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Record-breaking Kuwaiti heatwave triggers inadvisable TikTok expletive outburst

Desert storm of entirely the wrong kind lands unfortunate Egyptian national in very hot water

A man has been arrested in Kuwait for allegedly insulting the weather on social media app TikTok.

The offending video depicted the man driving through a sandstorm in the Gulf state while laughing sarcastically and swearing about the heat and dust.

The clip was posted to TikTok and later shared widely there and on Twitter, to the grave dissatisfaction of the Kuwaiti authorities. As a result, the video's creator – an Egyptian national who has not been identified – was arrested and charged with “insulting Kuwait”, Gulf News reports.

Kuwait's Ministry of Interior said in a tweet (translated) that: "The owner of the [offensive] clip was arrested [by] the State of Kuwait and referred to the competent authorities to take the necessary legal action against him."

Egyptians make up the second-largest expatriate community in Kuwait. Foreign workers in Kuwait have few rights and protections and since the unfortunate driver involved was not a Kuwaiti citizen, he was ordered to be deported back to Egypt for his transgressive cursing and disrespect for the Kuwaiti climate.

Many citizens of the diminutive desert nation are probably sympathetic to his plight, however, as Kuwait recently underwent a heatwave possibly unprecedented in recorded history.

Within the last fortnight, a weather station in Mitribah in the north-west of the country at one point measured a temperature of 54°C (129.3°F), which may be the hottest ever recorded on Earth.

While the Mitribah record is lower than the 56.7C (134.1F) measured on July 10 1913 in Death Valley, California, most modern weather boffins question this reading, pointing out that the instruments used were inaccurate and unreliable by modern standards.

Other content creators later uploaded their own clips of them insulting the weather in support of the arrested man, according to the BBC.

At the time of writing, the temperature in Kuwait City had dropped from its record highs earlier in the month to a positively balmy 40°C. ®

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