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Summer Storms Hit 119 Million
Deaths from storms and floods across China this summer have reached nearly 700, the state-run news media said. The floods have affected 119 million people, the Xinhua news agency said, with farmers bearing the brunt of the casualties and damage. The Red Cross opened an emergency appeal for aid for those left homeless, and, though summer storms are an annual threat, called the flooding the worst to hit China in a decade. “The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are increasing,” Dong Wenjie, the director of the state Climate Center, said on its Web site. “Records for worst-in-a-century rainstorms, droughts and heat waves are being broken more often. This, in fact, is closely associated with global warming.” Forecasters said torrential rain was likely to hit parts of the southwestern provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan as well as Hubei in the coming days.