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.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
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