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LA TESTE-DE-BUCH, France: French investigators probing the suspected deliberate lighting of what has become a raging wildfire in the country’s southwest detained a man for questioning, Meanwhile, firefighters and water-bombing planes on Tuesday fought the ferocious flames fueled by a heat wave smashing temperature records in Europe. Two huge fires feeding on tinder-dry pine forests in the Gironde region have forced tens of thousands of people to flee homes and summer vacation spots since they broke out July 12. One of the blazes, tearing through woodlands south of Bordeaux, is suspected to have been started deliberately. A motorist told investigators that he saw a vehicle speeding away from the spot where that fire started on July 12. The motorist pulled over and tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the flames, the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office said. Criminal investigators found evidence pointing to possible arson, it said. The 39-year-old man being questioned Tuesday lives in Gironde and was detained on Monday afternoon, the prosecutor’s office said. He previously also was questioned in 2012 on suspicion of starting a forest fire but that investigation was shelved in 2014 for lack of evidence, the prosecutor’s office added. Investigations are continuing and witnesses are being heard, it said. Ten water-bombing planes and more than 2,000 firefighters are working day and night to contain that fire and another fierce blaze southwest of Bordeaux that police investigators are treating as accidental. The blazes have already burned through more than 190 square kilometers (more than 70 square miles) of forest and vegetation, Gironde authorities said. Thick clouds of smoke and the risk of flames spreading to buildings have forced the evacuations of more than 37,000 people, including 16,000 on Monday alone, authorities said. A smaller third fire broke out late Monday in the Medoc wine region north of Bordeaux, further taxing regional firefighting resources. Those evacuated Monday included 74 residents of a retirement home, authorities said. Animals were also evacuated from a zoo. Five camping sites went up in flames in the Atlantic coast beach zone southwest of Bordeaux, around the Arcachon maritime basin famous for its oysters and resorts. Swirling winds and extreme heat have complicated the firefighting. But changing weather Tuesday offered some consolation, with heat-wave temperatures easing along the Atlantic seaboard and rains expected to roll in late in the day. The double blow of heat waves and droughts exacerbated by climate change are making wildfires more frequent, destructive and harder to fight. In Spain, the prime minister has linked wildfires that have killed two people to global warming, warning Monday that “climate change kills.” The head of Spain’s Civil Protection and Emergencies agency, Leonardo Marcos González, noted Tuesday that extreme heat and wildfires have hit the country three weeks earlier than usual this year and that many fires broke out at the same time. “We are in the midst of the most significant civil protection emergency on record,” he told radio station SER. In Portugal, cooling temperatures have eased pressure on emergency crews, with just two major wildfires being tackled by around 800 firefighters Tuesday. But more torrid weather is forecast for Wednesday. Authorities suspect a wildfire is to blame for the death of a couple in their 80s whose car went off the road and flipped over in a northern Portuguese village late Monday. Their charred vehicle with two bodies inside was found after a blaze engulfed the area, and officials suspect they were killed while trying to flee the flames. The pilot of a water-dumping plane also died in Portugal last week when his aircraft crashed while fighting a wildfire.

NEW DELHI: When the sea destroyed her home, Mary Joseph had to move to a warehouse, a shelter that she and her children now share with more than 20 other families displaced by coastal erosion in Valiyathura, a former port area of Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala state. The rising sea levels in the state that spans almost 600 kilometers on the southwestern coast of the Indian subcontinent is one of the reasons that people are losing their houses and livelihoods, but climate change is not the only culprit. In Trivandrum, more than 20 percent of the city’s Arabian Sea coastline is affected by erosion, much of it caused by artificial seawalls and riprap revetments protecting infrastructure projects, according to local government data. Hundreds of fishing families from Valiyathura and about a dozen other neighboring villages have been forced to abandon their houses in the past few years. “It’s terrible living here where you don’t have any privacy,” Joseph, who has two teenage children, told Arab News. “Life in the warehouse has not only dehumanized us, but has also brought health problems, with many of us suffering from respiratory problems because this building used to store cement earlier.” Since May, the displaced villagers and civil society groups have been protesting a multibillion-dollar seaport project built in nearby Vizhinjam, which they say has deprived local communities of homes by increasing sea levels at a pace much faster than climate change. The Adani Vizhinjam port and container transshipment facility, developed in a public-private partnership since 2016, has already affected about 200,000 people and the number is increasing, according to Trivandrum-based environmentalist A. J. Vijayan. “We have seen that every year at least 100 houses are getting lost after the port project started,” Vijayan told Arab News. He estimates that more than 650 families have since moved to temporary shelters in nearby schools and warehouses. Vijayan is one of the organizers of the protest to stop the development and compensate the fishermen who have lost their lands. “For land and housing, they should be adequately compensated,” he said, adding that protesters also want the local government to restore the eroded coastline that provided livelihoods to those dependent on it. “Stolen Shorelines,” a documentary film by K. A. Shaji, a journalist from Kerala, shows how development projects in Trivandrum are pushing coastal communities into homelessness and poverty. “The coastal region of Kerala is facing massive sea erosion. Massive sea erosion is visible in Trivandrum and the surrounding areas for the last four and five years, and now it has escalated to alarming levels,” Shaji told Arab News. “At one level climate change is a villain. On the other level there are many contributing factors that are aggravating the crisis created by climate change.” The local government has policies to rehabilitate displaced communities. “We are giving 10 lakhs rupees ($12,600) of which six lakhs is for buying land and four lakhs for building houses,” Sheeja Mary, deputy director of the Kerala Department of Fisheries, told Arab News. “These projects are for those who live within 50 meters of the high tide line and those affected by sea erosion.” She said that under the program, the government has so far helped 3,000 people and plans to rehabilitate a further 15,000. But the assistance covers all those displaced along the hundreds of kilometers-long Kerala coast, which means that only a fraction of the people affected will receive funding. And if they do, it may be too little to rebuild their households and livelihoods. Reni Dixon, another resident of the Valiyathura warehouse, said that with the government assistance she would fail to buy land in any port city of Kerala, where her family could rely for sustenance on what they know best — fishing. “If we shift to the rural areas then our livelihood is lost,” she added. “We have lost not only our houses, but also our livelihoods, and the government is not willing to accept that this is a problem.”

BOGOR, Indonesia: East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta said on Tuesday during a visit to Indonesia that he hoped to boost trade ties between the countries and seal a decades-long bid by his nation to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) next year. Ramos-Horta met his counterpart Joko Widodo on his first state visit to neighboring Indonesia since he was elected in April for a second stint as president. He previously served as president of East Timor, which is also known as Timor Leste, between 2007 and 2012. “Timor Leste as part of Southeast Asia has fulfilled many of the requirements necessary for a functioning economy and democracy so... will be a productive member of ASEAN,” he said, noting he hoped his young country could join the group when Indonesia takes over the presidency next year. East Timor, which applied for ASEAN membership in 2011, currently holds observer status. Speaking at the presidential palace in Bogor, south of Jakarta, the Indonesian president said his country had invested $818 million in East Timor, mainly in energy, banking and communication businesses. “We’ve agreed to increase trade between both countries,” said Widodo, who is widely known as Jokowi. Official Indonesia data shows trade between the countries was worth around $250 million last year. Heavily dependent on revenue from oil and gas, the half-island nation of 1.3 million people has grappled with diversifying its economy and reducing high rates of poverty. Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and East Timor only gained full independence in 2002 after a long and bloody struggle to end an often brutal occupation. Ramos-Horta, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his peaceful efforts to end the conflict, said he welcomed deepening trade ties with Jakarta and Indonesia’s commitment to East Timor joining the 10-member ASEAN regional grouping.

NAIROBI: The US military said it had killed two fighters from the Al-Shabab militant group in an airstrike in a remote part of Somalia’s southern Jubaland state on Sunday. The United States has been carrying out air strikes in Somalia to try to defeat Al-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda franchise seeking to implement its interpretation of Islamic law and overthrow the country’s Western-backed central government. The strike took place near Libikus in the Lower Juba region, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement late on Monday. “The command’s initial assessment is that two Al-Shabab terrorists were killed in action,” AFRICOM said. “No civilians were injured or killed given the remote nature of where this engagement occurred.” Rights activists have accused the United States of shrouding its Somalia operations in secrecy, potentially undermining accountability for incidents involving civilian deaths.

BEIJING: Authorities in southern China apologized for breaking into the homes of people quarantined for being suspected of contracting COVID-19 in the latest example of heavy-handed measures that have sparked a rare public backlash. The Communist Party newspaper Global Times reported Tuesday that 84 homes of people sent for isolation in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district were opened in an effort to find close contacts remaining inside and to disinfect the premises. The doors were later sealed and new locks installed, the paper reported. The district government apologized for such “oversimplified and violent” behavior, the paper said. An investigation team has been set up to investigate and “relevant people” will be severely punished, it said. China’s leadership has maintained its hard-line “zero-COVID” policy despite the mounting economic costs and disruption to the lives of ordinary citizens, who continue to be subjected to routine testing and quarantines, even while the rest of the world has opened up to living with the disease. Numerous cases of police and health workers breaking into homes around China in the name of anti-COVID-19 measures have been documented on social media. In some, doors have been broken down and residents threatened with punishment, even when they tested negative for the virus. Authorities have demanded keys to lock in residents of apartment buildings where cases have been detected, steel barriers erected to prevent them leaving their compounds and iron bars welded over doors. China’s Communist leaders exert stringent control over the government, police and levers of social control. Most citizens are inured to a lack of privacy and restrictions on free speech and the right to assembly.

However, the strict anti-COVID-19 measures have tested that tolerance, particularly in Shanghai, where a ruthless and often chaotic lockdown spurred protests online and in person among those unable to access food, health care and basic necessities. Authorities in Beijing have taken a gentler approach, concerned with prompting unrest in the capital ahead of a key party congress later this year at which president and party leader Xi Jinping is expected to receive a third five-year term amid radically slower economic growth and high unemployment among college graduates and migrant workers. A requirement that only vaccinated people could enter public spaces was swiftly canceled last week after city residents denounced it as having been announced without warning and unfair to those who have not had their shots. “Zero-COVID” has been justified as necessary to avoid a wider outbreak among a population that has had relatively little exposure to the virus and less natural immunity. Although China’s vaccination rate hovers at around 90 percent, it is considerably lower among the elderly, while questions have been raised about the efficacy of China’s domestically produced vaccines. Although China’s Fosun Pharma reached an agreement to distribute, and eventually manufacture, the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech, it still has not been cleared for use in mainland China, despite being authorized for use by separate authorities in Hong Kong and Macao. Studies have consistently shown that inoculation with mRNA vaccines offers the best protection against hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Chinese vaccines made with older technology proved fairly effective against the original strain of the virus, but much less so against more recent variants. Now health experts say the delay in approving mRNA vaccines — a consequence of placing politics and national pride above public health — could lead to avoidable coronavirus deaths and deeper economic losses. China’s national borders remain largely closed and although domestic tourism has picked up, travel around the country remains subject to an array of regulations, with quarantine restrictions constantly in flux. In one recent incident, some 2,000 visitors to the southern tourist hub of Beihai have been forced to prolong their stays after more than 500 cases were found and they were barred from leaving. The local government was struggling to find hotel rooms for those who had already prepared to return home, while hotels and airlines were providing refunds for those who had booked holidays to the city that had to be canceled. China regulates travel and access to public places through a health code app on citizens’ smartphones that must be updated with regular testing. The app tracks a person’s movements as a form of contact tracing, allowing a further imposition of public monitoring. The measures remain in place despite relatively low rates of infection. The National Health Commission on Tuesday announced just 699 new cases of domestic transmission detected over the previous 24 hours, the bulk of which were asymptomatic.

NEW DELHI: Sri Lanka opposition leader Sajith Premadasa withdrew on Tuesday from the race to become president of the island nation, in order to support a rival candidate. “For the greater good of my country that I love and the people I cherish, I hereby withdraw my candidacy for the position of president,” Premadasa said on Twitter. His party and “our alliance and our opposition partners will work hard toward making” Dullas Alahapperuma the winner, he added.