TODAY’S NATURAL DISASTER story

Dozens dead as Typhoon Kalmaegi slams Philippines

What happened
At least 66 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced after Typhoon Kalmaegi tore through the central Philippines yesterday. Another 26 people are missing. The destructive winds and devastating flooding hit the heavily populated island of Cebu particularly hard.

Who said what
The destruction in Cebu is “really unprecedented,” provincial Gov. Pamela Baricuatro said on social media. “We did everything we can” to prepare for the typhoon, she told The Associated Press, “but, you know, there are really some unexpected things like flash floods.” The storm sent “torrents of muddy water down hillsides” and into communities, the BBC said. “Most of the deaths” were from drowning.

Cebu residents told how “floodwater engulfed the first floors of their houses in just a few minutes, sending them scrambling to upper floors or roofs in panic,” the AP said. Footage shows homes “with only rooftops and top floors visible,” CNN said. Kalmaegi struck as Cebu was “still trying to recover” from a deadly magnitude 6.9 earthquake in late September, The Weather Channel said.

What next?
The Philippines is expecting “three to five more” storms by the end of the year, state weather forecaster Charmagne Varilla told Al Jazeera. Kalmaegi “moved west” into the South China Sea early today, “headed toward Vietnam,” The New York Times said. Central Vietnam and Thailand are braced for heavy rains from the typhoon starting Friday and through the weekend.

TODAY’S AVIATION DISASTER Story

At least 7 dead in Kentucky UPS cargo plane explosion

What happened
A UPS cargo jet crashed and exploded while taking off from Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville yesterday evening, killing at least seven people, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said last night. Another 11 people were hurt when the plane fell on nearby businesses, and some had “very significant” injuries, he said. “Anybody who has seen the images, the video, knows how violent this crash is.”

Who said what
Footage of the crash showed the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 traveling down the runway with flames flaring from its left wing, then struggling to climb before dropping and exploding in a massive fireball. The plane, en route to Hawaii, was carrying 38,000 gallons of fuel, officials said. UPS runs 300 flights a day out of the Louisville airport, where its Worldport global air hub sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour.

“This is a UPS town,” Betsy Ruhe, a Louisville Metro Council member, said at a press conference. “We all know somebody that works at UPS. And they are all texting their friends, their family, trying to make sure that everyone is safe. Sadly, some of those texts will probably go unanswered.”

What next?
The three crew members aboard the UPS jet are presumed dead, and Beshear said the death toll was “expected to rise.” The last UPS air crash was in 2013 outside Birmingham, Alabama, and killed the two pilots.

It’s not all bad

An international team of researchers in the Philippines made a surprising discovery: six new species of bats, including five that had been “masquerading” as a different species of tube-nosed bats, said Good News Network. Tube-nosed bats live in Asia and are “notoriously elusive,” making this discovery “deeply satisfying,” said Jodi Sedlock, a professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. She said she is “eager” to learn more about these bats and how they use their “tube-like nostrils.”

Under the radar

Scientists develop broad snake bite antivenom

Scientists have developed a pioneering multispecies snake bite antivenom, according to a study published in the journal Nature. It specifically targets 17 deadly snakes in the Elapidae family, of which there are approximately 360 species worldwide, including cobras, mambas and coral snakes. Elapids are “among the deadliest because their venoms contain potent neurotoxins that act rapidly to induce paralysis and respiratory failure,” Anne Ljungars, a study co-author, said to Popular Science.

More than 300,000 snake bites are reported each year in Sub-Saharan Africa, along with 7,000 bite deaths. Antivenoms have long existed, but getting the correct one was dependent on the “victim knowing which species of snake delivered the bite — something that is not always easy,” said The Economist.

Current antivenoms are “produced by immunizing horses with snake venom and extracting antibodies from their blood,” resulting in a “large, undefined mixture of antibodies, only a small proportion of which target and neutralize the most dangerous toxins,” Technical University of Denmark said a news release about the study. This creates a product with high levels of variation and potentially serious side effects.

For the new antivenom, researchers opted to use an alpaca and a llama. These camelid species “naturally produce a special antibody variant known as heavy-chain-only antibodies,” which could be used to engineer nanobodies, said Popular Science. Nanobodies can “bind strongly and precisely to many different similar toxins, which enables the antivenom to neutralize venom from multiple species,” said the news release. The antivenom has show promise in mice but needs to prove safe and effective in human testing before it can be made widely available.

On this day

November 5, 2013

India launched its first interplanetary spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Mission. The uncrewed craft reached Mars in September 2014, making India the first Asian nation to orbit the Red Planet. The orbiter circled Mars for eight years before contact was lost in 2022.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Much more than vice president’

Dick Cheney, who died yesterday at 84, “was much more than vice president,” the Arizona Republic says on Wednesday’s front page. “Pugnacious architect of the war on terrorism,” The Washington Post says. “Divisive VP held sway from shadows,” says the Houston Chronicle. “Democrats rally for big wins,” The Minnesota Star Tribune says. “Mamdani leads Democratic wins” as “party scores victories in New Jersey, Virginia,” The Wall Street Journal says. “N.Y. and others vote in harbinger elections,” but “Prop. 50 is all about Trump vs. California,” says the Los Angeles Times. “For what it’s worth, this shutdown is now the longest,” says The Boston Globe. “Talks to end the shutdown intensify,” says The Dallas Morning News. “Are Trump’s tariffs too big to fail at high court?” says USA Today.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

The prince of pumpkins

A gigantic image of the late Ozzy Osbourne made from more than 10,000 pumpkins and squash earned a Guinness World Record for largest cucurbita mosaic. The 2,281-square-foot mural, depicting a smiling Osbourne surrounded by bats, required nearly five hours of labor by 16 people at Sunnyfields Farm in Southampton, England. Osbourne’s widow, Sharon, daughter Kelly and son Jack surprised visitors by stopping by the farm to see the memorial to the “Prince of Darkness” in person.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.