A typhoon slammed into eastern China yesterday, the country’s third in a week, killing at least two people and causing more than US$1 billion in damage, state media said.
Typhoon Haikui made landfall early yesterday morning in Zhejiang Province south of Shanghai, after authorities moved nearly 2 million people to safety, Xinhua news agency reported.
Shanghai media reported that glass falling from a building killed a 57-year-old woman and the collapse of a small chemical factory led to the death of a young boy sheltering inside with his family.
The Zhejiang and Shanghai governments had yet to officially report any deaths or injuries.
The typhoon quickly weakened after landing south of Ningbo City, the China Meteorological Administration said, but warned that Haikui was still packing winds of 119kph.
The storm had cut off electricity to nearly 400,000 households in Zhejiang, Xinhua said.
The typhoon flooded crops and caused at least 6.8 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) in direct economic damage in Zhejiang, the provincial government estimated.
Haikui did not make a direct hit on Shanghai, but the city raised its most severe typhoon signal shortly before midday yesterday and urged people to stay home.
The typhoon knocked down trees, halted hundreds of flights at the city’s two airports and suspended some long-distance train services. Shanghai officials moved 374,000 people to emergency shelters, amid fears the storm could be the worst since 2005, when Typhoon Matsa killed seven people.
By late afternoon, the typhoon had passed Zhejiang’s provincial capital, Hangzhou, and was forecast to move into Anhui Province, bringing rains of up to 400mm in some areas.
In the Philippines, heavy rains continued to pound Metro Manila, prompting a new danger alert as emergency workers rushed food, water and clothes to almost 1 million people through streets turned into rivers after 11 straight days of monsoon downpour.
About 60 percent of Metro Manila, a metropolis of about 12 million people, remained inundated, said Benito Ramos, head of the national disaster agency.
Danger to the population was compounded by an early evening one-hour downpour yesterday of 54.7mm, just shy of a record one-hour soaking of 56.58 mm in September 2009 that inundated the capital, killing more than 700 people and causing US$1 billion worth of property damage.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it has lodged a protest with Pretoria after the name of the Taipei Liaison Office in South Africa was changed to the “Taipei Commercial Office” on the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation’s (DIRCO) Web site. In October last year, the South African government asked Taiwan to relocate the Taipei Liaison Office, the nation’s de facto embassy, out of Pretoria. It later agreed to continue negotiating through official channels, but in January asked that the office be relocated by the end of this month. As of the middle of last month, DIRCO’s Web
RSS