World News
At least sixty dead in China during historic storms
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Steph Deschamps / August 10, 2023
The torrential rains that have battered northern China in recent days have left at least 62 people dead, according to a revised death toll on Wednesday. Typhoon Doksuri, downgraded to a storm after hitting the neighboring Philippines, swept across parts of China last week with unusually intense rainfall.
China’s capital, Beijing, which experienced its heaviest rainfall in 140 years, and the neighboring province of Hebei were particularly hard hit. The death toll from the storms rose to at least 33, with 18 missing in Beijing alone on Wednesday. In neighboring Hebei province, at least 15 people died in the storms, which also claimed at least 14 lives in northeast China, near Russia and North Korea.
The Chinese authorities announced on Friday that the country’s natural disasters had left 147 people dead or missing in July. This figure only partially includes the victims of typhoon Doksuri. “I would like to offer my deepest condolences,” said Beijing Vice-Mayor Xia Linmao, calling for a moment of silence for the victims at a press conference.
At the other end of the country, at least seven people died on Wednesday in the mountainous province of Sichuan (south-west), during a flash flood on a river, reported the China News Agency. Meteorological services in a nearby town had warned on Wednesday of the risk of heavy rainfall in the area.
China has been facing extreme weather conditions and locally unusual temperatures in recent months, exacerbated by climate change, according to scientists.
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Sylvie Claire / September 23, 2023
At least 25 people, including two children, died when a bus crashed into a ravine in the Andean region of Huancavelica, in southern Peru, the authorities announced in a revised death toll on Monday evening.
An initial police report put the death toll at 20, with a further 35 injured. A statement from the Ministry of Health later that morning put the death toll at 24. Finally, at the end of the day on Monday, the death toll stood at “25 dead and 34 wounded”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
The accident occurred on Sunday night, when the bus carrying over 50 passengers from Huanta in Ayacucho to Huancayo in the Junin region ran off the road.
Images show the damaged bus lying on its side near a river below the ravine, debris and personal belongings strewn all around.
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte expressed her “condolences to the families” from New York, where she will be attending the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations. The Peruvian Episcopal Conference, for its part, urged the government to “carry out a serious investigation” to prevent such accidents from happening again.
On August 13, another accident in the same region left 13 people dead and 5 seriously injured.
Road accidents are frequent in Peru, mainly due to speeding and poor road maintenance, especially in mountainous areas.
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Sylvie Claire / September 17, 2023
In Japan, the number of people aged 100 has reached a record level: the world’s third-largest economy now has 92,139 people aged 100 or over. That’s 1,613 more than a year ago, reported the Ministry of Health in Tokyo on Friday.
For over half a century, the number of people aged 100 has been rising every year. Due to a low birth rate and almost non-existent immigration, no other industrial state is aging as fast as this East Asian country.
Japan’s population is also shrinking at a record pace. Last year, the number of Japanese fell by 801,000, the biggest drop since comparable data have been recorded. There are now 122.4 million.
When the Japanese Ministry of Health began compiling statistics in 1963, there were 153 centenarians. Twenty-five years later, there were over 10,000. According to the latest figures, around 88% of centenarians are women. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy for women is around 87 years, and 81 for men.
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Steph Deschamps / September 17, 2023
The death toll from the earthquake in Morocco has risen to 2,946, the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior announced on Wednesday evening. A further 5,674 people were injured.
The previous death toll was 2,901. The death toll is expected to rise further. Hopes of finding survivors are now very slim. Rescue workers have not yet been able to reach all the villages affected in the Atlas Mountains.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the country on Friday night. The epicenter was located some 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakech. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 300,000 people in and around Marrakech were affected by the disaster.
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