China is investigating whether rescue efforts following a landslide that killed at least 260 people were hampered by corrupt local officials trying to hide the true death toll, state press said yesterday.
The disaster occurred on Sept. 8 in the northern province of Shanxi when a mining tailings pond burst, swamping a village of 1,000 people in a torrent of mud and sludge.
A total of 260 bodies have been recovered in the town of Taoshi, with another 10 people missing, the latest official accounts in the state-run press said.
Local officials are suspected of “deliberately concealing” the discovery of 51 of those bodies amid initial rescue efforts to keep the death count down, the China Daily reported, quoting the national work-safety administration.
Local authorities had deliberately failed to record the deaths, as required, before letting grieving family members take away the corpses, the report said.
The concealment “could have led to a delay in proper rescue operations,” it quoted Huang Yi (黃毅), spokesman for the State Administration of Work Safety, as saying.
Huang also pointed to corrupt practices by local authorities for allowing the tailings pond, which was used by an unlicensed mine above the village, to exist.
“What had the local authorities been doing while such an [illegal] mine functioned right under their noses? Investigation on possible corruption is a must,” the China Daily quoted him as saying.
State media last week quoted Minister of Work Safety Wang Jun (王君) saying “several hundred” people were thought still buried in the mud.
However, later reports have said rescuers had already combed through nearly all of the affected area.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WAR: Ursula von der Leyen said that Europe was in Kyiv because ‘it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake. It’s Europe’s destiny’ A dozen leaders from Europe and Canada yesterday visited Ukraine’s capital to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion in a show of support for Kyiv by some of its most important backers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the visitors greeted at the railway station by Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha and the president’s chief of staff Andrii Yermak. Von der Leyen wrote on social media that Europe was in Kyiv “because Ukraine is in Europe.” “In this fight for survival, it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is
RSS