Many Australians yesterday experienced a bittersweet break from the threat of bushfires, with flooding rains deluging some parts of the eastern states and a tropical cyclone forecast to hit the nation’s northwest over the weekend.
The Bureau of Meteorology issued severe thunderstorm warnings for Queensland and a flood alert for more than 20 areas in New South Wales (NSW) after the start of heavy rainfall that is expected to continue for several days.
Warm, moist air feeding in from the east was bringing the rain, bureau forecaster Mike Funnell told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Photo: Reuters
“We are expecting those larger totals and heavier rainfall to come into the northeast coast of NSW and then sort of track slowly southwards,” he said.
A tropical low off the Kimberley coast in Western Australia state was forecast tomorrow to develop into a category three cyclone that could hit the Pilbara region, Australia’s iron ore producing heartland.
The wet weather has helped douse or slow some of the most damaging and long-running wildfires, which have burned through more than 11.7 million hectares of land since September last year.
The prolonged bushfire season has killed 33 people and about 1 billion native animals.
More than 2,500 homes have been destroyed.
However, officials warned that the threat was not yet over and that there will likely be weeks more of firefighting ahead.
About 60 fires were still burning across NSW and Victoria, the nation’s most populous states, with about half of those classified as uncontained.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
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