Thirty-two people died in two separate accidents in China yesterday in a rural area explosion and a construction accident.
In the first of the incidents, a blast occurred at 1:12am in the village of Donggancheng, Henan Province, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Fifteen people died and nine were injured,” an official with the Henan provincial work safety bureau said, speaking by telephone and giving only his surname, Huang.
While rescue work had already been completed by noon yesterday, investigations were launched into why the tragedy took place.
DETONATORS
One report from Xinhua suggested the explosion was related to illegal storage of detonators, adding that police were targeting unidentified people suspected of having broken safety regulations.
Explosives are widely available in the Chinese countryside, where they are used for construction work, and deadly accidents happen frequently.
In the day’s second serious incident, 17 people died after a construction elevator crashed to the ground on a building site.
The accident happened at about 7:30am in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, state media and officials said.
“Sixteen people died when the lift crashed and two were seriously injured,” an official at the Changsha work safety bureau surnamed Guan said.
“One of the two injured later died in hospital,” Guan said.
He said the cause of the accident was still under investigation.
China has experienced a construction boom in recent years and new buildings continue to be erected at a brisk pace despite the global economic crisis.
DEADLY RECORD
China’s work safety record is notorious and thousands of people die every year in mines, factories and on construction sites, official sources indicate.
Partial data from the State Administration of Work Safety showed that 1,942 died in large work-related accidents in the period from Jan. 1 to Dec. 14.
The administration said 99 people lost their lives on construction sites over the period, while it did not give a figure for deaths caused by explosions.
The figures are likely to amount to a drastic understatement of the real extent of safety problems at Chinese work places, as they do not include fatalities from smaller incidents.
Official data also gives an overly rosy picture because many accidents are covered up by local officials worried that they may be punished for flawed supervision.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
RSS