Massive heatwaves across East Asia and the Pacific could place millions of children at risk, the UN warned Thursday, calling for action to protect vulnerable people from the soaring temperatures.
Global monitors have warned that 2024 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record, marked by climate extremes and rising greenhouse gas emissions.
The UNICEF data showed over 243 million children across the Pacific and East Asia were estimated to be affected by heatwaves, putting them at risk of heat-related illnesses and death.
Several countries in the region are currently smouldering in the summer heat, with temperatures nearing record levels as they regularly hit over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
Local forecasters are predicting steeper rises in the coming weeks.
Some Philippine schools suspended in-person classes in April, with the state weather forecaster saying temperatures could reach a “danger” level of 42 or 43 degrees Celsius in parts of the country.
In Thailand, a temperature of 43.5 degrees Celsius was recorded in the northern province of Mae Hong Son earlier this week — just a few degrees shy of the record 44.6 degrees Celsius.
Around 40 people die from heat-related illnesses annually, according to the Thai Ministry of Health.
And in February, neighbouring Vietnam endured a monster heatwave in its southern “rice bowl” when temperatures reached up to 38 degrees Celsius — an “abnormal” high for the period.
According to the UNICEF report, children are more at risk than adults as they are less able to regulate their body temperature.
“Children are more vulnerable than adults to the effects of climate change, and excess heat is a potentially lethal threat to them,” said Debora Comini, Director of UNICEF Regional Office for East Asia and the Pacific.
The report said heatwaves and high humidity levels — commonly experienced in the region — can have a deadly effect as the heat will “hinder the body’s natural cooling mechanisms.”
“We must be on high alert this summer to protect children and vulnerable communities from worsening heatwaves and other climate shocks,” Comini said.
The UN projected that over two billion children are expected to be exposed to heatwaves by 2050.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei again warned Israel Wednesday that it “will be punished” for a Damascus air strike that killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.
“The evil regime made a mistake in this regard. It must be punished and will be punished,” Khamenei said in a televised speech after Eid al-Adha prayers in Tehran.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz swiftly riposted with a Persian-language statement on social media site X.
“If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack Iran,” he said.
Khamenei said the April 1 strike, which levelled the five-storey Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital, had run roughshod over international agreements providing for the inviolability of diplomatic premises.
“The consulate and embassy offices in any country are the territory of that country,” he said. “When they attacked our consulate, it means they attacked our territory.”
Khamenei has led Iranian officials in a succession of promises to avenge the strike, which was widely blamed on arch foe Israel.
One of his senior advisers, Yahya Rahim Safavi, warned on Sunday that Israeli embassies were “no longer safe”.
Israel said last week it was strengthening its defences and pausing leave for combat units following Iran’s retaliation threats.
Iran does not recognise Israel, and the two countries have fought a shadow war for years.
Iran charges that Israel was behind a wave of sabotage attacks and assassinations targeting its nuclear programme.
Most of the New Zealand cricketers who refused to visit Pakistan for the Indian Premier League (IPL) are in trouble getting no opportunity to the Indian franchise to play in the league.
Currently the Kiwi players who are part of the Indian Premier League are facing difficulties, the New Zealand cricketers are looking forward to the matches for a good start in this season but they are not being fed by the franchise.
9 New Zealand cricketers have signed contracts in the Indian Premier League but so far only 4 cricketers have been given the opportunity to play matches while the rest have sat on the bench and watched the matches.
A team in the league can field up to 4 foreign players in the playing XI, New Zealand players are rarely selected to be part of the playing XI.
New Zealand media quoted the country’s cricketer as saying that Kiwi cricketers seem to run for water and only practice.
The surprising thing is that Kane Williamson sat out in three matches while in two matches he scored 27 runs. Fast bowler Trent Boult has taken 5 wickets in 4 matches.
Rachin Ravindra, who performed well in the World Cup, has scored 112 runs in 5 matches, New Zealand’s most expensive player Daryl Mitchell has added 118 runs in 5 matches.
Mitchell Santner, Dion Conway, Lockie Ferguson, Glenn Phillips and Matt Henry are yet to get a match in the IPL.
Gazans did their best to celebrate the end of Ramadan in the driving rain on Wednesday, as the genocide ravaged on with 14 killed, including children, in a strike on their home, the health ministry said.
The Israeli military said it struck several targets on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, with a jet hitting a rocket launch site and troops killing a “terrorist cell” in close quarters fighting.
An AFP photographer witnessed the aftermath of the the bombing of the home in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Family members clutched the bodies of dead children at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir el-Balah.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.
Israel said 468 aid trucks — a record since the October 7 — were allowed into Gaza on the eve of the holiday which marks the end of the Muslim fasting month and is traditionally celebrated with family gatherings.
But with the United Nations warning the besieged territory is on the verge of famine, there was little to feast on for the 2.4 million residents of Gaza, up to 1.5 million of whom are crammed into camps around the far-southern city of Rafah.
The faithful gathered at dawn outside the city’s flattened Al-Farooq Mosque, where worshipper Khairi Abu Singer complained that Israel’s relentless bombardment had even “deprived Palestinians from praying inside their mosques”.
Father-of-four Ahmed Qishta, 33, told AFP there was little to celebrate at what should be a joyous time.
“We prepared sweets and biscuits from the aid we got from the UN and now we are giving it to the children. We try to be happy but it is difficult.”
He said they went to pray at the graves of family members killed in the war before going to the Ibn Taymiyyah mosque for Eid prayers.
There has never been “such an Eid — all sadness, fear, destruction and a grinding war”, he said.
Abir Sakik, 40, who fled her home in Gaza City with her family and is now living in a tent in Rafah, said she had no “ingredients for the cakes and sweets” she would usually make.
Instead she made cakes from crushed dates. “We want to rejoice despite all the blood, death and shelling,” she told AFP.
‘Enough of war’
Sakik said that despite it being a religious holiday, the Israeli military “committed a massacre and killed women and children” in the camp.
“We are tired and weary — enough, enough of war and destruction,” she said, adding that Gazans were desperate for a truce.
“We try to bring joy to the children. Before all this, there was a great atmosphere at Eid with the children’s toys, the Eid cakes, the food, the chocolates in every house — everything was sweet and beautiful.
“But they destroyed all of Gaza,” she said.
Nihaya Atallah, 49, from Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, also celebrated the festival in a tent in Rafah. “Our spirits are broken, our homes destroyed,” she told AFP.
“There’s no Eid, no joy, only war and loss.”
Rafah resident Moaz Abu Moussa said that “despite the pain and massacres, we will show our happiness in these difficult circumstances”.
“We don’t care about the war, we will live Eid like other Muslims and show our happiness to the displaced people and families of martyrs and detainees.”
Meanwhile in Jerusalem tens of thousands of worshippers poured into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, for morning prayers.
“It’s the saddest Eid ever,” said nurse Rawan Abd, 32, from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. “At the mosque you could see the sadness on people’s faces.”
In the occupied West Bank, the atmosphere was even more sombre, with many Palestinians in the flashpoint northern city of Jenin visiting its cemetery to pray for those who have been killed since the Israeli genocide in Gaza began.
Israeli offensive has killed at least 33,482 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.
GAZA STRIP: Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Wednesday as Muslims marked the end of the holy fasting month of Ramzan and after US President Joe Biden labelled Israel’s approach to the war a “mistake”.
Palestinians gathered for morning prayers on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday amid the ruins of Gaza, which has been devastated by more than six months of war since October 7.
Tens of thousands also flocked to Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound where one worshipper, nurse Rawan Abd, said: “It’s the saddest Eid ever… you could see the sadness on people’s faces.
“Usually we come to Al-Aqsa to celebrate, this year we came just to support each other,” the 32-year-old said at Islam’s third holiest site, which is also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.
Israeli forces kept up combat operations and air strikes on Gaza a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed no let-up in the campaign to destroy Hamas and bring home the hostages.
Netanyahu insisted on that “no force in the world” would stop Israeli troops from entering Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah which is packed with displaced Palestinians.
His threat came amid ongoing talks in Cairo involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators for a truce and hostage release deal.
Biden, voicing his growing frustration with hawkish Netanyahu, issued some of his sternest criticism yet of the war, which has brought mass civilian casualties and widespread suffering.
“I think what he’s doing is a mistake,” Biden told Spanish-language TV network Univision in an interview that aired Tuesday night after being recorded last week. “I don’t agree with his approach.”
He urged Netanyahu to “just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks, total access to all food and medicine going into the country.”
‘Famine-like conditions’
The war broke out with October 7 against Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Palestinian also took about 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,360 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Another 14 people were killed – including small children – in a strike on a home in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, the health ministry said.
The army said Wednesday that “Israeli troops are continuing to operate in the central Gaza Strip and killed a number of terrorists over the past day”.
It added that aircraft had “struck dozens of terror targets in the Gaza Strip, including military sites, launchers, tunnel shafts and infrastructure.”
Israel has imposed a siege that has deprived Gaza’s people of most food, water, fuel, medicines, and other essential goods.
Humanitarian groups have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, where UN experts say half the population is facing “catastrophic” food insecurity.
Washington’s recent tougher line with Israel, its main ally in the region, has brought some results, according to the US Agency for International Development.
Recent days had seen a “sea change” in aid deliveries, said USAID administrator Samantha Power, with Israel reporting 468 trucks entering from Egypt on Tuesday.
However, Power stressed that Israel needs to do more, saying that “we have famine-like conditions in Gaza, and supermarkets filled with food within a few kilometres away” in southern Israel.
Washington has also resumed funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after cutting it weeks ago after Israel claimed that some UNRWA staff took part in the October 7.
‘It will be punished’
Hamas has said it is studying the latest proposal for a truce. A framework being circulated would halt fighting for six weeks and see the exchange of about 40 hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
However, Hamas has so far also publicly insisted on a full withdrawal of Israeli ground forces and a permanent ceasefire – demands Israel has rejected outright.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that Israel had to “take some steps forward” while Hamas’s public statements had been “less than encouraging”.
The US State Department has however also warned Israel that “a full-scale military invasion of Rafah would have an enormously harmful effect” on civilians and “would ultimately hurt Israel’s security”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday he had no indication of an “imminent” assault on the city, where around 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering.
Blinken also said he doubted Israel would attack Rafah before a delegation is set to visit Washington next week.
Regional tensions have surged amid the Gaza war, and Israel was widely blamed for an April 1 strike on arch foe Iran’s consulate in Damascus that killed seven Revolutionary Guards.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Israel that “the evil regime made a mistake in this regard. It must be punished and will be punished.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz swiftly replied with a Persian-language post warning that “if Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack Iran.”
Louis Theroux, Aimee Lou Wood, Nicola Coughlan, Peter Capaldi, and Jenna Coleman are among the many celebrities who have donated items to help Cinema for Gaza.
Famous musicians, filmmakers, actors, and photographers like Annie Lennox, Jonathan Glazer, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Misan Harriman, Gurinder Chadha, Juliette Larthe, and Naqqash Khalid have also donated to a Cinema for Gaza Auction.
Film journalists and filmmakers Hanna Flint, Julia Jackman, Leila Latif, Sophie Monks Kaufman, and Helen Simmons have started Cinema For Gaza with a planned auction to help Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).
Many talented filmmakers from the UK and beyond have donated too. A-listers like Tilda Swinton, Jonathan Glazer, Ramy Youssef, Juliette Larthe, Peter Capaldi, Imelda Staunton, Brian Cox, Joseph Quinn, Mike Leigh, Misan Harriman, Joanna Hogg, Aimee Lou Wood, and Josh O’Connor.
Juliette Larthe, who helped start PRETTYBIRD UK and made the award-winning movie IN CAMERA, is giving a mentoring session over Zoom. And the director of IN CAMERA, Naqqash Khalid, is giving a mentoring session and two tickets to see his movie.
Some cool things in the auction are Tilda Swinton reading a bedtime story, special seats for the play Long Day’s Journey into Night with a chance to meet Brian Cox, signed movie posters from Jonathan Glazer, a photo taken by Misan Harriman, a small part in Gurinder Chadha’s next movie, handwritten lyrics to Annie Lennox’s song ‘Sweet Dreams’, and a Zoom serenade from Olly Alexander.
Louis Theroux, Aimee Lou Wood from Sex Education, Nicola Coughlan from Bridgerton, and Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman from Doctor Who have also given things to Cinema for Gaza.
MAP helps Palestinians living under occupation and as refugees by giving them medical aid and working on building up local healthcare. Right now, they’re helping with the emergency in Gaza.
The auction is online until Friday, April 12th, at midnight BST. You can bid on the lots here.
Former captain Muhammad Hafeez reacted to the announcement of the 17-member squad of the national team for the Pakistan New Zealand T20 series.
The 17-member squad for the national team was announced today, with the return of recently retired cricketers Mohammad Amir and Imad Wasim.
However, Mohammad Hafeez is not happy with the announcement of the national team for the series against New Zealand.
Muhammad Hafeez wrote ‘X’ “Rest in peace domestic cricket.”
Former cricketer Muhammad Hafeez parted ways with the director of the national team, Hafeez wanted to meet with PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi to present a report on the defeat in the tour of Australia and New Zealand, but Naqvi did not have time to meet Hafeez.
According to reports, PCB was not interested in working with Muhammad Hafeez due to which the two decided to part ways.
Pakistan has announced 17 member squad for the upcoming series against New Zealand.
The five-match series will be played in Rawalpindi and Lahore from April 18 to 27, for which the New Zealand cricket team will arrive in Pakistan on April 14.
2 new players Usman Khan and Irfan Khan Niazi have been included in the team announced under the leadership of Babar Azam.
Apart from this, Imad Wasim and Mohammad Amir will return to international cricket while 5 reserve players are also included in this series.
Muhammad Amir and Imad Wasim announced themselves to be available for the Pakistan cricket team by ending their retirement in the last few days.
Bollywood star Preity Zinta recently shared a precious memory from her early days in the industry on Instagram. The post featured a snapshot from her very first photoshoot at the age of 20.
In the caption, Zinta confessed to feeling clueless about posing for the camera back then. She wrote, “was going through some old stuff n found this photo! OMG!!! My first photo shoot ever… I was all of 20 & I thought I knew everything I needed to know about the world … except how to pose for a photo shoot.” Her candid reflection resonated with fans, who appreciated her honesty and humility.
Since her debut in the 1998 film ‘Dil Se,’ Preity Zinta has captivated audiences with her charm and talent. Alongside her successful acting career, she is also known for her philanthropy and advocacy work.
Actress Sarah Khan has recently shared some behind the scenes photos from the drama ‘Abdullahpur Ka Devdas.’ The highly anticipated series ‘Abdullahpur Ka Devdas’, starring Sarah Khan and Bilal Abbas Khan, made its debut on Zindagi channel after being produced for Zee5 some years ago. The drama, known for its cinematic storyline and presentation, has become a hit among viewers, averaging three million views per episode.
The acting performances have received praise from the audience. Bilal Abbas Khan, Sarah Khan, Raza Talish, Anoushey Abbasi, Nauman Ijaz, Ali Ansari, Savera Nadeem, and others star in the drama series. The final episode is scheduled to air next week on Friday since it consists of 13 episodes. Sarah Khan has posted some lovely behind-the-scenes pictures from the set. Take a look at a few of them below:
