MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Rescuers in the central Philippines counted at least 100 dead and many more injured Saturday a day after one of the most powerful typhoons on record ripped through the region, wiping away buildings and leveling seaside homes in massive storm surges, then headed for Vietnam.

With communications and roads still cut off, Capt. John Andrews, deputy director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, said he had received "reliable information" by radio from his staff that more than 100 bodies were lying in the streets of Tacloban on hardest-hit Leyte Island. It was one of five islands where Typhoon Haiyan slammed Friday.

Regional military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda said that the casualty figure "probably will increase," after viewing aerial photographs of the widespread devastation caused by the typhoon.

Civil aviation authorities in Tacloban, about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Manila, reported that the seaside airport terminal was "ruined" by storm surges, Andrews said.

Cabinet Secretary Rene Almendras, a senior aide to President Benigno Aquino III, said that the number of casualties could not be immediately determined, but that the figure was "probably in that range" given by Andrews. Government troops were helping recover bodies, he said.

U.S. Marine Col. Mike Wylie, who surveyed the damage in Tacloban prior to possible American assistance, said that the damage to the runway was significant. Military planes were still able to land with relief aid.

Typhoon Haiyan Blasts the Philippines Play video."

"The storm surge came in fairly high and there is significant structural damage and trees blown over," he told the AP. Wylie is a member of the U.S.-Philippines Military Assistance Group based in Manila.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that America stood ready to help.

Joseph de la Cruz, who hitched a ride on a military plane from Tacloban back to Manila, said he had counted at least 15 bodies.

"A lot of the dead were scattered," he said, adding that he walked for about eight hours to reach the Tacloban airport.

The Philippine television station GMA reported its news team saw 11 bodies, including that of a child, washed ashore Friday and 20 more bodies at a pier in Tacloban hours after the typhoon ripped through the coastal city.

Raw: Over 100 Dead in Philippines TyphoonPlay video."

At least 20 more bodies were taken to a church in nearby Palo town that was used as an evacuation center but had to be abandoned when its roofs were blown away, the TV network reported. TV images showed howling winds peeling off tin roof sheets during heavy rain.

Ferocious winds felled large branches and snapped coconut trees. A man was shown carrying the body of his 6-year-old daughter who drowned, and another image showed vehicles piled up in debris.

Nearly 800,000 people were forced to flee their homes and damage was believed to be extensive. About 4 million people were affected by the typhoon, the national disaster agency said.

Relief workers said they were struggling to find ways to deliver food and other supplies, with roads blocked by landslides and fallen trees.

In western Palawan province, disaster officials said three fishermen died in Coron township after jumping off their anchored boat which was battered by big waves. One fisherman survived.

View gallery."

In this image provided by NOAA Friday Nov. 8, 2013 which was taken at 12:30 a.m. EST shows Typhoon H …

Weather officials said Haiyan had sustained winds of 235 kph (147 mph) with gusts of 275 kph (170 mph) when it made landfall. By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the U.S., nearly in the top category, a 5.

Hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are the same thing. They are just called different names in different parts of the world.

The typhoon's sustained winds weakened Saturday to 163 kph (101 mph) with stronger gusts as it blew farther away from the Philippines toward Vietnam.

Vietnamese authorities in four central provinces began evacuating more than 500,000 people from high risk areas to government buildings, schools and other concrete homes able to withstand strong winds.

"The evacuation is being conducted with urgency and must be completed before 5 p.m.," disaster official Nguyen Thi Yen Linh by telephone from central Danang City, where some 76,000 are being moved to safety.

Hundreds of thousands of others were being taken to shelters in the provinces of Quang Ngai, Quang Nam and Thua Thien Hue. Schools were closed and two deputy prime ministers were sent to the region to direct the preparations.

The typhoon was forecast to make landfall around 10 a.m. Sunday between Danang and Quang Ngai and move up the northeast coast of Vietnam.

---

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez and Kiko Rosario in Manila, and Minh Tran in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report.

Timothy Young had just turned into a gas station in Lordsburg, N.M., at 10 p.m. and was about to fill up his pickup truck when several police cars pulled up behind him. The officers from the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office accused him of failing to use his turn signal, and asked him whether he was using or carrying drugs.

According to a complaint filed Friday in a federal court in New Mexico, what happened next in the October 2012 incident was nothing short of a six-hour nightmare. Young, 31, was forced to strip from the waist down in a public parking lot and then submit his body to an X-ray and anal penetration at a nearby hospital, all under the supervision of peace officers searching for contraband.

The invasive search that Young alleges he was subjected to is not an isolated incident, his lawyers say, and is part of a larger pattern of cops, eager to make drug busts, crossing the line in order to try to uncover drugs and money at all costs.

“They’re really pushing the envelope on these types of searches of people,” said Joe Kennedy, an Albuquerque lawyer who is representing Young.

Complaints about police conducting public full-body cavity and strip searches, sometimes without warrants, have popped up in Texas, Wisconsin and Kansas in recent months, alarming civil rights attorneys and advocates.

In Young’s case, the officers searched his truck with a drug dog, which alerted them that it had detected drugs in the driver’s seat. The police couldn’t find any drugs in the truck, so they ordered Young to drop his pants and underwear in the public parking lot to search him. Then, at 2 a.m., they got a warrant for a body search at the local hospital, where Young was digitally penetrated and X-rayed, according to the complaint.

He was discharged at 4:30 a.m., after cops failed to find contraband in his truck or hidden in his body. He was never arrested or charged with anything throughout the entire ordeal. Later, Gila Medical Center sent him a bill for $600.

Just a few months after Young’s encounter, some of the same officers stopped another man, David Eckert, in a Wal-Mart parking lot for failing to yield at a stop sign. The officers searched his car with a drug dog that alerted them to the smell of drugs. But they couldn’t find any contraband on Eckert or in his vehicle, so they obtained a warrant for a search of his body.

Over the course of 12 hours last January, Eckert was forced to receive an X-ray, CT scan, digital rectal exam, three enemas and a colonoscopy under anesthesia, according to his complaint filed in federal court this week. Eckert says the officers laughed at him at times while he was undergoing the procedures at Gila Regional Medical Center, the same hospital where Young was taken.

Like Young, Eckert was also billed for the procedures — this time for $6,000.

“That’s unbelievable to me,” Kennedy, Eckert’s lawyer, told Yahoo News. Eckert had a previous conviction for methamphetamine possession; Young had no criminal record whatsoever, the lawyer added.

Young and Eckert are suing the officers and the county for violating their constitutional rights, including the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizures under the Fourth Amendment. They argue in a complaint filed in a federal court on Friday that Young was “raped under the color of law” and that the officers’ conduct “shocks the conscience.”

The Hidalgo County Sherriff’s Office declined to comment on the cases, referring Yahoo News to the county’s attorney who did not return a request for comment.

“It’s something we’re quite concerned and often quite horrified at,” said Ezekial Edwards of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s hard to imagine when it would ever be appropriate, absent some personal threat of safety to the officer, for a court to allow these kinds of intrusions like anal cavity searches.”

Edwards linked the searches to the war on drugs and the nation’s record-breaking high incarceration rate, which he says leads some police into a mentality of trying to lock people up even when it means bending the rules.

Policies of “stop and frisk” in large metro areas like New York City have gained in popularity in recent years, meaning police are searching and stopping more people than ever before. The opportunities for abuse, then, are higher.

“You see an increase not to just stops and frisks but the lengths to which law enforcement will go to uncover evidence of drugs,” Edwards said.

In the Eckert and Young cases, police did obtain a warrant to search their bodies, though Kennedy maintains the warrant would, at most, allow them to do a “squat and cough” type anal cavity search, not an X-ray, digital search or colonoscopy.

Laws on strip and body cavity searches vary state by state, but typically a judge must sign off on a warrant for a cavity search to take place. Medical professionals, not police, generally perform them, and they’re usually confined to prison settings, legal experts say. Guards can request a warrant for a cavity search if they have probable cause to believe a prisoner is smuggling contraband into the jail, for example.

But these laws haven’t stopped flagrant abuses.

Last July in Texas, Angel and Ashley Dobbs were stopped by a state trooper while on a road trip to Oklahoma, allegedly for littering. The cops then thought they smelled marijuana in the car, and subjected both women to a genital search on the side of the road. The trooper, who’s since lost her job, did not even change the latex glove she was wearing in between searching the genitals of the women, the women allege. The Dobbs, an aunt and niece, settled the case for $185,000.

“It’s embarrassing, it’s humiliating,” said Scott Palmer, the Dobbs’ attorney. “I was proud of them, they didn’t use pseudonyms, but now their names are forever known as victims of this very intimate, nasty search and it happened on video and it’s all over the world.”

The shame associated with the searches may prevent more victims from coming forward, Palmer said.

Six weeks earlier, two other Texas women say they were genitally probed by state troopers near Houston after they were pulled over for speeding and told there was a marijuana smell in their car. Texas’ Department of Public Safety says troopers are prohibited from these types of searches and that there is no policy encouraging them.

Meanwhile, the city of Milwaukee is still defending itself against lawsuits from people who accuse eight officers of illegally searching their genitals and rectum to find drugs and other contraband, going back as far as 2009. At least four officers have lost their jobs in the case, and civil cases are pending. One of the alleged victims was only 15 when he says he was illegally anally probed by an officer.

Tim Lynch, who runs the Project on Criminal Justice for the libertarian Cato Institute, said people who feel they are being searched illegally by officers should be clear that they are not consenting.

“When you’re in the situation all you can do is make it absolutely crystal clear that you’re not consenting to these types of invasive procedures,” he said.

Tacloban (Philippines) (AFP) - One of the most powerful typhoons in history is believed to have killed 1,200 people in the Philippines, the Red Cross Saturday, as rescue workers raced to reach towns devastated by tsunami-like waves.

A day after Super Typhoon Haiyan whipped across the central Philippines with maximum sustained winds of around 315 kilometres (195 miles) an hour, a picture emerged of entire communities having been flattened.

Authorities said that, aside from the ferocious winds, storm surges of up to three metres (10 feet) high that swept into coastal towns and deep inland were responsible for destroying countless homes.

"Imagine a strip one kilometre deep inland from the shore, and all the shanties, everything, destroyed," Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said after visiting coastal towns in Leyte, one of the worst-hit provinces in the east of the archipelago.

"They were just like matchsticks flung inland. All the houses were destroyed."

The official government death toll on Saturday night was 138.

But with rescue workers yet to reach or communicate with many ravaged communities across a 600-kilometre stretch of islands, authorities said they were unable to give a proper assessment of how many people had been killed.

View gallery."

Graphic with detailed map of the central Philippines showing the track of Super Typhoon Haiyan on Fr …

Philippine Red Cross secretary general Gwendolyn Pang said her organisation estimated 1,200 people had died, while a UN official who visited Leyte described apocalyptic scenes.

"This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweed and the streets are strewn with debris," said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the head of a UN disaster assessment coordination team.

"The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami," he said, referring to the 2004 disaster that claimed about 220,000 lives.

Stampa made his comments after arriving in Tacloban, the destroyed capital of Leyte with a population of about 220,000 people.

More than 100 bodies were littered in and around Tacloban's airport, according to the facility's manager.

AFP journalists who arrived in Tacloban on a military aircraft encountered dazed survivors wandering amid the carnage asking for water, while others sorted through what was left of their destroyed homes.

View gallery."

A damaged village hall lies partially collapsed in water in the aftermath of super typhoon Haiyan in …

One resident, Dominador Gullena, cried as he recounted to AFP his escape but the loss of his neighbours.

"My family evacuated the house. I thought our neighbours also did the same, but they didn't," Gullena said.

Eight bodies had been laid to rest inside Tacloban airport's chapel, which had also been badly damaged, according to an AFP photographer.

One woman knelt on the flood-soaked floor of the church while holding the hand of a dead boy, who had been placed on a wooden pew.

Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla reached the fishing town of Palo, about 10 kilometres from Tacloban, by helicopter and said he believed "hundreds" of people had died just in that area.

Pope Francis tweeted his support for the typhoon victims: "I ask all of you to join me in prayer for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda especially those in the beloved islands of the Philippines."

View gallery."

People walk among fallen trees at Tacloban airport in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan in Taclo …

Race to reach decimated communities

Meanwhile, the military, government relief workers and non-government organisations battled to reach communities and deliver desperately needed supplies.

Fifteen thousand soldiers were in the disaster zones and helping in the rescue effort, military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Ramon Zagala told AFP.

Zagala said helicopters were flying rescuers into priority areas, while infantry units deployed across the affected areas were also proceeding on foot or in military trucks.

Haiyan's wind strength, which remained close to 300 kilometres an hour throughout Friday, made it the strongest typhoon in the world this year and one of the most intense ever recorded.

It exited into the South China Sea on Saturday and tracked towards Vietnam, where more than 200,000 people crammed into storm shelters.

Philippine authorities had expressed confidence on Friday that only a few people had been killed, citing two days of intense preparation efforts led by President Benigno Aquino.

Nearly 800,000 people in danger zones had been moved to evacuation centres, while thousands of boats across the archipelago were ordered to remain secured at ports. Hundreds of flights were also cancelled.

Aquino said on Saturday night it appeared some communities had not heeded the warnings.

"I hesitate to say this, but it seems that Tacloban was not that prepared, shall we say, compared with other areas," he told reporters in Manila.

An average of 20 major storms or typhoons, many of them deadly, batter the Philippines each year as they emerge from the Pacific Ocean.

The Philippines suffered the world's strongest storm of 2012, when Typhoon Bopha left about 2,000 people dead or missing on the southern island of Mindanao.

Haiyan is expected to make landfall in central Vietnam early Sunday, with millions of people thought to be in its path.

Authorities have begun mass evacuations in at least four central coastal provinces, Vietnam's state-run VNExpress news site said, as the country was put on high alert.


Photos: Storm, surge leave Philippines reeling

Evidence of Typhoon Haiyan is everywhere for those who take to the streets to assess the damage.
See the images

A mother and juvenile bottlenose dolphin. (AFP Photo/)"

Washington (AFP) - The deadliest known outbreak of a measles-like virus in bottlenose dolphins has killed a record number of the animals along the US Atlantic coast since July, officials said Friday.

A total of 753 bottlenose dolphins have washed up from New York to Florida from July 1 until November 3, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

That is more than 10 times the number of dolphins that would typically turn up dead along East Coast beaches, said Teri Rowles, program coordinator of the NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program.

"Historic averages for this same time frame, same geographic area is only 74, so you get an idea of the scope," she told reporters.

The death toll is also higher than the more than 740 strandings in the last major Atlantic morbillivirus outbreak in 1987-1988.

And they have come in a much shorter time period, leading officials to anticipate this event could get much worse.

"It is expected that the confirmed mortalities will be higher," said Rowles.

"If this plays out similar to the '87-88 die-off, we are less than halfway through that time frame."

The cause of death is morbillivirus, a form of marine mammal measles that is similar to canine distemper and can cause pneumonia, suppressed immune function and brain infections that are usually fatal.

There is no evidence that cetacean morbillivirus can cause disease in people.

However, sick dolphins can also have bacterial or fungal infections that do pose risks to people, so beach-combers are advised not to approach stranded animals but rather to call a local stranding network for help.

The virus spreads among dolphins in close contact.

A handful of washed up humpback whales and pygmy sperm whales have also tested positive for morbillivirus, but scientists have not been able to confirm that morbillivirus was the cause of those deaths since the animals were too decomposed by the time tests could be done.

Rowles said efforts are underway to try and determine if the virus might have been introduced into wild bottlenose dolphins from another species, like humpback whales or pygmy sperm whales.

"There are still a lot of unanswered questions about that," she told reporters.

Among bottlenose dolphins, immunity to the virus has been decreasing, particularly in the younger animals as time has gone by since the last outbreak 25 years ago.

"So we know we had a susceptible population, but just being susceptible alone is not how the outbreaks go," she said.

"We are trying to understand where this virus came from and how it got into the population in which it is now circulating."

Recent tests on three other species that have been found stranded -- spotted dolphins, harp seals and common dolphins -- have all been negative for morbillivirus.

In the meantime, the process of dealing with all the dead carcasses has been "overwhelming," particularly for local recovery teams, said Rowles.

The Virginia Aquarium alone has had to pick up and do necropsies on 333 animals in just a few months' time, said Ann Pabst, co-director of the University of North Carolina Marine Mammal Stranding Program.

"You can imagine that it really does become an all-consuming sort of job," she said.

"They have done heroically well in keeping up."

Five percent of the dolphins have been found alive on the beaches, but died soon after, NOAA said. The virus has appeared to infect dolphins of all ages, from young to old.

But since the number of dolphins washing up on shore may not represent all of the creatures that are dying, it is difficult to estimate what proportion of the population is sick.

And without a way to vaccinate the wild population, there is little that officials can do but collect the carcasses and continue to study them.

"Currently there is nothing that can be done to prevent the infection from spreading or to prevent animals that get infected from having severe clinical disease," said Rowles.

Virus outbreak threatens bottlenose dolphins

A measles-like disease has killed a record number of the animals along the U.S. Atlantic coast since July.
Could get much worse

By Manuel Mogato

TACLOBAN, Philippines (Reuters) - One of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall devastated the central Philippines, killing more than 1,000 people in one city alone and 200 in another province, the Red Cross estimated on Saturday, as reports of high casualties began to emerge.

A day after Typhoon Haiyan churned through the Philippine archipelago in a straight line from east to west, rescue teams struggled to reach far-flung regions, hampered by washed out roads, many choked with debris and fallen trees.

The death toll is expected to rise sharply from the fast-moving storm, whose circumference eclipsed the whole country and which late on Saturday was heading for Vietnam.

Among the hardest hit was coastal Tacloban in central Leyte province, where preliminary estimates suggest more than 1,000 people were killed, said Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, as water surges rushed through the city.

"An estimated more than 1,000 bodies were seen floating in Tacloban as reported by our Red Cross teams," she told Reuters. "In Samar, about 200 deaths. Validation is ongoing."

She expected a more exact number to emerge after a more precise counting of bodies on the ground in those regions.

Witnesses said bodies covered in plastic were lying on the streets. Television footage shows cars piled atop each other.

"The last time I saw something of this scale was in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami," said Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, head of the U.N. Disaster Assessment Coordination Team sent to Tacloban, referring to the 2004 earthquake and tsunami.

"This is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like tumbleweed and the streets are strewn with debris."

The category 5 "super typhoon" weakened to a category 4 on Saturday, though forecasters said it could strengthen again over the South China Sea en route to Vietnam.

Authorities in 15 provinces in Vietnam have started to call back boats and prepare for possible landslides. Nearly 300,000 people were moved to safer areas in two provinces alone - Da Nang and Quang Nam - according to the government's website.

View gallery."

Helicopters hover over the damaged area after super Typhoon Haiyan battered Tacloban city, central P …

The Philippines has yet to restore communications with officials in Tacloban, a city of about 220,000. A government official estimated at least 100 were killed and more than 100 wounded, but conceded the toll would likely rise sharply.

The national disaster agency has yet to confirm the toll but broken power poles, trees, bent tin roofs and splintered houses littered the streets of the city about 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila.

"IT WAS LIKE A TSUNAMI"

The airport was nearly destroyed as raging seawaters swept through the city, shattering the glass of the airport tower, leveling the terminal and overturning nearby vehicles.

"Almost all houses were destroyed, many are totally damaged. Only a few are left standing," said Major Rey Balido, a spokesman for the national disaster agency.

Local television network ABS-CBN showed images of looting in one of the city's biggest malls, with residents carting away everything from appliances to suitcases and grocery items.

Airport manager Efren Nagrama, 47, said water levels rose up to four meters (13 ft) in the airport.

"It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport. Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all throughout until the water subsided."

Across the country, about a million people took shelter in 37 provinces after President Benigno Aquino appealed to those in the typhoon's path to leave vulnerable areas.

"For casualties, we think it will be substantially more," Aquino told reporters.

Officials started evacuating residents from low-lying areas, coastlines and hilly villages as early as three days before the typhoon struck on Friday, officials said. But not all headed the call to evacuate.

"I saw those big waves and immediately told my neighbors to flee," said Floremil Mazo, a villager in southeastern Davao Oriental province.

Meteorologists said the impact may not be as strong as feared because the storm was moving so quickly, reducing the risk of flooding and landslides from torrential rain, the biggest causes of typhoon casualties in the Philippines.

Ferry services and airports in the central Philippines remained closed, hampering aid deliveries to Tacloban, although the military said three C-130 transport planes managed to land at its airport on Saturday.

At least two people were killed on the tourist destination island of Cebu, three in Iloilo province and another three in Coron town in southwestern Palawan province, radio reports said.

"I never thought the winds would be that strong that they could destroy my house," LynLyn Golfan of Cebu said in a television interview while sifting through the debris.

By Saturday afternoon, the typhoon was hovering 765 km west of San Jose in southwestern Occidental Mindoro province, packing winds of a maximum 185 kph, with gusts of up to 220 kph.

The storm lashed the islands of Leyte and Samar with 275-kph wind gusts and 5-6 meter (15-19 ft) waves on Friday before scouring the northern tip of Cebu province. It weakened slightly as it moved west-northwest near the tourist island of Boracay, later hitting Mindoro island.

Haiyan was the second category 5 typhoon to hit the Philippines this year after Typhoon Usagi in September. An average of 20 typhoons strike every year, and Haiyan was the 24th so far this year.

Last year, Typhoon Bopha flattened three towns in southern Mindanao, killing 1,100 people and causing damage of more than $1 billion.

(Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco, Manuel Mogato and Karen Lema in Manila and Nguyen Phuong Linh in Hanoi; Editing by Jason Szep and Nick Macfie)

View Gallery

Red Cross: Over 1,200 dead in Philippines