AUSTRALIA
El Nino has ended: agency
An El Nino weather event has ended, the Bureau of Meteorology said yesterday, adding that they were uncertain if a La Nina phenomenon would form later this year, as other forecasters have predicted. El Nino generally brings hotter, drier weather to eastern Australia and Southeast Asia and wetter conditions to the Americas, while a La Nina has the opposite effect. The weather phenomenon had formed in the middle of last year following three years of La Nina. Warmer sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific cause El Nino and cooler temperatures lead to La Nina, which a US government weather forecaster this month gave a 60 percent chance of emerging in the second half of this year. The sea surface has been cooling since December and oceanic and atmospheric indicators now show the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has returned to neutral, the bureau added. “Climate models indicate ENSO will likely continue to be neutral until at least July 2024,” it said, describing the switch between the two phases. While some climate models predict a flip to La Nina later this year, the bureau said it was uncertain whether this would happen and urged caution about such forecasts.
Photo: AP
UNITED STATES
ISS debris hit house: NASA
NASA on Monday confirmed that a mystery object that crashed through the roof of a Florida home last month was a chunk of space junk from equipment discarded at the International Space Station (ISS). The cylindrical object that tore through the home in Naples on March 8 was subsequently taken to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for analysis. NASA said it was a metal support used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was jettisoned from the space station in 2021, and the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but one piece survived. The chunk of metal weighed 0.7kg and was 10cm tall and about 4cm wide. Homeowner Alejandro Otero told television station WINK at the time that he was on vacation when his son told him what had happened. Otero came home early to check on the house, finding the object had ripped through his ceiling and torn up the flooring. “I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage,” Otero said. “I’m super grateful that nobody got hurt.”
UNITED STATES
‘Rust’ armorer gets jail
Hannah Gutierrez, the chief weapons handler for the Western movie Rust, was on Monday sentenced to 18 months in prison in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was shot when actor Alec Baldwin was handling a gun during the film’s production in 2021. Gutierrez, 27, was last month found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for mistakenly loading a live round into a revolver Baldwin was using on a Santa Fe, New Mexico, movie set. The shooting, which stunned Hollywood, is believed to be the first time in modern times that a member of a film crew or cast was killed by a live round accidentally loaded into a gun. Baldwin’s trial is set for July 10 after a grand jury indicted him on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in January. Gutierrez, step-daughter of Hollywood gun trainer Thell Reed, was sentenced by New Mexico District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer. Gutierrez’s lawyer, Jason Bowles, had requested she be given probation, but prosecutors argued for a full 18 months due to lack of contrition.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS