Saturday, September 05, 2009 MEXICO CITY: The remnants of what was once Hurricane Jimena lashed the northwestern Mexican mainland on Friday, blocking roads and cutting electricity and phone lines to two isolated towns, officials said.Jimena was a Category Four hurricane -- the most powerful of 2009 -- shortly before making landfall on the Baja California peninsula Wednesday, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center. It has since weakened to Tropical Depression strength, but still packs a powerful punch.Mexican authorities said at least two towns in the desert state of Sonora had been cut off by the storm, now gusting at 30 miles (45 kilometers) per hour."Guaymas and Empalme are isolated, there is neither light, nor telephone communications and the roads are closed," said Marco Antonio Marquez, from the state's civil protection service."Seventy percent of these cities are flooded and in some places the water has risen to such a level that people had to take shelter on the roofs of their homes," he said.An unidentified man was found dead Thursday after trying to ride out the storm at his home in the town of Mulege, halfway up the sparsely populated Baja peninsula.As of 1500 GMT Friday, the eye of Jimena had drifted to about 65 kilometers (40 miles) east of Santa Rosalia, the NHC said, warning however that some areas could see up to 76 centimeters (30 inches) of total rain accumulation.It is expected to weaken further while its center heads westward back over the Baja California peninsula later Friday.Luxury tourist resorts on the southern tip of the peninsula were spared a direct hit and most foreigners fled before Jimena struck.The US State Department on Friday urged would-be visitors "to consider carefully the risks of travel to areas in Mexico that remain affected"More than 15,000 families had been evacuated from high-risk zones and thousands of tourists deserted the resorts as Jimena barreled in from the Pacific.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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