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00:00:10Welcome back, you're watching TRT World. I'm Neil Harvey and these are our latest
00:00:13of headlines. Turkia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan,
00:00:17of assigned a landmark defense pact in Mecca, pledging that attack on one
00:00:20will be treated as an attack on all. Turkish president Erdogan said,
00:00:24the deal reaffirms the right to self-defense. It is not aimed
00:00:28any country. The deal. comes as tensions have grown across the region since
00:00:32the start
00:00:33of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
00:00:36of Iran's foreign minister says that Tehran and amana very close to deal a new shipping
00:00:40route through the straight of horm with technical and legal
00:00:43in issues largely resolved. Amagy says that reopening the waterway would
00:00:47still be conditional on
00:00:49of compensation for what Tehran's called US violations
00:00:51of the memorandum
00:00:52of understanding. Washington says it will end its blockade of Virans ports once the
00:00:56waterway
00:00:59of reopens. Russian overnight strikes on Ukraine's Kiev
00:01:03region have killed three people, including a child, three others
00:01:07were injured when multiple locations just outside the capital also
00:01:11hit. This is President Zelensky's in Belgrade on his first official visit to
00:01:15Serbia, one
00:01:15of the few
00:01:16of European countries to have maintained friendly relations with
00:01:18Russia. Abalado
00:01:22de la Aspria has been sworning as Colombia's new president, and just few
00:01:26hours after the ceremony, the United States pledged the $1 billion. security
00:01:30package for his new government. a spray is a political novice from the
00:01:34far right,
00:01:34of he won June's election
00:01:35of by around 250,00 votes, just one
00:01:38percentage.
00:01:43i am sending a firm message to the colombian people. the time has come
00:01:47to
00:01:47of restore order, authority and
00:01:49freedom. and spain has
00:01:53of retaliated against Italy
00:01:56of in a growing dispute over migration. the next month, travelers from Italy will face random.
00:02:00passport and id checks. Italy called for Spain to be kicked out
00:02:04of of the Shengen visa- free zone after some 70,00 migrants
00:02:07swam or walk their way into the North African enclave of Saeuta last
00:02:11week. And typhoon dolphins moving
00:02:15its way towards China with sustained wind speed of 162
00:02:19km an hour. It's already triggered heavy rains in northern Taiwan
00:02:22and passed close to southern Japan. There it's injured five people and
00:02:26caused a major blackout leaving
00:02:29of 50,000 buildings with. mount
00:02:30power, there's your latest headlines, it's been a
00:02:34pleasure to have your company, stay with us as the news
00:02:36continues.
00:02:50of hello and
00:02:54welcome to TRT World, from record breaking heat waves and
00:02:58of wildfires that threaten... communities across Europe and the Balkans
00:03:02to Kosovo becoming the center
00:03:04of the global music scene through the Sunny Hill festival, we bring you the
00:03:08stories shaping the region. I'm Najam Muftic and this is across the
00:03:13in Balcans.
00:03:21of
00:03:28High temperatures and wild. fires have hit Europe, near
00:03:32Athens and on several islands, flames have threatened communities
00:03:36of and vast areas of land. Meanwhile, the Danube, Europe's
00:03:39second longest river, has fallen to record low levels,
00:03:43putting regional power plants and local economies at risk.
00:03:47Adam Mamunu has more. This
00:03:51scene of horses fleeing wildfires in northwestern Greece is
00:03:54a vivid
00:03:55of representation of an
00:03:56of environmental crisis. Scientists have warned Europa.
00:04:01Europe is getting hotter, leading to wildfires that have scorched
00:04:05thousands of square kilometers of land and caused the
00:04:08evacuations of hundreds of thousands of
00:04:11people. Strong winds continue to hamper
00:04:15fire fighting efforts across Western Atica, northwest of Athens
00:04:18and on the islands
00:04:20of the Peliponese,
00:04:21of Parros and Nexos, though conditions are finally showing signs
00:04:25of easing. The
00:04:26in crisis has claimed to the lives of
00:04:28of five fire
00:04:29of fighters. including two crew members who
00:04:32in died
00:04:32in a mid-air helicopter collision west of
00:04:34Athens. After record
00:04:37of breaking heat waves and little rain. Several
00:04:40of countries, including Spain, Italy and Portugal, have collectively
00:04:43battled wildfires that exceed annual
00:04:47of averages. Southwest
00:04:48of France
00:04:48of suffered one
00:04:49of the largest forest fires since World War II.
00:04:53Following major fire incident in England, authorities
00:04:56announced that half of England and Wales had entered Dr.
00:05:00We've always had heat waves in this country and what is notable
00:05:04here is the sustained high temperatures and right now we're
00:05:08also
00:05:08in a very
00:05:09of dry of period
00:05:10of so top of those hot temperatures we've also... got drough to consider
00:05:14and wildfire risk and we flipped into this kind of
00:05:17scenario now where we are living through temperatures that are making us very
00:05:21uncomfortable when we had that red warning for heat out
00:05:25that meant that even healthy people were in trouble you know because
00:05:29the the hot temperatures that that we had and that is new and that
00:05:33is directly because of climate change and because we've been
00:05:37burning fossil fuels and putting that into our
00:05:39atmosphere.
00:05:44'This
00:05:45is Europe's second largest river,
00:05:47the Danube.
00:05:51It crosses 10 countries, including Balkan countries,
00:05:55Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Moldova,
00:05:58Hungary and Romania. Some sections are so shallow that they can be
00:06:02crossed on foot, and it has exposed relics of
00:06:05bygone errors. This includes the remains of a Nazi warship
00:06:09that emerged on the Serbian side
00:06:12the river'. px of World War II
00:06:14Nazi warships in Bulgaria, and these remains of what is
00:06:17believed to
00:06:18be ancient mammoth in northern Bulgaria. At the Viden
00:06:22Califat Bridge, connecting Bulgaria and Romania, Bulgarian
00:06:26fisherman complained of being out of work because the low water
00:06:29levels. Scientists won levels are unlikely to
00:06:33improve for at least another
00:06:35month.
00:06:39Taka suša do sega ne je imal.
00:07:12has not been so fortunate. low water levels forced the closure
00:07:16the Pax Nuclear power plant for the first time in its almost
00:07:2044 year history. the wildfires are a stark
00:07:23warning that unless the world controls global warming,
00:07:27destruction of this extent will continue to be the new
00:07:30normal. adam amunu across the
00:07:33balcans. more on the extreme
00:07:36climate conditions affecting Europe and the Balkans and what they
00:07:40mean for the future, I will discuss.
00:07:48Hello and thank you for having me on your program. Recent
00:07:52updates say wild fires across Europe have largely
00:07:56been contained. Can you tell us more about
00:07:58it? We can clearly say
00:08:02that most the wildfires now across Europe have
00:08:06been under control partially because we
00:08:10had some the disturbances from the Atlantic that brought some
00:08:14fresh air and instability, which also brought some
00:08:17beneficial rainfall, however, it's far from over,
00:08:21and we can say that we still have hundreds of
00:08:24wildfires across europe from France all the
00:08:28way to Bulgaria in the east, so we can
00:08:32expect that these these conditions will continue to linger
00:08:36for at least another week or so. uh, we see that the
00:08:40new rivers water levels
00:08:42hit a... low, what are the impacts on European and Balkan
00:08:45countries? there are major
00:08:48impacts on the European countries, it is not only
00:08:52the Balkans that is facing the the crisis with the
00:08:56water, it is also present across central and
00:09:00western Europe, which has endured
00:09:03very hot, dry and foremost
00:09:07record breaking summer, not to mention that we also see hunger
00:09:11stones. again and this is
00:09:15just telling you how serious the situation
00:09:18is across many parts of Europe, but for the Balkans in
00:09:22specific we can say that this is largely
00:09:26threatening the the ecosystems and
00:09:29also the transport of goods, so one
00:09:33the things that we have with the droughts is that this is
00:09:37a this is the insidious part
00:09:41the hazard. because the draw starts
00:09:44slowly but very treaterously and once it
00:09:48starts, once you have the onset in terms
00:09:52of meteorology and hydrology, we are now in
00:09:56meteorological and hydrological drought, this can
00:09:59only bring the you know the
00:10:03additional burdens to our pockets, because we will be
00:10:06paying more for the transport because we are overstretching
00:10:10the system and we're over stretching the limits of how we
00:10:14can operate, how we can transfer our goods,
00:10:17because we now need to use the fried services, we
00:10:21also need to use other sources sources of...
00:10:25transport, so it is not good in the
00:10:28way uh, for the for the human beings
00:10:31in in terms of what we can expect
00:10:34from it, and also we
00:10:36can carry say that we will be definitely paying
00:10:39more uh for many many
00:10:42goods. what measures should have been taken to
00:10:46prevent the danubes recession? could it have been
00:10:48prevented? largely
00:10:52speaking from meteorological perspective and... hydrological
00:10:55perspective, not likely that we could have
00:10:59prevented this, one what what we could have done is to
00:11:03track the weather uh and the seasonal weather
00:11:07forecasts, which implied
00:11:09that this summer will be dryer than normal across central and
00:11:13western parts of europe, which was nicely in analogue what
00:11:17we can with what we could have seen with some previous
00:11:21years that have resembled the similar conditions that we had in.
00:11:25since april, the signal for dryer and hotter
00:11:29summer has been persistent across many weather
00:11:33models that we analyzed and also the analogs that we
00:11:36derived, so we had the
00:11:39signal and we could have seen now, three,
00:11:43four months afterwards that this is now
00:11:46materializing in the way that maybe it
00:11:50left us a little bit surprise given the magnitude
00:11:54in in terms. how many heatways we had across
00:11:58many parts of Europe, especially western corner the Europe, and
00:12:02also the number of records that we have
00:12:05had both in hydrological and
00:12:08meteorological uh sense, not to mention that
00:12:12most the rivers are now depleted and the levels
00:12:16are extremely low for this time the year, which
00:12:20concurs with some the hottest summers that we uh recorded in
00:12:23Europe such as... 2003 which had very similar
00:12:27conditions when for example Zagreb was
00:12:31forced to have host by pans and also the water
00:12:34restrictions because sava river was on the
00:12:38record low. now we can clearly see that this
00:12:41is not just contained to the Balkans and central Europe, it is more pan
00:12:45European compared to 2025 years
00:12:49ago. Romania has used
00:12:51explosives to divert the danube's water. slope to
00:12:55its nuclear power plant, do you think this will
00:12:58work? a short term, yes, but this is
00:13:02just the emergency exit, you cannot
00:13:06always conduct these sort of experiments where
00:13:10you have a where you have detonation and essentially you're
00:13:14diverting the river flow, so you cannot
00:13:16always use these uh
00:13:20situations, it will help, but just as a element as a
00:13:24element. help, mean elementary precaution
00:13:28just to make sure that the chernovoda works
00:13:32without any disruption, we could have seen for for example in
00:13:36Hungary this has been done a different way, packs has
00:13:40been shut down, maybe Romania could have
00:13:43done the same, because this is the situation where you have
00:13:47a high level risk
00:13:49and you cannot always guarantee it will be successful, so you need to
00:13:53do this under v very high controlled levels,
00:13:57under the high control levels and then expect that you
00:14:01essentially get the favorable outcome, this time
00:14:05that was the case, thankfully, and also you
00:14:09could get the rise of your river
00:14:12flow in this sort of situations, but it's not the
00:14:16recommended way to do so. heat
00:14:20waves cause more and more serious problems every
00:14:23year, what protect? measures should governments
00:14:27take? That's a great question and I'm grateful that you asked
00:14:31it, because we always consider that the
00:14:34cold extremes are the ones that are
00:14:38attributed to the higher debts across
00:14:41Europe and across the world, but now we see
00:14:45that this has been overtaken with the warmer extremes as
00:14:49our climate progressively continues to warm up,
00:14:53and in that sense, 2026 was
00:14:56very stark reminder that the climate change is
00:15:00here and that the rate the climate crisis is
00:15:04just accelerating with more greenhouse gases that we dumped
00:15:07into our oceans because oceans are huge
00:15:11absorbers the the
00:15:14energy not to mention that
00:15:18what we can do is obviously we can do our part
00:15:21our individual parts but for the governments.
00:15:25is to put more into the infrastructure that is
00:15:29robust that it can handle these sort of
00:15:32extremes, which will also reduce this
00:15:36the burden on the... national health services
00:15:38and consequently you can expect that
00:15:42these summers will be much easier to
00:15:45bear and obviously it will be more comfortable for
00:15:49many. one the things that many European countries are now
00:15:53considering our introduction of sieastas or any sort
00:15:57of temporary break
00:15:59between the afternoon hours when
00:16:03you have the highest temperatures which perhaps
00:16:07wouldn't be a bad idea to reconsider how we
00:16:11work during the hottest part the year and not to
00:16:15mention that uh doing nothing cost even
00:16:19more than investing a robust infrastructure,
00:16:23so we all start from roads that are
00:16:26melting, especially in western Europe, which are
00:16:29not, which which are not adjusted to these
00:16:33sort of level of temperatures that we had in
00:16:362026, 'm and obviously uh this is
00:16:40causing more burden to your economy, but when you invest
00:16:44more into the robust infrastructure, you're
00:16:47reducing any additional uh debts and
00:16:51payments that you would normally have to
00:16:54invest uh because you're not doing
00:16:57anything and you're just waiting to see how much your
00:17:01infrastructure can handle these sort of extremes
00:17:05and obviously people are ' getting overheated
00:17:09in their homes and this is
00:17:12obviously having another you know feedback loop
00:17:15link where uh where you have a overheated home you get
00:17:19a you were essentially receiving some sort of a
00:17:23thermal stress and that is leading to the body
00:17:26exhaustion and then you're burdening your NHS and
00:17:30essentially causing more harm than good
00:17:33and it is a perfect scenario
00:17:37form where you can you can clearly see that
00:17:41all uh sectors are related quite
00:17:44closely and they should work as as their role
00:17:48is. nadem sladic, thank you so much for your time and for
00:17:52being with us in across the balks. thank you for
00:17:55having me
00:17:56again.
00:18:02at the beginning of August, Kosovo once again became the center
00:18:06the music for. as Global Music Stars performed in Prishtina and
00:18:10this year's Sunny Hill Festival. We discussed the festival and its
00:18:13significance for Kosovo with its founder and dua Lipa's
00:18:17father Dukajin Lipa. Welcome to Across the Balkans. Thank
00:18:21you for joining us. Thank you
00:18:25for having me. Another successful festival is behind
00:18:28you. Tell us more about this year's festival. For the
00:18:32audience, I think one of its highlights was when Katy Perry
00:18:36come on stage. holding the cosovo flag, am I
00:18:39right? uh, yeah, I
00:18:43guess, I guess the festival is becoming very big and not just
00:18:47one moment in the festival defines the festival itself, but yeah, of
00:18:51course it's Katie Perry, including the flag
00:18:55of Kosovo as part of her performance, as she does in many other
00:18:59countries, it is beautiful highlight for for the Kosovo audience
00:19:03and and Kosovo as a country, so yeah, this year.
00:19:07This year we have we have surpassed all our numbers that we had like
00:19:11from last year and it's becoming one the bigger festivals in southeast
00:19:15Europe - the lineup
00:19:19was amazing, the audience is equally amazing
00:19:23as as the lineup is we are very happy, we are very
00:19:26happy, great. Sunny Hill started as an idea between you and your
00:19:30daughter, Dualipa and today it has become one the biggest music
00:19:34festivals in southeast Europe. How did this idea come about? and
00:19:38why was it so important for
00:19:39you to create festival on this scale in
00:19:42Kosovo? uh, well, I
00:19:45mean it, it derives from so many different kind of angles, it's
00:19:49not just one idea that we had like one day and say, we would love to have
00:19:53festival, I was a musician
00:19:56in in my past life, and do I basically
00:20:00grew up with me performing and her being
00:20:04a backstage, and then we obviously we have...
00:20:08changed positions a much much much bigger
00:20:11scale and my
00:20:14marketing career started as a part the of
00:20:18of a organization that that that had festivals in their
00:20:22in their roster so i was always in
00:20:25love with festivals and and and and these kind of
00:20:29organizations and live music especially so it was
00:20:33kind of natural progression from being a
00:20:36festival into a promoter and
00:20:39organizer of festival
00:20:42and that's that's that's one
00:20:46the the things that we do and luckily.
00:20:50you now we are not too bad at that one, yeah dugi, turning
00:20:53that festival into reality was certainly not easy uh,
00:20:57what were the biggest challenges you and your family faced along the
00:21:01way? guess
00:21:05in the beginning the the the biggest challenges were to to to
00:21:09to let our friends, artists and managers
00:21:13and agents and and promoters to let them know
00:21:17that that what we are promising. as
00:21:20festival organizers is something very
00:21:24serious, we are in we we very well
00:21:27known -
00:21:29of promoting Kosovo and
00:21:33promoting the country and promoting the the the city of Pristina
00:21:36especially and
00:21:40we needed to kind of prove everyone that that coming to Prishtina and coming
00:21:44to the festival is going to be beautiful experience for
00:21:47everyone so maybe that was the hardest bit in the
00:21:51beginning to to to kind of make them believe us
00:21:55that we are not inviting you here just - as our friends, we are
00:21:59inviting
00:22:00you a level of professionalism that you
00:22:03are you have seen everywhere in the world uh if not
00:22:07a higher level because we have to prove that uh
00:22:10you know our production is great, our stages are great, our team is
00:22:14great, and what's more important the energy that that the audience
00:22:18gives back to the artist? is in my opinion unmached in
00:22:22the world uh today some the biggest names in
00:22:26world music come to Prishtina uh beside do Alippa, Miley
00:22:30Cyrus, Katie Perry, Sean Mendez, Calvin Harris and many
00:22:33others. What does it mean to you that Kosovo is bringing
00:22:37together global stars and gives young people across the Balkans
00:22:41and the Kosovan and Albanian diaspora the opportunity to
00:22:44experience worldcs concerts in their own country rather than
00:22:48having to travel abroad. I mean it's it's uh when you when
00:22:52you mat when you mention these names and and and Kosovo in one
00:22:56sentence have been probably an impossible
00:22:59sentence to to to utter, but
00:23:02you know thankfully and luckily and we have the technical capabilities, we
00:23:06have teams and we have hospitality that
00:23:09that you know our friends can enjoy and having all these
00:23:13number names in Kosovo is something that
00:23:17brings a lot of value to
00:23:20to the country, it brings a lot of value to to Pristina, to
00:23:24Kosovo, and now we are very proud to host our
00:23:28friends and these big artists in in our
00:23:32country, so despite achieving international
00:23:35success, you have remained deeply connected to Kosovo, what
00:23:39has it been important for you to invest in your
00:23:42homeland? I'm I'm I'm very attached to my homeland, I'm very
00:23:46attached to my hometown, Prishtina,
00:23:50luckily I have uh apart from from emotional
00:23:54attachments we have like work attachments as well so I'm I'm
00:23:58very very much connected to uh my
00:24:01hometown not just on the emotional side but from work side as
00:24:05well - talking
00:24:09about the the economical impact the Sunny Hill festival by our
00:24:13research last year we had about 50
00:24:15million um
00:24:18uh that Prishtina as
00:24:22a city or Kosovo benefited from Sunny Hill
00:24:25festival, that is that is an
00:24:28enormous amount of money that comes
00:24:32to the to Cosovo Kosovo through through the
00:24:35festival, um this year with this
00:24:38year uh research I'm expecting to to to
00:24:42double that considering that we had double the the the numbers
00:24:45nearly the festival, there is no
00:24:48business uh and we do have some very big
00:24:51businesses uh that run out of Kosovo can
00:24:55bring 50 to 100 million for one week not to
00:24:59their budgets but but to to to Kosovo budget
00:25:03so I think that Sunny Hill festival is very
00:25:06important to for the country as well uh your daughter
00:25:10Dualipa often speaks proudly about her Kosovan and
00:25:13Albanian rots how did you and your wife raise your children to
00:25:17maintain such a strong sense of identity, belonging
00:25:21and love for their homeland despite growing up and achieving success
00:25:25internationally. i
00:25:28think you have to be in love with who you are, you have to
00:25:32be in love with with with the country that you come from, you have
00:25:35embrace your history, you have to promote your history, you
00:25:39don't have to be, mean i know that that lot of people from
00:25:43Kosovo and from Albania and from
00:25:45you know the the the countries they work very hard in
00:25:49there.
00:25:50the their daily lives and they don't have enough time to spend with their kids and
00:25:54then usually
00:25:55you know kids start speaking the more the the the
00:25:59the language the country where you are or where the... live,
00:26:03but it's very important to to to to get your your
00:26:07children to to speak the language, it it's always something that
00:26:11it's great asset to have,
00:26:14and I guess we are very, very proud of where who we are
00:26:18and where we where we from, and that
00:26:21has trickled down to to
00:26:24to our to our children, and we try to speak Albanian as much as we
00:26:27can, when we are in London, when we
00:26:31are anywhere in the... world uh sometimes with dua when
00:26:35we need to say something in secret we turn it into Albanian that's our secret
00:26:38language
00:26:39so yeah
00:26:40I guess I guess embracing who you are and and being proud of
00:26:43who you are and and loving the heritage and loving the history
00:26:47and being proud of of that that's uh
00:26:51that's one the the the parts you know to to to
00:26:55kind of try and and tell your children that you should not be
00:26:59embarrassed of where you from and the language that you speak.
00:27:03Uh, what is your vision for the future of Sunny Hill Festival
00:27:07and how do you see the future of Kosovo? I think the Sunny Hill festival is
00:27:11going to become the biggest festival in
00:27:14Southeast Europe and hopefully in five years we are going to
00:27:18start competing with a bigger festival festivals in Europe.
00:27:22What Sunny Hill brings to to to the country is very
00:27:26valuable and we need to kind of
00:27:30work together ' into promoting the
00:27:33country as much as we
00:27:36can. Dukajin Lipa, thank you
00:27:40very much uh for joining us today in across the Balkans. Thank
00:27:44you for your time. Thank you so
00:27:47much.
00:27:53That's all from me and the theme for this week. Stay connected with across the
00:27:57Balkans by following our stories on TRT World's social medias and
00:28:01YouTube channel. I'm Najam Muftich, thank you for watching and hope to
00:28:05see you next
00:28:05time.
00:30:08Welcome back, you're watching TRT World, I'm Neil Harvey, and these are our latest
00:30:12headlines: Turkia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan assigned
00:30:16a landmark defense pact in Mecca, pledging that attack on one will
00:30:20be treated as an attack on all. Turkish president Erdogan said the
00:30:23deal reaffirms the right to self-defense. It is not aimed any
00:30:27country. The deal comes as tensions have grown across the region since the start
00:30:31the US. israi
00:30:32war on Iran. Iran's foreign minister says that
00:30:36Tehran and Aman are very close to deal a new shipping route through the straight of
00:30:40hormoos with technical and legal issues largely
00:30:43resolved. She says that reopening the waterway would still be
00:30:46conditional on compensation for what Tayran's called US
00:30:50violations the memorandum of understanding. Washington says it will.