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Afghan women demonstrate in the center of Kabul, Afghanistan
Hard Numbers: Afghan women protest, gunman kills two in New Zealand, Eastern Europe seeks import ban extension, Phoenix melts
50: In Afghanistan, where women’s rights have been increasingly restricted since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, 50 women dared to protest in Kabul on Wednesday. The demonstrations were a response to the Taliban closing beauty salons, further restricting the public spaces accessible to women.
2: Two people were shot dead in Auckland, New Zealand, early Thursday, just hours before the launch there of the ninth Women’s World Cup. The gunman is also dead, and six others were injured in the incident. Authorities do not believe it was an act of terror, and the soccer tournament is set to continue as planned.
5: The five countries closest to Ukraine – Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia – are asking the EU to continue allowing them to ban the sale of Ukrainian grain until the end of the year. These countries serve as critical ground transport routes and will continue to allow for the transfer of grain, but selling it domestically was proving catastrophic for local markets and farmers. This led to an import ban in April that was set to end in September.
20: As of Wednesday, Phoenix, AZ, has endured 20 straight days of temperatures at or above 110 degrees, beating its previous record of 18 days in 1974. Wednesday also marked nine consecutive days where the low temperature was in the 90s, another record.
Europe's heat wave highlights climate & energy dependencies
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics, from the Adriatic Sea.
What's going to be the fallout of the resignation of the Draghi government in Italy?
Quite substantial. I would suspect, Mario Draghi with his government, very broad government has given Italy credibility both in terms of economic policy management, reform policies, and foreign policy not the least on Ukraine, during quite some time. He was thrown out by the populist and the rightist parties for obscure reasons. And now there will be elections on September the 25th. What's going to come thereafter? We don't know. The rightist and the center-right forces are leading in opinion polls at the moment, but all bets are off.
How is Europe handling the heatwave and the energy crisis?
Yep, that's really what's dominating. The heat wave immediately, of course, primarily in the south of Europe, but it's also in other places, emphasizing the importance of the climate transition. But also all of the issues related to our energy dependence, primarily the gas dependence of Germany and a couple of other countries on Russia, are much of the focus of the politics of Europe in the middle of the summer.
Putin seeks military support from Iran, another G7 pariah
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60:
Is the severe heat wave sweeping across Europe the new summer normal?
Of course not. It is the coolest summer, just about you'll ever see going forward. Since we are at 1.2 degrees centigrade of warming and we're heading to 2.5, which is double where we are right now, and Europe is hit generally harder than the United States, It's going to get vastly hotter across Europe. So, I mean, enjoy it while you can. This is comparatively cool weather. Really kind of depressing to think about.
Why is the Chinese bank scandal testing people's faith in the Communist Party?
Well, in part, because the Communist Party isn't doing a lot to protect the people that are watching their savings melt away. Now, it's not a lot of money. It's not a lot of accounts. We're talking about six banks in a rural area of China. But nonetheless, we are talking about a country where people had a lot of belief that these accounts would be stable and that if there was ever a problem the government would back them up. And what we've actually seen is that a number of people that have protested have been beat up and police have been just standing by and the government's not really doing anything about it. In fact, there has even been some campaigns that have said that there's been corruption involved and some of the people that had their accounts there were actually involved in illicit transactions. Not what you want to see to build support and belief in the Communist Party system among average, pretty poor citizens. So this being the case, I think it's kind of a crisis, small crisis, but one that they really want to nip in the bud, could get a lot worse for the Communist Party. We should watch this one closely.
What does Putin hope will come from his trip to Iran?
Well, as opposed to China, Xi Jinping, who have aligned worldviews before the Russians invaded Ukraine. Today, it's Raisi and Putin, Raisi the Iranian President, that has the closest aligned worldview because Iran is actually a G7 pariah. They have been sanctioned and cut off from all of the advanced industrial democracies with massive sanctions against them. That's also true of Putin's Russia. It is not true of Xi Jinping's China. And so if you want to get military support, if you want to coordinate on the global stage, a lot harder for the Russians and Chinese to do that because China still wants to do good business with the Europeans, the Americans, a lot easier for the Iranians to do that. So you're going to watch really carefully as to whether or not the Iranians are willing to provide lots of drones for example, to Russia. Whether the Russians are willing to coordinate more with the Iranians on things like energy sales, since the Russians have been undercutting the Iranians and have taken market share. And finally, what does that mean for the Iranians returning to the Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA? Which is right now on life support or Weekend at Bernie's, pick it each way you want. But if that formally breaks, then the Americans and others are going to have to put more sanctions on Iran, then that will hurt energy prices, which are already pretty high.
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- We need to talk about wet bulb weather - GZERO Media ›
A woman puts water on her face to get relief from extreme heat during hot weather in Kolkata, India.
We need to talk about wet bulb weather
Millions of Indians are suffering through one of the country’s worst heat waves in over a century.
Temperatures in India throughout April passed 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) – a hell on earth that the Washington Post says is "testing the limits of human survival.” India’s meteorology department, meanwhile, has warned that the country is likely to continue to fry throughout May.
The problem is that residents can’t sweat it out – literally. India is not only experiencing soaring temperatures, but also soaring humidity levels, giving rise to a phenomenon known as wet bulb conditions. This occurs when temperatures exceed 88 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity is over 95%.
Indeed, sweating is a key way that the human body sheds heat. But scorching temperatures mixed with high humidity make it all but impossible for sweat to evaporate and for body temperatures to cool. In wet bulb weather, the human body literally gets cooked from the inside, ravaging internal organs.
This is what’s playing out, particularly in northern and central India, where a record-breaking heat-dome has already caused many deaths, though sporadic government reporting makes it hard to know exactly how many. Other countries, like neighboring Pakistan, are also seeing deadly wet-bulb conditions, and experts warn that more than 1 billion South Asians are now at risk of heat-related illness.
This phenomenon is becoming more widespread globally as climate change worsens. Last summer, wet bulb conditions swept North America's Pacific Northwest — temperatures in western Canada outpaced arid Dubai – leading to hundreds of deaths.
Protection from wet bulbs. For people of means, protecting oneself from these conditions might seem like common sense – avoiding direct contact with heat, staying in air-conditioned facilities, covering one’s head outdoors, and wearing loose clothes. But many people, particularly those in India who risk frequent exposure to the heat by working in the fields, don’t have access to air conditioning. And even in US states like California and Oregon, high demand for heat relief has caused power grids to buckle, leading to people frying in their urban dwellings.The Graphic Truth: Where are climate-linked scorchers deadliest?
A recent spate of extreme heat waves has killed scores of people around the world. But, why is this happening? According to a recent study, 37 percent of all global deaths from heat can be attributed directly to climate change, as a rapidly warming planet caused by industrial pollution makes heat waves more frequent, intense... and deadly. We take a look at where climate-linked scorchers kill the most people, as well as carbon dioxide emissions per capita in those places.
A man cools off in Salmon Street Springs downtown Portland, Ore., on June 28, 2021, where temperatures reached an all time high of 116 degrees Fahrenheit.
What We’re Watching: Global scorcher, Indonesia’s COVID surge, Lebanon keeps imploding
Global heat wave: In much of the world, the past few days have been an absolute scorcher. Temperatures in the normally damp, temperate US Pacific Northwest soared to records of 115 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Further north in Canada's British Columbia, the mercury climbed to 121, causing dozens of deaths. In remote reaches of Siberia, satellites recorded a mark of 117 degrees. Yes, you read that right: 117 degrees in Siberia. Typically toastier parts of the world have suffocated under unusual heat too: temperatures broke 120 in Southern Iraq this week, just as the region is struggling with widespread power outages. Experts say that although massive heatwaves are perfectly natural, climate change makes them more likely to occur and more intense when they do. In other words: the drastic effects of climate change aren't off in the future somewhere; they are here, right now. Will this hot spell light a fresh fire under efforts to tackle climate change ahead of the next UN climate change summit in Glasgow this fall? We're sweating out that answer along with the rest of you.
Indonesia on COVID brink: Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, is teetering on the edge of a COVID "catastrophe." On Tuesday, the country reported almost 20,500 new infections, its highest daily rate since the pandemic began. The Red Cross says the nation's health system could soon collapse as the more infectious Delta variant threatens the supply of hospital beds and oxygen. Indeed, in recent days the price of an oxygen tank has almost tripled to $140, way more than most Indonesians can afford. To make matters worse, only 5 percent of Indonesians have been fully vaccinated, mostly with China's Sinovac jab, which is as effective as other vaccines against COVID death and severe illness but less so to prevent contagion. Although some experts are blaming the rising cases and the deaths of at least 10 fully inoculated doctors on Sinovac, the Indonesian government has no plans to suspend its use for now. President Joko Widodo has already delayed opening up the island of Bali to international tourists, but he has yet to decide on imposing another national lockdown that could further damage Indonesia's already fragile economy.
Lebanese economic hell: For many Lebanese, their country has become "unlivable." In what used to be an oasis of modernity and prosperity in the otherwise troubled Middle East, people now face shortages of almost all basic products, most of which they can hardly afford even when available due to hyperinflation. Power outages are now frequent, and the government's sudden decision to cut subsidies on Tuesday increased fuel prices overnight by one-third. As we've written before, the current mess is a direct result of a severe economic crisis that started in late 2019 as a result of decades of corruption and mismanagement. It was then turbocharged by the fallout from the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, which left Lebanon without a functioning government. Since then, things have only gotten worse with no end in sight. The Lebanese are now venting their anger by fighting each other at gas stations and attacking bank staff. But they've been protesting for 20 months with little to show for it: the same politicians that got them here still hold power, and their latest plan to fix Lebanon's economic ills is… more subsidies.