PETALING JAYA – Gempa bumi kuat melanda Barat Kepulauan Tonga pada pukul 12.15 tengah hari tadi.

Menerusi satu hantaran daripada Jabatan Meteorologi Malaysia (MetMalaysia), gempa kuat tersebut berukuran 6.4 skala magnitud.

“Ia terjadi 665km Timur dari Laucala, Fiji,” katanya.

Bagaimanapun, tiada ancaman tsunami dilaporkan kepada Malaysia lanjutan daripada kejadian itu. -KOSMO! ONLINE

LONDON, 14 Mei – England mencatatkan permulaan musim bunga paling kering sejak 69 tahun lalu, menurut Agensi Alam Sekitar United Kingdom (UK), sekali gus meningkatkan kebimbangan bahawa kemarau berkemungkinan melanda negara itu dalam beberapa bulan akan datang.

Laporan agensi itu pada Selasa menyatakan bahawa bulan April merupakan bulan ketiga berturut-turut mencatatkan hujan di bawah purata, menjadikannya paling kering sejak tahun 1956.

Lebih tiga perempat kawasan di England mengalami hujan bawah paras normal atau lebih rendah, dan jumlah hujan kumulatif tiga bulan juga berada pada paras rendah atau sangat rendah.

Beberapa kawasan seperti timur laut dan barat laut England mengalami empat bulan pertama yang paling kering sejak tahun 1929.

Pengarah Timbalan Air, Richard Thompson, memberi amaran bahawa perubahan iklim akan menyebabkan lebih banyak kemarau pada musim panas dalam dekad akan datang.

“Dua tahun lalu merupakan antara yang paling basah dalam rekod bagi England, tetapi keadaan kering di awal tahun ini menjadikan kemarau satu kemungkinan,” katanya.

Menurut jurucakap Air UK, syarikat-syarikat air kini memindahkan bekalan air merentas kawasan untuk membantu kawasan yang paling terjejas.

Perubahan iklim telah menyebabkan peningkatan kejadian cuaca ekstrem di seluruh UK dalam beberapa tahun kebelakangan ini.

Sejak 1980-an, Eropah telah mengalami pemanasan dua kali lebih cepat berbanding purata global, menjadikannya benua yang paling cepat memanas di dunia.

Britain sebelum ini telah dilanda ribut besar, banjir serta gelombang haba, termasuk suhu mencecah rekod 40 darjah Celsius pada Julai 2022.

Kemarau juga telah menyumbang kepada jumlah kebakaran hutan yang tertinggi, dengan sekitar 500 kebakaran berlaku pada tahun 2022.

Sementara itu, Jawatankuasa Perubahan Iklim UK memberi amaran bulan lalu bahawa musim panas yang lebih panas dan kering akan meningkatkan risiko gelombang haba, kemarau dan banjir kilat permukaan.-AFP.

BANGKOK: Thailand has declared an end to search operation at the site of a partially constructed Bangkok skyscraper that collapsed during a March 28 earthquake and killed scores of construction workers, the city's governor said on Tuesday.

The 30-storey State Audit Office tower was the only building in the Thai capital that collapsed from the tremors caused by a 7.7 magnitude quake that struck central Myanmar about 1,020 km (635 miles) away.

An investigation is underway into why the building came down so easily while those in the rest of the city stood firm. Earthquakes and tremors of that scale are extremely rare in Thailand and the quake sparked panic in the city, which ground to a halt for most of the day.

Authorities have recovered 89 bodies from the rubble and seven are still missing from one of the deadliest accidents of its kind in Thailand, which killed 96 people. In Myanmar, more than 3,700 people died.

The six-week operation in Bangkok involved hundreds of personnel, including international rescue teams in an around-the-clock effort during which search dogs and heavy equipment were deployed. The mission was severely hampered by the scale and weight of the debris.

"I want to thank all those who helped," Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittupunt told reporters. "This was a life changing incident for many and a lesson."

Authorities have so far been identified 86 of the dead, while forensic tests are being conducted on 100 out of 313 fragments of human remains recovered from the site, according to police. The probe is focusing on those involved in the construction of the building, which started in 2020.

A Thai anti-corruption watchdog said it had flagged to authorities irregularities it found in the construction of the skyscraper before it collapsed, while industry officials said initial tests of materials at the site indicated the presence of substandard steel.

PARIS, May 15 — Scorching heatwaves fuelled by global warming are increasing the risk of dangerous complications during pregnancies across the world, a report warned on Wednesday.

Being exposed to extreme heat while pregnant has previously been linked to a range of problems, including a higher risk of premature birth, stillbirth, birth defects and gestational diabetes.

The new report from the US-based research group Climate Central sought to measure how much more pregnant women have been exposed to excessive heat since 2020 — and to what extent climate change is to blame.

In 222 out of the 247 countries and territories studied, “climate change at least doubled the average annual number of pregnancy heat-risk days experienced during the past five years”, the report said.

The biggest increases were in developing countries where access to healthcare is limited, such as in the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Pacific islands, South-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The researchers only looked at the rise in potentially dangerous hot days and did not examine the extent to which pregnant women were actually affected by heat in the countries.

Ana Bonell, a maternal health and extreme heat researcher at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine not involved in the report, said it “gives clear evidence of the growing exposure risk to extreme heat”.

While researchers are increasingly documenting the many ways that extreme heat can threaten human health, there remain “many unknowns” about the physiological mechanisms to explain why this happens, Bonell said.

A large 2024 study in Nature Medicine estimated that heatwaves increase the odds of having a complication during pregnancy by 1.25 times.

Beyond wider efforts to fight climate change — which is largely caused by humans burning fossil fuels — experts advised local policies to help communities beat the heat.

These include “greening neighbourhoods, limiting pollution, creating cool areas and informing residents about the risks,” French epidemiologist Lucie Adelaide said.

In a statement linked to the new report, she also recommended that existing information about the health risks of heatwaves include warnings for pregnant women, who are currently rarely mentioned in such efforts. — AFP