High winds blamed on Cyclone Fani more than 900 kilometers away blew tents off the side of Mount Everest on Friday, officials said.
Fallout from the deadly storm, which hit India's Bay of Bengal coast on Friday, spread across South Asia — including the world's highest mountain.
The monster storm was not predicted to go near Nepal, but the country's Meteorological Forecasting Division predicted effect from Fani would cause snow, rain and strong winds in the country.
About 20 tents at Everest's Camp 2, at 6,400 meters (21,000 feet), were affected.
"Very strong winds blew the tents off the mountain but no-one was hurt," Ishwori Poudel, general secretary of the Expedition Operators Association, told AFP.
With the spring climbing season looming, several teams have postponed acclimatisation on Everest fearing the bad weather.
"The effects of that storm mean we are likely to see significant snowfall and high winds on the mountain," expedition company Climbing the Seven Summits wrote on its blog.
The company said its climbers would wait at base camp until the storm has passed.
The Nepalese government has issued a warning to trekking and climbing companies to ensure the safety of tourists, and cautioned helicopters against flying.
The thousands of climbers who flock to Nepal each year to try eight of the world's 14 highest peaks provide a lucrative industry for the impoverished South Asian country.
Nepal has issued a record 377 permits to climb Everest this year.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
TOKYO - The death toll from a powerful earthquake that rattled the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido doubled to at least 16, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday, with more than half the island's 5.3 million residents still without power.
The 6.7-magnitude quake, which hit before dawn on Thursday, triggered landslides that buried houses and paralyzed Hokkaido with widespread power and transport cuts.
The death toll had been put at eight overnight but NHK cited Abe in reporting the new total soon after he held an emergency meeting early on Friday.
Another 26 people were missing, disaster management authorities said.
The island, a tourist destination about the size of Austria known for its mountains, lakes and seafood, lost all power after the quake when Hokkaido Electric Power Co shut its fossil fuel-fired power plants as a precaution.
The utility had restored power to about 1.31 million of 2.95 million customers by early Friday, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said. It could take at least a week to restore power fully, Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko has said.
The quake was the second disaster to hit Japan this week alone after a summer during which the country has been battered by deadly typhoons, flooding and a record heat wave.
Kansai International Airport has been shut since Typhoon Jebi ripped through Osaka on Tuesday, although some domestic flights operated by Japan Airlines (JAL) and ANA's low-cost carrier Peach Aviation resumed on Friday, the carriers said.
At Hokkaido's main airport, New Chitose, JAL was preparing to restart some flights from around 11:00 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Friday, a spokesman said. ANA cancelled all morning flights but would resume operations as normal in the afternoon, a spokesman said.
JR Hokkaido planned to resume bullet train operations from midday. It was also trying to resume other train services on Friday afternoon, a spokesman said.
However, manufacturers were still being affected by power outages.
Toyota Motor Corp's Tomakomai factory, which makes transmissions and other parts, said operations remained suspended indefinitely until power was restored, a spokesman said.
Toppan Printing's operations at a plant in Chitose, which makes food packages, would remain suspended until it regained power, a spokesman said.
Cultural events were also affected, with a soccer friendly between Japan and Chile scheduled for Friday in Sapporo called off.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Severe monsoon flooding has killed 213 people in western India, an official said Sunday, as rescuers continue to sift through villages devastated by torrential rains.
The death toll in Gujarat state jumped from Wednesday's total of 123 as waters recede from low-lying areas, allowing workers to reach remote spots where bodies are starting to appear.
"The death toll in Gujarat this monsoon has risen to 213," A.J Shah, director of relief operations with the Gujarat government, told AFP.
Overwhelmed authorities, who expect the toll to rise still further, said they have struggled to cope with the number of bodies needing identification and post-mortems, resulting in delays in confirming the latest deaths.
An official at the state's emergency control room explained that "only after a post-mortem is conducted we can officially confirm death of a person".
"Since many bodies were found, postmortem took time hence the sudden jump in numbers," the official, who requested anonymity, told AFP.
The rise comes after rescuers plucked 25 bodies, including 17 members of a single family, on Wednesday from two submerged villages in hard-hit Banaskantha district of Gujarat.
Rescue workers have moved close to 130,000 people from low-lying, dangerous areas as helicopters and boats try to reach those still stranded.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who surveyed the devastation across Gujarat from the skies last week, in his radio show on Sunday reassured flood-hit states that all help was being provided to them.
As well as Gujarat, the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam have been hard-hit by monsoon flooding, while pockets of the eastern states of Odisha and Bihar have also been affected.
In Assam at least 77 people have been killed and a state-wide emergency relief operation has been underway since April. Tens of thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
