Day: April 13, 2023

Western Australia is bracing for the arrival of a major storm which could bring “very destructive” winds of up to 275 km/h (170 mph).

Tropical Cyclone Ilsa is predicted to strike some 500 kilometres (310 miles) west of Broome.

Food and fuel have been delivered to remote areas, and people have been advised to stock up on water.

The category four cyclone could be region’s strongest in almost 10 years, local authorities said.

A yellow alert, which orders people to be ready to shelter, has been issued for several remote towns including Port Hedland, a town of 15,000 which is the world’s biggest iron ore exporting port, BBC news reported.

Some 700 residents from the remote community of Bidyadanga were being evacuated, the fire service said.

Ilsa is set to be the strongest storm to hit Australia’s north west since Cyclone Christine in December 2013.

The last category four storm to make landfall anywhere in the country was Cyclone Trevor, which hit the Northern Territory and Queensland in 2019.

In April 2021, category three Cyclone Seroja hit WA’s west coast with gusts of up to 170km/h, damaging houses, and toppling trees and power lines.

Source: Oman News Agency

Whilst not quite the dominance seen from the brilliant Manchester City last Tuesday, Real Madrid performed comfortably as European champions in a commanding 2-0 win over Chelsea in the UEFA Champions League (CL) quarterfinal.

Goals from Karim Benzema and Marco Asensio put Los Blancos into a truly dominant position in the tie, even with the return leg to come at Stamford Bridge in a week.

Frank Lampard spoke of his feelings of good fortune to be in place to coach Chelsea at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, but he may now be ruing his words as his term were soundly beaten.

It wasn’t as convincing as it could have been with Los Merengues electing to control the match, keeping their opponents at arms’ length. You got the feeling that when the Spanish champions wanted to score… they did.

Vinicius Jr and Karim Benzema is the perfect one-two punch. Much has been made of the relationship between Vinicius Jr and Karim Benzema, and if such a thing as ‘tough love’ still exists in modern society then their pairing is the perfect example of the positive side of it.

There was once an instance where Benzema was encouraging teammates not to pass the ball to the Brazilian, yet now they are the best one-two punch in European football.

The duo combined so fluidly together that Chelsea’s defense could barely cope.

Wesley Fofana was booked early on after they bamboozled him, and he was walking a disciplinary tightrope from then on.

Benzema scored the opening goal after 22 minutes, with Kepa Arrizabalaga tamely parrying Vinicius Jr’s shot strike to the Frenchman, the Spanish MARCA newspaper reported.

He duly added a tap-in from close-range and Real Madrid were on their way.

Of course, Chelsea have dangerous players and they could have drawn level from the restart.

A clever cross from Reece James found Raheem Sterling inside the penalty area, and his effort skewed off Eder Militao, forcing a world-class save from Thibaut Courtois.

Real Madrid kept their foot off the gas until the second-half, and Ben Chilwell’s red-card made Chelsea’s task more challenging.

A quickly taken free-kick set Rodrygo Goes free over the top and the former Leicester City defender dragged the Brazilian down needlessly when he was one-on-one with the Chelsea keeper.

A clever corner-kick routine saw Vinicius Jr able to pass the ball to Marco Asensio on the edge of the penalty area, and the Spaniard coolly side-footed the ball beyond Kepa.

At 2-0 the tie isn’t dead and buried for Real Madrid, but they will feel they’re in a comfortable position after a comfortable evening’s work.

Source: Oman News Agency

The European Space Agency (Esa) is set to launch a satellite to the planet Jupiter, one of the organisation’s most ambitious missions ever.

The satellite will leave Earth today on an eight-year journey to reach the giant planet’s major moons.

There’s good evidence that these icy worlds – Callisto, Europa and Ganymede – hold oceans of liquid water at depth.

The Esa mission aims to establish whether the moons might also have the conditions needed to sustain life, BBC news reported.

The project is known as the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice for short.

Juice is not seeking to detect life – it will not be sending back pictures of alien fish. But it could help determine whether conditions in the moons’ hidden oceans have at least a chance of supporting simple microbial organisms.

The €1.6bn (£1.4bn; $1.7bn) mission is scheduled to launch on an Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.

The Ariane doesn’t have the energy to send Juice directly to Jupiter, certainly not within a useful timeframe.

Instead, it will despatch the spacecraft on a path around the inner Solar System. A series of flybys of Venus and Earth will then gravitationally sling the mission out to its intended destination.

Arrival in the Jovian system is expected in July 2031.

Juice will perform 35 close passes of the moons – getting to within 400km of their surfaces on occasion – before settling into orbit around Ganymede.

The spacecraft carries a total of 10 instruments. There are various cameras, particle detectors, a radar to map sub-surface features; there’s even a lidar, which is used to make 3D maps of surface terrain.

But it is the UK-provided magnetometer that could provide some of the most influential data. The Imperial College London-built experiment will tell us about the properties of the moons’ hidden oceans. And at Ganymede, in particular, the information should be quite detailed.

Source: Oman News Agency

The Ministry of Interior announced the arrest of an electronic blackmailer who threatened a girl in Baghdad governorate, asking her for 5 million dinars.

The ministry said in a statement that “detachments of the Baghdad Crime Control Directorate arrested an accused for blackmailing a girl online and threatening her to publish her pictures on social media if she did not pay him an amount of money (five million dinars).

It added, “The arrest process took place after the complainant sought help from the detachments of Al-Kadhimiya Office for Combating Crime about being subjected to electronic blackmail by a person and threatening her to publish her photos in exchange for a sum of money,” indicating that “immediately a work team was formed to follow up on the matter and after investigating and collecting information and after a great and distinguished effort, resulted in reaching the accused, where a tight ambush was set up and he was arrested red-handed.”

It explained that the accused confessed to blackmailing the girl electronically and threatening her to publish her photos in exchange for a sum of money.

Source: National Iraqi News Agency

The exchange rates of the dollar stabilized in the local market today, Thursday.

The selling price was recorded at 146,000 dinars per hundred dollars, while the purchase price was 145,000 dinars.

Source: National Iraqi News Agency

Caretaker Minister of Public Works and Transport, Ali Hamieh, on Thursday met with MP Alain Aoun over the latest developments at the economic, social and political levels, in addition to an array of development-related affairs relevant to the region of Baabda.

Source: National News Agency – Lebanon