Junior Digest

The UN, meanwhile, said that one of the worst storms to hit southern Africa in decades had also unleashed a humanitarian crisis in Malawi, affecting nearly a million people and forcing more than 80,000 from their homes.

Four days after Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall, emergency teams in central Mozambique fanned out in boats and helicopters, seeking to pluck survivors from roofs and treetops in an inland sea of floodwater, sometimes in the dead of night.

Air force personnel from Mozambique and South Africa were drafted in to fly rescue missions, while an NGO called Rescue South Africa said it had picked up 34 people since Friday night, using three helicopters.

“It is the only way to access the people that are stranded,” Rescue SA’s Abrie Senekal told AFP, saying the NGO was trying to hire more helicopters.

Ian Scher, who heads Rescue SA, said the helicopter teams were having to make difficult decisions.

In Nhamatanda, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Beira, 27-year-old Jose Batio and his wife and children survived by climbing onto a roof.

But a lot of their neighbours “were swept by the water,” he said.

“Water came like a tsunami and destroyed most things. We were prisoners on the roof,” he told AFP after they were rescued by boat.

The city of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city and a major port, was immediately cut off after the storm. According to the Red Cross, the cyclone damaged or destroyed 90 percent of the city of half a million people.

“We are in an extremely difficult situation,” Nyusi said, warning of high tides and waves of around eight metres (26 feet) in the coming days.

On Monday, Nyusi had said he feared more than 1,000 had died and more than 100,000 people were in danger.

Manila, Jul 27 : The death toll in the twin earthquakes that shook the Philippines rose to eight, officials said on Saturday.
Earlier, media reported that at least five people were killed and 12 other sustained injuries in the two earthquakes that occurred near the northern islands of the Philippines during the night.
On Friday, the US Geological Survey reported that a 5.4 earthquake was registered east of the island of Itbayat in the northernmost part of the Philippines on 2016 hrs (GMT).
Soon after, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake was registered at 2337 hrs (GMT) around that same area.
Another earthquake, of 5.7 magnitude, was registered on Saturday at 0124 hrs (GMT).
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said the second quake hit at a depth of 43 km about 19 km northwest of Itbayat. Both quakes were tectonic in origin.
According to the institute, the tremors were also felt in the towns of Basco and Sabtang.

Paris: A massive fire consumed Notre-Dame Cathedral on Monday, gutting the roof of the Paris landmark and stunning France and the world, but firefighters managed to save the shell of the stone structure and its two main bell towers from collapse.

Flames that began in the early evening burst rapidly through the roof of the eight centuries-old cathedral and engulfed the spire, which toppled, quickly followed by the entire roof.

As it burned into the evening, firefighters battled to prevent one of the main bell towers from collapsing and tried to rescue religious relics and priceless artwork. One firefighter was seriously injured – the only reported casualty.

“The worst has been avoided, even if the battle has not been totally won yet,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters at the scene shortly before midnight, as firefighters worked to further cool some of the interior structures still at risk of collapse.

Macron said France would launch a campaign to rebuild the cathedral, including through fundraising efforts and by appealing to “talents” from overseas to contribute.

Paris fire chief Jean-Claude Gallet said the cathedral’s main structure had now been saved from complete destruction.

Distraught Parisians and stunned tourists gazed in disbelief as the inferno raged at the cathedral, which sits on the Ile de la Cite, an island in the River Seine and marks the very centre of Paris.

Thousands of onlookers lined bridges over the Seine and along its embankments, held at a distance by a police cordon. Some sang Ave Maria, with others in the crowd also kneeling and praying.

World leaders expressed shock and sent condolences to the French people.

A huge plume of smoke wafted across the city and ash fell over a large area. People watching gasped as the spire folded over onto itself and fell into the inferno.

Firefighters battled smoke and falling drops of molten lead as they tried to rescue some of Notre-Dame’s treasures.

A centuries-old crown of thorns made from reeds and gold and the tunic worn by Saint Louis, a 13th century king of France, were saved, Notre-Dame’s top administrative cleric, Monsignor Patrick Chauvet said. But firefighters had struggled to take down some of the large paintings in time, he said.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had launched an inquiry into the fire. Several police sources said that they were working on the assumption for now that it was accidental.

Macron cancelled an address to the nation that he had been due to give on Monday evening in a bid to answer a wave of street protests that has rocked his presidency. Instead he went to the scene of the blaze with his wife Brigitte and some of his ministers. He thanked and congratulated emergency services and firefighters.

The French Civil Security service, possibly responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that firefighters “act quickly” and employ flying water tankers, said that was not an option as it might destroy the entire building.

The Vatican said the fire at the “symbol of Christianity in France and in the world” had caused shock and sadness and said it was praying for the firefighters.

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said at the scene that some of many artworks that were in the cathedral had been taken out and were being put in safe storage.

The cathedral, which dates back to the 12th century, features in Victor Hugo’s classic novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site that attracts millions of tourists every year.

It is a focal point for French Roman Catholics who like Christians around the world are celebrating Holy Week, marking the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The archbishop of Paris called on all priests in Paris to ring church bells as a gesture of solidarity for Notre-Dame.

“I have a lot of friends who live abroad and every time they come I tell them to go to Notre-Dame,” said witness Samantha Silva, with tears in her eyes.

“I’ve visited it so many times, but it will never be the same. It’s a real symbol of Paris.”

The cathedral was in the midst of renovations, with some sections under scaffolding, and bronze statues were removed last week for works.

Built over a century starting in 1163, Notre-Dame is considered to be among the finest examples of French Gothic cathedral architecture.

It is renowned for its rib vaulting, flying buttresses and stunning stained glass windows, as well as its many carved stone gargoyles.

Its 100-metre-long (330-foot) roof, of which a large section was consumed in the first hour of the blaze, was one of the oldest such structures in Paris, according to the cathedral’s website.

A centre of Roman Catholic faith, over the centuries Notre-Dame has also been a target of political upheaval.

It was ransacked by rioting Protestant Huguenots in the 16th century, pillaged again during the French Revolution of the 1790s and left in a state of semi-neglect. Hugo’s 1831 work led to revived interest in the cathedral and a major – partly botched – restoration that began in 1844.

The wood-and-lead spire was built during that restoration, according to the cathedral’s website.

United Nations, Apr 29 : With Mozambique and Comoros battling heavy rains and raging flood waters in the wake of Cyclone Kenneth – the second major storm to hit southern Africa in the past six weeks – the United Nations and its humanitarian partners are supporting national authorities in assessing needs and providing help.
UN Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said on Sunday that Secretary-General António Guterres is appealing to the international community for additional resources, critically needed to fund the response to the twin tragedies in the immediate, medium- and longer-term.
“The Secretary-General is deeply saddened at reports of loss of lives and destruction in Mozambique and Comoros as a result of tropical cyclone Kenneth, six weeks after Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe,” the Spokesman said in a statement.
The UN chief also extended his condolences and solidarity to the families of the victims and to the governments and peoples of Mozambique and Comoros.
In a flash update earlier Sunday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said the cyclone, with powerful winds that ripped the roofs off homes, caused the death of at least five people in Mozambique’s Pemba city, Macomia district and on Ibo Island, according to Government reports.
Some 3,500 homes in Comoros have been totally or partially destroyed and there are reports of electrical outages, road blockages and at least one bridge collapse, according to WFP.
The UN and its partners have been in the region since late March, after Cyclone Idai made landfall near Beira City in central Mozambique. The long-lived cyclone continued across land as a Tropical Storm and hit eastern Zimbabwe, southeastern Malawi and parts of Madagascar with heavy rains and strong winds.
Last Friday, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock lamented that Cyclone Idai had devastated central Mozambique, killing more than 600 people, unleashing a cholera epidemic, wiping out crops in the country’s breadbasket, forcing a million people to rely on food assistance to survive, and causing massive destruction of homes, schools and infrastructure in one of the world’s poorest countries.
He stressed that Cyclone Kenneth marks the first time two cyclones have made landfall in Mozambique during the same season, further stressing the Government’s limited resources. Malawi and Zimbabwe are also expected to experience heavy rains and flooding caused by Cyclone Kenneth.
“Cyclone Kenneth may require a major new humanitarian operation at the same time that the ongoing Cyclone Idai response targeting three million people in three countries remains critically underfunded,” said Mr Lowcock, adding “The families whose lives have been turned upside down by these climate-related disasters urgently need the generosity of the international community to survive over the coming months.”

GUWAHATI: Rescue workers were trying to reach 15 coal miners trapped underground for 13 days on Wednesday as families prayed for their safe return, but chances of survival looked slim after floodwaters rushed through the illegal “rat-hole” pit in Meghalaya.

The 15 went to work at the mine in Meghalaya on December 13 and have been underground ever since.

“Only God’s grace and some miracle can help them to be alive,” Kyrmen Shylla, Meghalaya’s disaster management minister, told .

The rescue operations were suspended on Sunday following flash floods from a nearby river, officials said.

A team of about 100 National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) experts have been camping at the mine site but their operations have been hampered by lack of sophisticated equipment, S.K. Shastri, NDRF commandant leading the operations, said.

The mine is an old, illegal so-called rat-hole mine, common in Meghalaya but dangerous as the coal is pulled out from narrow, horizontal seams.

Workers, including children, descend hundreds of feet on bamboo ladders to dig out the coal, often leading to accidents at such mines.

Kathmandu , April 1 : A massive rainstorm that swept through many places in Nepal on Sunday killed 25 people and injured at least 400 others.
Nepali Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli confirmed the above report in a Twitter message.
The Prime Minister said that security forces have been alerted while rescue operations and helicopters with night vision capabilities were waiting for the weather to clear to help bring the injured from the villages.
“Deepest condolences to the victims’ families are revealed. Keep the helicopter preparatory phase ready in order to help the needy. ‘Night Vision’ helicopter is ready for the preparation phase,” Oli posted on his official twitter handle.
According to the District Police Office in Parsa, the number of casualties is expected to rise as the storm had hit many villages in the Bara district, located about 120 kilometers south of Kathmandu, The Himalayan Times reported.
The National Emergency Operation Centre said that rescue operations would be difficult especially during the night as roads and other communication facilities in those areas have been blocked by fallen trees and electricity poles.
Meanwhile, the people who were injured during the calamity have been safely shifted to the hospital.
“Two battalions have been mobilised immediately there, here in Mid Air Base, Katmandu; night vision helicopters are on standby with the rescue team. Our security agencies are waiting for favourable weather conditions [sic]”, Prime Minister’s Chief Advisor Bishnu Rimal was quoted as saying.

Shimla, Nov 28 : As many as 343 people lost their lives in the flash floods, landslides, cloud bursts and road accidents during the monsoon causing a loss of Rs 1,600 crore to the public and private properties in Himachal Pradesh.
These figures were released by Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jairam Thakur while presiding over the meeting of inter-ministerial central team at Mandi on Tuesday, which was here access the damages the state has suffered due to untimely snowfall and heavy rains.
The Chief Minister said that Public Works department suffered major losses due to damages to roads and bridges etc. The total losses on this account have been accessed to be about Rs 930 crore. He said 405
incidents of landslides and 34 cloudbursts have been reported in the state. The Irrigation and Public Health department suffered losses worth Rs 430 crore while Rs 130.37 crore to agriculture crops and infrastructures.
He said that 343 persons lost their lives due to flash floods, landslides, cloud bursts and road accidents.
The state government has provided ex-gratia worth Rs 13.72 crore for the loss of human life. It was ensured that damaged roads and infrastructures were restored immediately in order to avoid inconvenience to the general public as well as tourists visiting the state.
Mr Thakur said that as many as 4,033 persons were rescued by different means from Chamba, Kullu and Lahaul-Spiti districts between 3 September to 1 October, 2018.
He thanked the union government in general and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular for providing all possible help to ensure relief and rehabilitation work in the state. He said that it was on the request of the state government that seven helicopters of Indian Air Force were provided to the state to airlift the stranded people in Lahul-Spiti and Chamba districts. He said that as many as 292 people were air lifted from these districts.
He urged the inter-ministerial central team to recommend for maximum support from the Government of India keeping in view the gravity of losses and damages suffered by the state which were worst in the last 10 years.

Harare: Cyclone Idai killed at least 157 people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique as it tore across Southern Africa, officials and state media said on Monday, and vast areas of land have been flooded, roads destroyed and communications disrupted.

The Mozambican port city of Beira has suffered massive damage, the Red Cross said. The storm has also pounded Malawi.

“The scale of devastation (in Beira) is enormous. It seems that 90 per cent of the area is completely destroyed,” said Jamie LeSueur, leader of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) team there.

In Zimbabwe, the Chimanimani district has been cut off from the rest of the country by torrential rains and winds of up to 170 km per hour that swept away roads, homes and bridges and knocked out power and communication lines.

Zimbabwean information ministry official Nick Mangwana told Reuters the number of confirmed deaths throughout the country was now 89. The body count is expected to rise.

The Mozambican state news agency put the death toll in Beira at 68, although television channel TVM reported that about 84 people had died across Mozambique.

Zimbabwean rescuers were struggling to reach people in Chimanimani, many of whom have been sleeping in the mountains since Friday, after their homes were flattened by rock falls and mudslides or washed away by torrential rains. Many families cannot bury the dead due to the floods.

The Harare government has declared a state of disaster in areas affected by the storm, the worst to hit the country since Cyclone Eline devastated eastern and southern Zimbabwe in 2000.

The country of 15 million people is already suffering a severe drought that has wilted crops. A United Nations humanitarian agency says 5.3 million people will require food aid.

SOUTHEASTERN AFRICA GATEWAY

In Beira, home to Mozambique’s second largest port which serves as gateway for imports to landlocked countries in southeast Africa, billboards were blown down and electricity and telephone poles knocked down.

Large swathes of land city’s outskirts were submerged, and many houses were destroyed. In some streets, people waded through knee-high water, avoiding piles of mangled metal, detached tin roofs and other debris.

Beira has a population of 500,000 and sits at the mouth of the Pungwe River.

The director of a company that jointly manages the port, Cornelder, based in the Netherlands, said the port had been closed since last Wednesday but was relatively all right and would hopefully resume operations on Tuesday.

At least two cranes would be working but damage to the access routes and roads further inland was more likely to cause a problem, said the director, who asked not to be named.

“It’s a total blackout, so all networks and electricity are down,” the person said, adding the company had large generators and enough fuel to run for now.

The fuel pipeline running from Beira to Zimbabwe was believed to be intact, the person said, though communication was still very patchy and therefore the situation at the port remained uncertain.

In February 2000, Cyclone Eline hit Mozambique when it was already devastated by its worst floods in three decades. It killed 350 people and made 650,000 homeless across southern Africa.

PEMBA, Mozambique/JOHANNESBURG : Rescuers were racing to help people caught in fast-rising floodwaters in Mozambique’s cyclone-hit city of Pemba on Sunday, as houses collapsed in one neighbourhood and heavy rain raised fears of worse to come.

Cyclone Kenneth slammed into the northern province of Cabo Delgado on Thursday, flattening entire villages and killing at least five people. It has since pounded a region prone to floods and mudslides with rain, prompting warnings that rivers could burst their banks and leave vast areas under water.

The impoverished southern African country is still recovering from another powerful cyclone that hit further south last month, submerging an area of 3,000 square km (1,200 square miles) and killing more than 1,000 people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

As a heavy downpour hammered Pemba, home to about 200,000 people, brown water started to course through the streets on Sunday.

Homes started to collapse in the northern neighbourhood of Natite, one of the worst-affected areas, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said on Twitter.

Rescue workers evacuated at least 130 people to centres elsewhere in the city on Sunday, mostly by boat, said Salviano Abreu, spokesman for the U.N.’s humanitarian arm.

Video shared by another U.N. official, Luiz Godhino, showed

people on a seaside avenue in Pemba wading through waist-high water in the pouring rain. A car had been swept into a ditch, and a torrent of brown water churned under a bridge.

Another image showed a line of cars forming on the main road out of the city, a section of which was under water.

Mozambican authorities had on Friday urged people living near two rivers, one to the north of the city and the other to the south, to move to higher ground.

Weather forecasters had warned that Kenneth, with winds of up to 280 km per hour (174 miles per hour) when it made landfall, could dump twice as much rain on northern Mozambique as Cyclone Idai did near the port city of Beira last month.

It is the first time on record that two such powerful cyclones have hit Mozambique in so short a space of time.

The U.N. says more than 1.8 million people still need aid in central Mozambique, where Idai destroyed homes, ruined crops and unleashed a cholera outbreak. Kenneth affected at least 168,000 others, the country’s disaster management agency said on Sunday.

Following an aerial assessment of the affected area in Cabo Delgado on Saturday, an official with the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said some villages had been “entirely wiped out”.

“They look like they have been run over with a bulldozer,” said Gemma Connell, who heads OCHA’s regional office.

Images shared by the agency showed rows of wooden houses, separated by sandy paths, that had been almost completely flattened. Only a few structures and the occasional coconut tree were left standing.

Lee County coroner Bill Harris confirmed the death toll: “We’ve got 14 people dead at this time and I expect that number to go higher,” he told MSNBC.

“There are some children involved,” Harris said.

The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Birmingham, Alabama tweeted that it could confirm at least eight deaths in Lee County and added that the toll was likely to rise, saying that there were “many injured & still missing.”

Jones described the damage caused by the storm as “catastrophic, based on the destruction of homes that we’ve seen.”

The swath of destruction left by the storm was a quarter mile (0.4 kilometers) wide and stretched for the “several miles that it traveled on the ground,” according to Jones.

Jakarta: At least 68 people have been killed and nearly 7,000 forced to take refuge in emergency shelters after floods, landslides and a tornado battered the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in the past week, authorities said on Sunday.

Rescue teams were still looking for seven missing people, while 47 had been injured during the devastation that saw heavy rains cause a dam to overflow, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency.

More than 5,000 homes had been submerged with scores of bridges, schools and places of worship damaged, as well as thousands of acres of rice paddies destroyed, he said in a statement.

Some displaced people had started to return to their homes as flood waters receded, but heavy equipment was needed to clear a thick layer of mud that had enveloped roads and houses, he said.

Others had chosen to remain in camps after being traumatized, Nugroho said, adding that there was still an urgent need for food, blankets and medical services.

The devastation that has struck Southern Sulawesi in the past week had also extended to Makassar, the capital of the province.

Durban , Apr 24 : South African authorities on Wednesday said that at least 51 people were killed, including two Zambian minors aged six and nine, after a rainstorm lashed the provinces of Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal here.
Scores have been wounded and more than 1,000 have been displaced, according to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“We want to commend rescue services at all levels of government for their rapid response. Resources have been mobilized and our teams on the ground have saved lives. More than 1000 people have been displaced and the government is providing shelter and support to those in need,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
“We thank the communities and individuals who risked their own lives to save loved ones, neighbours or strangers. We also thank the NGOs who are helping those in need by providing shelter, food and ablution facilities. I’ll be going to EC to assess the situation there as well,” he added.

The city of Durban was amongst the most affected areas, which faced flash floods and rainstorm.
The two Zambian children lost their lives after the roof of the house they were sleeping in collapsed, reports Xinhua. Their father sustained injuries and is currently receiving treatment, according to the Zambian embassy in South Africa.

Amritsar, Oct 20 : Forty of the 59 people killed in the train accident near here have been identified so far and the bodies of 36 of were cremated, officials said Saturday.

The bodies of four other persons, who belonged to Uttar Pradesh, have been sent to their home towns by the district administration, an official said.

The 36 bodies were cremated in batches at a ground near Shitla Mata Temple here in the presence of officials of the state government and family members of the deceased.

According to officials, the post-mortem examination on 29 bodies has been done.

At least 59 people were killed and 72 injured Friday evening after a crowd of Dussehra revellers that had spilled onto railway tracks while watching burning of Ravana effigy was run over by a train near here, officials said.

The injured have been admitted to seven hospitals, the officials said.

The train was coming from Jalandhar when the accident occurred at Joda Phatak near Amritsar, where at least 300 people were watching ‘Ravana dahan’ at a ground adjacent to the tracks.

He added: “Most of them were on rooftops or gathered on trees huddling into each other and today we actually saw (some of) them walking in Buzi.

“Although the town is still flooded, it gives an indication that the water is going down and help will be easier to access the place.”

Bhubaneswar , May 11: Over 1.5 crore people were affected and more than five lakh houses damaged by the extremely severe Cyclone Fani, which hit Odisha’s coast in Puri on May 3, according to a report released on Friday.
The State Emergency Operation Center (SEOC) in its report said that 159 Blocks, 16,659 villages, and 1,50,94,321 population were affected in the cyclone. 5,08,467 Houses were damaged too across 14 districts of the cyclone-affected state.
There were 21 human casualties were reported in Puri out of overall death toll of 41, the report said.
“The district of Puri and Khurdha have been extremely severely affected. For all families covered under Food Security, 50 kg of rice plus Rs. 2000 and polythene will be provided. Cuttack, Kendrapada and Jagatsinghpur districts are moderately affected. Rs 500 plus additional one month quota of rice will be provided in these districts,” the SEOC said.
“Hon’ble Prime Minister has announced an ex-gratia from Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund at Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of the deceased and Rs. 50,000 each for the persons, who got seriously injured due to FANI cyclone in the State in 2019,” it further read.
The SEOC’s report also stated that 14,70,197 persons evacuated and sheltered while 24,889 numbers of tourists were safely evacuated from Puri, Ganjam, Cuttack and Balasore districts.
“Under the Chief Minister’s package, the houses completely damaged will be reconstructed under housing schemes expeditiously. Loss of Agriculture and horticultural crops and animal resources, fisheries will be assessed and compensated accordingly,” it said.
“In all the affected districts one-month additional pension and house building assistance as per relief code i.e. Rs 95,100 for fully damaged structures, Rs 5,200 for partially damaged structures and Rs 3,200 for minor damages will be provided,” it read.
In Odisha, 14 cyclone-affected districts include Angul, Balasore, Bhadrak, Cuttack, Dhenkanal, Ganjam, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Kendrapara, Keonjhar, Khordha, Mayurbhanj, Nayagarh and Puri.

Amritsar, Oct 19 : In a major tragedy, at least 50 people, including women and children, were killed and more than 50 injured after a train ran them over when they were gathered at a crossing to watch burning of Ravana’s effigy at Jora Phatak near Amritsar on Friday evening.
Reports said that at Dussehra celebrations, around 500 people were standing near the railway tracks to watch a Ravan effigy being burnt and could not hear the sound of the train due to burning of firecrackers.
The train was on its way from Jalandhar to Amritsar when the tragedy took place at Jora Phatak.
Amritsar Sub Division Magistrate I Rajesh Sharma confirmed that 50 bodies have been recovered and over 50 injured have been admitted to a government hospital.
According to Amritsar Police Commissioner SS Srivastava, at least fifty people have died in this tragedy. “We are still assessing the number of casualties,” he added.
The crowd started retreating towards the tracks when the effigy was lit and the fireworks went off, official sources said adding that a large number of people were already standing there to watch the event.
However, two trains arrived from the opposite direction at the same time giving little time to people to escape. Many people were mowed down by one of the trains, sources said.
Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu, wife of Punjab Local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, was the chief guest at the Dussehra function. After the tragedy, she left the venue in her car.
The mob attacked Education Minister OP Soni when he reached the spot. Police rescued the minister.
Meanwhile, the Punjab Government has announced Rs 5 lakh for the families of each person killed in the accident and free treatment for the injured.
Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has directed Home Secretary, Health Secretary and ADGP (law and order) to immediately rush to Amritsar. The Chief Minister would fly to Amritsar on Saturday to assess the situation.

Jakarta: An earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale rocked East Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia on Tuesday, but was not potential for tsunami, the country’s meteorology and geophysics agency said.

There was no initial report of damage, the agency said.

The quake had epicentre at 103 km southwest of Sumba Barat district of the province and a depth of 10 km under sea bed, official in charge of meteorology and geophysics agency, Aziz Sugiarso said.

GUATEMALA CITY : Nearly 4,000 people were evacuated on Monday from areas around Guatemala’s Fuego volcano, which began violently erupting overnight, the country’s disaster agency Conred said.

The volcano spewed out dangerous flows of fast-moving clouds of hot ash, lava and gas early Monday and more than 2,000 people had taken refuge in shelters so far, officials from the agency told reporters. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

More dangerous flows of hot ash and lava could be expelled, said Juan Pablo Oliva, the head of the country’s seismological, volcanic and meteorological institute Insivumeh.

In June, explosive flows from Fuego killed more than 190 people.

This is the fifth eruption so far this year of the 3,763-meter (12,346-feet) volcano, one of the most active in Central America, about 19 miles (30 km) south of Guatemala City.

Abu Dhabi , May 12 : Several powerful explosions on Sunday hit the port of Fujairah in UAE following a huge fire that engulfed at least seven oil tankers, state media reported.
The blasts were heard between 4 am and 7 am local time (00:00 – 03:00 GMT), the Al-Mayadeen broadcaster reported, adding that from seven to 10 oil tankers were in flames.
However, according to local sources, the causes of the incident remains unknown, Sputnik reported.
Eyewitnesses reportedly saw several French and the US military planes flying over the port.
Further details are awaited.

Maputo [Mozambique], Mar 19 : Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi on Monday said that Cyclone Idai, which made landfall in Mozambique and other neighbouring countries, might have claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, as torrential rains showed no signs of abating.Scores were also killed and more than 200 are missing in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

The city of Beira in central Mozambique bore Cyclone Idai’s full wrath on Thursday before the storm barrelled on to neighbouring Zimbabwe, unleashing fierce winds and flash floods and washing away roads and houses.

“For the moment we have registered 84 deaths officially, but when we flew over the area… this morning to understand what’s going on, everything indicates that we could register more than 1,000 deaths,” Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said in a nationwide address.

“This is a real humanitarian disaster,” he said. “More than 100,000 people are in danger”.

Aerial photographs released by a Christian non-profit organisation, the Mission Aviation Fellowship, showed groups of people stuck on rooftops with flood waters up to window level.

“The scale of damage… (in) Beira is massive and horrifying”, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said.

Ninety percent of the city of some 530,000 people and its surrounding area has been “damaged or destroyed,” it said in a statement.

“The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous,” the IFRC’s Jamie LeSueur said.

“Almost everything is destroyed. Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed. Some affected communities are not accessible.”

A large dam burst on Sunday and cut off the last road to Beira, he said.

Sofala Province governor Alberto Mondlane warned that the “biggest threat we have now, even bigger than the cyclone, is floods because it’s raining more and more”.

Emma Beaty, coordinator of a grouping of NGOs known as Cosaco, said: “We’ve never had something of this magnitude before in Mozambique”.

“Some dams have broken, and others have reached full capacity, they’ll very soon open the flood gates. It’s a convergence of flooding, cyclones, dams breaking and making a potential wave: everything’s in place so we get a perfect storm.”

Nyusi said the Pungwe and Buzi rivers in central Mozambique “have burst their banks and engulfed entire villages.”

“Communities are isolated and bodies are floating” on the waters, he said.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, Idai left 98 dead and at least 217 more missing, according to the Information ministry.

Families started burying their dead on Monday in damp graves, according to an AFP photographer.

The storm swept away homes and ripped bridges to pieces, leaving destruction that the acting defence minister, Perrance Shiri, said “resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war”.

The eastern district of Chimanimani was worst-hit, with houses and most of the region’s bridges washed away by flash floods.

The most affected areas are not yet accessible, and high winds and dense clouds have hampered military rescue helicopter flights.

Hundreds of buildings were destroyed by the wave, which hit the coast of southern Sumatra and the western tip of Java around 9:30 pm (1430 GMT) on Saturday after a volcano known as the “child” of the legendary Krakatoa erupted.

The death toll from Hurricane Michael rose to at least 16 on Friday amid fears it would continue to climb as search-and-rescue teams scour the debris of the Florida town that bore the brunt of the monster storm.

“Mexico Beach is devastated,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said of the town where Michael made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Wednesday.

“It’s like a bomb went off,” Scott said as he toured the town of 1,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s like a war zone.”

“I hope we don’t see it climb dramatically but I have reasons to believe we still haven’t got into some of the hardest hit areas,” he said.

“What’s happening is search and rescue is trying to get into the rubble to make sure that there’s nobody covered up, trying to assess if there’s additional casualties there,” Long added.