Asia News Wrap: Unseasonal rains kill 22 in Arabian Gulf, and more

Here are a few stories from around Asia you may have missed this week.

Record levels of rain killed at least 20 people in the Arabian Gulf this week, 19 people in Oman, and at least one person in Dubai. The rains first hit Oman on Sunday and Monday before moving to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Tuesday, flooding highways and leaving vehicles floating on roads across Dubai. The rains left large ponds of water on streets as strong winds stopped flights at Dubai International Airport. The UAE saw record rainfall with 254 millimeters falling in less than 24 hours in Al Ain, a city on the UAE-Oman border, according to the National Meteorology Centre. That was the most since records began in 1949, before the UAE was formed in 1971. Some airlines canceled flights to Dubai. The government of Dubai ordered schools to continue teaching classes online on Thursday, as workers cleared debris, including trees and furniture from the streets.

In Oman, the death toll included at least nine schoolchildren and their driver whose vehicle was washed away by the floodwaters in Samad A'Shan on Sunday. Several areas of Oman received over 230 mm of rain between Sunday and Tuesday, according to the country's National Committee for Emergency Management. The average annual rainfall in Muscat, the capital, is about 100 mm.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced on Monday he would hand over power to his designated successor, Lawrence Wong, on May 15. Wong, 51, has been prime minister-in-waiting since April 2022. Reuters reported that "he was catapulted into the spotlight as co-head of the government's COVID-19 task force during the pandemic, restricting movement in and out of Singapore and overseeing contact-tracing, earning him praise for helping contain the infection and keeping deaths low in the city-state while also explaining policies clearly to the public." He served as Lee's principal private secretary from 2005 to 2008 and led the education and national development ministries before becoming finance minister in 2021 and deputy prime minister in 2022. In a statement posted on his Facebook page, Lee, who has been prime minister since 2004 and is the eldest son of modern Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, called the leadership transition a "significant moment." "I will relinquish my role as Prime Minister on 15 May 2024 and Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong will be sworn in as the next Prime Minister on the same day," wrote Lee.

More than 1,500 people were evacuated and almost 12,000 more affected when the Ruang volcano in Indonesia emitted explosive plumes of lava, rock and ash into the sky, officials said on Thursday, declaring the highest alert. The volcano's eruption on a remote island in the province of North Sulawesi threw a red column of lava, rock and ash as high as three kilometers into the sky. Falling rocks and ash damaged homes and forced a nearby hospital to evacuate. Authorities shut an airport in the provincial capital of Manado to protect against the showers of ash. Budget airline Air Asia canceled flights with nine airports in East Malaysia and Brunei after aviation authorities warned of a safety threat.

Officials have cordoned off an area of six kilometers around the volcano and are evacuating more residents, some from the neighboring island of Tagulandang, said Abdul Muhari, spokesperson of the disaster mitigation agency.

Japan is on course to achieve a government goal of topping the pre-pandemic figure of 32 million annual foreign visitors by 2025, with the January-March quarter seeing a record 8.56 million, data from the Japan National Tourism Organization showed on Wednesday. "If we continue at this pace, we can expect the numbers of both inbound visitors and the amount spent to reach a record high in 2024, surpassing the target we had set for 2025," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at a ministerial meeting on Wednesday. In 2023, the figure was 9.62 million, less than half of the amount recorded in 2019.

(Cover: Vehicles submerged on a highway after heavy rain in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, April 17, 2024. /CFP)