Super Typhoon Yagi slams southern China, shutting schools and canceling flights

Super Typhoon Yagi slams southern China, shutting schools and canceling flights
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A ship passes by as storm clouds gather over Victoria harbor in Hong Kong on September 5, 2024, as super typhoon Yagi tracked across the South China Sea towards the southern China coast. (AFP)
Super Typhoon Yagi slams southern China, shutting schools and canceling flights
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Storm clouds gather over buildings in Hong Kong on September 5, 2024, as super typhoon Yagi tracked across the South China Sea towards the southern China coast. (AFP)
Super Typhoon Yagi slams southern China, shutting schools and canceling flights
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Tourists walk on the promenade under stormy skies over Victoria harbour in Hong Kong on September 5, 2024, as super typhoon Yagi tracked across the South China Sea towards the southern China coast. (AFP)
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Updated 06 September 2024
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Super Typhoon Yagi slams southern China, shutting schools and canceling flights

Super Typhoon Yagi slams southern China, shutting schools and canceling flights
  • Winds and rain were accompanied by powerful thunder and lightning across the region overnight and on Friday morning
  • Packing maximum sustained winds of 245 kph, Yagi is the world’s second-most powerful tropical cyclone in 2024 so far
  • Vietnam’s four airports in the country’s north, including Hanoi’s Noi Bai International, would be closed on Saturday due to the storm

HONG KONG: Powerful gales and heavy rain from Super Typhoon Yagi drenched southern China on Friday, with schools shut for a second day and flights canceled as one of the strongest storms to hit Asia this year headed for landfall along Hainan’s tropical coast.
Packing maximum sustained winds of 245 km per hour (152 mph) near its eye, Yagi registers as the world’s second-most powerful tropical cyclone in 2024 so far, after the Category 5 Atlantic hurricane Beryl.
More than doubling in strength since devastating northern Philippines earlier this week, Yagi is expected to make landfall along China’s coast from Wenchang on the island of Hainan, to Leizhou, in Guangdong province from Friday afternoon.
Winds and rain were accompanied by powerful thunder and lightning across the region overnight and on Friday morning.
Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority said four airports in the country’s north, including Hanoi’s Noi Bai International, would be closed on Saturday due to the storm.

Transport links across southern China were mostly shuttered on Friday with many flights canceled in Hainan, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. The world’s longest sea crossing, the main bridge linking Hong Kong with Macau and Zhuhai in Guangdong, was also closed.
In the financial hub of Hong Kong, the stock exchange was shuttered while schools remained closed on Friday.
The typhoon 8 signal, the third highest, would be lowered by 12.40pm, Hong Kong’s observatory said, with winds over the city expected to weaken gradually as Yagi moves away, allowing businesses to begin to reopening.
Intense rainbands associated with Yagi will still bring heavy squally showers to the territory, it said, warning residents to stay away from the shoreline.
China’s government sent task forces to Guangdong and Hainan to guide flood and typhoon prevention, official news agency Xinhua said.
In Hainan’s capital Haikou, streets were deserted as people stayed indoors, photographs on social media showed
Super Typhoon Yagi’s projected landfall in Hainan is rare, as most typhoons landing on the duty-free island are classified as weak. From 1949 to 2023, 106 typhoons landed in Hainan but only nine were classified as super typhoons.
Typhoons are becoming stronger, fueled by warmer oceans, amid climate change, scientists say. Last week, Typhoon Shanshan slammed into southwestern Japan, the strongest storm to hit the country in decades.
Yagi, which strengthened into a super typhoon on Wednesday night, is the Japanese word for goat and for the constellation of Capricornus, a mythical creature that is half goat, half fish. (Reporting by Farah Master and the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)


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)
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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.

 


UK’s Princess Catherine visits women’s prison

Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, visits a mother and baby unit at HMP Styal, a prison and young offender institution.
Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, visits a mother and baby unit at HMP Styal, a prison and young offender institution.
Updated 5 min 24 sec ago
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UK’s Princess Catherine visits women’s prison

Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, visits a mother and baby unit at HMP Styal, a prison and young offender institution.
  • Catherine visited HMP Styal in northwest England to meet offenders who had used the services of a charity-run mother and baby unit

LONDON: Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales, on Tuesday visited a women’s prison to meet ex-offenders and those still serving, as she continues her return to public duties having completed her cancer treatment.
Catherine visited HMP Styal in northwest England to meet offenders who had used the services of a charity-run mother and baby unit.
“It is great that you are looking at the mother’s wellbeing as well. The best thing for baby is to have a mother whose emotional needs and wellbeing is met as well,” she told staff at the unit.
Former inmate Sam told the princess that parental support was better in jail than outside.
“I only left six weeks ago and I am just getting rolling with everything again. I have said so many times that I just wish I could take this (prison) nursery and put it in my hometown,” she said.
Catherine, 43, who is mother to Prince George 11, Princess Charlotte, nine, and six-year-old Prince Louis, has only recently begun a gradual return to royal duties after a shock cancer diagnosis last year.
It was the princess’s fifth public engagement in just over two weeks.


Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky

Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky
Updated 17 min 51 sec ago
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Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky

Ukraine prepared to offer territory swap with Russia: Zelensky
LONDON: Ukraine will offer to swap territory with Russia in any potential peace negotiations, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published Tuesday, adding that Europe alone would not be able to shoulder Kyiv’s war effort.
Zelensky will meet US Vice President JD Vance on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, the Ukrainian leader’s spokesman told AFP, as Washington pushes for an end to the nearly three-year war with Russia.
Vance has been a frequent critic of US support that has been vital to Ukraine’s war effort.
“There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no,” Zelensky told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on the UK newspaper’s website on Tuesday.
“Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.
Trump is keen for both sides to reach a deal, the terms of which are a source of concern in Ukraine.
Zelensky told the Guardian he would offer Russian President Vladimir Putin territory that Ukraine seized in Russia’s Kursk region six months ago.
“We will swap one territory for another,” he said, adding that he did not know which territories he would ask for in return.
“I don’t know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he said.
Russia says it has annexed five regions of Ukraine — Crimea in 2014 and then Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia in 2022 — though it does not have full control over them.


Trump confirmed Monday that he would soon dispatch his special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, to Ukraine.
The US president is pressing for a swift end to the conflict, while Zelensky is calling for tough security guarantees from Washington as part of any deal.
Kyiv fears that any settlement that does not include hard military commitments, such as NATO membership or the deployment of peacekeeping troops, will allow the Kremlin time to regroup and rearm for a fresh attack.
Zelensky has said he would offer US companies lucrative reconstruction contracts in a bid to win over Trump.
“Those who are helping us to save Ukraine will renovate it, with their businesses together with Ukrainian businesses. All these things we are ready to speak about in detail,” he told the Guardian.
Ukraine has some of the biggest mineral reserves in Europe and it is “not in the interests of the United States” for those to fall into Russian hands, he said.
“Valuable natural resources where we can offer our partners possibilities that didn’t exist before to invest in them. For us it will create jobs, for American companies it will create profits,” he added.
The Munich meeting comes with Russia advancing across Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where over the past year it has captured several settlements, most completely flattened by months of Russian bombardments.

Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce

Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce
Updated 21 min 32 sec ago
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Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce

Trump prepares executive order to continue downsizing federal workforce
  • Hundreds of people gathered for a rally Tuesday across the street from the US Capitol

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday that would continue downsizing the federal workforce, including strict limits on hiring.
The Associated Press reviewed a White House fact sheet on the order, which is intended to advance Elon Musk ‘s work slashing spending with his Department of Government Efficiency.
It said that “agencies will undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components (or agencies themselves) may be eliminated or combined because their functions aren’t required by law.”
It also said that agencies should “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart from federal service.” There are plans for exceptions when it comes to immigration, law enforcement and public safety.
Trump and Musk are pushing federal workers to resign in return for financial incentives, although their plan is currently on hold while a judge reviews its legality. The deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, would allow employees to quit and still get paid until Sept. 30. Administration officials said more than 65,000 workers have taken the offer.
Hundreds of people gathered for a rally Tuesday across the street from the US Capitol in support of federal workers.
Janet Connelly, a graphic designer with the Department of Energy, said she’s fed up with emails from the Office of Personnel Management encouraging people to take the deferred resignation program.
She tried to use her spam settings to filter out the emails but to no avail. Connelly said she has no plans to take the offer.
“From the get-go, I didn’t trust it,” she said.
Connelly said she thinks of her work as trying to do an important service for the American public.
“It’s too easy to vilify us,” she said.
Others have said fear and uncertainty have swept through the federal workforce.
“They’re worried about their jobs. They’re worried about their families. They’re also worried about their work and the communities they serve,” said Helen Bottcher, a former Environmental Protection Agency employee and current union leader in Seattle.
Bottcher participated in a press conference hosted by Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
Murray said workers “deserve better than to be threatened, intimidated and pushed out the door by Elon Musk and Donald Trump.” She also said that “we actually need these people to stay in their jobs or things are going to start breaking.”


Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine

Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine
Updated 11 February 2025
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Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine

Ebola cases in Uganda rise to nine, while 265 others are being monitored under quarantine

KAMPALA: Ebola cases in Uganda have risen to nine, while 265 other people were being monitored under quarantine, health authorities said Tuesday.

The nine include the first victim, a male nurse who died the day before the outbreak was declared on Jan. 30. That man remains the only fatality.

Eight patients “are receiving medical care and are in stable condition,” a Health Ministry statement said. 

Seven of them were admitted to the main public hospital in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, in addition to one being treated in the eastern district of Mbale, the ministry said, adding that “the situation is under control” amid heightened surveillance.

The nurse who died had first sought treatment in Kampala and later traveled to Mbale, where he was admitted to a public hospital. 

Health authorities said that the man also sought the services of a traditional healer. His relatives are among those being treated for Ebola.

Kampala has a highly mobile population of about 4 million, and officials are still investigating the source of the outbreak. Tracing contacts is key to stemming the spread of Ebola, which manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever.

There are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola that is infecting people in Uganda. But authorities have launched a clinical study to further test the safety and efficacy of a trial vaccine as part of measures to stop the spread of the current outbreak.

The last outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, which began in September 2022, killed at least 55 people by the time it was declared over four months later.

Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

Scientists suspect that the first person infected in an Ebola outbreak acquires the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat. 

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.