GOLD COAST, Australia: Violent winds toppled power lines Friday as a tropical cyclone inched toward Australia’s eastern coast, swelling rivers, sparking evacuation orders and leaving 80,000 homes without electricity.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred was 125 kilometers east of Brisbane by Friday afternoon, crawling toward the densely populated coastline at “walking speed,” government forecasts said.
Some four million people were in the firing line along a 400-kilometer (250-mile) stretch of coastline straddling the state border of Queensland and New South Wales.
It is a region rarely troubled by typhoons — it has been more than 50 years since a tropical cyclone made landfall in that stretch of coast.
No deaths have been reported, but police said one man was missing after his four-wheel drive vehicle was swept from a bridge into fast-running river water south of the cyclone.
“The male driver was able to exit the vehicle and secure himself to a tree branch,” New South Wales police said in a statement.
But later, “the man was swept from the tree and seen to go beneath the water where he has not been sighted since.”
Heavy rains associated with the cyclone had already prompted flood warnings in the area.
Around 80,000 homes were left in the dark across the two states as winds uprooted trees and brought down power lines, officials and utility companies said, as repair crews raced to restore electricity.
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said the storm already “packed a punch,” warning conditions would get worse as it approached land on Saturday morning.
AFP images showed a white yacht blown into the rocks after snapping its moorings at Point Danger on the Gold Coast.
Two people made “a lucky escape” after a large gum tree crashed through the roof of a house in rural Currumbin Valley, the Queensland Ambulance Service said.
Emergency response officials said they had issued evacuation orders for some 10,000 people in the flood-prone northern rivers region of New South Wales.
There was particular concern for the town of Lismore, which was engulfed by record 14-meter (45-feet) floodwaters after heavy rains in 2022.
Many residents have spent the past three days fortifying their homes with sandbags, tying down loose furniture and stocking up on food and water.
“A lot of people are feeling a bit anxious, for sure, because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Paul Farrow from Coolangatta, a coastal suburb better known for its sun-splashed beaches.
“Yeah, we could all lose our houses. Who knows,” the 62-year-old told AFP.
“The pubs might be shut for a week or two. Who knows.”
Farrow said he had stashed a “couple of peaches,” a “couple of cartons of beer,” and “a bag of grapes” to get him through.
“So I’ll be right,” he said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the region should “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
“When nature does its worst, Australians are at our best. We rally. We lift each other up. We look out for our neighbors,” he told reporters.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred would likely cross the coast on Saturday, the Bureau of Meteorology said, although its path has proven increasingly difficult to track.
It was forecast to make landfall somewhere north of Brisbane.
Drenching rains, “destructive” wind gusts, and “abnormally high tides” would pummel the coast as it crept nearer, the bureau said.
More than 900 schools across Queensland state and neighboring parts of northern New South Wales were closed on Friday, education department officials said.
While cyclones are common in the warm tropical waters lapping Australia’s northern flank, it is rarer for them to form in cooler waters further south.
Alfred would be the first to make landfall in that part of Australia since 1974, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Researchers have repeatedly warned that climate change amplifies the risk of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and cyclones.
Australians told ‘prepare for worst’ as tropical cyclone nears
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Australians told ‘prepare for worst’ as tropical cyclone nears
- Some four million people in the firing line along a 400-kilometer stretch of coastline straddling the state border of Queensland and New South Wales
- It is a region rarely troubled by typhoons – it has been more than 50 years since a tropical cyclone made landfall in that stretch of coast
’I have to pray’: fear, danger for paramedics in South Africa’s crime hotspots
- The call came in just after 7:00 p.m. as the paramedics began the night shift: a man had been stabbed in the head with a glass bottle and was bleeding heavily
The medical crew and their ambulance from Cape Town’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) were only minutes away. But they could not respond until they had an armed police escort.
The Cape Flats, low-lying townships outside Cape Town, are hotspots for murder and gang violence in a country already plagued by one of the highest crime rates in the world.
The sprawling area of Philippi, where the wounded man lay bleeding in a shack, is among the most dangerous.
It is one of nine Red Zones in Cape Town where the EMS refuses to allow its medical crews to move without security cover.
“If it was up to me, I would go straight there,” said paramedic Mawethu Ntintini, 52, pacing the sidewalk outside the Philippi police station in his green reflective uniform.
“But we have to go through the police.”
Waiting inside the ambulance was Ntintini’s partner, Ntombikayisi Joko, who has narrowly escaped ambush while on duty and was robbed in 2021 while waiting for directions to a call-out.
“Every time I’m going out, I have to pray,” the 42-year-old mother told AFP.
“If we were going there by ourselves, we would be robbed,” Ntintini admitted.
They waited another 30 minutes before a police patrol car emerged to escort the ambulance 10 minutes down the road to a small shack of corrugated iron.
Anguished family members crowded at the wounded man’s bed were relieved to see the paramedics. “Sometimes we have to wait until the morning just because we live in a wrong place,” one said.
As the team worked, the police car’s flashing lights cast a blue glow on the dark street.
The man’s injuries, a deep cut to the arm and a bump on the head, were less severe than feared. Loaded into the ambulance, he arrived at the hospital at 8:45 pm, almost two hours after the call for help.
Joko recalled a time the police, overstretched and overburdened, could only free up an escort more than an hour after an emergency was issued for a woman in labor.
It was too late.
“It was a baby boy, he was so cute. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck,” she said.
“I was crying, because I knew that if I was there before, I would have helped that baby.”
Four of South Africa’s top five homicide hotspots last year were in the Cape Flats, according to police figures.
The Western Cape — one of nine provinces — recorded more than 12 people murdered every day, with the national average hovering around 75 a day.
The EMS demanded security escorts in 2015 when there was more than one assault a week on paramedics operating in the Cape Flats.
Incidents peaked in 2017 when nearly 90 attacks were recorded, ranging from verbal abuse and theft to hijackings and stabbings. In 2023, the latest available figure, there were 44 incidents.
Ambulance crews are soft targets for criminals looking to steal phones, money or medical equipment, said Pastor Craven Engel, who runs a gang violence prevention organization called Ceasefire.
He linked the violence to hardships imposed under apartheid, the previous government that espoused racial segregation and forced non-whites into bleak areas like Philippi, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the city center.
“It started with the urban displacement, uprooting people, putting them into areas where there’s no economic development, no recreation, no sustainable livelihood,” Engel said.
With high unemployment and rampant poverty, “the resources are so depleted that people are now targeting the good guys,” he told AFP at his offices in Hanover Park, another Red Zone.
Medical crews working to save lives sometimes know the criminals who threaten them and might also, one day, need their assistance, said 32-year-old paramedic Inathi Jacob.
“You get angry,” she said. “But we don’t let them get us to the core. There are a lot of people who really need the services of EMS.”
Ntintini and Joko had just dropped the bleeding man at a hospital when the second “priority one” call of their night shift came in: an elderly man, recently recovered from a stroke, was unresponsive.
Driving to his house would take only five minutes but the ambulance could only leave 40 minutes later, sirens blaring as a police car escorted them down narrow, dark alleyways.
France ‘strongly’ condemns Israel’s Gaza conquest plan
- France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Paris “very strongly” condemns Israel’s new military campaign in the Gaza Strip
PARIS: France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Paris “very strongly” condemns Israel’s new military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
“It’s unacceptable,” Jean-Noel Barrot said in a radio interview, saying the Israeli government was “in violation of humanitarian law,” after its security cabinet approved a plan that an Israeli official said will entail “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories.
Bangladesh’s ex-premier Khaleda Zia returns, adding pressure for elections
- Zia has been pressuring Bangladesh’s interim government to hold national election in December this year
- Her physical presence in country has huge symbolic value for her party as ex-PM Hasina remains in exile
DHAKA, Bangladesh: Bangladesh’s ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia returned to the country from London on Tuesday morning after four months of medical treatment, adding to pressure for its interim leaders to hold elections.
The South Asian country has been under a government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in a students-led mass uprising in August last year.
Zia, Hasina’s archrival, and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party have been pushing Yunus’ government to hold a national election in December to return the country to democratic rule.
Many welcomed Hasina’s overthrow as a chance to return to democratic elections, but suspicion and uncertainty have surfaced in recent months about the new government’s commitment to hold elections soon. It has said the next election will be held in either December or by June next year, depending on the extent of reforms in various sectors
Crowds gathered outside Dhaka’s main airport to welcome Zia.
Accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, Zia arrived on a special air ambulance arranged by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who also arranged her transport to London in January. Zia suffers from various serious health conditions and she has not attended any public gatherings for many years. Her elder son, Tarique Rahman, leads the party as acting chief from exile in London.
Zia’s physical presence in the country has huge symbolic value for her party while Hasina is in exile in India.
Zia and Hasina have alternately ruled the country as prime ministers since 1991 when the country returned to a democracy after the ouster of authoritarian President H.M. Ershad.
Zia served the country as prime minister three times, twice for full five-year terms and once for just a few months.
Zia is the widow of former military chief-turned-president Ziaur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1981. Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh’s independence struggle against Pakistan in 1971.
Trump official says Harvard banned from federal grants
- Harvard has drawn Trump’s ire by refusing to comply with his demands that it accept government oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s education secretary said Monday that Harvard will no longer receive federal grants, escalating an ongoing battle with the prestigious university as it challenges the funding cuts in court.
The Trump administration has for weeks locked horns with Harvard and other higher education institutions over claims they tolerate anti-Semitism on their campuses — threatening their budgets, tax-exempt status and enrollment of foreign students.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in a letter sent to Harvard’s president and posted online, said that the university “should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided.”
She alleged that Harvard has “failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor.”
Harvard — routinely ranked among the world’s top universities — has drawn Trump’s ire by refusing to comply with his demands that it accept government oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant.
That prompted the Trump administration to in mid-April freeze $2.2 billion in federal funding, with a total of $9 billion under review.
McMahon, a former wrestling executive, said that her letter “marks the end of new grants for the University.”
Harvard is the wealthiest US university with an endowment valued at $53.2 billion in 2024.
The latest move comes as Trump and his White House crack down on US universities on several fronts, justified as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled anti-Semitism and a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at addressing historical oppression of minorities.
The administration has threatened funding freezes and other punishments, prompting concerns over declining academic freedom.
It has also moved to revoke visas and deport foreign students involved in the protests, accusing them of supporting Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel provoked the war.
Trump’s claims about diversity tap into long-standing conservative complaints that US university campuses are too liberal, shutting out right-wing voices and favoring minorities.
Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow forces airports’ closure, officials say
Russian air defense units destroyed a swarm of Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow for the second night in a row, prompting the closure of the capital’s airports, Russian officials said early on Tuesday.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that at least 19 Ukrainian drones were destroyed on their approach to Moscow “from different directions.”
“At the sites where fragments fell, there was no destruction or casualties,” Sobyanin wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Specialists from the emergency services are working at the sites where the incidents occurred.”
Some of the debris had landed on one of the key highways leading into the city, he said.
Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said on Telegram it had halted flights at all four airports that serve Moscow. Airports in a number of regional cities were also closed.
On Tuesday, Russia’s air defense units destroyed four Ukrainian drones on their approach to Moscow, with no damage or injuries reported.
The war began more than three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine, a move Moscow described as a special military operation. Since then, Kyiv has launched several drone attacks on Moscow. Its biggest attack in March killed three people.
There was no immediate comment from Kyiv about the latest drone attack. Ukraine says its drone attacks are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s overall war efforts and are in response to Russia’s continued assault on Ukrainian territory, including residential areas and energy infrastructure.
