Firefighters have managed to stabilise a wildfire that has ravaged vast swathes of land in eastern Spain, allowing officials to lift all remaining evacuation orders.

The blaze, which started on Monday near Bejis in the eastern Valencia region, has destroyed over 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of land and spurred the evacuation of around 2,200 people.

Reconnaissance flights on Sunday showed it “no longer had any active fronts”¨and can be considered “stabilised”, regional interior minister Gabriela Bravo told reporters.

Firefighters said reduced winds, cooler overnight temperatures and higher humidity levels had allowed them to contain the blaze.

But Bravo cautioned that temperatures were still forecast to be high on Monday, with strong winds that could rekindle the blaze.

Earlier on Sunday Valencia regional president Ximo Puig said all remaining evacuees could return to their homes.

“Now is the time to return to normality, with caution,” he said.

Local officials had on Saturday already lifted evacuation orders in two villages, Bejis and Toras, because the threat from the flames had diminished.

About 20 aircraft were deployed to battle the blaze on Sunday, compared to 42 the day before.

Another major wildfire which broke out last Saturday some 200 kilometres (125 miles) further south in the Vall de Ebo was brought under control on Sunday, Puig said.

It has ravaged some 12,000 hectares of woods, bushes and farmland.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will visit fire damage on Monday with Puig, the premier’s office said in a statement.

The blazes are among the almost 400 to have broken out in Spain so far this year amid a series of punishing heatwaves and long dry spells that have devastated more than 283,000 hectares of land, more than three times the total area destroyed in 2021.

Areas of neighbouring Portugal have likewise suffered devastation.

The death toll has climbed to at least 43 from wildfires that have raged for days in northern Algeria, with numbers expected to rise further, the gendarmerie said Monday.

Thirteen people have been arrested over suspicion of involvement in starting the fires, it added.

“The latest toll of victims from the fires increased to 43,” from 38 recorded two days earlier, the gendarmerie command said on state radio.

Fires had swept through 14 wilayas, or administrative councils, in the north of the country, with most concentrated in the northeastern El Tarf region near the border with Tunisia.

The gendarmerie, which operates under the defence ministry, added that they are still working on identifying the bodies of the victims.

The death toll is expected to increase, it said, despite earlier reports that the fires had mostly been contained.

Civil protection services said some 31 fires were put out in various parts of the North African country between Saturday and Sunday.

More than 1,000 families were evacuated from various districts over the past few days, the civil defence’s Colonel Boualem Boughlef said on Saturday.

The fires, which have become a yearly fixture due to climate change, have devastated thousands of hectares (acres) of woodland in the mostly-desert country.

Fires last year killed at least 90 people and seared 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of forest and farmland in the north.

The extreme heat and drought that has been roasting a vast swath of southern China for at least 70 straight days has no parallel in modern record-keeping in China, or elsewhere around the world for that matter.

More than 260 weather stations saw their highest-ever temperatures during the long-running heat wave, according to state media reports.

It has coincided with a severe drought that has shriveled rivers and lakes and throttled back some of China’s hydropower production.

This has led the government to cut power to Sichuan’s key industrial hubs, an emergency measure extended on Aug. 21.

Gao reached 110.3°F (43.5°C) while Jianyang and Zigong hit 110.1°F (43.4°C), according to Meteo France meteorologist Etienne Kapikian.

The all-time high temperature of 105.8°F (41°C) in Mianyang on Sunday broke the previous record by 4°F, an unusually large margin for such a milestone.

On Saturday, Chongqing, whose city center is home to 9 million, saw an overnight low temperature that was a few degrees hotter than its typical August daytime high, at 94.8°F (34.9°F).

If verified, it would be the hottest overnight minimum temperature anywhere in China during August, according to weather historian Maximiliano Herrera.

In Beibei, the temperature hit 113°F (45°C) on Aug. 19 and 20, the highest reliable temperature ever recorded in the country outside of Xinjiang.

Threat level: This heat wave has also set records for its geographic reach, with nearly 530,000 square miles within China seeing high temperatures exceed 104°F (40°C).

This is equivalent to the states of Texas, Colorado and California combined.

In China, such a footprint encompasses well over 100 million people.

What they’re saying: “I can’t think of anything comparable to China’s heat wave of summer 2022 in its blend of intensity, duration, geographic extent, and number of people affected,” meteorologist Bob Henson, a contributor to Yale Climate Connections, told Axios.

Henson noted the simultaneous extreme heat events and droughts also occurring this summer in Europe, East Africa and the U.S.

“We know that when drought happens, a warming climate accentuates the impacts, parching the landscape and allowing temperatures to rise even further. We’ve seen the drought-and-heat playbook in action across the Northern Hemisphere this summer,” Henson said.

The bottom line: The human and economic tolls from this event are serious and will become clearer with time. For one, the drought and extreme heat are further slowing China’s economic growth.

Nestled inland, directly north of sprawling Lagos, the regional capital of the Ogun State can be found surrounded by great swathes of yam fields and maize farms, swaying wooded savanna and palm oil plantations.

An historic location on the important trade routes between the coast and the heart of West Africa led to previous inhabitants raising adobe fortifications around the old town, many of which can still be seen today.

Abeokuta is the state capital of Ogun State in southwest Nigeria. It is situated on the east bank of the Ogun River, near a group of rocky outcrops in a wooded savanna; 77 kilometres (48 mi) north of Lagos by railway, or 130 kilometres (81 mi) by water. As of 2006, Abeokuta and the surrounding area had a population of 449,088.

Geography And Economy

Abẹokuta lies in fertile country of wooded savanna, the surface of which is broken by masses of grey granite. It spreads over an extensive area, being surrounded by mud walls 18 miles in extent.

Palm oil, lumber, natural rubber, yams, rice, cassava, maize, cotton, other fruits, and shea butter are the chief articles of trade. It is a key export location for cocoa, palm products, fruit, and kola nuts.

Both rice and cotton were introduced by the missionaries in the 1850s and have become integral parts of the economy, along with the dye indigo.

History

In 1817, the Oyo Empire dissolved into civil war. Refugees displaced by the collapse of Oyo joined with the Ijebu in their war against the Owu in southern Yorubaland, which had broken out around the same time.

Following the fall of Owu in around 1822, the leading Ife and Ijebu generals returned to their respective homes, but the rest of the armies that had allied with the Oyo refugees were invited by the Ijebus to Ipara, which they made their headquarters for further attacks against several towns in the region.

This group then turned their attention to waging war with the Egba, a loose confederacy of towns that had been established by Yoruba migrants in the 13th century and were spread throughout the forested land between Ipara and Ibadan.

The group conquered and destroyed many of these towns, eventually settling in one of the villages that had not been completely destroyed, Ibadan, which they used as their headquarters for additional conquests.

At least a handful of Egba groups had by this point joined the group of marauders, and they too were living at Ibadan.

Conflict between the various groups arose, and in one incident, an Egba chief named Lamodi shot an Ife chief named Ege to death with a pistol at a public meeting before himself being killed in the ensuing commotion.

Fearing Ife reprisal, most of the Egba population withdrew as a group to an encampment about 3 or 4 miles distant on the other side of the Ona River.

Here they enlisted Sodeke to be their leader and migrated to a hilly area known as Olumo Rock, where they established the town of Abeokuta around 1830 at what was then a small farming village.

By 1825, Olumo Rock was already a place of refuge from Ibadan and Dahomey slave hunters; people were scattered throughout the landscape, taking shelter among the rocks surrounding the settlement.

The Egba who established Abeokuta were soon joined by other Egba refugees and a substantial number of Owu who had escaped their captors.

It became a busy metropolis and home to the majority of the Egba. However, the various groups of Egba did not fuse into a single community; rather, Abeokuta functioned more as a “federation of communities within a town wall than a community in its own right”.

Because Abeokuta was in a key location for the palm oil trade and because it was the so-called capital of the Egbas, Dahomey soon became hostile. In the 1851 Battle of Abeokuta, the Egba defeated King Gezo and the Dahomey incursion. They again beat back the Dahomey military in 1864.

The 1860s also saw problems arise with the Europeans, namely the British in Lagos, which led to the Egba first closing trade routes, followed by the expulsion of missionaries and traders in 1867.

Between 1877 and 1893 the Yoruba Civil Wars occurred, and Abeokuta opposed Ibadan, which led the king or alake of the Egba to sign an alliance with the British governor, Sir Gilbert Carter.

This occurred in 1893, which formalized the Egba United Government based in Abẹokuta which became recognized by the United Kingdom.

In 1914, the Egba lands were incorporated into the colony of Nigeria by the British, with Abeokuta as the provincial capital.

A Short Introductory Expose Of The Egbas In Egba Dialect By A Native Speaker

In 1918, an uprising took place, the Adubi War, which was related to the levying of taxes and the policy of indirect rule by Sir Frederick Lugard, the British Governor-General.

This was the only internal threat to British control of Nigeria during the course of the First World War.

The Abeokuta Women’s Revolt, led by the Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU), took place in the 1940s. It was a resistance movement against the imposition of unfair taxation by the Nigerian colonial government.

In 1976, Abeokuta became the capital of the newly created Ogun State.

The Ruins of St. Paul’s refer to the façade of what was originally the Church of Mater Dei, or also known as Church of St. Paul, and located in the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.

The church was built by the Jesuits (male religious congregation of the Catholic Church), between 1602 and 1640, and had the primate as one of the largest Catholic churches in Asia at the time.

It stands adjacent to the famous Mount Fortress and Macau Museum, and from there as previously said the façade together with the grand stone stairs are the only remains of this great church.

The façade is 27 meters (89 feet) tall, 23.5 meters (77 feet) wide and 2.7 meters (9 feet) thick, and it is mannerism in style carrying some distinctively oriental decorative motifs.

It is built with granite, and from the bottom up there are five tiers. The first one has three entrances with ten Ionic columns.