Schools reopened yesterday in badly damaged central Philippine towns for the first time since one of the world’s strongest storms ever to hit land killed thousands two months ago.
Crowding into makeshift classrooms built from tarpaulins and plywood, the children — many of them still traumatized — sat quietly as teachers tried to engage them in friendly banter.
Mothers refused to leave the tents despite appeals from teachers to let the children slowly resume their daily routine, a reporter said.
“Only about 50 percent of our school’s nearly 1,000 pupils are back,” principal Maria Evelyn Encina said in the seaside village of San Roque near the central city of Tacloban, where giant tsunami-like waves triggered by Typhoon Haiyan wiped out entire neighborhoods.
She said at least nine students had been among the dead, although the fate of many others and their families remained unknown.
“They could be in evacuation centers or taken in by their relatives in the mass evacuation that followed,” Encina said. “But we can’t know for sure. We just want to let them know wherever they are that we are here waiting for them.”
What passes for a community learning center now are desks under a white tent donated by relief organizations.
It sits about 50m from the sea, in an area that the government has officially dubbed a “permanent danger zone,” the principal said.
“We need a more permanent structure in the longer term, but in the meantime, this will suffice,” Encina said.
Haiyan cut a swathe of destruction when it struck on Nov. 8 last year, bringing powerful winds that topped 315kph. It also triggered giant storm surges which swamped large areas, leaving nearly 8,000 dead or missing and nearly 30,000 others injured.
It also displaced 4 million people, 1.7 million of them children, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The agency along with other groups is leading a campaign to help about 550,000 children, teachers and daycare workers return to schools.
“UNICEF’s objective is to ensure that children affected by typhoon Yolanda [Haiyan’s local name] return to quality learning as soon as possible,” the group’s officer in charge in the Philippines, Angela Kearney, said.
By re-establishing a daily routine, UNICEF says it hopes to transform schools into “safe spaces” that provide some sense of normalcy.
It said that with children back in school, parents would also have more time to rebuild their ruined homes.
However, with memories of the surging, towering waves still fresh, mother of six Milet Labrado, 42, was not taking any chances.
“The school is just too near the sea, and we survived by clinging to each other,” she said, while anxiously watching her youngest, a six-year-old boy, mingle with his classmates.
The US on Monday confirmed that it would resume sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, as concerns over human rights in the kingdom’s Yemen war give way to US hopes for it to play a role in resolving the conflict in Gaza. More than three years after imposing limits on human rights grounds over Saudi Arabian strikes in Yemen, the US Department of State said that it would return to weapons sales “in regular order, with appropriate congressional notification and consultation.” “Saudi Arabia has remained a close strategic partner of the United States, and we look forward to enhancing that partnership,”
Women’s accessories sold by some of the world’s most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said yesterday. Chinese giants including Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in popularity around the world in the past few years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at low prices. The explosive growth has led to increased scrutiny of their business practices and safety standards, including in the EU and South Korea, where Seoul officials have been conducting weekly inspections of items sold by online platforms. In the most recent inspection, 144 products from
Russia yesterday ordered more evacuations in a region bordering Ukraine as it battled to contain an unprecedented push onto its territory by Kyiv’s forces. Ukraine last week sent troops into Russia’s border region of Kursk, in the largest cross-border operation by Kyiv since Moscow launched its offensive more than two years ago. The assault, which has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing, marked the most significant attack by a foreign army on Russian territory since World War II. A top Ukrainian official said that the operation was aimed at stretching Moscow troops and destabilizing the nation after months of slow Russian advances
DEMOCRACY: The Brazilian president’s shifting attitude toward leftist authoritarians is because he does not want to be seen as supporting dictatorships, analysts said Brazil and Nicaragua have expelled each other’s ambassadors in a tit-for-tat diplomatic row, as Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva appears to recalibrate his approach to authoritarian leftist rulers who were once seen as allies. The dual expulsions this week came amid growing tensions between Lula and another supposedly progressive leader, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose claim of re-election the Brazilian president has yet to acknowledge. Lula and his counterparts in Colombia and Mexico have called on Maduro to release voting tallies from all polling stations to support his win. On Thursday, Brazil announced the expulsion of the Nicaraguan ambassador as
RSS