Vietnam: 1,000 people evacuated ahead of latest typhoon

Today's news: Nasrallah: ‘Israel has crossed all red lines’, raids on Gaza continue; Taiwan opens same-gender marriage also between Taiwanese and Chinese citizens; 500 million dollars on loan from the Asian Development Bank to Indonesia to aid ecological transition; On eve of vote in Sri Lanka, economic crisis weighs.

VIETNAM

A new tropical storm - Typhoon Soulik - hit Vietnam yesterday, causing the evacuation of about 1,000 people, as authorities warned of further landslides and flooding, a week after the biggest typhoon of the year passed through Southeast Asia. It follows Typhoon Yagi, which arrived on Vietnam's northern coast on 7 September. On Wednesday, flooding and landslides caused by that storm had left at least 329 people dead and several missing.

ISRAEL - LEBANON

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the pager and walkie-talkie attacks had crossed ‘all red lines’ and that the group would retaliate and would not be deterred in its fight against Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza. The unprecedented attacks, which took place over two days, killed at least 37 people. Meanwhile, 12 more Palestinians were killed in two Israeli attacks in Gaza City, after Israeli raids on Thursday left at least 28 dead across the Strip.

SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka's election recess has been underway since Wednesday. More than 17 million Sri Lankans will vote tomorrow to elect a new president for a five-year term, the first election since a severe shortage of dollar reserves pushed the South Asian island into its worst financial crisis.

TAIWAN

Even couples formed by Taiwanese and Chinese citizens of the same gender can now legally register their marriages in Taiwan. In 2019, Taiwan will become the first country in the region to legalise marriages between LGBTQ+ people. However, tensions between Taiwan and China - which claims the self-governing island as part of its territory and maintains daily military movements around it - had until now meant that same-sex couples in the Strait were not covered by this law.

INDONESIA

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a USD 500 million loan to Indonesia to finance a programme to aid the country's energy transition efforts. Resource-rich Indonesia, with a goal of zero carbon emissions by 2060, is seeking to reduce its use of coal, on which it is dependent, with financial support from the G7's Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). The ADB said the programme is committed “to clean energy transition, strengthening sector governance and financial sustainability”.

ARMENIA

The Armenian authorities announced that they had prevented an attempted coup d'état with an armed uprising, which some Armenian citizens and refugees from Nagorno Karabakh were preparing, 7 of whom were identified and who were about to participate in a 3-month training in Russia by paying a sum of 220,000 roubles per month, to then storm the government.

RUSSIA

The Russian courts receive dozens of legal requests daily from the mothers and relatives of Russian soldiers who disappeared in Ukraine with no news of their fate, also because the only way to obtain the promised compensation for their death is to have it recognised by the court, and often the bodies of other people are recognised and buried.

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