World

The Dutch joined Germany and Austria in reverting to coal power on Monday following an energy crisis provoked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Netherlands said it would lift all restrictions on power stations fired by the fossil fuel, which were previously limited to just over a third of output.

Berlin and Vienna made similar announcements on Sunday as Moscow, facing biting sanctions over Ukraine, cuts gas supplies to energy-starved Europe.

“The cabinet has decided to immediately withdraw the restriction on production for coal-fired power stations from 2002 to 2024,” Dutch climate and energy minister Rob Jetten told journalists in The Hague.

The Dutch minister said his country had “prepared this decision with our European colleagues over the past few days”.

Germany however said it still aimed to close its coal power plants by 2030, in light of the greater emissions of climate-changing CO2 from the fossil fuel.

“The 2030 coal exit date is not in doubt at all,” economy ministry spokesman Stephan Gabriel Haufe said at a regular news conference.

The target was “more important than ever”, he added.

– ‘More countries being squeezed’ –

Russia’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbour has sent global prices for energy soaring and raised the prospect of shortages if supplies were to be cut off. 

Russian energy giant Gazprom has already stopped deliveries to a number of European countries, including Poland, Bulgaria, Finland and the Netherlands.

Germany’s reliance on Russian energy imports has made it particularly vulnerable as Moscow looks for leverage against the West.

The Dutch are less reliant, depending on Russia for around 15 percent of their gas supplies compared to the EU average of 40 percent. But they are still concerned.

“I want to emphasise that at the moment there’s no acute gas shortage,” Dutch minister Jetten said. “However, more countries are now being squeezed (by Russia). That worries us.” 

The Dutch government said it was also making an “urgent appeal” to companies and business to save as much energy as possible ahead of the winter.

Germany’s decision to power up its coal power plants came after Gazprom cut deliveries to Germany via the Nord Stream gas pipeline last week.

The move, presented by Gazprom as a technical issue, has been criticised as “political” by Berlin. 

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, a Green party politician, described the decision to revert to coal as “bitter, but indispensable for reducing gas consumption”.

– ‘Unexpected situation’ –

Austria’s government meanwhile announced Sunday that it would reopen a mothballed coal power station because of power shortages arising from reduced deliveries of gas from Russia.

The authorities would work with the Verbund group, the country’s main electricity supplier, to get the station in the southern city of Mellach back in action, said the Chancellery.

The European Commission noted Monday that “some of the existing coal capacities might be used longer than initially expected” because of the new energy landscape in Europe.   

“We know that the energy mix and the plans of member states will adjust slightly because we are in an unexpected situation,” Commission spokesman Tim McPhie said at a press briefing. 

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has managed to reduce the share of its natural gas supplied by Russia from 55 percent before the invasion to 35 percent.

The government has also mandated the filling of gas reserves to 90 percent ahead of the European winter at the end of the year, to hedge against a further reduction in supply.

Germany’s government, a coalition between the Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens, aims “ideally” to close all coal power plants by 2030.

Their agreement, reached at the end of last year, brought forward the previous government’s aim to shut the plants by 2038.

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Colombia’s outgoing conservative President Ivan Duque on Monday promised a “transparent and efficient” transition to the new administration led by Gustavo Petro.

Ex-guerrilla Petro, 62, made history on Sunday when he was elected as the first left-wing president in the crisis-torn South American country’s history.

But with Duque and Petro occupying polar opposites on the political spectrum, there are fears the transition could be tense.

“Yesterday, we Colombians went to the polls, we expressed our points of view and the first thing one must recognize to defend democracy is the popular will,” said Duque on Twitter.

“To the new president @petrogustavo, I expressed my support for a transparent and efficient transition.”

Petro garnered 50.4 percent of the vote in Sunday’s runoff, with millionnaire businessman Rodolfo Hernandez on 47.3 percent, missing out by 700,000 votes.

Hernandez immediately recognized his defeat as Petro ended 200 years of conservative and liberal political dominance.

In his victory speech, Petro promised “real change” for his country, based on “peace, social justice and environmental justice.”

He vowed to “leave hatred behind, leave sectarianism behind.”

Petro celebrated his victory in a huge theater in Bogota while thousands of his supporters descended on a rainy historic square in the center of the capital to rejoice.

The announcement of environmental activist and feminist Francia Marquez as the new vice-president was met with joy in her home town of Suarez in the southwestern department of Cauca.

As the first black woman to be elected to that post, her success was celebrated throughout communities with significant populations of Afro-descent, who make up around 10 percent of the country’s 50 million people.

On Monday morning, El Espectador ran a headline lauding the “historic change,” while also pointing to the many challenges facing Petro.

Former president Alvaro Uribe (2001-10), speaking on behalf of the traditional right-wing, which suffered a humbling first round defeat last month, said Petro would face determined opposition.

“To defend democracy, you have to respect it. Gustavo Petro is the president. One feeling must guide us: Colombia first,” said Uribe on Twitter.

“A difficult stage in the national life is about to begin and we must prepare to face it with the necessary tenacity to defend our principles and values,” added senator Maria Fernanda Cabal.

“It is not the time to conform, it is time to fight for our freedom.”

Petro will assume office on August 7.

Dmitry Muratov, the Russian editor in chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, on Monday will auction off his Nobel Peace Prize gold medal to benefit children displaced by the war in Ukraine.

Muratov won the prize in 2021 alongside journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines, with the committee honoring them “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.”

Muratov’s paper in March suspended operations in Russia, after Moscow adopted legislation providing for tough jail terms against anyone criticizing the Kremlin’s bloody military campaign in Ukraine.

Muratov was among a group of journalists who founded Novaya Gazeta in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union. This year it became the only major newspaper left voicing criticism of President Vladimir Putin and his tactics inside and outside the country.

The announcement that it was suspending operations came more than a month into Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Heritage Auctions is handling the sale of Muratov’s Nobel Medal, which is on the block both online and in person, with the final sale slated for Monday evening in Manhattan.

As of Monday morning the bid stood at $550,000. The proceeds will go to UNICEF’s Humanitarian Response for Ukrainian Children Displaced by War.

In April Muratov was assaulted on a train when a person threw oil-based paint mixed with acetone on him, causing his eyes to burn.

Since 2000, six of Novaya Gazeta’s journalists and collaborators have been killed in connection with their work, including investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

Muratov has dedicated his Nobel Prize to their memory.

“This newspaper is dangerous for people’s lives,” Muratov told AFP last year. “We are not going anywhere.”

Speaking in a video released by Heritage, the prominent journalist said that winning the Nobel “gives you an opportunity to be heard.”

“The most important message today is for people to understand that there’s a war going on and we need to help people who are suffering the most,” he continued, pointing specifically to children in refugee families.

US President Joe Biden said Monday he will probably not visit Ukraine during a trip to Europe that starts this week.

Biden first said “that depends” when asked if he planned to visit Ukraine.

But then he said “on this trip, not likely,” as he spoke to reporters who pressed him about such a possibility as he strolled on the beach during a long holiday weekend.

Biden is among a shrinking number of major Western leaders who have not yet visited Ukraine to show support against the Russian invasion.

Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron joined the prime ministers of Germany and Italy in visiting Ukraine, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been there twice.

Biden did go as far as Poland, which borders Ukraine to the west, in late March.

Biden is heading to Germany on Saturday for a Group of Seven Summit, then on to Madrid for a meeting of NATO leaders.

He told reporters a visit to Ukraine would depend on “a lot of things, whether or not it causes more difficulties for Ukrainians, whether it distracts from what’s going on.”

Then he said such a trip is unlikely during this tour of Europe.

Biden said he is close contact with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking to him “almost four times a week.”    

Julian Assange’s father and brother on Monday called on the German government to ask US President Joe Biden to drop the case against the WikiLeaks founder.

“The German government should express to President Biden their concern about this case and they should request that it should be dropped,” said Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, at a press briefing in Berlin. 

The British government on Friday approved Assange’s extradition to the United States, to the dismay of his supporters and free press campaigners.

He is wanted to face trial for violating the US Espionage Act by publishing military and diplomatic files in 2010 and could face up to 175 years in jail if found guilty.

The Assange case has become a cause celebre for media freedom and his supporters accuse Washington of trying to muzzle reporting of legitimate security concerns.

“I’ve always felt that acquiescence, doing nothing, is complicity. Being invisible in the case of Julian Assange is complicity,” said Assange’s father John Shipton, also at the press briefing.

The pair called on Germany to use its influence in NATO and the upcoming Group of Seven leaders’ meeting in Bavaria to push Assange’s cause.

“When you’re attempting to speak to Russia about press freedom (but also) endorsing the extradition of a journalist and publisher for doing their job, you lose standing in these situations,” Gabriel Shipton added.

– A ‘legal process’ –

Assange’s brother and father were due to attend a meeting in the German foreign ministry later on Monday and on Tuesday will meet members of a parliamentary group formed in support of Assange. 

But government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit on Monday said he could not see how Germany would intervene on a political level in legal proceedings in another country.

“This is a legal process that is already in motion, so I would be a little wary of political intervention,” he said, adding that Germany would continue to keep a close eye on the case.

Assange has been held on remand at a top-security jail in southeast London since 2019 for jumping bail in a previous case accusing him of sexual assault in Sweden.

Before that he spent seven years at Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid being removed to Sweden.

He was arrested when the government changed in Quito and his diplomatic protection was removed.

A heat wave that baked much of the central United States last week will start to move eastward with dangerously high temperatures, forecasters said Monday.

The National Weather Service told Americans to gird for another day of well above normal, near-record or even record-breaking heat from the central Plains to the Upper Midwest.

“Dangerous heat will continue to make headlines,” the service said in an advisory.

The scorching blast will start to drift eastward Tuesday into the Great Lakes region with highs in the upper 90s Fahrenheit (mid 30s Celsius) which is up to 20 degrees F above normal.

Around 120 million people were under some sort of advisory last week as a heat wave burned the Upper Midwest and the Southeast. 

This stemmed from what forecasters called a dome of high pressure, with wild weather such as thunderstorms, flash flooding and extreme rainfall erupting around its edges.

Yellowstone National Park, the oldest in the United States, closed down last week because of extensive flood damage as roads were washed away.

Torrential rainfall and snowmelt sent months’ worth of run-off into rivers in just a couple of days. The sprawling park sits mainly in Wyoming and is home to the Old Faithful geyser.

Helicopters were used to rescue nearly 90 people.

The park said its southern section will reopen to visitors on Wednesday. Park officials say other parts will remain closed for the rest of the season.

As heat scorched the southwest, in Arizona a wildfire burning its way up a mountainside consumed four buildings at the Kitt Peak National Observatory but they apparently did not contain telescopes or other scientific equipment, officials said.

“This is the most threatening fire I can remember at Kitt Peak in the last 25 years,” said Buell Jannuzi, who heads the University of Arizona astronomy department, according to ABC News. 

The university is a tenant at the observatory, which is operated by the National Science Foundation.