Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a deadly typhoon in the Indo-Pacific, Russian and Chinese warplanes near North America, and Ethiopia’s devastating landslides.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a deadly typhoon in the Indo-Pacific, Russian and Chinese warplanes near North America, and Ethiopia’s devastating landslides.
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‘Racing Against Time’
Typhoon Gaemi hit mainland China on Thursday, marking the third and most powerful storm to reach the country’s eastern seaboard this year. Beijing issued its highest-tier disaster warning in preparation for Gaemi’s landfall after witnessing the devastation that it caused elsewhere in the region.
Gaemi (also called Carina) first struck the Philippines this week and has continued to wreak havoc across the country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered local authorities to speed up food and aid deliver efforts to isolated rural villages after flooding and landslides killed at least 22 people.
Manila is also keeping a close eye on the MT Terra Nova, an oil tanker carrying 1.5 million liters of industrial fuel that sank off of Limay town in Bataan province early Thursday. The Philippine Coast Guard is “racing against time” to contain the spill, Rear Adm. Armando Balilo said. With oil already spreading roughly 2.5 miles, the Terra Nova could become the worst spill in Philippine history and endanger the local marine environment as well as the shoreline. One crew member was killed in the incident.
On Wednesday, Gaemi continued its destruction in Taiwan. Labeled a “severe typhoon,” the highest level on Taipei’s three-tier scale, Gaemi is the biggest such storm to hit Taiwan in eight years. Gaemi recorded maximum sustained winds of 127 miles per hour, knocking out power to more than 345,000 Taiwanese, killing at least three people, and injuring hundreds more. Six cargo ships sank or ran aground, according to Taiwan’s Coast Guard, with rescue workers still searching for six crew members who were aboard one such vessel, the Fu-Shun.
With Gaemi being just the first typhoon to hit Taiwan this season, meteorologists are worried that the island could record several more major storms before the year’s end. Some experts have even compared Gaemi to last year’s super typhoon Doksuri, which killed at least 20 people in China. Last summer, Doksuri’s rainfall broke a 140-year record in Beijing and devastated neighboring Hebei province, costing nationwide damages of nearly $30 billion.
With the specter of Doksuri looming in recent memory, China evacuated more than 240,000 residents in its coastal Fujian province and canceled flights, trains, and ferry services, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Gaemi is expected to hit Beijing and Hebei by the weekend.
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What We’re Following
Warplanes near Alaska. U.S. and Canadian fighter jets intercepted Russian and Chinese warplanes off Alaska’s coast on Wednesday. Two Russian TU-95 Bear and two Chinese H-6 bombers were spotted in Alaska’s air defense identification zone, a buffer zone in international airspace, though the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said the aircraft didn’t enter U.S. or Canadian airspace and weren’t seen as a military threat.
“NORAD will continue to monitor competitor activity near North America and meet presence with presence,” the agency said. All four planes departed from a Russian air base.
This was the first time that Russian and Chinese strategic bombers collaborated near North America; however, both nations’ naval forces patrolled near Alaska last August in the largest such flotilla to approach the U.S. coast. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday’s exercise was “not aimed at any third party.” But Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski called the incident an “unprecedented provocation by our adversaries.”
Unstable ground. The death toll from landslides in Ethiopia is expected to double to around 500 people, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Thursday. Already, at least 257 deaths have been recorded after heavy rains in southern Ethiopia’s remote Gofa Zone triggered two consecutive landslides—one on Sunday and the other on Monday. The second landslide buried many people engaged in rescue efforts for the first catastrophe.
“It is too dangerous to approach to the site,” Gofa Zone administrator Dagmawi Ayele said as rain continued on Thursday. The U.N. agency recommended that more than 15,000 people be evacuated immediately due to the risk of additional landslides. This week’s disasters were the deadliest landslides in Ethiopia’s history. The U.N. has dispatched food, health, and other critical supplies to help survivors in the area, U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
Iran-linked extremism. Berlin banned the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) on Wednesday for being an extremist organization. After a yearslong investigation, German authorities concluded that the IZH acts as a front for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; spreads antisemitism; and supports Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite militant group in Lebanon that the German government classifies as a terrorist group. It also accused the IZH of spreading Iranian revolutionary ideas “in an aggressive and militant manner.”
The IZH has denied such allegations in the past. On Wednesday, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the German ambassador and called the decision an “example of Islamophobia.”
The German Interior Ministry seized assets during searches of 53 IZH-linked properties, including in Berlin and Hamburg. The government also shut down four IZH-affiliated mosques on Wednesday, including the so-called Blue Mosque in Hamburg, which served as the IZH’s headquarters and was one of Europe’s main Shiite Muslim community centers.
Odds and Ends
The 2024 Olympic Games are set to kick off in Paris on Friday, but mayhem is already stirring. On Tuesday, Australian swimming coach Michael Palfrey found himself in hot water after he expressed support for rival South Korean freestyler Kim Woo-min. Palfrey’s comments were “un-Australian” despite him having coached Kim in the past, Australian head coach Rohan Taylor said.
Also on Tuesday, New Zealand accused Canada of flying a drone over the Kiwi women’s soccer practice in Saint-Étienne, about 250 miles southeast of Paris, ahead of their match on Thursday. And on Wednesday, the Morocco-Argentina soccer match in Saint-Étienne was delayed for almost two hours after Morocco fans ran onto the field and threw bottles to protest a late Argentine goal in the 16th minute of added time. And all of this before the Games have even officially begun!
The post Typhoon Gaemi Devastates the Indo-Pacific appeared first on Foreign Policy.
