Foreign News
Corfu latest Greek island to evacuate over wildfires
Corfu has become the latest Greek island to issue an evacuation order, as the country grapples with wildfires.
Photos uploaded to social media show flames engulfing Corfu. A fire broke out on the northern part of the island which is popular with British tourists.
It comes after some 19,000 people were evacuated on the island of Rhodes, which has also been hit by fires. Many were forced to flee their hotels as the flames continued to spread from the centre of the Greek island.
Greece has been grappling with searing heat, with temperatures exceeding 40C across the country, and fires have blazed for nearly a week in some areas. A national holiday that had been planned for Monday has been cancelled “in view of the extraordinary conditions prevailing in the country due to the fires”, the Greek presidency said.
Late on Sunday evening Greece’s Emergency Communications Service published evacuation orders for a number of areas of Corfu. People in the areas of Santa, Megoula, Porta, Palia, Perithia and Sinies on the island have been told to evacuate. Boats in the area had been dispatched to evacuate residents by sea, a government official said.
Corfu – sits in the Ionian sea off the northwest of Greece – is a destination popular with tourists, with hundreds of thousands Brits visiting every year.
Rhodes – an island some 1,027km (670 miles) away – has been battling wildfires fanned by strong winds since Tuesday and after smoke started enveloping tourist areas.
Some 16,000 people were evacuated by land and 3,000 by sea on the island, according to local officials. Greece’s Ministry of Climate Change and Civil Protection said it was “the largest evacuation from a wildfire in the country”.
(BBC)
Independent Wexford TD Verona Murphy will be the next Ceann Comhairle (speaker) of Dáil Éireann.
She will become the first woman to ever hold the role after being elected by her fellow TDs (members of the Irish parliment).
Fianna Fáil’s John McGuinness and Seán Ó Fearghaíl as well as Aengus Ó Snodaigh from Sinn Féin also ran for the position.
Politicians in the Republic of Ireland met for the first time since the general election on Wednesday.
[BBC]
A plot to assassinate Pope Francis during a trip to Iraq was stopped following a tip-off from British intelligence, according to his upcoming autobiography.
The Pope writes that, after landing in Baghdad in March 2021, he was told an event at which he was set to appear was being targeted by two suicide bombers.
Both attackers were subsequently intercepted and killed, he said in excerpts published by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The visit, which took place over three days during the coronavirus pandemic, was the first ever to Iraq by a pope and saw an intense security operation.
The years before had seen increased sectarian violence in Iraq, with fighting between Shia and Sunni Muslims as well as the persecution of religious minorities.
The country’s Christian community had shrunk dramatically, having been targeted in particular by the Islamic State group and other Sunni extremists.
In excerpts of his autobiography, the Pope says “almost everyone advised me against” the visit but he felt he “had to do it”.
He says the plot was uncovered by British intelligence, who warned Iraqi police, and they in turn told his security detail once he had touched down.
“A woman packed with explosives, a young suicide bomber, was heading towards Mosul to blow herself up during the papal visit,” he says.
“And a van had also set off at great speed with the same intention.”
The Pope adds that he asked a security official the following day what had happened to the would-be attackers.
“The [official] replied laconically: ‘They are no more’. The Iraqi police had intercepted them and blown them up,” he wrote.
The book, entitled Hope, is due to be published on 14 January.
[BBC]
A woman from the Philippines who spent almost 15 years on death row in Indonesia and was nearly executed by firing squad is on her way home.
Mary Jane Veloso was sentenced to death in 2010 after she was found carrying 2.6kg (5.7lb) of heroin through an Indonesian airport.
But the 39-year-old mother of two has always maintained she was tricked into carrying the drugs.
She was handed over to Philippine officials on Tuesday night, after the two governments reached a deal to allow her to return home.
“I have to go home because I have a family there, I have my children waiting for me.”
While the agreement states that Ms Veloso will return as a prisoner, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos could grant her a reprieve.
Ms Veloso was arrested in April 2010 at Yogyakarta airport.
She said she was convinced by the daughter of one of her godparents to travel to Indonesia to start a new job as a maid.
She claimed that the woman’s male friends gave her new clothes and a new bag, which she was unaware had heroin sewn into it.
She was due to face the firing squad in 2015, but the Philippine government won a last-minute reprieve for her after the woman suspected of recruiting her was arrested and put on trial for human trafficking, while Ms Veloso was named a prosecution witness.
Her reprieve was so late that several newspapers in the Philippines went to print with front pages and headlines reporting it had happened.
The case drew widespread public sympathy in the Philippines (BBC)Ms Veloso’s case drew widespread public sympathy in the Philippines, which does not have the death penalty.
Her circumstances were familiar to many in the Philippines, where it is common for women to escape poverty by seeking work abroad as domestic helpers.
“I bring a lot of things, such as guitar, books, knittings … even this T-shirt I’m wearing was given by my friends,” she said while leaving prison for the airport.
Her transfer comes just days after the five remaining members of the infamous Bali Nine drug ring returned home after serving nearly 20 years in Indonesian prisons.
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