Foreign News
Two dead and several missing in New Zealand landslides
Two people have died and several are feared buried after landslides in New Zealand’s North Island.
The deaths were reported at Welcome Bay, while rescue workers are still searching through rubble at a different site in a popular campground on Mount Maunganui.
There are no “signs of life”, authorities said, adding that they have a “rough idea” of how many people are missing but are waiting for an exact figure. They provided no other details except that the group includes “at least one young girl”.
The landslides were triggered by heavy rains over the last few days, which led to flooding and power outages across the North Island. One minister said the east coast resembled “a war zone”.
New Zealand is “heavy with grief” after the “profound tragedy” caused by recent weather, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on X.
Footage from the campsite on Mount Maunganui, an extinct volcano, shows a huge slip near the base of the volcanic dome, as rescuers and sniffer dogs comb through crushed caravans and flattened tents.
Authorities said that the search would continue through the night. “This is a complex and high-risk environment, and our teams are working to achieve the best possible outcome while keeping everyone safe,” said Megan Stiffler, the deputy national commander for the Urban Search and Rescue team,
The extinct volcano is a sacred Māori site and one of the most popular campgrounds in New Zealand, with a local holiday website describing it as a “slice of paradise”. But it has been repeatedly hit by landslides in recent years.
“I heard this huge tree crack and all this dirt come off, and then I looked behind me and there’s this huge landslide coming down,” Australian tourist Sonny Worrall told local broadcaster TVNZ.
“I’m still shaking from it now… I turned around and had to jump out of my seat and just run,”he added. He saw it happen while swimming in a hot pool.
Hiker Mark Tangney told the New Zealand Herald he heard people screaming from under the rubble. “So I just parked up and ran to help… We could hear people screaming: ‘Help us, help us, get us out of here’,” he said.
Those calls persisted for about half an hour and then went silent, Tangney said.
A surf club in another part of Mount Maunganui has been evacuated following fears of more landslides.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Bay of Plenty where Mount Maunganui sits, and various parts of the North Island, including Northland, Coromandel, Tairāwhiti and Hauraki.
Several areas reported their wettest days on record on Thursday. Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, for example, received three months worth of rain within a day, according to local media.
Some 8,000 people were without power as of Thursday morning, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported.
The wife of a man who was swept away in the Mahurangi River is holding out hope that he will survive.
“I know his personality is strong, wise,” she told RNZ, adding that he was a fisherman back home in Kiribati and knew how to swim and dive.
The man, 47, was driving to work with their nephew when the car they were in fell into the river.
He had pushed the nephew towards a branch so the nephew could hoist himself onto land; but the older man did not manage get back up himself, according to the report.
“It’s been a very big event for us as a country, really hitting almost our entire eastern seaboard of the North Island,” said Minister for Emergency Management Mark Mitchell.
“The good news is that everyone responded really quickly, and there was time to get prepared. That helps to mitigate and create a very strong response,” he told RNZ.
December to February are typically the sunnier months in New Zealand but in recent years heavy rains and storms have become more frequent.
In February 2023, parts of the island were devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle, which is to date the costliest cyclone to hit the Southern Hemisphere, with damage amounting to NZ$13.5bn ($7.9bn; £5.9bn).
This week’s flooding has added to the toll for the local communities that are still rebuilding.
[BBC]
At least two people have been killed when an Air Canada Express flight from Montreal struck a ground vehicle while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, according to several United States media outlets. The airport has been closed and flights diverted.
Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said 32 of the 41 people who were injured had been released on Monday while nine remained in hospital with “serious injuries”. Those injured included passengers, crew members and the two officers on the fire truck. Both officers remained hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries.
The aircraft, operated by Jazz Aviation, a regional partner of Air Canada, struck a firefighting truck on Runway 4 about 11:40pm on Sunday (03:40 GMT on Monday) as the vehicle drove to a separate incident, the Port Authority said.
A preliminary passenger list showed 76 people on board Flight AC8646, including four crew members, Jazz Aviation said in a statement.
The CRJ-900 aircraft struck the vehicle at a speed of 39 kilometres per hour (24 miles per hour), the flight tracking website Flightradar24 said.
“The airport is currently closed to facilitate the response and allow for a thorough investigation,” the Port Authority said in a statement to the AFP news agency.
Emergency response protocols were “immediately activated”, it said.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a ground stop for all departures to LaGuardia due to the aircraft emergency with the airport closure in effect until 05:30 GMT. The probability of an extension was listed as high.
[Aljazeera]
Along Beirut’s downtown waterfront, Alaa is looking for somewhere to rest his head.
The Syrian refugee, originally from the occupied Golan Heights, is now homeless. He explained that he had already spent the day wandering around the Lebanese capital trying to find shelter.
He used to live in Dahiyeh – the southern suburbs of Beirut that have been pummelled by Israeli attacks, which have now killed MORE THAN 1,000 across Lebanon.
Now, he’s just looking for somewhere he can be safe. And in that context, Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival that began on Friday, is far from his mind.
When asked if he had any plans for Eid, he replied in the negative. Instead, his focus was on getting a tent.
“I got rejected from staying in a school, then I went to sleep on the corniche,” Alaa said. “Then people from the municipality told me to come here to downtown Beirut’s waterfront.”
Alaa wasn’t able to find a tent and is sleeping in the open air for now. But others in the area have, transforming a downtown more famous for its expensive restaurants and bars into a tent city for those displaced by the fighting. Across Lebanon, more than a million people have been displaced.
Lebanese are uncertain when this war will end, particularly as they have barely recovered from the conflict with Israel that ran between October 2023 and November 2024.
It makes celebrations difficult – a common theme across the countries affected by the current conflict.
In Iran, now in its third week of US-Israeli attacks – with no sign of an immediate end and an economic crisis that preceded the conflict, people are struggling to afford any of the items typically bought during the holiday season.
And it is potentially dangerous for people to shop at places like Tehran’s grand bazaar, which has been damaged by the bombing.
The religious element of Eid adds an extra sensitivity for antigovernment Iranians, some of whom now see any sign of religiosity as support for the Islamic Republic. The fact that Nowruz – the Persian New Year – falls on Friday this year means that some in the antigovernment camp will be focused on that celebration instead, and eschewing any events to mark Eid.
[Aljazeera]
King Charles has hosted a spectacular state banquet for the president and first lady of Nigeria, praising the strengths of Nigeria’s partnership with the UK.
After greeting the 160 guests in the Yoruba language, the King spoke of the “living bridge” of the Nigerian community in the UK, in a speech in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle.
Famous figures at the banquet included England rugby union captain, Maro Itoje, Olympic athlete Christine Ohuruogu and poet Sir Ben Okri, alongside senior royals including Queen Camilla and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
There were special adaptations for Muslims, with the banquet taking place in the fasting month of Ramadan.
A prayer room was set aside in Windsor Castle and the usual lunch hosted by the King on such state visits did not take place.
It’s become a tradition to invent a cocktail for state visits – and in this case the “crimson bloom” was made from non-alcoholic ingredients, combining the Nigerian drink Zobo with English rose soda and hibiscus and ginger syrup.
There were also alcoholic drinks available for guests in St George’s Hall, including fine red and white wines, port and whisky.
The King’s speech reflected on the importance of religious tolerance, in which “people of different faiths can, do, and must live alongside one another in peace”.
He also told President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and First Lady Oluremi Tinubu of the importance of partners such as Nigeria and the UK standing together in difficult times “when rain clouds gather”.
As well as diplomatic ties, King Charles spoke of “Afrobeats filling our concert halls and Nollywood captivating our screens”.
There was also a reflection by the King on the “painful marks” of a shared history, in a reference to colonialism.
“I do not seek to offer words that dissolve the past, for no words can,” said the King, but he hoped for a more optimistic future “worthy of those who bore the pains of the past”.
The banquet, on an elaborately decorated table filled with spring flowers, saw a meat-free menu.
It included:
- Soft boiled quail egg tartlet with watercress and kale and a basil sabayon
- Fillet of turbot, lobster mousse wrapped in spinach, beurre blanc sauce, sprouting broccoli with hollandaise sauce, fricassee of peas and broad beans, Jersey Royal potatoes
- Iced blackcurrant souffle with red fruit coulis
The two-day state visit began on Wednesday morning with a ceremonial welcome at Windsor.
In warm spring sunshine, the president and first lady – wearing traditional robes – were given the ceremonial grandeur of a royal welcome.
There was a carriage procession, bringing the Nigerian visitors into the quadrangle inside Windsor Castle, where a military band, with careful symmetry, paraded on the chequerboard lawn.
There was a gun salute, national anthems were played, guards were inspected and the Household Cavalry kicked up dust as they paraded inside the castle, in front of a viewing stand for the King and Queen and their visitors.
Official gifts were exchanged. The president and Mrs Tinubu were given hand-crafted pottery, a silver photo frame containing a picture of the King and Queen and a silver and enamel bowl.
In return, the King and Queen were given a traditional Yoruba statuette and a jewellery box featuring the faces of important Nigerian women.
President Tinubu is a Muslim and his wife is a Christian and the couple attended an interfaith event at Windsor Castle, designed to build bridges between religions.
It’s at a time of tensions within Nigeria, with a series of suspected suicide bombings this week in the north-eastern state of Borno, in which at least 23 people were killed and 108 injured in attacks blamed on hard-line Islamist militants from the Boko Haram group.
This is Nigeria’s first state visit to the UK for 37 years and such visits are a way of building relationships with international partners.
The Nigeria visit will see a strengthening of business links, including financial services. And there are personal and family connections, with more than 270,000 Nigerian-born people living in the UK.
“This state visit is about turning a historic relationship into a modern economic partnership – transforming trust into opportunity,” said Nigeria’s government spokesman Mohammed Idris.
“Nigeria’s economic reforms are unlocking the potential of Africa’s largest consumer market. The United Kingdom is a natural partner in what comes next.”
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