Pervasive charcoal trade getting major rethink in Haiti

Pungent wood smoke wafts daily across the hinterlands of Haiti’s southern peninsula, where villagers stack smoldering wood beneath dirt mounds to make the charcoal that nearly all the urban households in the country use to cook every meal. For decades, authorities and development workers have denounced such rural charcoal makers for stripping the nation’s forests, sending topsoil to sea and helping make Haiti the poorest country in the Americas.

Freak storm brings ‘twister’ to Queensland

A FREAK storm caused flash flooding, mass blackouts, and a rare weather phenomenon resembling a twister in Queensland’s most populated areas on Sunday night. Massive thunderstorms moved across Brisbane and into Ipswich yesterday, where flash flooding was caused by 80mm of rain falling in an hour.

Bringing hope and healing to Haiti

As I sit to write you about my recent trip to Haiti, I am not sure where to start. The devastation I saw from Hurricane Matthew was huge but the picture that immediately comes into my mind is of the young mom with a 12-month-old babe and a three-year-old boy whom I met.

Updated: 6 hours agoComments (0)The worst of the storm has passed.

A Colorado low dumped up to 30 centimetres of snow on some parts of Northwestern Ontario before moving off to the east on Tuesday. “There was a massive area of precipitation with this thing; rain in southern Ontario to heavy snow in the northern part of the province,” Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson said Tuesday.

Philippines Hunts for Crew of Ship Sunk by Typhoon Nock-Ten; AIR Comments

The Philippine coast guard pressed its search Tuesday for 18 crewmen from a cargo ship that sank at the height of Typhoon Nock-Ten, which struck the country on Christmas Day. Coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo said 14 other crewmen have been rescued and one died after the M/V Starlite Atlantic sank off Mabini town in Batangas province, where the powerful typhoon passed Monday on its way out of the country into the South China Sea.

Philippines Hunts for Crew of Ship Sunk by Typhoon Nock-Ten; AIR Comments

The Philippine coast guard pressed its search Tuesday for 18 crewmen from a cargo ship that sank at the height of Typhoon Nock-Ten, which struck the country on Christmas Day. Coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo said 14 other crewmen have been rescued and one died after the M/V Starlite Atlantic sank off Mabini town in Batangas province, where the powerful typhoon passed Monday on its way out of the country into the South China Sea.

Tens of thousands flee Christmas Day typhoon in Philippines

Babies, toddlers and old people were loaded onto military trucks in pouring rain in the Philippines on Sunday as tens of thousands fled the path of a powerful typhoon barrelling towards the disaster-prone archipelago. Officials warned of large coastal waves of up to 2.5-metres high, landslides and flash floods as Nock-Ten closed in on the Bicol peninsula and nearby islands.

Risk of Australia’s first 2016/17 cyclone this week

A slow-moving tropical low in the Indian Ocean could intensify into Australia’s first cyclone of the 2016/17 season, forecasters said on Monday. The near-stationary low was situated 550 km north northwest of Karratha, an oil, gas and iron ore mining hub along Australia’s west coast, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

French foreign minister visits Haiti city devastated by

France’s foreign minister has visited a Haitian city devastated by Hurricane Matthew two months when the Category 4 storm’s center tore through the impoverished country’s southwest. The French Embassy in Port-au-Prince says the purpose of Jean-Marc Ayrault’s visit to Jeremie on Sunday was to express France’s solidarity with its former colony as affects areas struggle to recover from Matthew’s Oct. 4 passage.