NEWS

An international firefighting effort to put out a huge blaze on a container ship off Sri Lanka’s coast will likely take days, the country’s navy chief said Thursday, amid mounting fears of a major oil leak.    

Nine Sri Lankan ships and three Indian vessels have been working with international salvage experts to douse the eight-day old inferno on the Singapore-registered X-Press Pearl.

The vessel was carrying nearly 1,500 containers, including 25 tonnes of nitric acid, when a fire broke out as it waited to enter Colombo port.

Cyclone Yaas, which began its landfall on Wednesday morning near Dhamra port in Odisha, has completed the process, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, whose state is also in storm's path, said that at least 1 crore people have been affected and three lakh houses damaged due to rough weather conditions arising out of the cyclone.

"Cyclone Yaas has complete the process of landfall. Rainfall will continue till tomorrow. Fishermen are advised not to venture till tomorrow morning because the sea condition going to be rough," said Umashankar Das, senior scientist, Meteorological Centre, Bhubaneswar.

Cyclone Yaas has left a trail of destruction in Odisha and parts of the coastline in Bengal, where the cyclonic storm made landfall on Wednesday morning. After hitting the shores, the cyclonic storm kept battering the eastern coast as cars, mud houses, trees were seen flying in various videos that surfaced throughout the day. In some places, main communication routes also got submerged underwater.

The impact of the cyclone:

Cyclone 'Yaas' made its landfall in Odisha on May 26 noon and battered the coast with strong winds and heavy rainfall on the coastline of Odisha and West Bengal. It is very likely to move northwestwards across interior Odisha and weaken gradually.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to stop the "misinformation campaign on vaccination by Ramdev". The IMA has also urged the prime minister to take "appropriate action (against Ramdev) under the sedition" law.

In the letter addressed to PM Modi, IMA said it would like to "painfully" bring to your notice a "video claiming 10,000 doctors have died in spite of taking both the dose of (Covid-19) vaccine and lakhs of people have died due to allopathic medicine".

It said these allegations were made by Ramdev, and that the video has gone viral on social media.