Greece fears water shortages after warmest winter ever
Greece fears water shortages after warmest winter ever/node/2549911/world
Greece fears water shortages after warmest winter ever
An officer gives water to a presidential guard member standing in front of the monument of The Unknown Soldier in Syntagma Square in Athens on July 12, 2024. (AFP)
Greece fears water shortages after warmest winter ever
“Would you like some water? Turn off the tap!” one public service announcement in Athens implores; another daily spot urges the capital’s residents to not fill their bath all the way to the top
Updated 15 July 2024
AFP
ATHENS: After Greece’s warmest winter and earliest heatwave on record, authorities are sounding the alarm over the risk of dire water shortages in the heat of the Mediterranean summer.
“Would you like some water? Turn off the tap!” one public service announcement in Athens implores; another daily spot urges the capital’s residents to not fill their bath all the way to the top.
Already, there are signs that habits may need to change.
At the beginning of July, the Mornos reservoir around 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Athens, the main water source for the Attica region surrounding the capital, levels were down 30 percent from the same period last year.
And overall reserves for Attica were down by nearly a quarter over the same period, according to the water utility company EYDAP.
Home to more than a third of Greece’s population, the region of 3.7 million inhabitants was recently placed on “yellow alert” by EYDAP, which urged people to reduce consumption to keep reserves at a sustainable level.
Across Greece’s islands, which tend to rely on wells and desalination plants to meet water needs, the problem is even more acute.
Added pressure comes from the millions of tourists who flock to the country’s beaches each summer, swelling the local populations.
On some islands suffering from overtourism, the demand for water in summer “is sometimes 100 times greater than in winter,” Nikitas Mylopoulos, a professor of water resource management at the University of Thessaly, told AFP.
Mylopoulos said the problem of mass tourism was being compounded by poor water management.
At the end of June, a month-long state of emergency was declared for the Dodecanese island of Leros.
The island’s council noted malfunctions at the desalination plant, alleging “poor maintenance in the past.”
Other islands threatened by water scarcity include Sifnos in the Cyclades, Chios in the north Aegean and Lefkada and Corfu in the Ionian Sea.
Sifnos’s mayor, Maria Nadali, has criticized “the over-consumption of water for swimming pools and watering large gardens.”
On Lefkada, Michalis Makropoulos, a local resident and author, denounced a “deplorable” situation where “the water was cut off at the end of June for four consecutive days.”
In a local newspaper article, he blamed the problem on “years of mismanagement by the municipal authorities” and the “uncontrolled development of tourism without adequate infrastructure.”
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis traveled to Lefkada in July to announce “one of the largest water supply projects in Greece to cover the needs.”
The water shortfalls have been made worse by intense heat, which scientists say is at least in part a result of human-driven climate change.
The mildest Greek winter on record has been followed by higher average temperatures this spring.
Last month, the country’s earliest-ever heatwave resulted in the hottest June since 1960, with temperatures reaching 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in many parts of the country.
The heat has also sparked an increase in wildfires, with more than a thousand recorded last month, more than double the number in the same month last year, authorities say.
The head of the water utility EYDAP, Charalambos Sachinis, has said a “special plan” had been drawn up “to deal with extreme water shortages,” including investments of around 750 million euros ($819 million).
Elissavet Feloni, a hydrologist at the National Technical University of Athens, said the company was also planning to tap Lake Yliki, around 85 kilometers northwest of Athens, as an additional emergency source alongside the main Mornos reservoir.
“However, this is an energy-intensive solution because the water has to be pumped up, whereas the Mornos stream has a natural gradient,” she said.
“For better water management, a central body needs to be set up to develop a comprehensive approach to resources across the country,” she said.
ATHENS: Taylor Swift fans were left disappointed earlier this month by news that the American pop star’s long-awaited tour dates in the Austrian capital, Vienna, were to be canceled owing to a terrorist threat to the concert venue by Daesh sympathizers.
On Aug. 7, Austrian authorities arrested three youths, aged 19, 17 and 15, who they claimed were involved in, or had knowledge of, a terrorist plot to attack the Ernst Happel Stadium where Swift was due to perform over the Aug. 8-10 period.
After searching the home of the 19-year-old suspect, an Austrian national with North Macedonian heritage, police found an array of edged weapons and bomb-making materials, counterfeit cash and Daesh propaganda.
A closer view of the Austrian man of Macedonian descent, identified only as Beran A., who was arrested by Vienna police for allegedly plotting a terror attack on a stadium where American singer Taylor Swift was to hold a concert last week. (Social media photo
Although the suspects had been taken into police custody, Swift’s promoter Barracuda Music decided to cancel the superstar’s three-date run of her Eras Tour, which was expected to attract 65,000 fans inside the stadium at each concert and 30,000 onlookers outside.
The decision was deemed prudent, especially given Daesh’s track record of attacking European concert venues. The group killed 90 at the Bataclan theater in Paris, France, in 2015. Two years later, a Daesh suicide bomber killed 22 at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.
Most recently, in March of this year, a massive, coordinated attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall by Daesh’s Central Asian branch, Islamic State in Khorasan, or IS-K, killed 145 people and injured more than 500.
What is surprising about the Vienna plot, however, is Daesh’s ability to continue recruiting followers in Western nations — long after its territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria in 2019 and despite international efforts to smash its leadership, financing networks and online presence.
“I’m not so surprised that there are still young people who join Daesh and want to do something in Europe,” Thomas Schmidinger, a Vienna-based political scientist and expert in extremism and deradicalization, told Arab News.
“I think the failure of Daesh as a state project in Iraq and Syria may have even increased the danger of terrorist attacks in Europe, because, in 2014 and 2015, people were going to Syria to join Daesh there. Now there is no more existing state project, but the organization continues to exist. The reasons why young people were attracted by this ideology are still here.”
Schmidinger, however, believes it may have been a mistake to cancel Swift’s Vienna tour dates as doing so might encourage Daesh to threaten other such events in the future.
“The way the organizers of the concert reacted was actually a victory for the terrorists, because the Austrian police did catch the possible perpetrators and there was no reason to cancel the event,” he said. “This cancelation is now at least a propaganda victory for Daesh.”
Although authorities are desperate to avoid a repeat of the attacks in Paris, Manchester and Moscow, analysts say coordinated attacks of this scale are likely to be rare. Indeed, the majority of Daesh-inspired activities in the West, particularly in recent years, can be attributed to self-radicalized individuals acting of their own accord.
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This handout photograph taken and released by Russian Emergency Ministry on March 23, 2024 shows
rescuers working inside the Crocus City Hall, a day after a gun attack in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow. (Handout via AFP/File)
You can tell the difference between someone who was inspired by Daesh, or just said they were Daesh, versus the ones who actually were Daesh,” Mia Bloom, professor of communication and Middle East studies at Georgia State University, told Arab News.
“There are degrees to which people claim Daesh affiliation and loyalty. They make this baya, or pledge of allegiance, to Daesh, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that Daesh has accepted it.
“For example, you can have people who are radicalized online who engage in a violent attack and they say they were inspired by watching beheading videos or propaganda that they’ve consumed.
“That’s very different from what we saw at the Bataclan in France, or in Charlie Hebdo, or in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where the perpetrators were trained in a Daesh camp. Daesh funded it, and Daesh live-streamed it on GoPro cameras.”
Europe is not alone in facing an ongoing threat from Daesh. Although attacks in the US have been less common, the perpetrators of the 2015 shooting in San Bernardino, California, which left 16 dead, had pledged allegiance to Daesh on Facebook. A year later, a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, claimed 49 lives.
However, there was no evidence that Daesh planned either attack.
“Daesh put out infographics on their successes from around 2014 to 2019,” said Bloom. “They put out a map of the US showing the attacks for which they were responsible, and they put Orlando in California and San Bernardino in Florida.
“If you don’t even know where the attack was, you probably weren’t responsible for it.”
INNUMBERS
• 28 Completed, failed or foiled terrorist attacks recorded in the EU in 2022.
• 380 People arrested by EU member states for terrorism-related offenses in 2022.
Source: Europol
Just last week, two Somali refugees living in Arizona pleaded guilty to attempting to join Daesh. The men, who were arrested in 2019, had allegedly made plans to travel to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, with one stating his wish to martyr himself and to become “the beheading guy.”
A June report by NBC highlighted the Department of Homeland Security’s identification of 400 Central Asian immigrants who may have been brought to the US by a Daesh-affiliated human smuggling network.
Though some of these individuals have been found, the department claims the whereabouts of at least 50 are still unknown.
“Particularly through illegal immigration routes, that means most of the southern border, there has been an influx of people who have some degree of connection to Daesh,” Lorenzo Vidino, director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told Arab News.
“This doesn’t mean that everybody smuggled in was Daesh, but nonetheless, the smuggling network had a Daesh connection, and so some individuals who have been arrested in the US have come through those routes and have known Daesh links.”
While Daesh may be able to infiltrate Western countries from overseas, Vidino says the number of native-born, self-radicalized individuals is likely to be far higher.
“If you look historically at the attacks that we’ve seen in the US over the last 10 years, most of them were perpetrated by Americans, not those who were smuggled through the southern border,” he said.
More than five years since Daesh’s defeat in its last territorial holdout of Baghouz in eastern Syria, many wonder what is drawing new recruits to the group. According to Schmidinger, there is rarely a single reason.
“The biographies of young men who join Daesh are very diverse,” he said.
“These are people who went through strong alienation from their societies. The reasons for this alienation are different. It can be psychological problems, it can be related to racism and anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, it can be related to the failure of their educational or professional careers. It can be related to problems with their sexual orientation.
“There are different concrete reasons. But what they have in common is this alienation from European societies.”
He added: “Daesh was here at the moment that they were searching for meaning, belonging and the ability to intervene in history. So you have a lot of people who feel powerless. They have the feeling that by perpetrating, for example, a terrorist attack, or by threatening European societies, they get power. They become masters of their own history.
“Especially for people who feel completely alienated and powerless, this is an attractive opportunity that gives them a kind of empowerment. I think one of the big problems for these people is that there is no other radical but humanistic alternative for them.”
Although Daesh and other extremist entities continue to pose a threat to Western states, there are ways to undermine their attack potential by eliminating their safe havens in the world’s ungoverned and unstable spaces.
Tens of thousands of Daesh-linked individuals are held in prisons and camps across northeast Syria, guarded by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. However, these facilities have witnessed frequent violence and escape attempts.
Sympathizers in Europe have even organized fundraising campaigns to help Daesh-affiliated women held in these camps to support themselves and even to smuggle themselves out.
Siyamend Ali, a spokesperson for the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units — a group affiliated with the SDF — told Arab News there are areas of northern Syria where Daesh and other extremist groups “can continue to train, gather resources, issue orders and propagandize.”
Tensions in northeast Syria between the SDF, Syrian regime forces and the Turkish military are also having a destabilizing effect, said Ali, increasing the likelihood of a Daesh resurgence in the region.
In addition to eliminating Daesh’s international networks and safe havens, Schmidinger says that the threat of future attacks in Europe can also be reduced through the implementation of social policies to promote integration and inclusion.
“You will never be able to completely stop it. We will always face some people on the fringes of society who will be attracted to extremist organizations like Daesh,” he said.
“But it is possible to reduce the number by reducing the feeling of alienation from society. By giving all people the chance for education, a proper job, and to give people — especially young people — the chance to participate in society and politics, it will keep them from feeling that they are powerless and can’t change anything.
“They won’t need an extremist organization to give them the feeling that they can change things in society.”
Ukrainian president says push into Russia’s Kursk region is to create a buffer zone there
Zelensky said “it is now our primary task in defensive operations overall: to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions
Updated 10 min 50 sec ago
AP
KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday the daring military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region aims to create a buffer zone.
It was the first time the president had clearly stated the aim of the operation, which was launched on Aug. 6. Previously, he had said the operation aimed to protect communities in the bordering Sumy region from constant shelling.
Zelensky said “it is now our primary task in defensive operations overall: to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions. This includes creating a buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory – our operation in the Kursk region.”
Ukraine has destroyed a key bridge in Russia’s Kursk region and struck a second one nearby, disrupting supply lines as it pressed a stunning cross-border incursion that began Aug. 6, officials said Sunday.
The bridge attacks, apparently aimed at thwarting a Russian counter-push in Kursk, could mean that Kyiv intends to seek a foothold in the region.
Pro-Kremlin military bloggers acknowledged that the destruction of the first bridge on the Seim River near the town of Glushkovo will impede deliveries of supplies to Russian forces repelling Ukraine’s incursion, although Moscow could still use pontoons and smaller bridges. Ukraine’s air force chief, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, on Friday released a video of an airstrike that cut the bridge in two.
Less than two days later, Ukrainian troops hit a second bridge in Russia, according to Oleshchuk and Russian regional Gov. Alexei Smirnov.
As of Sunday morning, there were no officials giving the exact location of the second bridge attack. But Russian Telegram channels claimed that a second bridge over the Seim, in the village of Zvannoe, had been struck.
According to Russia’s Mash news site, the attacks left only one intact bridge in the area. The Associated Press could not immediately verify these claims. If confirmed, the Ukrainian strikes would further complicate Moscow’s attempts to replenish its forces in Kursk and evacuate civilians.
Glushkovo is about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) north of the Ukrainian border, and approximately 16 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of the main battle zone in Kursk. Zvannoe is located another 8 kilometers (5 miles) to the northwest.
Ukraine could try to hold the ground it has seized
Kyiv has said little about the scope and goals of its push into Russia with tanks and other armored vehicles, the largest attack on the country since World War II, which took the Kremlin by surprise and saw scores of villages and hundreds of prisoners fall into Ukrainian hands.
The Ukrainians drove deep into the Kursk region in several directions, facing little resistance and sowing chaos and panic as tens of thousands of civilians fled the area. Ukraine’s Commander in Chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed last week that his forces had advanced across 1,000 square kilometers (390 square miles) of the region, although it was not possible to independently verify what exactly Ukrainian forces effectively control.
Analysts say that although Ukraine could try to consolidate its gains inside Russia, it would be risky, given Kyiv’s limited resources, because its own supply lines extending deep into Kursk would be vulnerable.
The incursion has proven Ukraine’s ability to seize the initiative and has boosted its morale, which was sapped by a failed counteroffensive last summer and months of grinding Russian gains in the eastern Donbas region.
The move into Kursk resembled Ukraine’s lightning operation from September 2022, led by Syrskyi, in which its forces reclaimed control of the northeastern Kharkiv region after taking advantage of Russian manpower shortages and a lack of field fortifications.
Zelensky seeks permission to strike deeper into Russia
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Kyiv’s allies to lift the remaining restrictions on using Western weapons to attack targets deeper in Russia, including in Kursk, saying his troops could deprive Moscow “of any ability to advance and cause destruction” if granted sufficient long-range capabilities.
“It is crucial that our partners remove barriers that hinder us from weakening Russian positions in the way this war demands. … The bravery of our soldiers and the resilience of our combat brigades compensate for the lack of essential decisions from our partners,” Zelensky said in a post on the social platform X.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry and pro-Kremlin bloggers have alleged that US-made HIMARS launchers have been used to destroy bridges on the Seim. These claims could not be independently verified.
Ukraine’s leaders have repeatedly sought authorization for long-range strikes on Russian air bases and other infrastructure used to pummel Ukraine’s energy facilities and other civilian targets, including with retrofitted Soviet-era “glide bombs” that have laid waste to Ukraine’s industrial east in recent months.
Moscow also appears to have increased attacks on Kyiv, targeting it Sunday with ballistic missiles for a third time this month, according to the head of the municipal military administration. Serhii Popko said in a Telegram post that the “almost identical” August strikes on the capital “most likely used” KN-23 missiles supplied by North Korea.
Another attempt to target Kyiv followed at about 7 a.m. Popko said, this time with Iskander cruise missiles. Ukrainian air defenses struck down all the missiles fired in both attacks on the city, he said.
Fears mount for Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
In a separate development, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency said Saturday that the safety situation at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is deteriorating following reports of a nearby drone strike.
Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urged “maximum restraint from all sides” after an IAEA team stationed in the plant reported that an explosive carried by a drone detonated just outside its protected area.
According to Grossi’s statement, the impact was “close to the essential water sprinkle ponds” and about 100 meters (100 yards) from the only power line supplying the plant. The IAEA team at the plant has reported intense military activity in the surrounding area in the past week, it said.
Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame for attacks in the vicinity of the power plant since it was captured by Russian forces early in the 2022 invasion, including a fire at the facility last weekend. Grossi’s statement said the blaze had caused “considerable damage,” but posed no immediate danger to nuclear safety.
Ukraine has repeatedly alleged that Russia plans to stage an attack and blame Ukrainian forces. Last summer, Zelensky warned of possible explosives he said Moscow may have planted on the plant’s roof to blackmail Ukraine.
Belarus says it’s deploying more troops on Ukraine border
Russian ally Belarus has massed “nearly a third” of its army along its border with Ukraine, according to authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko told Russian state TV that Minsk was responding to the deployment of more than 120,000 Ukrainian troops to the 1,084-kilometer (674 mile) frontier. Belarus’ professional army numbers upwards of 60,000.
Ukrainian border force spokesman Andrii Demchenko said Sunday it had not observed any sign of a Belarusian buildup.
Lukashenko, in power for three decades, has relied on Russian support to suppress the biggest protests in Belarus’ post-Soviet history after his 2020 reelection, widely seen as a sham both at home and abroad. He allowed Russian troops to use Belarus’ territory to invade Ukraine and let Moscow deploy some tactical nuclear weapons on its soil.
Thousands of activists expected in Chicago for Democratic convention to call for Gaza ceasefire
The convention will draw an estimated 50,000 people to the nation’s third-largest city, including delegates, activists and journalists
Updated 18 August 2024
AP
CHICAGO: Thousands of activists are expected to converge on Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention, hoping to call attention to abortion rights, economic injustice and the war in Gaza.
While Vice President Kamala Harris has energized crowds of supporters as she prepares to accept the Democratic nomination, progressive activists maintain their mission remains the same.
Activists say they learned lessons from last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and are predicting bigger crowds and more robust demonstrations in Chicago, a city with deep social activism roots.
Who is pro testing?
Demonstrations are expected every day of the convention and, while their agendas vary, many activists agree an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war is the priority.
Things are set to kick off Sunday on the convention’s eve with an abortion rights march along iconic Michigan Avenue.
Organizer Linda Loew said even though Democrats have pushed to safeguard reproductive rights at home, the issue is international. They will march in solidarity with people everywhere who struggle for the right to control what happens to their bodies, as well as to protest the money the US spends to back wars that could be used for health care, she said.
“We believe that the billions of dollars that continue to flow to the state of Israel and the flow of weapons are having an inordinate and horrific impact, but in particular on women, children and the unborn,” she said. “All of these things are tied together.”
The largest group, the Coalition to March on the DNC, has planned demonstrations on the first and last days of the convention.
Organizers say they expect at least 20,000 activists, including students who protested the war on college campuses.
“The people with power are going to be there,” said Liz Rathburn, a University of Illinois Chicago student organizer. “People inside the United Center are the people who are going to be deciding our foreign policy in one way or another.”
Where are they protesting?
Activists sued the city earlier this year, saying restrictions over where they can demonstrate violate their constitutional rights.
Chicago leaders rejected their requests for permits to protest near United Center on the city’s West Side, where the convention is taking place, offering instead a lakefront park more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) away.
Later, the city agreed to allow demonstrations at a park and a march route closer to the United Center. A federal judge recently signed off on the group’s roughly 1-mile (1.6-kilometer) route.
Coalition to March on the DNC spokesman Hatem Abudayyeh said the group is pleased it won the right to protest closer to the convention, but he believes its preferred 2-mile (3-kilometer) march would be safer for larger crowds. The group is chartering buses for activists from about half a dozen states.
“We’re going forward, full speed ahead,” he said.
The city has designated a park about a block from United Center for a speakers’ stage. Those who sign up get 45 minutes.
The Philadelphia-based Poor People’s Army, which advocates for economic justice, plans to set up at Humboldt Park on the city’s Northwest Side and will feature events with third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West, plus a 3-mile (5 kilometer) march Monday to the United Center.
Some group members have spent the last few weeks marching the more than 80 miles (130 kilometers) from Milwaukee, where they protested during the Republican convention.
“Poor and homeless people are being brutalized, with tents and encampments destroyed and bulldozed away, from San Francisco to Philadelphia to Gaza and the West Bank,” spokesperson Cheri Honkala said in a statement as the group reached Illinois. “These preventable human rights violations are being committed by Democratic and Republican leaders alike.”
How does a new nominee change things?
Many activists believe nothing much will change because Harris is part of the Biden administration.
“The demands haven’t changed. I haven’t seen any policy changes,” said Erica Bentley, an activist with Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity. “If you’re going to be here, you’re going to have to listen to what’s important to us.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters in Chicago have been highly visible, shutting down roads to the airport and staging sit-ins at congressional offices. Some are planning their own one-day convention Sunday with third-party candidates.
“Regardless of who the nominee is, we’re marching against the Democrats and their vicious policies that have allowed Israel to kill over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza,” said Fayaani Aboma Mijana, an organizer with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
It’s unclear if the convention will draw far-right extremists who ardently support former President Donald Trump.
Secret Service Deputy Special Agent in Charge Derek Mayer said last week there are no known specific security threats against the convention.
Is Chicago ready?
The convention will draw an estimated 50,000 people to the nation’s third-largest city, including delegates, activists and journalists.
The city says it has made necessary preparations with police and the Secret Service. Security will be tight, with street closures around the convention center.
To combat traffic concerns, city leaders are touting a new $80 million train station steps from the United Center. They also have tried to beautify the city with freshly planted flowers and new signs. City leaders also cleared a nearby homeless encampment.
Police have undergone training on constitutional policing, county courts say they are opening more space in anticipation of mass arrests and hospitals near the security zone are beefing up emergency preparedness.
Authorities and leaders in the state have said people who vandalize the city or are violent will be arrested.
“We’re going to make sure that people have their First Amendment rights protected, that they can do that in a safe way,” Mayor Brandon Johnson told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
But some have lingering safety concerns, worried that protests could become unpredictable or devolve into chaos.
Activist Hy Thurman protested and was arrested at the infamous 1968 convention. The 74-year-old now lives in Alabama but plans to come to Chicago to protest the war in Gaza.
“It’s extremely personal for me,” he said. “I see parallels.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has said that he expects peaceful protests.
“We intend to protect the protesters’ First Amendment rights, and also the residents of the city of Chicago and the visitors to Chicago at the same time,” Pritzker told the AP in a recent interview.
Putin is due to hold talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev on bilateral relations and “international and regional problems,” the Kremlin said
Updated 18 August 2024
AFP
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku on Sunday for a two-day state visit, Russian news agencies reported.
Russian television broadcast images of the Russian president’s plane as it arrived in Baku in the evening.
His visit to the Caucasus country, a close partner of both Moscow and Turkiye but also a major energy supplier to Western countries, comes against the backdrop of an unprecedented Ukrainian military offensive on Russian soil.
Putin is due to hold talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev on bilateral relations and “international and regional problems,” the Kremlin said.
The two leaders are dining Sunday evening at the Azerbaijani president’s official residence, local official news agency Asertac said.
On Monday, Aliyev and Putin will sign joint documents and make statements to the press, said Russian agency Ria Novosti.
Putin will also lay a wreath on the tomb of Heydar Aliyev, father of the current leader, who was president from 1993 to 2003.
Earlier, the Kremlin said they would also discuss “the question of settling (the conflict) between Azerbaijan and Armenia.”
Azerbaijan reconquered the mountainous enclave in September 2023 from the Armenian separatists who had held it for three decades.
Armenia accused Russia of inadequate support in its conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Since then, Armenia has sought to deepen its ties with Western countries, especially the United States, much to the annoyance of Moscow, which considers both former Soviet republics to be in its sphere of influence.
Azerbaijan is a major producer of natural gas, to whom many European countries turned to make up for the sharp reduction in Russian deliveries after the start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022.
It is also hosting the COP29 climate conference in November.
Putin’s last visit to Azerbaijan was in September 2018.
Putin has been under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court since March 2023 for the “deportation” of Ukrainian children to Russia, an accusation the Kremlin denies.
While the threat of arrest has limited Putin’s travels abroad, Azerbaijan is not a signatory to the Rome Statute treaty that established the ICC.
Volcano erupts after powerful earthquake in Russia’s Far East and scientists warn of a stronger one
The tremors in the area may be a prelude to an even stronger earthquake in southeastern Kamchatka, Russian scientists warned
Updated 18 August 2024
AP
PETROPAVOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia: One of Russia’s most active volcanoes has erupted, spewing plumes of ash 5 kilometers (3 miles) into the sky over the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula and briefly triggering a “code red” warning for aircraft.
The Shiveluch volcano began sputtering shortly after a powerful 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck off Kamchatka’s east coast early Sunday, according to volcanologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences. They warned that another, even more potent earthquake may be on the way.
The academy’s Institute of Volcanology and Seismology released a video showing the ash cloud over Shiveluch. It stretched over 490 kilometers (304 miles) east and southeast of the volcano.
The Ebeko volcano located on the Kuril Islands also spewed ash 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) high, the institute said. It did not explicitly say whether the earthquake touched off the eruptions.
A “code red” ash cloud warning briefly put all aircraft in the area on alert, the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team reported. A separate report on Sunday carried by the official Tass news agency said that no commercial flights had been disrupted and there was no damage to aviation infrastructure.
The tremors in the area may be a prelude to an even stronger earthquake in southeastern Kamchatka, Russian scientists warned. The Institute of Volcanology said a potential second quake could come “within 24 hours” with a magnitude approaching 9.0.
There were no immediate reports of injuries from Sunday’s earthquake, which struck at a depth of 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) under the sea bed with the epicenter 108 kilometers (67 miles) southeast of the nearest city, according to Russian emergency officials.
Russian news outlets cited residents of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a port city of more than 181,000 people that sits across a bay from an important Russian submarine base, reporting some of the strongest shaking “in a long time.”
On Nov. 4, 1952, a magnitude 9.0 quake in Kamchatka caused damage but no reported deaths despite setting off 9.1-meter (30-foot) waves in Hawaii.
