Southern Europe braces for second heat storm in a week
New system pushing into region from north Africa could lead to temperatures above record 48.8C
Southern Europe is bracing for a second heat storm in a week, with Spain, Italy and Greece, along with Morocco and other Mediterranean countries being told temperature records could be broken on Tuesday.
A new anticyclone that pushed into the region from north Africa on Sunday could lift temperatures above the record 48.8C (120F) seen in Sicily in August 2021, and follows last week’s Cerberus heatwave.
The European Space Agency (ESA) said the next week could bring the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe in a heatwave called Charon, after the Greek mythological boatman who ferries souls to the underworld.
Abu Dhabi SecretsHow United Arab Emirates Seeks to Leverage Its Influence in Europe
On the third floor of a brown, inauspicious flat-roofed building in Geneva’s Rue de Montchoisy, employees of a private detective agency are planning to launch a character assassination. Their firm, though, isn’t just focusing on individual people, but on an entire country.
The company’s name: Alp Services.
It’s commodity: spying and smear campaigns.
It’s clients: politicians, oligarchs, countries.
It’s target in this case: Qatar.
The company’s contractor is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar’s neighbor and long-time rival, and Alp Services has been asked to identify people and organizations that have links to Qatar and insinuate that they are involved in Islamism and terrorism. Facts are beside the point. Alp Services focuses much of its attention on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Iran: Morality police return to enforce dress code in cities
Many women in Iran stopped covering their heads after the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini. But police now say morality patrols are back.
Iranian police announced they were resuming patrols to enforce a strict dress code that requires women to cover their hair in public. In Tehran, male and female morality police officers could be seen patrolling the streets in marked vans on Sunday.
“The police will launch car and foot patrols to warn, take legal measures, and refer to the judiciary those who disobey police orders and disregard consequences of dressing against the norms,” said police spokesman Saeed Montazer Almehdi, according to the official news agency IRNA.
The report comes exactly ten months after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who was arrested for violating the Islamic dress code and later died in police custody.
Private Russian military companies are multiplying – and so are the Kremlin’s problems
The Kremlin said Friday that it is considering granting legal status to some of the more than two dozen private military companies active in Russia. Legally, these shadow paramilitary groups do not exist – which allows them to operate parallel to Russia’s armed forces, at times doing high-risk “dirty” jobs for the army while giving Moscow a measure of deniability.
The Kremlin has announced it may give legal status to some of the many private military companies (PMCs) active within Russia, notably the Wagner Group but also lesser-known militias like Convoy, Patriot, the Moran Security Group and Shchit (Shield).
“Legally, the Wagner private military group does not exist and has never existed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, noting that the status of companies such as Wagner remains “rather complicated”.
The declaration came a day after a similar statement made by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the “Kommersant” business daily. “The (Wagner) group is here, but it does not exist legally,” he said. Putin said its eventual legalisation was a question to be discussed in the Duma (the lower house) and within the government.
Living in ‘an oven’: Heatwave grips displacement camps in Syria
Under a scorching sun, Hamida Dandoush sprinkles water on her tent in an attempt to cool it down, hoping to alleviate the high temperatures for herself and her family.
The 62-year-old woman from the town of Maardabsah is residing in the Saharah camp near the Syrian-Turkish border, where approximately 80 displaced families are enduring harsh living conditions amid the intense heatwave striking the region.
Shimizu failed to monitor grueling working hours of ‘karoshi’ victim
By TAKEHIKO SAWAJI/ Senior Staff Writer
July 16, 2023 at 17:34 JST
A 29-year-old employee of general contractor Shimizu Corp., whose suicide was recognized as an industrial accident resulting from overwork, likely underreported the hours he clocked due to workplace pressure to reduce overtime.
The man killed himself at a company dormitory in Tokyo in August 2021.
A report by an investigative committee of three lawyers established by Shimizu found that the employee put in more than 100 hours in average monthly overtime during the three months before his death, but manipulated computerized records to give the impression he worked fewer hours.
As a result, Shimizu failed to monitor his grueling work schedule.
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