Millions evacuated as typhoon slams Japan’s Kyushu, halting flights and factories

Millions evacuated as typhoon slams Japan’s Kyushu, halting flights and factories
1 / 3
A police car drives amid destruction from Typhoon Shanshan in Miyazaki city, Japan, on August 29, 2024. (TomokichiviaX/via REUTERS)
Millions evacuated as typhoon slams Japan’s Kyushu, halting flights and factories
2 / 3
High waves are observed along the shore as Typhoon Shanshan approaches southwestern Japan in Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture, on August 28, 2024. (Kyodo/via REUTERS)
Millions evacuated as typhoon slams Japan’s Kyushu, halting flights and factories
3 / 3
This handout photo taken and released by Gamagori City Hall on August 28, 2024 shows rescue workers outside a house that was hit by a landslide in Gamagori, Aichi prefecture. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 29 August 2024
Follow

Millions evacuated as typhoon slams Japan’s Kyushu, halting flights and factories

Millions evacuated as typhoon slams Japan’s Kyushu, halting flights and factories
  • Authorities warned that Shanshan, with gusts of up to 198 kph, could be one of the strongest ever typhoon to hit the region
  • The typhoon made landfall near Satsumasendai city located in the country’s southwestern island of Kyushu on Thursday morning

TOKYO: Millions of people were told to evacuate from their homes as Typhoon Shanshan lashed southwest Japan with strong winds and heavy rain on Thursday, knocking out power, snarling air traffic and forcing major factories to close.
At least three people have been killed so far and scores injured in what authorities have warned could be one of the strongest ever storms to hit the region.
Major automaker Toyota suspended operations in all of its domestic plants due to the storm, while Nissan, Honda and chipmakers Renesas and Tokyo Electron also temporarily halted production at some factories.
 

Funeral parlour employee Tomoki Maeda was in a hearse when the typhoon struck in Miyazaki city in southern Kyushu, shattering windows and tearing down walls of some buildings.
“I’ve never experienced such a strong wind or tornado in my 31 years of life,” Maeda told Reuters.
The typhoon, with gusts of up to 50 meters per second (180 km per hour/112 mph), was near Unzen city in Nagasaki Prefecture at 1:45 p.m. (0445 GMT), moving north at about 15 km per hour, according to the weather agency.
Around 230,000 households in seven prefectures were without power in the afternoon, according to Kyushu Electric Power Co. The utility earlier said there as no impact at its Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Satsumasendai city, where the storm made landfall earlier on Thursday.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a news conference that three people had died and one was missing in incidents related to the typhoon, while the disaster management agency said 45 had suffered injuries.
After hovering over Kyushu for the next few days, the storm is expected to approach the central and eastern regions, including the capital Tokyo, around the weekend, the weather agency said.
More than 5.2 million people have been issued evacuation notices across the country, authorities said.
Madoka Kubo, who runs a hotel in historic city of Hitoyoshi in Kumamoto prefecture, told Reuters that all reservations had been canceled and her hotel was now being used to house elderly people who had been evacuated from nearby areas.
Airlines, including ANA Holdings and Japan Airlines , have already announced cancelations of nearly 800 flights. Train services have been suspended in many areas of Kyushu while hundreds of bus and ferry services have also been halted, according to the transport ministry.
Typhoon Shanshan is the latest harsh weather system to hit Japan, following Typhoon Ampil, which also led to blackouts and evacuations, earlier this month.


WHO facing ‘new realities’ as US withdrawal looms

WHO facing ‘new realities’ as US withdrawal looms
Updated 12 February 2025
Follow

WHO facing ‘new realities’ as US withdrawal looms

WHO facing ‘new realities’ as US withdrawal looms
  • “We regret the announcement by the United States of its intention to withdraw, and it was also sad to see them participating less this week,” he said

GENEVA: The World Health Organization on Tuesday wrapped up its executive board meeting, held against the backdrop of the United States — by far its largest donor — heading for the exit.
The agenda-setting eight-day gathering at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters wrestled with the impact of US President Donald Trump’s January 20 decision to start the one-year process of withdrawing from the UN health agency.
“We are operating with twin strategic goals: to mobilize resources and to tighten our belts,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his closing remarks.
“We regret the announcement by the United States of its intention to withdraw, and it was also sad to see them participating less this week,” he said.
“I think we all felt their absence. We very much hope they will reconsider and we would welcome the opportunity to engage in constructive dialogue.”
The United States is on the executive board, but made only fleeting contributions throughout the eight-day event.
The board is composed of 34 member states, who nominate a board member who is technically qualified in health.
The board agrees the agenda and resolutions for the decision-making World Health Assembly in May.
“We have had to face new realities, with the announcement of the withdrawal of the US from the WHO,” said Barbados’s health minister Jerome Walcott, the board’s chair, as he closed the meeting.
“Despite the many challenges we faced, we have come together and found agreement on 40 decisions and seven resolutions, which aim to strengthen our work and to enhance good public health.”

If anything, the US move has driven home the need for more secure and reliable funding at WHO, which in recent years has relied heavily on voluntary contributions.
As part of a plan to swell membership fees to cover at least half of the organization’s budget by 2030, the board recommended a 20 percent fee hike.
Boosting membership fees is seen as a way for WHO to reduce its reliance on a handful of major donors and ensure more predictable and flexible finances.
“This is a very strong signal of your support, and it’s a major step toward putting WHO on a more predictable and sustainable financial footing,” Tedros said.
“You said we need to prioritize based on realistic funding. We agree,” he added.
“You said we need to improve efficiency, enhance oversight and reduce unnecessary expenditures. We agree.”
Last week, the board also re-adopted a resolution on responding to the health conditions in the Palestinian territories.
The total planned costs required to implement the decision were given as $648 million, including $275 million for emergency response and $265 million for early recovery and rehabilitation.
Other topics discussed by the board included non-communicable diseases, mental health, skin diseases, environmental health, air pollution, the global health workforce, substandard and falsified medicines, maternal and newborn health, health emergencies, and universal health coverage.
 

 


Why Trump’s proposal on Gaza is ringing alarm bells in the region

Why Trump’s proposal on Gaza is ringing alarm bells in the region
Updated 12 February 2025
Follow

Why Trump’s proposal on Gaza is ringing alarm bells in the region

Why Trump’s proposal on Gaza is ringing alarm bells in the region
  • Egyptian authorities have publicly rejected the idea of displacement of Palestinians on human rights grounds
  • From the earliest days of the Gaza war, Arab governments, particularly Egypt and Jordan, have said Palestinians must not be driven from land where they want to make a future state, which would include the occupied West Bank and Gaza

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has infuriated the Arab world by saying that Palestinians would not have the right of return to the Gaza Strip under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, which has been devastated by an Israeli offensive. From the earliest days of the Gaza war, Arab governments, particularly Egypt and Jordan, have said Palestinians must not be driven from land where they want to make a future state, which would include the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Trump first suggested on January 25 that Egypt and Jordan should take in Palestinians from Gaza, a proposal they strongly oppose. In a shock announcement on February 4, after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump proposed resettling Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians and the US taking control and ownership of the demolished seaside enclave, redeveloping it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
On February 10, he said Palestinians would not have the right of return to Gaza under his plan, contradicting his own officials who had suggested Gazans would only be relocated temporarily. Trump’s plan touches on one of the most sensitive issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the right of Palestinians to return. Trump, known as a tough dealmaker in his earlier career as a property developer in New York, said that he believed he could persuade Jordan and Egypt to take in displaced Palestinians. He also said Palestinians could be resettled in “much better housing.”
Many of Gaza’s buildings have turned into rubble since the war between Hamas and Israel erupted on October 7, 2023.
Trump’s plans are likely to heighten fears among Palestinians in Gaza of being driven out of the coastal strip, and stoke concern in Arab states that have long worried about the destabilising impact of any such exodus.

WHAT IS BEHIND THE CONCERNS?
Palestinians have long been haunted by what they call the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, when 700,000 of them were dispossessed from their homes during the war that surrounded the creation of Israel in 1948.
Many were driven out or fled to neighboring Arab states, including to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, where many of them and their descendants still live in refugee camps. Some went to Gaza. Israel disputes the account that they were forced out.
Today about 5.6 million Palestinian refugees — mainly the descendants of those who fled — currently live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. About half of registered refugees remain stateless, according to the Palestinian foreign ministry, many living in crowded camps.
Trump’s talk of resettling some two million Gazans is a nightmare for Jordan, which has long feared the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, and echoes a vision long propagated by right-wing Israelis of Jordan as an alternative Palestinian home.
The anxiety dates back to what is known as Black September. In 1970 the Jordanian army launched a huge offensive by that name to retake control of territory occupied by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Jordan.
King Hussein, fearing the growing influence of Palestinian factions, cracked down on Palestinian nationalists. His generals ordered tanks into the capital Amman. Over 3,000 Palestinians were estimated killed and some 20,000 fled Jordan.
The latest conflict, currently paused amid a fragile ceasefire agreement, has seen an unprecedented Israeli bombardment and land offensive in Gaza, devastating urban areas.
Most Gazans have been displaced several times in Israel’s offensive, launched after the 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 48,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to Palestinian health officials.

HOW HAVE PALESTINIANS MOVED DURING THIS CONFLICT?
Before Israel launched its offensive in 2023, it told Palestinians in north Gaza to move to what it said were safe areas in the south. As the offensive expanded, Israel told them to head further south toward Rafah, on the border with Egypt.
Later in the war, before launching a campaign in Rafah, it instructed them to move to a new designated humanitarian zone in Al-Mawasi, an area that stretches 12 km (7 miles) along the coast, starting from the western areas of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza to Khan Younis and Rafah in the south.
According to UN estimates, up to 85 percent of the population of Gaza — one of the world’s most densely populated areas — have already been displaced from their homes.

COULD A MAJOR DISPLACEMENT FROM GAZA HAPPEN?
Many Palestinians in Gaza have said they would not leave the enclave even if they could because they fear it might lead to another permanent displacement in a repeat of 1948.
Egyptian authorities have publicly rejected the idea of displacement of Palestinians on human rights grounds.
The most populous Arab country would also be wary of hosting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians potentially including members of Hamas, after years of crackdowns on domestic Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which had close ties to Hamas.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has shown no tolerance for Islamists. He views them as an existential threat to his country and thousands of Islamist militants have been imprisoned.

WHAT HAVE ISRAEL’S GOVERNMENT AND ITS POLITICIANS SAID?
Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz, now serving as defense minister, said on February 16, 2024, that Israel had no plans to deport Palestinians from Gaza. Israel would coordinate with Egypt on Palestinian refugees and find a way to not harm Egypt’s interests, Katz added.
However, comments by some in the Israeli government have stoked Palestinian and Arab fears of a new Nakba. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has repeatedly called for a policy of “encouraging the migration” of Palestinians from Gaza and for Israel to impose military rule in the territory.

 


Musk, with Trump at White House, says US will go ‘bankrupt’ without cuts

Musk, with Trump at White House, says US will go ‘bankrupt’ without cuts
Updated 12 February 2025
Follow

Musk, with Trump at White House, says US will go ‘bankrupt’ without cuts

Musk, with Trump at White House, says US will go ‘bankrupt’ without cuts
  • Trump administration finds itself on a collision course with the US courts, as federal judges questioned the legality of White House cost-cutting measures
  • Musk, who also heads SpaceX — which has multiple US government contracts — and Tesla, said he is seeking to be as transparent as possible

WASHINGTON: Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has been tapped by President Donald Trump to lead federal cost-cutting efforts, said Tuesday that the United States would go “bankrupt” without budget cuts.
Musk leads the efforts under the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and was speaking at the White House with Trump, who has in recent weeks unleashed a flurry of orders aimed at slashing federal spending.
In particular, Musk took aim at the country’s budget deficit, which topped $1.8 trillion in the last fiscal year.
He said that reducing federal expenses was not optional.
The remarks, however, came as the Trump administration finds itself on a collision course with the US courts, as federal judges questioned the legality of White House cost-cutting measures.
Trump’s sweeping plans, which have effectively shuttered some federal agencies and sent staff home, have sparked legal battles across the country.
Multiple lawsuits seek to halt what opponents characterize as an illegal power grab.
Asked about his conflicts of interest on Tuesday, Musk, who also heads SpaceX — which has multiple US government contracts — and Tesla, said he is seeking to be as transparent as possible.
The DOGE reform team has triggered alarm among critics as well by gaining access through the US Treasury to the personal and financial data of millions in the United States.


Turkish writer, son accused of fleeing after crash can be extradited, US judge rules

Turkish writer, son accused of fleeing after crash can be extradited, US judge rules
Updated 12 February 2025
Follow

Turkish writer, son accused of fleeing after crash can be extradited, US judge rules

Turkish writer, son accused of fleeing after crash can be extradited, US judge rules

BOSTON: A US judge on Tuesday ruled that a Turkish author and her son can be extradited to Turkiye to face charges that he caused a reckless, fatal car crash in Istanbul and then fled the country with the help of his mother.
US Magistrate Judge Donald Cabell in Boston rejected arguments that Turkish novelist and poet Eylem Tok and her 17-year-old son, Timur Cihantimur, had not been charged with extraditable offenses, clearing the way for the US State Department to consider turning them over.
Further litigation is likely and could further delay their extradition, which Turkiye has been pursuing since their arrest in June as the mother and son were about to tour a private school in Boston.
David Russcol, Tok’s lawyer, said her attorneys “are evaluating Ms. Tok’s options for further judicial review of the serious legal issues involved.” Her son’s lawyer had no immediate comment.
According to prosecutors, the teenager was driving a Porsche on the night of March 1 when, while speeding around a corner, he crashed into a group of people on all-terrain vehicles. One person, Oguz Murat Aci, died and four others were injured.
Prosecutors said the teenager immediately fled the scene after saying something like “my life is over.” He was picked up by the family’s driver, and within hours Tok had bought one-way plane tickets for them to fly to Cairo, Egypt. They then continued on to the United States.
Their lawyers argued the teenager could not be extradited for the crime of causing reckless killing and injury because the US-Turkiye extradition treaty only covered individuals who are formally charged, while he was only facing an arrest warrant.
They also argued that Tok’s alleged offenses of concealing a cellphone that authorities viewed as evidence and protecting an offender by helping her son flee were not extraditable under that treaty.
But Cabell rejected those arguments. With regard to Tok’s son, he said it was clear that the term “charged” in the treaty did not mean a formal charge. “Rather, construed in the generic and more elastic sense, it is synonymous with accused,” he said.


16 Pakistanis killed in shipwreck off Libya: Islamabad

A migrant looks at the sea from the deck of the boat of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms on July 1, 2018. (AFP)
A migrant looks at the sea from the deck of the boat of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms on July 1, 2018. (AFP)
Updated 11 February 2025
Follow

16 Pakistanis killed in shipwreck off Libya: Islamabad

A migrant looks at the sea from the deck of the boat of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms on July 1, 2018. (AFP)
  • “So far 16 dead bodies have been recovered and their Pakistani nationalities established on the basis of their passports,” a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement

ISLAMABAD: Emergency workers have recovered the bodies of 16 Pakistanis after a boat capsized off the coast of Libya, with 10 others believed to be missing, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said Tuesday.
Thirty-seven people survived the accident, according to authorities.
The ministry first reported the accident on Monday. It said 63 Pakistanis had been onboard the vessel and 10 are still missing, according to unconfirmed reports.
“So far 16 dead bodies have been recovered and their Pakistani nationalities established on the basis of their passports,” a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“There are 37 survivors including 1 in hospital and 33 in police custody.”
A team from Pakistan’s embassy in Tripoli visited the coastal city of Zawiya to meet with local officials and those from Zawiya hospital.
“The Embassy in Tripoli is in the process of gathering further information and maintaining contact with the local authorities,” the statement added.
Each year thousands of Pakistanis pay large sums to traffickers to launch risky and illegal journeys to Europe, where they hope to find work and send funds to support families back home.
Pakistanis are frequently among those drowned on crammed boats which sink on the Mediterranean Sea separating North Africa from Europe — the world’s deadliest migrant route.
An official from the Federal Investigation Agency, speaking anonymously to AFP in 2023, estimated Pakistanis attempt 40,000 illegal trips every year.
In June that year the Mediterranean witnessed one of its worst migrant shipwrecks when a rusty and overloaded trawler sank overnight. It was carrying more than 750 people — up to 350 of them Pakistanis according to Islamabad — but only 82 bodies were ever recovered.