Triple train crash: Over 280 dead, hundreds hurt in India

AT LEAST 288 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a three-train collision in India, officials said Saturday, the country’s deadliest rail accident in more than 20 years.

Wreckage debris was piled high at the crash site near Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha, where some carriages had been tossed far from the tracks and others flipped over entirely.

Smashed train compartments were torn open in the impact late on Friday, leaving blood-stained holes in their sides.

Survivor Arjun Das told a Bengali television channel he heard a thundering sound, then saw people falling from upper berths.

He jumped out of the train. “People were screaming, shouting for help,” he said.

“There were injured lying everywhere, inside coaches and along the tracks. I want to forget the scenes.”

The disaster began when an express train running north from India’s tech hub Bengaluru to Kolkata derailed, falling onto the adjacent southbound track.

Minutes later, the Coromandal Express heading from Kolkata to Chennai smashed into the wreckage, some of its coaches also colliding with a goods train parked nearby.

Researcher Anubhav Das was in the last carriage of the second train when he heard “screeching, horrifying sounds coming from a distance.” AFP

PH eyes possible multilateral Balikatan military exercises

THE Philippines is open to expanding the annual Balikatan exercises with the United States to include other allies, Defense Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said during the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore.

“We really explore possibly expanding the bilateral Balikatan exercises into a multilateral exercise,” Galvez said.

“In the future, we might be expanding it with other allied nations,” he added.

In previous Balitan exercises, small contingents from Australia have joined the military training, while Japan has sent personnel as observers.

In late April, close to 18,000 Filipino and American troops, along with over 100 Australian soldiers, concluded the largestever Balikatan exercises.

During President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s visit to Washington last month, the US and the Philippines released their new defense cooperation guidelines that include moves toward real-time sharing of military information and greater coordination “within the framework of the alliance to face regional and global security challenges.” pilot program covering about 300,000 families starting next month until December, Punay said.

The nationwide “Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program” aims to give targeted households P3,000 food credit per month to address involuntary hunger in the country.

“We still have discussion with the economic team on how to source this (funding) because of the limited resources that we have,” Punay said.

An estimated 3 million Filipino families experienced hunger at least once in the last three months of 2022 – or leading into the Christmas holidays -- a survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) released in January showed.

The national survey of 1,200 adults found that 11.8 percent of Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger, which means being hungry and not having anything to eat, in the fourth quarter of last year.

The number of families facing hunger from October to December was highest in Mindanao at 12.7 percent, followed by the Visayas at 12 percent, Metro Manila at 11.7 percent, and Balance Luzon at 11.3 percent.

“It has been highest in Mindanao in 38 out of 100 surveys since July 1998,” the SWS noted.

‘Brace for rapidly evolving bird flu virus’

n By MARICEL V. CRUZ

HOUSE Ways and Means chairperson

Albay Rep. Joey Salceda on Saturday called on the government to ensure contingencies are in place to prepare the country for the “rapidly evolving” bird flu virus that is now affecting mammals and migratory birds in South America. “The nature of these things is that they come. It will come to the Philippines, no doubt,” said Salceda, vice chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture and Food.

Since first emerging in 1996, the H5N1 avian influenza virus had previously been confined to mostly seasonal outbreaks. But “something happened” in mid-2021 that made the group of viruses much more infectious, according to Richard Webby, the head of a World Health Organization collaborating center studying influenza in animals.

Salceda said Vietnam, Egypt, and China are already undertaking massive poultry vaccination programs, and that France is doing it in the last quarter of the year.

“There are high risk areas – areas where both wildlife avian migration and poultry raising are heavily concentrated. The hotspots will really be Batangas and Cebu since both are heavy on avian migration and heavy on poultry raising – number 1 and number 3 for top producing provinces,” Salceda said.