A couple of months ago, just after sunrise, 40-year-old Mamta began the first of as many as 10 journeys she would make that day. Carrying three empty plastic buckets, she walked a few hundred metres to the nearest handpump in her village in Jalaun district, in the drought-prone Bundelkhand region of northern India. Temperatures in
Western Europe got its first hint of an unusual summer in May 2026, when a heat dome produced exceptional temperatures that shattered records in several countries. Remarkable as it was, that early heat wave turned out to be only the opening salvo. By mid-August, Europeans were sweating through their fifth heat wave of the season,
“If it’s too late, at least we try,” Hugo, 26, said defiantly as he filled his water tank. “Fifty thousand hectares have already been destroyed, what will we tell our children?” Hugo grew up in the area and returned from his home in Bali to keep an eye on his mother’s house in the village
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