HUMAIN VAI BORGUNA southern China as climate COVID UPDATE 2022 KAKA

 Torrential rains in southern China have killed at least 25 people, impacted millions of residents and caused billions of yuan in economic losses, as the country grapples with increasingly devastating flood seasons fueled by climate change.

In recent weeks, heavy rainfall has triggered severe flooding and landslides in large swathes of southern China, damaging homes, crops and roads.

In Hunan province, 10 people have been killed this month and three remain missing, with 286,000 people evacuated and a total of 1.79 million residents affected, officials said at a news conference Wednesday.

 

 

More than 2,700 houses have collapsed or suffered severe damage, and 96,160 hectares of crops have been destroyed -- heavy losses for a province that serves as a major rice-producing hub for China. Direct economic losses are estimated at more than 4 billion yuan ($600 million), according to officials.

 

Flooding and landslides caused by torrential rains have killed 10 people in Hunan province this month.

 

Late last month, flooding and landslides killed eight people in coastal Fujian province, five people in southwestern Yunnan province, and two children who were swept away by torrents in Guangxi province.

Chinese authorities are on high alert for this year's flood season, which started this month, after the deaths of 398 people in devastating floods caused by unprecedented rainfall in central Henan province last summer.

Summer floods are a regular occurrence in China, especially in the densely populated agricultural areas along the Yangtze River and its tributaries. But scientists have been warning for years that the climate crisis would amplify extreme weather, making it deadlier and more frequent.

 

 

 

 

'Once in a thousand years' rains devastated central China, but there is little talk of climate change

 

Henan, traditionally not a region that faces regular flooding, saw what authorities called a "once in a thousand years" downpour at some weather stations last July.

The provincial capital of Zhengzhou, which accounted for the majority of the death toll, was ill-prepared for the flooding. City officials failed to heed the five consecutive red alerts for torrential rain -- which should have prompted authorities to halt gatherings and suspend classes and businesses. Flood water gushed into the

The United Nations is pursuing a deal that would allow grain exports from Ukraine through the Black Sea and unimpeded access to world markets for Russian food and fertilizers.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told U.N. correspondents on Wednesday that without the deal hundreds of millions of people in developing countries face the threat of an unprecedented wave of hunger, three months after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor.

Guterres said, “Ukraine’s food production and the food and fertilizer produced by Russia must be brought into world markets, despite the war.”

Senior officials have been working closely with contacts in Moscow, Kyiv, Ankara, Brussels and Washington for the past 10 days, Guterres said. He said he didn’t want to jeopardize the chances of success by revealing details.

“This is one of those moments when silent diplomacy is necessary, and the welfare of millions of people around the world could depend on it,” he said

Meanwhile, fears of a global food crisis escalated over Ukraine’s inability to export millions of tons of grain through its blockaded ports.

At the same time, Ukrainian and Russian forces battled fiercely Wednesday for control of Sievierodonestk, a city that has emerged as central to Moscow’s grinding campaign to capture Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, known as the Donbas.

Many buildings in Mariupol contain 50 to 100 bodies each, according to a mayoral aide in the Russian-held port city in the south.

Petro Andryushchenko said on the Telegram app that the bodies are being taken in an “endless caravan of death” to a morgue, landfills and other places. At least 21,000 Mariupol civilians were killed during the weeks-long Russian siege, Ukrainian

Ukraine, long known as the “bread basket of Europe,” is one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, but much of that flow has been halted by the war and a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. An estimated 22 million tons of grain remains in Ukraine. The failure to ship it out is endangering the food supply in many developing countries, especially in Africa.

Russia expressed support Wednesday for a U.N. plan to create a safe corridor at sea that would allow Ukraine to resume grain shipments. The plan, among other things, calls for Ukraine to remove mines from the waters near the Black Sea port of Odesa.

But Russia is insisting that it be allowed to check incoming vessels for weapons. And Ukraine has expressed fear that clearing the mines could enable Russia to attack the coast. Ukrainian officials said the Kremlin’s assurances that it wouldn’t do that cannot be trusted.

The 46th President blamed the lack of any progress on gun safety on intimidation by the gun lobby, as he called on voters to make it a deciding issue come November during his first in-person appearance on a late-night talk show.

Mr Biden, who is a Democrat, told Kimmel that the National Rifle Association has bullied Republicans into thinking that if they vote for the rational gun policy, they are going to be primaried.

He added that he is considering additional executive orders related to the issue but doesn’t want to emulate his predecessor’s (Donald Trump) use of the non-legislative strategy, calling it an “abuse of the Constitution”.

Mr Biden explained to Kimmel that he has issued executive orders “within the power of the presidency” regarding guns.

“But what I don’t want to do, and I’m not being facetious, I don’t want to emulate Trump’s abuse of the constitution,” the President told Kimmel. “I often get asked, ‘look the Republicans don’t play it square, why do you play it square?’ Well, guess what? If we do the same thing they do, our democracy will literally be in jeopardy.”

Shares were mostly lower in Asia on Thursday as investors watched for fresh signs of inflation and crude oil prices hovered above $122 a barrel, adding to price pressures.

Benchmarks declined across the region, except in Tokyo, where a weakening yen sent issues of some Japanese exporters higher. Nintendo Co. issues surged 1.9% in afternoon trading, while Honda Motor Co. stocks gained more than 0.9%.

 

The Japanese yen has recently slid to fresh 20-year lows against the U.S. dollar, a trend the International Monetary Fund and other analysts expect to continue for a while because of higher interest rates in the U.S. and Europe, compared to Japan, where long-term interest rates remain at near-zero.