the times | Thursday April 28 2022 2GM 33
Suu Kyi gets five more
years in jail for corruption
Page 344,500-year-old sculpture
For a district shaped like a bow tie, plat-
ed with ever-glowing screens and in-
habited by performers dressed as su-
perheroes and a mostly naked cowboy,
Times Square has never been known
for peace and quiet.
But as tourists flood into Manhattan
once more, there are plans to super-
charge the crossroads of the world into
a Las Vegas of the east, with extrava-
gant new hotels and casinos.
Plans to bring casinos to New York
City, where they have long been barred,
have now been brought forward by
Kathy Hochul, the state governor, al-
lowing for up to three new licences.
The move has coincided with a reviv-New roll of the dice for Times Square
al in visitors to Times Square, which has
begun to recover from the pandemic
even as other parts of Manhattan are
still struggling.
Marc Holliday, head of the property
company SL Green, hopes to build a
casino in Times Square. “We’ve studied
it closely and I feel New York City can
handle not one, but two of the three li-
cences,” he said. “I feel the absolute
best, most obvious, least impactful and
most globally accepted area will be
Times Square.”
New hotels are planned, too. One, the
Hard Rock Hotel, opened this week,
with 400 rooms, entertainment venues
and a rooftop lounge. Another, TSX
Broadway, due to open next year, will
have a square concert stage above the
plaza, where singers can performagainst the backdrop of glowing bill-
boards.
It follows two difficult years in which
businesses closed and crime rose. Tom
Harris, president of the Times Square
alliance, said 338,000 people passed
through the plaza on Saturday night,
about 30,000 fewer than would have
before the pandemic. But in 2020, the
foot traffic fell to 35,000, and more than
80 per cent of stores closed. Now, he
said, 80 per cent had reopened. “I get
why developers are excited.”
A visitor who stayed in a hotel above
Times Square this month found it full
of young people staying six to a room.
“It’s got an energy now that I think
people identify with New York,” she
said. “Post-pandemic, it feels like: ‘Oh,
New York City is returning to itself.’ ”United States
Will Pavia New Yorklemons, typically about 100 rupees (£1)
per kilo during the summer, has tripled.
Some traders have reported stock being
stolen from warehouses, forcing them
to store them in their homes.
The soaring temperature has had a
significant impact on those who work
outdoors, often in lower-paid jobs, such
as rickshaw drivers, farmers and food
vendors. “I bring a towel from home
with me and dunk it in water whenever
I can and plonk it on my head to protect
myself. But it dries out in a minute,” Om
Prakash, an auto rickshaw driver in
Delhi, said.
The capital has been hotter than 40C
for several days this month, with high
summer still to come before the cooling
monsoon rains arrive in June.
Northern states, including Rajast-
han, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, were
initially the worst affected but the heat-
wave has also engulfed southern parts
of the country.
Heatwaves have killed more than
6,500 people in India since 2010, and
scientists say climate change is making
such events harsher and more frequent.India swelters in
48C and it’s not
even high summer
India is grappling with a record heat-
wave even before high summer has
arrived, with temperatures likely to
reach 48C in the next few days.
The meteorological department re-
ported that maximum temperatures
last month were the highest for March
in 122 years, and rainfall was at about
only a quarter to a third of the normal
level.
Residents have described daily life as
“hellish” — taps are starting to run dry
and soaring demand for electricity to
power air-conditioners has caused long
and regular power cuts. In northern
India forest fires are destroying agricul-
tural land.
Vulnerable people have been advised
to stay indoors.
“Temperatures are rising rapidly, and
rising much earlier than usual,” Naren-
dra Modi, the prime minister, told the
heads of state governments. “We are
seeing increasing incidents of fires in
various places — in jungles, important
buildings and in hospitals — in the past
few days.”
Modi asked state governments to pri-
oritise fire-safety audits for hospitals.
Dozens of people die every year in fires
in hospitals and factories, mainly
because of llegal construction and lax
enforcement of safety regulations.
Several rubbish dumps have ignited,
causing thick, toxic smoke to cloak
nearby towns. A fire at a 200ft high
landfill site in Delhi on Tuesday was the
fourth in less than a month.
“The dry and hot weather produces
excess methane gas at the dumping
sites that triggers such fires,” Pradeep
Khandelwal, the former head of Delhi’s
waste management department, said.
Delhi is a sprawling megacity and
home to more than 20 million people,
but it lacks modern waste management
infrastructure to process the roughly
12,000 tonnes of rubbish it produces
every day.
The impact on food supplies has
caused a steep rise in prices. The cost ofIndia
Amrit Dhillon DelhiCalifornia’s water warning
Six million Californians have been
told to cut back on their water use
after the state’s driest start to the
year on record. The board of the
Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California, which supplies
Los Angeles and nearby counties,
has declared an emergency and told
cities and water utilities to restrict
outdoor watering to one day a week
from June 1, enforced with fines.
“The water is not there,” Rebecca
Kimitch, its spokeswoman, said.
“This is unprecedented territory.”
Water is drawn from the Colorado
River and from the State Water
Project. This relies on the
Sacramento-San Joaquin River
Delta, which has said it can deliver
only 5 per cent of its usual
allocation this year.and archaeological sites yet to be
discovered.
In January construction work-
ers working on an Egyptian-
funded housing project stum-
bled on a 2,000-year-old
cemetery and unearthed the
ruins of 31 Roman-era
tombs. The work was part of
the projects undertaken by
Egypt after the 11-day vio-
lence between the Israel
Defence Forces and Hamas
last May.
Hamas, the militant group
that controls the strip, has
been accused of destroying such
heritage in the past. In 2017 it
demolished large parts of a
Canaanite settlement called Tell
al-akan to build houses for its
own employees.
A life-size statue of the
Greek god Apollo was dis-
covered in 2013 but has since
disappeared.
This year, Hamas reopened
the remains of a 5th-century
Byzantine church restored
after years of effort with fund-
ing from foreign donors. But
the archaeological gems in
Gaza may never be seen in per-
son by travellers as the strip
remains blocked by Israel and
mired in a protracted conflict.The 4,500-year-old limestone
head is being hailed as proof of
ancient Palestinian civilisation
simmering anger among the public
over the king’s activities during the
pandemic. In March 2020 he made
a speech to the nation on the
pandemic and lockdown
emphasising “compassion and the
need to look after each other”.
However, by summer, he and
Queen Máxima were photographed
in Greece failing to observe social-
distancing rules in a restaurant.
The couple had flown to their villa
in the Peloponnese on a state
aircraft. He was then caught up in a
row over his private use of a
publicly funded park for hunting.REMKO DE WAAL/ANP/AFP/GETTY IMAGESKing Willem-Alexander and Queen
Máxima enjoyed a drink in Maastricht
during King’s Day celebrations