At least four people were killed and two were missing after Tropical Storm Mirinae struck central Vietnam, national storm and flood authorities said yesterday.
The storm brought winds of 133kph and dumped some 600mm of rain when it came ashore on Monday morning in the central provinces of Phu Yen, Binh Dinh, Quang Ngai and Khanh Hoa.
Mirinae destroyed more than 150 houses, and the roofs of several schools and health centers were blown away.
Vietnam’s Steering Committee for Flood and Storm Control said 27 fishing boats were sunk at wharfs.
More than 900 hectares of rice and 830 hectares of vegetables were destroyed or flooded.
Some reports indicated the rains had spoiled the drying of coffee in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. But a storm official in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak said the coffee industry had not been much affected.
Towns and villages were flooded by up to 1.2m of water.
Vietnam Airlines said it cancelled 34 flights to and from central Vietnam on Monday, affecting about 2,000 passengers.
The storm had reportedly weakened to a tropical low-pressure zone by yesterday morning, and was heading west with wind speeds down to between 20kph and 25kph.
Vietnam evacuated more than 27,000 people from storm-affected areas to evade landslides. Authorities had warned 18,000 fishing boats carrying 104,000 fishermen to take shelter in advance of the storm.
Mirinae was rated as a typhoon when it struck the Philippines over the weekend, killing at least 19 people.
Elsewhere in Vietnam, six forest workers were reported drowned and 13 were lucky to survive after their boat was hit by a tornado on Monday in the Gulf of Tonkin. The workers were on their way to plant trees on an island off the northern province of Quang Ninh.
Authorities said losses in Vietnam were low because residents were still cautious after the experience of Typhoon Ketsana in September.
Ketsana killed at least 246 people in the Philippines and 172 in Vietnam, and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in each country.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS