TAIPEI: Rescue and recovery efforts continued Wednesday in China and Taiwan after Typhoon Morakot, which killed at least 70 people in both countries.In Taiwan, the death toll was 62 as of Tuesday evening, a Chinese news agency, reported. Another 57 were missing, and three others were killed Tuesday when a relief helicopter crashed.Thousands of households remained without electricity or running water. In mountainous areas, helicopters were used to drop food and water in villages cut off by bridges that had washed away.Sixteen Chinese tourists were evacuated Tuesday after being trapped since the storm at Mount Ali.Morakot made landfall in Taiwan late Friday and in China early Sunday. In China, eight were reported dead and three missing.Vice Premier Hui Liangyu, who traveled to the provinces hit by the storm, warned of secondary damage from flooded rivers. He said more than 20 rivers in Fujian, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces were at dangerous levels and continued rainfall could bring more floods and landslides.Morakot also hit areas in the Philippines and its outer bands caused high winds and rain on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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