Body found in floodwaters and troops injured in Australia storm

goldcoastnewsline@gmail.com

March 8, 2025
0 Comments

Australian authorities say a body has been found in floodwaters and 36 military workers injured in a vehicle crash as wild weather from a tropical storm lashes the country’s eastern coast.

Cyclone Alfred was downgraded to a tropical low on Saturday but is due to make landfall near the Queensland capital city of Brisbane in coming hours.

Officials have warned residents to stay indoors and remain vigilant, saying the storm’s threat is “not over”.

Winds have brought down trees and power lines and flooded low-lying roads. More than 300,000 properties are without power in the region.

Police said on Saturday they had discovered a body in the search for a 61-year-old man who went missing on Friday after his car was caught in floodwaters in Dorrigo, northern New South Wales.

Emergency responders witnessed the man escaping his car and climbing onto a tree near the riverbank, but rescuers were not able to reach him before he was swept away.

Police found a body in the area on Saturday and said it “is believed to be that of the missing man”.

In a separate incident on Saturday, 36 military personnel were injured in a convoy crash in Lismore, about 200km south of Brisbane. One truck overturned while driving on a narrow road. A second truck then collided with it.

They had been part of military crews deployed to Lismore, near the Queensland border, to help rescue and response operations.

“Our ADF [Australian Defence Force] heroes were on their way to help Australians in need,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement noting some had been “seriously” injured.

Albanese earlier on Saturday had addressed the nation from the capital Canberra, saying millions of residents were “well-prepared” but “we must remain vigilant.”

goldcoastnewsline@gmail.com

World

goldcoastnewsline@gmail.com
March 22, 2025
0 Comments
2 minutes Read

One million malnourished children in Nigeria and Ethiopia risk losing aid- UNICEF says

The United Nations children’s agency said on Friday it will run out of its supply of lifesaving food to treat children suffering from acute forms of malnutrition in Ethiopia and Nigeria within the next two months due to lack of funding exacerbated by Trump administration cuts to foreign aid.

Some 1.3 million children under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition risk losing access to lifesaving support this year in Ethiopia and Nigeria, UNICEF says.

“Without new funding, we will run out of our supply chain of Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic-Food by May, and that means that 70,000 children in Ethiopia that depend on this type of treatment cannot be served,” Kitty Van der Heijden, UNICEF’s deputy executive director, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Abuja on Friday. “Interruption to continuous treatment is life-threatening.”

In Nigeria, UNICEF said it may run out of supplies to feed 80,000 malnourished children as soon as the end of this month. Van der Heijden described recently being in a hospital in Maiduguri with a child who was so malnourished that her skin was falling off.

Advertisement · Scroll to continue

International donors have in recent years reduced contributions to UN agencies, including UNICEF. Its funding woes were accelerated when the United States, its top donor, imposed a 90-day pause on all U.S. foreign aid on the first day of President Donald Trump‘s return to the White House in January.

That action, and ensuing orders halting many programmes of the U.S. Agency for International Development worldwide, have jeopardised the delivery of lifesaving food and medical aid, throwing into chaos global humanitarian relief efforts.

“This funding crisis will become a child survival crisis,” warned Van der Heijden, adding that the sudden nature of the cuts did not give the agency the ability to mitigate the risks.

Funding cuts have also hit health programmes offering nutrition and malaria care for pregnant women and children in Ethiopia. Twenty-three mobile health clinics were taken out of operation in the region of Afar, with only seven left operating due to funding cuts, according to UNICEF.

Source: Reuters

World

goldcoastnewsline@gmail.com
March 22, 2025
0 Comments
4 minutes Read

Heathrow flights resume after fire forced shutdown

Flights have resumed at Heathrow Airport and a full service is expected on Saturday following an “unprecedented” loss of power caused by nearby a substation fire.

About 200,000 passengers were affected as flights were grounded throughout Friday, with inbound planes being diverted to other airports in Europe after flames ripped through the North Hyde plant in Hayes, west London, on Thursday evening.

The airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye apologised to stranded passengers and said the disruption was “as big as it gets for our airport” and that it could not guard itself “100%”.

The Met Police confirmed the fire was not believed to be suspicious.

The investigation will focus on the “electrical distribution equipment”, the force said.

British Airways announced eight of its long-haul flights had been cleared to leave Heathrow during Friday evening and it was “urgently contacting customers to let them know”.

Restrictions on overnight flights have also been temporarily lifted to help ease congestion, the Department of Transport said. Passengers have been advised to contact their airlines for the latest updates.

Mr Woldbye said that a back-up transformer had failed meaning systems had to be closed down in accordance with safety procedures so that power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations to restore electricity enough to power the airport.

Several airlines announced they would restart scheduled flights both to and from Heathrow, including British Airways, Air Canada and United Airlines.

An airport spokesperson said the first flights were focused on “repatriating the passengers who were diverted to other airports in Europe… and relocating aircraft”.

Mr Woldbye said: “I’d like to stress that this has been an incident of major severity. It’s not a small fire.

“We have lost power equal to that of a mid-sized city and our backup systems have been working as they should but they are not sized to run the entire airport.”

Asked if there is a weak point in Heathrow’s power system, he said: “You can say that but of course contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100% and this is one of them.

“I mean, short of anybody getting hurt, this is as big as it gets for our airport.”

“This is unprecedented,” he added.

Mr Woldbye went on to say the airport expected to return to “100% operation” on Saturday.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she believed airport bosses “stood up their resilience plan swiftly, and they’ve collaborated closely with our emergency responders and the airline operators; they do have backup energy supplies, they have generators, diesel generators.

“None of that failed on this occasion because that backup supply is designed to protect the critical key systems within the airport and not to provide power to the whole airport.”

Alexander added that she was in close contact with the energy secretary, the home secretary and with Heathrow to “make sure that any lessons we need to learn from the systems that the airport has in place are learned”.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, earlier announced it would commission a review “to understand the cause of this incident and what lessons can be learned”.

Emergency services were first called to the scene at 23:20 GMT on Thursday.

Some 120 aircraft heading to the airport at that time were forced to either divert or return to their point of origin.

Ten fire engines and about 70 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze, LFB said, with the fire being brought under control by 06:30.

London Fire Brigade (LFB) said the fire involved a transformer containing 25,000 litres (5,500 gallons) of cooling fluid that had been set alight.

A large cordon was put in place as a precaution and about 150 people were evacuated from their homes. Most of those had returned home by 17:00, according to LFB.

Hillingdon Council said it was assisting 12 people with hotel accommodation until it was safe for them to return to their homes.

More than 65,000 homes in the area were left without power as a result, as well as the airport, although the National Grid said power was restored by 14:00.

Source: BBC