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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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