Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, has left dozens dead since sweeping across southern China and Southeast Asia last week, leaving a trail of destruction with its intense rainfall and powerful winds.

After hitting the Philippines, where it killed more than a dozen people, it churned westwards towards southern China and shortly after parts of Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.

Nearly a week since it made landfall, many farms and villages in northern parts of Vietnam and neighboring Thailand remain under water as communities struggle to cope with severe flooding and the looming threat of landslides.

In Vietnam, the death toll has risen to at least 226 as a result of the storm and the landslides and flash floods it triggered, the government’s disaster agency said Thursday, according to Reuters. The storm caused widespread damage to infrastructure and factories.

Video captured by a car’s dashcam earlier this week showed the moment a steel bridge collapsed over the engorged Red River in Vietnam’s Phu Tho province, plunging drivers into the raging waters.

The downpours also inundated Thailand’s northern province of Chiang Rai, submerging homes and riverside villages, making rescue efforts difficult.

At least 33 people have died across Thailand since mid-August due to rain-related incidents, with at least nine deaths this week after Yagi, Reuters reported citing the local government.

Storms are being made more intense and deadlier by the warming ocean, scientists have long warned. While developed nations bear a greater historical responsibility for the human-induced climate crisis, developing nations and small-island states are suffering the worst impacts.

Russia’s FSB security service said on Friday it had revoked the accreditation of six British diplomats in Moscow whose actions it said showed signs of spying and sabotage work.

Britain’s embassy in Moscow did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet KGB, said it had documents showing that a British foreign office department in London responsible for Eastern Europe and Central Asia was coordinating what it called “the escalation of the political and military situation” and was tasked with ensuring Russia’s strategic defeat in its war against Ukraine.

“Thus, the facts revealed give grounds to consider the activities of British diplomats sent to Moscow by the directorate as threatening the security of the Russian Federation,” the FSB said in a statement.

“In this connection, on the basis of documents provided by the Federal Security Service of Russia and as a response to the numerous unfriendly steps taken by London, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, in co-operation with the agencies concerned, has terminated the accreditation of six members of the political department of the British Embassy in Moscow in whose actions signs of spying and sabotage were found,” it said.

The six diplomats were named on Russian state TV, which also showed photographs of them.

“The English did not take our hints about the need to stop this practice (of carrying out intelligence activities inside Russia), so we decided to expel these six to begin with,” an FSB employee told the Rossiya-24 state TV channel.

The FSB said Russia would ask other British diplomats to go home early if they were found to be engaged in similar activity.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was cited by the state TASS news agency as saying the activities of the British embassy in Moscow had gone well beyond diplomatic convention and accusing it of carrying out deliberate activity designed to harm the Russian people.

New pictures of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un touring what state media said is a uranium enrichment facility have given an extremely rare glimpse inside the isolated nation’s closely guarded nuclear weapons program.

According to a report from Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Friday, Kim visited the facility – a bright, sterile warehouse filled with long rows of cylindrical machinery – which is used to produce weapons-grade nuclear material for the North’s growing arsenal.

The report comes as North Korea continues to ramp up its illegal nuclear weapons program and strengthens relations with Russia, deepening widespread concern in the West over the isolated nation’s direction under Kim.

The location and exact date of Kim’s visit to the site were not disclosed in the report, but the purpose of his inspection was clear, according to KCNA: to lay out a “long-term plan for increasing the production of weapon-grade nuclear materials.”

Experts say the images – which show Kim flanked by men in military uniforms and crisp white lab shirts – underscore North Korea’s growing confidence in its position as a nuclear power.

“Kim is exceptionally confident these days and he’s particularly interested in making sure that his calls for a massive increase in nuclear capabilities are not misinterpreted,” said Ankit Panda,  Stanton Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, adding “these disclosures lend credibility to North Korea’s plans and demonstrate that they’ve come a long way in their enrichment capabilities.”

It’s a theme the North Korean leader has touched on frequently in recent years, including this week.

In a speech celebrating the 76th anniversary of North Korea’s founding on Monday, Kim pledged to “exponentially” expand the regime’s nuclear arsenal, reiterating bellicose rhetoric he has used in the past.

During his visit to the purported enrichment facility, Kim expressed repeated satisfaction with the technical capabilities of North Korea’s nuclear sector and emphasized the need to increase the number of centrifuges for greater production, according to state media.

Park Won-gon, professor of North Korean Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said the timing of the disclosure is also important.

The disclosure comes at a time of heightened tensions between North Korea and the West, with the US and its allies accusing North Korea of providing substantial military aid to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied North Korean arms exports, despite significant evidence of such transfers.

In June, the two autocratic nations pledged to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance in the event the other is attacked, according to a landmark defense pact agreed to during a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang.

Since the location of this facility was not revealed in the KCNA report, it’s unclear whether the images are from a site already known to international observers, such as the Yongbyon nuclear research facility, or something entirely new. North Korea is believed to have several sites for enriching uranium.

“I’m not sure we can establish the site from the images,” said Martyn Williams, a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, “but it’s certainly the first time we’ve seen this set up and in this level of detail.”

South Korea has for decades been known as the world’s largest “baby exporter” – sending hundreds of thousands of children overseas after the country was ravaged by war and many mothers left destitute.

Many of those adopted children, now adults scattered across the globe and trying to trace their origins, have accused agencies of corruption and malpractice, including in some cases forcibly removing them from their mothers.

A report released earlier this week by a Korean government commission supports those claims and uncovers new evidence on the coercive methods used to force mothers to give up their children.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, tasked in 2022 with investigating the claims, found that more than a dozen babies in several government-funded care facilities in the 1980s had been forcibly taken to adoption agencies, sometimes “on the day of birth or the next day.”

It examined three care facilities in the cities of Daegu and Sejong where, in 1985 and 1986, 20 children in total were transferred to adoption agencies. Most of those children were adopted overseas in the United States, Australia, Norway and Denmark.

The commission is still investigating cases allegedly involving falsified paperwork. An interim report is expected to publish later this year.

Searching for their roots

More than 200,000 South Korean children have been adopted overseas since the 1950s following World War II and the Korean War, according to authorities. Many of those children were adopted by families in the US and Europe.

While adoptions continue today, the trend has been declining since the 2010s after South Korea amended its adoption laws in an effort to address systematic issues and reduce the number of children adopted overseas.

For a generation of adoptees who have grown up in often homogenous, majority-White populations, some say they feel both disconnected from their Korean roots and unable to fit in. It’s what prompted a search for their biological families.

Some of those adoptees say they have mixed emotions over the commission’s findings, feeling both horror and hope that the investigation will shed light on what many long suspected.

“It’s truly terrifying to hear how systemic these issues were, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily surprising,” said Susanné Seong-eun Bergsten, who was adopted from South Korea and grew up in Sweden.

Bergsten’s biological family found her when she was a young adult, and while there was no sign that her paperwork was falsified, she says she can understand the struggles having been involved in advocacy for Korean adoptees.

“Us adoptees, we’re all kind of told, these adoptions are for our own good and we should all feel grateful for escaping poverty,” she said, calling the reality “far more complex.”

“Our adoption papers often lack important information which could give us more context for adoption, like our cultural background, stigma, and the individual struggles that our parents faced in the post-war era,” she said.

“[It] validates what Korean adoptees have known for decades within our community: The narrative that Korean mothers chose of their own volition to relinquish their children is, in all too many cases, a fiction,” he said.

While both Zastrow and Bergsten said it marked a promising step in the right direction, Bergsten urged the government to continue taking accountability and offer reparations to adoptees and their families.

“Adoption touches every level of Korean society, every economic class,” said Zastrow. “There is still much about Korean adoption that has not been formally acknowledged.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters Thursday that allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike inside Russia would be seen by Moscow as NATO’s direct entry into the war.

“This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us,” he said.

According to the Russian president, “the Ukrainian army is not capable of using cutting-edge high-precision long-range systems supplied by the West” without Western assistance in targeting.

The United States already does provide intelligence to Ukraine, and has previously assisted in the targeting, although not with the long-range systems currently being considered.

According to Center for New American Security Senior Fellow Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn, there may also be other intelligence resources available to Ukrainian forces, including commercial satellite imagery, depending on the target.

In a press conference on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated that, as part of continuing military assistance to Ukraine, the United States provides intelligence to Ukrainian forces, but declined to answer whether the US would increase its intelligence sharing.

The United States first provided Ukraine with long-range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles, which have a maximum range of approxmiately 186 miles, in October of 2023. Kyiv has long advocated its backers to allow the use of weapons systems that would provide a longer reach inside Russian territory.

Michael Callahan, Natasha Bertrand, and Oren Liebermann contributed reporting.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Brigadier General Yossi Sariel, who led its 8200 intelligence unit, has informed them he will “conclude his role in the near future.”

The country’s public broadcaster Kan and several other media outlets have published excerpts of his resignation letter stating he feels personally responsible for not preventing Hamas from launching the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

“On October 7th at 06:29 I did not fulfill the task as I expected of myself, those at my command and commanders expected me and the citizens of the state I love so much,” the letter said, according to Kan.

“Today, in accordance with the state of the war, the processes of the gathering ranks and the building of the unit’s resilience, and after the completion of the initial investigative processes, I request to fulfill my personal responsibility as the commander of the unit on October 7 and at a time to be determined by my commanders to pass the baton to the next shift,” Kan reported Thursday.

Shortly after the attack, a number of top defense and security officials came forward to take responsibility, to some extent, for missteps that led to Hamas’ attack on Israel, which left 1,200 people dead and another 250 taken hostage.

On October 16, the head of Israel’s domestic security agency, Shin Bet, tasked with combating terrorism, wrote a statement saying: “The responsibility is on me.”

“Despite a series of actions we carried out, we weren’t able to create a sufficient warning that would allow the attack to be thwarted,” Shin Bet chief Ronan Bar said.

Later that month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also received sharp public criticism after he accused security chiefs in a later-deleted social media post of failing to warn him about the impending attack.

In a May interview with Dr. Phil McGraw on the “Dr. Phil Primetime” show, Netanyahu admitted there were political and military failures. “The government’s first responsibility is to protect the people. That’s the ultimate enveloping responsibility. People weren’t protected. We have to admit that,” Netanyahu told Dr. Phil.

When asked if he held himself to that standard and failed in some way he added, “I hold myself and everyone on this. I think we have to examine how it happened. What was the intelligence failure?”

For decades, life choices were bleak for many in El Salvador: Leave or die. Dubbed the “murder capital of the world,” there was an average of a homicide an hour in early 2016, in this country of just 6 million people — two million fewer than call New York City home. Gang warfare drove an exodus of Salvadorans, mostly north to the US. But now, the security situation is so different that people are returning, even after building good new lives over decades in the US.

Deported, and now grateful

When Victor Bolaños and his wife, Blanca, lost their asylum case in a US immigration court, their ‘American dream’ came crashing down. When they agreed to accept a voluntary departure order, the couple knew they had to leave behind the life they had been building for over 15 years in Denver and return to their native El Salvador and the conditions that had made them flee.

“We came back 6 years ago, and everything was unsafe,” Victor recalls, seated in the modest home the couple now shares in the capital, San Salvador. At 65, his voice carries the weight of what they faced upon their return in 2018. “When we came back the situation seemed difficult because of the insecurity, lots of robberies, lots of gangs.”

But a couple of years after their return, something unexpected happened. The relentless daily violence eased, and streets began to calm. The suffocating fear that had defined daily life started to fade.

El Salvador, once synonymous with violence and waves of emigration, saw a dramatic drop in crime. For many citizens, this shift offered more than just safety — it offered much needed hope. The world, too, took notice. Suddenly, the small Central American nation seemed to be reinventing itself under Bukele, who was elected President in 2019 at the age of 37. When his New Ideas party later took control of Congress, it was easier for rules to be bent or broken. Bukele won re-election, even though the country’s constitution had barred anyone standing for a second term. A “temporary” state of emergency granting authoritarian powers of detention is now more than two years old. Human Rights Watch says that even children are being caught up in “severe human rights violations.”

Yet in San Salvador, Blanca sits in her living room, carefully crafting handmade jewelry. “Now, one feels safe, freedom is felt in our country,” she says.

She and her husband, Victor, say the improved security has allowed them to start a small jewelry business from their home, something that once seemed impossible. “Now you can have a business, if you look, there are entrepreneurs everywhere in the country,” Blanca says, reflecting on how, not long ago, gang extortion would have crippled any such venture.

For decades, people from Central America, particularly from the Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, have fled violence and insecurity, seeking protection and opportunity in the US. But new data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reveals a surprising trend — fewer Salvadorans are now heading north.

In 2022, CBP recorded more than 97,000 encounters with Salvadoran citizens at the Southern Border. By 2023, that number fell to just over 61,000, and 2024 is on track for an additional decline compared to 2023.

While these numbers may appear promising, the root causes of migration remain complex.  Many Salvadorans still leave their country due to economic hardship and lack of opportunity. Although El Salvador’s economy has shown slow, steady growth since Bukele took office, according to the World Bank, the nation still struggles to provide sufficient opportunities for its citizens.

Leaving Houston to build a beach resort

For the past 27 years, Diego Morales has built a life far from home. The 48-year-old real estate investor, husband, and father of three left El Salvador in 1997, chasing the safety, stability, and opportunity that the US had to offer. The idea of returning had never crossed his mind — until the grim stories of violence that had haunted his homeland for so many years were replaced by tales of newfound safety.

Diego’s childhood was marred by a constant sense of danger.  “I’d wake up, go to school and find dead people on the street,” he recalls, his voice bearing the burden of the painful memories as he sits inside his well-kept, suburban Houston home.

But today, El Salvador is no longer the country he fled. “Now it’s safe and many people are going back,” Diego says, his words a reflection of the optimism spreading among Salvadorans and others abroad.

The country’s reputation has dramatically shifted. Once known for violence, El Salvador is now attracting waves of investors. “Many people, even Americans … we have friends from Florida, from Austin, from Hawaii, looking to buy (property),” he says, a sign of just how far the nation has come.

Diego himself is preparing for a return to the land he once left behind. He has already invested in Tamanique, his hometown about an hour’s drive from the capital, where he built a beach resort that he now runs remotely.

Along the Salvadoran coastline, you can find beach towns like El Tunco, El Zonte, and La Libertad buzzing with new construction, capturing the attention of tourists and real estate developers eager to capitalize on the country’s rebirth. Cliffs that were once gang lookouts are now being considered scenic locations for hotels.

“As soon as President Bukele brought security to this country, everything went up (in value),” Diego says, adding that land that cost around $100,000 five years ago is now going for ten times that price.

And the Salvadoran dream is not just his — his 23-year-old son, Jairo, a natural-born US citizen also plans to follow in his father’s footsteps. “We’ve had conversations… it’s already starting,” Jairo says, his eyes lit with the promise of returning to his roots.

El Salvador’s government is courting those who left with a program of tax exemptions on belongings and vehicles for citizens who return home. Since 2022, nearly 19,000 Salvadorans have moved back under this initiative, according to government figures.

‘No mercy’ for gang members

A decade or so ago gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18 terrorized communities, extorting businesses and waging brutal turf wars over control of neighborhoods, and El Salvador was the most violent nation in the Western Hemisphere, according to InSight Crime.

But something extraordinary has happened since then. By 2022, the number of murders began to drop dramatically, and the next year there were 154 homicides — a staggering 97.7% decrease compared to 2015, according to government figures. Bukele even tweeted that his country’s homicide rate was the lowest in all the Americas.

The sharp decline followed Bukele bringing in emergency measures giving police the power to detain suspects without charges for up to 15 days and deploying the military across the nation. The new rules, which are still in effect, allowed an unprecedented crackdown on gang activity, with more than 80,000 people detained since the state of emergency began in March 2022.

Central to this effort is the newly constructed “Terrorist Confinement Center,” or Cecot, a massive prison complex with the capacity to hold up to 40,000 inmates. The maximum-security prison currently holds 14,000 gang members — all accused of having murdered at least one person. Images from Cecot show tattooed men with their heads shaved in a warehouse-sized concrete room filled with metal bunks, or sitting in tight rows on the ground, wearing nothing but white shorts, their heads bowed and hands behind their backs. And, according to Salvadoran authorities, those sent to Cecot will never be released.

Villatoro’s words echo the brutal reality El Salvador has faced for years. He claims that gang members were required to kill at least one person as part of their initiation into groups like MS-13 or Barrio 18.

“Imagine a serial killer in your state, in your community, being released by a judge, how would you feel as a citizen?” he asks. “We don’t have facts that someone can change the mind of a serial killer, and we have more than 40,000 in El Salvador.”

The government’s hardline approach was not spontaneous; it was meticulously planned. Villatoro and members of Bukele’s cabinet had begun studying the gangs as early as 2017.

“Before you start a war, you have to know your enemy,” he explained.

While the government’s relentless campaign has been praised by many for restoring peace, it has also attracted significant criticism. Human rights groups have accused the Bukele administration of widespread abuses in its battle against the gangs. Villatoro, however, dismisses these claims, asserting that the focus should be on the victims, not the criminals.

“What about the society, the good citizens that you have in the country … Where were (these human rights groups) when we lost 30 Salvadorans in our country a day?” he asks pointedly.

Bukele himself has been unflinching in his rhetoric. In 2022, he famously challenged human rights advocates, telling them to “take” the gang members if they cared so much. “Come pick them up — we’ll give them to you, two for the price of one,” he declared.

The president’s iron-fist approach to security has earned him praise from some US conservatives, who have openly applauded Bukele’s tactics. However, at this year’s Republican National Convention, former US President Donald Trump took an unexpected swipe at Bukele when addressing the country’s newfound safety.

“In El Salvador, murders are down 70 percent. Why are they down? They’re down because they’re sending their murderers to the United States of America,” Trump claimed, offering no evidence to support his statement.

“No,” Villatoro replied. “The problem with that, you (Trump) don’t have facts, you don’t have evidence, but instead, we have evidence of where we put our terrorists,” the minister said, referring to Cecot, the massive prison where thousands of gang members are held

In other detention centers, lower-ranking gang members and other criminals are tasked with fixing what the gangs broke and erasing their presence. Some inmates are sent to rebuild homes while others smash tombstones commemorating underworld leaders.

Jailed ‘for having long hair and tattoos’

In early 2024, Juan Carlos Cornejo found himself swept up in Bukele’s mass arrests after an anonymous call to the police accused him of “illicit association.” Hours later, he was in jail, confused and terrified.

Juan Carlos believes he was targeted simply because of how he looked.

“I was accused of illicit association, but I have nothing to do with that. I like music, rock, so my appearance was different. I had long hair,” he said from his dimly lit, mosquito-ridden home in Santa Ana, a city about 35 miles from the capital. “I have tattoos, but these are artistic expressions,” he said, his frustration palpable.

“There was no investigation, nothing,” he claims.

Juan Carlos was in prison for five long months. Before his detention, he had been working as a veterinary assistant, treating sick or injured pets, and he insists he had never been arrested before.

His release came only after Socorro Jurídico Humanitario (SJH), a group dedicated to providing legal counsel in cases of human rights violations, successfully filed a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf. But Juan Carlos’ story is far from unique. According to SJH, between 33,000 and 35,000 people have been “detained in an arbitrary manner without any justification” since the state of emergency began.

Despite widespread criticism of these tactics, the Bukele government stands firm. Officials argue that these measures — though harsh — are done lawfully and are necessary to secure the country’s future. And they highlight efforts to rehabilitate tens of thousands of inmates convicted of lesser crimes.

Armed soldiers on the streets — and thanked

Critics argue that Salvadorans have traded freedom for security, but the people we met say they have never felt so free. There’s the mother laughing as she takes her skipping toddler to the park, not afraid of getting caught in a gun battle or stumbling over a corpse or having to pay the gang extortion “rent” to simply enter her own neighborhood. There’s the father, no longer worried his son will be recruited by gangs. Unlike in places like Cuba or China, where residents can seem nervous to criticize repressive regimes, in El Salvador the optimism appears real.

Teresa Lilian Gutierrez is caught in the middle, and her experience shows the many complexities of life in El Salvador today.

“Now it’s safe, it’s calm,” she told us on a street in La Campanera, once among the most dangerous neighborhoods in San Salvador. “Before no one would visit, not even family.”

But her son who helped her financially is not able to visit, she said.

“He’s been detained for two years in Mariona (prison). He is not a gang member, he was taken in the state of emergency,” she said, showing pictures of her son working as a cashier in a restaurant.

“I ask the government to get him out, please … I spoke to the lawyer last year because they were going to release him, but she said no, they’re not going to give him to me,” she said.

President Bukele enjoys one of the highest approval ratings in Latin America, a sentiment echoed by the people we meet while with the Salvadoran army touring a once gang-infested area outside San Salvador.

Armored cars and uniformed soldiers are no longer terrifying reasons to run but chances for curious children to ask questions or for supporters to grab a selfie.

“It was so bad before, you couldn’t go anywhere,” one woman says, beaming as she snaps a picture with Defense Minister René Merino, who has become a symbol of the government’s hardline security strategy. A few years ago, no one in this area would have looked members of the police or army in the eye, Merino said, but now it’s all changed. Moments later, another resident steps forward, and thanks the minister and poses for a photo, apologizing for interrupting our interview.  In what feels more like a victory parade  than a law enforcement patrol, we stop dozens of times over the course of a couple hours as residents excitedly relay their gratitude.

But the looming question is: what happens after 2029, when Bukele’s term comes to an end? In a recent interview, the president declared he would not seek a third term, leaving many to wonder about the future.

For some, like Blanca Bolaños, the answer is already clear. “I voted for Nayib this time, and the last, and if he runs again, I will vote for him,” she says with unwavering conviction.

As the country grapples with its transformation, Bukele’s legacy and controversial tactics will be tested. Whether El Salvador’s newfound stability endures or falters, only time will tell. But for now, among those who say their lives have been changed, there is little doubt: they believe in Bukele, and they would follow him again.

A runaway penguin has been found safe in Japan nearly two weeks after she first went missing, having paddled 45 kilometers (28 miles) during a typhoon in a survival story her keeper called “miraculous.”

While taking a dip in the ocean to avoid heatstroke, Pen suddenly became agitated and swam through a hole in her enclosure out into open waters. Her escape left Imai wracked with worry and guilt.

African penguins can swim up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) a day, he said, but in captivity, their muscle mass decreases. Pen had never swum in the sea before visiting that beach.

A lucky break would keep Pen safe.

A powerful typhoon called Shanshan brought high winds and torrential rain to the country at the end of August, killing at least six people, displacing millions, knocking out power and disrupting air travel.

But, amid the destruction, the typhoon was a boon for little Pen, Imai said. With no boats able to operate, Pen avoided collisions and getting caught in fishing nets. The record rainfall provided a reliable source of hydration and cooling.

“She survived because of the typhoon,” Imai said. “It was almost miraculous timing.”

Because of the typhoon, Gekidan Penters wasn’t initially able to send out rescue boats to search for Pen, so it was even more surprising when on Sunday someone spotted her swimming near a beach about 8 miles from where she first went missing. It was just 10 minutes from the facility where she usually lives.

“When we first received the report, I couldn’t believe there was really a penguin,” Imai said. “It was a huge relief.”

Pen had no injuries and was in good physical shape.

She also passed “substantial droppings,” Imai said, which means she must’ve found something to snack on during her journey – likely fish or crab, her keeper guessed, though Pen had never eaten live fish before.

He added, “it’s nothing short of a miracle.”

Nearly 200 people have died in Vietnam in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi and more than 125 are missing as flash floods and landslides take their toll, state media reported Thursday.

Vietnam’s VNExpress newspaper reported that 197 people have died and 128 are still missing, while more than 800 have been injured.

The death toll spiked earlier in the week as a flash flood swept away the entire hamlet of Lang Nu in northern Vietnam’s Lao Cai province Tuesday. Hundreds of rescue personnel worked tirelessly Wednesday to search for survivors, but as of Thursday morning 53 villagers remained missing, VNExpress reported, while seven more bodies were found, bringing the death toll there to 42.

Yagi was the strongest typhoon to hit the Southeast Asian country in decades. It made landfall Saturday with winds of up to 149 kph (92 mph). Despite weakening on Sunday, downpours continued and rivers remain dangerously high.

The heavy rains also damaged factories in export-focused northern Vietnam’s industrial hubs.

Olga is running around the intensive care unit, constantly checking her patients’ oxygen levels, adjusting their medication and noting their vitals. She’s working fast, but even at her busiest, the nurse anesthetist doesn’t hesitate to pause to adjust a pillow or blanket, and make sure the injured soldiers in her care are as comfortable as possible amid the constant rocking and rumbling.

A sergeant in the Ukrainian military, she is attending to some of its sickest patients. It’s a busy job – and she is doing it on a speeding train.

Most cities in eastern Ukraine are struggling to find enough hospital beds to accommodate the almost constant stream of casualties from the frontlines. But freeing up space requires that even the sickest patients, many of them unconscious, are transferred to far-flung places, often hundreds of miles away.

Long ambulance journeys are too risky for people in a critical condition, and flying a helicopter is too dangerous given Russia’s air superiority over Ukrainian skies.

The train is a lifesaver.

He explained that his field – combat medicine – mostly involves stabilizing and evacuating patients to safety, rather than carrying out treatment. His work on the train is just one part of a medical chain that starts the moment a soldier is wounded.

“The most difficult part is evacuation from the frontline,” he said. “Combat medics who work on the front are dying just like soldiers.”

Running an ICU unit on a moving train is a herculean task that involves dozens of people and presents a unique set of challenges.

Oleksandr said the vast majority of his patients, some 90%, have suffered multiple shrapnel injuries. Many have had amputations, and several are intubated, alive thanks to ventilators and other life-support machines. All have numbers written on their hands showing which car of the long evacuation train they need to travel on.

“We are very limited in our capabilities here… If something happens, I cannot call an outside consultant,” he said.

“There may be minor operations, to stop bleeding. We cannot perform abdominal… and chest surgeries. We have to be very careful when selecting the patients,” he added.

Yevgeniy was severely wounded in a drone attack just two days before he was selected for evacuation on the ICU unit of the train.

Ukraine’s most important train

The railway hospital is an example of the kind of Ukrainian ingenuity that impressed the world in the early months of this conflict.

To limit rocking, the vehicle travels at about 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hour, which is about half the speed of a regular train. It also has priority over everyone else – including any special VIP trains carrying foreign dignitaries.

Even so, the ICU unit is constantly shaking. Every piece of equipment, every bed and every beeping machine needs to be anchored to the floor and the staff must take extra care when working on the patients.

Ambulance trains were first used during the Crimean War in the 1850s, but they have come a long way since then. The modern Ukrainian versions come equipped with ventilators, life support machines, ultrasound scanners and portable air conditioners that help maintain stable temperatures even on the hottest days.

Each carriage is a self-sustained unit powered by generators – an important safety feature given the frequent Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Pertsovskyi said.

But it is the little touches that make these trains truly special.

Children’s drawings and Ukrainian flags are on display in every car, offering some comfort to the bruised and battered passengers. The blind brackets on every window are shaped as a trident, the country’s national symbol, placed deliberately in the eyeline of soldiers lying in their beds.

A tale of two deployments

The train provides a small window into the brutal cost of war. Experienced warriors and new recruits are traveling together, united by injury and pain.

“They dropped a grenade. I was stunned. I have shrapnel in my hands, on my shoulders and on my back,” he said, adding that the blast wave damaged his hearing.

An electrician and a father of two, the 35-year-old was mobilized 18 months ago and was serving as an anti-tank gunner in an infantry battalion in the Donetsk region. In all that time, he has spent just 45 days away from the frontlines.

“Morale is high, but people are very tired,” he said with a blank stare, as the train kept chugging along.

“At this point you realize that everything depends not on you, but on God. Or on luck. When the bombs fall, there is not much you can do about it.”

It was a sobering assessment from a man with the callsign “Positive.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has long admitted that the military is struggling to replenish its ranks, leaving exhausted soldiers without a chance to rest.

At a news conference last month, Zelensky said this effort to recruit more soldiers was gathering steam. “Some rotations have started. I can’t call it fundamental rotations yet, to be honest. But it’s a start, and that’s very important,” he said.

Sitting just a few beds away from Oleksandr was Stanislav, who enlisted voluntarily just three months ago. He was also wounded by a drone that dropped into his trench, leaving him with a punctured lung, broken ribs and other injuries.

Wearing a sports jersey and shorts, he was adamant Ukraine would win the war, despite being outnumbered and outgunned by Russia.

“They use quantity, and we use quality,” he said.

The incredible price of war

Nearly nine hours into its journey, the hospital train finally pulled into a railway station in one of Ukraine’s cities. In the darkness of the night, a long line of ambulances was awaiting the patients. The train’s voyage was over, but their road to recovery was only starting. Some will likely never fully recover.

Olga, the ICU nurse, was getting ready to hand her patients over to the medics on the platform. Her job was done for the day.

She joined the military as a civilian nurse in 2015, a year after the conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukraine started in the eastern parts of the country, and Crimea was illegally annexed by the Kremlin. She enlisted in the military in 2016 and – except for a short break in 2022 – has served ever since.

“But we have the opportunity to provide much-needed help to our defenders 24/7, and that’s the best part.”

When the ambulances departed and the train left the station, Pertsovskyi, the railway chief, was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. The medical train is thought to be a major target for Moscow and there have recently been several strikes targeting the vicinity of railway stations and other infrastructure.

Standing on the platform, just hours after he saw a train full of new recruits headed in the opposite direction, he reflected on the brutality of the conflict.

“In the morning, I see these kids who are saying goodbye to their dads who are heading towards the frontlines,” he said. “So, seeing those same guys coming back… unconscious or with amputations, it feels like the price of the war is incredible. It’s a conveyor belt.”