The first significant rain for weeks poured down on Moscow yesterday, but alarm remained even as the authorities were downplaying the health impact of the record heatwave on the Russian capital.
Forecasters said the heatwave that has left tens of thousands of hectares of land ablaze and destroyed a quarter of Russian crops would continue in the next days, albeit with slightly lower temperatures.
Despite signs of public frustration with the authorities, a heavy police presence ensured only a few dozen activists turned out for a protest against the Moscow mayor’s handling of the crisis, several of whom were then arrested.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A dramatic storm with rain throughout the night hit Moscow. Temperatures up to 32°C were expected later in the day — hotter than usual but still cooler than temperatures edging up to 40°C recorded earlier.
There was little sign of the smog from the wildfires that had blighted the Russian capital in the last week, but new reports emerged accusing the authorities of hiding the true health toll from the heatwave.
HIDING FIGURES
Moscow’s top health official has already said the mortality rate had doubled in the heatwave, with hundreds more deaths every day than in usual periods. However, the federal authorities have refused to confirm these figures.
The Interfax news agency quoted Moscow doctors as saying they had been forbidden to give “heatstroke” as a cause of death to keep a lid on the statistics.
“We received the order not to use the diagnosis ‘heatstroke.’ We are told that the statistics for heatstroke were mounting up,” one doctor told the news agency.
“There was no official order, everything has been communicated orally,” the source added.
News Web site lifenews.ru even published a picture of what it said was an informal order pinned up in a Moscow hospital saying: “Attention! Do not use the diagnosis ‘heatstroke!’”
“This is done so that the statistics, including cases of death connected with the heatwave, do not mount up,” a medical source told the Web site.
There was no immediate official confirmation.
PROTEST
Several dozen activists gathered outside Moscow City Hall on Thursday evening for an unsanctioned protest against Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, where they were quickly surrounded by riot police.
About 20 people were arrested, including veteran human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov and Left Front leader Sergey Udaltsov, who was prevented from joining the demonstration.
Luzhkov controversially remained on holiday as the city’s health crisis mounted, only returning on Sunday.
With the full impact of the drought and fires becoming clear, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said a quarter of Russia’s crops had been lost and many farms were now on the verge of bankruptcy.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.