The 24th Abha Shopping Festival has attracted more than 200,000 visitors since its launch on July 1.

The festival consists of six shopping arcades displaying housewares, clothes, perfumes and sweets.

It also offers a variety of entertainment programs and events, including theme parks, shows, and restaurants.

The event will run until August 14 at the Abha International Exhibition Centre. 

Northern China, which is still dealing with flooded rivers and floodwaters produced by Typhoon Doksuri two weeks ago, is bracing for further rains with Typhoon Khanun’s approach.

Parts of Japan and the Korean Peninsula have already been hit by Khanun.

Following unprecedented flooding last week, China’s northern Hebei region raised its emergency response to the highest level on Thursday in preparation for potentially devastating downpours from the newcomer.

Since late July, China’s north and northeast have been hit by extensive floods caused by Doksuri’s record rainfall.

Last week, Hebei, which is part of the Haihe River basin, the largest in northern China, received more than a year’s worth of rain, prompting the evacuation of almost 200,000 people.

The brown and black cattle of Texas, beloved symbols of the Lone Star state, walk through desiccated grass and stand in shrunken watering holes while their ranchers struggle to get them enough food.

For the second summer in a row, drought and extreme heat are stressing the health of cattle in Texas – the top beef-producing state in the U.S. by far – leading some ranchers to think about thinning their herds to save money on animal feed and hay.

“The grass is just not growing and primarily because it’s thirsty,” said rancher David Henderson. “Now we hit August and this is normally our hottest, driest time of the year … and the only thing I can think of, sometimes it calls for selling cows.”

Henderson, 62, manages a herd of about 150 cows in Tennessee Colony in East Texas, and said he sold roughly 30 cows in 2022 due to the drought.

Dry conditions last year drove ranchers in East Texas to sell more than 2.66 million cattle from January 2022 through August 2022 — an increase of more than 480,000 cattle compared to that time period the previous year, according to the Texas Farm Bureau.

“Well, certainly for the next few decades, the trends are going to continue,” Nielsen-Gammon said. “This sort of heat will become normal in the summertime for Texas. And that, in addition, means that the heat extremes will be that much hotter and that much more severe.”

The drought, triple-digit heat and lack of food impacts just about every facet of the cattle industry – how much milk the calves get, how the cows fatten up, how much they reproduce, and how much that coveted steak will cost.

Jimmy Reed owns the Cattle Ranch Supply store in Tennessee Colony and, with pastures diminished, has been sending out feed deliveries to ranchers in early August instead of the normal time in mid-November.

“With everybody wanting to eat that rib eye and that T-Bone or those ribs, there’s going to be less supply. So the price of beef will once again take a rise,” Reed said.

Rancher Corey Davis, 39, said after plentiful spring rains he had been optimistic.

“This year, I thought being a young farmer, I said, ‘Well, we’re going to make a bunch of hay,'” Davis said.

“I was excited and you know, four or five months later, no rain for a month. So, we’re back in a drought again.”

A wildfire that swept through the picturesque resort town of Lahaina on Hawaii’s Maui island has killed at least 36 people, authorities said, while leaving smoldering ruins in its wake and forcing thousands to flee.

Video footage showed neighborhoods and businesses razed and vehicles burned to a crisp across the western side of the U.S. island as the wildfires cut off most roads out of Lahaina, the historic former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

The town is one of Maui’s prime attractions, drawing 2 million tourists to the island each year, or about 80 percent of its visitors.

The cause in Maui had yet to be determined, but the National Weather Service said the fires were fueled by a mix of dry vegetation, strong winds, and low humidity.

Maui resident Dustin Kaleiopu on Thursday said his family, now relocated to the other side of the island, had only had minutes to evacuate and lost two generational family homes to the flames.

Such scenes of devastation have become all too familiar elsewhere in the world.

Wildfires, often caused by record-setting heat this summer, forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in Greece, Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe.

In western Canada, a series of unusually severe fires sent clouds of smoke over vast swaths of the U.S., polluting the air.

Human-caused climate change, driven by fossil fuel use, is increasing the frequency and intensity of such extreme weather events, scientists say, having long warned that countries must slash emissions to prevent climate catastrophe.

Wildfires occur every year in Hawaii, according to Thomas Smith, an environmental geography professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, but this year’s fires are burning faster and bigger than usual because of the low rainfall, higher temperatures, and nearby storm systems.