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The decision to hold a climate summit in oil-and-gas-producer Azerbaijan, which will be hosting the COP29 UN Climate Change Conference this year, has puzzled many environmental groups. But the tightly controlled energy-rich Caspian nation is seeking to change its reputation as a polluting authoritarian state.  Baku has in recent years organised numerous high-profile international events, which experts say are aimed at bringing prestige to the country ruled with an iron fist by President Ilham Aliyev.  Baku has hosted matches in the Euro 2020 football championship, as well as the Formula 1 Grand Prix, plus the 2021 Eurovision song contest — all of which brought international attention to the country, whose reputation is tarnished by massive rights violations. “These are vanity projects for Azerbaijani leadership,” Giorgi Gogia, Human Rights Watch associate director for the Caucasus, told AFP.”Azerbaijan really cares for its international image and prestige, and is really willing to host mega events to whitewash its abysmal rights record,” he added.The latest international event — the COP29 climate conference which will kick off in Baku in November — will be held just over a year after its lightning Nagorno-Karabakh offensive. In September 2023, Baku’s troops recaptured the enclave from Armenian separatists who had controlled it for decades. The region’s entire ethnic Armenian population — more than 100,000 people — fled in the aftermath.  And while Azerbaijan gears up to host COP29, it orchestrated yet another crackdown on independent media, arresting several critical journalists who have exposed high-level graft.  – ‘Centre of universe’ – Ilham Aliyev has been in power since 2003, when he succeeded his father Heydar, and is poised for an easy re-election for his fifth consecutive term on Wednesday.The snap polls have been boycotted by the main opposition parties. By hosting prestigious events like COP29, Baku also seeks to assert itself as a “key state in the region” where traditional powers Russia, Turkey and Iran compete for domination, said Azerbaijani analyst Elhan Shaynoglu.  In December, Aliyev said that Azerbaijan’s hosting of the COP29 is proof of the “huge confidence and deep respect” of the international community towards the country. “Baku will be the centre of the universe for two weeks,” he said.  Since winning its COP29 bid, the ex-Soviet republic has already got a taste of heightened international attention — and not always the kind it wants. The hydrocarbon industry dominates the Azerbaijani economy with hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil produced a day and billions of cubic metres of natural gas exported annually.Baku now aims to double gas exports to Europe, which is trying to reduce its energy dependence on Russia since the Ukraine invasion, by 2027.   Azerbaijan remains “extremely dependent on oil and gas production,” accounting for 92 percent of its export revenues, according to a 2023 report by the US State Department.  It will be the second year in a row that the COP29 will be hosted by an oil giant, with the 2023 conference held in the United Arab Emirates. Adding to the controversy, the presidency of the conference has been entrusted to Mukhtar Babayev, a former employee of Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR.”There is a major conflict of interest, for the second consecutive year,” said Romain Ioualalen of the Oil Change International NGO.- ‘Risky gamble’ -Ioualalen said Azerbaijan hosting the conference was a “risky gamble” for the Caspian country, which might backfire as it will be “closely watched” on its climate policy this year.  “Azerbaijan has expansion plans, especially in gas production, which are not at all compatible with the Paris Agreement, which it must implement as the president of COP, setting specific targets for limiting climate change,” he said. Beyond environmental concerns, the Oil Change International calls for human rights respect be imposed on countries hosting a COP.”Such an important conversation cannot take place if civil society does not have the assurance of expressing its opinions,” said Ioualalen. Last summer, rare protests in a remote village in western Azerbaijan against the pollution from a British mining company ended with arrests, according to local media.Gogia of Human Rights Watch hopes that the international community will make use of the event to exert pressure on Azerbaijan, and aim to secure the release of political prisoners.  “What kind of climate conference will be legitimate without independent voices?”

The death toll from central Chile’s blazing wildfires climbed to at least 112 people on Sunday, after President Gabriel Boric warned the number would rise “significantly” as teams search gutted neighborhoods.Responders continued to battle fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend.Abraham Mardones, a welder who fled his burning home in Vina del Mar, told AFP he narrowly escaped the fast-paced inferno that raged over a hillside Friday and through several blocks of the seaside city.”We looked out again and the fire was already on our walls. It took only 10 minutes. The entire hill burned,” he said.”The fire consumed everything — memories, comforts, homes. I was left with nothing but my overalls and a pair of sneakers that were given to me as a gift,” Mardones told AFP. “I could only rescue my dog.”Upon his return on Sunday, he said he found several neighbors who had died in the flames.Friends passed by driving a truck “carrying the burned bodies of their brother, their father, their daughter.”The Interior Ministry said late Sunday that the medical examiner’s office had received 112 dead victims, 32 of whom have been identified, and that there are 40 fires still active in the country.Speaking earlier in Quilpue, a devastated hillside community near Vina del Mar, Boric had said the death toll was 64 but “we know it is going to increase significantly,” adding it was the country’s deadliest disaster since a 2010 earthquake and tsunami that killed 500 people. Vina del Mar mayor Macarena Ripamonti told reporters “190 people are still missing” in the city.”Not a single house was left here,” retiree Lilian Rojas, 67, told AFP of her neighborhood near the Vina del Mar botanical garden, which was also destroyed in the flames.- Dead victims in the streets -Boric, who met with fire survivors at a Vina del Mar hospital Sunday, has declared a state of emergency, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet.According to national disaster service SENAPRED, nearly 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) had been burned across the central and southern regions by Sunday.Supported by 31 firefighting helicopters and airplanes, some 1,400 firefighters, 1,300 military personnel and volunteers are combating the flames.SENAPRED chief Alvaro Hormazabal, noting the dozens of blazes still burning out of control, said weather “conditions are going to continue to be complicated.”Authorities have imposed a curfew, while thousands in the affected areas were ordered to evacuate their homes.In the hillsides around Vina del Mar, AFP reporters saw entire blocks of houses that were burned out.Some of the dead were seen lying on the road, covered by sheets.- ‘Inferno’ -The fires, raging for days, forced authorities on Friday to close the road linking the Valparaiso region to the capital Santiago, about 1.5 hours away, as a huge mushroom cloud of smoke impaired visibility.Images posted online from trapped motorists showed mountains in flames at the end of the famous “Route 68” leading to the Pacific coast.According to Interior Minister Carolina Toha, the weekend blazes have been “without a doubt” the deadliest fire event in Chile’s history.”This was an inferno,” Rodrigo Pulgar, from the town of El Olivar, told AFP. “I tried to help my neighbor… my house was starting to burn behind us. It was raining ash.”During his Sunday address, Pope Francis, a native of neighboring Argentina, called for prayers for the “dead and wounded in the devastating fires in Chile.”The fires are being driven by a summer heatwave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.

Within minutes his world erupted in a hellish fire: Abraham Mardones, with just the clothes on his back, miraculously managed to escape the epicenter of the deadliest wildfires in Chile’s recent history.Still shaken by the charred bodies he saw inside the crumbling houses in his Villa Independencia neighborhood of Vina del Mar, the 24-year-old welder and university student has been left devastated.”My neighbors were burned” to death, he said Sunday, recalling how he covered one of their corpses.”The fire consumed everything — memories, comforts, homes. I was left with nothing but my overalls and a pair of sneakers that were given to me as a gift,” Mardones told AFP. “I could only rescue my dog.”Mardones lived with several relatives in a row of four houses. While their lives were saved, they lost everything else.As evening fell Friday, wind-whipped flames raced over the crowded hills of the coastal city of Vina del Mar and other areas of the Valparaiso region.Mardones and other residents were buffeted by gusts of incandescent air.To date there have been 112 confirmed deaths, but the government expects the toll to swell in the South American country’s worst tragedy since a 2010 earthquake and tsunami.In Villa Independencia alone, at least 19 people perished, authorities said, and between 3,000 and 6,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. The smell of ash and burned plastic lingered.  – Sudden courage -Mardones, having seen an adjacent hillside burn, had barely begun to throw water on the walls of his home when the heat became unbearable. He, his uncle and dog fled just before flames torched the place.”We saw the fire on the hill in front,” he said. “We looked out again and the fire was already on our walls. It took only 10 minutes. The entire hill burned.”On Saturday he returned — and then came the horror he was thoroughly unprepared for. “I didn’t have the courage, but at least I had enough to find my charred neighbor and cover her up” with a tarp — in part to keep dogs away from her, he said.”I have neighbors who were burned to death,” he said, surveying a narrow street littered with debris and shells of cars under blankets of ash.Friends had passed by driving a truck “carrying the burned bodies of their brother, their father, their daughter,” he said.Nearby, Eduardo Castillo, a 60-year-old machinery operator, said he, his two children and five dogs fled “an immense bonfire” that consumed their home.”There was nothing we could do,” he told AFP.Residents of Villa Independencia were still in the streets Sunday, removing debris where they could.”I lost my welding machine, I lost my grinder, I have nothing,” Mardones said. “But my hands are good, thank God.”

Scorching summer heat is hard to imagine now in mid-winter Paris, but in six months’ time when the world’s athletes arrive for the Olympics, another pounding heatwave would spell trouble for organisers.A new study presenting “climate simulations to anticipate worst-case heatwaves during the Paris 2024 Olympics” has focused minds after it warned that the French capital faced a not insignificant risk of record-breaking high temperatures.The research, published in December in the Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science journal, looked at the risk of a two-week heatwave that would surpass the all-time record hot spell seen in Paris in 2003.”In 20 years, the climate has changed and the idea was to warn policymakers that something even worse than 2003 could happen, that it’s possible,” lead author Pascal Yiou told AFP.”In the 20th century, it wasn’t possible to go beyond this record, but now we cannot only equal it but surpass it with a probability that is ultimately quite high, in the region of 1/100,” he added.A separate study in the Lancet Planet Health journal last May found that Paris had the highest heat-related death rates of 854 European towns and cities, partly due to its lack of green space and dense population. The statistics were also heavily skewed by the events of 2003 when 15,000 people died, most of them vulnerable elderly people living on their own, sparking a bout of national soul-searching.- Stress testing -In the last five years, Paris has witnessed a series of blistering summers that have seen heat records crumble. A new all-time temperature peak was set in July 2019 when the Meteo-France weather service clocked 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in the capital.Organisers of the 2024 Paris Olympics, which will run from July 26 to August 11 and the Paralympics which start in late August, say they are “fully aware” of the climate-related risks to the Games.”Heatwaves and extreme weather events are factors that we take into account and that we are preparing for as much as possible, in order to take necessary action,” a spokesperson told AFP. Operational teams have run simulations looking at the consequences of shifting some outdoor events to earlier or later start times to avoid the midday heat.The athletics events, particularly the marathon, as well as tennis or beach volleyball are all seen as being vulnerable to the effects of punishing sunshine and high temperatures.Young and fit athletes might also prove more resistant than spectators who will likely face queues to enter venues and potentially hours without shade in open-air stadia.The head of the French agency responsible for building the Olympics venues, Nicolas Ferrand, reassured a Senate hearing that all indoor facilities had been built with global heating in mind.”We checked that all of our buildings would be comfortable in the summer of 2050,” he said last month, adding that the national weather office and IT consultancy firm Dassault Systemes had helped with the modelling. – A/C issue -Another area of ongoing concern is the athletes’ village in northern Paris which has been built without air conditioning as part of efforts to set new environmental standards for the Paris Games.Instead, the river-side tower blocks have a natural geo-thermal cooling systems, as well as sunshades, planted areas, and wind ventilation.They guarantee an indoor temperature at least 6.0 degrees Celsius lower than outside — something viewed as insufficient by some attending nations. “Air-conditioning at the village has been an issue,” a European diplomat involved in Olympics coordination told AFP on condition of anonymity. As a compromise, French organisers are now offering to provide portable air conditioners to visiting delegations at their expense.- Torrid Tokyo -The last Summer Olympics in Tokyo is widely thought to have been the hottest on record, with temperatures regularly above 30 Celsius coupled with 80 percent humidity.Tokyo organisers moved the race walk events and two marathons 800 kilometres (500 miles) north of Tokyo in the hope of cooler weather that did not really materialise.Despite a range of anti-heat measures including misting stations, many athletes struggled in the heat, including Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev who wondered aloud on court if he might die.Many athletes are adapting to climate change by doing more hot-weather training, either in overseas camps or in specially designed bubbles that can artificially increase heat and humidity.Speaking after Tokyo, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe warned that the “new norm” was competing in “really harsh climatic conditions”.

Paris voters on Sunday backed a proposal from the capital’s socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo to triple parking charges on hefty SUV-style cars, according to official results from city hall.Parisians voted 54.55 percent in favour of charging cars weighing 1.6 tonnes or more 18 euros ($19.50) per hour for parking in the city centre, or 12 euros further out.But only 78,000, or 5.7 percent, of the 1.3 million eligible voters bothered to vote at the 39 voting stations set up around the French capital.Hidalgo hailed a “clear choice of Parisians” in favour of a measure that is “good for our health and good for the planet”.Fully electric cars will have to top two tonnes to be affected, while people living or working in Paris, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers and people with disabilities will all be exempt.”It’s an ecological issue, but it’s also a societal issue, and it’s about how cities need to evolve in a changing environment,” said Gregoire Marchal, a 43-year-old cinema distributor, after voting in favour of the measure at a polling station in Paris’s 10th district.”I do have a car, but I think it’s great that we can ask ourselves the question and change our behaviour,” he added.Not all voters were happy.”I’m sick of all these diktaks from Mrs. Hidalgo,” said Jeannine, 75, in the wealthier 8th district, where more of the cars appear to be SUVs.- SUVs an ‘aberration’ -Hidalgo herself voted at a school in the city’s 15th district a little before 6:00 pm local time. On Hidalgo’s watch, the capital city has pedestrianised many streets, including the banks of the river Seine, and built a network of cycle lanes in an effort to discourage driving and reduce harmful transport emissions.Environmental group WWF has dubbed SUVs an “aberration”, saying they burn 15 percent more fuel than a classic coupe and cost more to build and purchase.City hall has further pointed to safety concerns about taller, heavier SUVs, which it says are “twice as deadly for pedestrians as a standard car” in an accident.The vehicles are also singled out for taking up more public space — whether on the road or while parked — than others.Paris officials say the average car has put on 250 kilogrammes (550 pounds) since 1990.Hidalgo, whose city will this summer host the 2024 Olympics, rarely misses a chance to boast of the environmental credentials of the town hall and its drive to drastically reduce car use in the centre.- 35 mn euros a year -But drivers’ groups attacked the scheme, Yves Carra of Mobilite Club France dismissing the “SUV” classification as “a marketing term” that “means nothing”.He argued that compact SUVs would not be covered by the measures, which would however hit family-sized coupes and estate cars.Conservative opposition figures on the Paris council say this imprecise targeting of the referendum “shows the extent of the manipulation by the city government”.Even among fuel-burning cars, “a new, modern SUV… does not pollute more, or even pollutes less, than a small diesel vehicle built before 2011”, said drivers’ group 40 millions d’automobilistes.France’s Environment Minister Christophe Bechu told broadcaster RTL the SUV surcharge amounted to “a kind of punitive environmentalism” — even if drivers should “opt for lighter vehicles”.Hidalgo’s transport chief David Belliard, of the Green party, says around 10 percent of vehicles in Paris would be hit by the higher parking fees, which could bring in up to 35 million euros per year.Paris’s anti-SUV push has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in France, with the Green party mayor in Lyon planning a three-tier parking fee for both residents and visitors from June.The last city referendum in Paris, on banning hop-on, hop-off rental scooters from the capital’s streets, passed in an April 2023 vote — but only drew a turnout of seven percent.

The death toll from central Chile’s blazing wildfires jumped to at least 99 people on Sunday, after President Gabriel Boric warned the number would rise “significantly” as teams search gutted neighborhoods.Responders continued to battle fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend.Rosana Avendano, a 63-year-old kitchen assistant, was away from home when the fire began to sweep through Vina del Mar, the seaside city where she lives with her husband.”It was terrible because I couldn’t get (to my house). The fire came here… we lost everything,” Avendano told AFP.”My husband was lying down and began to feel the heat of the fire coming and he ran away.”She feared the worst for hours, but eventually was able to contact him.”Not a single house was left here,” retiree Lilian Rojas, 67, told AFP of her neighborhood near the Vina del Mar botanical garden, which was also destroyed in the flames.The organization in charge of managing victims’ bodies said Sunday afternoon it had “taken in 99 people, 32 of them identified.”Speaking earlier in Quilpue, a devastated hillside community near Vina del Mar, Boric had given a toll of 64 people, but said the number was certainly “going to rise.””We know it is going to increase significantly,” he added, saying it was the country’s deadliest disaster since a 2010 earthquake and tsunami that killed 500 people. – Dead victims in the streets -Boric has declared a state of emergency, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet after he flew over the affected area in a helicopter Saturday afternoon.According to the national disaster service, SENAPRED, nearly 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) had been burned across the central and southern regions by Sunday.Supported by 31 firefighting helicopters and airplanes, some 1,400 firefighters, 1,300 military personnel and volunteers are combating the flames.SENAPRED chief Alvaro Hormazabal said firefighters were battling 34 blazes as of Sunday morning, with 43 others under control.Weather “conditions are going to continue to be complicated,” Hormazabal said. Authorities imposed a curfew beginning at 9:00 pm Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday), while thousands in the affected areas were ordered to evacuate their homes.In the hillsides around Vina del Mar, AFP reporters saw entire blocks of houses that were burned out overnight Friday into Saturday.Some of the dead were seen lying on the road, covered by sheets.- ‘Inferno’ -The fires, raging for days, forced authorities on Friday to close the road linking the Valparaiso region to the capital Santiago, about 1.5 hours away, as a huge mushroom cloud of smoke impaired visibility.Images posted online from trapped motorists showed mountains in flames at the end of the famous “Route 68” leading to the Pacific coast.According to Interior Minister Carolina Toha, the weekend blazes have been “without a doubt” the deadliest fire event in Chile’s history.”This was an inferno,” Rodrigo Pulgar, from the town of El Olivar, told AFP. “I tried to help my neighbor… my house was starting to burn behind us. It was raining ash.”During his Sunday address, Pope Francis, a native of neighboring Argentina, called for prayers for the “dead and wounded in the devastating fires in Chile.”The fires are being driven by a summer heatwave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.The rising temperatures threaten to engulf more of the continent, as brigades in Argentina have been fighting a fire that has consumed more than 3,000 hectares in Los Alerces National Park, famed for its beauty and biodiversity, since January 25.

Wildfires blazing in central Chile have now killed at least 64 people and the toll will keep rising, President Gabriel Boric said Sunday as the disaster left bodies in the streets and homes gutted.Authorities warned “complicated” conditions as they battled fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend. Rosana Avendano, a 63-year-old kitchen assistant, was away from home when the fire began to sweep through the city of Vina del Mar, where she lives with her husband.”It was terrible because I couldn’t get (to my house). The fire came here… we lost everything,” Avendano told AFP.”My husband was lying down and began to feel the heat of the fire coming and he ran away.”She feared the worst for hours, but eventually was able to contact her spouse.”We can sadly confirm that there are 64 deaths,” Boric said from Quilpue, outside the hard-hit city of Vina del Mar.”The figure is going to rise. We know it is going to increase in a significant way,” he added, saying it was the country’s deadliest disaster since a 2010 earthquake and tsunami that killed 500 people. – Death toll could rise -Boric has declared a state of emergency, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet after he flew over the affected area in a helicopter Saturday afternoon.According to the national disaster service, SENAPRED, nearly 26,000 hectares (64,000) acres had been burned across the central and southern regions by Sunday. SENAPRED chief Alvaro Hormazabal said firefighters were battling 34 blazes as of Sunday morning, with 43 others under control. Weather “conditions are going to continue to be complicated,” Hormazabal said. Authorities imposed had a curfew beginning at 9:00 pm Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday), while thousands in the affected areas were ordered to evacuate their homes. In the hillsides around Vina del Mar, AFP reporters saw entire blocks of houses that were burned out overnight Friday into Saturday.Some of the dead were seen lying on the road, covered by sheets.- ‘Inferno’ -The fires, blazing for days, forced authorities on Friday to close the road linking the Valparaiso region to the capital Santiago, about 1.5 hours away, as a huge mushroom cloud of smoke impaired visibility. Images posted online from trapped motorists showed mountains in flames at the end of the famous “Route 68” leading to the Pacific coast.According to Interior Minister Carolina Toha, the weekend blazes have been “without a doubt” the deadliest fire event in Chile’s history.”This was an inferno,” Rodrigo Pulgar, from the town of El Olivar, told AFP. “I tried to help my neighbor… my house was starting to burn behind us. It was raining ash.”The fires are being driven by a summer heatwave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.The rising temperatures threaten to engulf more of South America, as brigades in Argentina have been fighting a fire that has consumed more than 3,000 hectares in Los Alerces National Park, famed for its beauty and biodiversity, since January 25.

Parisians were voting on Sunday in a referendum on tripling parking costs for hefty SUV-style cars, a campaign that has drivers’ groups up in arms against city hall.Some 1.3 million in the French capital are eligible to cast their ballot on the change, which would see cars weighing 1.6 tonnes or more charged 18 euros ($19.50) per hour for parking in central areas, or 12 euros further out.Fully electric cars would have to top two tonnes to be affected, while people living or working in Paris, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers and people with disabilities would all be exempt.”The bigger they are, the more they pollute,” Paris’s Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo said in December to justify the step.Most people at one polling station in the city’s 10th district on Sunday said they were voting in favour of the higher fees.”It’s an ecological issue, but it’s also a societal issue, and it’s about how cities need to evolve in a changing environment,” said Gregoire Marchal, a 43-year-old cinema distributor.”I do have a car, but I think it’s great that we can ask ourselves the question and change our behaviour,” he added.On Hidalgo’s watch, the capital city has pedestrianised many streets, including the banks of the river Seine, and built a network of cycle lanes in an effort to discourage driving and reduce harmful transport emissions.Environmental group WWF has dubbed SUVs an “aberration”, saying they burn 15 percent more fuel than a classic coupe and cost more to build and purchase.City hall has further pointed to safety concerns about taller, heavier SUVs, which it says are “twice as deadly for pedestrians as a standard car” in an accident.The vehicles are also singled out for taking up more public space — whether on the road or while parked — than others.Paris authorities say the average car has put on 250 kilogrammes (550 pounds) since 1990.Hidalgo, whose city will this summer host the 2024 Olympics, rarely misses a chance to boast of the environmental credentials of the town hall and its drive to drastically reduce car use in the centre.- 35 mn euros per year -But drivers’ groups have attacked the scheme, with Yves Carra of Mobilite Club France saying the “SUV” classification is “a marketing term” that “means nothing”.He argued that compact SUVs would not be covered by the measures, which would however hit family-sized coupes and estate cars.Conservative opposition figures on the Paris council say this imprecise targeting of the referendum “shows the extent of the manipulation by the city government”.Even among fuel-burning cars, “a new, modern SUV… does not pollute more, or even pollutes less, than a small diesel vehicle built before 2011″, said drivers’ group 40 millions d’automobilistes.”We’re fed up with Hidalgo’s decrees from on high,” said Jeannine, a 75-year-old voting in Paris’s upscale eighth district who asked to withhold her family name.”All these environmentalists are killing us,” she added.France’s Environment Minister Christophe Bechu told broadcaster RTL the SUV surcharge amounted to “a kind of punitive environmentalism” — even if drivers should “opt for lighter vehicles”.Hidalgo’s transport chief David Belliard, of the Green party, says around 10 percent of vehicles in Paris would be hit by the higher parking fees, which could bring in up to 35 million euros per year.Paris’s anti-SUV push has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in France, with the Green party mayor in Lyon planning a three-tier parking fee for both residents and visitors from June.The last city referendum in Paris, on banning hop-on, hop-off rental scooters from the capital’s streets, passed in an April 2023 vote — but only drew a turnout of seven percent.

Chileans Sunday feared a rise in the death toll from wildfires blazing across the South American country that have already killed at least 51 people, leaving bodies in the street and homes gutted.Authorities warned Sunday of “complicated” conditions as they battled fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend. Dense gray smoke blanketed the city of Vina del Mar on the country’s central coast Saturday, forcing residents to flee.Rosana Avendano, a 63-year-old kitchen assistant, was away from home when the fire began to sweep through the El Olivar neighborhood, where she lives with her husband.”It was terrible because I couldn’t get (to my house). The fire came here… we lost everything,” Avendano told AFP.”My husband was lying down and began to feel the heat of the fire coming and he ran away.”She feared the worst for hours, but eventually was able to contact her spouse.At least 51 people have been killed, authorities said, including six who succumbed to their injuries after being rescued. – Death toll could rise -President Gabriel Boric, who declared a state of emergency, warned the number of victims would likely increase, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet after he flew over the affected area in a helicopter Saturday afternoon.According to the national disaster service, SENAPRED, nearly 26,000 hectares (64,000) acres had been burned across the central and southern regions by Sunday. SENAPRED chief Alvaro Hormazabal said firefighters were battling 34 blazes as of Sunday morning, with 43 under control. Weather “conditions are going to continue to be complicated,” Hormazabal said. Authorities imposed had a curfew beginning at 9:00 pm Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday), while thousands in the affected areas were ordered to evacuate their homes. In the hillsides around Vina del Mar, AFP reporters saw entire blocks of houses that were burned out overnight Friday into Saturday.Some of the dead were seen lying on the road, covered by sheets.- ‘Inferno’ -The fires, blazing for days, forced authorities on Friday to close the road linking the Valparaiso region to the capital Santiago, about 1.5 hours away, as a huge mushroom cloud of smoke impaired visibility. Images posted online from trapped motorists showed mountains in flames at the end of the famous “Route 68” leading to the Pacific coast.According to Interior Minister Carolina Toha, the weekend blazes have been “without a doubt” the deadliest fire event in Chile’s history.”This was an inferno,” Rodrigo Pulgar, from the town of El Olivar, told AFP. “I tried to help my neighbor… my house was starting to burn behind us. It was raining ash.”The fires are being driven by a summer heatwave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.The rising temperatures threaten to engulf more of South America, as brigades in Argentina have been fighting a fire that has consumed more than 3,000 hectares in Los Alerces National Park, famed for its beauty and biodiversity, since January 25.

Turkey on Tuesday holds pre-dawn vigils for the loss of more than 50,000 people — and parts of entire cities — in the earthquake-prone country’s deadliest disaster of modern times.Grieving Turks are still coming to terms with how a 7.8-magnitude tremor could upturn the lives of millions of people in a matter of seconds while they were still asleep.An updated toll released Friday showed that 53,537 people had died across 11 southeastern provinces officially designated as the disaster zone.The confirmed loss of 5,951 more lives in neighbouring Syria makes last year’s February 6 earthquake one of the 10 deadliest in the world in the past 100 years.Ancient cities such as Antakya have been effectively wiped off the map.Others have gaping holes in place of apartment towers that toppled like houses of cards when the ground began to move at 4:17 am.Shellshocked survivors stood outside in the freezing cold in their pyjamas and listened to those trapped under concrete slabs of debris scream in agonising pain.”It’s been a year, but it doesn’t leave our minds,” housewife Cagla Demirel told AFP in one of the container camps set up for hundreds of thousands of survivors in Antakya.”Life has lost its spark,” the 31-year-old said. “I have no family left to visit, no door to knock on, no pleasant place to be. Nothing remains.”- ‘Can you hear us?’ -Antakya’s remaining residents plan to gather on Tuesday at 4:17 am for a vigil that will see everyone cry out: “Can you hear us?”The call became ubiquitous across the disaster zone as people searched for loved ones in the rubble.But it also appears to be a nuanced reminder for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government that many in the quake zone feel left behind.Analysts at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) point out that the disaster struck an area already weighted down by unemployment and underinvestment.”Some districts in the region have the highest poverty rate in Turkey,” TEPAV said in a report.Erdogan pushed back hard against complaints that government rescuers were unprepared and slow to respond.He has branded the quake “the catastrophe of the century” that no nation could have averted or quickly overcome.He crisscrossed the nation in the first weeks of the disaster and promised to deliver 650,000 new housing units within a year.- ‘No return to normal’ -He began to hand out keys in Antakya on Saturday for the first 7,000 apartments of the 46,000 ready to be delivered across the quake zone this month.He said up to 20,000 units would be delivered monthly and 200,000 by the end of the year — short of his initial promise but still impressive for a region hit by post-quake chaos.”Of course, we cannot bring back the lives we lost, but we can compensate all the other losses,” Erdogan told Antakya residents on Saturday.”We made promises to do so.”But Erdogan’s words offer little solace to people such as ice cream vendor Kadir Yeniceli.The 70-year-old native of Kahramanmaras — a hard-hit city where Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party enjoys overwhelming support — said people feel “confused” about what happens next.”There has been no return to normal,” Yeniceli told AFP. “It remains the same, there is no progress. There is a lack of employment, there is a lack of money, there is a lack of income.”- ‘Much to be done’ -Erdogan’s housing pledges came in the runup to a May 2023 general election that turned into the toughest of his two-decade rule.He prevailed in a runoff presidential ballot thanks to consistent support across much of the disaster zone.Many voters expressed a lack of trust in the opposition and thought Erdogan’s government was doing the best anyone could do under the circumstances.But many voters and analysts point out that Turkey is no better prepared for another big shake than it was one year ago.The country straddles two of the world’s most active fault lines and is rattled almost daily by more minor quakes.And hundreds of contractors are currently facing prosecution for allegedly skirting the building safety standards already in place.”The country urgently needs to transition from crisis management to risk management,” said Istanbul Technical University disaster management professor Mikdat Kadioglu.”There is still much to be done.”