Maziar Motamedi Al Jazeera Sun, 14 Nov 2021 15:04 UTC
Two powerful earthquakes have hit southern Iran in quick succession, leaving at least one person dead and sending panicked residents rushing to the streets.
Esmaeil Bayramnejad, the head of the Iranian Seismological Center, told state television the two tremors of magnitude 6.4 and 6.3 respectively struck one minute apart in an area near the island of Qeshm, close to the port city of Bandar Abbas, on Sunday afternoon.
The quakes were felt in neighbouring provinces, including Kerman, as well as in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Several aftershocks were reported in the following hours in Iran.
More than 500 people got bitten by scorpions in Egypt's southern province of Aswan, Acting Minister of Health Khaled Abdel Ghaffar said.
The Aswan region was hit by hail storms and heavy rain, which forced scorpions out of their burrows and into the streets and people's houses.
"503 residents in Aswan got antidotes for scorpion bites ... there were no deaths from the bites," Khaled Abdel Ghaffar said in a Saturday statement.
Meanwhile, local media reports said that three people have died from scorpion bites in the city of Aswan.
According to the acting health minister, there is enough anti-venom in all hospitals in Egypt, with 3,350 doses currently available in hospitals in Aswan Governorate alone.
32 cm. fell in Canora over 2 days, Environment Canada says
People in Saskatchewan were back to wearing their winter boots and shoveling snow off their driveways, after much of the province saw its first major snowfall for the season.
The storm that passed through the province on Wednesday and Thursday made roads dangerous and left some vehicles stuck in ditches.
Snowfall amounts varied around the province, but the town of Canora in eastern Saskatchewan got the highest amount, with 32 centimetres, Environment Canada said Friday.
The snow might not stick around for too long, however. Rain is expected in the coming days in some areas of the province, including Regina, and temperature variations could cause the snow to melt, Environment Canada says.
Thousands of people are still without power across southern Manitoba, and an overnight parking ban will be in place for some Winnipeg streets after the first wintry wallop of the season left part of the province covered in a thick layer of snow.
As of around 2:30 p.m. Friday, more than 1,400 people were still waiting for power to be restored, after it was knocked out by the sudden inclement weather over the past few days, Manitoba Hydro's outage website said.
Meanwhile, people in Winnipeg will need to be careful where they park their cars overnight, after the city brought in an extended snow route parking ban that will kick in at midnight and continue through 7 a.m. on all designated snow routes.
The city said in a news release that parking ban will stay until it notifies the public that snow clearing is finished.
A main road in Songkhla province and parts of Narathiwat municipality were under floodwater on Friday morning as heavy rain continued to lash the southern region.
Water up to 50 centimetres deep blocked traffic on Road 407, a main road connecting Hat Yai and Muang districts of Songkhla province.
Motorists slowed their vehicles to a crawl as they negotiated the flooded section at Ban Klong Leuk in Muang district, causing traffic to build up. Another road in Hat Yai district was also flooded.
Songkhla and other southern provinces along the Gulf of Thailand have been pummelled by rain for three days.
Melani Manel Perera Aasianews.it Thu, 11 Nov 2021 13:11 UTC
Floods caused by torrential rains have killed at least 25 people and injured seven in recent days, Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Centre (DMC) reported. So far, more than 200,000 people in 145 divisional secretariats in 17 districts have been affected, but this could change.
Fearing landslides, the authorities have ordered the closure until tomorrow of the road connecting the capital to Kandy at Pahala Kadugannawa (Kegalle district). In several areas, people have been ordered to evacuate with immediate effect. In Jaffna Province, schools have been closed until a later date.
Priyankara Costa, a resident of Madampe, a village in North Western Province, told AsiaNews that the fury of the waters swept away his cultivated land. "We have never experienced such terrible rain and flooding," he explained.
His son is studying at Jaffna University and had to leave his boarding house in a hurry due to the danger of flooding. For now, he is staying at a campus hostel.
Many Anchorage residents were shoveling sidewalks and brushing off car windshields for the first time this year as the town got hit by its largest snowstorm of the season.
Some parts of town are reporting over a foot of snow, including 15 inches reported as of 8:25 a.m. on Huffman and Birch Road on the Anchorage Hillside, according to the National Weather Service.Valdez reported 19 inches of powder at 6:40 a.m.
The National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory through Anchorage and the Mat-Su Borough until 4 p.m. on Thursday. There's a winter storm warning in effect starting in Girdwood and covering the Southern Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound through 4 p.m. Thursday.
