The death toll from Typhoon Rammasun in the Philippines rose to 94 — with six missing — as another storm brought rains to the ravaged areas, authorities said yesterday.
The reports of fatalities came in as repairmen struggled to restore electricity to hundreds of thousands of households who have been without power since the storm hit last week.
“The majority of the fatalities are from falling debris and trees while many of the missing are from boats that went out to sea,” despite the storm, National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council spokeswoman Mina Marasigan said.
Photo: Reuters
The typhoon has since blown to southern China, but a new storm, named Matmo, was packing gusts of 150kph and worsening rainfall in places affected by Rammasun, she said.
Manila Electric Co, the country’s largest power distributor, said more than 400,000 homes in the Manila area were still experiencing outages since the first typhoon of the year hit on Wednesday.
There were no immediate reports of damage from Typhoon Matmo, which is expected to pass over the northern end of the main Philippine island of Luzon tomorrow, the government weather station said.
CHINA
Meanwhile, Rammasun, the strongest typhoon to hit southern China in four decades has killed 18 people, the government said yesterday.
The typhoon killed nine people and left five missing after hitting Hainan Island on Friday, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said in a statement.
Nine others died later in the Guangxi region as the storm plowed into China on its way north to Vietnam.
The typhoon is the strongest to hit southern China in 41 years, according to the China Meteorological Administration.
Wind speeds reached 216kph, with the storm knocking down power lines and damaging buildings, Xinhua said.
Authorities in southern China ordered the highest level of alert — red — on Saturday and suspended hundreds of buses, trains and flights across the region.
Television pictures yesterday showed waterlogged roads and heavy rain in Yunnan Province. Online pictures showed uprooted trees, destroyed crops and deserted, rain-soaked streets across much of southern China.
The storm has since been downgraded “as it is abating and affecting fewer Chinese localities,” Xinhua said.
All the airports on Hainan had reopened yesterday, as ferry, rail and bus services resumed, it said.
Meanwhile, China’s National Meteorological Centre was warning that downpours triggered by the typhoon were expected in northern parts of China in the coming days.
Additional reporting by AP
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS