About 200 holiday skiers in the Italian Dolomites were winched to safety on Thursday after getting stranded in cable car cabins buffeted by 130kph winds.
The Ciampinoi cable car in the popular Val Gardena resort ground to a halt after a huge tree was blown over onto the cable, local officials said.
HELICOPTER EVACUATION
Amid fears the cable could snap at any moment, mountain rescue experts and firefighters were lowered on to the cabins from helicopters.
They then quickly evacuated the skiers from about 20 different cabins using ropes, and succeeded in getting everyone off without any serious injuries.
CASUALTIES OF STORM
The drama came as stormy weather caused havoc across much of northern Italy, claiming at least two lives and causing the partial collapse of a much-admired 17th-century church bell tower at Cortona in Tuscany.
A woman was crushed by a falling tree in Urbino in the Emilia Romagna region, while a man died behind the wheel of his car when it was hit by a rockfall near Lucca, also in Tuscany.
Winds of up to 180kph tore through the Riviera region of Liguria. In the port city of Genoa, local authorities closed public spaces, including cemeteries, and banned motorbikes and scooters from circulating in some areas of the city.
In Tuscany, numerous schools shut their doors and ferry sailings to Sardinia were suspended, because of stormy sea conditions.
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