Wildfires rage on untamed in Greece, Portugal and Corsica

Hot and dry weather stoked another round of wildfires burning across southern Europe on Sunday as firefighters in Greece, Portugal and the French island of Corsica struggled to corral the flames.

Greek authorities voiced suspicions that at least some of the several dozen fires that broke out on both the mainland and the island of Zakynthos over the weekend were started deliberately.

Flames and smoke rise from a forest fire at Kalamos village, north of Athens. (AP Photo)

Over 4,000 firefighters were battling more than 250 wildfires in Portugal, which requested assistance from other European Union nations.

On Corsica, fires that have raged since Thursday forced the evacuation of 1,000 people, authorities said.

A helicopter drops its load over a forest fire at Kalamos village. (AP Photo)

The latest blaze in Greece started Sunday afternoon in a pine forest and had damaged as many as 20 houses by night in a town north of the capital. Kalamos, a town some 44 kilometers (27 miles) north of Athens, is a favorite vacation spot for Athenians.

Authorities said they have shut down a large portion of the local road network as the blaze expanded in several directions, including toward Athens. They also evacuated two children's campgrounds.

A firefighter controls a wild fire approaching the village of Pucarica, near Abrantes, central Portugal, Friday, Aug. 11,(AP Photo)

Portugal Civil Protection Agency spokeswoman Patricia Gaspar said the country set an annual single-day record for new fires on Saturday, when 268 separate fires started. That surpassed the previous year-to-date high mark of 220 fires reached Friday.

While the weather isn't helping, nature was responsible for igniting a minority of the blazes, Gaspar said.

A helicopter drops its load over a forest fire at Kalamos village, north of Athens. (AP Photo)

"We know that more than 90 percent of the fires have a human cause, whether intentional of from negligence. Both are crimes," she said.

Authorities believe a series of fires raging on several fronts on the western Greek island of Zakynthos were started deliberately.

Smoke fills the air among burnt trees in the village of Pucarica, near Abrantes, central Portugal, Friday, Aug. 11, 2017. (AP Photo)

The country's fire service said there were "well-founded suspicions of foul play" after five fires broke out late Saturday and early Sunday, followed by another three later on Sunday morning.

Greek Justice Minister Stavros Kontonis, who is also the local member of parliament, said of the multiple blazes while visiting the island: "This is planned."

The fire service said 10 of the 12 fires burning on Zakynthos were still unchecked, with high winds making it difficult to control the flames.

Residents and volunteers wield branches trying to extinguish a forest fire at Kalamos village, north of Athens, on Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017. (AP Photo)

A total of 53 wildfires broke out in Greece on Saturday and several more did on Sunday, including on the island of Kefalonia, next to Zakynthos.

Authorities said the multiple blazes had stretched firefighting capabilities to the limit. Firefighting planes and helicopters cannot fly at night, adding another degree of difficulty. In Zakynthos, authorities were monitoring the progress of the flames with a small camera-equipped drone, which provides information to firefighters on the ground, the fire service said.

Trouble controlling flames and forecasts calling for more hot and dry days ahead prompted Portugal's government to ask other countries in Europe for help, Minister of Internal Administration Constanca Urbano de Sousa said.

A firefighter tries to extinguish a fire at a house during a forest fire at Kalamos village, north of Athens, on Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017.  (AP Photo)

Portugal has been especially hard hit by wildfires, including one that killed 64 people in June, during a summer marked by high temperatures and a lack of rain.

Wildfires in Portugal this year have accounted for more than one-third of the burned forest in the entire 28-country European Union.

The EU's Emergency Management Service said the amount of forestland blackened in Portugal as of Aug. 5 was about five times larger than the average recorded in the country between 2008 and 2016.

A resident stands on a street during a forest fire at Kalamos village, north of Athens, on Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017.  (AP Photo)

In southern France, fierce flames have ravaged some 2,100 hectares (5,190 acres) of land since Thursday — with 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres) burned in Corsica alone.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said there have been no casualties from the fires thanks to the efforts by 1,200 firefighters and the air teams that carried out 300 water drops in 24 hours.

While the mainland fires were tamed over the weekend, the Corsica blazes were ongoing and still required "major means," Collomb said.

A firefighter sprays water inside the courtyard of a house during a forest fire at Kalamos village, north of Athens. (AP Photo)

Firefighters continued to fight wildfires in the Corsican towns of Manso and the hilly Pietracorbara.

Northern Corsica Prefect Gerard Gavory said over 1,000 thousand residents and tourists have been evacuated.

WASHINGTON (AP) — On the left and right, Supreme Court justices seem to agree on a basic truth about the American system of government: No one is above the law, not even the president.

“The law applies equally to all persons, including a person who happens for a period of time to occupy the Presidency,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in 2020.

Less than a year earlier, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, then a federal trial judge, wrote, “Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings.”

But former President Donald Trump and his legal team are putting that foundational belief to the test on Thursday when the high court takes up the Republican’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump’s lawyers argue that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn't function as the commander in chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.

Lower courts have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington, D.C. And even if the high court resoundingly follows suit, the timing of its decision may be as important as the outcome. That’s because Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has been pushing to delay the trial until after the November election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed.

The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, which is roughly four months before the election.

The election interference conspiracy case brought by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington is just one of four criminal cases confronting Trump, the first former president to face prosecution. He already is standing trial in New York on charges that he falsified business records to keep damaging information from voters when he directed hush money payments to a former porn star to keep quiet her claims that they had a sexual encounter.

Smith’s team says the men who wrote Constitution never intended for presidents to be above the law and that, in any event, the acts Trump is charged with — including participating in a scheme to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden — aren’t in any way part of a president’s official duties.

Nearly four years ago, all nine justices rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from a district attorney’s subpoena for his financial records. That case played out during Trump’s presidency and involved a criminal investigation, but no charges.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who would have prevented the enforcement of the subpoena because of Trump’s responsibilities as president, still rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity and pointed to the text of the Constitution and how it was understood by the people who ratified it.

“The text of the Constitution … does not afford the President absolute immunity,” Thomas wrote in 2020.

The lack of apparent support on the court for the sort of blanket immunity Trump seeks has caused commentators to speculate about why the court has taken up the case in the first place.

Phillip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia University’s law school, said he worries about the delay, but sees value in a decision that amounts to “a definitive expression by the Supreme Court that we are a government of laws and not of men.”

The court also may be more concerned with how its decision could affect future presidencies, Harvard law school professor Jack Goldsmith wrote on the Lawfare blog.

But Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the court never should have taken the case because an ideologically diverse panel of the federal appeals court in Washington adequately addressed the issues.

"If it was going to take the case, it should have proceeded faster, because now, it will most likely prevent the trial from being completed before the election. Even Richard Nixon said that the American people deserve to know whether their president is a crook. The Supreme Court seems to disagree,” Roosevelt said.

The court has several options for deciding the case. The justices could reject Trump's arguments and unfreeze the case so that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan can resume trial preparations, which she has indicated may last up to three months.

The court could end Smith's prosecution by declaring for the first time that former presidents may not be prosecuted for official acts they took while in office.

It also might spell out when former presidents are shielded for prosecution and either declare that Trump's alleged conduct easily crossed the line or return the case to Chutkan so that she can decide whether Trump should have to stand trial.

Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

FILE - The Supreme Court is seen at sunset in Washington, on Jan. 24, 2019. On the left and right, Supreme Court justices seem to agree on a basic truth about the American system of government: No one is above the law, not even the president. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)