Month: October 2009

Manila, October 03: Typhoon Parma weakened slightly and veered course overnight, easing the threat to Manila and surrounding areas still reeling from a deadly storm, Philippines weather officials say.

“The threat of typhoon Pepeng to us (in the disaster zone) has eased,” weather bureau spokesman Nathaniel Cruz said in a radio interview, referring to Parma’s local name.

“That is good news.”

Weather officials said Parma, billed as a “supertyphoon”, altered course toward the northernmost tip of the Philippines’ Luzon island.

Beijing, October 03: Seventeen people died when an overloaded coach crashed in central China, state media says.

A further 54 passengers were wounded in the accident in Hunan province on Friday, the official Xinhua news agency said, quoting local authorities.

A preliminary investigation found there were 71 passengers on board on a coach designed to carry only 30, according to the report.

The extra weight and a brake failure caused it to overturn as it descended a hill, Xinhua said.

—Agencies

Washington, October 03: Samoa is planning a mass burial for victims of a tsunami that devastated the Pacific island earlier this week, the government said, as the death toll from the disaster crept towards 200.

Some families were already burying their loved ones in unmarked graves on high ground less ravaged by Tuesday’s walls of water that wiped out coastal settlements, but Samoa has offered a mass funeral for around 100 others.

Jakarta, October 03: UP to 4000 people are still trapped in rubble following the devastating 7.6-magnitude quake that struck Indonesia this week, the UN and Red Cross say.

“We estimate about 3000 to 4000 people are still trapped or buried under the rubble,” UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Indonesia El-Mostafa Benlamlih said today.

Bob McKerrow, head of the Indonesia delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, said his estimate was 4000, based on his tour of the city of Padang and surrounding countryside.

California, October 03: A 4.7-magnitude earthquake hit central California late Friday, the US Government reported.
The epicentre of the tremor, which occurred at 6:09 pm local time on Friday (11:09 AEST), was located 11 kilometres south of the central Californian town of Keeler, according to the US Geological Survey.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The reading was based on the open-ended Moment Magnitude scale, now used by US seismologists, which measures the area of the fault that ruptured and the total energy released.

—Agencies

New York, October 03: A man accused of making secret video tapes of ESPN broadcaster Erin Andrews undressing in hotel rooms has been arrested by the FBI.

Illinois resident Michael David Barrett, 48, was arrested overnight on charges of interstate stalking.

Mr Barnett allegedly tampered with the peepholes in the Nashville and Milwaukee hotel rooms Andrews stayed in while on assignment.

He is accused of making up to seven video tapes of her with his mobile phone before posting them on the internet, The New York Post reported.

Lisbon, October 03: Portuguese Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates won a second term in a general election on Sunday but, as expected, his centre-left party fell short of an absolute majority in parliament.

Socrates, 52, won about 38 percent of the vote, according to exit polls and initial results, cutting his share of the ballot from 45 percent in 2005, which had given him a solid absolute majority in parliament during his first term.

Berlin, October 03: German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday won the center-right majority that eluded her four years ago.

Voters sent the nation’s main left-wing party, the Social Democrats of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, into opposition after 11 years as part of the government. It was the party’s worst parliamentary election result since World War II.

“There is no talking around it: this is a bitter defeat,” a subdued Steinmeier said, vowing to lead a strong opposition.

Leone, October 03: The village of Leone is a picturesque enclave that has been a mainstay of the Samoas for centuries, a place where residents gather under beach meeting houses for rituals that are sacred to the local culture.

Today, much of the village is a bleak landscape of rubble.

An overturned van is jammed into the roof of a beach house. Four elderly villagers were killed while weaving Samoan mats and crafts on the shore. A 6-year-old boy and two sisters were swept away while on the way to school. The post office is gone. So is the grocery store.

Hanoi, October 03: The death toll from Tropical Storm Ketsana in Laos has risen to 24, the country’s Red Cross said on Saturday.

Seven people who refused to leave their homes in southernmost Attapeu province accounted for most of the additional deaths, said Bountheung Menvilay, head of the agency’s disaster preparedness division.

Their houses were swept into a river, he said.

On Friday, when details of the tragedy began to emerge from one of Asia’s poorest nations, Bountheung reported 16 deaths from the storm which moved through the country on Wednesday.

Hanoi, October 03: The death toll in Vietnam from Typhoon Ketsana, one of the worst disasters to hit the country in recent years, rose to at least 107 on Saturday, officials said.

That figure came from an official at the national flood and storm control committee in Hanoi, who listed 28 missing and 252 injured. He declined to be named.

The Danang office of the flood and storm committee, closer to the heart of the area where the typhoon made landfall last Tuesday, said there were 122 dead and 12 missing.

Islamabad, October 03: The Saudi Arabia government has freed five Pakistanis who were wrongly implicated in a narcotics case in that country, the Online news agency reported.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani Friday welcomed the decision by the Saudi government.

The Pakistanis were freed after the arrests of the real culprits who had placed the narcotics in the victims’ belongings before they boarded the flight to Saudi Arabia. The accused were arrested in Pakistan.

Washington, October 03: A top aide to US President Barack Obama said that there was virtually no chance Congress would have a climate and energy bill ready for him to sign before negotiations on a global climate treaty begin in December in Copenhagen, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The newspaper said the prediction was offered by Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, during an onstage interview in Washington.