Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) traveled to remote quake-hit northwestern China yesterday to inspect relief efforts as rescuers struggled to cope with a disaster that has killed more than 1,400 people.
The Chinese leader, who cut short a trip to Latin America to oversee the emergency response, went to visit victims in Jiegu, the largest city in the shattered region, four days after it was hit by a magnitude 6.9 quake.
Hu on Saturday chaired a meeting of China’s top leaders, urging all-out efforts for the quake response, the Xinhua news agency reported.
PHOTO: AFP
“As long as we have hope, we will put 100 percent into the rescue work,” Miao Chonggang (苗崇鋼), an emergency official at the China Earthquake Administration, told a news briefing.
More than 6,000 people have been pulled alive from the rubble of collapsed buildings, Miao said. The number of personnel aiding rescue and recovery operations on the Tibetan Plateau had risen to 15,000, he said.
On Jiegu’s streets, boxes of bottled water were dropped to help residents cope with water shortages as aid continued to pour in.
Infrastructure in Jiegu suffered major damage in the quake, with the water supply “basically paralyzed,” Xia Xueping (夏雪萍), spokesman for relief efforts, told a news briefing in the town.
Geng Yang, the head of the civil affairs bureau in Qinghai Province, told reporters that essential items such as food, drinking water, cold-weather tents, quilts and clothing remained in short supply in the isolated area.
Officials have warned of a growing disease threat because of sanitation risks including damage to water supplies that could leave them polluted, although no such outbreaks had yet been reported.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who Beijing considers a separatist and was born in Qinghai Province, has appealed to the Chinese authorities to allow him to visit the quake zone, where more than 12,000 people were injured and 100,000 left homeless.
In Jiegu, residents were talking excitedly about the possibility of the Tibetan spiritual leader visiting for the first time since he fled after a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.
“Everyone would like to see the Dalai Lama come here. He should come here,” said 52-year-old Dorje, who like many Tibetans goes by one name, as he circled a local temple in a daily prayer ritual.
“The Dalai Lama was born in Qinghai,” he said with a smile. “I think the government will allow him to come home.”
However, it appeared unlikely Beijing would allow the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader to visit the crippled area to comfort victims in person.
The Dalai Lama praised the official response to the disaster, “especially Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), who has not only personally offered comfort to the affected communities, but has also overseen the relief work.”
Tibetan Buddhist monks wearing maroon-and-saffron robes have been a prominent part of the rescue effort, digging by hand in search of survivors after the quake pancaked traditional mud and wood homes.
Monks cremated hundreds of victims on Saturday as hopes dimmed of finding further survivors and fears of disease spread. The official toll stood at 1,484 dead and more than 300 missing.
Naked, bloodied and bruised corpses were piled on a massive funeral pyre outside Jiegu on the remote Tibetan plateau and lit by chanting Buddhist monks.
The scale of the calamity and fears of disease forced a break from traditional Tibetan “sky burials” in which corpses are left on mountaintops to decompose or be consumed by vultures.
Beijing has offered families 8,000 yuan (US$1,170) for each relative who died in the quake.
Health authorities in the quake zone are particularly concerned that marmots who emerged from their burrows after the quake could spread pneumonic plague, Xinhua cited Jie Xuehui, a provincial health official, as saying.
A team of 16 quarantine workers and 10 plague specialists, equipped with disinfection vehicles and medicines and vaccines had been deployed, Jie said.
A light snowfall fell on Saturday in the region, where relief efforts have been complicated by sub-zero temperatures at night and scant oxygen because of the altitude of about 4,000m.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS