Author: Eric Biegon

Eighteen bodies have been found in a forested area of northern Greece hit by wildfires for the past four days, the Greek fire service says.

Initial reports suggest those who died may have been migrants. A coroner and investigation team are heading to the scene near the Dadia forest.

The Evros region of north-eastern Greece, not far from the Turkish border, has been ravaged by fires.

A hospital in the city of Alexandroupolis had to be evacuated.

Newborn babies and intensive care patients were among those moved to a ferry at the port.

Fires are raging across several fronts in Greece, whipped up by high winds and temperatures which climbed above 40C in several places on Tuesday.

Flames are thought to have spread rapidly since Monday in the large wooded Dadia national park to the north of Alexandroupolis. Emergency services sent mobile text messages to the surrounding areas asking people to leave.

Before the latest grim discovery, an initial death believed to have been of a migrant was reported in the area.

Eighteen more bodies were found on Tuesday near a hut outside the village of Avantas, reports said, when the fire brigade inspected the charred remains of a building.

Fire service spokesman Yiannis Artopios said the possibility that the victims had entered Greece illegally was being investigated, given that there had been no reports of missing residents.

Unconfirmed reports said the bodies were discovered in two groups and there were fears that the number of casualties could increase. The fire service said investigations were continuing throughout the area where the fire had spread.

The Evros region has become one of the most popular routes for Syrian and Asian migrants crossing the River Evros from Turkey into the European Union. The Dadia forest is also known to be a route favoured by migrants.

Yiannis Artopios stressed that emergency messages had been sent to all mobile phones in the area, including foreign networks.

Migrant support group Alarm Phone said it had been in contact with more migrants who needed rescuing from the fires. One group of nine people had already crossed the border while another 250 people were stranded on two small islands in the River Evros, it said.

In the past three days 380,000 acres of land has burned in the Evros region alone, according to the National Observatory of Athens’ Meteo unit.

Firefighters are having to respond to major outbreaks in other parts of Greece too. The fire brigade has urged tens of thousands of people to leave parts of the north-west Athens suburb of Ano Liosia.

A few kilometres to the north, 50 nuns were reported trapped when a fire broke out near a historic monastery on the slopes of Mt Parnitha.

Several villages have also been evacuated on the island of Evia and in Boeotia in central Greece.

A fiery, red glow was visible on the fringe of Alexandroupolis in the early hours of Tuesday and satellite images showed several regions of Greece covered in thick smoke.

During the night residents in eight nearby villages were told to leave their homes and head for safety in the city. Later on Tuesday a stream of cars could be seen heading there as vegetation along the coast burned.

Flames were seen entering the grounds of the university hospital while the operation was taking place to evacuate the site on the north-east fringe of Alexandroupolis. Greek officials ordered a fleet of ambulances and buses to take some 115 patients away.

While some of the patients were moved to other hospitals in the city, as many as 90 were taken to a ferry, the Adamantios Korais, which has been requisitioned to look after intensive care patients and new-born babies.

West of Athens, several warehouses became engulfed in flames in an industrial area in Aspropyrgos and close to the Attica Highway the sky darkened with acrid smoke.

Two Albanian workers told the BBC that if helicopters had arrived in time they would have been able to put the fire out.

Around midday on Tuesday a second large fire broke out on the opposite side of the highway in the village of Fyli. Half an hour later residents received a mobile phone message from the 112 emergency number to evacuate the area.

Meanwhile, France endured its hottest ever day on Monday after the mid-August holiday, according to weather service Météo-France.

Temperatures on Monday soared as high as 42.4C in the Drôme area of south-eastern France but the record refers to Monday’s daily average temperature of 26.63C, recorded in 30 weather stations across France.

In Switzerland, the high temperatures have pushed the “zero-degree isotherm” – the height where temperatures fall below freezing point – to a record altitude. MeteoSwiss said the limit had now increased to 5,298m (17,381ft).

The point is shifting steadily higher, mainly because of global warming induced by humans, the Swiss met office says.

The increased height of the zero-degree isotherm has been accelerating since the 1970s, especially in spring and summer, it says.

Donald Trump has said he plans to turn himself in on Thursday to a court in the state of Georgia to face charges of election interference.

A judge in Atlanta who is overseeing the former president’s case has set bail at $200,000 (£157,000).

The agreement says Mr Trump can remain free pending trial so long as he does not attempt to threaten or intimidate witnesses.

Mr Trump denies 13 charges, including racketeering and false statements.

He and the 18 others accused in this case had previously been given until noon on Friday to appear at Fulton County Jail for processing.

The county sheriff has said they will all be treated like any other defendants, which could mean Mr Trump is fingerprinted and has his mugshot taken.

Before he announced on social media that he would surrender on Thursday, a court filing was released that set out the terms of his bond agreement.

“The defendant shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him or her to be a co-defendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice,” it said.

“The above shall include, but are not limited to, posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media,” the order adds.

It was signed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is overseeing the case, and lawyers for Mr Trump.

Later on Monday Mr Trump posted to his social media platform, Truth Social: “Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED by a Radical Left District Attorney, Fani Willis.”

“She campaigned, and is continuing to campaign, and raise money on, this WITCH HUNT,” he added. “This is in strict coordination with crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ [Department of Justice].”

Ms Willis has asked the judge to schedule arraignments – in which a defendant is formally charged and enters a guilty or not guilty plea – on 5 September.

She has also proposed that the trial begin in March. Both the arraignment and trial could be televised.

When Mr Trump does surrender, there will be a lockdown of the surrounding area and barricades have already been erected outside the court.

Mr Trump was charged last week alongside his co-defendants with attempting to subvert the will of the Georgia electorate by meddling in the state’s election results following his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The former president was heard in a phone call pressuring Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” during the ballot count.

The first former or serving US president ever to be indicted, he faces three other criminal cases.

Mr Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and calls the charges politically motivated.

He is currently leading the Republican race to pick its next White House nominee to challenge the Democratic candidate, probably Mr Biden, in the 2024 presidential election.

Mr Trump has already said he will skip the first Republican televised debate on Wednesday evening.

“The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had,” Mr Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday. “I will therefore not be doing the debates.”

Sources close to Mr Trump say he has instead recorded an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

State-by-state primaries – in which Republican voters will choose their party’s nominee – are due to begin on 15 January 2024.

Thailand’s former PM Thaksin Shinawatra has been jailed upon returning to the country after 15 years in exile.

But many believe he has struck a deal that will keep him from serving more than a short period in prison.

He arrived on Tuesday morning in a private jet, ahead of a vote for the next Thai leader – the frontrunner is from his Pheu Thai party.

He was then sentenced to eight years, on former criminal convictions he says were politically motivated.

Mr Thaksin, Thailand’s most successful elected leader, has long been feared by conservative royalists, who have backed military coups and contentious court cases to weaken him.

But now the brash, politically ambitious telecoms tycoon is back, years after he was deposed by a military coup. He landed in Bangkok’s main airport to cheers from hundreds of loyal “red shirt” supporters who had gathered overnight to see him.

Samniang Kongpolparn, 63, was among those who had travelled from Surin province in the northeast, the stronghold of Mr Thaksin’s party in past decades.

“He’s the best prime minister we’ve ever had. Even though I won’t get to see him today, I still wanted to come to show him support,” she said. “I’m ok with them reconciling with the pro-military government, or else we’re stuck with the senators. We don’t want that.”

Flanked by his two daughters and son, Mr Thaksin emerged briefly from the airport terminal and paid his respects to a portrait of the king and queen. The 74-year-old was immediately taken to the Supreme Court where he was sentenced to eight years on three former convictions, and then to Bangkok Remand Prison.

Prison authorities there say he will be kept in a wing with specific medical equipment, given his advanced age. He will also immediately undergo a 10-day quarantine – the first five days of which he will be confined to his room, authorities said.

It has been speculated that Thaksin will seek a royal pardon, and prison authorities on Tuesday said he would be able to submit a petition from jail immediately. The process can take one to two months.

Thaksin’s political party in the front seat

Mr Thaksin’s Pheu Thai party is expected later today to join a coalition government – a byzantine process which in three months has taken Thailand full circle.

It began with the heady hopes of a new dawn led by the radical young Move Forward party, which won the most seats in the May election.

Move Forward initially formed a partnership with Pheu Thai but it’s now certain that the coalition will include almost everyone but the reformers, including two parties led by former coup-makers – a deal with its sworn enemies that Pheu Thai vowed it would not do.

Pheu Thai insists the two developments are unconnected. Few people believe that.

It is true that Pheu Thai’s hands have been tied by the unelected senate, a 250-seat constitutional landmine planted in Thailand’s political landscape by the military junta which ruled for five years after a 2014 coup.

And Pheu Thai’s bargaining position was weakened by its poorer-then-expected performance in the election, when it lost a lot of support to Move Forward and for the first time was relegated to second place.

The senators, all appointed under the junta, are allowed to join the 500 elected MPs in voting for the new prime minister. Their thinly-disguised remit is to block any party which might threaten the status quo – the nexus of monarchy, military and big business which has dominated decision-making in Thailand for decades.

Unsurprisingly they refused to back the Move Forward-led coalition with Pheu Thai, despite its commanding majority in the lower house. When it was Pheu Thai’s turn to negotiate a new coalition, its need for senate support meant it had to take in some of its former opponents.

However some Pheu Thai politicians argue that the party should have held out for a better deal, by refusing to be in a government with the most hard-line conservative groups. Any minority administration formed without Pheu Thai and Move Forward would quickly collapse, because the senators cannot join normal parliamentary votes on issues like the budget.

But the Pheu Thai leadership was not willing to wait; it even invited the ultra-royalist party United Thai Nation to join the coalition, whose leaders have in the past been virulently critical of the Shinawatra family and their supporters, and were instrumental in ousting the last Pheu Thai government led by Thaksin’s sister Yingluck. That these two factions will now sit together in the same government is a mark of how far Thai politics has shifted.

In the end for the ultra-royalists the perceived threat posed by Move Forward, and by a younger generation of Thais demanding a conversation about the power and wealth of the monarchy, eclipsed their long feud with the Shinawatra family.

For the Shinawatras, and Pheu Thai’s more conservative, business-minded elements, getting into government again and guaranteeing the deal to bring Thaksin back, have been bigger priorities than worrying about the party’s reputation.

But there are those, even within Pheu Thai, who are horrified by the cynical pragmatism of this deal. They are warning that the party will lose even more of its once-passionate grass-roots supporters, and lose, perhaps forever, the dominance it held over electoral politics in Thailand for two decades.