ATHENS: After Greece’s warmest winter and earliest heatwave on record, authorities are sounding the alarm over the risk of dire water shortages in the heat of the Mediterranean summer.
“Would you like some water? Turn off the tap!” one public service announcement in Athens implores; another daily spot urges the capital’s residents to not fill their bath all the way to the top.
Already, there are signs that habits may need to change.
At the beginning of July, the Mornos reservoir around 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Athens, the main water source for the Attica region surrounding the capital, levels were down 30 percent from the same period last year.
And overall reserves for Attica were down by nearly a quarter over the same period, according to the water utility company EYDAP.
Home to more than a third of Greece’s population, the region of 3.7 million inhabitants was recently placed on “yellow alert” by EYDAP, which urged people to reduce consumption to keep reserves at a sustainable level.
Across Greece’s islands, which tend to rely on wells and desalination plants to meet water needs, the problem is even more acute.
Added pressure comes from the millions of tourists who flock to the country’s beaches each summer, swelling the local populations.
On some islands suffering from overtourism, the demand for water in summer “is sometimes 100 times greater than in winter,” Nikitas Mylopoulos, a professor of water resource management at the University of Thessaly, told AFP.
Mylopoulos said the problem of mass tourism was being compounded by poor water management.
At the end of June, a month-long state of emergency was declared for the Dodecanese island of Leros.
The island’s council noted malfunctions at the desalination plant, alleging “poor maintenance in the past.”
Other islands threatened by water scarcity include Sifnos in the Cyclades, Chios in the north Aegean and Lefkada and Corfu in the Ionian Sea.
Sifnos’s mayor, Maria Nadali, has criticized “the over-consumption of water for swimming pools and watering large gardens.”
On Lefkada, Michalis Makropoulos, a local resident and author, denounced a “deplorable” situation where “the water was cut off at the end of June for four consecutive days.”
In a local newspaper article, he blamed the problem on “years of mismanagement by the municipal authorities” and the “uncontrolled development of tourism without adequate infrastructure.”
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis traveled to Lefkada in July to announce “one of the largest water supply projects in Greece to cover the needs.”
The water shortfalls have been made worse by intense heat, which scientists say is at least in part a result of human-driven climate change.
The mildest Greek winter on record has been followed by higher average temperatures this spring.
Last month, the country’s earliest-ever heatwave resulted in the hottest June since 1960, with temperatures reaching 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in many parts of the country.
The heat has also sparked an increase in wildfires, with more than a thousand recorded last month, more than double the number in the same month last year, authorities say.
The head of the water utility EYDAP, Charalambos Sachinis, has said a “special plan” had been drawn up “to deal with extreme water shortages,” including investments of around 750 million euros ($819 million).
Elissavet Feloni, a hydrologist at the National Technical University of Athens, said the company was also planning to tap Lake Yliki, around 85 kilometers northwest of Athens, as an additional emergency source alongside the main Mornos reservoir.
“However, this is an energy-intensive solution because the water has to be pumped up, whereas the Mornos stream has a natural gradient,” she said.
“For better water management, a central body needs to be set up to develop a comprehensive approach to resources across the country,” she said.
Greece fears water shortages after warmest winter ever
https://arab.news/b7n2k
Greece fears water shortages after warmest winter ever
![](https://www.arabnews.pk/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/main-image/2024/07/15/4467341-1642899520.jpg?itok=iNRhcevc)
- “Would you like some water? Turn off the tap!” one public service announcement in Athens implores; another daily spot urges the capital’s residents to not fill their bath all the way to the top
China accuses the Philippines of deliberately crashing one of its ships into a Chinese vessel near disputed shoal
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- China’s coast guard claims the Philippine Navy ships ignored its warning and “deliberately collided” with one of China’s boats
- Chinese ships had repeatedly tried to stop Philippine vessels trying to resupply its station in in one of the disputed shoals
TAIPEI, Taiwan: China’s coast guard accused the Philippines of deliberately crashing one of its ships into a Chinese vessel early Monday near Sabina Shoal, a new flashpoint in the increasingly alarming territorial disputes between the countries in the South China Sea.
Two Philippine coast guard ships entered waters near the shoal, ignored the Chinese coast guard’s warning and “deliberately collided” with one of China’s boats at 3:24 a.m., a spokesperson said in a statement on the Chinese coast guard’s website.
Philippine authorities did not immediately comment on the encounter near the disputed atoll in the Spratly Islands, where overlapping claims are also made by Vietnam and Taiwan.
“The Philippine side is entirely responsible for the collision,” spokesman Gan Yu said. “We warn the Philippine side to immediately stop its infringement and provocation, otherwise it will bear all the consequences arising from that.”
Gan added China claimed “indisputable sovereignty” over the Spratly Islands, known in Chinese as Nansha Islands, including Sabina Shoal and its adjacent waters. The Chinese name for Sabina Shoal is Xianbin Reef.
In a separate statement, he said the Philippine ship that was turned away from Sabina Shoal entered waters near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, ignoring the Chinese coast guard’s warnings. “The Chinese coast guard took control measures against the Philippine ship in accordance with law and regulation,” he added.
Sabina Shoal, which lies about 140 kilometers (87 miles) west of the Philippines’ western island province of Palawan, has become a new flashpoint in the territorial disputes between China and the Philippines.
The Philippine coast guard deployed one of its key patrol ships, the BRP Teresa Magbanua, to Sabina in April after Filipino scientists discovered submerged piles of crushed corals in its shallows which sparked suspicions that China may be bracing to build a structure in the atoll. The Chinese coast guard later deployed a ship to Sabina.
Sabina lies near the Philippine-occupied Second Thomas Shoal, which has been the scene of increasingly alarming confrontations between Chinese and Philippine coast guard ships and accompanying vessels since last year.
China and the Philippines reached an agreement last month to prevent further confrontations when the Philippines transports new batches of sentry forces, along with food and other supplies, to Manila’s territorial outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal, which has been closely guarded by Chinese coast guard, navy and suspected militia ships.
The Philippine navy transported food and personnel to the Second Thomas Shoal a week after the deal was reached and no incident was reported, sparking hope that tensions in the shoal would eventually ease.
Russia files claims with Germany on Nord Stream attack investigation, RIA reports
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Russia has filed claims with Germany regarding the investigation into the 2022 explosions of the Nord Stream pipelines, RIA news agency reported on Monday, citing a Russian foreign ministry official.
“We have raised the issue of Germany and other affected countries fulfilling their obligations under the UN anti-terrorist conventions,” RIA cited Oleg Tyapkin, the head of a European department at the Russian foreign ministry, as saying.
“We have officially made corresponding claims on this matter bilaterally, including to Berlin.”
Pakistani hero in London stabbing incident calls for unity after far-right unrest
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- Abdullah, a security guard at a tea shop in London’s Leicester Square, was honored for tackling a rioter who attacked a 34-year-old mother and her daughter
LONDON: A Pakistan-born man who went viral after intervening in a knife attack in London’s busy theater district last week has called for unity following far-right riots that recently swept across the UK.
The unrest, which lasted for a week, erupted following a knife attack on children in Southport. False information quickly spread on social media, wrongly accusing a Muslim asylum seeker of the crime.
“Everyone was concerned, scared. They were scared of going to the mosque. They were not able to do their religious obligations,” Abdullah, who lives in London, told the Guardian. “Especially my friends who are living in Manchester and in the north, they were more concerned because there were more protests over there.”
Abdullah, who only wished to give his first name to media, had recently moved to the UK to pursue a master’s degree in project management after growing up in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
He unexpectedly found himself at the center of another shocking incident just days after the riots subsided.
In London’s Leicester Square, a 34-year-old mother and her 11-year-old daughter were attacked, leaving the child with serious stab wounds. Abdullah, working as a security guard at a nearby tea shop, bravely tackled the 32-year-old attacker, who has since been charged with attempted murder.
Abdullah, who started working as a security guard in December 2023 after struggling to secure a job in project management, expressed his deep concern for his and his community’s safety amid the spread of far-right violence across England, Northern Ireland, and Wales.
“First of all, in that (Southport) incident, it had nothing to do with Muslims, or it had nothing to do with the Pakistani or Asian community. If it’s an individual act, we should deal with it as an individual act, not as a whole community or as a religion,” he told the Guardian.
Abdullah also voiced his concern over the influence of far-right figures like Tommy Robinson, who he said was spreading misinformation: “He needs to be responsible for whatever he’s saying because he has so much [of a] following, it makes it a risk for me as well. It is a security risk for me.”
Since the incident, Abdullah has been widely praised for his bravery, including being recognized by the Pakistani High Commission.
“They’re saying: ‘Well done Abdullah, hero of Leicester Square’,” he said. “All of my relatives, friends are going to my home (in Pakistan) and meeting my parents, my siblings. It’s just like Eid, people are coming there and celebrating like: ‘Your son has made our whole country proud’.”
He added: “After the (Leicester Square) incident, it’s proved that we Muslims, we Pakistanis, we Asians are peaceful. We are here to save people. We are here to protect the English community, our own community. This is our country, we came here as a choice so we are protectors, not attackers.”
Abdullah hopes to apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK and secure a job in project management. “I would love to stay in this country because I love this country.”
Conservative peer Aamer Sarfraz described Abdullah as a “real-life hero” whose “actions have single-handedly shut down the narrative of the far-right protesters”.
“His bravery also sheds light on the largely unsung workforce of security guards, who protect us every day, without ever really being recognised,” Lord Sarfraz added.
Harris implies Trump a ‘coward’ during Pennsylvania campaign appearance
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- “Anybody who’s about beating down other people is a coward,” Harris said in a campaign rally in Pennsylvania
- Rejecting advice not to go personal, Trump had repeatedly referred to Harris as a “radical” and a “lunatic”
ROCHESTER, Pennsylvania: US Vice President Kamala Harris indirectly criticized former President Donald Trump on Sunday, suggesting her opponent in the Nov. 5 election was a “coward” whose politics focused on putting down rivals.
The remarks came in a campaign appearance in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania with running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, before Harris heads to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which kicks off Monday.
“Over the last several years there’s been this kind of perversion that has taken place, I think, which is to suggest that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down. When what we know is the real and true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up,” Harris told a crowd of supporters. “Anybody who’s about beating down other people is a coward.”
She did not directly name Trump, who in a campaign appearance Saturday in eastern Pennsylvania referred to Harris as a “radical” and a “lunatic.”
Opinion polls have shown Harris bringing fresh energy to the campaign and closing the gap with former President Trump both nationally and in many of the eight highly competitive states including Pennsylvania that will play a decisive role in picking Democratic President Joe Biden’s successor.
Harris, who is Black and has Asian heritage, will be the first woman president if she wins in November.
Trump on Saturday said he believed she would be easier to beat than Biden, 81, who dropped out last month under pressure from his own party after a disastrous debate against Trump.
Pennsylvania was one of three Rust Belt states, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, that helped power Republican Trump’s upset victory in the 2016 election.
Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, flipped the trio back to the Democrats in 2020, and Harris aims to hold on to them.
Sources said on Saturday that she is likely to join Biden on stage at the convention on Monday as he passes the torch to her as the party’s nominee for president.
The Trump campaign will try to counter-program the convention with a series of swing-state events this week. He will visit a manufacturing facility in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday, where his campaign says he will focus on the economy, and a county sheriff’s office in Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday to talk about safety and crime.
Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, will travel to Asheboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday for remarks on national security, and on Friday Trump will join Turning Point Action, a group founded by conservative activist Charlie Kirk, for a rally in Glendale, Arizona, aimed in part at highlighting efforts to boost turnout.
Trump supporters said they hope he will refocus his campaign on policy rather than the repeated personal attacks against Harris he has leaned heavily on in the weeks since she emerged as the Democratic candidate.
“President Trump can win this election. His policies are good for America and if you have a policy debate he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Policy is the key to the White House.”
What foiled Taylor Swift concert attack plot says about Daesh threat to Europe
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- Three young men were arrested by Austrian police on Aug. 7 for allegedly planning to target event in Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium
- The plot, which echoed earlier attacks on European concert venues, showed the allure Daesh still holds for alienated youths
ATHENS: Taylor Swift fans were left disappointed earlier this month by news that the American pop star’s long-awaited tour dates in the Austrian capital, Vienna, were to be canceled owing to a terrorist threat to the concert venue by Daesh sympathizers.
On Aug. 7, Austrian authorities arrested three youths, aged 19, 17 and 15, who they claimed were involved in, or had knowledge of, a terrorist plot to attack the Ernst Happel Stadium where Swift was due to perform over the Aug. 8-10 period.
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After searching the home of the 19-year-old suspect, an Austrian national with North Macedonian heritage, police found an array of edged weapons and bomb-making materials, counterfeit cash and Daesh propaganda.
Although the suspects had been taken into police custody, Swift’s promoter Barracuda Music decided to cancel the superstar’s three-date run of her Eras Tour, which was expected to attract 65,000 fans inside the stadium at each concert and 30,000 onlookers outside.
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The decision was deemed prudent, especially given Daesh’s track record of attacking European concert venues. The group killed 90 at the Bataclan theater in Paris, France, in 2015. Two years later, a Daesh suicide bomber killed 22 at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.
Most recently, in March of this year, a massive, coordinated attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall by Daesh’s Central Asian branch, Islamic State in Khorasan, or IS-K, killed 145 people and injured more than 500.
What is surprising about the Vienna plot, however, is Daesh’s ability to continue recruiting followers in Western nations — long after its territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria in 2019 and despite international efforts to smash its leadership, financing networks and online presence.
“I’m not so surprised that there are still young people who join Daesh and want to do something in Europe,” Thomas Schmidinger, a Vienna-based political scientist and expert in extremism and deradicalization, told Arab News.
“I think the failure of Daesh as a state project in Iraq and Syria may have even increased the danger of terrorist attacks in Europe, because, in 2014 and 2015, people were going to Syria to join Daesh there. Now there is no more existing state project, but the organization continues to exist. The reasons why young people were attracted by this ideology are still here.”
![](https://www.arabnews.com/sites/default/files/pictures/August/20/2024/daesh_fighters.jpg)
Schmidinger, however, believes it may have been a mistake to cancel Swift’s Vienna tour dates as doing so might encourage Daesh to threaten other such events in the future.
“The way the organizers of the concert reacted was actually a victory for the terrorists, because the Austrian police did catch the possible perpetrators and there was no reason to cancel the event,” he said. “This cancelation is now at least a propaganda victory for Daesh.”
Although authorities are desperate to avoid a repeat of the attacks in Paris, Manchester and Moscow, analysts say coordinated attacks of this scale are likely to be rare. Indeed, the majority of Daesh-inspired activities in the West, particularly in recent years, can be attributed to self-radicalized individuals acting of their own accord.
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rescuers working inside the Crocus City Hall, a day after a gun attack in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow. (Handout via AFP/File)
You can tell the difference between someone who was inspired by Daesh, or just said they were Daesh, versus the ones who actually were Daesh,” Mia Bloom, professor of communication and Middle East studies at Georgia State University, told Arab News.
“There are degrees to which people claim Daesh affiliation and loyalty. They make this baya, or pledge of allegiance, to Daesh, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that Daesh has accepted it.
“For example, you can have people who are radicalized online who engage in a violent attack and they say they were inspired by watching beheading videos or propaganda that they’ve consumed.
“That’s very different from what we saw at the Bataclan in France, or in Charlie Hebdo, or in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where the perpetrators were trained in a Daesh camp. Daesh funded it, and Daesh live-streamed it on GoPro cameras.”
![](https://www.arabnews.com/sites/default/files/pictures/August/20/2024/bataclan.jpg)
Europe is not alone in facing an ongoing threat from Daesh. Although attacks in the US have been less common, the perpetrators of the 2015 shooting in San Bernardino, California, which left 16 dead, had pledged allegiance to Daesh on Facebook. A year later, a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, claimed 49 lives.
However, there was no evidence that Daesh planned either attack.
“Daesh put out infographics on their successes from around 2014 to 2019,” said Bloom. “They put out a map of the US showing the attacks for which they were responsible, and they put Orlando in California and San Bernardino in Florida.
“If you don’t even know where the attack was, you probably weren’t responsible for it.”
INNUMBERS
• 28 Completed, failed or foiled terrorist attacks recorded in the EU in 2022.
• 380 People arrested by EU member states for terrorism-related offenses in 2022.
Source: Europol
Just last week, two Somali refugees living in Arizona pleaded guilty to attempting to join Daesh. The men, who were arrested in 2019, had allegedly made plans to travel to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, with one stating his wish to martyr himself and to become “the beheading guy.”
A June report by NBC highlighted the Department of Homeland Security’s identification of 400 Central Asian immigrants who may have been brought to the US by a Daesh-affiliated human smuggling network.
Though some of these individuals have been found, the department claims the whereabouts of at least 50 are still unknown.
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“Particularly through illegal immigration routes, that means most of the southern border, there has been an influx of people who have some degree of connection to Daesh,” Lorenzo Vidino, director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told Arab News.
“This doesn’t mean that everybody smuggled in was Daesh, but nonetheless, the smuggling network had a Daesh connection, and so some individuals who have been arrested in the US have come through those routes and have known Daesh links.”
While Daesh may be able to infiltrate Western countries from overseas, Vidino says the number of native-born, self-radicalized individuals is likely to be far higher.
“If you look historically at the attacks that we’ve seen in the US over the last 10 years, most of them were perpetrated by Americans, not those who were smuggled through the southern border,” he said.
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More than five years since Daesh’s defeat in its last territorial holdout of Baghouz in eastern Syria, many wonder what is drawing new recruits to the group. According to Schmidinger, there is rarely a single reason.
“The biographies of young men who join Daesh are very diverse,” he said.
“These are people who went through strong alienation from their societies. The reasons for this alienation are different. It can be psychological problems, it can be related to racism and anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, it can be related to the failure of their educational or professional careers. It can be related to problems with their sexual orientation.
“There are different concrete reasons. But what they have in common is this alienation from European societies.”
![](https://www.arabnews.com/sites/default/files/pictures/August/20/2024/eu_foreign_fighters.jpg)
He added: “Daesh was here at the moment that they were searching for meaning, belonging and the ability to intervene in history. So you have a lot of people who feel powerless. They have the feeling that by perpetrating, for example, a terrorist attack, or by threatening European societies, they get power. They become masters of their own history.
“Especially for people who feel completely alienated and powerless, this is an attractive opportunity that gives them a kind of empowerment. I think one of the big problems for these people is that there is no other radical but humanistic alternative for them.”
Although Daesh and other extremist entities continue to pose a threat to Western states, there are ways to undermine their attack potential by eliminating their safe havens in the world’s ungoverned and unstable spaces.
Tens of thousands of Daesh-linked individuals are held in prisons and camps across northeast Syria, guarded by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. However, these facilities have witnessed frequent violence and escape attempts.
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Sympathizers in Europe have even organized fundraising campaigns to help Daesh-affiliated women held in these camps to support themselves and even to smuggle themselves out.
Siyamend Ali, a spokesperson for the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units — a group affiliated with the SDF — told Arab News there are areas of northern Syria where Daesh and other extremist groups “can continue to train, gather resources, issue orders and propagandize.”
Tensions in northeast Syria between the SDF, Syrian regime forces and the Turkish military are also having a destabilizing effect, said Ali, increasing the likelihood of a Daesh resurgence in the region.
In addition to eliminating Daesh’s international networks and safe havens, Schmidinger says that the threat of future attacks in Europe can also be reduced through the implementation of social policies to promote integration and inclusion.
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“You will never be able to completely stop it. We will always face some people on the fringes of society who will be attracted to extremist organizations like Daesh,” he said.
“But it is possible to reduce the number by reducing the feeling of alienation from society. By giving all people the chance for education, a proper job, and to give people — especially young people — the chance to participate in society and politics, it will keep them from feeling that they are powerless and can’t change anything.
“They won’t need an extremist organization to give them the feeling that they can change things in society.”