Although nearly all heat-related deaths are preventable, heatwaves kill thousands of people worldwide every year. At this very moment, an extreme heatwave in India and Pakistan, affecting about one billion people, is “testing the limits of human survivability,” warns Chandni Singh, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report.
Almost one-quarter of humanity lives on the Indian subcontinent. That fact is easily forgotten elsewhere, as world leaders focus on combating outbreaks of COVID-19 and its new variants within their own countries. But when our descendants pass judgment on this moment in history, they won’t remember just the lockdowns, face masks, and vaccination programs. They will also remember India and its neighbours.
In a choked voice, Parasuram Maurya described desperately running from one hospital to another to save his father from COVID-19.Sundar Maurya, a farmer from the south-western town of Narainapur, complained of breathing difficulties and tested positive on 3 May. Within days, his condition worsened.Mr Maurya took his father, who is in his mid-50s, to three medical facilities in the Banke district but all refused him admission due to a shortage of beds and oxygen.
As India battles a major coronavirus wave, there's concern about rising infection levels in neighbouring countries.Travel and other restrictions have been introduced amid fears that poorly resourced local health services will be unable to cope.What's Happened To Case Numbers?In India, daily case numbers and deaths began rising in March and then surged dramatically.
In December 1862, in the throes of the American Civil War, which pitted the norms of slavery against the norms of freedom, United States (US) President Abraham Lincoln presented his emancipation plan to Congress. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present,” he declared. “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
It is already apparent that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be uneven, with poorer countries bearing the brunt of the fallout. This includes the 1.2 million children in Bangladesh who are engaged in the harshest forms of child labour. In such uncertain times, these children – and millions of others elsewhere – are even more vulnerable to exploitative and hazardous work. The reason is simple.
The United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and Canada have accused Russia of trying to steal coronavirus vaccine research as the pandemic surges across the world, with Brazil surpassing two million confirmed cases and the US notching a new daily record.The virus has killed more than 588,000 people, infected more than 13.7 million and crippled the global economy since emerging late last year, and world hopes have turned to a vaccine to end the onslaught.In the latest positive sign, British me
Stunning mini-revolutions have erupted in recent months in two of the world’s largest Muslim countries. The first shock came in Indonesia, where a little-known group of activists led a mass protest against the Christian governor of Jakarta. Accused of disrespecting the Prophet, the governor, a close ally of the country’s president Joko Widodo, is now in prison.
The Middle East is often viewed as a region waylaid by feelings of collective humiliation and violent rivalries, both between and within countries. But South Asia is beset by some of the same forces, reflected in a surge of Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar, where the Muslim Rohingya are being driven from the country, and Hindu nationalism in India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.The good news for South Asia is that a “Middle Eastern” future is not inevitable.
Violence in Myanmar that’s pushed nearly 400,000 Muslim refugees into neighbouring Bangladesh is threatening to deepen sectarian tensions across the region.The exodus of Rohingya from Rakhine state has sparked concerns that politicians in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India could seek to capitalise on public anger over the treatment of a group that’s considered stateless in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
