickly and peacefully. Modi visited Kyiv in August and Moscow in July in an effort to encourage talks, casting Delhi as a potential peacemaker, but there have been few developments since.

Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president, who has also sought to play the role of mediator in the conflict, praised Moscow as a “valued ally” and friend “who supported us from the very beginning in the fight against apartheid”.

Putin, speaking on Tuesday with the president of the Brics New Development Bank, Dilma Rousseff, said the use of local currencies instead of the dollar or euro “helps to keep economic development free from politics as far as possible in the context of today’s world”.

Russia claims the group now represents the global majority that can make up a substantial element of a coming new global order.

The Brics group has already expanded from its five members – South Africa, Russia, China, Brazil and India – to a broader group including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates. Ethiopia and Iran. Argentina applied and then withdrew after its presidential elections.

Egypt’s president, Abdelfattah al-Sisi, hailed Russian support for Egypt’s economic projects when he met Putin. Chief among them, Sisi said, was Egypt’s first nuclear power plant at El-Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast, built by Russia’s state atomic energy corporation Rosatom.

New applicants, often known as hedging states, that are in various stages of seeking membership include Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Others due to attend the event, apart from the wavering Guterres, include the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as well as leaders from Algeria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Indonesia and Mexico.

Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, said on the way to the summit in Kazan: “Brics can be a way out of American totalitarianism and create a path of multilateralism. Brics can be a solution to deal with the dominance of the dollar and deal with the economic sanctions of countries.”

But with expansion of Brics membership comes the risk of a loss of clear ideological cohesion.

India and Brazil share some of the desire to be freed of the dollar’s dominance, but not to the same extent as China or Russia. Despite the anti-western language in summit communiques, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for instance, has insisted that Brics is “not against anyone”. Brazil is advising against Venezuela being admitted to the group as part of an effort to prevent the alliance becoming purely anti-western.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro made a previously unannounced arrival. He was quoted by Russian news agencies as calling the group “the epicentre of the new multi-polar world”.

Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin, said overall the Brics summit was already a gift to Putin.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, he said the message of the gathering will be: “Not only is [Russia] far from being an international pariah but also is now a pivotal member of a dynamic group that will shape the future of the international order. That message is not mere rhetorical posturing, nor is it simply a testament to the Kremlin’s skilful diplomacy with non-western countries or to those countries’ self-interested, pragmatic engagement with Russia.”

Putin was unable to risk attending the last Brics summit in Johannesburg because he did not want to embarrass his hosts, who would have been obliged to arrest him on the ICC warrant since South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute.

The Russian president may be hoping more generally that world events are swinging in his direction, with the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House next month and the possibility of favourable result in the elections in Georgia this weekend.

The future of the Ukraine conflict in the short term rests on Trump’s election, but even if he loses, war fatigue in Europe is leading all sides to conclude that Ukraine will at least have to open talks with Putin while Russian troops still occupy a large part of eastern Ukraine. A decision by Guterres to attend the summit would have international consequences.

In 2014, Brazil, China, India and South Africa abstained from voting on a UN general assembly resolution in support of Ukraine’s territorial integrity after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Their unity was diluted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, where India, China and South Africa abstained, and Brazil condemned Russia’s actions.

But the Brics+ founding

purpose is not security but a means to develop economic and tech platforms that are immune to US pressure and sanctions, in part by circumventing the dollar and pushing the internationalisation of the yuan.

Despite Brics+ group having a larger combined GDP than either the G7 or the EU, its capital share and subsequent voting influence within institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) remains significantly smaller, because each member country’s voting power is weighted on the basis of its financial contribution to the World Bank.