At least four people were killed after Super Typhoon Haima smashed into the northern Philippines with ferocious wind and rain, flooding towns and forcing thousands to flee, although it slightly weakened yesterday after slamming into a mountain range on its way to the South China Sea, officials said.
Haima’s blinding wind and rain had rekindled fears and memories from the catastrophe wrought by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, but there were no immediate reports of any major damage amid spotty communications and power outages in several provinces.
Thousands of villagers were moved to emergency shelters as the typhoon approached.
Photo: EPA
Two construction workers died when a landslide buried their shanty in La Trinidad town in the mountain province of Benguet, officials said, while two villagers drowned in floodwaters in Ifugao province, near Benguet.
The typhoon slammed into the shore in Cagayan province late on Wednesday and lashed the mountainous province of Apayao at dawn with slightly weaker sustained winds of 205kph and gusts of 285kph. It was blowing northwestward at 25kph toward the tobacco-growing Ilocos Norte, the last province before it exits toward the South China Sea, forecasters said.
In Narvacan town in northern Ilocos Sur province, ricefields resembled a brown lake under waist-high floodwaters. Despite the still-strong wind and rain, government workers have started clearing roads blocked with toppled trees and all kinds of debris.
India yesterday summoned Canada’s high commissioner in India to “convey strong concern” over Sikh protesters in Canada and how they were allowed to breach the security of India’s diplomatic mission and consulates. Canadian media reported that hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Indian consulate in Vancouver on Saturday over demands for an independent Sikh state, a simmering issue for decades that was triggered again in the past few weeks. Canada has the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab in India. “It is expected that the Canadian government will take all steps which are required to ensure the
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
The US Department of Justice on Friday unveiled spying charges against a Russian who, under a Brazilian alias, studied at a Washington university and then tried to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. The indictment of Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov said it would try to contest his extradition to Russia from Brazil, where he is jailed on identity fraud charges. Cherkasov, 39, was detained at the beginning of April last year by Dutch authorities for using fake identity papers. He arrived in the country as Viktor Muller Ferreira, a Brazilian, to take a position at the ICC as a junior analyst. The
The US military must be ready for possible confrontation with China, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Thursday, pushing the US Congress to approve the Pentagon’s proposed US$842 billion budget, which would modernize the force in Asia and around the world. “This is a strategy-driven budget — and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Austin told the US House of Representations Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Pointing to increases in new technology, such as hypersonics, Austin said the budget proposes to spend more than US$9 billion, a 40 percent increase over last
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