CHINA
Quake losses hit US$75m
The strong earthquake that hit northwest China last week, killing at least 148 people, caused economic losses estimated to be worth tens of millions in the agricultural and fisheries industries, state media said on Saturday. Officials in Gansu Province conducted preliminary assessments that showed the province’s agricultural and fisheries industries have lost 532 million yuan (US$75 million), state broadcaster China Central Television reported. Authorities were considering the best use of the relief fund, set up days before, for the agricultural sector to resume production as soon as possible, the report said. The magnitude 6.2 quake struck in a mountainous region on Monday last week between Gansu and Qinghai provinces. More than 14,000 homes were destroyed. During a visit on Saturday to several villages in Gansu and a county in Qinghai, Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強) urged authorities to improve living conditions for the survivors of the quake by every available method, the Xinhua News Agency reported. China Global Television Network, the Chinese state broadcaster’s international arm, on Friday night said that the first batch of 500 temporary housing units had been built for residents in Meipo, a village in Gansu. Many had spent nights in shelters set up in the area as temperatures plunged below freezing.
UNITED STATES
Double uterus twins born
An Alabama woman with a rare congenital anomaly that results in her having two uteri gave birth to healthy twin girls earlier this week. Kelsey Hatcher and husband Caleb welcomed Roxi Layla on Tuesday night and her sister Rebel Laken on Wednesday morning at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, the mother of five wrote on Instagram. “Our miracle babies were born! They decided they were rare enough statistically that they should just go ahead and have their own birthdays too,” Hatcher wrote. She has a double uterus and was pregnant with a baby on each side, a rare pregnancy known as a dicavitary pregnancy that has a one in a million chance of occurring. “Two babies in two uteri were a true medical surprise,” Hatcher’s obstetrician, Shweta Patel, said in a hospital news release. Hatcher’s pregnancy was considered high risk and she was induced at 39 weeks. After a combined 20 hours of labor, the two girls were born. Although a typical twin pregnancy is defined by two babies in one uterus, Richard Davis, the physician who comanaged the pregnancy, said it is “safe to call the girls fraternal twins.”
UNITED STATES
Dixie Chicks founder dies
Laura Lynch, a founding member of the country band Dixie Chicks, died in a head-on car crash on a Texas highway, law enforcement said on Saturday. “We are shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of Laura Lynch,” the band, which renamed themselves The Chicks in 2020, wrote on social media. “Laura was a bright light … her infectious energy and humor gave a spark to the early days of our band,” the band said. Lynch cofounded the group in 1989 along with musicians Robin Lynn Macy and sisters Martie and Emily Erwin. The Chicks said Lynch was “instrumental” to the band’s early success. Lynch was the Dixie Chicks’ bassist and at one point the main vocalist. She left the group in 1995. Originally founded as a bluegrass band, the Dixie Chicks released their major label debut Wide Open Spaces in 1998, selling “more CDs than all other country music groups combined,” and earning their first Grammy Award, according to the awards’ Web site.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
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