NEW DELHI: India’s heatwave is the longest ever to hit the country, the government’s top weather expert said Monday as he warned people will face increasingly oppressive temperatures.
Parts of northern India have been gripped by a heatwave since mid-May, with temperatures soaring over 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).
“This has been the longest spell because it has been experienced for about 24 days in different parts of the country,” the head of India’s Meteorological Department (IMD), Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, said in an interview with the Indian Express daily.
The mercury is expected to fall as the annual monsoon rains move north this month, but Mohapatra cautioned worse will follow.
“Heatwaves will be more frequent, durable and intense, if precautionary or preventive measures are not taken,” he said.
India is the world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases but has committed to achieve a net zero emissions economy by 2070 — two decades after most of the industrialized West.
For now, it is overwhelmingly reliant on coal for power generation.
“Human activities, increasing population, industrialization and transport mechanisms are leading to increased concentration of carbon monoxide, methane and chlorocarbons,” Mohapatra said.
“We are endangering not only ourselves, but also our future generations.”
Scientific research shows climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
The latest heatwave has seen temperatures in New Delhi match the capital’s previous record high: 49.2C (120.5F) clocked in 2022.
As people sought relief from the scorching temperatures, the electricity grid groaned under a record peak power demand of 8,302 megawatts.
On May 29, an automatic weather station in the Delhi suburb of Mungeshpur recorded a high of 52.9C (127.2F), but the temperature was the result of a faulty sensor.
Elsewhere in Delhi, 17 other city stations hit a maximum of 49C (120.2F) the same day.
“We constituted an expert committee, which observed readings for the next two days and found there were problems with the sensor,” Mohapatra said.
While the IMB had raised its concerns about the recording within hours, Mohapatra confirmed for the first time that the sensor was faulty.
“We inspect the AWS (automatic weather stations) every six months,” he said.
“But in between a bird or a monkey can disturb it.”
India’s heatwave longest ever, worse to come
https://arab.news/5hwht
India’s heatwave longest ever, worse to come
- Parts of northern India have been gripped by a heatwave since mid-May
- Climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense
Hong Kong begins national security trial of Tiananmen vigil group
- Three government-vetted judges will preside over the trial, which is expected to last 75 days
HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s High Court began hearing on Thursday a landmark national security trial of the three former leaders of a now disbanded group that organized annual vigils marking Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
Once legal in China-ruled Hong Kong, such public commemorations were hailed as a symbol of the Asian financial hub’s relative freedom, compared to mainland China.
“Justice resides in the hearts of the people, and history will bear witness,” said Tang Ngok-kwan, a former senior member of the disbanded group, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.
He was among dozens who braved cold weather to queue outside the court building, which was tightly guarded by scores of police officers and vehicles.
The events on June 4, 1989, when Chinese troops opened fire to end student-led protests, are not publicly discussed in China, which treats the date as taboo and allows no public remembrance.
Blocked in 2020 over COVID-19 curbs, the Hong Kong memorials have never resumed since China imposed a tough national security law that year. Several June 4 monuments, such as the “pillar of shame,” have also been removed from the city’s universities.
Under that law, Lee Cheuk-yan, 68, Albert Ho, 74, and Chow Hang-tung, 40, three former leaders of the group, now face charges of “inciting subversion of state power” that carry punishments of up to 10 years in jail.
Chow and Lee, one of the city’s veteran democratic leaders, pleaded not guilty, while Ho, also a former chairman of the city’s largest opposition Democratic Party, pleaded guilty.
The trial is among the last of several such major cases, with Chow, the former vice chair of the group, held on remand for more than 1,500 days after being denied bail.
Subverting state power a key question in trial
In an opening statement, prosecutors said the case centered on whether the Alliance’s publicly stated goal of “ending one-party rule” constituted illegally inciting others to carry out acts aimed at subverting state power.
The other key focus of the case was whether such acts amounted to “overthrowing or undermining” China’s system of government, they added.
In the past, the Alliance has said it hoped to see a democratic China and was not aiming to destroy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but to see it contest free elections.
Rights groups and some foreign governments have criticized such national security cases against prominent democrats as a weaponization of the rule of law to silence dissent.
“This case is not about national security – it is about rewriting history and punishing those who refuse to forget the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown,” said Sarah Brooks, the Asia deputy director of rights group Amnesty International.
Beijing says Hong Kong’s national security law was necessary to restore order after sometimes violent protests rocked the former British colony for months in 2019.
Detained since September 2021, Chow, a Cambridge-educated barrister, is one of the few democratic campaigners still speaking out against the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown.
She has represented herself in court and challenged prison rules.
“The state can lock up people but not their thinking, just as it can lock up facts but not alter truth,” she told Reuters in an interview.
Last November, the High Court rejected Chow’s bid to terminate the trial.
On Wednesday, the judges said the court would rely on evidence and legal principles, adding that it “will not allow trials to become a tool for political repression ... or an abuse of judicial procedures,” as Chow claimed.
