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Archive for November 11th, 2013
Devastation in Typhoon’s Path Slows Relief in Philippines
Posted by New York Times: Keith Bradsher on November 11th, 2013
New York Times: Three days after one of the most powerful storms ever to buffet the Philippines, the scale of the devastation and the desperation of the survivors were slowly coming into view. The living told stories of the dead or dying — the people swept away in a torrent of seawater, the corpses strewn among the wreckage. Photos from the hard-hit city of Tacloban showed vast stretches of land swept clean of homes, and reports emerged of people who were desperate for food and water raiding aid convoys and stripping...
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Philippine typhoon survivors beg for help as rescuers struggle
Posted by Reuters: Manuel Mogato and Roli Ng on November 11th, 2013
Reuters: Dazed survivors begged for help and scavenged for food, water and medicine on Monday after a super typhoon killed an estimated 10,0000 in the central Philippines.
President Benigno Aquino declared a state of national calamity and deployed hundreds of soldiers in the coastal city of Tacloban to quell looting.
The huge scale of death and destruction from Friday's storm become clearer as reports emerged of thousands of people missing and images showed apocalyptic scenes in one town that has not...
Relief teams rush to typhoon-devastated Philippines
Posted by LA Times: Barbara Demick on November 11th, 2013
LA Times: With the vast scale of death and destruction slowly coming into focus, international relief teams rushed toward the central Philippines, where one of the strongest storms on record left bereft survivors looting food and water or scrambling for a way out.
Aid agencies said they were hurrying supplies to the area hit early Friday by the typhoon. U.S. Marines were en route from bases in Okinawa, Japan, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel directed the Pacific Command to deploy helicopters, logistics...
Philippines: Aquino Faces Test With Typhoon Haiyan
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 11th, 2013
Bloomberg: The agenda for the second-half of Benigno Aquino's presidency is devastatingly clear. In the first three years of his term, the Filipino leader attracted remarkable investment-grade ratings for the onetime Sick Man of Asia. He raised taxes to increase revenues and stabilize the national balance sheet. He won global accolades for jailing his predecessor, Gloria Arroyo, and going after the corruption that has made the Philippines a third-rail country for overseas investors. He even took on the powerful...
Food, Water are Top Concerns for Philippine Survivors
Posted by Voice of America: Simone Orendain on November 11th, 2013
Voice of America: In the Central Philippines authorities are struggling to reach many of the some 600,000 people displaced by Super Typhoon Haiyan. Officials anticipate a death toll in the thousands.
At the Villamor Air Force Base in Manila, C130 planes filled with relief goods are headed to one of the hardest hit cities, Tacloban in Leyte Province.
Some relief organizations say their provisions are taking three times longer to get there because so many land routes have been blocked by massive piles of debris...
Philippines prepared for Typhoon Haiyan, but evacuation sites couldn’t withstand storm surges
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 11th, 2013
Associated Press: Hours before Typhoon Haiyan hit, Philippine authorities moved 800,000 people to sturdy evacuation centers — churches, schools and public buildings. But the brick-and-mortar structures were simply no match for the jet-force winds and massive walls of waves that swept ashore Friday, devastating cities, towns and villages and killing thousands, including many of those who had huddled in government shelters. The tragedy is another reminder that nature’s fury is sometimes so immense that it can overwhelm...
Philippines left reeling in wake of storm
Posted by Wall Street Journal: Josephine Cuneta and Te-Ping Chen on November 11th, 2013
Wall Street Journal: An area of the central Philippines devastated by one of the world's worst typhoons began burying its dead in mass graves on Monday, as soldiers and police reinforcements arrived to hard-hit Tacloban City to help restore order.
Gov. Sharee Ann Tan of Samar province, whose town of Guiuan was the first to be hit by Typhoon Haiyan when it made landfall Friday, said in a television interview that bodies were buried in mass graves in Basey, a town that faces Tacloban City across the sea. She said the...
Analysis: Telling secrets to stop burning natural gas in U.S. fracking boom
Posted by Reuters: Ernest Scheyder on November 11th, 2013
Reuters: The North American energy industry's reputation for ironclad secrecy is starting to crack as producers discover a little transparency can help save millions of dollars.
That is what is motivating Continental Resources Inc, the biggest player in North Dakota's prolific Bakken shale field, to take the unusual step of sharing its long-term drilling plans with pipeline companies.
The company, led by the legendary wildcatter Harold Hamm, hopes the disclosures will speed up the routing of new pipelines...
Devastation in Typhoon’s Path Slows Relief in Philippines
Posted by New York Times: Keith Bradsher on November 11th, 2013
New York Times: Decomposing bodies still lie along the roads, like a corpse in a pink, short-sleeve shirt and blue shorts facedown in a black, muddy puddle 100 yards from the airport. Just down the road is a church that was supposed to be an evacuation center but is littered with the bodies of those who drowned inside. When a wind-whipped ocean rose Friday night, the ground floors of homes hundreds of yards inland were submerged within minutes, trapping residents like Virginia Basinang, a 54-year-old retired teacher,...
Ethiopia’s Indigenous Excluded from Rapid Growth
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 11th, 2013
Inter Press Service: As the construction of a major transmission line to export electricity generated from one of Ethiopia’s major hydropower projects gets underway, there are growing concerns that pastoralist communities living in the region are under threat.
The Gibe III dam, which will generate 1,800 megawatts (MW), is being built in southeast Ethiopia on the Omo River at a cost of 1.7 billion dollars. It is expected to earn the government over 400 million dollars annually from power exports. On completion in 2015...