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Monday, August 10, 2009 BEIJING: A powerful typhoon killed eight people, toppled houses, flooded villages and forced nearly 1 million people to flee to safety on China's eastern coast before weakening into a tropical storm Monday.Named Morakot, the storm struck after triggering the worst flooding in Taiwan in 50 years, leaving dozens missing and bringing down a six-story hotel. It earlier lashed the Philippines, killing at least 22 people.Morakot, or emerald in Thai, slammed into China's Fujian province Sunday afternoon as a typhoon carrying heavy rain and winds of 74miles (119 kilometers) per hour, according the China Meteorological Administration. At least one child died after a house collapsed in Zhejiang province. By early Monday, the storm packed winds of 52 miles per hour (83kilometers per hour) and churned at about 6 mph (10 kph), it said. Hundreds of villages and towns were flooded and more than 2,000houses collapsed, the official news agency said. About 1 million peop...

BAGHDAD: At least 42 people were killed and nearly 100 wounded in a spate of bomb attacks near the restive northern Iraqi city of Mosul and in the capital Baghdad on Monday, police said. In the deadliest single attack, two booby-trapped lorries exploded before dawn in the village of Khaznah, east of Mosul, leaving 25 people dead and 70 others wounded. Thirty-five houses were destroyed in the village, which is home to members of the tiny Shabak community, a sect of Kurdish origin. In Baghdad, two car bombs went off as day labourers were gathering in the early morning hours looking for jobs.The first bomb exploded at Hay al-Amel, in the west of the capital, killing nine people and injuring 46. The second bomb attack in Shurta Arbaa in the north of the city killed seven people and wounded 35 others.

Monday, August 10, 2009 BEIJING: China's state news agency said Sunday there was a bomb threat on a plane from Afghanistan scheduled to land in Xinjiang, the restive western region of China that was rocked by ethnic riots last month.News Agency did not identify the airline or the type of plane, but said the Urumqi airport had been told not to allow the plane to land.It said police and emergency vehicles had been rushed to the airport.Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, was the scene of the worst ethnic violence in China in decades when deadly rioting killed 197 people and injured more than 1,700, according to official count.A Xinjiang regional government duty officer, who refused to give his name, said he had not received any information about the incident, while calls to the region's public security bureau rang unanswered.Calls to the Urumqi airport's information counter also rang unanswered.