Bidens Host Final Halloween Trick-or-treat Event. First Lady Comes as Giant Panda

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden in a giant panda costume, host the annual Halloween celebration at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden in a giant panda costume, host the annual Halloween celebration at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
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Bidens Host Final Halloween Trick-or-treat Event. First Lady Comes as Giant Panda

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden in a giant panda costume, host the annual Halloween celebration at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden in a giant panda costume, host the annual Halloween celebration at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

US President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, who dressed as a giant panda, hosted trick-or-treaters on the White House South Lawn on Wednesday for the last time.
The first lady had participated in the National Zoo's announcement earlier this year that pandas would be returning to Washington. They arrived in the nation's capital in mid-October and Jill Biden donned the panda suit Wednesday as a “welcoming gesture,” the White House said.
Jill Biden added an educational theme to the event and named it “Hallo-Read” to help encourage reading. She has been a teacher for 40 years. Earlier Wednesday, she read a short story about spooky pumpkins to a group of costumed children gathered on the lawn, The Associated Press reported.
She and the president later ventured outside at sunset and spent about an hour handing out treats. Biden, in a suit and tie, dropped boxes of White House Hershey's Kisses chocolates in the kids' tote bags while the first lady handed out copies of “10 Spooky Pumpkins.”
Up to 8,000 people, including students and children tied to the military, were expected to pass through the White House gates during the day.
A large orange moon and a sign that said “Hallow-Read at the White House” decorated the south face of the executive mansion. The decorations also included cardboard representations of Willow, the family cat who is rarely seen in public, and stacks of books. Giant pumpkin decorations flanked the door.
Biden dropped his bid for reelection in July. He leaves office in January.



China’s ‘Hawaii’ under Water as Tropical Storm Dumps Record Rainfall

People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
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China’s ‘Hawaii’ under Water as Tropical Storm Dumps Record Rainfall

People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)
People and vehicles move through a waterlogged road in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Oct. 28, 2024. (EPA/ Xinhua / Zhao Yingquan)

For a third day, extreme rainfall pounded the southern Chinese province of Hainan, known as China's "Hawaii", amid the transit of yet another tropical cyclone, leaving the island half-submerged in a year of record-breaking wet weather.

Cities in Hainan including Sanya, famed for its palm trees, seafront hotels and sandy beaches, remained waterlogged on Tuesday due to Tropical Storm Trami to the south. On Monday, Sanya logged 294.9mm (11.6 inches) of rainfall over a 24-hour window, the most for any day in October since 2000.

Trami made landfall in central Vietnam on Sunday after a slow trek across the South China Sea from the Philippines, where it left at least 125 people dead and 28 missing. While Hainan did not take a direct hit from Trami, Chinese authorities took no chances, recalling all fishing vessels and evacuating over 50,000 people.

China's entire eastern coastline has been tested by extreme weather events this year - from the violent passage of Super Typhoon Yagi across Hainan in September to the strongest tropical cyclone to strike Shanghai since 1949. Scientists warn more intense weather is in the offing, spurred by climate change.

"In October, the national average precipitation was 6.3% higher than the same period in previous years," Jia Xiaolong, a senior official at the National Climate Centre, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Last week, the water along China's Bohai Sea inexplicably rose up to 160 cm (5.2 feet) in a matter of hours despite the absence of any wind, leading to a tidal surge that flooded the streets of Tianjin and many cities in the northern provinces of Hebei and Liaoning.

"It's hard to imagine how much power was needed to push such a large area of sea water to one place," Fu Cifu, an official at the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Centre, told state-run Xinhua news agency at the time.

China is historically no stranger to floods, but its prevention infrastructure and emergency response planning are coming under increasing pressure as record rains flood populous cities, ravage crops and disrupt local economies.

Amid disaster recovery efforts this summer, authorities had to provide billions of dollars in additional funding to support reconstruction in multiple regions from the south to the northeast of China.

In July, the country suffered 76.9 billion yuan ($10.8 billion) in economic losses from natural disasters, with 88% of those losses caused by heavy rains and floods from Typhoon Gaemi, the most for the month of July since 2021.