Evacuation from South Korea jamboree begins
Buses began moving thousands of global scouts from their campsite on South Korea's coast to inland venues on Tuesday ahead of a tropical storm that is forecast to bring intense rains and strong winds to the peninsula within days. More than 1,000 vehicles are being used to move 37,000 scouts – mostly teenagers – from the World Scout Jamboree that opened last week in Buan, a county on South Korea’s southwestern coast. Most will be accommodated in Seoul and the capital's metropolitan area, where officials have secured university dormitories, government and corporate training centres, and hotels. More than 460 members of the Scout Association of Hong Kong attended the jamboree. The association has said arrangements are being made to move them to a safe location and return them to the SAR as soon as possible. Tropical Storm Khanun has meandered around Japan's southwestern islands for more than a week, dumping heavy rain, knocking out power and damaging homes. Early Tuesday morning, the storm was centred 350 kilometres south of Kagoshima, a city on the southwestern tip of Japan’s main southern island of Kyushu. Khanun had winds of 108 kph, with gusts to 144 kph, and was moving slowly north, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. South Korea’s weather agency, which measured the storm at typhoon strength of 126 kph, expected it to gain strength slightly before making landfall on the Korean Peninsula on Thursday morning. Evacuating the scouts from the coastal campsite is expected to take six hours or more. Hot temperatures have already forced thousands of British and American scouts to leave the site. The British scouts, about 4,500, were transferred to hotels in Seoul while the American scouts, numbering about 1,000, were moved to Camp Humphreys, a major US military base 70 kilometres south of Seoul. “This is the first time in more than 100 years of World Scout Jamborees that we have had to face such compounded challenges,” said Ahmad Alhendawi, secretary general of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement.  “It’s disappointing that these adverse weather conditions have forced us to shift our plans.” (AP)