An unrelenting heatwave sweeping across northern India has killed at least 52 people in New Delhi, the Times of India reported on Thursday, as the country grappled with record temperatures this summer.
At least 52 bodies were brought to hospitals in the past two days, the Times of India said, most of them destitute and poor people who lived and worked in the open.
India has recorded more than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases this summer and at least 110 confirmed deaths between March 1 and June 18, when northwest and eastern India recorded twice the usual number of heatwave days.
“A prolonged summer should be classified as a natural disaster,” The Hindu newspaper said in an editorial on Thursday, pointing to water shortages and record power demand.
The health ministry ordered federal and state institutions to ensure immediate attention to patients, while hospitals were directed to make more beds available.
The weather office has forecast above normal temperatures for this month as well, and Delhi saw its warmest night in over 50 years on Wednesday, with a minimum temperature of 35.2 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), data from the weather department showed.
Billions of people across Asia are grappling with extreme heat in a trend scientists say has been worsened by human-driven climate change.
Heatwave kills dozens in India’s capital, reports Times of India
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Heatwave kills dozens in India’s capital, reports Times of India
- India recorded more than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases this summer and at least 110 confirmed deaths between March 1 and June 18
Drought-hit lakes in Chile come back to life after downpours
SANTIAGO: Recent torrential rains in Chile have brought back to life — for now at least — reservoirs and lagoons that had all but dried up after years of drought, with dramatic images of cracked lake beds replaced by mirror-like still waters.
A severe years-long drought had decimated water supplies and hit local industries from mining to agriculture and bees in the Andean nation, while exacerbating tensions over water use.
The Aculeo Lagoon became a symbol of the crisis, as dead cattle and fish carcasses lay on its cracked and dry surface where there had once been a huge body of water. That’s now dramatically refilled.
“The water is alive,” Gloria Contreras, manager of a campsite in the area, told Reuters. “With the drought of the lagoon, many jobs were lost. But now that’s changed, everything is reactivated — businesses, even the smallest vendors.”
The recent rains that have refilled the lakes and seen snow dumped on bare mountainsides in the Andes, damaged hundreds of homes and left one person dead.
But the water has meant that other lagoons like Lake Penuelas, an important water source for tourist coastal town Valparaíso that had dried up to a “puddle,” has recovered substantially.
“It’s been more than 20 years since we saw the lake like this, it’s beautiful,” said Eduardo Torres, a resident in the area of the nature reserve.
Experts, however, believe that recent rains won’t make up for the decade-long drought. A recent El Niño weather pattern brought low-pressure storms from the Pacific, heralding strong rains during the Southern Hemisphere winter, replenishing aquifers and covering the Andes mountains with snow.
Mauritania president faces six challengers in Saturday’s election
- Mohammed Ould Ghazouani keen to accelerate investments as youths seek jobs, equal opportunities
NOUAKCHOTT: Mauritania’s President Mohammed Ould Ghazouani has promised to accelerate investments to spur an energy and mining boom as he takes on six challengers in the June 29 presidential election.
Increased investments in energy and mining could boost Mauritania’s economy and solidify the 67-year-old former army chief’s grip at the helm of the soon-to-be gas producer.
Widely expected to win due to the ruling party’s dominance in the desert nation, Ghazouani faces an opposition field that includes anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, who came second in the 2019 election with over 18 percent of the vote.
The iron ore, gold, and copper producer is on track to become a gas producer by the end of the year with the start of production at the BP-operated Greater Tortue Ahmeyin, or GTA, offshore gas project that spans Mauritania and Senegal.
Mauritania, which holds a 7 percent take in the GTA project, is also finding developers for its BirAllah offshore gas field, which is estimated to contain nearly 60 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Ghazouani has promised a gas-fired power plant from the GTA while investing in renewable energy and expanding gold, uranium, and iron ore mining if re-elected.
Other candidates in the election include lawyer Id Mohameden M’Bareck, economist Mohammed Lemine El-Mourtaji El Wafi, neurosurgeon Otouma Soumare, and Hamadi Sidi El-Mokhtar of the Tewassoul party.
Despite growth prospects, Mauritania, four times the size of the United Kingdom and home to fewer than 5 million people, suffers from widespread poverty and has been dealing with an influx of tens of thousands of people from Mali.
As a transit route for migrants heading for Europe, the EU has promised more funds to help Mauritania curb irregular migration.
Abeid is challenging Ghazouani on his human rights record and the marginalization of Mauritania’s Black African population.
Despite slavery being abolished in 1981 and criminalized in 2007, forms of slavery persist in some parts of the country, according to a 2023 UN report.
Tens of thousands of Black Mauritanians still live as domestic slaves, rights groups say, usually to lighter-skinned masters of Arab or Berber descent.
Ghazouani has presided over a period of relative stability since 2019, as Mauritania’s Sahel neighbors, including Mali, struggle with Islamist insurgencies that have led to military coups. Mauritania has not recorded a militant attack on its soil in recent years.
“Mauritania has a more professional army with an effective presence on the ground,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
Mauritania has remained a Western ally in the fight against militants in the region, accepting help from countries such as France. In contrast, Western powers have been kicked out of junta-led Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, which have all turned to Russia for military support.
On the campaign trail, Ghazouani, who currently chairs the African Union, has promised to manage militant threats.
The International Monetary Fund projects economic growth this year at 4.3 percent, up from 3.4 percent in 2023, but warns that delays in the GTA project could worsen the country’s medium-term debt profile.
For the country’s 2 million registered voters, key issues include equitable distribution of mineral wealth and tackling corruption.
“Mauritania needs decentralized management which promotes each of the 15 regions of the country,” said civil society activist Sidha Mint Yenge.
Job access is a priority for young people, said 23-year-old student Hawa Boubacar Traore.
“These elections are an opportunity for young people to show civic commitment with a demand for transparency,” she said.
UK Labour leader hits back after PM Sunak’s ‘ayatollah and Taliban negotiations’ jibe
- Keir Starmer says Conservative election rival has ‘no answer’ to growing asylum backlog
- Party leaders exchange angry barbs over migrant question during BBC debate
LONDON: Labour leader Keir Starmer has hit back after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accused him of planning to “sit down with the Iranian ayatollah” and of making a “deal with the Taliban” on return agreements in a bid to clear the UK’s asylum backlog.
During a televised debate aired on Wednesday, the Conservative leader rejected his election rival’s argument that he would seek to move asylum seekers to safe countries or return them to their home countries, adding that many had arrived in the UK from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan.
“Is he going to sit down with the Iranian ayatollah? Are you going to try to do a deal with the Taliban? It’s completely nonsensical; you are taking people for fools,” Sunak said in a BBC leaders’ debate.
As part of his election campaign, Starmer has said he wants to negotiate return agreements as part of efforts to address the country’s chronic asylum backlog, which has worsened due to recent legislation brought in by the Conservatives, which does not allow asylum claims to be processed while deportations to Rwanda are on hold.
“There are some things that are not sensible for the asylum policy. That was a throwaway comment from the prime minister himself who had no answer to that question,” Starmer said on Thursday.
“But leaving those claims unprocessed is not the answer to that. Of course, there will be countries, Afghanistan for example, where you can’t return people — people who perhaps helped us by interpreting for our troops in Afghanistan and put themselves at risk; people who in my constituency were fleeing war in Afghanistan and found we weren’t able to get them out on those flights. Of course, in relation to their particular cases they’re not going to be returned to Afghanistan.
“But what we can’t do is stay with this absurd situation where there’s just a growing and growing number to which the prime minister has got absolutely no answer. It is absurd and reckless,” he added.
Polls have predicted Starmer is on course to win the July 4 election with a large majority, ending 14 years of Conservative rule. The Labour leader and Sunak have clashed at several debates or public sessions with voters in recent weeks over who was better suited to lead the country.
Prague-to-Budapest train collides with a bus in Slovakia, killing 5 people and injuring 5
- More than 100 people were aboard the Eurocity train when the accident took place
- Video footage showed that the engine of the train was on fire
BRATISLAVA: A train traveling from the Czech capital of Prague to the Hungarian capital of Budapest collided with a bus in southern Slovakia on Thursday, leaving at least five people dead and five injured, officials said.
More than 100 people were aboard the Eurocity train when the accident took place shortly after 5 p.m. (1500 GMT) in the town of Nove Zamky, police and the Slovak railway company ZSSK said. The deaths and injuries were confirmed by Slovakia’s rescue service.
Video footage showed that the engine of the train was on fire. The bus was badly damaged in the crash, railway officials said.
Interior Minister Matus Sutai Estok was heading to the scene of the accident, police said.
The major train track linking Slovakia’s capital Bratislava with Budapest was closed until further notice.
The more than 100 stranded passengers aboard the stricken train were being transported by buses to the town of Sturovo on the Hungarian border, ZSSK said.
President Peter Pellegrini, who was in in Brussels to attend a summit of European Union leaders, offered his condolences to the relatives of the dead.
“I wish the injured a speedy recovery and thank the doctors and rescue teams for their work done,” Pellegrini said. “I wish that such catastrophes would avoid Slovakia in the future.”
Spain arrests four Colombians rescued from submarine suspected of transporting drugs
- Police rescued the occupants after they had scuttled the 20-meter long narco-submarine 518 kilometers west of Cadiz
- The crew surfaced safely while the submarine flooded and sank with its cargo
MADRID: Spanish authorities intercepted another submarine suspected of transporting drugs to Europe from South America and arrested four Colombian nationals who were crewing the vessel, officials said Thursday.
Police rescued the occupants after they had scuttled the 20-meter (65-foot) long narco-submarine 518 kilometers (312 miles) west of Cadiz on Tuesday, when it was heading for the mainland.
Due to the characteristics of the boat and the crew’s behavior, authorities believed that it transported cocaine, the Civil Guard said in a statement on Wednesday.
The crew surfaced safely while the submarine flooded and sank with its cargo, the statement added.
The Civil Guard told the Associated Press that they would not try to retrieve the vessel which is believed to be at a depth of 1,000 meters (0.6 miles),
The submarine, which departed from Colombia, is similar to those intercepted by authorities in previous operations in northwestern Spain in 2019 — when three metric tons of cocaine were confiscated — — and last year.
Similar vessels have been discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, especially near Central and South America. They usually sail underwater at shallow depths and are rarely able to submerge.
The Colombian and Ecuadorian authorities have been working on the seizure of this sort of semi-submersible. The Colombian Navy said that in 2024 they have uncovered 13 such vessels laden with illicit drugs in the Pacific.
