12 10 / 2011
Hurricane Jova hits key Mexican port, kills two
While Jova ravaged the coast, a tropical depression farther to the southeast prompted thousands of evacuations in Mexico as well as flooding and mudslides that have killed 18 in Central America since the start of this week.Streets in the port of Manzanillo were underwater, coastal communities flooded and roads blocked due to fallen trees and washouts after Jova, now a tropical depression, hit the coast as a Category Two hurricane late on Tuesday.Manzanillo, Mexico’s busiest port for cargo, remained closed to traffic despite the storm easing. Some streets in the city were under 3 feet (1 meter) of water.”The streets of Manzanillo are impassable, as are the highways connecting Manzanillo with the south of Jalisco,” national Red Cross coordinator Isaac Oxenhaut said.Highways leading northwest from Manzanillo along the coast were closed and the beach towns of Zihuatlan, Melaque and Barra de Navidad were swamped with floodwaters, the Red Cross said.In the village of Jose Maria Morelos northwest of the port, a woman and her son died when a deluge of mud hit their home.”I think they asphyxiated,” Alfredo Juan de Dios, 65, said of his sister-in-law Marisol and her young son Juan Pablo after the mud brought down a wall of their house, trapping them. “I have never seen rain like this. It’s caused mayhem,” he added.Outside his shattered home, Marisol’s husband wept as rescue workers covered his son’s body with a white sheet.The force of the winds flipped metal roofs off homes and cut power supplies to some 107,000 people in the area.In Melaque, local musician Roberto Orozco said he was forced to abandon his home for higher ground. “I got back to find my stove and my fridge swimming,” said Orozco, 52. “We’re really sad, we lost everything.”With winds that reached 35 mph, Jova was about 20 miles east-south east of Tepic at 2 p.m. PDT (2100 GMT), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.The Miami-based NHC said the center of Jova hit the coast near the town of Chamela in the state of Jalisco, on a stretch dotted with beaches south of tourist resort Puerto Vallarta. Mexico has no major oil installations in the Pacific.PUERTO VALLARTA SPAREDPuerto Vallarta, which suffered bad flooding when hurricane Kenna hit in 2002, was spared from the storm overnight.On Tuesday workers scrambled to fill and stack sandbags to protect the professional beach volleyball courts on Puerto Vallarta’s coast, where events from the Pan American Games are scheduled to be staged this week.The NHC downgraded Jova to a tropical depression and Mexico lifted bad weather warnings south of Manzanillo. The storm will likely dissipate entirely by Friday, but could still cause life-threatening mudslides and floods, the NHC said.Jova could produce up to 12 inches of rainfall over four western Mexican states, with isolated rainfall of up to 20 inches, the hurricane center said.Manzanillo, Mexico’s main point of arrival for cargo containers, has been closed since late on Sunday and about 13 container ships are stuck in the port.The port handles about 750 containers of cargo a month and ships goods including cars, car parts, cattle, minerals and tequila to Asian and North American markets.Farther south, tropical depression Twelve E struck southwest Mexico and Central America, causing flooding and mudslides that have killed 13 people in Guatemala, four in Nicaragua and one in El Salvador since Monday.Rising river levels in the southern Mexican state Tabasco also prompted the evacuation of 75,000 people.The depression weakened on Wednesday, prompting the Mexican government to end a tropical storm warning from Barra de Tonala southeastward to the Mexico-Guatemala border, the NHC said.With winds of 35 miles per hour, the depression will probably dissipate later on Wednesday, the center said. It could produce rainfall of 5 to 10 inches in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas and parts of Guatemala — and as much as 15 inches in some areas, the NHC said.
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12 10 / 2011
Hurricane Jova hits key Mexican port, kills two
While Jova ravaged the coast, a tropical depression farther to the southeast prompted thousands of evacuations in Mexico as well as flooding and mudslides that have killed 18 in Central America since the start of this week.Streets in the port of Manzanillo were underwater, coastal communities flooded and roads blocked due to fallen trees and washouts after Jova, now a tropical depression, hit the coast as a Category Two hurricane late on Tuesday.Manzanillo, Mexico’s busiest port for cargo, remained closed to traffic despite the storm easing. Some streets in the city were under 3 feet (1 meter) of water.”The streets of Manzanillo are impassable, as are the highways connecting Manzanillo with the south of Jalisco,” national Red Cross coordinator Isaac Oxenhaut said.Highways leading northwest from Manzanillo along the coast were closed and the beach towns of Zihuatlan, Melaque and Barra de Navidad were swamped with floodwaters, the Red Cross said.In the village of Jose Maria Morelos northwest of the port, a woman and her son died when a deluge of mud hit their home.”I think they asphyxiated,” Alfredo Juan de Dios, 65, said of his sister-in-law Marisol and her young son Juan Pablo after the mud brought down a wall of their house, trapping them. “I have never seen rain like this. It’s caused mayhem,” he added.Outside his shattered home, Marisol’s husband wept as rescue workers covered his son’s body with a white sheet.The force of the winds flipped metal roofs off homes and cut power supplies to some 107,000 people in the area.In Melaque, local musician Roberto Orozco said he was forced to abandon his home for higher ground. “I got back to find my stove and my fridge swimming,” said Orozco, 52. “We’re really sad, we lost everything.”With winds that reached 35 mph, Jova was about 20 miles east-south east of Tepic at 2 p.m. PDT (2100 GMT), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.The Miami-based NHC said the center of Jova hit the coast near the town of Chamela in the state of Jalisco, on a stretch dotted with beaches south of tourist resort Puerto Vallarta. Mexico has no major oil installations in the Pacific.PUERTO VALLARTA SPAREDPuerto Vallarta, which suffered bad flooding when hurricane Kenna hit in 2002, was spared from the storm overnight.On Tuesday workers scrambled to fill and stack sandbags to protect the professional beach volleyball courts on Puerto Vallarta’s coast, where events from the Pan American Games are scheduled to be staged this week.The NHC downgraded Jova to a tropical depression and Mexico lifted bad weather warnings south of Manzanillo. The storm will likely dissipate entirely by Friday, but could still cause life-threatening mudslides and floods, the NHC said.Jova could produce up to 12 inches of rainfall over four western Mexican states, with isolated rainfall of up to 20 inches, the hurricane center said.Manzanillo, Mexico’s main point of arrival for cargo containers, has been closed since late on Sunday and about 13 container ships are stuck in the port.The port handles about 750 containers of cargo a month and ships goods including cars, car parts, cattle, minerals and tequila to Asian and North American markets.Farther south, tropical depression Twelve E struck southwest Mexico and Central America, causing flooding and mudslides that have killed 13 people in Guatemala, four in Nicaragua and one in El Salvador since Monday.Rising river levels in the southern Mexican state Tabasco also prompted the evacuation of 75,000 people.The depression weakened on Wednesday, prompting the Mexican government to end a tropical storm warning from Barra de Tonala southeastward to the Mexico-Guatemala border, the NHC said.With winds of 35 miles per hour, the depression will probably dissipate later on Wednesday, the center said. It could produce rainfall of 5 to 10 inches in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas and parts of Guatemala — and as much as 15 inches in some areas, the NHC said.
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12 10 / 2011
Five major Saudi banks post strong Q3 profits
* Banque Saudi Fransi, SABB Bank miss forecastsBy Asma AlsharifJEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Five major Saudi
banks posted third-quarter net profits, three of which beat
analysts forecasts, citing lower operational costs as well as
increased income from banking fees and investments, the lenders
said on Wednesday.Saudi Arabia’s biggest Islamic Bank, Al Rajhi Bank
posted an 18-percent rise in its third-quarter net profit to 1.9
billion riyals ($506 million) from 1.6 billion, attributing the
rise in profit to higher revenue from banking fees and
investment income.Al Rajhi’s operational profit rose 7.6 percent to 3.2
billion riyals from 2.97 billion riyals a year earlier.Analysts, surveyed by Reuters, had expected the bank to post
an average third-quarter net profit of 1.8 billion riyals.Another lender, Saudi Hollandi Bank saw its
third-quarter net profit more than triple to 299 million riyals
from 85 million, after it lowered its operational costs, the
bank said.Analysts polled by Reuters expected the bank to post, on
average, a third-quarter net profit of 244.5 million riyals.Saudi Hollandi, the kingdom’s oldest bank, had a 5.1 percent
rise in its profit from special commissions to 359.8 million
riyals but its operational profit dropped 0.6 percent to 521
million, it said.Meanwhile, Aljazira Bank tripled its third-quarter
net profit to 66 million riyals, up from 22 million during the
same period a year ago, citing lower operational costs.Five analysts in a Reuters survey expected the bank to post,
on average 55 million riyals in net profit for the third
quarter.SABB Bank posted a 50.4-percent-rise in its
quarterly profits but still missed analyst forecasts. SABB made
a net profit of 630 million riyals in the third-quarter,
compared with 419 million riyals in the same period a year
earlier.The lender cited lower operation costs for its rise in
profits.SABB’s income from special commissions dropped 1.6 percent
to 787 million riyals in the third-quarter from 800 million
riyals in the same period a year earlier, while its operational
profit rose 4.5 percent to 1.2 billion from 1.16 billion, it
said.The fifth bank, Banque Saudi Fransi missed analyst
forecasts after it posted a 22-percent-rise in its quarterly
profit. It made 760 million riyals in the third quarter,
compared with 621 million riyals in the same period a year
earlier.Analysts surveyed by Reuters expected the bank to post a
third-quarter net profit, averaging 766 million riyals.Saudi Fransi’s operational profit rose 7.4 percent to 1.2
billion riyals from 1.1 billion riyals a year earlier and its
profit from special commissions rose 3.9 percent to 808 million
riyals from 778 million riyals.
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