Plane Makes Emergency Landing at Syracuse Airport, USA

A United Airlines flight on its way to the Canadian capital was forced to make an emergency landing in Syracuse Tuesday morning.

The plane had smoke in the cockpit and landed safely at Syracuse Hancock International Airport just before 9 a.m.

An official from the Syracuse Regional Airport Authority said 38 people were on board.

The flight originated in Dulles, Virginia, and was headed for Ottawa.

Passengers were able to reschedule their flights.

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Deadly train crash in South Korea

Train crashed, ferry accidents, shopping mall fires, South Korea had a hand full of issues recently reflecting the confidence in the travel and tourism industry to that country.

Korea has a very modern infrastructure, but today two passenger trains collided in South Korea on Tuesday, killing one person and injuring dozens, a hospital official and police said, in the latest in a string of accidents that has rattled the country.

A commuter train and a tourist train collided in Taebaek, a resort area about 200 km (125 miles) southeast of Seoul.More than 70 people had been injured, but declined to confirm any deaths.

South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, has developed into a vibrant and technically advanced democracy, but faces criticism that regulatory controls and safety standards have not kept pace.

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Train crash leads to derailment; injures 2 people, spills fuel, leads to home evacuations, USA

Crews are cleaning up at the site of a freight train collision in southeastern Wisconsin that caused cars to derail, injured two people and spilled thousands of gallons of fuel.

A spokesman for Canadian National Railway Co. says the derailed CN locomotives and cars have been righted and the track is expected to reopen Monday evening.

CN spokesman Patrick Waldron says the southbound Canadian National train struck several Wisconsin & Southern Railroad cars around 8:30 p.m. Sunday at a rail crossing in Slinger, about 35 miles northwest of Milwaukee.

Slinger Fire Chief Rick Hanke says about 5,000 gallons of diesel spilled from a locomotive fuel tank.

Some 100 people who live near the crash site were evacuated as a precaution but were allowed to return early Monday.

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Tropical depression moving Westward in the Atlantic

The second tropical depression of the 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season has formed.

As of the 11 a.m. Tuesday update from the National Hurricane Center, the depression was located over the open Atlantic Ocean about 910 miles east of the Lesser Antilles island chain in the Caribbean Sea.

Maximum sustained winds as of early Tuesday morning are at 35 mph. The feature continues to move to the west at 17 mph. There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect.

Though the depression has shown signs of organization since it’s development late Monday, the long-range projections have it weakening considerably as it encounters unfavorable territory by the end of the week.

At this time the system is expected to be near the Lesser Antilles by Thursday as a remnant low.

This disturbance follows Hurricane Arthur, the first named storm of the 2014 tropical weather season.

At its peak, Arthur was a category two storm that impacted areas of coastal North Carolina the worst before weakening on its northern movement toward Atlantic Canada.

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Super Typhoon Rammasun causes at least 46 deaths in China and here comes Typhoon Matmo

The death toll from the strongest storm to hit China for decades has reached 46 with another 25 missing, authorities said Tuesday, as another typhoon approaches the country’s eastern coastline.

Typhoon Rammasun has left 19 people dead in south China’s island province of Hainan, 18 in southwestern Yunnan and nine in neighbouring Guangxi, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said in a statement on its website.

Over 620,000 people have been relocated and some 252,000 are in need of “emergency aid”, the statement said.

A total of 37,000 houses have been destroyed since the storm first made landfall in China on Friday afternoon as a super typhoon, packing winds exceeding 200 kilometres (124 miles) an hour.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs early Wednesday morning said 33 people had died in the storm.

The strongest typhoon to hit south China since 1973 also caused devastation in the southern Guangdong province.

Rammasun — meaning “Thunder God” in Thai — has caused more than 120 deaths in the Philippines and Vietnam, authorities there say.

Meanwhile, Typhoon Matmo was expected to make a landfall on China’s eastern coast on Wednesday, the National Meteorological Centre (NMC) said.

Matmo is packing gusts of up to 173 kilometres per hour (107mph) and is forecasted to first hit Taiwan early Wednesday before heading west to China from the afternoon to evening.

It is expected by the NMC to make landfall in Fujian and Zhejiang, before heading north.

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Super Typhoon causes significant damage to orange, cane, rice crops in China

MORE TYPHOONS ARE ON THE WAY

China’s top orange grower revealed “significant” damage to a 1.4m-tree plantation from Typhoon Rammasun, reckoned to be the worst storm to hit the south of the country in 41 years.

Asian Citrus Holdings said that Rammasun, which brought 130mph winds to southern China last week, had caused “widespread damage”, with press agency Xinua reporting 33 deaths and $1.7bn of damage on the island province of Hainan alone.

World Weather said that the typhoon “moved through Hainan and south western Guangdong, China Friday into the weekend producing some very heavy rainfall and flooding”, including to rice and cane areas.

“Rain totals over 15 inches occurred in the Luichow Peninsula of Guangdong and greater totals occurred in Hainan.”

For Asian Citrus itself, the “impact of the typhoon in Guangxi, where our Hepu Plantation is located, is significant”, the company said.

Citrus shares fell 6.4% to 12.73p in lunchtime deals in London, although the group said it would take “a period of time” to assess the exact financial impact of the damage.

Cursed by poor weather

Typhoon damage represents the latest in a series of weather setbacks at Hepu, which covers 31,000 square kilometres, with “unstable” conditions in 2012 blamed for an outbreak of citrus canker, a bacterial disease which causes leaves and fruit to drop prematurely.

Hepu’s output fell 23% to 116,720 tonnes in the year to the end of June last year, with the direct impact of canker exacerbated by losses to a replanting programme.

This year, ill-timed frost has already added to the plantation’s weather setbacks, prompting Asian Citrus last month to reveal that Hepu’s production of summer oranges had fallen to 49,540 tonnes – below the 57,367 tonnes a year before, and contracted volumes of 57,000 tonnes.

The group cut to 197,467 tonnes, from 218,600 tonnes, its estimate for production for the year to the end of last month.

Asian Citrus has planted 220,000 banana trees at Hepu, which has 1.2m orange trees, in an attempt to diversify its risk, and which are due for their first harvest in September.

Another typhoon

Typhoon Rammasun has also reportedly caused 94 deaths in the Philippines, and at least 11 in Vietnam, where it made landfall over the weekend.

In China, an estimated 600,000 people have been evacuated.

And the region is braced for further devastation with a second typhoon, Matmo, set to strike, on a slightly more northerly course.

“Typhoon Matmo will move toward Taiwan and south eastern China the next two days with landfall late Tuesday night and Wednesday in Taiwan and south eastern China Wednesday,” World Weather said.

“Damage to rice and sugarcane is expected as the storm rolls into the region,” with Taiwan to suffer the “greatest” losses.

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Giant dust storm ‘haboob’ engulfs Phoenix, Arizona, USA

These stunning images show a huge dust cloud as it engulfs a major American city.

 

The towering storm hit Phoenix, Arizona, cutting power to thousands of homes, grounding flights and causing traffic chaos. 

 

Taken by photographer and storm chaser Mike Olbinski, 39, the pictures depict the sheer magnitude and power of the cloud.

It was the first intense dust storm – known as a haboob – of the region’s annual summer monsoon season, and led to all inbound and outbound flights at the city’s Sky Harbour International Airport being temporarily grounded.

 

Twenty four planes had to be diverted to alternative airports.

 

Lasting for up to four hours, winds as high as 50 mph knocked down trees and power lines, while lightning strikes were suspected to have started at least two fires in the city, which has a population of 1.4 million.

 

Such storms are not uncommon in the South Western United States, where monsoon rains stir up dust and sand, which have built up over the summer.

 

Major cities like Phoenix usually experience between one and three haboobs a year.

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Landslide bury two houses, seven at risk in Jajarkot, Nepal

Two houses were buried and seven others are at high risk of landslide at Lahan village district committee (VDC) in Jajarkot district, police said.

 

The houses of Yub Raj Rawal and Ram Bahadur Pun of Kalimati, Lahan VDC-8 of the district were buried due to landslide last night.

 

Similarly, the houses of Ganesh BK, Karna Bahadur Oli, Bir Bahadur Khatri, Dip Bahadur Sunar, Sher Bahadur Oli, Jugari Lal Sunar and Sita Ram Sunar are at high risk of landslide, police added.

 

“The families living in these seven houses were sifted to safe areas”, said DSP Chakra Bahadur Singh.

 

“All the properties of the two buried houses were damaged as they did not have time to take out the properties”, victim Rawal said.

 

The displaced people are compelled to live in tents, reports RSS.

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Landslide Kills 5 Civilians in Kachin Camp, Burma

A makeshift camp for internally displaced persons, in the grounds of a church in Muse, northern Shan State, was flooded by rains in May

Five people were killed in a camp for displaced Kachin civilians near the rebel-held town of Laiza on Tuesday after their shelters were buried by a landslide, according to Kachin rebels. They said the disaster occurred after several days of heavy rains hit the mountainous region in Kachin State, northern Burma.

 

Doi Be Za, an officer in charge of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) IDPs and Refugees Relief Committee, told The Irrawaddy that two families were buried alive inside their huts at Je Yang camp during the mudslide and instantly killed.

 

“There has been a lot of rain here. A landslide from the mountain occurred this morning around 7 am and two shelters were destroyed; two older people and three children were killed,” he said, adding that a funeral would be held for the victims around 4 pm on Tuesday.

 

The victims include a 50-year-old man, a 40-year-old woman and three teenage boys, aged between 14 and 15 years, according to Doi Be Za.

 

Three days of downpours in the KIO-controlled parts of Kachin State, which include the town of Laiza and mountainous areas along the Burma-China border, had caused several landslides in the area that have blocked roads and put internally displaced person’s (IDP) camps at risk, he said.

 

Je Yang refugee camp, located south of Laiza, is home to some 8,000 Kachin who have been displaced by the fighting between the Kachin rebels and the Burma Army, which began in mid-2011.

 

More than 100,000 ethnic civilians have been displaced by the conflict and the majority live in KIO-controlled areas, where their situation is precarious because the rebels and local Kachin NGOs struggle to support the camps. UN and other international aid groups have only been able to offer some support for several IDP camps in rebel-held areas.

 

In May, several Kachin NGOs warned that the impending rainy season would bring problems for the displaced as their tents were unsuitable for the heavy downpours that often lash northern Burma.

 

The conflict quieted down after intense fighting occurred in early 2013, but it continues to fester as attempts to negotiate bilateral ceasefire between Kachin rebels and government have failed.

 

In recent months, skirmishes have become more frequent and a government offensive in southern Kachin State in April displaced another 2,700 villagers.

 

Ethnic Palaung and Shan rebels have also increasingly clashed with the Burma Army as fighting has spilled over into northern Shan State, where hundreds of villagers fled their homes in recent weeks.

http://tinyurl.com/m2sabna

MAGNITUDE 5.1 SOUTHERN IRAN

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usb000rw57#summary

Subject To Change

Depth: 10 km

Distances: 49km (30mi) NNE of Minab, Iran
111km (69mi) ENE of Bandar ‘Abbas, Iran
123km (76mi) ENE of Qeshm, Iran
184km (114mi) NE of Khasab, Oman
451km (280mi) NE of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates