Philippines

The Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare confirmed the cases, which brought the total number of infections in nationals studying in the Philippines at 18.

The results came from the first of three rounds of testing which people waiting for repatriation flights must undertake.

The first of three flights from the Philippines is scheduled for today.

A spokesperson for the government said the infected students and their contacts would now be rescheduled for a third flight next month.

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said this now brought to 12 the number of students who had contracted the coronavirus there.

All had been asymptomatic.

The latest six are from a group of 144 students scheduled to be on one of two repatriation flights next week.

They had undergone the first of three tests before the flight.

The Solomon Star newspaper reported the results were received by the government on Tuesday.

Sogavare said students who had tested negative were staying in two hotels while waiting for repatriation flights on 27 and 29 September.

The patient was a 44-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan, in Hubei province, where the virus was first detected.

He appeared to have been infected before arriving in the Philippines, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

More than 300 people have died in the outbreak so far, the vast majority from Hubei. More than 14,000 people have been infected.

The US, Australia and an increasing number of other countries have barred the arrival of foreigners from China and are requiring their own citizens to be quarantined.

Typhoon Phanfone, also known as Ursula, carried gusts of close to 190km/h (118 mph) and made landfall several times across various islands, officials say.

Tens of thousands of people were left stranded in ports as they tried to make their way home for Christmas.

Phanfone struck close to regions devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

More than 6,000 people were killed in November that year, making it the Philippines' deadliest storm.

With winds of more than 310km/h, it was the most powerful storm to ever make landfall.

At least 25 people are known to have died but blocked roads and downed communications lines mean the true impact on rural areas is not yet clear.

Extensive crop damage is feared in the agricultural province of Cagayan.

The storm, which packs a 900km (550 mile) rain band and strong winds, is heading towards southern China.

It poses a "severe threat" to Hong Kong, the territory's observatory said, urging residents to stay on high alert.

 Almost all buildings in the city of Tuguegarao sustained some damage, a government official said, and communications were down in places.

However, there were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.

More than four million people are directly in the path of the storm, with sustained winds of 185km/h (115mph).

Thousands were evacuated amid warnings of 6m (20ft) storm surges.

The typhoon is forecast to barrel toward China across the weekend.

The deadliest storm on record in the country was Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, which killed more than 7,000.

Storm Tembin brought flash flooding and mudslides to parts of Mindanao island.

Two towns badly hit were Tubod and Piagapo, where a number of homes were buried by boulders.

Tembin, with winds of up to 80km/h (50 mph), has passed across Mindanao and reached the resort islands of Palawan, and will now move further west.

The Philippines suffers regularly from deadly tropical storms, although Mindanao is not often hit.

Last week French drug company Sanofi announced its vaccine could worsen the potentially deadly disease in people not previously infected.

The public immunization programme was suspended on Friday.

Dengue fever affects more than 400 million people each year around the world.

The mosquito-borne disease is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in some Asian and Latin American countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The death toll in a battle over the southern city of Marawi, 800 kilometres south of Manila, has reached more than 100, including 18 civilians.

Among the civilians killed, eight were men were believed to have been executed and then thrown into a ravine along a highway.

The eight dead men, most of them shot in the head and some with hands tied behind their backs, were labourers who were stopped by Islamic State-linked militants on the outskirts of Marawi City while trying to flee clashes, according to police.

 Details of the creature, which can reach up to 1.55m (5ft) in length and 6cm (2.3in) in diameter, were published in a US science journal.

The giant shipworm spends its life encased in a hard shell, submerged head-down in mud, which it feeds on.

Though its existence has been known for years, no living specimen had been studied until now.

Despite its name it is actually a bivalve, which is the same group as clams and mussels.