Tornadoes and thunderstorms ravaged four states in the US south on Tuesday night, killing at least 47 people, injuring dozens and causing widespread damage, emergency services and local media said yesterday.
Twenty-four people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas and 1 in Alabama, CNN reported. Local officials would not immediately confirm the tolls.
More than 50 tornadoes touched down as a series of thunderstorms rare for the winter season rolled through the region late on Tuesday and early yesterday.
PHOTO: AP/BRUCE NEWMAN, OXFORD EAGLE
The violent storms swept across Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi. Both Arkansas and Tennessee were involved in "Super Tuesday" polls and several candidates expressed condolences to the victims.
Several polling stations in Tennessee and Arkansas had to be closed as the storm approached, reports said.
In Arkansas, emergency services said tornadoes hit as many as eight counties.
"It's a pretty rough night in the scope of it. I don't know if I can remember when we've had as many [tornado] warnings and touchdowns," Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe said in a telephone interview from an emergency operations center in North Little Rock.
The governor's spokesman, Matt DeCample, said there was "no clue" as to how many were injured.
At least three people were killed at a mobile home park in Kentucky, the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper reported.
The Nashville Tennessean said that the National Weather Service had recorded a half dozen tornadoes in Tennessee and Mississippi.
Extensive damage in Tennessee included part of a shopping mall in Memphis and a dormitory at Union University in Jackson, where some students were trapped for a time but not seriously injured, the Web site of Memphis' Commercial Appeal said.
The paper quoted a National Weather Service spokesman as saying that the Memphis area had been hit by a "pretty significant tornado."
ABC affiliate WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi reported that a 15m wall had collapsed at the Sears store in the Hickory Ridge Mall in Memphis and that an unknown number of people were trapped in a nearby industrial plant.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
RSS