VALENCIA: Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia on Sunday just after midday arrived in the Valencia region where devastating floods have killed more than 200 people, television images showed.
The royals, accompanied by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, visited Paiporta — one of the worst affected towns — and are due to move on to Chiva, another battered town close to Valencia, later in the day.
Hopes of finding survivors ebbed five days after torrents of muddy water wrecked towns and infrastructure in Spain’s worst such disaster in decades.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the Valencia region, where thousands of security and emergency services frantically cleared debris and mud in the search for bodies.
Describing “the worst natural disaster in the recent history of our country,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said it was the second deadliest flood in Europe this century.
Sanchez was expected to accompany King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia as well as the Valencia region leader Carlos Mazon on a visit to the areas affected by the floods on Sunday, according to the premier’s office. The exact program of their visit has not yet been made public.
The monarchs’ visit comes as Spain’s meterological agency issued a fresh warning for heavy downpours in the Valencia region.
Up to 100 liters per square meter (22 gallons per square yard) of water could fall in the province of Castellon and the area surrounding the city of Valencia, the agency forecast.
It also sounded the alarm for torrential rain that may cause flooding in the southern province of Almeria, advising residents not to travel unless strictly necessary.
Restoring order and distributing aid to destroyed towns and villages — some of which have been cut off from food, water and power since Tuesday’s torrent — is a priority.
With Spain deploying an extra 10,000 troops, police and civil guards to the Valencia region, the country was carrying out its largest deployment of military and security force personnel in peacetime, Sanchez said.
Officers made around 20 arrests on Saturday evening for thievery and acts of looting, police said, with the authorities pledging to crack down on those taking advantage of the disaster to commit crimes.
Authorities — including Mazon — have come under fire over the warning systems before the floods, and some stricken residents have complained that the response to the disaster has been too slow.
“I am aware the response is not enough, there are problems and severe shortages... towns buried by mud, desperate people searching for their relatives... we have to improve,” Sanchez said.
In the ground-zero towns of Alfafar and Sedavi, AFP reporters saw no soldiers while residents shovelled mud from their homes and firefighters pumped water from garages and tunnels.
“Thank you to the people who have come to help us, to all of them, because from the authorities: nothing,” a furious Estrella Caceres, 66, told AFP in Sedavi.
In Chiva, a town west of Valencia which Spanish media reported may be visited by the monarchs, Danna Daniella said she had been cleaning her restaurant for three days straight and was still in shock.
“It feels like the end of the world,” the woman in her 30s said.
She said she was haunted by memories of the people trapped by the raging floodwaters “asking for help and there was nothing we could do.”
“It drives you crazy. You look for answers and you don’t find them.”
With telephone and transport networks severely damaged, establishing a precise figure of missing people is difficult.
Sanchez said electricity had been restored to 94 percent of homes affected by power outages and that around half of the cut telephone lines had been repaired.
Transport Minister Oscar Puente told El Pais daily that certain places would probably remain inaccessible by land for weeks.
Ordinary citizens carrying food, water and cleaning equipment have continued their grassroots initiative to assist the recovery, although authorities have urged people to stay at home to avoid congestion on the roads that would hamper the work of emergency services.
On Sunday, the Valencian government limited the number of volunteers authorized to travel to the city’s southern suburbs to 2,000 and restricted access to 12 localities.
The storm that sparked the floods on Tuesday formed as cold air moved over the warm waters of the Mediterranean and is common for this time of year.
But scientists warn climate change driven by human activity is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of such extreme weather events.
Emergency services late on Saturday issued an updated toll of 213 people confirmed killed — 210 in the Valencia region, two in neighboring Castilla-La Mancha and one in Andalusia in the south.
Authorities have warned the toll could yet rise, as vehicles trapped in tunnels and underground car parks are cleared.
Spanish royals visit flood-hit region as fresh downpours loom
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Spanish royals visit flood-hit region as fresh downpours loom
- Hopes of finding survivors ebbed five days after torrents of muddy water wrecked towns and infrastructure in Spain’s worst such disaster in decades
Arab America decides as Trump and Harris remain tied in final stretch of election race
- Recent Arab News/YouGov survey revealed Arab American frustration with US policy in the Middle East
- In swing states with large concentrations of Arab Americans, their votes have become as valuable as gold dust
LONDON: They are in a minority of about 1 percent.
In the US census carried out in 2020 — the first that specifically sought information about MENA origins — just 3.5 million of America’s 334 million citizens reported being of Middle East and North African descent.
But as Americans go to the polls today to select their next president, that 1 percent is poised to have a 100 percent impact on one of the most important US elections for a generation.
No one would suggest that this is a homogeneous group. Culturally, historically and linguistically, being “Arab” is an umbrella term for peoples as diverse as the 22 nations that comprise the League of Arab States.
But as an exclusive Arab News/YouGov survey revealed last month, in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election all Arab Americans have been united — in grief and outrage and in disappointment at the performance of the current US administration over the shocking events that have taken place in Gaza and Lebanon over the past year.
The survey also found that Arab Americans were preparing to vote in unprecedented numbers — underscoring just how important their swing-state vote will have been today for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
What the survey also revealed, however, is that Arab Americans have been divided over which of the two main candidates to vote for.
This explains the last-minute efforts to woo the Arab American vote by both Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Right up to the wire, the election race has been too close to call, which is why in the crucial swing states that happen to be home to the largest concentrations of Arab Americans, their votes have become like gold dust.
On Sunday Harris was in Detroit, announcing: “I am honored to have the support of many Arab American leaders who represent the interests and the concerns of the Arab American community.”
She also made sure to repeat a line she has delivered frequently during the campaign as she sought to distance herself from association with the perception that the Biden administration had failed to hold Israel in check over the past year.
“The level of deaths of innocent Palestinians is unconscionable,” she said.
The Arab News/YouGov survey revealed the extent to which traditional Arab American support for the Democratic Party has ebbed away over the Palestine issue.
In October, Harris met community leaders in Flint, Michigan, in a clear attempt to make the point that, although she served as his vice president, she is not Biden.
But some community leaders declined the invitation to meet Harris, and not everyone who took part in a virtual meeting with Harris’ national security adviser, Phil Gordon, was reassured by the overture.
Ali Dagher, a Lebanese-American community leader who did not attend the meeting, described Harris’ outreach to the Arab community as “too little, too late.”
Both campaigns have been very aware that of all seven battleground states, the result in Michigan appears to have been the most finely balanced, and on Friday it was Trump’s turn to assure the 200,000 Arab American voters in the state there that he was on their side.
In messages found on billboards along Michigan’s highways, Trump portrayed himself as pro-peace in the Middle East, while casting Harris as pro-Israel. Skeptics saw it as a curious flight of fancy for a man whose record as president was entirely pro-Israel, and not all of them were falling for it.
“We’re not naive about what he means for our community,” Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of Michigan advocacy group the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network, told the BBC.
Nazarko and doubtless many other Arab Americans have not forgotten Trump’s 2017 “Muslim ban,” his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his Abraham Accords, widely perceived in the Arab world as favoring Israel and patronizing Palestinians.
Regardless, several influential Arab Americans have declared for Trump, including Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, near Detroit. He has said his decision to endorse the former president was “a combination of both disappointment and hope” — disappointment with Biden’s handling of the Middle East situation and “hope that some change will bring peace to the Middle East, and we found President Trump is so determined about that.”
However, one of the latest polls of American voters suggests that Harris is beginning to pull ahead of Trump in five of the crucial seven swing states.
But it is in the three remaining swing states where the election is likely to be won and lost — including in Michigan, where the two candidates are neck-and-neck with exactly 47 percent of the vote each.
This echoes almost precisely the result of the Arab News/YouGov poll, which was published last week, and which also found that the Arab American vote is virtually polarized. Asked which candidate they were most likely to vote for, 45 percent said Trump, while 43 percent opted for Harris.
This was a big surprise, especially as 40 percent of those polled described themselves as natural Democrats, only 28 percent as Republicans and 23 percent as independents.
The poll made clear just how many Arab Americans appear to have switched their allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in response to the disappointment engendered by the Biden administration’s handling of Israel and the catastrophe in Gaza.
It will soon be clear whether Harris has been able to shake off that association among Arab American voters.
Whether she has or not, and whoever will be heading for the White House in January following today’s vote, the 2024 presidential election is already a historic one for Arab Americans. Their wholehearted embrace of the US democratic process — on a scale far outweighing that of the American electorate overall — has been on an unprecedented scale, reflecting not only their concern for their familial homelands but also their engagement with the politics of America.
Because make no mistake: Although the world categorizes them as Arab Americans, they see themselves as American Arabs — and their stake in the country that can lay claim to being the world’s greatest melting pot of immigrants is as deeply embedded as any.
In 2023 Dearborn, Michigan, became the first Arab-majority city in America. The fact that it did, and that Michigan’s Arabs have been in a position to play such a vital role in the selection of America’s next president, is down to something as all-American as the Model T Ford — literally.
At the start of the 20th century there was nothing much other than farmland in and around Dearborn. In 1908 Henry Ford began producing his revolutionary Model T cars in Detroit, and among the first workers he hired on the production line were Arabs who had recently emigrated from Syria.
They were followed by others, chiefly from Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, who all settled in and around Dearborn, working for the gigantic Ford factory that grew up there, and where the company still has its headquarters today.
There have been 21 presidents since the first Arab immigrants began working on Ford’s Model T production lines in Michigan 116 years ago. When the last polls close in Michigan today at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, their descendants will have the satisfaction of knowing that in the race to become the 47th president of the United States they have been firmly in the driver’s seat.
Spain dreads more flood deaths as rain pounds Catalonia
- The toll stands at 217 dead — almost all in the eastern Valencia region — with the country dreading the discovery of more corpses
VALENCIA: Rescuers plunged into inundated garages on Monday to find victims of Spain’s deadliest floods in a generation as fresh downpours sparked transport chaos in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
The toll stands at 217 dead — almost all in the eastern Valencia region — with the country dreading the discovery of more corpses as an unknown number of people remain missing.
National weather service AEMET announced the end of the emergency for Valencia but torrential rain struck Catalonia, where residents received telephone alerts urging the utmost caution.
Barcelona’s El Prat airport, Spain’s second busiest, said 50 flights were canceled or delayed and 17 diverted on Monday, while the city closed some flooded metro stations and regional trains were suspended.
Images on social media showed cars plowing through flooded roads in the Barcelona suburbs of Castelldefels and Gava and bare-footed travelers wading through water that had seeped into El Prat.
Spain also grappled with the aftermath of an extraordinary outburst of popular anger in which crowds heckled and hurled mud at King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
The Civil Guard has opened an investigation into the chaos in the ground-zero town of Paiporta that cut short their visit on Sunday, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told public broadcaster TVE.
He blamed “marginal groups” for instigating the violence where mud spattered the monarchs’ face and clothes and a window of Sanchez’s car was broken.
The incident underscored growing anger at the authorities’ preparation for and reaction to the catastrophe.
Experts have questioned the warning systems that failed to alert the population in time and the speed of the response.
“They were saying ‘alert for water’, but they should have said it was a flood,” Teresa Gisbert, 62, told AFP in the destroyed town of Sedavi, saying she had “lost everything.”
Thousands of soldiers, police officers, civil guards and firefighters spent a sixth day distributing aid and clearing mud and debris to find bodies.
But relief works only reached some towns days after the disaster and in many cases volunteers were the first to provide food, water, sanitation and cleaning equipment.
“We shouldn’t romanticize it: the people saved the people because we were abandoned,” said Jorge, 25, a resident of the town of Chiva where the royals canceled their visit on Sunday.
Divers on Monday concentrated their search for missing bodies in garages and a multi-story car park in the town of Aldaia.
The storm caught many victims in their vehicles on roads and in underground spaces such as car parks, tunnels and garages where rescue operations are particularly difficult.
Local authorities in Valencia extended travel restrictions for another two days, canceled classes and urged residents to work from home to facilitate the work of the emergency services.
The unity that bound Spain’s polarized politics when the tragedy struck started to fray as attention turned to those responsible for handling the crisis.
Far-right party Vox slammed Spain’s “failed” state, blaming Sanchez for the slow deployment of troops and “demonizing” volunteers. The hard-left Podemos demanded the resignation of the Valencia region’s conservative leader Carlos Mazon.
Sanchez has said now is not the time to scrutinize the management of the disaster during urgent rescue and reconstruction work.
The main opposition Popular Party urged the left-wing government to go further by declaring a national emergency and approving aid packages for individual citizens.
Storms coming off the Mediterranean are common during this season. But scientists have warned human-induced climate change is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of extreme weather events.
“Politicians haven’t acted on climate change, and now we’re paying the consequences of their inaction,” environmental activist Emi, 21, told AFP in Chiva.
India’s Rajasthan state seeks Saudi investment with roadshow in Riyadh, Jeddah
- Rajasthan is aiming to double its state GDP to $350 billion in next five years
- State seeks Saudi investment in engineering, food processing, agro-solutions
NEW DELHI: The government of India’s Rajasthan state is seeking Saudi investment in its growing industries, its minister told Arab News on Monday as he leads an official delegation to meet investors and business leaders in the Kingdom.
Rajasthan, India’s largest state by area, is gearing up to host a global investment summit in its capital Jaipur next month as part of the goal to double the state’s gross domestic product to $350 billion in the next five years.
The summit is aimed at attracting international investors and fostering new partnerships in various sectors, including renewable energy, electric vehicles, infrastructure, startups and tourism.
Ahead of the event, the state government has organized a roadshow in Riyadh and Jeddah this week to invite Saudi officials and business players to invest in Rajasthan.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the largest and key economies in the West Asian region that is of immense significance to Rajasthan from the perspective of furthering trade and other partnerships,” Rajasthan’s Minister of State for Industry and Commerce K. K. Vishnoi, told Arab News.
“The sectors that remain our key focus from the perspective of seeking Saudi investment include engineering, machinery and equipment, investment advisory, agro solutions, food processing and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) distribution, among others.”
Rajasthan officials are scheduled to meet leading Saudi companies operating in these sectors, and will present the state’s strategic advantages while also offering key incentives to potential investors, he added.
As part of his visit to the Kingdom, Vishnoi held talks on Monday with the Saudi Assistant Minister of Investment Ibrahim Yousef Al-Mubarak, according to a release issued by the state government.
“The delegation will also extend an invitation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to participate in the investment summit as a partner country,” it said.
Saudi Arabia is India’s fifth-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade valued at about $43 billion in the 2023-2024 financial year, accounting for more than 4.5 percent of India’s total trade.
Philippines to pursue sustainability, halal sector projects with Saudi businesses
- Top Philippine, Saudi business bodies signed an agreement to boost trade ties last week
- The memorandum is ‘significant milestone’ in Saudi-Philippine relations, commerce body says
MANILA: The Philippines is seeking new partnerships with Saudi Arabia in the sustainability and halal sectors, the Department of Trade and Industry said on Monday after the two countries’ top business bodies signed an agreement to enhance economic ties.
The Federation of Saudi Chambers and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry signed a memorandum of understanding in Riyadh last week, aimed at boosting trade and investment between the two countries.
“The collaboration sets the stage for ongoing exchanges that will drive sustainable growth across sectors,” the DTI said in a statement of the PCCI pact.
The agreement was a “significant milestone” in Saudi-Philippine relations and will be “a foundation for projects aligned with both countries’ goal(s) in sustainable development, trade expansion, and cultural ties,” it added.
The PCCI was part of a DTI-led delegation comprising government agencies and business leaders, whose mission to the Kingdom will conclude on Tuesday.
The mission was organized to promote the Philippines’ halal industry, as Manila has set out to expand it significantly. This includes doubling the number of its halal-certified products and services, raise 230 billion pesos ($4 billion) in investments, and generate around 120,000 jobs by 2028.
To achieve those goals, the Philippines is also working to tap into the global halal market — estimated to be worth more than $7 trillion — through new collaborations with countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.
“This is a good beginning where we can open the gate so that we could collaborate between two countries … we can restart and redevelop our business between the Philippines and Saudi Arabia,” Elsie Chua, business executive and co-chair of the Philippines-Saudi Business Council, told Arab News.
Chua said there were opportunities under the Saudi Vision 2030 plan, including in construction, food security and wellness.
“I can foresee we could reach not only in (halal) food … but also in cosmetics, etc.,” she said. “Next year, we will bring a bigger delegation to be led by our president of the PCCI … wherein we will also bring designers, architects as well as construction companies.”
Manila recorded a rise in Philippine-Saudi trade from 2022 to 2023. This followed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s visit to Riyadh last October, during which a $4.26 billion investment agreement was signed with the Kingdom’s business leaders.
Germany’s top diplomat in Kyiv as Ukraine girds for impact of US election on the war
- Germany is Ukraine’s second biggest weapons supplier after the US
- Ahead of the US vote, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky attempted to lock Ukraine’s Western supporters into a long-term “victory plan”
KYIV, Ukraine: Germany’s top diplomat arrived Monday in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on an unannounced visit, in what appeared to be a show of European support for Ukraine on the eve of a US presidential election that could bring far-reaching changes in Washington’s policy toward Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.
Germany is Ukraine’s second biggest weapons supplier after the US, and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock vowed that Berlin’s backing would remain steadfast.
“Together with many partners around the world, Germany stands firmly by Ukraine’s side,” she said, German news agency dpa reported. “We will support the Ukrainians for as long as they need us so that they can continue on their path to a just peace.”
The war is at a critical moment for Ukraine, with the Russian army making creeping gains on the battlefield and another hard winter ahead after Russia relentlessly battered the Ukrainian power grid.
Ahead of the US vote, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky attempted to lock Ukraine’s Western supporters into a long-term “victory plan,” including a formal invitation for Ukraine to join NATO and permission to use Western long-range missiles to strike military targets in Russia, but the response was disappointing for Kyiv officials.
Russia is using its superior numbers to heap pressure on Ukrainian positions along the front line. Ukraine’s top commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Saturday his troops are struggling to hold back “one of the most powerful (Russian) offensives” of the war.
Russia is now adding to its offensive push what Western intelligence sources say is a force of about 10,000 North Korean combat troops sent by Pyongyang under a pact with Moscow.
That has deepened Zelensky’s frustration with Western help. On Saturday, he urged allies to stop “watching” and take steps before the North Korean troops reach the battlefield.
Zelensky said Kyiv knows at which Russian camps the North Korean troops are being trained but Ukraine can’t strike them without permission from allies to use the Western-made long-range weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia.
Baerbock arrived in Kyiv hours after debris from drones intercepted by air defenses fell in two districts of the city, starting small fires, officials said. No people or property were harmed, according to the head of the Kyiv city administration, Serhii Popko.
A Russian glide bomb attack on Sunday night injured 15 people in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the northeast, regional police said.
Russia fired some 80 Shahed drones at Ukrainian cities overnight, Ukraine’s air force said.
