47 killed in Taiwan plane crash

July 24, 2014

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Taipei (Taiwan), Jul 24: A plane attempting to land in stormy weather crashed on a small Taiwanese island today, killing 47 people and wrecking houses and cars on the ground.

The ATR-72 operated by Taiwan's TransAsia Airways was carrying 58 passengers and crew when it crashed on Penghu in the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China, authorities said.

The plane was arriving from the city of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan.

Two people aboard the plane were French citizens and the rest Taiwanese, Transport Minister Yeh Kuang-shih told reporters. The twin-engine turboprop crashed while making a second landing attempt, Yeh said.

The crash of flight GE222 was Taiwan's first fatal air accident in 12 years and came after Typhoon Matmo passed across the island, causing heavy rains that continued into this night. Some 200 airline flights had been canceled earlier in the day due to rain and strong winds.

The official death toll was 47, according to Wen Chia-hung, spokesman for the Penghu disaster response center. He said the 11 other people were injured.

Authorities were looking for one person who might have been in a house that was struck by wreckage, Wen said. A car was crushed by a toppled wall but Wen said no one was in it.

President Ma Ying-jeou called it "a very sad day in the history of Taiwanese aviation," according to a spokesman for his office, Ma Wei-kuo, the government's Central News Agency reported.

The plane came down in the village of Xixi outside the airport. Television stations showed rescue workers pulling bodies from wreckage. Photos in local media showed firefighters using flashlights to look through the wreckage, and buildings damaged by debris.

Penghu, a scenic chain of 64 islets, is a popular tourist site about 150 kilometers southwest of the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.

Residents said they heard thunder and then what sounded like an explosion, the news agency said. It cited the Central Weather Bureau as saying there were thunderstorms in the area.

"I heard a loud bang," a local resident was quoted as saying by television station TVBS. "I thought it was thunder, and then I heard another bang and I saw a fireball not far away from my house."

About 200 military personnel were sent to help recover the people who were on the plane, Taiwanese Defense Ministry spokesman Maj Gen Luo Shou-he said, according to the news agency.

The ministry said military vehicles and ambulances were rushing people to hospitals and an air force rescue team was on standby to transfer survivors to Taiwan's main island if needed for treatment, the agency reported.

The flight left Kaohsiung at 4:53 pm for Magong on Penghu, according to the head of Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration, Jean Shen. The plane lost contact with the tower at 7:06 pm after saying it would make a second landing attempt.

Visibility as the plane approached was 1,600 meters, which met standards for landing, and two flights had landed before GE222, one at 5:34 pm and the other at 6:57 pm, the aviation agency reported. Shen said the plane was 14 years old.

The Central News Agency, citing the county fire department, said it appeared heavy rain reduced visibility and the pilot was forced to pull up and make the second landing attempt.

Taiwan was battered by Matmo yesterday, and the Central Weather Bureau warned of heavy rain Wednesday evening, even after the center of the storm had moved west to mainland China.

In Taipei, TransAsia Airways' general manager, Hsu Yi-Tsung, bowed deeply before reporters and tearfully apologised for the accident, the news agency said.

"As TransAsia is responsible for this matter, we apologize. We apologise," Hsu said.

Hsu said the carrier would take relatives of passengers to Magong on Thursday morning and would spare no effort in the rescue and in handling the aftermath, the report said.

Taiwan's last major aviation disaster also was near Penghu. In 2002, a China Airlines Boeing 747 broke apart in midair and crashed into the Taiwan Strait, killing all 225 people aboard.

In October 2013, a Lao Airlines ATR-72 crashed during a heavy storm as it approached Pakse Airport in southern Laos, killing all 49 people on board.

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Agencies
February 4,2020

The death toll in China's coronavirus rose sharply to 425 with 64 deaths on Monday alone while 3,235 new confirmed cases were reported, taking the number of those infected with the deadly disease to 20,438, Chinese health authorities said on Tuesday.

The 64 people who died on Monday were all from the Hubei province, the epicentre of the virus, China's National Health Commission said.

Also, 3,235 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection were reported, a big increase in a day.

Another 5,072 new suspected cases were reported on Monday, said the commission, adding that 492 patients became seriously ill.

The commission said that 2,788 patients remained in severe condition and 23,214 people were suspected of being infected with the virus, a pointer that it is increasingly turning virulent.

The overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland had reached 20,438 by the end of Monday, the commission said, noting that a total of 425 people had died of the disease.

A total of 632 people had been discharged from hospital after recovery, state-run Xinhua news agency reported As the virus spreads from human to human, 221,015 close contacts had been traced, with 171,329 others still under medical observation.

By the end of Monday, 15 confirmed cases had been reported in Hong Kong, eight in the Macao and 10 in Taiwan.

The Philippines reported the first overseas death from the virus on Sunday while 148 cases have been reported from abroad.

India has reported three cases of the coronavirus. All the three patients from Kerala recently returned from the affected Wuhan city.

Currently, 647 Indians and seven Maldivians who have been evacuated from Wuhan and Hubei are in 14-day quarantine at a medical camp in Manesar, near Delhi.

As the virus continued to spread at an alarming rate, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday warned officials of punishment if they shirked responsibility in tackling the virus outbreak.

On Monday, China has opened a 1,000-bed hospital built in record nine days in Wuhan city and started trials for new drug to contain the virus and is set to open another 1,300 bed hospital next to it on Wednesday.

The ruling Communist Party of China on Monday held its political bureau meeting presided by President Xi to review the steps being taken on various fronts to halt the spread of the deadly virus.

The outcome of the epidemic prevention and control directly affects people's lives and health, the overall economic and social stability and the country's opening-up, Xi said.

"Those who disobey the unified command or shirk off responsibilities will be punished," Xi was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Xi said that the party and government leaders supervising them would also be held accountable in severe cases.

Chinese armament firms, including those building aircraft carrier and military aircraft, have postponed planned work in order to concentrate on controlling the risk of coronavirus, state-run Global Times reported.

Noted Chinese health expert Zhong Nanshan has said that based on the fresh evidence, the novel coronavirus, which is spreading rapidly in China and the world, may reach its peak in the next 10 to 14 days, contrary to earlier estimates of climaxing sooner.

This means that the cases would drastically increase in the next two weeks before slowing down.

Also, China has begun clinical trials to test a drug to treat the patients of the coronavirus which till now has no cure.

Currently, patients are being treated with a combination of antivirals and other measures, as scientists race to find a vaccine.

Some reports said drugs to treat HIV too was being tried to treat the patients.

The experimental antiviral drug, Remdesivir, to be tested in field trials is developed by US-based Gilead Sciences. It is aimed at treating infectious diseases such as Ebola and SARS, South China Morning Post reported.

It was given to the first US patient last week - a 35-year-old man whose condition appeared to improve within a day, it said.

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News Network
July 26,2020

Seoul, Jul 26: North Korean authorities have imposed a lockdown on the border city of Kaesong after discovering what they called the country's first suspected case of the novel coronavirus, state media reported Sunday.

Leader Kim Jong Un convened an emergency politburo meeting on Saturday to implement a "maximum emergency system and issue a top-class alert" to contain the virus, official news agency KCNA said.

If confirmed, it would be the first officially recognised COVID-19 case in the North where medical infrastructure is seen as woefully inadequate for dealing with any epidemic.

KCNA said a defector who had left for the South three years ago returned on July 19 after "illegally crossing" the heavily fortified border dividing the countries.

But there have been no reports in the South of anyone leaving through what is one of the world's most secure borders, replete with minefields and guard posts.

Pyongyang has previously insisted not a single case of the coronavirus had been seen in the North despite the illness having swept the globe, and the country's borders remain closed.

The patient was found in Kaesong City, which borders the South, and "was put under strict quarantine", as would anybody who had come in close contact, state media said.

It was a "dangerous situation... that may lead to a deadly and destructive disaster", the media outlet added.

Kim was quoted as saying "the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country", and officials on Friday took the "preemptive measure of totally blocking Kaesong City".

The nuclear-armed North closed its borders in late January as the virus spread in neighbouring China and imposed tough restrictions that put thousands of its people into isolation, but analysts say the North is unlikely to have avoided the contagion.

South Korea is currently recording around 40 to 60 cases a day.

Earlier this month Kim warned against any "hasty" relaxation of anti-coronavirus measures, indicating the country will keep its borders closed for the foreseeable future.

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News Network
June 11,2020

Jun 11: The total death toll in the US from the novel coronavirus pandemic could hit the grim figure of 200,000 by September and expecting a dramatic decrease in COVID-19 cases in the country will be a "wishful thinking , an eminent Indian-American professor has warned.

Ashish Jha, the head of Harvard's Global Health Institute, told CNN on Wednesday that he is not trying to scare people to stay at home rather urged everyone to wear masks, adhere to the social distancing rules and called for ramping up testing and tracing infrastructure.

Anybody who's expecting a dramatic decrease in cases is almost surely engaging in wishful thinking. And if it (COVID numbers) stays just flat for the next three months, we're going to hit 200,000 deaths sometime in September and that is just awful, Jha said.

Jha said the 200,000 death toll is not just a guess . Currently 800-1000 people are dying daily in America from the virus and all data suggest that the situation is going to get worse.

We're gonna have increases, but even if we assume that it's going to be flat all summer, that nothing is going to get worse... even if we pick that low number of 800 a day, that is 25,000 (deaths) a month in three and a half months. We're going to add another 88,000 people and we will hit 200,000 sometime in September, Jha said.

The United States is by far the hardest-hit country in the global pandemic, in terms of both confirmed infections and deaths.

According to data by the Johns Hopkins University, the number of coronavirus cases in the US currently is nearly two million and about 112,900 people have died in the country, the most in the world.

When asked about an improvement in states like New York, which had been the epicenter of the COVID19 pandemic in the US, Jha said while coronavirus cases are declining in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, the numbers are increasing in states such as Arizona, Florida, Texas, North and South Carolina while the country as a whole is pretty flat.

He said, people should take measures as that will help suppress the virus and ensure people could get back outside safely but he voiced concern that this was not the situation in reality.

We're not doing that and so we're going to unfortunately have another 25,000 deaths a month until September, and then it'll keep going. It's not going to magically disappear. We've got a turn around. This is not the future I want, he said.

Jha said he had expected the situation to improve in the summer months but on the contrary the numbers have continued to rise even in the warm weather.

Summer was supposed to be our better months - warmer weather, people outside, a little less transmission. This is not the time (summer) I was expecting a lot more cases. We're seeing a lot more cases, especially in states like Arizona where the numbers look really scary, he said.

Jha added that he was hopeful that maybe the summer months would give us more of a break. I think I may have been too optimistic on that.

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