A torrential flood hit a school in northeast China and swept 64 people to their deaths, while a fire in the country's south raced through the top floors of a hotel and killed 31, state media reported yesterday.
Authorities in Beijing were struggling to handle the twin tragedies thousands of kilometers apart, and trying to overcome faulty communication in the flood zone and vowing to dispatch an emergency team of investigators to the hotel fire.
Friday's flash flood inundated a school in Shalan, a remote town in far northeastern Heilongjiang Province, claiming the lives of 62 students and two villagers, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
TORRENT OF WATER
Some 352 students -- all between 6 and 14 years old -- and 31 teachers were in the school when it was slammed by a torrent of water from heavy rains gushing down a mountain, the agency said.
Information was slowly trickling out of Shalan more than a day after the flood.
Initial reports said that 29 people were killed, and authorities later announced the dramatically higher death toll yesterday afternoon.
Meanwhile, in China's far south, a fire engulfed the top three floors of a hotel, killing 31 people, state media said.
The fire broke out at noon on Friday at the Huanan Hotel in Shantou, a city in Guangdong Province, and swept through the top stories of the four-story building, the reports said.
more bodies
Early dispatches said five people had died, but rescuers found more bodies when they entered the hotel after putting out the fire, Xinhua said. Another 15 people were injured, four of them seriously, the agency said.
It wasn't clear how many people were in the hotel at the time of the blaze, which took three hours to extinguish.
Images on television showed the neighborhood shrouded in heavy gray smoke, and still photographs showed firefighters removing tanks of cooking gas from the hotel.
A firefighter reached by phone yesterday said the cause was still under investigation.
Huanan Hotel is managed by a Hong Kong company, Xinhua said.
SEPARATE: The MAC rebutted Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is China’s province, asserting that UN Resolution 2758 neither mentions Taiwan nor grants the PRC authority over it The “status quo” of democratic Taiwan and autocratic China not belonging to each other has long been recognized by the international community, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday in its rebuttal of Beijing’s claim that Taiwan can only be represented in the UN as “Taiwan, Province of China.” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday at a news conference of the third session at the 14th National People’s Congress said that Taiwan can only be referred to as “Taiwan, Province of China” at the UN. Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory, which is not only history but
NATIONAL SECURITY: The Chinese influencer shared multiple videos on social media in which she claimed Taiwan is a part of China and supported its annexation Freedom of speech does not allow comments by Chinese residents in Taiwan that compromise national security or social stability, the nation’s top officials said yesterday, after the National Immigration Agency (NIA) revoked the residency permit of a Chinese influencer who published videos advocating China annexing Taiwan by force. Taiwan welcomes all foreigners to settle here and make families so long as they “love the land and people of Taiwan,” Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) told lawmakers during a plenary session at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei. The public power of the government must be asserted when necessary and the Ministry of
CROSSED A LINE: While entertainers working in China have made pro-China statements before, this time it seriously affected the nation’s security and interests, a source said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) late on Saturday night condemned the comments of Taiwanese entertainers who reposted Chinese statements denigrating Taiwan’s sovereignty. The nation’s cross-strait affairs authority issued the statement after several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑), Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜) and Michelle Chen (陳妍希), on Friday and Saturday shared on their respective Sina Weibo (微博) accounts a post by state broadcaster China Central Television. The post showed an image of a map of Taiwan along with the five stars of the Chinese flag, and the message: “Taiwan is never a country. It never was and never will be.” The post followed remarks
Proposed amendments would forbid the use of all personal electronic devices during school hours in high schools and below, starting from the next school year in August, the Ministry of Education said on Monday. The Regulations on the Use of Mobile Devices at Educational Facilities up to High Schools (高級中等以下學校校園行動載具使用原則) state that mobile devices — defined as mobile phones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches or other wearables — should be turned off at school. The changes would stipulate that use of such devices during class is forbidden, and the devices should be handed to a teacher or the school for safekeeping. The amendments also say
RSS