Category: World News

World News

Arresting Putin a ‘declaration of war’: S.Africa’s Ramaphosa

Arresting Vladimir Putin would amount to a declaration of war on Russia, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote in court papers released on Tuesday as the country wrangles over hosting the Russian leader.

Putin has been invited to a BRICS summit in Johannesburg next month but is the target of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant — a provision that Pretoria as an ICC member would be expected to implement were he to attend.

South Africa’s diplomatic dilemma is playing out in court, where the leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), is trying to force the government’s hand and ensure the Kremlin leader is held and handed over to the ICC if he steps foot in the country.

But in a responding affidavit, Ramaphosa described the DA’s application as “irresponsible” and said national security was at stake.

“Russia has made it clear that arresting its sitting President would be a declaration of war,” he said.

“It would be inconsistent with our Constitution to risk engaging in war with Russia,” he said, adding that this would go against his duty to protect the country.

South Africa is seeking an exemption under ICC rules based on the fact that enacting the arrest could threaten the “security, peace and order of the state,” he said.

South Africa is the current chair of the BRICS group, a gathering of heavyweights that also includes Brazil, Russia, India and China, which sees itself as a counter-balance to Western economic domination.

Putin is sought by the ICC over accusations that Russia unlawfully deported Ukrainian children.

Deputy South African President Paul Mashatile has said in recent interviews with local media the government has been trying to persuade Putin not to come — but so far unsuccessfully.

Signed in June and initially marked as “confidential”, Ramaphosa’s affidavit was published on Tuesday, after the court ruled related papers be made public.

‘Hot and dangerous weekend’: US bakes under relentless heat dome

Tens of millions of Americans braced for more sweltering temperatures Sunday as brutal conditions threatened to break records due to a relentless heat dome that has baked parts of the country all week.

The National Weather Service (NWS) warned of an “extremely hot and dangerous weekend,” with daytime highs routinely ranging between 10 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in the US West.

Residents of central and southern California saw thermometers peaking at 105 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (41 to 43 degrees Celsius) on Saturday, it said.

By Saturday afternoon, California’s famous Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth, had reached a sizzling 124F (51C), with Sunday’s peak predicted to soar as high as 129F (54C). Even overnight lows there could exceed 100F (38C).

The heat is forecast to remain anchored over the west for the weekend, “growing hotter in the South by early next week,” according to the NWS.

Authorities have been sounding the alarm for days, advising people to avoid outdoor activities in the daytime and to avoid dehydration, which can quickly become fatal in such temperatures.

In Arizona, the state capital of Phoenix has recorded 16 straight days above 109F (43C), as temperatures hit 117F (47C) Saturday afternoon and are expected to stay above 90F (32C) overnight.

The NWS said Phoenix is “likely to register its hottest week on record by 7-day temperature average.”

The city has organized volunteers to direct residents to cooling centers and distribute bottles of water and hats, but program head David Hondula told the local ABC station that its three-days-per-week schedule is “clearly… not enough” as the heat intensifies.

The NWS has said that “heat is the leading weather-related killer in the US” and to take the risk “seriously.”

At a construction site outside Houston, a 28-year-old worker who gave his name only as Juan helped complete a wall in the blazing heat.

“Just when I take a drink of water, I get dizzy, I want to vomit because of the heat,” he told AFP. “I need something else, a Coca-Cola, a Gatorade — and cold — just to be able to keep going.”

Residents of the Texas metropolis have been asked to conserve energy from 2:00 to 10:00 pm Saturday through Monday by provider Reliant Energy, in an attempt to mitigate high demand.

Further west, the Texas border city of El Paso marked its 30th consecutive day of temperatures reaching or topping 100F (38C) Saturday, though it had dipped slightly to 89F by the evening.

– ‘Not typical’ –

Heat waves are occurring more often and more intensely in major cities across the United States, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, with a frequency of six per year during the 2010s and 2020s compared to two per year during the 1960s.

“This heat wave is NOT typical desert heat,” the NWS’s Las Vegas branch tweeted, specifying that “its long duration, extreme daytime temperatures, & warm nights” were unusual.

In Canada, which is suffering from warm temperatures combined with months of below-average rainfall, the amount of land burned by devastating wildfires climbed to an-all time high of 24.7 million acres (10 million hectares) so far this year on Saturday.

“We find ourselves this year with figures that are worse than our most pessimistic scenarios,” Yan Boulanger, a researcher at Canada’s natural resources ministry, told AFP.

Smoke from the wildfires was creating unhealthy air quality conditions in upper-central parts of the United States, similar to episodes in June when Canadian blazes cloaked the US East Coast in a noxious haze.

While it can be hard to attribute a particular weather event to climate change, scientists insist that global warming — linked to humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels — is responsible for the multiplication and intensification of heat waves around the world.

The US heat wave comes after the EU’s climate-monitoring service said the planet saw its hottest June on record last month.

Sudan’s rival armies slap with UK sanction

Britain has announced sanctions against firms linked to the rival military groups in Sudan’s increasingly bloody conflict.

A British government minister, Andrew Mitchell, said the Sudanese army and paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had dragged their country into a wholly unjustified war.

The sanctions impose an asset freeze on three businesses linked to each side in the fighting.

Washington imposed sanctions at the start of June.

Since the fighting in Sudan erupted three months ago, it’s thought thousands of people have been killed.

Millions of people have been forced from their homes.

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