INDONESIA: Floods in Indonesia have killed 11 people and forced thousands to flee their villages on the southern part of the country's main Java island, local media reported yesterday.
Heavy rain which began on Saturday caused flooding around President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's birthplace of Pacitan and the neighbouring town of Blitar, where his mother resides.
Indonesia's national news agency reported the dead came from villages around those towns, located in the crowded East Java province.
More than 3,000 villagers from around the Blitar-Pacitan area had to seek refuge at nearby schools. The area is one of the poorest regions on Java and rarely visited by foreigners.
Meanwhile record-breaking winds struck Tokyo yesterday, beaching a tanker, toppling trees, halting trains and injuring at least 14 people in and near the capital, police said.
Winds gusting up to 144 km per hour hit Tokyo - the highest speed since records began in 1964, the Meteorological Agency said. Most of the injured were in Chiba prefecture, east of the capital, where winds reached 170 km per hour.
A 460-tonne chemical tanker, the Kissho Maru, ran aground on the coast of Chiba prefecture but no one was injured and there were no reports of leaks, Kyodo news agency said.
The gales temporarily knocked out power to 32,000 homes in Chiba prefecture. One railway line was blocked after a tree fell on a train in central Tokyo without causing injuries and about 55 flights to and from the city's Haneda and Narita airports were cancelled.