Residents in Australia’s Norfolk Island and in New Zealand are bracing for heavy rain and gales over the weekend from Cyclone Gabrielle, with authorities also warning of hazardous surf conditions and strong winds along Australia’s east coast.
Australia’s weather bureau yesterday upgraded the tropical cyclone to a category 3 storm that could generate winds of up to 159kph and gusts up to 224kph.
“It is looking like making a direct hit at Norfolk Island,” Australia Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Jonathan Howe said during a television interview. “We might see the centre of the tropical cyclone pass directly over Norfolk Island.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Norfolk Island, an Australian territory 1,500km east of Sydney, covers about 3,400 hectares in the Pacific Ocean, between New Caledonia and New Zealand.
The island’s 2,200 residents, many descended from British sailors who mutineed on the HMS Bounty in the 18th century, have begun to fuel up emergency power generators and tie down loose outdoor equipment and objects, emergency management controller George Plant told a reporter.
“This is probably the worst one we’ve seen for a long time,” he said.
Australia’s mainland is not likely to be significantly affected, although some eastern coastal areas could experience large waves and strong winds.
In New Zealand, upper North Island regions including Auckland are preparing for further bad weather, two weeks after the country’s largest city was hammered by historic levels of rain that killed four people and caused widespread flooding.
“The ground will be sodden and very wet, which will contribute to the likelihood of trees falling from that heavy rain, and the combination of strong winds,” New Zealand MetService forecaster David Miller told Radio NZ.
Authorities urged residents to prepare bags with essential supplies, food and water to last three days, and said power cuts could affect automated cash machines.
Gabrielle is likely to make landfall on New Zealand’s North Island from tomorrow through Tuesday.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant