Hundreds of blue,
green and grey tents are pitched under the sun's searing rays in downtown
Phoenix, a jumble of flimsy canvas and plastic along dusty sidewalks. Here, in
the hottest big city in America, thousands of homeless people swelter as the
summer's triple-digit temperatures arrive.
The stifling tent city has ballooned amid pandemic-era
evictions and surging rents that have dumped hundreds more people onto the
sizzling streets that grow eerily quiet when temperatures peak in the
midafternoon. A heat wave earlier this month brought temperatures of up to 114
degrees (45.5 Celsius) - and its only June. Highs reached 118 degrees (47.7
Celsius) last year.
"During the summer, it's pretty hard to find a place at
night that's cool enough to sleep without the police running you off,"
said Chris Medlock, a homeless Phoenix man known on the streets as
"T-Bone" who carries everything he owns in a small backpack and often
beds down in a park or a nearby desert preserve to avoid the crowds.
"If a kind soul could just offer a place on their couch
indoors maybe more people would live," Medlock said at a dining room where
homeless people can get some shade and a free meal.
Excessive heat causes more weather-related deaths in the
United States than hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes combined.
Around the country, heat contributes to some 1,500 deaths
annually, and advocates estimate about half of those people are homeless.
Temperatures are rising nearly everywhere because of global
warming, combining with brutal drought in some places to create more intense,
frequent and longer heat waves. The past few summers have been some of the
hottest on record.
Just in the county that includes Phoenix, at least 130
homeless people were among the 339 individuals who died from heat-associated
causes in 2021.
"If 130 homeless people were dying in any other way it
would be considered a mass casualty event," said Kristie L. Ebi, a
professor of global health at the University of Washington.
It's a problem that stretches across the United States, and now, with rising
global temperatures, heat is no longer a danger just in places like Phoenix.
This summer will likely bring above-normal temperatures over
most land areas worldwide, according to a seasonal map that volunteer
climatologists created for the International Research Institute at Columbia
University.
Last summer, a heat wave blasted the normally temperate US
Northwest and had Seattle residents sleeping in their yards and on roofs, or
fleeing to hotels with air conditioning. Across the state, several people
presumed to be homeless died outdoors, including a man slumped behind a gas
station.
In Oregon, officials opened 24-hour cooling centers for the
first time. Volunteer teams fanned out with water and popsicles to homeless
encampments on Portland's outskirts.
A quick scientific analysis concluded last year's Pacific
Northwest heat wave was virtually impossible without human-caused climate
change adding several degrees and toppling previous records.
Even Boston is exploring ways to protect diverse
neighbourhoods like its Chinatown, where population density and few shade trees
help drive temperatures up to 106 degrees (41 Celsius) some summer days. The
city plans strategies like increasing tree canopy and other kinds of shade,
using cooler materials for roofs, and expanding its network of cooling centers
during heat waves.
It's not just a US problem. An Associated Press analysis
last year of a dataset published by the Columbia University's climate school
found exposure to extreme heat has tripled and now affects about a quarter of
the world's population.
This spring, an extreme heat wave gripped much of Pakistan
and India, where homelessness is widespread due to discrimination and
insufficient housing. The high in Jacobabad, Pakistan near the border with
India hit 122 degrees (50 Celsius) in May.
Dr Dileep Mavalankar, who heads the Indian Institute of
Public Health in the western Indian city Gandhinagar, said because of poor
reporting it's unknown how many die in the country from heat exposure.
Summertime cooling centers for homeless, elderly and other
vulnerable populations have opened in several European countries each summer
since a heat wave killed 70,000 people across Europe in 2003.
Emergency service workers on bicycles patrol Madrid's streets,
distributing ice packs and water in the hot months. Still, some 1,300 people,
most of them elderly, continue to die in Spain each summer because of health
complications exacerbated by excess heat.
Spain and southern France last week sweltered through
unusually hot weather for mid-June, with temperatures hitting 104 degrees (40
Celsius) in some areas.
Climate scientist David Hondula, who heads Phoenix's new
office for heat mitigation, says that with such extreme weather now seen around
the world, more solutions are needed to protect the vulnerable, especially
homeless people who are about 200 times more likely than sheltered individuals
to die from heat-associated causes.
"As temperatures continue to rise across the US and the
world, cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, New York or Kansas City that don't
have the experience or infrastructure for dealing with heat have to adjust as
well."
In Phoenix, officials and advocates hope a vacant building
recently converted into a 200-bed shelter for homeless people will help save
lives this summer.
Mac Mais, 34, was among the first to move in.
"It can be rough. I stay in the shelters or anywhere I
can find," said Mais who has been homeless on and off since he was a teen.
"Here, I can stay out actually rest, work on job applications, stay out of
the heat."
In Las Vegas, teams deliver bottled water to homeless people
living in encampments around the county and inside a network of underground
storm drains under the Las Vegas strip.
Ahmedabad, India, population 8.4 million, was the first
South Asian city to design a heat action plan in 2013.
Through its warning system, nongovernmental groups reach out
to vulnerable people and send text messages to mobile phones. Water tankers are
dispatched to slums, while bus stops, temples and libraries become shelters for
people to escape the blistering rays.
Still, the deaths pile up.
Kimberly Rae Haws, a 62-year-old homeless woman, was
severely burned in October 2020 while sprawled for an unknown amount of time on
a sizzling Phoenix blacktop. The cause of her subsequent death was never
investigated.
A young man nicknamed Twitch died from heat exposure as he
sat on a curb near a Phoenix soup kitchen in the hours before it opened one
weekend in 2018.
"He was supposed to move into permanent housing the
next Monday," said Jim Baker, who oversees that dining room for the St.
Vincent de Paul charity. "His mother was devastated."
Many such deaths are never confirmed as heat related and
aren't always noticed because of the stigma of homelessness and lack of
connection to family.
When a 62-year-old mentally ill woman named Shawna Wright
died last summer in a hot alley in Salt Lake City, her death only became known
when her family published an obituary saying the system failed to protect her
during the hottest July on record, when temperatures reached the triple digits.
Her sister, Tricia Wright, said making it easier for
homeless people to get permanent housing would go a long way toward protecting
them from extreme summertime temperatures.
"We always thought she was tough, that she could get
through it," Tricia Wright said of her sister. "But no one is tough
enough for that kind of heat."
– AP/UNB
US Homeless Extreme heat Heat Wave USA
Comment
American and British forces carried out a fresh wave of strikes Saturday against 18 Huthi targets in Yemen, following weeks of unrelenting attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Iran-backed rebels.
The strikes "specifically targeted 18 Huthi targets across eight locations in Yemen" including weapons storage facilities, attack drones, air defense systems, radars, and a helicopter, a joint statement said.
It was co-signed by Australia, Bahrain, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand, who gave unspecified "support" to the new round of strikes, the second this month and fourth since the rebels began their attacks on ships in the region.
"The Huthis' now more than 45 attacks on commercial and naval vessels since mid-November constitute a threat to the global economy, as well as regional security and stability, and demand an international response," the statement said.
Huthi-run Al-Masirah television reported "a series of raids on the capital Sanaa," while AFP correspondents in the rebel-controlled city in western Yemen said they heard several loud bangs.
"The United States will not hesitate to take action, as needed, to defend lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world's most critical waterways," Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said in a separate statement after the strikes.
"We will continue to make clear to the Huthis that they will bear the consequences if they do not stop their illegal attacks, which harm Middle Eastern economies, cause environmental damage, and disrupt the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen and other countries."
Huthi military spokesman Yahya Saree was defiant, vowing in a social media statement that the rebels would "confront the American-British escalation with more qualitative military operations against all hostile targets in the Red and Arab Seas."
The UK Ministry of Defence said four Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4s targeted "several very long-range drones, used by the Houthis for both reconnaissance and attack missions," on Saturday, at a site north-east of Sanaa.
Saturday's operation comes after several merchant vessels were struck this week in the region, including the fertilizer-filled Rubymar, whose crew had to abandon ship after it was hit Sunday and began taking on water.
Apart from the joint operations with Britain, the United States has also carried out unilateral strikes against Huthi positions and weaponry in Yemen, and downed dozens of missiles and drones in the Red Sea.
- Anti-ship missile downed -
Earlier on Saturday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that an American Navy ship had shot down an anti-ship ballistic missile "launched into the Gulf of Aden from Iranian-backed Huthi controlled areas of Yemen."
The missile "was likely targeting MV Torm Thor, a US-Flagged, owned, and operated chemical/oil tanker," CENTCOM said on X, formerly Twitter.
US forces on Friday also shot down three attack drones near commercial ships in the Red Sea and destroyed seven anti-ship cruise missiles on land, CENTCOM said.
The Huthis say they are targeting Israel-linked vessels in support of Palestinians in Gaza, which has been ravaged by the Israel-Hamas war.
Following previous US and UK strikes, the Huthis declared American and British interests to be legitimate targets as well.
The Huthis will "persist in upholding their religious, moral and humanitarian duties towards the Palestinian people, and their military operations will not stop unless the aggression stops and the siege on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted," military spokesman Saree said.
Anger over Israel's devastating campaign in Gaza -- which began after an unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 -- has grown across the Middle East, stoking violence involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Comment
Israel launched air strikes Thursday on southern Gaza's Rafah after threatening to send troops into the city, where around 1.4 million Palestinians have sought shelter from around the territory.
Global powers trying to navigate a way to end the Israel-Hamas war have so far come up short, but a US envoy was expected in Israel on Thursday to try to secure a truce deal.
International concern has spiralled over the high civilian death toll and dire humanitarian crisis in the war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack against Israel.
More than four months of relentless fighting and air strikes have flattened much of the Hamas-run coastal territory, pushing its population of around 2.4 million to the brink of famine, according to the UN.
International concern has in recent weeks centred on Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million people forced to flee their homes elsewhere in the territory are now living in crowded shelters and makeshift tents.
The last city untouched by Israeli ground troops, Rafah also serves as the main entry point via neighbouring Egypt for desperately needed relief supplies.
Israel has warned it will expand its ground operations into Rafah if Hamas does not free the remaining hostages held in Gaza by next month's start of the Muslim holy month Ramadan.
- 'My daughter' -
The war started when Hamas launched its attack on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Hamas militants also took about 250 hostages -- 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 30 presumed dead, according to Israel.
Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 29,313 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest count by the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory.
War cabinet member Benny Gantz said Israel's operation in Rafah would begin "after the evacuation of the population", although his government has not offered any details on where civilians would be evacuated to.
In the early hours of Thursday, AFP reporters heard multiple air strikes on Rafah, particularly in the Al-Shaboura neighbourhood.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said early Thursday that 99 people had been killed around Gaza during the night, most of them women, children and elderly people.
Abdel Rahman Mohamed Jumaa said he lost his family in recent strikes on Rafah.
"I found my wife lying in the street," he told AFP. "Then I saw a man carrying a girl and I ran towards him and.... picked her up, realising she was really my daughter."
He was holding a small shrouded corpse in his arms.
- 'Possibility of progress' -
Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, was expected to arrive in Israel Thursday -- his second stop in the region after Egypt as part of US efforts to advance a hostage deal and broker a truce.
Hamas's chief Ismail Haniyeh was in Cairo for talks as well, according to the group.
Israel's Gantz said there were efforts to "promote a new plan for the return of the hostages".
"We are seeing the first signs that indicate the possibility of progress in this direction."
Matthew Miller, US State Department spokesman, said Washington was hoping for an "agreement that secures a temporary ceasefire where we can get the hostages out and get humanitarian assistance", but declined to give details on ongoing negotiations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the army will keep fighting until it has destroyed Hamas and freed the remaining hostages.
Israel's parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly backed a proposal by Netanyahu to oppose any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.
The vote came days after the Washington Post reported that US President Joe Biden's administration and a small group of Arab nations were working out a comprehensive plan for long-term peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
It included a firm timeline for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the report said.
Separately, a report by an Israeli group that fights sexual violence said Hamas's October 7 attack also involved systematic sexual assaults on civilians, based on witness testimonies, public and classified information, and interviews.
The report came the same week UN rights experts called for an independent probe into alleged Israeli abuses against Palestinian women and girls -- which Israel rejected as "despicable and unfounded claims".
Israeli officials have repeatedly alleged the militants committed violent sexual assaults during the attack -- something Hamas has denied.
- 'Waiting for death' -
Combat and chaos have stalled sporadic aid deliveries for civilians in Gaza, while in Khan Yunis -- a city just north of Rafah -- medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said an Israeli tank had fired on a house sheltering their employees and families.
Two relatives of MSF staff were killed and six others injured, it said, condemning the strike in the "strongest possible terms".
When contacted by AFP about the incident, the Israeli army said its forces had "fired at a building that was identified as a building where terror activity is occurring", adding that it "regrets" harm to civilians.
In the same town, the Palestinian Red Crescent said another hospital was also hit by "artillery shelling".
Israel has repeatedly said Hamas militants use civilian infrastructure including hospitals as operational bases -- claims that Hamas has denied.
Comment
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today stressed the need for expanding business between Bangladesh and India using their own currencies.
"We can do our business through exchanges of Bangladeshi Taka and Indian Rupee. It has already started, but we have to expand it further so that we can increase our businesses," she said while Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar paid a call on the Prime Minister.
The meeting was held at Hotel Bayerischer Hof, the conference venue, here on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) 2024, this morning.
Foreign Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud briefed newsmen about the outcome of the meeting upon its completion.
The Foreign Minister said the Bangladesh Premier and Jaishankar attached importance to doing business between the two friendly countries through their own currencies to reduce dependency on other currencies like the US dollar.
He said Bangladesh and India have excellent bilateral relations and it has elevated to another height under the leadership of the prime ministers of the two countries.
"The relations between the countries are getting stronger day by day," he said, adding that the two leaders discussed the issues during the meeting.
Quoting Jaishankar, Hasan said, "Our relations will further be closer in the days ahead."
Bangladesh Ambassador to Germany Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and PM's Deputy Press Secretary Md. Noorelahi Mina were present during the briefing.
Bangladesh Prime Minister arrived in Munich on February 15 evening on a three-day official visit to join the Munich Security Conference 2024.
Upon completion of the tour, Sheikh Hasina will leave Munich tomorrow night and is scheduled to reach Dhaka on February 19.
(BSS)
Comment
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called upon all concerned to find ways to stop Russia-Ukraine war while holding a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy here.
"Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina always says we are against all kinds of war. Today, she discussed time and again about how the war can be stopped while holding talks with Zelenskyy," said Foreign Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud at a news briefing after the meeting.
The meeting between the two leaders was held at Hotel Bayerischer Hof here on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) 2024, this morning.
Hasan also said that they also discussed how the attacks on innocent men and women in Gaza can be stopped.
The Premier reminded all that war can't bring wellbeing for any one.
"Others can be benefitted from the war. But the war cannot bring welfare for the countries involved in war and their people have to be affected by the war," said Sheikh Hasina.
In this connection, the Prime Minister recollected her memories about the sufferings of the countrymen and she herself faced during the Great War of Liberation in 1971.
She recalled her inhuman sufferings and the birth of her only son Sajeeb Wazed Joy under the captivity of the Pakistani occupation forces during the War.
"Bangladesh's foreign policy - 'Friendship to all, malice to none’ - prominently came up in the discussion between Prime Minister and Zelenskyy," the foreign minister said.
Replying to a query, Hasan said the friendly relations between Bangladesh and Russia which got foundation during the Liberation war , will not hamper at all.
"Our relationship with Russia is very wonderful. Russia stood beside us during the Liberation War and played a pivotal role in rebuilding Bangladesh after the war," he said.
He said they only discussed how to stop the war.
Bangladesh Ambassador to Germany Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and PM's Deputy Press Secretary Md. Noorelahi Mina were present during the briefing.
Bangladesh Prime Minister arrived in Munich on February 15 evening on a three-day official visit to join the Munich Security Conference 2024.
Upon completion of the tour, Sheikh Hasina will leave Munich tomorrow night and is scheduled to reach Dhaka on February 19.
(BSS)
Comment
Comment
American and British forces carried out a fresh wave of strikes Saturday against 18 Huthi targets in Yemen, following weeks of unrelenting attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Iran-backed rebels. The strikes "specifically targeted 18 Huthi targets across eight locations in Yemen" including weapons storage facilities, attack drones, air defense systems, radars, and a helicopter, a joint statement said.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today stressed the need for expanding business between Bangladesh and India using their own currencies. "We can do our business through exchanges of Bangladeshi Taka and Indian Rupee. It has already started, but we have to expand it further so that we can increase our businesses," she said while Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar paid a call on the Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called upon all concerned to find ways to stop Russia-Ukraine war while holding a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy here. "Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina always says we are against all kinds of war. Today, she discussed time and again about how the war can be stopped while holding talks with Zelenskyy," said Foreign Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud at a news briefing after the meeting.