World
A right to drink? Inside the debate to protect US workers against the heat
Dallas, Texas – More than a decade later, Eva Marroquin’s voice still shakes when she talks about it.
The 51-year-old mother of five had been working construction in Austin, Texas, for about five years when she heard that a friend had died of heat exposure at a worksite. It was 2012, and he had been helping to build a bridge at the intersection of two local highways.
“He just couldn’t get to the water in time,” Marroquin said.
The news shook Marroquin, who had experienced her own close calls with the sweltering temperatures that broil the southern United States in the summertime.
After days of painting walls or cleaning up sites, Marroquin’s face would burn red in the heat. Sometimes, she felt feverish and dizzy. Her throat would even close. It left her with haunting thoughts of what her friend must have lived through in his final moments.
“I distinctly remember how that felt, and it made me want to speak up even more,” Marroquin told Al Jazeera.
Marroquin is among the advocates pushing for greater protections for workers facing extreme temperatures in the US.
The US Department of Health and Human Services found that heat-related deaths overall have been on the rise, as climate change drives temperatures to new heights. In 2023, an estimated 2,302 people died from heat-related conditions, up from 1,722 in 2022 and 1,602 in 2021.
But in the US, there are no federal protections specifically designed to protect workers from environmental heat.
Marroquin and other workplace advocates are lobbying to change that — but in the meantime, state and local governments in the US have been duking it out over the authority to protect workers from the stifling heat.
A fight between state and local authority
On July 1, a new law comes into effect in Florida that reflects those tensions.
Last summer was the hottest on record in the state, prompting Miami-Dade County to consider an ordinance that would mandate heat safety training, regular breaks and access to water during high-temperature days.
But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blocked that attempt, signing a law that instead banned local governments from establishing their own workplace safety requirements for heat exposure.
“There was a lot of concern out of one county, Miami-Dade,” DeSantis told local press at the time, warning that the local ordinance would have caused “a lot of problems”.
Florida was the second state in recent months to pass such a law. In 2023, Texas Governor Greg Abbott also signed what critics called the “Death Star” bill — so named for its ability to destroy local regulations that went beyond existing state mandates.
It, too, prevented municipalities from implementing their own heat safety laws, effectively killing ordinances in areas like Austin and Dallas. Houston and other cities have challenged the law in court.
As in Florida, however, proponents of the law have argued that a patchwork of local regulations would be too cumbersome for companies to navigate. Business groups also warned of “local government overreach”.
“The Texas law is mostly focused on preventing the big municipalities from doing basically anything that might make doing business in Texas inconvenient or location-specific,” said Alison Grinter, a civil rights lawyer in the Dallas metropolitan area.
She explained that the oil and gas industries have long held sway in Texas politics and helped craft the state’s business-friendly reputation. That, in turn, has attracted technology and finance companies to the state as well.
Grinter added that part of the motive for blocking the local ordinances was also political. While the Texas state government is dominated by Republicans, several of its biggest cities — including Houston and Austin — are led by Democrats.
“For culture war purposes, the idea that there are four or five different big oases in the middle of the state that are sanctuaries from all of the reactionary social laws really galls lawmakers,” Grinter said.
Still, only five states have taken it upon themselves to pass heat-exposure protections. They include California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Minnesota.
“The Texas government doesn’t want local laws, but they also don’t want a statewide law,” said Ana Gonzalez of the Texas AFL-CIO, a labour union. “So workers are stuck.”
Petitioning the federal government
That gridlock on the state and local level has shifted the battle over workplace protections to the federal government.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandates that employers implement a workplace safety policy, but it does not indicate how that policy must address heat protection.
That may be changing, though. In 2021, OSHA announced it would start to develop a rule to mitigate the risks of heat-related injuries and deaths for workers, and a spokesperson, Kimberly Darby, told Al Jazeera that this month marked an important step forward.
“Last week, OSHA’s proposed rule was sent to the Office of Management and Budget for review,” Darby said. “We are another step closer to giving workers the protections they need and deserve.”
The proposed rule, however, has yet to be published — and its exact contents are therefore unknown. In addition, new OSHA rules can take years to achieve final approval.
So some advocates are looking to another federal body: the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA.
On June 17, 31 organisations — including immigrants’ rights groups, environmental nonprofits and farmworkers unions — petitioned FEMA (PDF) to provide disaster relief funds for extreme heat, as well as areas affected by wildfire smoke.
It is part of a broader effort to convince the federal government to step in for their local counterparts, according to Will Humble, who signed the petition on behalf of the Arizona Public Health Association, a nonprofit.
“Planning for and saving lives is a state and local responsibility,” Humble told Al Jazeera. “But FEMA really should include heat emergencies in their funding. Many county health departments are understaffed.”
‘Not seen as human’
In the absence of strong federal action, activists like Christine Bolaños say that employers are left with all the power to decide how to address extreme heat in the workplace, leaving workers at risk.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), at least 600 workers died from heat exposure while working from 2005 to 2021. An additional 43 deaths were documented in 2022 alone.
Experts indicate the actual number is likely higher, as heat-related deaths are difficult to track.
A broad swath of the workforce is at risk, too. The bureau estimates that 33 percent of American employees spend time outdoors as part of their everyday work.
Especially vulnerable are foreign-born Latino labourers, including both legal and undocumented immigrants, who represent a disproportionate number of work-related deaths.
Though these workers make up only 8.2 percent of the workforce, they represent 14 percent of on-the-job fatalities. The bureau also noted that Latino workers make up the majority of the construction and agricultural labour, two industries where heat exposure is an acute risk.
Bolaños — a staff member at the Workers Defense Project, a community organisation that fights for the rights of low-wage immigrant construction workers in Texas — said the heightened risks are part of a pattern of exploitation.
“Immigrant workers are especially prone to wage theft and other violations of their rights, and they’re often not aware of their rights,” said Bolaños.
The lack of heat-related protections, she added, was a reflection of how workplaces perceive these employees.
“Sometimes, they’re not seen as human,” Bolaños said. “They are not valued for their humanity, just what they can produce. Employers forget workers need to drink water. They need shade; they need breaks.”
‘The monster is here’
Congressman Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat, believes part of the problem is also scepticism towards climate change itself — and a resistance to addressing its dangers.
“Many of us progressives used to campaign on ‘the climate crisis is coming,’ and we were accused of making up a monster that didn’t exist,” Casar told Al Jazeera.
“Now the monster is here, and the things we’re fighting for have become so basic. We’re arguing over food and housing. We’re arguing over people having the right to a water break.”
Casar has spent years organising demonstrations to showcase the plight of workers — including through “thirst strikes”, where he and others refused to drink for hours, to demonstrate the risks of extreme heat.
At a “thirst strike” last year, Marroquin’s coarse, strong hands clutched a sign that read, “PEOPLE OVER PROFITS”.
Tears flowed from her eyes, which she says have been damaged by the sun and heat. She explained she developed pterygium, a kind of fleshy growth near one of her eyes, from her exposure to hot, dry conditions.
Now, a year later, Marroquin told Al Jazeera she hopes change will come soon. Just this month, she spoke to OSHA about her experience and gave feedback on the forthcoming federal rule.
“It’s really difficult to implement laws about work,” she conceded. “But we have to demand that OSHA implements rules as a whole across construction sites, in the same way they demand scaffolding is built in a certain way.”
But even with a federal standard on the way, advocates and legal experts are wary. Several told Al Jazeera that new OSHA rules are notoriously difficult to pass because of understaffing and a high standard of review, as well as potential legal challenges.
Gonzalez, the advocate from the Texas AFL-CIO, said she was bracing for the mandatory public commenting period for the eventual rule — at which time, she expects corporations to weigh in.
“I’m sure there will be pushback from the state or associations, because the rule will impact all industries,” she said. “But hopefully, this is going to prevent people from dying.”
World
Former Hamas hostage warned Australian leaders about dangers of antisemitism months before Bondi Beach attack
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A former Hamas hostage told Fox News Digital that he warned Australian leaders to take antisemitism more seriously months before the deadly shooting at Bondi Beach.
Eli Sharabi, who spent 491 days as a hostage in Gaza, said the attack on Bondi Beach was “crazy,” but far from unpredictable. Sharabi told Fox News Digital that while in Australia in June, he met with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong and warned them that rising antisemitism would lead to something worse.
Sharabi recalled telling the officials that a hate crime would take place in Australia and that he would “see the fears” of Jewish people walking on the streets. He urged them to speak out against antisemitism before it was too late.
RABBI KILLED IN SYDNEY HANUKKAH ATTACK HAD WARNED AUSTRALIAN PM ABOUT RISING ANTISEMITISM
Rabbi Yossi Friedman speaks to people gathering at a flower memorial by the Bondi Pavilion at Bondi Beach on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, following a shooting in Sydney, Australia. (Mark Baker/AP Photo)
He recounted to Fox News Digital the moment he told Marles and Wong, “When it happens, a hate crime here, it will be your responsibility because you have to have a stronger voice against antisemitism.” Though, Sharabi said he did not know why he told them that at the time.
“Unfortunately, it happened. And that’s crazy, it’s crazy. Really, I’m so sorry for that,” he said.
A spokesperson for Wong said that she “deeply appreciated her meeting with Eli Sharabi and thanks him for sharing his insights and experiences.”
“Minister Wong has consistently condemned antisemitism and antisemitic attacks,” the spokesperson said. “In response to the horrific antisemitic terror attack at Bondi, we are further strengthening laws against those who spread antisemitism and online abuse, ensuring our education system properly responds to antisemitism, and lowering the threshold to cancel visas for those who come to Australia to spread antisemitism.”
The spokesperson also conveyed Wong’s sympathies to the loved ones of the Bondi Beach shooting victims.
Sharabi told Fox News Digital that the attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach that left at least 15 dead and dozens wounded, reminded him of the persecution of European Jews in the 1940s.
“Suddenly you feel like it’s the 1940s again, and we are in 2025, 90 years later, all these things are happening again,” Sharabi said.
AUSTRALIA ANTI-TERROR POLICE DETAIN 7 MEN AS COUNTRY LAYS YOUNGEST BONDI BEACH VICTIM TO REST
A member of the Jewish community reacts as he walks with police toward the scene of a shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Dec. 14, 2025. (David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)
On Feb. 8, 2025, Sharabi was released from Hamas captivity, 491 days after he was taken hostage from Kibbutz Be’eri during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. He did not know until after he was freed that his wife, Lianne, and their daughters, Noiya and Yahel, had been killed when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel.
Since his release, Sharabi has traveled the world speaking to Jewish communities, world leaders and various audiences about his experience as a hostage, something he recounted in his book, “Hostage,” which has been translated into multiple languages.
Israeli hostages Or Levy, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross by Hamas under a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement with Israel, in Deir al Balah, Gaza, on Feb. 8, 2025. (Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
After he was released, he learned that while he was in the hands of terrorists, there were people around the world praying for him and demanding he and the other hostages be freed.
He said that while he was in the hospital in the days following his release, he was slowly exposed to the work that people in Israel and around the world did to advocate for him and the other hostages. It started with revelations about his family and friends, then his realization that people in Israel and around the world also took part in the fight for his release.
He soon joined the fight, advocating for the release of all hostages, including Alon Ohel, someone who Sharabi bonded with during his time in captivity.
“It was an amazing feeling to see him released. He’s like my son,” Sharabi told Fox News Digital.
Sharabi said that he and Ohel have seen each other a few times as free men and that they try to speak every day.
Eli Sharabi, who spent 491 days in Hamas captivity, and whose wife and two daughters were killed by terrorists, speaks at the United Nations. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
OPINION: AUSTRALIA’S HANUKKAH MASSACRE: THE HORROR OF BEING PROVEN RIGHT
Sharabi told Fox News Digital about his life after captivity. Now a free man for nearly a year, he said he appreciates every moment.
“First of all, I’m alive. Second, I’m free, and I’ve learned that freedom is priceless,” he said. “Every morning I wake up, I say thank you very much for what I have and for my freedom, and I can be able to choose whatever I do that day and not to ask permission from anyone to eat or drink or speak,” he told Fox News Digital. “I’m happy with my life. The memory of my wife, my daughters and my brother will be with me until my last day.”
Former Hamas hostage Eli Sharabi and Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon hold a photo of Sharabi’s family that shows his wife and daughters, all three of whom were murdered on Oct. 7, 2023. (Perry Bindelglass/Israeli U.N. Mission)
Sharabi told Fox News Digital that while in captivity, he promised himself that he would move his family to London, where they could live a peaceful life. He said that he made the decision because of the fear he saw in his daughters’ eyes on Oct. 7.
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While his plans on relocating to London have changed, Sharabi envisions himself living a quiet life and focusing on his own healing once the body of Ran Gvili, the last remaining hostage in Gaza, is returned to Israel. However, Sharabi said that he cannot go back to Kibbutz Be’eri and that he will likely seek a fresh start a bit further north in central Israel.
“I can’t go back to Be’eri. It’s something I need to solve with myself and with my therapist, of course. How can I get into my house again? For me, living in Be’eri, it’s not an option. In every corner, I can see the tragedy,” Sharabi said. “I need a new place, a new restart for my life, so it cannot be in Be’eri.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Marles’ office for comment.
Khan and his wife have denied accusations that they misrepresented the value of state gifts, including jewellery, and profited from them.
Published On 20 Dec 2025
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been sentenced to 17 years in prison after a Pakistani court found them guilty of illegally retaining and selling valuable state gifts.
The sentence, handed down on Saturday, capped a years-long saga that saw the duo accused of selling various gifts – including jewellery from the Saudi Arabian government – at far below market value. They have denied all charges.
In order to keep gifts from foreign dignitaries, Pakistani law requires officials to purchase them at market value and to declare profits from any sales.
But prosecutors claimed that the couple profited from the items after purchasing them at an artificially low price of $10,000, compared with their market rate of $285,521.
Khan’s supporters were quick to denounce the ruling, with his spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari saying that “criminal liability was imposed without proof of intent, gain, or loss, relying instead on a retrospective reinterpretation of rules”.
His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, wrote on social media that the proceedings were a “sham” and criticised international media coverage of the case.
The 73-year-old former leader served as Pakistan’s prime minister from 2018 until April 2022, when he was ousted in a no-confidence vote.
He was imprisoned starting in August 2023 on various charges of corruption and revealing state secrets, all of which he has denied and claimed to be politically motivated. He has been acquitted of some charges.
An internationally famous cricket player in the heyday of his sporting career, Khan remains popular in Pakistan, with his imprisonment leading to protests throughout the last two years.
The former leader is now confined to a prison in the city of Rawalpindi and “kept inside all the time”, his sister, Uzma Khanum, told journalists earlier this month.
Khanum, a doctor who was the first family member allowed to visit Khan in weeks, described him as “very angry” about the isolation, saying that he considered the “mental torture” of imprisonment to be “worse than physical abuse”.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration launched military strikes Friday in Syria to “eliminate” Islamic State group fighters and weapons sites in retaliation for an ambush attack that killed two U.S. troops and an American civilian interpreter almost a week ago.
A U.S. official described it as “a large-scale” strike that hit 70 targets in areas across central Syria that had IS infrastructure and weapons. Another U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations, said more strikes should be expected.
“This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance. The United States of America, under President Trump’s leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on social media.
The new military operation in Syria comes even as the Trump administration has said it’s looking to focus closer to home in the Western Hemisphere, building up an armada in the Caribbean Sea as it targets alleged drug-smuggling boats and vowing to keep seizing sanctioned oil tankers as part of a pressure campaign on Venezuela’s leader. The U.S. has shifted significant resources away from the Middle East to further those goals: Its most advanced aircraft carrier arrived in South American waters last month from the Mediterranean Sea.
Trump vowed retaliation
President Donald Trump pledged “very serious retaliation” after the shooting in the Syrian desert, for which he blamed IS. Those killed were among hundreds of U.S. troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting the militant group.
During a speech in North Carolina on Friday evening, the president hailed the operation as a “massive strike” that took out the “ISIS thugs in Syria who were trying to regroup.”
Earlier, in his social media post, he reiterated his backing for Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who Trump said was “fully in support” of the U.S. effort.
Trump also offered an all-caps threat, warning IS against attacking American personnel again.
“All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned — YOU WILL BE HIT HARDER THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN HIT BEFORE IF YOU, IN ANY WAY, ATTACK OR THREATEN THE U.S.A.,” the president added.
The attack was conducted using F-15 Eagle jets, A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack aircraft and AH-64 Apache helicopters, the U.S. officials said. F-16 fighter jets from Jordan and HIMARS rocket artillery also were used, one official added.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the region, said in a social media post that American jets, helicopters and artillery employed more than 100 precision munitions on Syrian targets.
How Syria has responded
The attack was a major test for the warming ties between the United States and Syria since the ouster of autocratic leader Bashar Assad a year ago. Trump has stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops and said al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack,” which came as the U.S. military is expanding its cooperation with Syrian security forces.
Syria’s foreign ministry in a statement on X following the launch of U.S. strikes said that last week’s attack “underscores the urgent necessity of strengthening international cooperation to combat terrorism in all its forms” and that Syria is committed “to fighting ISIS and ensuring that it has no safe havens on Syrian territory and will continue to intensify military operations against it wherever it poses a threat.”
Syrian state television reported that the U.S. strikes hit targets in rural areas of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa provinces and in the Jabal al-Amour area near the historic city of Palmyra. It said they targeted “weapons storage sites and headquarters used by ISIS as launching points for its operations in the region.”
IS has not said it carried out the attack on the U.S. service members, but the group has claimed responsibility for two attacks on Syrian security forces since, one of which killed four Syrian soldiers in Idlib province. The group in its statements described al-Sharaa’s government and army as “apostates.” While al-Sharaa once led a group affiliated with al-Qaida, he has had a long-running enmity with IS.
The Americans who were killed
Trump this week met privately with the families of the slain Americans at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware before he joined top military officials and other dignitaries on the tarmac for the dignified transfer, a solemn and largely silent ritual honoring U.S. service members killed in action.
The guardsmen killed in Syria last Saturday were Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown. Ayad Mansoor Sakat, of Macomb, Michigan, a U.S. civilian working as an interpreter, also was killed.
The shooting near Palmyra also wounded three other U.S. troops as well as members of Syria’s security forces, and the gunman was killed. The assailant had joined Syria’s internal security forces as a base security guard two months ago and recently was reassigned because of suspicions that he might be affiliated with IS, Interior Ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba has said.
The man stormed a meeting between U.S. and Syrian security officials who were having lunch together and opened fire after clashing with Syrian guards.
___
Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut, Lebanon, contributed.
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