What happened
More than one million people have been moved from their homes across the Philippines as Super Typhoon Fung-wong made landfall on the eastern coast. The storm, carrying sustained winds of 115mph and stronger gusts, swept across northern Luzon late yesterday. The country is still reeling from the impact of Typhoon Kalmaegi, which struck days earlier, causing extensive casualties and leaving many people missing.

Who said what
Philippines Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro urged residents to comply with evacuation orders, saying a failure to do so would put both civilian and emergency workers’ lives at risk.

Fung-wong is the “biggest typhoon to threaten the Philippines in years”, said The Independent. Typhoon season is year round, said The New York Times, “however, most typhoons form from early July through mid-December”. While many “scrape or strike” places like the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan, they can also hit the Korean Peninsula, China and Vietnam. The Philippines is “battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year”, is also hit by earthquakes, and has more than a dozen active volcanoes, making it “one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries”, said NPR.

What next?
Schools and government offices across the Philippines are shut. The storm is expected to move north and weaken as it heads toward Taiwan later this week.

What happened
A mutated strain of H3N2 influenza that emerged over the summer has triggered an unusually early and rapidly growing flu season in the UK. The virus, which underwent seven significant genetic changes in June, appears to partially evade immunity built up through past infections and vaccinations. Early estimates suggest that this strain spreads more easily than recent seasonal flu viruses, raising concerns that the coming months could be more challenging than usual.

Who said what
Professor Nicola Lewis of the Worldwide Influenza Centre said the situation “does concern me, absolutely”, calling the pattern of spread “unusual”. Professor Derek Smith of the University of Cambridge said the variant “almost certainly will sweep the world”.

The UK is “braced for a spate of flu deaths this winter”, said Rebecca Whittaker in The Independent. Health officials are “raising alarms” because the new variant “appears to bypass existing immunity”, said Laura Zilincanova in the Daily Express.

What next?
The NHS has issued a “flu jab SOS”, urging people to take up available vaccination appointments.

The public groping of Mexico’s president has brought its epidemic of violence against women into sharp focus.

Claudia Sheinbaum (pictured in the illustration above) was speaking to a group of supporters in Mexico City last week when a man tried to kiss her on the neck and touch her chest. Video footage “quickly ricocheted across the internet”, said Reuters, “underscoring for many in Mexico the insecurity that women face”.

Sheinbaum said she had decided to press charges because the suspect allegedly harassed other women in the crowd. “If I don’t file a complaint, what will happen to other Mexican women?” Sheinbaum said on Wednesday. “If this happens to the president, where does that leave all the young women in our country?”

The incident has “sparked outrage”; Mexican women saw their own experiences “reflected in her plight”, said The Guardian. For some, watching the country’s first female president being groped in public was a “personal affront”.

Rights groups say the incident shows the “extent of ingrained machismo” in Mexico, where a man “believes he has the right to accost even the president if she is a woman”, said the BBC. Femicide is a “huge problem” – a “staggering 98% of gender-based murders” are estimated to go unpunished.

Since Sheinbaum’s election last October, she “has made clear progress” on women’s rights, said The New York Times. But “non-lethal violence against women has hardly budged”. And of Mexico’s 32 federal entities – Mexico City and 31 states – “only 16 criminalise sexual harassment”, said Al Jazeera. Sheinbaum has now unveiled a new national initiative against sexual abuse, including a push to make harassment punishable in every state.