China has posted hundreds of police and rescue officials to shore up dams threatening to burst under torrential rain that has already flooded 23,300km² of crops and homes.
The rain and floods, concentrated in the industrial hub of Guangdong Province, have killed at least 171 people and left 52 missing since the start of the annual flood season and forecasters have warned of more downpours in coming days.
More than 750 government officials and police had been sent to conduct rescue work for six reservoirs “in danger of bursting” in the Guangxi region, Xinhua news agency said.
PHOTO: AP
Some 3,000 people had already been evacuated downstream from a reservoir with a capacity of 1.8 million cubic meters, the agency said.
More than 1.66 million people have been evacuated across nine provinces and regions in southern China since major flooding started 11 days ago.
Families were perched on the roofs of homes flooded up to the first-floor ceiling, enduring the latest in a series of disasters in Beijing’s Olympic year after record snowstorms in January and February and the devastating May 12 earthquake.
Rain-triggered floods have toppled 134,000 houses, damaged or destroyed 2.32 million hectares of crops and caused economic losses of 27.7 billion yuan (US$4 billion).
China’s meteorological bureau forecast storms in western Guangdong and southern Guangxi and warned authorities to halt outdoor work and guard against damaged electric cables.
Water levels in the swollen Xijiang and Beijiang rivers in Guangdong were subsiding slowly, but rain forecast over the next three days would provide renewed risk of flooding, Xinhua said.
Heavy rains forecast for neighboring Fujian Province could also “cause geological disasters.”
Provincial water authorities earlier reported that the Pearl River Delta, a major exporting base, had suffered its greatest flooding in 50 years.
Analysts have warned sustained rains could reduce sugar production in Guangxi, which accounts for 60 percent of the country’s crop.
Rain has also been forecast for quake-hit areas of Sichuan, where officials have warned of renewed threats of epidemics as summer temperatures rise.
BIRTH OF ‘LOVE’
Meanwhile, a pregnant woman who was pulled from rubble in Sichuan 50 hours after she was trapped, gave birth to a healthy, pink-cheeked 3.3kg girl at the Urumqi Maternal Care Hospital in her home region of Xinjiang.
Zhang Xiaoyan’s dramatic rescue was a rare bright spot after the May 12 quake.
The image of rescue workers pulling the eight-month pregnant victim onto a stretcher two days after the quake, her stomach protruding from under a blue sweater and pink pants, was played on TV screens and newspapers across the country.
“Even if I didn’t make it, I just wanted my baby to survive. I was holding out hope during the earthquake that this day would come,” Zhang, 35, said yesterday as she reclined in a hospital bed with her daughter swaddled in a pink floral blanket beside her.
She named the baby Ai (“love”) in honor of the rescue workers and strangers who showered her with kindness, gifts and VIP treatment in the month since she was pulled out of the debris.
Zhang’s husband, Pan Yuncheng, a native of Sichuan, remains in Dujiangyan where he is living in a refugee camp.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS