GOLD COAST, Australia: Violent winds toppled power lines Friday as a tropical cyclone inched toward Australia’s eastern coast, swelling rivers, sparking evacuation orders and leaving 80,000 homes without electricity.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred was 125 kilometers east of Brisbane by Friday afternoon, crawling toward the densely populated coastline at “walking speed,” government forecasts said.
Some four million people were in the firing line along a 400-kilometer (250-mile) stretch of coastline straddling the state border of Queensland and New South Wales.
It is a region rarely troubled by typhoons — it has been more than 50 years since a tropical cyclone made landfall in that stretch of coast.
No deaths have been reported, but police said one man was missing after his four-wheel drive vehicle was swept from a bridge into fast-running river water south of the cyclone.
“The male driver was able to exit the vehicle and secure himself to a tree branch,” New South Wales police said in a statement.
But later, “the man was swept from the tree and seen to go beneath the water where he has not been sighted since.”
Heavy rains associated with the cyclone had already prompted flood warnings in the area.
Around 80,000 homes were left in the dark across the two states as winds uprooted trees and brought down power lines, officials and utility companies said, as repair crews raced to restore electricity.
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said the storm already “packed a punch,” warning conditions would get worse as it approached land on Saturday morning.
AFP images showed a white yacht blown into the rocks after snapping its moorings at Point Danger on the Gold Coast.
Two people made “a lucky escape” after a large gum tree crashed through the roof of a house in rural Currumbin Valley, the Queensland Ambulance Service said.
Emergency response officials said they had issued evacuation orders for some 10,000 people in the flood-prone northern rivers region of New South Wales.
There was particular concern for the town of Lismore, which was engulfed by record 14-meter (45-feet) floodwaters after heavy rains in 2022.
Many residents have spent the past three days fortifying their homes with sandbags, tying down loose furniture and stocking up on food and water.
“A lot of people are feeling a bit anxious, for sure, because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Paul Farrow from Coolangatta, a coastal suburb better known for its sun-splashed beaches.
“Yeah, we could all lose our houses. Who knows,” the 62-year-old told AFP.
“The pubs might be shut for a week or two. Who knows.”
Farrow said he had stashed a “couple of peaches,” a “couple of cartons of beer,” and “a bag of grapes” to get him through.
“So I’ll be right,” he said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the region should “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
“When nature does its worst, Australians are at our best. We rally. We lift each other up. We look out for our neighbors,” he told reporters.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred would likely cross the coast on Saturday, the Bureau of Meteorology said, although its path has proven increasingly difficult to track.
It was forecast to make landfall somewhere north of Brisbane.
Drenching rains, “destructive” wind gusts, and “abnormally high tides” would pummel the coast as it crept nearer, the bureau said.
More than 900 schools across Queensland state and neighboring parts of northern New South Wales were closed on Friday, education department officials said.
While cyclones are common in the warm tropical waters lapping Australia’s northern flank, it is rarer for them to form in cooler waters further south.
Alfred would be the first to make landfall in that part of Australia since 1974, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Researchers have repeatedly warned that climate change amplifies the risk of natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and cyclones.
Australians told ‘prepare for worst’ as tropical cyclone nears
https://arab.news/r2dcf
Australians told ‘prepare for worst’ as tropical cyclone nears
- Some four million people in the firing line along a 400-kilometer stretch of coastline straddling the state border of Queensland and New South Wales
- It is a region rarely troubled by typhoons – it has been more than 50 years since a tropical cyclone made landfall in that stretch of coast
Kyiv receives 909 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers
Russia has not commented on the latest patriation
KYIV: Kyiv said Friday it had received the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers killed during battles with Russia, the second such patriation in the space of three weeks.
The exchange of prisoners and war dead is one of the few areas of cooperation between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine more than three years ago.
“As a result of repatriation activities, the bodies of 909 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a government agency, said in a statement on social media.
On 28 March, the two countries conducted a similar exchange, with Kyiv receiving the same number of bodies, 909, and Moscow 43, according to Russian state media.
Russia has not commented on the latest patriation.
In mid-February, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told US broadcaster NBC News that more than 46,000 of his soldiers had been killed and some 380,000 wounded.
Russia has not reported on its losses since autumn 2022, when it acknowledged fewer than 6,000 soldiers killed.
An ongoing investigation by Mediazona and BBC News Russian has identified the names of around 100,000 dead Russian soldiers since the beginning of the war, based on information from publicly available sources.
US Vice President says he is ‘optimistic’ Russia-Ukraine war can be ended
- Vance saw Meloni in Washington on Thursday
- “We do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close”
ROME: The United States is optimistic it can put an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, Vice President JD Vance said on Friday as he met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for the second time in 24 hours.
Vance saw Meloni in Washington on Thursday and the two have since flown to the Italian capital ahead of the Easter holidays.
“I want to update the prime minister on some of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine ... even in the past 24 hours, we think we have some interesting things to report on,” Vance told reporters sitting alongside Meloni.
“Since there are the negotiations I won’t prejudge them, but we do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close,” he added.
Hours earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said US President Donald Trump would walk away from trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days unless there were clear signs that a deal could be done.
Russia rains missiles on Ukraine as US mulls ending truce efforts
- US President Donald Trump has been pressing Moscow and Kyiv to agree to a truce
- There has been no major concessions from the Kremlin, despite repeated negotiations between his administration and Russia
KHARKIV, Ukraine: Russia fired a fresh volley of missiles and drones at Ukraine overnight, wounding dozens of people, Kyiv said Friday, as the United States warned it could end efforts to broker a ceasefire if it did not see progress soon.
US President Donald Trump has been pressing Moscow and Kyiv to agree to a truce, but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin, despite repeated negotiations between his administration and Russia on the three-year war.
After meeting European officials in Paris to discuss Ukraine, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington needed to figure out soon whether a ceasefire was “doable in the short term.”
“Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” he told reporters at Le Bourget airport before leaving the French capital.
Russia fired at least six missiles and dozens of drones at Ukraine overnight, killing two people in the eastern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy and wounding 70 others, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the attack, which came just days before Easter.
“This is how Russia started Good Friday – with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, Shahed drones. A mockery of our people and cities,” he said on Telegram.
An AFP photographer in the city of Kharkiv witnessed the aftermath of one strike, which left rubble and debris scattered across a street.
An elderly resident could be seen bandaged, her face smeared with blood, while residents assessed the damage.
Since taking office Trump has embarked on a quest to warm ties with the Kremlin that has alarmed Kyiv and driven a wedge between the US and its European allies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last month rejected a joint US-Ukrainian proposal for a full and unconditional pause in the conflict, while the Kremlin has made a truce in the Black Sea conditional on the West lifting certain sanctions.
Trump has also repeatedly expressed anger and frustration at Zelensky in a marked break from policy under his predecessor, Joe Biden.
The US is pushing Ukraine into a deal that would give Washington sweeping access to its mineral resources.
Ukraine’s prime minister will visit Washington next week for talks with top US officials aimed at clinching the minerals and resources deal by April 26, according to a US-Ukraine signed “memorandum of intent” published Friday.
Trump wants the deal – designed to give the United States royalty payments on profits from Ukrainian mining of resources and rare minerals – as compensation for aid given to Ukraine under Biden.
France hosted meetings between US and European officials in Paris on Thursday, saying the talks had launched a “positive process.”
The meetings included French President Emmanuel Macron, Rubio and US envoy Steve Witkoff.
European officials had expressed dismay at being shut out from the peace process, while Ukraine has expressed concern that Witkoff – one of Trump’s closest allies – is biased toward Russia.
Zelensky accused Witkoff on Thursday of having adopted the “strategy of the Russian side,” after the US envoy suggested a peace deal with Moscow hinged on the status of Ukraine’s occupied territories.
“He is consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know, spreading Russian narratives,” Zelensky told journalists.
Witkoff told Fox News on Monday that a peace settlement depended on “so-called five territories” – the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea, that Russia claims to have annexed.
The Kremlin wants its claims over the regions to be recognized as part of any peace deal, a proposal that Ukraine has balked at. Moscow does not fully control any of them except for Crimea, which it seized in 2014.
Zelensky also said Thursday he had “information” China was supplying weapons to Russia, amid an escalating row between Kyiv and Beijing over China’s support for Moscow.
China, which has portrayed itself as a neutral party in the three-year war, has hit back at Kyiv’s criticism and called on all parties in the conflict to refrain from “irresponsible remarks.”
Indonesia weighs US arms purchases to curb tariff threat, Bloomberg News reports
- Equipment includes fighter jets and munitions
Dubai: Indonesia is considering purchasing billions of dollars worth of US-manufactured defense equipment, including fighter jets and munitions, Bloomberg news reported on Friday.
Indonesia’s Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin held a closed-door meeting of senior officials on April 8 to deliver a directive from the President Prabowo Subianto instructing them to identify US weapons that could be imported or fast-tracked for purchase, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the gathering.
EU needs to decide on possible Iran sanctions, Rubio says
- Rubio said the US administration is looking for a peaceful solution with Iran
PARIS: Europe needs to decide if it is willing to reimpose sanctions on Iran when it becomes clear it is close to developing a nuclear weapon, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday.
“The Europeans have a decision to make, because I believe we should all anticipate that they’re about to get a report from the IAEA that says not just Iran is out of compliance, but Iran is dangerously close to a weapon, closer than they’ve ever been,” Rubio said in Paris after meeting with European leaders.
Rubio said the US administration is looking for a peaceful solution with Iran, but will never tolerate the country developing a nuclear weapon.
“It has to be something that not just prevents Iran from having a nuclear weapon now,” he said about a possible agreement.
“But in the future as well, not just for ten years with some sort of sunset provision or the like.”
