Police have arrested 13 people involved with a crowded nightclub where fireworks sparked a blaze and stampede that killed at least 43 people and injured 88, state media and officials said.
The detainees included Wang Jing (王靜), the legal representative of the unlicensed King of the Dancers club in the Longgang district of the city of Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, the state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted police as saying yesterday.
Wang fled the scene when the fire broke out late on Saturday but turned himself in on Sunday after the general manager, vice general manager, safety officer, technician and performers were detained, the report said.
An initial police investigation showed that the blaze was triggered by fireworks ignited during the show in the club with a capacity of 380 people, on the third floor of a marketplace, Xinhua said.
Many partygoers were hurt in a stampede to escape down “a narrow aisle,” the agency quoted a club staff member as saying.
“I saw people rushing out ... and all the lights were off,” it quoted Yang Zhi (楊智) as saying.
Xinhua said Yang suffered burns to his neck.
Video footage aired on Sunday by Hong Kong’s ATV news showed the smoke-filled nightclub after the fire. Overturned tables, broken glass and shoes lost by partygoers littered the floor.
Guangdong Province Governor Huang Huahua (黃華華) blamed poor ventilation for the deaths.
“There was something wrong with the architectural design,” Huang told Hong Kong media after inspecting the nightclub.
“If there was a better ventilation system, there wouldn’t be so many deaths in the fire,” Huang said.
ATV said the nightclub had no windows and only one exit.
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
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS