Monday, September 9, 2024

7 THE STAR NEWS • Monday, September 9, 2024 @JamaicaStar www.facebook.com/JamaicaStar • www.jamaica-star.com Houses are submerged after Typhoon Yagi hit Yen Bai province, northwestern Vietnam, on Sunday. AP ONE-MINUTE READS NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD Pope Francis is hugged by a blind pupil of the Holy Trinity Humanistic School in Baro, near Vanimo, Papua New Guinea, on Sunday. AP PAPUA NEW GUINEA (AP): P ope Francis travelled to the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea on Sunday to celebrate the Catholic Church on the peripheries, bringing with him a ton of medicine, musical instruments and a message of love for the people who live there. Francis flew aboard a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 transport plane from Port Moresby to Vanimo, on the northwest coast of the South Pacific nation. There, he met with the local Catholic community and the missionaries from his native Argentina who have been ministering to them. For an Argentine pope who marvelled in 2013 at having been chosen from the “end of the Earth” to lead the Church, it was a voyage to another end of the Earth on the longest, farthest trip of Francis’ pontificate. Francis has previously travelled to the edge of the Arctic (to apologise to the Inuit people for church abuses), and into the Peruvian Amazon (to draw attention to its plight), and to the plains of Ur, Iraq (to boost Christian-Muslim ties). CONGO (AP): A vaccination campaign against mpox in Congo will begin on October 2, the authorities said, with workers focusing on the three most affected provinces first. Adults in Equateur, South Kivu and Sankuru provinces will be vaccinated first, Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of Congo’s Monkeypox Response Committee, told The Associated Press. Last week, the first batch of mpox vaccines arrived in the capital of Congo, the centre of the outbreak. The 100,000 doses were donated by the European Union through HERA, the bloc’s agency for health emergencies. Another 100,000 were delivered on Saturday. The 200,000 doses are just a fraction of the three million doses the authorities have said are needed to end the mpox outbreaks in Congo, which is the epicentre of the global health emergency. The European Union countries pledged to donate more than 500,000 others, but the timeline for their delivery remained unclear. Since the start of 2024, there have been 5,549 confirmed mpox cases across the continent, with 643 associated deaths. VIETNAM (AP): A t least 14 people have died and 176 others injured in Vietnam after Typhoon Yagi slammed the country’s north, state media said on Sunday, as officials warned of heavy downpours despite its waning power. Described by Vietnamese officials as one of the most powerful typhoons to hit the region over the last decade, Yagi left more than three million people without electricity in northern Vietnam. It also damaged vital agricultural land, nearly 116,192 hectares where rice and fruits are mostly grown. Hundreds of flights were cancelled after four airports were closed. The typhoon made landfall in Vietnam’s northern coastal provinces of Quang Ninh and Haiphong with wind speeds of up to 149 kilometres per hour (92 miles per hour) on Saturday afternoon. It raged for roughly 15 hours before gradually weakening into a tropical depression early Sunday morning. Vietnam’s meteorological department predicted heavy rain in northern and central provinces and warned of floods in low-lying areas, flash floods in streams, and landslides on steep slopes. USA (AP): T ens of thousands of homes and buildings were threatened on Sunday by an out-of-control wildfire burning in the foothills of a national forest east of Los Angeles (LA), amid a days-long heatwave that pushed temperatures into the triple digits across the region. State firefighters said more than 35,000 structures were threatened, including single- and multi-family homes and commercial buildings, while the authorities issued evacuation orders for several areas. The so-called Line Fire was burning along the edge of the San Bernardino National Forest, about 65 miles (105 kilometres) east of LA. As of Sunday morning, the blaze had charred about 27 square miles (70 square kilometres) of grass and chaparral, leaving a thick cloud of dark smoke blanketing the area. County officials, who declared an emergency on Saturday evening, issued evacuation orders for Running Springs, Arrowbear Lake, areas east of Highway 330, and other regions. The fire began on Thursday evening, and the cause is under investigation. Mpox vaccines to roll out next month Typhoon Yagi kills at least 14 Wildfire threatens thousands of homes Pope brings toys to faraway land