Vietnam braces for Typhoon Cimaron, plans mass evacuations

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam braced for Typhoon Cimaron and planned mass evacuations after the storm slammed the northern Philippines, leaving at least 15 people dead in landslides and flooding, state media reported Tuesday.
Originally a super typhoon, Cimaron quickly lost strength after slamming ashore in the northeastern Philippine province of Isabela late Sunday and cutting across Luzon island Monday with winds of 75 mph and gusts of up to 130 mph.

Philippine forecasters said that it could intensify over the South China Sea before making landfall along Vietnam's central coast by Saturday morning.

At least 15 people drowned or were killed by falling trees and another 15 were injured in the northern Philippines, local officials reported.

Tuesday's Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan (People) quoted Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung as telling disaster officials that evacuation of people from high-risk areas must be completed by Thursday afternoon.

The deputy prime minister also ordered provincial governments to recall fishing boats still operating in the South China Sea and banned other fishing boats from leaving port.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who is currently in China, dispatched Deputy Prime Minister Truong Vinh Trong to the central region to direct emergency operations, Nhan Dan said.

Last month's Typhoon Xangsane left 230 people dead and missing as it ripped through Manila and neighboring provinces and later killed 69 people in central Vietnam.

Cimaron slams Philippines as a maximum category five storm or "Super Typhoon"

MANILA, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Typhoon Cimaron churned towards central Vietnam on Tuesday after killing at least 10 people and displacing thousands in the northern Philippines with fierce winds and raging waters.

Cimaron slammed into Luzon, the Philippines' most populated island and its rice bowl, on Sunday night as a maximum category five storm or "super typhoon", tearing up trees, power lines and roofs and destroying houses and roads.

The typhoon, the second to hit the Philippines in over a month, weakened as it swept out of the archipelago on Monday and was churning westwards towards Vietnam with winds of 120 km (75 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 150 km per hour.

Storm tracker www.tropicalstormrisk.com showed Cimaron picking up speed and tipping northwards en route to Vietnam, bringing stormy weather to Hong Kong and the Chinese island of Hainan on Wednesday morning.

Cimarno is expected to hit Vietnam as a category 1 typhoon on Friday morning.

At least five people were reported drowned or killed by falling trees in the Philippine coastal province of Isabela, according to local mayor Renato Candido. There were at least five other reported fatalities, disaster officials said.

The Office of Civil Defense said police were still verifying reports of several landslides.

THOUSANDS EVACUATED

Over 2,000 people were evacuated to makeshift accommodation while nearly 180,000 were affected by wind damage, landslides and flooding. Power was slowly returning to four provinces.

The storm disrupted thousands of travellers on the move for the Roman Catholic festivals of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day on Nov. 1 and 2, when millions of Filipinos throng cemeteries to honour their dead.

Cimaron was estimated to have destroyed around 114 million pesos ($2.3 million) worth of crops, fisheries and livestock. The bill for damage to roads, bridges and schools was put at 25 million pesos.

The Department of Agriculture has said the typhoon destroyed around 8 percent of rice and corn due for harvesting before the end of the year.

Cimaron crashed into the archipelago just weeks after Typhoon Xangsane raked the Philippines and Vietnam, killing at least 169 people and taking a heavy toll on electricity networks, roads and crops.

The Philippines cut its annual agricultural growth target to around 4 percent for 2006 from at least 5 percent due to the destruction by Xangsane.

Blowing snow in northern Plains results in scary driving conditions

WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) — At least 3 inches of snow fell here overnight, and more was expected from a fast-moving winter storm in northern North Dakota.
Highway Patrol Capt. Alan Billehus said drivers seemed to be prepared early Monday morning.

"We've been pretty fortunate," he said shortly after 9 a.m. "The east-west roads are in pretty good driving condition. The north-south roads are compacted snow. We've had one vehicle in the ditch south of Williston on U.S. 85 and one rollover near Stanley, on U.S. 2."

Billehus said he knew of no major injuries.

"I think there was enough warning that people prepared themselves for this," he said.

"It's tapering off. When it was still dark out, you couldn't see anything," said Greg Westlake, manager of the Farmers Union Oil station near Kenmare. He estimated that area had more than 4 inches of snow from about midnight to 7 a.m.

The National Weather Service issued winter storm watches and warnings for west and central areas north of Interstate 94, continuing into the northeast on Tuesday.

Forecasters said up to 8 inches of snow was possible in some areas, and wind speeds up to 35 mph could blow the snow around and make travel hazardous.

Temperatures Monday were expected to peak in the 30s and 40s in the morning and then fall throughout the afternoon, the weather service said. Overnight lows were forecast in the teens and lower 20s.

Scientists uncover new bird flu strain

WASHINGTON - Scientists have discovered a new strain of bird flu that appears to sidestep current vaccines. It's infecting people as well as poultry in Asia, and some researchers fear its evolution may have been steered by the vaccination programs designed to protect poultry from earlier types of the H5N1 flu.

The discovery by Yi Guan of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues is reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new variant has become the primary version of the bird flu in several provinces of China and has spread to Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand, the researchers report. It is being called H5N1 Fujian-like, to distinguish it from earlier Hong Kong and Vietnam variants.

"We don't know what is driving this," report co-author Dr. Robert G. Webster of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., said in a telephone interview.

Heavy rains kill at least 17 in Somali capital

MOGADISHU (AFP) - Torrential rains have killed at least 17 people in the Somali capital overnight, bringing the death toll to 27 as a result of floods across the shattered African nation in the past week, officials and witnesses said.

They said the victims, mainly children and the elderly, died after their mud-walled houses collapsed under heavy rain that pummelled several Mogadishu districts late Saturday, leaving hundreds homeless and destroying property of unknown value.

Medics said relatives recovered more bodies from the the drenched debris after the overnight downpour.

"The death toll has now reached 17. Some people have been recovered from houses that collapsed last night," said Abdullahi Sheikh Ali, nurse in the capital's Arafat hospital on Sunday.

A pharmacist who treated injured victims said that a woman and one child were killed in the city's northern Suuq-Bacad district while five children were found dead inside a collapsed house in a nearby neighbourhood.

"It was a tragedy," said pharmacist Omar Mohamed Ali. "I treated four family members but the mother and a three-year-old child had died by the time I arrived at the scene."

"The rain was so heavy and their house was old and collapsed," he added.

The bodies of five children were recoved from another house in Wardhigley district south of Mogadishu.

Abdulahi Shirwa Nur, a relative of the dead children, told AFP the walls of the house had caved in.

A neighbour, Amino Abduweli Rage, said: "It was about 8:30 pm (1730 GMT) when I was awoken by people shouting 'help.' I rushed to the scene and found people digging a collapsed part of a house and they recovered bodies of five children."

Three of the casualties were among the elderly living in a displaced people's camp in northern Mogadishu.

"In this camp, three people were drowned. All of them were elder people," said Sheikh Nur Hilowle, the chairman of the camp. Mogadishu is home to at least 250,000 people displaced by the conflict that has raged across the Horn of Africa nation for the past 15 years.

Residents said that at least 61 houses were destroyed by the heavy seven-hour downpour.

In August, thousands of Mogadishu residents were forced to flee to higher ground by flooding which destroyed dozens of makeshift homes.

Last week, heavy rains also killed at least 10 people in the country's southern Gedo region, which was recently hit by a scorching drought that put millions on people on the verge of starvation.

Eight killed by storms in Syria and Lebanon

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Six Syrians and two Lebanese have died after torrential downpours hit both countries in the past two days, media and police sources said.

The official Syrian news agency SANA said six people, two of them firemen, had drowned in the northeast in the past two days, while police in Lebanon reported two deaths in the north of the country.

Three victims' bodies were recovered and searches were continuing for the three others, SANA said on Sunday.

Police in Lebanon said a four-year-old boy and a shepherd, 16, died on Saturday.

The boy drowned after being swept away by floodwaters in an irrigation channel, and the shepherd was killed by a bolt of lightning.

Lebanese weather forecasters said they expected further heavy rainfall until Wednesday, and also snowfall above 1,800 metres (5,940 feet).

Cork, oak trees dying for unknown reasons: conservation group

LISBON (AFP) - Cork and oak trees are losing their leaves and drying up for unknown reasons at an alarming rate, a World Wildlife Fund official warned at the start of a two-day conference in Portugal called to discuss the issue.

The problem is killing trees in Portugal, the world's biggest producer of cork, as well as in Mediterranean countries in southern Europe, said Luis Silva, the global conservation group's forest officer for Portugal.

"We don't know yet if it is a disease or if the mortality is caused by climatic factors and this is why the issue is being studied," he told the Lusa news agency at the conference held in the southern town of Evora.

The gathering was organized by the World Wildlife Fund together with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Association for Mediterranean Forests and Portugal's agriculture ministry.

It is being attended by experts from Portugal, Spain, France, Algeria, Tunisia and the United States.

"This conference aims to boost the scientific discussion of the problems of the abnormal mortality affecting cork and oak plantations," Portugal's agriculture ministry said in a statement.

Portugal produces 160,000 tonnes of cork per year. Neighbouring Spain is the second-biggest producer of cork followed by Algeria, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia and France.