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Asia Beat: May 22 08
TOKYO, Japan A tropical storm swirled out to sea off the northern Philippines on Monday after killing 12 people, destroying homes, flooding rice paddies, and leaving 35,000 people stranded by floods, landslides, weather and other disasters, officials said. Halong, a tropical storm with winds of 95 km per hour at its centre, lost strength as it made landfall on Luzon’s northwestern region on Sunday, and was headed to southern Japan earlier this week. BEICHUAN, China JIANGYOU, China An ailing Taiwan couple who were happily married for 66 years died on the same day, becoming the envy of friends and neighbours who thought it was the perfect ending to an ideal marriage. Wang Wei-chen, 97, and his wife Wang Lin-hsueh, 87, lived in Kaohsiung, south Taiwan.
Some 16,000 people were evacuated to shelters in Tokyo on the weekend as troops removed a one-tonne unexploded bomb believed to have been dropped by the U.S. military during the Second World War. Train services were halted and roads sealed off as local authorities put a cordon around a 500-metre radius of the bomb found 3.5 metres below ground in Tokyo’s residential area of Chofu.
MANILA, The Philippines
KATHMANDU, Nepal
Up to 20 people were killed and dozens are missing and presumed drowned after a packed passenger bus skidded off a mountain road and plunged into a river in Nepal. More than half of the passengers on the bus, which fell 100 metres from the road into the Rapti River, were Indian nationals on a pilgrimage.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia
A Cambodian mother-in-law who forced her son’s wife to live — and even give birth — in the family’s pig pen, has avoided prosecution because the victim refused to press charges. Police stumbled on the abuse allegedly endured by Leng Chan Thorn, 23, when they intervened to stop her husband beating her at a local guesthouse after she ran away. The mother-in-law reportedly didn’t like the woman’s "character" because she used to be a singer.
With soldiers talking on the radio saying "all retreat," 1.2 million Chinese have fled to the hills amid fears lakes formed near the epicentre of this month’s earthquake would burst their banks. The water level at the lakes, formed after aftershocks blocked rivers, was rising rapidly in Beichuan and nearby Qingchuan and "may burst its bank at any time," the official Xinhua news agency said.
YANGON, Myanmar
The UN’s top disaster official John Holmes arrived in Myanmar this week on a three-day visit to convince the reluctant regime to open the doors to a massive relief effort after Cyclone Nargis. He arrived just hours after the latest UN emergency report on the country — where about two million survivors lack food and water more than two weeks after the storm hit — said basic needs were still critical. The international community has been turning up the pressure on the regime over its handling of the tragedy, which has left nearly 134,000 people dead or missing since it struck May 2.
China has declared three days of mourning and suspended the Olympic torch relay nearly a week following the massive earthquake in the country’s southwest. An estimated 50,000 people are believed dead with the confirmed death toll from the massive earthquake in China one week ago rising to 34,073, a government spokesperson said earlier this week. Another 245,108 people were injured in the disaster. A powerful aftershock rattled devastated Sichuan province, killing at least three people and hampering China’s efforts to help nearly 5 million homeless facing the threats of disease and floods.
TAIPEI, Taiwan
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