Authorities prepared to evacuate tens of thousands of Beijing residents as tropical storm Matsa churned toward the capital after killing 13 people and causing billions of yuan (hundreds of millions of dollars) in losses in eastern China.
The city's Municipal Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters was preparing to evacuate as many as 40,000 people in the mountains north of Beijing where there was a high risk of landslides and mudflows, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported yesterday.
Thirteen people have been killed by the storm since it hit China and two people were missing, the paper said, citing China's Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Work on Beijing's estimated 6,000 construction sites was halted to prevent injuries if support structures were to collapse, the paper said.
Roofs were also being reinforced in the city's Xuanwu district, where many traditional single-story homes are packed into alleyways, it said.
It is extremely rare for Beijing to be hit by a major tropical storm. Only four typhoons have swept through the city since 1949, killing a total of 86 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Matsa slammed into the eastern province of Zhejiang on Saturday, pummeling the region with winds up to 160km per hour, flooding farmland and ruining more than 13,000 buildings.
In Zhejiang Province alone, two people were killed and damages amounted to an estimated 6.56 billion yuan (US$809 million), Xinhua said, citing the provincial Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.
More than 1.2 million people were moved out of low-lying and coastal areas ahead of the storm.
In Shanghai, three people died of electrocution due to flooding and a construction worker died when his dormitory was blown down, local reports said. One person died in Anhui, further to the north.
The storm toppled trees, ripped away billboards and street signs and flooded streets and a subway tunnel in Shanghai, whose 20 million residents were warned to stay home to avoid injury.
The city's two airports were closed for most of two days, with fewer than 20 flights arriving or departing within a 40-hour period, Xinhua reported. The airports usually handle about 1,000 flights daily.
Matsa, named after a Laotian fish, dumped torrential rains on Taiwan before moving northwest into China.
At least 811 people have been reported killed by storms since China's summer rainy season began on June 1.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS