Firefighters have rushed to save trapped residents in Zhanjiang City of south China's Guangdong Province after Typhoon Matmo made landfall in the area.
Matmo, the 21st named storm of the 2025 Pacific typhoon season, made landfall along the eastern coast of Xuwen County, Zhanjiang City in south China's Guangdong Province around 14:50 on Sunday. And the typhoon made its second landfall along the coast of Fangchenggang City in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region at around 01:10 Monday.
Starting from noon on Sunday, the wind and rain in Zhanjiang began to gradually intensify.
At around 12:00, the local fire department received an call saying that two elderly people were trapped in Chiqian Village of Leizhou City. The firefighters arrived at the village as soon as possible and helped the two elderly people put on raincoats. Then they protected the elderly people from the wind and rain with their bodies. Eventually, they escorted the two elderly onto the fire trucks and transferred them to a safe location.
At noon on Sunday, the roof of a civilian house in Leizhou was blown off by the typhoon, and there were people inside who urgently needed to be evacuated. The firefighters rushed to the scene and found three children. They put raincoats on the children and carried them to a safe area in the howling wind and rain.
Typhoon Matmo is expected to move in a west-northwest direction in the future, bringing heavy rainfall to Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and some other places.
The Central Meteorological Observatory continued to issue a yellow alert for heavy rain and a blue alert for typhoons on Monday morning.
According to the meteorological departments, Typhoon Matmo brought strong winds and rain to areas including western Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Guangxi on Sunday. Although the typhoon is expected to weaken in the future, it will still bring heavy rainfall to Yunnan, Guizhou, and some other provinces. Those regions should remain vigilant against possible secondary disasters caused by heavy rain due to the complex geological conditions.
Firefighters rescue flood-trapped residents as Typhoon Matmo hits south China
The United Arab Emirates' decision to withdraw from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) signals a broader strategic recalibration as the Gulf producer seeks to diversify its energy export routes and reduce vulnerability to regional chokepoints, according to a Middle East affairs expert.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced Tuesday it will withdraw from OPEC, marking the end of its decades-long alignment with the cartel.
Against this backdrop, the UAE is actively exploring alternative logistics pathways to safeguard its energy exports. A key focus is developing overland connections to bypass the strategically sensitive Strait of Hormuz.
"The UAE's primary energy loading and unloading ports are currently located in the Gulf region, within the Strait of Hormuz. However, given the increasingly uncertain security situation around the Strait of Hormuz, the UAE has gradually come to realize that its existing transportation system -- which relies on transit through the Strait of Hormuz to connect with international energy markets -- will be difficult to sustain over the long term. Consequently, the UAE hopes to establish overland connections linking its main inland energy production areas with the Fujairah Port, where crude oil can be loaded onto vessels for export to international energy markets," said Wang Jin, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Northwest University in China.
While the strategic rationale is clear, implementation faces significant hurdles. Wang noted that infrastructure constraints could limit the effectiveness of this pivot, particularly given the UAE's ambitious production targets.
"However, this strategy involves two key challenges. First, the existing overland pipeline infrastructure cannot fully meet the UAE's so-called energy transport capacity requirements. According to current UAE projections, the country's average daily energy production may reach approximately 5 million barrels in the future. Yet the transport capacity of the existing pipelines falls far short of this anticipated volume. Therefore, the UAE must consider how to further expand the capacity of its overland energy pipeline network in the future, and whether new pipelines should be constructed to connect with the Fujairah Port," he said.
Beyond pipeline capacity, long-term success hinges on port infrastructure and sustainable financing -- questions that remain unresolved as the UAE weighs its next moves, according to Wang.
"More importantly, as the Fujairah Port -- a deep-water port -- gains increasing strategic significance, the UAE must also consider whether the port should be expanded and its capacity upgraded to accommodate more vessels for loading and unloading energy-related products. Thus, for the UAE, critical questions remain: how to develop effective planning, how to advance infrastructure construction, and where to secure funding for related projects. Consequently, although the UAE currently has proposals to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, whether and when these plans can be realized will likely require a long and complex process ahead," he said.
UAE's OPEC exit reflects strategic shift amid energy security concerns: expert
