标签： Asia

For weeks, New Delhi, India’s bustling capital, has been trapped in the grip of an unrelenting severe heatwave, with official daily air temperatures regularly climbing past the 40-degree Celsius mark. Weather forecasts routinely note that “real feel” temperatures run even higher, but a new on-the-ground investigation by Greenpeace India has laid bare just how stark the gap between official readings and the dangerous heat experienced by street-side workers and low-income residents actually is.

On the Tuesday the survey was conducted, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) logged an official maximum air temperature of 43.5C across the capital. But when Greenpeace researchers deployed a high-resolution thermal camera to measure surface temperatures across crowded streetscapes, the readings told a far more alarming story: in sun-exposed spots, surface temperatures hit as high as 64C, more than 20 degrees above the official air measurement.

It is important to note the difference between the two metrics: IMD’s official data measures ambient air temperature under standardized shaded conditions, while thermal imaging captures the temperature of solid exposed surfaces. On intense heat days, asphalt roads, concrete infrastructure, idling vehicles, and open ground absorb solar radiation far more intensely than the surrounding air, pushing their temperatures far higher than official air readings. These extreme surface temperatures amplify heat absorption by the human body through radiant heat, making urban areas feel vastly hotter than official forecasts suggest—especially in areas with almost no tree cover or shade.

The Greenpeace team’s first measurement stop came at midday at the IIT flyover, one of south Delhi’s busiest traffic intersections, where hundreds of thousands of vehicles pass daily and peak-hour waits can stretch to 10 minutes. When researcher Nibedita Saha pointed the camera at shaded areas under the flyover, the reading hit 42C. But when she shifted focus to idling motorcyclists waiting under direct sun at the stop line, the reading spiked to 64C. The open pavement where the team stood registered 61C—yet just 10 feet away under the cover of a single tree, the temperature dropped sharply to 39.8C.

“Consistent exposure to such extreme heat can trigger serious, life-threatening health complications,” Saha explained, noting the transformative impact of even one tree. “We felt immediate relief just moving that short distance. That’s how much difference a single tree can make.”

Medical experts warn that the gap between official temperatures and actual on-the-ground heat creates severe public health risks. Dr. A Fathahudeen, a leading pulmonologist, explains that the human body maintains a core temperature of 37C, and prolonged exposure to high surrounding heat can push this core temperature higher. “When core temperature exceeds 40C, the body stops functioning normally,” he said. “The most common issue is heat exhaustion, marked by extreme sweating, headaches, and fatigue. In more severe cases, people experience confusion, disorientation, and even seizures. Without urgent medical intervention, patients can develop multi-organ failure and die.”

To reduce risk during heatwaves, Dr. Fathahudeen advises the public to drink water regularly even when not thirsty, wear loose light-colored clothing, and use sun protection like umbrellas. He also called on the Indian government to enforce mandatory restrictions banning outdoor labor between 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m., when heat is at its peak.

But for Delhi’s millions of low-income workers who rely on daily street-side work to survive, following this guidance is not a viable option. When the Greenpeace team traveled to Old Delhi’s iconic Red Fort to speak with street vendors, they found hundreds of people still working through the brutal heat, driven by the need to earn enough to feed their families.

“What choice do poor people like me have?” asked Sanjana Ben, a dry fruit vendor who sells her goods from the pavement. She sat on a thin cloth cushion on the scorching ground, with stacks of dry fruit laid out in front of her. The thermal camera recorded a temperature of nearly 40C on her face, but the ground just inches from her body hit 51.4C, and nearby open pavement registered 57C.

“Sometimes my head starts spinning and my vision blurs,” Sanjana Ben told the reporting team. “When the ground feels too hot, I stand up for a minute, but I can’t stand all day, so I have to sit back down.”

Nearby footwear vendor Mohammad Mahfouz Alam described the unrelenting nature of the heat, which seeps up from the ground and beats down from the sun with no escape. “There’s no relief day or night,” he said. “I feel sluggish all day, my legs ache, and I get home completely exhausted. Even after I bathe, I can’t sleep—the fan just blows hot air, and I toss and turn all night.”

Alam added that Delhi’s weather has grown far more erratic over the years, a shift that hits street-dependent workers the hardest. “Seasons aren’t predictable anymore—summer, winter, monsoon all come and go when they shouldn’t, and it hits us worst of all,” he said. Gesturing to the tree behind his stall, he added, “If this tree wasn’t here, I couldn’t work here at all. The day it’s cut down, that’s the end of me working this spot.” When the thermal camera scanned Alam’s surroundings, it registered 58.65C on nearby open pavement, and 44.8C on his shoulder.

A short walk from the Red Fort stalls lies Chandni Chowk, Delhi’s historic bustling shopping district, where a main pedestrian promenade was built years ago with stone seating areas for visitors to rest. But with no shade covering the open promenade, the seats go unused: the thermal camera registered 56.9C on the concrete pillar where a young toy vendor was sitting.

By the time the team traveled to Sundar Nagri, a lower-middle-class neighborhood in east Delhi’s Seelampur area, it was past 5 p.m. and the sun had begun to weaken. Even so, sun-exposed concrete surfaces were still scorching: a public bench at the neighborhood entrance registered 51.6C.

In this crowded neighborhood, small concrete homes are packed tightly along narrow lanes barely wide enough for one person to pass. For two weeks, 19-year-old Abhishek has kept a “Garmi Khata”, or heat register, for a Greenpeace research project, documenting how the extreme heat has disrupted his family’s health, sleep, income, and daily routines. When the team visited, the thermal camera registered 42C just outside Abhishek’s home. Walking up a narrow flight of stairs to the family’s two-room home, the team found almost no reprieve indoors: temperatures of dishes and kitchen surfaces on the wall hovered around 40C, barely lower than the outdoor reading.

The home has no window or ventilation to let trapped hot air escape, and only a small ceiling fan that circulates the same stale hot air through the rooms. “When it’s this hot, I feel nauseous all the time,” said Abhishek’s sister Kajal. “You can’t stand being outside, but you can’t stand being inside either.”

Abhishek read a recent entry from his register, which detailed how the heat has upended the family’s daily life: “This week’s heat has changed all our routines. Everyone gets home late, and no one can sleep properly,” he wrote. “In the mornings, we turn off the fan to cook, and the heat becomes unbearable. My sister can barely get her chores done, and my mother is more tired than I’ve ever seen her.”

For Abhishek, the worst part of the heatwave is the sweltering nights. “I cut my hair short, I get up multiple times a night to wash my face, I even sleep without a shirt, and I still can’t sleep,” he said. “Outside, at least there’s a little breeze. Inside, it feels like standing right next to a burning oven.”

On a Sunday in West London, tensions over Israeli settlement expansion boiled over into violent clashes outside a real estate event marketing occupied Palestinian land, leaving multiple people arrested and drawing widespread condemnation of the gathering from political and human rights figures across the United Kingdom.

The controversial gathering, dubbed the ‘Great Israeli Real Estate Event’, was held inside Edgware United Synagogue and organized by Israeli real estate firm My Home in Israel. It was designed to promote the sale of residential and commercial properties located in illegal Israeli settlements built on the occupied West Bank, territory that Palestinians claim as the core of their future sovereign state. Under international law, all Israeli settlements established in the West Bank after the 1967 Six-Day War are classified as illegal, a position reaffirmed repeatedly by United Nations resolutions and global human rights bodies.

Hundreds of demonstrators from both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel factions gathered outside the venue to stake out opposing positions on the event. Reporters on the ground from Middle East Eye, the independent outlet that first broke detailed coverage of the clashes, documented at least one physical assault: a pro-Israel supporter was filmed throwing multiple punches at a pro-Palestine activist who stood behind a metal safety railing, before uniformed officers intervened and escorted the attacker away.

Heated rhetoric permeated the standoff. Pro-Israel counter-protesters were repeatedly recorded chanting the aggressive slogan ‘There is no Palestine, we flattened it’, and even young children in the pro-Israel crowd were heard hurling misogynistic slurs at pro-Palestine campaigners. Many pro-Palestine demonstrators, including Jewish anti-Zionist activists, framed the event as nothing less than state-sanctioned theft of Palestinian land.

Oscar Leyens, a long-time Jewish pro-Palestine activist and member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, called the gathering an affront to Jewish values of anti-oppression. ‘I’m a true practising and very proud Jew who sees what’s going on between Israel and the Palestinians as an abomination of Judaism,’ Leyens told Middle East Eye. ‘This event is land theft. They are trading land to explicitly only a Jewish population in order to organise settlers to move to their apartheid state. This is a disgrace to Jewish history of resistance against fascism and racism. They are the fascists, they are the racists, and we will not stand for a moment while they trade in Palestinian land.’

Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, a journalist who has spent years documenting Israeli settler violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, said the violent clashes outside the London synagogue mirrored the aggression he had witnessed firsthand in occupied Palestinian territory. ‘We are surrounded by a bunch of Zionists who are counter-protesting and attacking people. A bunch of Palestinian activists were attacked by the Zionists and then got arrested,’ he said. ‘This is very reminiscent of everything that I’ve seen in the West Bank… I feel like I’ve been here before.’

By the end of the day of demonstrations, London’s Metropolitan Police Service announced that 15 people had been taken into custody in connection with the unrest. Of those arrested, seven identified as pro-Israel supporters, six as pro-Palestine demonstrators, and the affiliation of two remaining detainees remained unclear as of initial police statements.

The event itself drew fierce political and legal pushback in the UK days before it even began. Just two days prior to the gathering, more than 100 British Members of Parliament signed an open letter to UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper urging authorities to cancel the event entirely. The letter argued that allowing the promotion and sale of settlement property directly contradicted existing UK government guidance that warns businesses against engaging in any settlement-related economic activity, and would violate the UK’s own obligations under international law.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan also publicly came out against the gathering, confirming he had raised his concerns directly with Metropolitan Police leadership. ‘I share concerns about the Great Israeli Real Estate Event taking place in our city, which I oppose, and that’s why I’ve discussed this directly with the Met Police,’ Khan said. ‘I’m informed that any allegations of criminality relating to the potentially unlawful sale of property at the event would be assessed by the Met with a view to investigation.’

The list of participating organizations, released publicly on Facebook by Emanuel Vatari, CEO of event sponsor Emanuel Group, confirms that multiple Israeli firms with deep ties to settlement construction took part in the event. Among them were Harey Zahav, a development firm that openly lists properties for sale in Negohot, an illegal settlement in the southern Hebron Hills, and the Meshulam Levinstein Group, a diversified construction and real estate conglomerate that has built both residential and commercial projects in illegal settlements across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, including a large housing and retail development in the East Jerusalem settlement neighborhood of Homat Shmuel. Additional participants included Tivuch Shelly, an agency that advertises homes in the large West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adunim, and Africa Israel Residences, a subsidiary of the Africa Israel Group that has developed multiple settlement projects across occupied Palestinian territory.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a UK-based legal advocacy organization, delivered a formal legal notice to Edgware United Synagogue on the day before the event, putting venue leadership on notice of significant legal and reputational risks for hosting the gathering. The ICJP letter, reviewed by Middle East Eye, noted that the event was explicitly marketed as a platform for the sale of property in the occupied Palestinian territories, and that UK government guidelines clearly warn businesses away from such activity due to its legal and ethical risks under international law.

A tense demonstration outside a London venue hosting an Israeli real estate event tied to illegal settlements in occupied Palestine devolved into violence on Sunday, as pro-Israel counter-protesters assaulted anti-apartheid activists opposing the controversial gathering. The event, branded the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event”, was held at Edgware United Synagogue in north London, drawing immediate condemnation from human rights organizations and political figures who argue it normalizes the displacement of Palestinian people and the expansion of unlawful Israeli settlements.

Anti-apartheid and pro-Palestine demonstrators assembled outside the synagogue to highlight the event’s core purpose: marketing and selling property built on occupied Palestinian land that the international community universally recognizes as illegally occupied. Public records of participating companies, published by the event’s sponsor earlier in the week, confirmed that at least four participating entities either explicitly advertise real estate in illegal Israeli settlements or are directly involved in settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, a journalist and long-standing activist working to document Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, was on site during the confrontation. He told independent outlet Middle East Eye that the aggression from pro-Israel counter-protesters mirrored exactly the violence he had witnessed first-hand in occupied Palestinian territories. “We are surrounded by a bunch of Zionists who are counter-protesting and attacking people — a bunch of Palestinian activists were attacked by the Zionists and then got arrested,” Khrzhanovskiy explained. “This is very reminiscent of everything that I’ve seen in the West Bank… I feel like I’ve been here before.”

Disturbing footage of the confrontation, circulated widely across social media platforms, captured extreme rhetoric from pro-Israel counter-protesters. The crowd chanted “There is no Palestine, we flattened it”, while even children in the counter-protest were recorded shouting misogynistic slurs at pro-Palestine and anti-apartheid demonstrators. Online footage also shows anti-Zionist activists entering the event space to disrupt the proceedings and publicly denounce the trade of illegally seized Palestinian land.

Criticism of the event extended far beyond the protest line. More than 100 sitting British Members of Parliament have joined human rights groups in calling on the UK government to block the gathering over its explicit ties to illegal settlement expansion. For many Jewish activists opposing Israeli apartheid, the event held at a British synagogue represents a profound betrayal of Jewish values and history. Paul, one of the Jewish pro-Palestine activists speaking to Middle East Eye from the protest, emphasized that the occupation and displacement of Palestinians violates core tenets of his faith.

“I’m a true practising and very proud Jew who sees what’s going on between Israel and the Palestinians as an abomination of Judaism,” Paul said. “This event is land theft. They are trading land to explicitly only a Jewish population in order to organise settlers to move to their apartheid state. And in the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, we say this is a disgrace to Jewish history of resistance against fascism and racism. They are the fascists, they are the racists, and we will not stand for a moment while they trade in Palestinian land.”

Amnesty International UK has echoed these criticisms, framing events like this London gathering as “apartheid and annexation with a sales pitch”. Ahead of the event, legal advocacy group The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians delivered an official legal notice to Edgware United Synagogue, formally warning leadership of the “serious legal and reputational concerns regarding the event” hosted on their property.

Maya Saad, a Middle East Eye reporter covering the protest on the ground, confirmed that cross-party political opposition and widespread rights advocacy had failed to convince the UK government to intervene to cancel the event, leaving protesters to challenge the gathering directly outside the venue. The confrontation marks the latest high-profile flashpoint in growing global tensions over Israeli settlement expansion and apartheid policies toward Palestinians, as grassroots movements push for stronger governmental action to hold Israel accountable for violations of international law.

In a moment that marks a pivotal shift in regional geopolitics, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi — popularly known by his nickname Cirro and serving as the president of the self-declared independent state of Somaliland — arrived in Israel on Sunday, making history as the first Somaliland head of state to conduct an official state visit to the Jewish nation. The trip comes roughly six months after Israel made a groundbreaking move to recognize Somaliland as an independent sovereign state, a step no other United Nations member state had previously taken.

Taking to the social platform X to share his first impressions after landing, Cirro expressed deep gratitude for the reception he received from Israeli President Isaac Herzog. He called the journey a once-in-a-generation milestone for the relationship between the breakaway East African territory and Tel Aviv. “For thirty-five years, the people of Somaliland have built a peaceful, democratic, and resilient nation. We asked the world: Do you see us? Israel answered first,” Cirro wrote in his public post, which was paired with an on-the-ground photo from his arrival. “Today, history is being written, and Somaliland stands ready to forge a shared future founded on friendship, cooperation, and mutual respect.”

According to reporting from Israeli daily newspaper Maariv, the two-day visit will see Cirro hold additional high-level meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, beyond his initial talks with Herzog. Israeli President Herzog struck a collaborative tone in his response to the visit, noting that both sides aim to expand joint work across multiple priority sectors. “We both seek security and stability in the region and in the Horn of Africa. We both see the importance of protecting maritime freedom,” Herzog stated.

To understand the full context of this historic encounter, it is necessary to outline Somaliland’s decades-long path to international recognition. The autonomous region in northern Somalia declared its separation from the rest of Somalia in 1991, following the collapse of the Siad Barre regime. To date, however, the United Nations, the African Union, and nearly every sovereign government across the globe still formally recognize the territory as an integral part of Somalia, leaving Somaliland’s independence bid isolated on the global stage.

That changed this past December, when Israel became the first UN member state to formally grant recognition to Somaliland as an independent country. Regional analysts have widely framed the move as a calculated step to advance Israeli geopolitical interests in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region. The territory sits just 30 kilometers south of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the critical narrow waterway that links the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea — one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes for global trade.

A permanent Israeli foothold in Somaliland would place Israeli military and intelligence assets within very close proximity to Yemen’s Houthi movement, which has launched repeated attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea since late 2023. The Houthis have stated their attacks are a retaliation for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza against Hamas. For Israel, establishing a presence in Somaliland also advances a broader goal of countering the expanding influence of Iran and its regional allied network across the Red Sea and Horn of Africa, analysts add.

Israel’s alignment with Somaliland also deepens its existing close security and political partnership with the United Arab Emirates, which has long backed Somaliland’s bid for international standing. Back in 2017, the Somaliland government approved a UAE bid to construct a military base at the strategic Port of Berbera, a move Hargeisa hoped would bolster its case for global recognition. Since Israel granted recognition to Somaliland earlier this year, senior Somaliland officials have confirmed they have held discussions about hosting an Israeli military base on their territory — a reversal of earlier denials of any such plans from Hargeisa’s foreign ministry.

For Somaliland, the new partnership with Israel carries tangible potential benefits beyond the long-sought win of international recognition. In comments given to Reuters back in February, Cirro revealed that Somaliland expects to finalize a bilateral trade agreement with Israel in the near future, and has offered Israel exploration and extraction rights to its untapped mineral deposits as part of the broader deal. The breakaway region has also identified growing security cooperation with Israel as a key priority: after the United Nations partially lifted its long-standing arms embargo on Somalia in 2023, Somaliland has cited new growing security threats to its territory and has sought to strengthen its own military capabilities.

On a tense Sunday in the Middle East, an Israeli drone strike on an apartment building in Beirut’s southern Ghobeiry neighborhood of the Dahieh district killed at least three civilians and left 15 others injured, sending shockwaves through already fragile regional peace negotiations and drawing sharp condemnation alongside explicit threats of retaliation from top Iranian government and military officials.

Lebanese media confirmed the targeted structure was a municipally owned apartment building in the densely populated Dahieh area, a district that has long been a stronghold of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The attack marked the latest escalation in a cycle of cross-border violence that has gripped the Israel-Lebanon border for months, coming just hours after three unmanned aerial vehicles launched from Lebanese territory struck northern Israel earlier the same day. In response to that initial incursion, senior Israeli cabinet members immediately called for forceful, aggressive retaliation targeting Beirut directly.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement confirming the Sunday strike was a deliberate targeting of Hezbollah assets in Dahieh, carried out in direct response to the earlier drone fire on Israeli territory. This latest attack fits a consistent pattern of Israeli military activity that has persisted since a temporary ceasefire went into effect across the region on April 16: Israel has conducted daily bombardment operations across southern Lebanon, while its ground forces have progressively expanded their occupation of southern Lebanese villages and carried out widespread demolitions of local residential and civilian infrastructure.

Early Sunday, the Israeli military had already issued a broad evacuation order urging residents of at least 30 towns and villages across Lebanon’s Nabatieh and Sidon districts, located north of the Litani River, to leave their homes immediately ahead of planned military operations. The timing of the Beirut strike carries particularly high stakes, as it comes at a critical moment when Washington and Tehran appeared to be on the cusp of finalizing a landmark US-Iran agreement designed to de-escalate the broader regional war. As recently as this weekend, both US and Pakistani leaders publicly predicted the deal could be finalized and signed as early as Sunday.

Just last week, a separate Israeli strike on the Dahieh district already triggered a full exchange of cross-border fire between Israeli and Iranian forces, bringing regional tensions dangerously close to a full-scale conflict that would have collapsed the ongoing negotiation process entirely. Iran has long listed a full cessation of Israeli hostilities in Lebanon and a complete withdrawal of Israeli occupying forces from all southern Lebanese territory as non-negotiable conditions for any final wider agreement with the United States. On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reaffirmed that the imminent deal would explicitly include commitments to end all hostilities in Lebanon and enforce the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the south.

Sunday’s strike has thrown these plans into complete disarray. Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief nuclear and negotiation negotiator, argued that the attack exposed a critical failure on the part of the United States: either Washington lacks the political will to uphold its own commitments to the emerging deal, or it does not have the capability to rein in its Israeli ally to meet the agreed terms. In a public post on the social platform X, Ghalibaf warned that the current path toward negotiation would become completely unworkable if the US cannot deliver on the obligations it has put forward.

Senior Iranian military leadership has further raised the threat of direct retaliation. Brigadier General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, deputy commander of Iran’s supreme military command, told Iranian state media that what he labeled Israeli “crimes” in Lebanon would not remain unanswered, signaling that Tehran is prepared to take direct military action in response to the strike.

Adding another layer of complication to the negotiation process, Israeli Defense Minister Katz has already explicitly rejected the core Iranian condition for the deal: he confirmed earlier this week that Israel has no intention of withdrawing its forces from the areas of southern Lebanon it currently occupies. This stance puts Washington in an impossible position, as it tries to reconcile its unwavering military and political support for Israel with its diplomatic goal of reaching a de-escalation agreement with Iran to prevent a wider regional war.