With billboards, tweets, Philippines thanks world for typhoon aid

Terra Daily via AFP: The Philippines said "Thank you" on billboards around the world Saturday in gratitude for the massive outpouring of international help after a typhoon that killed about 8,000 people three months ago.

Electronic billboards lit up with "Thank you" signs at New York's Times Square, Galeries Lafayette in Paris, Tokyo's Shibuya Crossing, London's Piccadilly Circus and five other cities at 2040 GMT Friday, exactly three months after Super Typhoon Haiyan struck the central Philippines.

"The number of lives lost and affected is unprecedented. But ever since then, the world has been one with the Philippines in helping rebuild the nation," the tourism ministry behind the ad and social media campaign said on its website.

"The Philippines wants to say a big thank you to everyone who are helping us rebuild after Typhoon Haiyan," the ministry said on its official Twitter page, where it later posted the billboard pictures.

Haiyan, one of the strongest typhoons ever to hit land, smashed across 171 towns and cities in the central islands with a combined land area the size of Portugal, wrecking the homes of more than four million people....

Typhoon Haiyan viewed from the International Space Station