Environment

Kanpur: "Summer shows its wrath now," says one. Certainly, the weather is not just the same in Jajmau area now. The normal temperature stays between 43° Celsius and 25° Celsius. Sunny day adds heat to the warm weather thereby forcing the residents to confine into the cooled room. The Muslim devouts who keep fast do not feel comfortable in such hot weather.

LONDON, May 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Cars will be banished from miles of streets in central London to encourage more walking and cycling and help public transport cope with social distancing restrictions, the city’s mayor said. 

Sadiq Khan said the plan, which covers major cross-town routes, would transform parts of central London into one of the largest car-free zones in any capital city.

“COVID-19 poses the biggest challenge to London’s public transport network in TfL’s (Transport for London) history,” he said.

MANILA, May 15 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Over 140,000 people were forced into cramped shelters as a powerful typhoon hammered the Philippines on Friday, compounding the nation’s battle with the coronavirus pandemic.

Typhoon Vongfong has dumped heavy rains since it roared ashore on Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in its path on the coast or in flimsy homes.

The storm hit as tens of millions of Filipinos are hunkered down at home against the coronavirus, but at least 141,700 have had to flee because of the powerful storm, disaster officials said.

BANGKOK, May 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Environmentalists have criticised Laos for pressing ahead with plans for another dam on the Mekong River, a waterway already strangled by hydropower schemes.

The flow of the Mekong, Southeast Asia’s longest river, is interrupted by a cascade of dams in China — where it is called the Lancang.

Two downstream dams — the Xayaburi and Don Sahong — have been built in Laos, which wants to construct seven more as it strives to live up to its billing as the “Battery of Asia”.

ROME, May 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A mild earthquake shook Rome early Monday but there were no immediate reports of damage, emergency services said.

Firefighters said they had received numerous inquiries from people after the tremor struck shortly after 5 am, estimated at 3.3 magnitude by the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology.

Rome is not directly situated in a zone of strong seismic activity, but stronger earthquakes in the neighbouring Abruzzi region have often been felt in the Italian capital.

TOKYO, May 11 (NNN-NHK) – An earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.5, on Monday (today), struck off Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

The temblor occurred at 8:58 a.m. local time, with its epicentre at a latitude of 36.4 degrees north, and a longitude of 141.1 degrees east, and at a depth of 50 km.

The quake logged 3 in some parts of Ibaraki Prefecture, on the Japanese seismic intensity scale, which peaks at 7.

So far no tsunami warning has been issued.

KANPUR: A heavy storm suddenly encircled the larger area with sand in the city's suburban Jajmau in the evening today. The speed of the storm was immense. The darkness filled all over the place. It was later followed by showers. However, the residents coped with the stormy situation. 

The clouds stretched over the sky. The air turned out to be comforting. The humid weather persisted until the afternoon was transformed into pleasant weather. The clouds were continued to thunder. Even there was lightning too.

New Delhi, May 10 (PTI) A medium-intensity earthquake of magnitude 3.4 hit Delhi on Sunday, a third in less than a month, the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) said.

The epicentre of the quake was near Wazirpur in northeast Delhi, J L Gautam, Head (Operations) at the NCS, an institute under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

8 May 2020; MEMO: An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.1 struck Iran early Friday, prompting some residents in the capital to evacuate their homes, Anadolu Agency reports.

The earthquake occurred at 00:48 a.m. local time (2118GMT) in Damavand district of Tehran at a depth of seven kilometers (4.34 miles), according to the Tehran University Seismological Center.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Visakhapatnam, May 7 (PTI) A technical glitch in the refrigeration unit attached to the two styrene tanks at a chemical plant near here caused the vapour leak that killed 11 people and affected around 1,000 on Thursday, a senior district official said quoting a preliminary report.

The leak at the LG Polymers Limited was so intense that a "only around 9.30 am could we understand what exactly it was as the thick fog that formed in the area cleared," District Collector V Vinay Chand said.