Three people were missing in Vietnam as tropical storm Conson hit the country, officials said yesterday, after leaving 68 dead in the Philippines when it roared in as a typhoon.
A woman went missing in the north of Vietnam and two fishermen disappeared in waters off the impoverished central provinces, an official in Hanoi from the national committee to fight storms and flooding told reporters.
Conson swept onto the shores of Vietnam late on Saturday and was downgraded to a tropical depression, the official said.
“It continues to cause rainfall in parts of northern and central regions. We have not yet been able to calculate the amount of damage,” he said, but added the storm “has destroyed basic infrastructure, especially water works.”
Thousands of Vietnamese soldiers have been mobilized to help people living in areas affected by Conson and about 30,000 people were evacuated before the storm blew in.
Conson slammed into the Philippines on Tuesday last week, directly hitting the capital Manila as it cut westward into the South China Sea with a ferocity that caught weather forecasters by surprise.
Rescuers retrieved three more bodies from the sea yesterday, raising the death toll to 68 in the Philippines, but more bad weather was hampering search operations.
“Three more bodies were recovered from a sunken fishing vessel,” Benito Ramos, chief of the Office of Civil Defense in Manila, said on DZBB radio. “The death toll is now 68.”
He said rescuers, including volunteers and troops, continued to scour coastal areas in the country’s southeastern seaboard yesterday, where the majority of the 84 still missing were reported.
However, he said fresh rains brought on by a new weather disturbance east of the main island of Luzon were hampering search and rescue operations.
State weather forecasters said the rains were unlikely to develop into a full-blown storm.
The Philippines is in the so-called typhoon belt of the Pacific. Up to 20 typhoons sweep through the country each year, killing hundreds of people.
After slamming into the Philippines, Typhoon Conson, the first of the season, brushed past the southern Chinese island of Hainan and barreled its way into Vietnam on Saturday.
It killed at least two people, tore down trees and ripped up electricity pylons when it hit Hainan on Friday evening, local officials said. Authorities on the popular tourist island evacuated about 40,000 people from the most vulnerable areas before the storm headed inland.
Two men, a security guard and a motorcyclist, died after being struck by advertising hoardings unhinged by strong winds, an official from the local typhoon warning center said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion