LONDON: Two people have been hospitalized after a fire broke out at the shipyard that builds Britain’s nuclear-powered submarines, but there is “no nuclear risk,” police said Wednesday.
Cumbria Constabulary said a “significant” fire broke out soon after midnight at the BAE Systems shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, northwest England.
The force said two people were taken to hospitals with suspected smoke inhalation and there were no other casualties. It advised people living nearby to stay indoors and keep doors and windows closed.
The 150-year-old shipyard, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) northwest of London, is currently building several nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Navy. It is also where the handful of subs that carry the UK’s nuclear missiles were constructed.
Police say there is no nuclear risk after a fire at Britain’s nuclear submarine shipyard
https://arab.news/684q9
Police say there is no nuclear risk after a fire at Britain’s nuclear submarine shipyard
- The force said two people were taken to hospitals with suspected smoke inhalation and there were no other casualties
A powerful typhoon nears the Philippines, with many shelters still crammed after a recent storm
- Northern Philippine provinces are forcibly evacuating villagers from high-risk areas as a powerful typhoon approached while the country is still recovering from a recent storm
MANILA: Villagers in northern Philippine provinces were forced to evacuate on Wednesday as a powerful typhoon approached the nation still reeling from a recent storm that left at least 182 dead and missing and emergency shelters crammed with displaced people.
Typhoon Kong-rey was last tracked 350 kilometers (217 miles) east of northern Cagayan province, with sustained winds of up to 185 kph (115 mph) and gusting up to 230 kph (143 mph). Forecasters said it could further strengthen at sea.
It was blowing northwestward and was predicted to pass near the northernmost Philippine province of Batanes before slamming into southeastern Taiwan on Thursday.
“We are still recovering from the two previous typhoon and storm and here we go again,” Batanes Governor Marilou Cayco told The Associated Press.
“We’re going around now to supervise the forced evacuation of people, specially those whose houses were severely damaged by the last storm,” Cayco said.
Elsewhere across the northern Philippines, more than 300,000 people displaced last week by Tropical Storm Trami, remained in emergency shelters as the new typhoon approached, Office of Civil Defense officials said.
Forecasters also warned of a “life-threatening storm surge reaching 2 to 3 meters (6.5 to 9.8 feet)” that could be whipped up by Kong-rey in low-lying coasts of Batanes and the nearby Babuyan cluster of islands.
All ships and cargo vessels were advised to remain in ports and those at sea should seek shelter or safe harbor as soon as possible until winds and waves subside.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., who oversees disaster-response efforts, ordered the forced evacuation of people in high-risk areas threatened by Kong-rey, which is locally called Leon.
“We always aim for zero casualty in the event of disasters, so we strongly urge the public to heed our protocols,” Teodoro said.
While Kong-rey was expected to blow off the northern Philippines, its extensive rain band with a width of more than 600 kilometers (373 miles) could lash the entire main northern region of Luzon, the country’s most populous, the government said.
Tropical storm Trami, which blew out of the northern Philippines last Friday, left at least 145 dead and 37 missing mostly in widespread flooding and landslides and affected more than 7 million people in nearly 11,000 mostly rural villages, the government’s disaster-mitigation agency said.
More than 111,000 houses were damaged, many inundated by floods and swollen rivers. Trami dumped up to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, setting off flash floods that swept away cars and trapped people on their roofs.
At the height of last week’s onslaught, officials in the hard-hit region of Bicol, southeast of the capital of Manila, appealed frantically for more rescue boats to save thousands of villagers trapped in rising floodwaters.
About 20 storms and typhoons batter the disaster-prone Philippines each year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones in the world, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused several cargo ships to ran aground inland and smash into houses and people in the central Philippines.
Tuberculosis infected 8 million people last year, the most WHO has ever tracked
- WHO says TB continues to mostly affect people in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Western Pacific
LONDON: More than 8 million people were diagnosed with tuberculosis last year, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, the highest number recorded since the UN health agency began keeping track.
About 1.25 million people died of TB last year, the new report said, adding that TB likely returned to being the world’s top infectious disease killer after being replaced by COVID-19 during the pandemic. The deaths are almost double the number of people killed by HIV in 2023.
WHO said TB continues to mostly affect people in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Western Pacific; India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines and Pakistan account for more than half of the world’s cases.
“The fact that TB still kills and sickens so many people is an outrage, when we have the tools to prevent it, detect it and treat it,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
TB deaths continue to fall globally, however, and the number of people being newly infected is beginning to stabilize. The agency noted that of the 400,000 people estimated to have drug-resistant TB last year, fewer than half were diagnosed and treated.
Tuberculosis is caused by airborne bacteria that mostly affects the lungs. Roughly a quarter of the global population is estimated to have TB, but only about 5–10 percent of those develop symptoms.
Advocacy groups, including Doctors Without Borders, have long called for the US company Cepheid, which produces TB tests used in poorer countries, to make them available for $5 per test to increase availability. Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders and 150 global health partners sent Cepheid an open letter calling on them to “prioritize people’s lives” and to urgently help make TB testing more widespread globally.
In Georgia, some voters balanced EU hopes with the fear of war with Russia
- For many voters, avoiding war with Russia a priority
- Election result poses a challenge to EU ambitions
TBILISI: For some Georgians who supported the ruling Georgian Dream party in Saturday’s disputed parliamentary election, the aspiration to go West toward the European Union had to be balanced by the brutal reality of the need to keep the peace with Russia.
The opposition and foreign observers had cast the election as a watershed moment that would decide if Georgia moves closer to Europe or leans back toward Russia amid the war in Ukraine. The ruling party, which is seen as loyal to its billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, says it wants to one day join the EU but that it must also avoid confrontation with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia that could leave the South Caucasus republic devastated like Ukraine.
“We’ve had peace these 12 years in Georgia,” said Sergo, a resident of the capital Tbilisi who has voted for Georgian Dream in every election since the party rose to power in 2012. Georgian Dream clinched 54 percent of the vote on Saturday, the electoral commission said, while opposition parties and the president claimed the election had been stolen and the West called for investigations into reports of voting irregularities.
Observer groups, including the 57-nation Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said alleged violations, including ballot-stuffing, bribery, voter intimidation and violence, could have affected the election’s outcome.
The EU and the United States said there was not a level playing field but stopped short of saying the result was stolen by Georgian Dream. Russia accused the West of meddling. Beyond the rhetoric, though, the result poses a challenge to Tbilisi’s ambitions to join the European Union, which polls show the overwhelming majority of Georgians support.
Brussels has effectively frozen Georgia’s EU accession application over concerns of democratic backsliding under Georgian Dream and what it casts is its pro-Russian rhetoric.
Georgian Dream backers say that while they want to join Europe, they don’t want to sacrifice Georgia’s traditional values of family and church.
EU ASPIRATIONS?
For them, Georgian Dream’s party slogan, “Only with peace, dignity, and prosperity to Europe,” appeals.
Official results, which the opposition says are fraudulent, showed the party securing huge margins of up to 90 percent in rural areas, even as it underperformed in Tbilisi and other cities.
Ghia Abashidze, a political analyst close to Georgian Dream, attributed the party’s showing to its emphasis on keeping the peace and preserving traditional values. The Georgian parliament passed a law this year curbing LGBT rights and Pride events have been attacked by violent mobs in years past. The topic remains sensitive in conservative Georgia, which is devoutly Orthodox Christian. Abashidze said that Georgian Dream was still committed to EU integration, but found more to like in some of the bloc’s Eastern European members such as Hungary, whose premier Viktor Orban flew to Tbilisi on Monday and hailed the election as free.
He said Orban’s Hungary, which has also been accused of democratic backsliding, shared the Georgian ruling party’s core values of “family, traditions, statehood, sovereignty, peace.”
In Isani, a working class Tbilisi neighborhood and one of the few in the capital where Georgian Dream received more votes than the four main opposition parties combined, Sergo, who did not want to give his last name, echoed the sentiment.
“We want to go to the European Union with our customs, our traditions, our mentality,” the 56-year-old said, passing freshly-baked bread to customers from his shop window. He said he believed LGBT people should receive medical treatment and go to church to become “normal people.”
RUSSIA OR EU?
By contrast, opposition supporters say the ruling party’s positions on foreign policy and social issues are incompatible with Europe’s, and keeping the peace with Russia depends on Georgia aligning with the West.
At a thousands-strong protest against the election results on Monday, Salome Gasviani said the opposition was fighting to preserve Georgia’s freedom and independence.
“We’re here to say out loud that Georgia is a very European country and our future is in the EU, in the West,” she said.
Russia, which ruled Georgia for about 200 years, won a brief war against the country in 2008, and memories of Russian tanks rolling toward Tbilisi are still fresh for many. During the campaign, Georgian Dream played on fears of war, with posters showing devastated Ukrainian cities beside picturesque Georgian ones to illustrate the threat.
“The main thing is that we don’t have a war,” 69-year-old Otar Shaverdashvili, another Isani resident, said before the vote. “I remember the last war very well. No one wants another one.”
Kornely Kakachia, head of Georgian Institute of Politics think tank, said the opposition had struggled to allay fears that a change of government could risk Georgia being sucked into the Ukraine war.
“If someone asks you to choose between war and the European Union and you have this kind of choice, then of course people will choose the status quo,” he said.
Taiwan expects Super Typhoon Kong-rey to make landfall on Thursday
- Packing gusts of nearly 300 kph, the storm has strengthened into a super typhoon and is expected to further intensify before hitting Taitung county
- Up to 1.2 meters of rainfall is expected in mountainous eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely to hit coastal areas on Thursday
TAIPEI: Taiwan expects Super Typhoon Kong-rey to make landfall on Thursday along its sparsely populated east coast, issuing a warning on Wednesday ahead of the powerful storm that will bring heavy rain and strong winds across a swath of the island.
Packing gusts of nearly 300 kph, the storm has strengthened into a super typhoon and is expected to further intensify before hitting Taitung county, according to US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
The storm is then forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration said, which labelled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful storm level for Taiwan.
Up to 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) of rainfall is expected in mountainous eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely to hit coastal areas on Thursday, according to the administration.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te urged people to stay away from the mountains and coast.
“I would like to urge my friends in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had put about 36,000 troops on standby across the island.
Central Weather Administration forecaster Stan Chang said it was relatively rare for a strong typhoon to directly hit Taiwan this late in the year, pointing to the still favorable environment for typhoons, including warmer sea temperatures in the Pacific and later-than-normal cold fronts from the north.
“We must urge people to make preparations. It’s a strong typhoon with a large size,” Chang added.
Heavy rain is also expected in the north around the capital Taipei throughout the day on Thursday, the administration said.
The transport ministry said at least 26 ferry trips to outlying islands had been stopped for Wednesday, while Taiwan’s largest domestic carrier UNI Air said it had canceled all flights for Thursday.
Subtropical Taiwan is frequently hit by typhoons. The last one, Typhoon Krathon, killed four people earlier this month as it passed through the south of the island.
Vietnam jails six over deadly karaoke bar blaze
- The blaze in a province close to business hub Ho Chi Minh City shocked Vietnam and led to the closure of thousands of karaoke bars nationwide for failing to meet fire regulations
HANOI: A court in Vietnam on Wednesday jailed six people including four police officers over a fire that ripped through a karaoke bar two years ago, killing 32 people.
The blaze in a province close to business hub Ho Chi Minh City shocked Vietnam and led to the closure of thousands of karaoke bars nationwide for failing to meet fire regulations.
The court in southern Binh Duong province convicted the bar owner, a contractor involved in its construction and four police officers on charges of breaching fire regulations and negligence.
Bar owner Le Anh Xuan was given eight years in jail, while the bar’s fire prevention system contractor was sentenced to five years.
Four police officers were jailed for between four and seven and half years.
In his final words before court last week, bar owner Le Anh Xuan apologized to victims and their families, saying “my mistakes had caused huge losses.”
Flames engulfed the second floor of the 30-room An Phu karaoke building in Binh Duong in September 2022, trapping customers and staff as dense smoke filled the staircase and blocked the emergency exit.
Many crowded onto a balcony to escape the flames, which spread quickly through the wooden interior, while others were forced to jump from the building.
A total of 32 people died in the inferno, 17 men and 15 women.
The police officers were charged for their involvement in designing and approving the fire prevention system at the bar.
Vietnam regularly experiences deadly fires — 56 people were killed in a Hanoi apartment disaster last year — and the Binh Duong blaze prompted a nationwide crackdown on karaoke bars that failed to comply with fire regulations.
More than two-thirds of the country’s approximately 15,000 karaoke bars were forced to close, according to state media, citing police sources.
