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Super typhoon Haiyan hits Philippines (Updated)
India accuses Goldman Sachs of 'messing' in domestic politics
Indonesia, Australia in high seas asylum boat stand-off

Super typhoon Haiyan hits Philippines (Updated)

Posted:

MANILA, Nov 08, 2013 (AFP) - One of the most intense typhoons on record whipped the Philippines Friday, killing at least three people and terrifying millions as monster winds tore apart homes.

Super Typhoon Haiyan smashed into coastal communities on the central island of Samar, about 600 kilometres (370 miles) southeast of Manila, before dawn on Friday with maximum sustained winds of about 315 kilometres (195 miles) an hour.

"It was frightening. The wind was so strong, it was so loud, like a screaming woman. I could see trees being toppled down," said Liwayway Sabuco, a saleswoman from Catbalogan, a major city on Samar.

The government said three people had been confirmed killed and another man was missing after he fell off a gangplank in the central port of Cebu.

But the death toll was expected to rise, with authorities unable to immediately contact the worst affected areas and Haiyan only expected to leave the Philippines in the evening.

An average of 20 major storms or typhoons, many of them deadly, batter the Philippines each year.

People stand at the pier as Super Typhoon Haiyan smashes into coastal communities on the central island of Bacalod on November 8, 2013. One of the most intense typhoons on record whipped the Philippines, killing three people and terrifying millions as monster winds tore roofs off buildings and giant waves washed away flimsy homes. AFP

The developing country is particularly vulnerable because it is often the first major landmass for the storms after they build over the Pacific Ocean.

The Philippines suffered the world's strongest storm of 2012, when Typhoon Bopha left about 2,000 people dead or missing on the southern island of Mindanao.

But Haiyan's wind strength made it one of the four most powerful typhoons ever recorded in the world, and the most intense to have made landfall, according to Jeff Masters, the director of meteorology at US-based Weather Underground.

Haiyan generated wind gusts of 379 kilometres an hour on Friday morning, according to the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Masters said the previous record for the strongest typhoon to make landfall was Hurricane Camille, which hit Mississippi in the United States with sustained winds of 190 miles an hour in 1969.

In Tacloban, a city of more than 200,000 people close to where Haiyan made landfall, corrugated iron sheets were ripped off roofs and floated with the wind before crashing into buildings, according to video footage taken by a resident.

Residents (R) stand along a sea wall as high waves pounded them amidst strong winds as Typhoon Haiyan hit the city of Legaspi, Albay province, south of Manila on November 8, 2013. One of the most intense typhoons on record whipped the Philippines on November 8, killing three people and terrifying millions as monster winds tore roofs off buildings and giant waves washed away flimsy homes. - AFP

Flash floods also turned Tacloban's streets into rivers, while a photo from an ABS-CBN television reporter showed six bamboo houses washed away along a beach more than 200 kilometres to the south.

Authorities expressed initial confidence that the death toll from Haiyan would not climb dramatically, citing a massive effort starting two days before the typhoon hit to evacuate those in vulnerable areas and make other preparations.

More than 718,000 people had sought shelter in evacuation centres, 3,000 ferries had been locked down at ports and hundreds of flights were cancelled, according to the national disaster management council's spokesmen, Reynaldo Balido.

"In terms of damage, we cannot avoid that... but the silver lining here is that the casualties are only three as of now," he said in Manila.

"It is possible that this will increase, but we don't think it will increase that much more unlike in previous typhoons. The people have learnt their lesson."

Another reason for optimism was that Haiyan did not bring extreme rains, which is typically the major cause of deaths for typhoons in the Philippines.

Nevertheless, Balido said disaster officials had yet to make contact with many cities and towns that were believed to have been badly damaged, and it was impossible to get a clear picture of the damage on Friday evening.

One of the isolated areas was Guiuan, a fishing town of about 40,000 people that was the first to be hit after Haiyan swept in from the Pacific Ocean.

The International Organization for Migration also warned that widespread damage and casualties was likely.
"This is a massive, devastating weather event," said Conrad Navidad, the IOM's Operations Coordinator in the Philippines.

"It seems likely that the loss of life and damage to infrastructure will be very significant."

It said one particularly vulnerable area in Haiyan's path was the central island of Bohol, the epicentre of a 7.1-magnitude earthquake last month that killed 222 people and where 350,000 people were living in temporary shelters.

Haiyan weakened slightly as it travelled across the central Philippines but still maintained ferocious maximum winds of 268 kilometres an hour, according to the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

It was forecast to exit the Philippines after 9:00pm (1300 GMT) and into South China Sea, tracking towards Vietnam and Laos.

Earlier report:

MANILA (AFP): One of the most intense typhoons ever recorded tore into the Philippines on Friday, triggering flash floods and ripping down buildings as millions of people huddled indoors.

Super Typhoon Haiyan smashed into fishing communities on the central island of Samar, about 600km southeast of Manila, before dawn on Friday with maximum sustained winds of 315km (195 miles) an hour.

The strength of the wind made it one of the four most powerful typhoons ever recorded in the world, and the most powerful to have made landfall, according to Jeff Masters, the director of meteorology at US-based Weather Underground.

Masters said he expected the damage in Guiuan, the fishing town of about 40,000 people that was the first to be hit after Haiyan swept in from the Pacific Ocean, to be "catastrophic".

"Perhaps the greatest wind damage any city on Earth has endured from a tropical cyclone in the past century," Masters wrote on his blog for the weather monitoring website at www.wunderground.com.

Communication with Guiuan was cut off immediately after Haiyan hit, and the civil defence office said it was too early to give an assessment of the damage there.

Filipino residents sleep on the floor as they seek refuge inside a gymnasium turned into an evacuation centre in Sorsogon City, Bicol region, Philippines, Nov 7, 2013. - EPA

But in Tacloban, a nearby city of more than 200,000 people, streets were flooded and some buildings were torn down, according to footage broadcast on ABS CBN television.

Haiyan had maximum sustained winds on Friday morning of 315kph, and gusts of 379kph, according to the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre.

Masters said the previous record for the strongest typhoon to make landfall was Hurricane Camille, which hit Mississippi in the United States with winds of 305kph in 1969.

Preparing for disaster

Philippine President Benigno Aquino on Thursday warned his countrymen to make all possible preparations for Haiyan.

"To our local officials, your constituents are facing a serious peril. Let us do all we can while (Haiyan) has not yet hit land," Aquino said in a nationally televised address.

Aquino warned areas within the 600-kilometre typhoon front would be exposed to severe flooding as well as devastating winds, while coastal areas may see waves 6m (20 feet) high.

More than 125,000 people in the most vulnerable areas had been moved to evacuation centres before Haiyan hit, according to the civil defence office, and millions of others braced for the typhoon in their homes.

Residents of Legazpi city in Albay province, south of Manila, being evacuated to relief centres on Nov 7, 2013. - AFP

Authorities said schools in the storm's path were closed, ferry services suspended and fishermen ordered to secure their vessels.

In the capital of Manila, which was on the northern edge of the typhoon's path, many schools were closed amid forecasts of heavy rain.

Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific and other carriers announced the suspension of hundreds of flights, mostly domestic but also some international.

State meteorologist Romeo Cajulis said on Friday that Haiyan was travelling quickly, at 39kph, and would travel across the country towards the South China Sea throughout Friday.

One particularly vulnerable area in Haiyan's path was the central island of Bohol, the epicentre of a 7.1-magnitude earthquake last month that killed 222 people.

At least 5,000 survivors were still living in tents on Bohol, and they were moved to schools that had been turned into evacuation centres.

Other danger zones were the port cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan on the southern island of Mindanao, where flash floods induced by Tropical Storm Washi killed more than 1,000 people in December 2011.

The Philippines is battered by an average of 20 major storms or typhoons each year, many of them deadly.

The country also suffered the world's strongest storm of 2012, when Typhoon Bopha left about 2,000 people dead or missing on Mindanao island in December.

The government and some scientists have said climate change may be increasing the ferocity and frequency of the storms.

Masters said warm waters of the Pacific Ocean were an important reason for the strength of Haiyan.

"It had very warm waters that extended to great depth, and favourable upper level winds that... acted to ventilate the storm, allowing large amounts of air to get sucked in near the surface and get carried away," he wrote in an e-mail to AFP.

But Masters said it was premature to blame climate change for Haiyan.

"The historical record of typhoons and hurricanes is too short and of too low quality to say if climate change may have played a role," he said.

India accuses Goldman Sachs of 'messing' in domestic politics

Posted:

NEW DELHI, Nov 08, 2013 (AFP) - India's government has accused global investment bank Goldman Sachs of interfering in the country's domestic politics after it raised market ratings citing "optimism over political change".

Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said Goldman's latest report where it suggested the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could topple his ruling Congress party in 2014 polls "made Goldman's credibility and motives highly suspect".

Sharma was speaking to leading Indian business daily The Economic Times in an interview published Friday.

Governments do not normally object when investment banks raise their ratings on a country's outlook.

But the Congress-led coalition, racked by corruption scandals, charges of political paralysis and a sharp slowdown in economic growth, has become increasingly worried about its chances in general elections due by next May.

Sharma accused Goldman of an "eagerness to push the case of a particular political leader" and a desire "to mess around with India's domestic politics."

Earlier in the week, Goldman in a report titled "Modi-flying our view", hiked its rating for Indian markets to "market weight" from "underweight".

"Equity investors tend to view BJP as business-friendly , and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as an agent of change," the bank's analysts said.

"The opposition BJP-led alliance has gained ground in opinion polls in the last three months and current opinion polls suggest a higher probability of a BJP-led alliance forming the next government," Goldman said.

Sharma said Indians alone would "decide the future of Indian politics" and "will not be influenced by the motivated campaign by agencies like Goldman, which have, in any case, left behind a graveyard of their failed predictions".

The Goldman's note did not endorse the BJP but noted "optimism over political change, led by the BJP's prime ministerial candidate Mr. Modi."

Modi's pro-investor policies as chief minister of the prosperous state of Gujarat have won him endorsements from a wide range of senior Indian business figures.

But he is also seen as a politically divisive figure as the politician who was at the helm of Gujarat during deadly anti-Muslim riots in 2002.

Goldman Sachs had no immediate comment on the veteran commerce minister's accusations.

But in an interview in India's Mint daily, Timothy Moe, chief Asia Pacific regional equity strategist and one of the report's authors, said Goldman was not "expressing any preference" for any Indian party or candidate.

Indonesia, Australia in high seas asylum boat stand-off

Posted:

JAKARTA, Nov 08, 2013 (AFP) - Indonesia and Australia were locked in a high seas stand-off Friday after Jakarta rejected attempts by an Australian vessel to return scores of asylum seekers to the main island of Java.

The row, which came with tensions already high between Jakarta and Canberra over a spying controversy, prompted fresh questions about new Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's hardline asylum-seeker policies.

The Australian boat picked up some 60 would-be refugees south of Java, where many asylum seekers board rickety wooden vessels to try and reach Australia, on Thursday after a distress call, according to Indonesian officials.

Under Abbott's tough refugee policies, asylum-seekers arriving by unauthorised boats face the prospect of their vessels being turned back to Indonesia if it is safe to do so.

But Jakarta has previously voiced anger about the policies, and on Friday angrily rejected the idea of the asylum seekers being returned to Java.

"The Indonesian government NEVER AGREED to such wishes or policies of Australia," Djoko Suyanto, co-ordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs told AFP in a text message.

"This has been conveyed since the time of (former Australian premier) Kevin Rudd, and there is NO CHANGE of policy regarding asylum seekers wanting to go to Australia under the current Abbott government.

"Australia already has its own 'detention centres' in Nauru and PNG (Papua New Guinea). That's where the asylum seekers should be sent, NOT TO Indonesia."

He also reportedly said that in previous cases where Indonesia had accepted asylum seekers picked up by Australian vessels, it was only when people were hurt or had drowned.

Thousands of asylum seekers, many from Iran and Afghanistan, board rickety, wooden boats in Indonesia every year to try and make the perilous see crossing to Australia, normally arriving at the Australian territory of Christmas Island.

But continued arrivals of boatpeople is deeply sensitive in Australia, and stopping the influx was a key issue at the September elections that brought Abbott to power.

Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, commander of Canberra's military-led effort to stop people-smuggling boats arriving, told reporters in Sydney an Australian vessel went to the aid of an Indonesian boat 43 nautical miles south of Java.

"I am advised that all people have been accounted for," he said.

Agus Barnas, a senior official at the co-ordinating ministry for political, justice and security affairs, reiterated Suyanto's tough stance, telling AFP that Indonesia "rejects taking asylum seekers, that's our stance for the time being.

"We are still negotiating with Australia on this matter."

In Australia, Abbott faced questions about whether the stand-off signalled his hardline policies were a failure, but would only respond by saying that Canberra has "good and improving cooperation with Indonesia".

"Everyone in the official establishment of Indonesia understands that it is in Indonesia's national interest, just as much as it is in Australia's national interest, that the scourge of people smuggling be eliminated," he said.

Some critics have accused Australia of abandoning its obligations to the UN convention on refugees through its new policy.

Tensions between Jakarta and Canberra rocketed in the past week after the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported that Australian missions across Asia, including the one in Jakarta, were involved in a US-led spying network.

The paper amplified a report in German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, which was based on leaked documents from fugitive intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.

The allegations of espionage prompted Indonesia to summon the Australian ambassador, while Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa declared "enough is enough".

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Jumaat, 8 November 2013