A severe cyclone has killed more than 500 people in Bangladesh and left thousands injured or missing, triggering an international relief effort yesterday to help the army-backed interim government cope with the disaster.
Local officials and Red Crescent workers said 508 deaths have been confirmed. Hundreds more were injured or missing after Cyclone Sidr struck overnight packing winds of 250kph.
The Category 4 cyclone brought with it a 5m high tidal surge that devastated the coastal towns of Patuakhali, Barguna and Jhalakathi and forced 3.2 million people to evacuate, officials and aid agencies said.
PHOTO: AP
Fakhruddin Ahmed, chief of Bangladesh's army-backed interim government, flew to some devastated districts on the coasts of the Bay of Bengal yesterday to see the extent of damage to lives and property, officials said.
The cyclone, which followed devastating floods over the summer that killed more than 1,000 people, posed a new challenge to the interim administration, mainly tasked to hold a free and fair election before the end of next year.
Communication links to the devastated area have been cut off. A government official in Dhaka said there was no immediate information about casualties from the region.
By early yesterday the storm had weakened to a tropical storm and had moved well inland northeast of Dhaka.
The navy has launched a search and rescue operation while helicopters began ferrying relief supplies to offshore islands, the defense ministry said.
Most of the dead were killed by falling debris, said Nahid Sultana, an official at a cyclone control room in Dhaka.
However, three people were electrocuted in the capital.
Agriculture officials said that rice and other crops in the cyclone-battered areas were badly damaged and caused added suffering to the villagers who had earlier lost two crops in the floods.
"Life shall never be easy," said Mohammad Salam, a farmer in Khulna. "We are destined to suffer."
The cyclone also flattened thousands of flimsy huts, uprooted trees, electricity and telephone poles and destroyed fish farms in 15 coastal districts, local government officials and witnesses said.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS