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Natural Disasters

  • Mira-Bhayandar highly prone to floods!

    THE upcoming monsoon is going to be a testing time for the flood-control machinery of any municipal corporation and Mira-Bhayandar is no exception. While the administration of the Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) boasts of making elaborate arrangements to tackle any eventually arising out of flood situation during monsoon, certain colonies in urban areas and some of the villages in the low lying areas are still very much vulnerable to floods following heavy rains.

  • Libya Ships Aid To Drought-Hit Niger

    Libya on Tuesday shipped 30 tonnes of humanitarian relief to drought-stricken Niger, one of several African states struggling to cope with a surge in global food prices, Libyan state media said on Tuesday. Libya also sent a team of doctors and pharmacists to distribute the aid, which includes medicine, clothes and tents, and provide health care to the poor in the Sahelian country, one of the world's top producers of uranium. Oil-exporting Libya is one of the main sources of aid to its neighbour Niger, an arid country on the southern fringe of the Sahara.

  • Tornadoes in Minnesota, Iowa kill 8

    Severe thunderstorms packing large hail and tornadoes rumbled across the United States' midsection, killing at least eight people and damaging dozens of homes, authorities said.

  • Troops to explode debris to avert flood

    Chinese soldiers prepared on Monday to explode earthquake debris blocking a river where quickly rising waters threatened to flood disaster victims. Two weeks after the magnitude 7.9 earthquake hit central Sichuan province, lakes formed by obstructed rivers clogged by landslides were adding new complications to recovery efforts already strained to find shelter for millions of homeless.

  • Monsoon likely in 3-4 days

    Here is some cheering news on the monsoon front. The countdown has finally begun for its onset over Kerala. According to the India Meteorological Department, conditions are fast becoming ripe for the system to set in during the next 3-4 days. The normal date of the onset is June 1. Experts at the IMD said numerical weather prediction models indicated that the west-south-westerly cross-equatorial wind flows from the southern hemisphere, which bring in the monsoon, were steadily becoming faster and deeper. Wind speed

  • Call to protect coastal ring embankments

    Speakers at a discussion meeting on Monday called for protecting the coastal ring embankments immediately to ensure safe livelihood of marginal farmers and fishermen in the region. They also demanded immediate repair of the damaged embankments to save the lives of marginal people, saying that most damaged portions of the embankments were hindered mainly by the owners of saline water shrimp enclosures.

  • Myanmar praises UN cyclone relief

    Myanmar state media Tuesday praised the UN's relief efforts after the cyclone that left 133,000 dead or missing, in a marked shift of tone after weeks of claiming the military could distribute aid on its own. "The United Nations and its agencies took prompt action to carry out (the) relief and rehabilitation mission with the contributions of international organisations," the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.

  • Flash flood kills nine in southwest China

    A flash flood killed nine people and left 11 others missing in southwest China's Guizhou province, state media said Tuesday, as thunderstorms also threatened neighbouring quake-hit Sichuan. Torrential rain hit nine townships in the Guizhou county of Wangmo on Monday evening that caused the flood, Xinhua news agency quoted the Emergency Response Office of the local government as saying. The flood destroyed 58 houses, two bridges, a highway, and power poles, causing blackouts in eight townships, affecting 26,000 people, Xinhua said.

  • China Finds Escaped Quake Panda

    China has recaptured a giant panda that made a bid for freedom after a massive earthquake devastated the research base where it lived, the official Xinhua agency said on Monday. The panda, named Xi Xi, was spotted on Sunday by a river not far from the Wolong research centre, but had disappeared into the woods by the time staff had got across. It did not get very far in its escape effort however, as they captured it on Monday just 200 metres (yards) downstream from its home.

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