Typhoon Rai leaves 31 dead, many homes roofless in Philippines
The Hindu
A Governor said her island has been “leveled to the ground"
A powerful typhoon left at least 31 people dead, knocked down power and communications in entire provinces and wrought widespread destruction mostly in the central Philippines, officials said Saturday. A Governor said her island has been “leveled to the ground."
blew away on Friday night into the South China Sea after rampaging through southern and central island provinces, where more than 3,00,000 people in its path were evacuated to safety in advance in a pre-emptive move officials say may have saved a lot of lives.
At its strongest, Rai packed sustained winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 270 kph (168 mph), one of the most powerful in recent years to hit the disaster-prone Southeast Asian archipelago, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. The typhoon slammed into the country’s southeastern coast on Thursday but the extent of casualties and destruction remained unclear two days after with entire provinces still without power and cellphone connection.
The 29th edition of the Conference of Parties (COP29), held at Baku in Azerbaijan, is arguably the most important of the United Nations’ climate conferences. It was supposed to conclude on November 22, after nearly 11 days of negotiations and the whole purpose was for the world to take a collective step forward in addressing rising carbon emissions.