Lashing rains and gale force winds bore down on India’s southeastern coast yesterday, disrupting power supplies and communication lines as Cyclone Thane made landfall near the industrial city of Chennai, officials and witnesses said.
With wind speeds of up to 125kph and accompanied by tidal surges of up to 1.5m, Thane hit Tamil Nadu State, close to the former French colonial town of Pondicherry yesterday morning, as coastal villagers moved to relief shelters.
“Under the influence of this system, rainfall at most places with heavy to very heavy falls at a few places and isolated extremely heavy falls would occur,” the Indian Meteorological Department said in its latest bulletin. “Gale wind speeds reaching 120kph to 130kph gusting to 145kph is likely along and off north Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry coasts during the next 3 hours and will then decrease gradually.”
Witnesses in Chennai and Pondicherry said trees had been toppled, that there were power outages throughout the night and disruptions in telephone and Internet services in some areas.
There have been no reports of casualties.
Hundreds of people from fishing communities along north Tamil Nadu’s coast and neighboring Andhra Pradesh State, have moved to schools set up as relief centers until the weather system passes.
India’s cyclone season generally lasts from April to December, with severe storms often causing dozens of deaths and the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from low-lying villages and widespread crop and property damage.
In 1999, a “super-cyclone” battered the coast of the eastern state of Orissa for 30 hours with wind speeds reaching 300kph. It killed 10,000 people.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not