Moscow registered nearly 11,000 deaths from an unprecedented heat wave this summer, a city official said on Friday, as the mortality rate more than doubled in the Russian capital.
Last month alone, 15,016 deaths were registered in the city of more than 10 million people, compared with 8,905 for the same period last year — an increase of 6,111 deaths, city official Evegenya Smirnova said.
The month earlier, Moscow saw 4,824 deaths more compared with the same period in July last year, she said by telephone.
Overall, the city experienced 10,935 deaths linked to the extreme temperatures and stifling smog over the two months from July to last month, which represents a 60 percent rise in the mortality rate.
Russian authorities have faced searing criticism for downplaying the health risks amid the country’s worst ever heat wave when a toxic mix of smog and smoke from nearby wildfires engulfed the city.
The health ministry only acknowledged on Aug. 30 that the country had seen a surge in deaths in the affected regions — up by 50 percent in Moscow in July — despite media reports this summer describing morgues overflowing.
Federal authorities had earlier refused to give details of the Moscow death toll and there was no public announcement of the figures on Friday.
The authorities have partially attributed the rise in deaths to a spike in the number of drownings as Russians rushed to escape the sweltering temperatures topping 40ºC over several weeks.
Officials say it may take months for the government to tally the damage from the disaster that destroyed over a quarter of Russia’s grain harvest, but several economists have put the cost to the economy this year at roughly US$7 billion to US$15 billion.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS