Heatwave hits North Africa, with power cuts in Tunisia and wildfires in Algeria

In Tunisia long power outages across the country have added to the strain of an intense heatwave, with temperatures as high as 49C. In neighbouring Algeria, more than 100 people were hospitalised after wildfires, the country's interior minister said this week.


Issued on: 24/07/2026 - RFI

A forest officer battles a wildfire in a mountainous area near the town of Al Hachimia, Bouira Province, Algeria, 21 July. AFP - -


For days, the STEG state electricity and gas company has been issuing daily heat alerts in Tunisia, listing neighbourhoods where it would cut electricity to reduce pressure on the national grid.

STEG chief executive Faycel Trifa said heavy air conditioner use had pushed the electricity network to its limit.

Another company official told state television that electricity demand may have reached a record 6 gigawatts on Tuesday, after hitting 5.6 gigawatts only days earlier.

"I’m adapting. Since the power cuts out every two hours, I avoid stocking up on food so it doesn’t spoil," vendor Mohamed Ali told RFI's reporter in the city of El Fahs, north of Tunisia. "We’ve been in this situation for three weeks, and no one understands what’s going on because the outages happen constantly."

The outages have become one of the country's main talking points, both online and in the streets. Some residents say their electricity has gone off for up to six hours at a time, while some are avoiding using lifts for fear of being trapped inside.

The Young Doctors' Association has recorded nearly 150 heatwave-related deaths.

Temperatures likely to remain at record levels until 2030, UN warns

Tunisia has been experiencing temperatures exceeding 48C, and daily water and electricity cuts. AFP - FETHI BELAID

Economic consequences

President Kais Saied said those responsible for the failures should be held accountable. He has also ordered immediate measures to address water and electricity outages, which he described as "abnormal phenomena".

Tunisian business groups fear the outages are hurting the economy, with employers' organisation CONECT saying the lack of precise schedules for planned cuts made it difficult for companies to prepare for production.

As scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the length, intensity and frequency of heatwaves, Héla Tlili, an economics lecturer at Tunis El Manar University, said Tunisia needs to speed up the development of renewable energy.

The country has vast solar potential and favourable conditions for wind power, but the biggest challenge would be storing electricity, Tlili said.

That would require significant public investment, she added, arguing that Tunisia needs "a change of paradigm" diversifying its energy resources.

Wildfire deaths

Meanwhile, fires broke out in neighbouring Algeria on Tuesday in Seraidi, a town west of the city of Annaba surrounded by forests.

More than 100 people were hospitalised this week after the wildfires reached nearly 150 homes in a small town in the north-eastern region of the country, according to the interior ministry.

Interior Minister Said Sayoud told reporters at a local hospital that most of the hospitalised people were in a "stable and reassuring" condition.

Civil protection crews "were still battling the blazes" most of the week, the minister added.

Algeria has been grappling with hundreds of wildfires for days, with at least six people dead in several provinces, according to the interior ministry.

Every summer, northern Algeria is struck by forest fires, a phenomenon exacerbated by drought and climate change. Dozens of people have been killed in recent years and thousands of hectares of forest or farmland destroyed, along with numerous homes.

A court in Algiers said on Wednesday that four people had been placed in pre-trial detention for "setting fires within forest areas" around northeastern Algeria's Constantine province.

(with AFP)

 

Spain's Galicia region bets big on AI and satellites to prevent summer 'megafires'

Copyright (AP Photo/Alba Sotelo)

By Una Hajdari

Published on 24/07/2026 - EURONEWS

Galicia is rolling out AI-powered cameras and satellites to detect wildfires within minutes, hoping to avoid a repeat of last August's devastating wildfire destruction.

Galicia is deploying artificial intelligence and an expanded satellite and camera network to detect wildfires earlier, after a region long considered one of Europe's most fire-prone areas suffered its most destructive season in decades last year.

The regional government is now implementing its "largest fire prevention plan in its history" with AI, a new app, more resources and a €213 million investment.

Wildfires burned more than 118,000 hectares across Galicia in 2025 — an area larger than Berlin, leading to them being referred to as "megafires" — according to figures released by the regional government, with the Larouco fire in Ourense becoming the largest single blaze in the region's recorded history.

Galicia's mix of dense forestry, an ageing rural population and land abandonment has long made it one of the most fire-affected regions in Europe, alongside Portugal and Greece.

How can AI help?

The AI systems work by feeding a constant stream of images, whether from ground-based cameras or, in some cases, orbiting satellites, into models trained to recognise the visual signatures of a fire starting: a rising column of smoke, a heat signature, or a specific pattern of colour and movement across the landscape.

When the system flags a possible match, it sends an automatic alert, which a technician then checks before crews are deployed.

The aim is to shrink the gap between ignition and detection from hours to minutes, since a fire caught within its first few minutes can often be contained to a small area, while one that burns unnoticed overnight or in a remote valley can spread across thousands of hectares before anyone responds.

Presenting the update to Galicia's wildfire prevention plan, regional president Alfonso Rueda said the changes were designed to "adapt to the new types of fires" of "enormous intensity" seen in recent summers, according to Galicia Press.

Galicia has built this capability into Xeocode, the region's internal fire management platform, ahead of the high-risk season that began on 1 July.

The system uses convolutional neural networks, a type of AI model suited to recognising patterns in images, to identify smoke rising from any of the 241 surveillance cameras installed in high-risk parishes across the region.

Two years of pilot testing found the system could detect a fire from more than 15 kilometres away, rising to 25 kilometres in favourable weather.

Related

Other countries deploying AI

Galicia is not alone in turning to AI and space technology to fight fires.

The approach reflects a wider shift across fire-prone parts of Europe and beyond, as 2025 was the EU's most destructive wildfire season on record, with more than 1,079,000 hectares burnt across 25 of the 27 member states.

Greece has gone furthest, becoming the first country to integrate a dedicated satellite constellation into its national firefighting system.

Four nanosatellites, each smaller than a piece of carry-on luggage and built by German company OroraTech, scan the country twice a day, with thermal sensors designed to flag blazes as small as four metres across.

When a fire is detected, AI-processed data on its location, size and intensity is sent directly to national commanders, helping them prioritise resources when multiple fires break out at once.

The models are also trained to filter out false alarms, such as sun-warmed rock faces, solar panels or overheated factory roofs, before an alert ever reaches emergency services.

Portugal, which has the largest cumulative burnt area of any European country over the past two decades, has also begun integrating satellite-based detection into its national response, as fire-prone southern European states increasingly turn to the same combination of cameras, satellites and machine learning that Galicia is now rolling out.

Explosive report busts Trump official on potentially deadly lie: ‘This is not a game’

Alexander Willis
July 25, 2026 

RAW STORY


A satellite image shows wildfires spreading through northern Minnesota, U.S., and Ontario, Canada, July 14, 2026. CSU/CIRA & NOAA/Handout via REUTERS

President Donald Trump’s Forest Service chief, Tom Schultz, was exposed Saturday for having potentially lied during a congressional hearing earlier this week, a potential lie that may very well prove fatal.

On Wednesday, Rep. Angie Craig (DFL-MN) pressed Schultz on whether the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts from early on in the second Trump administration had impeded firefighting efforts in Minnesota. Schultz insisted they hadn’t.

However, as wildfires currently ravage northern Minnesota, inside sources and a Forest Service (USFS) document suggest the DOGE cuts had, in fact, severely impacted firefighting efforts in Minnesota, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

“At the beginning of 2025, the U.S. DOGE Service paused or canceled federal grants and spending to review whether they were connected to diversity or climate initiatives,” the Post’s report reads.

“That affected nearly all of the Forest Service’s grant projects and funds, according to two USFS officials familiar with the situation, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of professional retaliation.”

Aaron Kania, a former U.S. Forest Service district ranger who retired last December, explicitly said that had funding not been disrupted, the ongoing wildfires in Minnesota could have likely been better contained, if not entirely prevented.

“We were shovel-ready,” Kania said, speaking with the Post. “Had that work been implemented, it would have been effective in stopping or slowing down these fires. It’s the totality of all these things that set us back about a year and a half.”

In a statement to the Post, Craig lashed out at the Trump administration for its impact on Minnesota’s ability to combat wildfires, putting the blame squarely at its feet.

“Yet again, the Trump administration’s short-sighted cuts to federal programs have put Minnesotans in danger,” Craig said. “Firefighters have died and Minnesota kids have been put in harm’s way – all because this administration decided to roll back critical wildfire prevention efforts. This is not a game. These are real lives.”

Backsliding on Climate Could Cost Not Only Elections But Lives

Economic populism goes hand in hand with a clean energy transition.


In this long exposure photograph, flames surround a drought-stricken Shasta Lake during the “Salt fire” in Lakehead, California early on July 2, 2021, as firefighters battle nearly a dozen wildfires in the region following a heatwave and multiple lightning strikes.
(Photo by Josh Edelson / AFP via Getty Images)

Emma Buretta
Jul 24, 2026

Common Dreams

Temperatures are soaring globally, and wildfire smoke just blanketed much of North America for the second time in a few years. This summer’s heat will likely make this year the hottest ever, and that heat is costing lives. It’s no surprise that concern about climate change among Americans is at one of its highest points since 1989.

But despite the fact that climate change and extreme heat are posing a threat to the health and well-being of Americans, neither major party is offering a serious policy response.

Republicans have become the official party of climate change denial. The Trump administration and its GOP allies in Congress have aggressively attacked renewable energy while boosting fossil fuels. Meanwhile many Democrats have become increasingly silent about climate, leaving voters concerned about the issue with no major political party to represent their values and interests.

In fact, The New York Times recently found that many Democratic candidates are backtracking on their previous opposition to the oil and gas industries. “With voters worried about spiking gas prices and inflation, some of the party’s leaders argue that they should stop trying to throttle oil and gas, which heat the planet when burned,” the paper reported.

Voters recognize that public investments in clean energy, public transit, and other climate-friendly policies ultimately save them money.

This messaging could cost lives and elections.

As a young voter, I saw this sense of abandonment play out in real time. I remember walking proudly around my campus all day in 2024 wearing an “I voted” sticker. I had voted early by mail, as had many of my classmates—or so I thought. What I came to realize throughout the day was that many of my classmates had yet to vote—and had no plan to.

Voting can be time consuming, frustrating, and often unnecessarily complicated. Barriers to voting are even more intimidating when you’re voting for the first time. For these reasons and more, many young people only make the effort to vote if they feel candidates will strongly advocate for the issues they care about.

On my campus, students are given access to all kinds of information about how and why to vote, and they’re given ample time and opportunity to do so. If students with access to so many resources on voting aren’t voting, how can we expect young people in parts of the country where there are larger barriers to voting to turn out en masse?

Over half of voters aged 18-29 didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election, and 77% of young voters didn’t vote in the 2022 midterms. The 2026 midterm races are already tight, which could make the failure to address climate change a recipe for political as well as ecological disaster.

There’s no contradiction between having a serious climate policy and being responsive to voter concerns about rising costs. Progressive populists like Zohran Mamdani in New York, Janeese Lewis George in Washington, DC, and Melat Kiros in Denver, among others, have all proven that climate-friendly economic populism can be effective at increasing voter turnout, especially among young people.

Economic populism goes hand in hand with a transition to green energy, as 90% of renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. Voters recognize that public investments in clean energy, public transit, and other climate-friendly policies ultimately save them money.

In New York, one of Mamdani’s core promises—Free, Fast Buses—was proof of this. In DC, a core component of Lewis George’s campaign was affordable energy for all, with a focus on expanding community and government solar to cut electric bills. In Denver, Kiros also campaigned on combining economic and environmental issues with her support of a Green New Deal.

These recent victories owed much to the young people who powered their campaigns. It was also overwhelmingly young people who organized the 75,000 person March To End Fossil Fuels in 2023 and organized 500,000 people around the US against fossil fuels in 2019.

These examples suggest young people aren’t apathetic—they’re just not being heard. They will power campaigns that support a transition to green energy. But they won’t make an effort for those who enable the fossil fuel industry or talk out of both sides of their mouths on the issue.

Now is the time to push for a future with cheaper, greener energy for all. It is not the time to backslide on fossil fuels.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Emma Buretta
Emma Buretta is a sophomore at Yale University and a Henry A. Wallace Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She was a core organizer for the March to End Fossil Fuels.
Full Bio >

As We Choke and Sweat, Big Oil Is Trying to Buy Its Way Out of Accountability

Fossil fuel-funded lawmakers have introduced legislation that would dismiss ongoing climate damages lawsuits, shield the industry from similar future cases, pre-empt state Climate Superfund laws, and block any state level regulation of greenhouse gases.


Activists hold signs reading, “Make Polluters Pay” as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge calling for leaders to “Tear down the pillars of fossil fuels” during a Youth Global Climate demonstration ahead of the United Nations Climate week and General Assembly in New York City on September 20, 2024.
(Photo by Alex Kent / AFP via Getty Images)

Basav Sen
Jul 25, 2026

OtherWords

The 2026 heatwave is a global phenomenon, inflicting extreme temperatures on billions of people from the United States to Europe and South Asia.

Extreme heat is deadly. In Europe, an estimated 10,000 people have died from heat this summer, and the official count of a few dozen deaths in India and Pakistan is likely to be too low by several orders of magnitude, according to a recent scientific study.

Dozens of Americans died from heat over the Fourth of July weekend alone—a toll that’s still unacceptably high.

Meanwhile, much of the country has been blanketed in smoke from wildfires in Canada and Minnesota, triggered by the hot and dry conditions arising from the heatwaves. Like heat, wildfire smoke is also deadly. A similar wildfire smoke event in 2023 led to an estimated 33,000 premature deaths in the US alone.

Effectively, these legislators—like too many others—were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.

Scientists have found that all of these regional heatwaves were made likelier and more severe because of human-caused climate change, mainly attributable to burning fossil fuels.

Major oil and gas corporations have known for decades that their business model would cause disasters like these. Their response was to minimize or even hide their findings to keep the public in the dark about the risks—and pay front groups to deceive them.

This drive to preserve profits at the expense of humanity has understandably caused outrage. Eleven US states, two tribes, and dozens of local governments are suing fossil fuel corporations for damages for the harm they’ve suffered from climate disasters.

State legislators have also joined the fray. New York and Vermont have passed “Climate Superfund” bills that require fossil fuel corporations to pay for economic losses arising from extreme heat, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and flooding. Similar laws are being considered in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

The US has experienced more than $200 billion in climate damages every year since 2016, and it’s only fair that fossil fuel corporations pay for some of the damage caused by their reckless greed.

But instead of trying to make Big Oil pay up, some lawmakers in Congress are trying to do the opposite. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have introduced House and Senate bills, respectively, that seek to dismiss ongoing climate damages lawsuits, shield Big Oil from similar future cases, pre-empt state Climate Superfund laws, and—most outrageously—block any state level regulation of greenhouse gases.

This is legislation expressly designed to protect a powerful, wealthy industry from having to face any accountability for harming the public. And when you follow the money, you can see why.

Rep. Hageman has received more than $23,000 in campaign money from the petroleum refining and marketing industry in this cycle, making it the second biggest industry (after sugar) backing her candidacy. She’s also received thousands more from other fossil fuel interests.

Also in this cycle alone, Sen. Cruz has gotten more than $129,000 in contributions from different segments of the oil and gas industry.

Effectively, these legislators—like too many others—were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.

And if we want the kind of democracy we need and deserve, the rest of us shouldn’t tolerate it anymore.


This column was distributed by OtherWords.


Basav Sen
Basav Sen is the climate justice project director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and writes on the intersections of climate change and social and economic justice. Prior to joining IPS, Basav worked for 11 years as a campaign researcher for the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Full Bio >

Vampire Planet: The Billionaire Invasion of Montana

Joshua Frank

 July 24, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Montana, still worth fighting for. Photo by Joshua Frank.

If you have a flair for the ostentatious, the Yellowstone Club, the ultra-elite billionaires’ colony in Big Sky, Montana, may be for you. You’ll get to rub shoulders with titans of tech and capital like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Ackman. Perhaps you’ll swap insider trading tips while knee-deep in powder on the slopes of a private 2,900-acre ski hill, on the back nine of an award-winning golf course, or as you swirl a vintage Bordeaux in the cellar at one of the club’s exclusive, gourmet restaurants. 

The entrance fees aren’t cheap, of course. You’ll have to fork over a bundle of cash, starting with the purchase of a property within the Yellowstone Club’s gates, where homes can top $20 million. Then you’ll have to cut a check for a cool $400,000 deposit and tens of thousands more each year to remain in good standing. That’s just the price to gain access to the world’s only private golf and ski community, populated with some of the worst people on the planet. 

This sure isn’t the Montana where I was raised, nor is it my late father’s, the son of an immigrant who grew up sharecropping sugar beets and running cattle outside a small railroad town. The Montana I used to know is also not the fetishized version portrayed in Yellowstone, Paramount’s neo-Western drama starring a grizzled, Stetson-wearing Kevin Costner as a land baron rancher. The series is supposed to be set along the Yellowstone River in the scenically perfect Paradise Valley (almost as idyllic as the Gallatin River, which doubled for the Big Blackfoot in Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It adaptation). However, Yellowstone was primarily filmed outside Park City, Utah. This tidbit about the show’s fictitious Montana setting hasn’t slowed the influx of well-heeled transplants hoping to live out their Costner-inspired cowboy fantasies, spurs and all.

Montana has changed in more than just its cultural cache. The once-independent political spirit that swung as much to the right as to the left is now firmly lodged in MAGA-land, with two right-wing senators prone to lying (and a visceral hatred for Native Americans), a couple of loony congressmen, not to mention a wolf-killing billionaire governor from New Jersey. Bozeman, once a charming college ski town, now offers direct flights from Los Angeles and Chicago and is home to high-end hotels and boutiques. As a result of its newfound popularity, property values have skyrocketed, surging more than 100% over the last decade.

The wealthy also have another plan to reshape Big Sky country, which is to privatize the state’s public lands, exploit its rich natural resources, and, along with Idaho and Wyoming, to delist the imperiled grizzly bear so they can kill ’em for sport.

Don’t mistake my antipathy for animus. Montana remains majestic and wondrous, full of salt-of-the-Earth folks. But I do harbor a bit of hatred for the wealthy who have taken the state hostage, because it’s the super-rich who are clogging its trout streams with their drift boats and driving home values out of reach for most who live here.

Montana, the fourth-largest state in the country, is not crowded, with just over 1.14 million residents. That’s only one person per 7.8 square miles. Yet the state is home (probably second, third, or fourth) to a cadre of criminally-rich billionaires. Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot, has a sprawling ranch in Paradise Valley. Rupert Murdoch holes up at his compound, the largest ranch in the state, which spans over 340,000 acres. Ted Turner lived here, and so do heavy-hitting capitalists like Felix Baker and Robert Kraft. The Rolodex of the wealthy and powerful who have land in Montana is thick for a state with such a low population. The list also includes Bill Gates, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Warren Buffett, Nick Woodman of GoPro fame, and investment mogul Ron Burkle, to name a few. 

As you can imagine, the wealth disparity in Montana is tangible and severe. The state has the country’s worst home-price-to-income ratio, making it the least affordable in the US. The working class is hurting, as brilliantly detailed in a 2023 piece by Joseph Bullington for In These Times, where he explores how housing, especially in cities like Bozeman, is increasingly out of reach for the people who service the well-to-do. It’s the same story in many resort towns across the West.

If you didn’t already loathe the super-rich, you should, and not just for what they’re doing to places like Montana. A study published in Nature Climate Change found that the world’s wealthiest 10% were responsible, through their lavish lifestyles and extensive investment portfolios, for ⅔ of all climate warming emissions since 1990.

“This is not an academic discussion – it’s about the real impacts of the climate crisis today,” says the report’s lead author Sarah Schöngart. “Climate action that doesn’t address the outsize responsibilities of the wealthiest members of society, risks missing one of the most powerful levers we have to reduce future harm.”

If we are ever to get the climate under control (and save Montana), billionaires (and that one trillionaire) have got to go.

+++

In other news, Chaco Canyon is under attack, so take a few minutes to read up and sign this petition. You can also sign a petition to ban data centers from being built in Montana.

+++

Alright, a little good news. The endangered grizzly bear has made a remarkable comeback in Montana and Wyoming. In the mid-1970s, only 700 of these amazing animals remained in the Lower 48 states, but today there are over 2,000. And, despite record drought and record-setting heatwaves, Montana has so far avoided damaging wildfires this summer.

Lastly, Bad Energy will be out next month. Have you had a chance to pre-order your copy yet? It’d be a lot cooler if you did.

JOSHUA FRANK is co-editor of CounterPunch and co-host of CounterPunch Radio. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, and the forthcoming, Bad Energy: The AI Hucksters, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who are Selling Off Our Future, both with Haymarket Books. He can be reached at joshua@counterpunch.org. You can troll him on Bluesky @joshuafrank.bsky.social