Tag Archives: oceania

headline

Cyclone threatens North Queensland as rain pummels parts of state

Thunderstorms and wet weather continue to soak parts of Queensland, with cyclone threats looming for the north, and storms threatening to intensify into the New Year period.

A weather system moving east from the Northern Territory is behind the storms.

"A strengthening monsoon trough currently extends from a tropical low over the Top End of the Northern Territory through the Gulf of Carpentaria and over the base of Cape York Peninsula," a Bureau of Meteorology warning read.

"The tropical low is forecast to move into the Gulf of Carpentaria late today and towards the eastern Gulf Country district during Wednesday."

READ MORE: Devastating fires tear through Western Australia

https://twitter.com/BOM_au/status/1475656140562259969

The BoM predicted "monsoonal rain and squalls," sudden and violent winds, and localised storms would hit the tropics from tomorrow morning.

Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski warned cyclones were a possibility for North Queensland communities, as the storms crossed into the state from the Northern Territory.

"It will come out of the gulf with a low chance of it becoming a cyclone in that area but will push across into North Queensland from about Cooktown to as far as Townsville," Mr Gollschewski said.

"We will see significant amounts of rain and high wind."

READ MORE: People waiting almost a week for COVID-19 results amid testing chaos

https://twitter.com/BOM_Qld/status/1475659323250561031

He urged residents to remember flood warnings, in the wake of multiple deaths due to driving through floodwaters this month.

"The message is very, very clear for our community up there, be ready for this and if it's flooded forget it," Mr Gollschewski said.

"We've already lost people this year because of people driving through floodwaters so it's very important people understand that weather is coming towards us."

https://twitter.com/BOM_Qld/status/1475723237342461954

The BoM has issued flood warnings for several regions in North Queensland, like Townsville and Proserpine, in the Whitsundays following days of storms.

Further north, communities in the Cape and Gulf regions have also been urged to prepare for flooding, following warnings of severe weather, damaging winds and heavy rainfall.

Coastal catchments between Cooktown and Proserpine are also urged to prepare for floods, with abnormally high marine tides impacting parts of the Gulf and Peninsula.

Further south, major flooding continues in the town of Hebel, in Queensland's border region near New South Wales, on the Bokhara River. In the town of Surat, an outback town approximately 500 km west of Brisbane, floods are easing from the Balonne River.

The south-east region has also been pelted with rain.

On the Gold Coast, those seeking a summer tropical holiday have instead been met with storms, and on the Sunshine Coast, 117mm of rain fell in the last 24 hours to 9am today.

Brisbane has had more than the December average rainfall already this month, with the BoM predicting a further 100mm could fall this weekend.

headline

Red box over 130 years old found under US Civil War statue

Crews wrapping up the removal of a giant pedestal that once held a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond found what appeared to be a second and long-sought-after time capsule, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said on Monday (local time).

The governor tweeted photos of a box being removed from the site and said conservators were studying the artifact.

"They found it! This is likely the time capsule everyone was looking for," he tweeted.

READ MORE: Moondyne Joe: Australia's most notorious prison escapee

The box was expected to be opened Tuesday afternoon. It wasn't immediately clear what kind of condition any contents might be in.

The development marked the latest turn in a months-long search for the capsule, which contemporaneous news accounts indicate was placed during a cornerstone-laying ceremony in 1887 attended by thousands of people.

News accounts described its dozens of donated artifacts, including Confederate memorabilia. Based on historical records, some have also speculated the capsule might contain a rare photo of deceased President Abraham Lincoln.

Earlier this month, crews dismantling the pedestal found a time capsule embedded in a granite block that some initially thought might have been the one placed in 1887.

READ MORE: The 121-year-old lighthouse mystery that will never be answered

But after state conservators spent hours last week gingerly prying the box open, they didn't find the expected trove of objects related to the Confederacy. Instead, conservators pulled out a few waterlogged books, a silver coin and an envelope with some papers.

The prevailing theory last week was that the lead box was left by a person — or persons — who oversaw the monument's construction.

The search for the 1887 time capsule resumed Monday.

Devon Henry, the contractor whose company was overseeing the removal, said the box was found inside a granite enclosure basically at ground level, surrounded by fill and other construction material. Workers pulled off the top of the granite enclosure to find the box, which appeared to be made of copper, sitting in water, Henry said.

READ MORE: World's oldest family tree reconstructed from Stone Age tomb

The box was then covered in bubble wrap and transported by vehicle from the site for further study, he said.

The governor's office said in a news release that the box, which matches the size of the capsule listed in historical records, had been X-rayed. The resulting images showed it appeared to include books, coins, buttons and perhaps a type of Civil War-era ammunition, the news release said.

It was scheduled to be opened Tuesday afternoon at a state lab.

The Lee statue, which depicted the general atop a horse, was erected on the soaring pedestal in 1890 in the former capital of the Confederacy. Its removal in September came more than a year after Northam ordered it in the wake of protests that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The statue was one of five enormous Confederate tributes along Monument Avenue, and the only one that belonged to the state. The four city-owned statues were taken down in 2020, but the Lee statue's removal was blocked by two lawsuits until a ruling from the Supreme Court of Virginia in September cleared the way for it to be dismantled.

READ MORE: Ancient treasure horde found in Mediterranean shipwrecks

Crews searched for the time capsule then, digging and removing some massive stones, but were unable to locate it.

Mr Henry said it was found Monday in the northeast corner of the pedestal, about 1.2 metres below the area initially searched.

Northam's administration initially planned to leave the pedestal in place but announced in early December that contractors would remove the behemoth, now covered in graffiti, and transfer the grassy traffic circle it inhabited to the city of Richmond.

The administration has said it will be stored until "next steps" have been determined.

Finalising the removal work at the site will likely take another week, Mr Henry said.

READ MORE: Uncovered time capsule may contain photo of 'Abraham Lincoln in coffin'

headline

'No rednecks here': African clergy filling key roles in US church

The Reverend Athanasius Chidi Abanulo — using skills honed in his African homeland to minister effectively in rural Alabama — determines just how long he can stretch out his Sunday homilies based on who is sitting in the pews.

Seven minutes is the sweet spot for the mostly white and retired parishioners who attend the English-language Mass at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in the small US town of Wedowee.

"If you go beyond that, you lose the attention of the people," he said.

LIVE UPDATES: 'There is no logic' – NSW Health Minister continues Queensland attack

For the Spanish-language Mass an hour later, the Nigerian-born priest — one of numerous African clergy serving in the US — knows he can quadruple his teaching time.

"The more you preach, the better for them," he said.

As he moves from one American post to the next, Rev. Abanulo has learned how to tailor his ministry to the culture of the communities he is serving while infusing some of the spirit of his homeland into the universal rhythms of the Mass.

"Nigerian people are relaxed when they come to church," Rev. Abanulo said.

"They love to sing, they love to dance. The liturgy can last for two hours. They don't worry about that."

During his 18 years in the US, Rev. Abanulo has filled various chaplain and pastor roles across the country, epitomising an ongoing trend in the American Catholic church. As fewer American-born men and women enter seminaries and convents, US dioceses and Catholic institutions have turned to international recruitment to fill their vacancies.

The Diocese of Birmingham, where Rev. Abanulo leads two parishes, has widened its search for clergy to places with burgeoning religious vocations like Nigeria and Cameroon, said Birmingham Bishop Steven Raica. Priests from Africa were also vital in the Michigan diocese where Bishop Raica previously served.

READ MORE: Ghislaine Maxwell jury call for accuser testimony transcripts

"They have been an enormous help to us to be able to provide the breadth and scope of ministry that we have available to us," he said.

Africa is the Catholic church's fastest-growing region. There, the seminaries are "fairly full," said Reverand Thomas Gaunt, director of Georgetown University's Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which conducts research about the Catholic church.

It's different in the US, where the Catholic church faces significant hurdles in recruiting home-grown clergy following decades of declining church attendance and the damaging effects of widespread clergy sex abuse scandals.

Catholic women and married men remain barred from the priesthood; arguments that lifting those bans would ease the priest shortage have not gained traction with the faith's top leadership.

READ MORE: Australia claims the Ashes after debutante takes six wickets

"What we have is a much smaller number beginning in the 1970s entering seminaries or to convents across the country," Rev. Gaunt said.

"Those who entered back in the '50s and '60s are now elderly and so the numbers are determined much more by mortality."

From 1970 to 2020, the number of priests in the US dropped by 60 per cent, according to data from the Georgetown centre. This has left more than 3500 parishes without a resident pastor.

Rev. Abanulo oversees two parishes in rural Alabama. His typical Sunday starts with an English-language Mass at Holy Family Catholic Church in Lanett, about 200km from Birmingham along the Alabama-Georgia state line. After that, he is driven an hour north to Wedowee, where he celebrates one Mass in English, another in Spanish.

READ MORE: Global travel chaos as thousands of flights cancelled

"He just breaks out in song and a lot of his lectures, he ties in his boyhood, and I just love hearing those stories," said Amber Moosman, a first-grade teacher who has been a parishioner at Holy Family since 1988.

For Ms Moosman, Rev. Abanulo's preaching style is very different from the priests she's witnessed previously.

"There was no all of a sudden, the priest sings, nothing like that … It was very quiet, very ceremonial, very strict," she said.

"It's a lot different now."

Rev. Abanulo was ordained in Nigeria in 1990 and came to the US in 2003 after a stint in Chad. His first US role was as an associate pastor in the diocese of Oakland, California, where his ministry focused on the fast-growing Nigerian Catholic community.

Since then, he has been a hospital chaplain and pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, and a chaplain at the University of Alabama.

Amid the US clergy shortage, religious sisters have experienced the sharpest declines, dropping 75 per cent since 1970, according to the Georgetown centre.

When Maria Sheri Rukwishuro was told she was being sent from the Sisters of the Infant Jesus order in Zimbabwe to West Virginia to work as a missionary nun, she asked her mother superior, "Where is West Virginia?".

She was scared, worrying about the unknowns.

"What kind of people am I going to? I'm just a Black nun coming to a white country," Sister Rukwishuro told The Associated Press from Clarksburg, West Virginia, where she has been teaching religious education to public and Catholic school students since arriving in 2004.

Sister Rukwishuro vividly remembers that at her introduction, a little girl walked to her and "rubbed her finger on my fingers all the way, then she looked at her finger and she smiled but my heart sank…She thought I was dirty."

Despite that, Sister Rukwishuro says most people have been very welcoming. She's now a US citizen and says, "It feels like home."

One of her first culture shocks was an overnight snowfall.

"I really screamed. I thought it was the end of the world," she said.

"Now I love it. I do my meditations to that."

During their integration into American life, it is commonplace for newly arrived clergy to face culture shocks.

For Sister Christiana Onyewuche of Nigeria, a hospital chaplain in Boston administering last rites for the dying, it was cremation. She recalled thinking, "Like really? … How can they burn somebody? I can't even imagine."

She came to the US 18 years ago and previously served as the president of the African Conference of Catholic Clergy and Religious, a support group for African missionaries serving in the US.

2021 in review: Biggest international stories of the year

Sister Onyewuche said African clergy can face communication challenges with the Americans they serve. To address this, many dioceses have offered training to soften accents, she said. Rev. Abanulo, who went through the training in Oakland, says it helped him slow down his speech and improve his pronunciations.

Rev. Abanulo, who moved to Alabama in 2020, admits he was initially apprehensive about his latest posting, which meant exchanging a comfortable role as university chaplain for two rural parishes.

"People were telling me 'Father, don't go there. The people there are rednecks'," he said.

But after a year and a warm reception, he says he now tells his friends, "There are no rednecks here. All I see are Jesus necks."