CHINA
Highway collapse kills 19
A section of a highway collapsed early yesterday in southern China leaving at least 19 people dead, local officials said, after heavy rain in the area in the past few days. Eighteen cars fell down a slope after a 17.9-meter-long section of the highway collapsed, authorities in Meizhou City in Guangdong Province said. The incident occurred at about 2am. Witnesses told local media they heard a loud noise and saw a hole open up several meters wide behind them after driving past the section of the road just before it collapsed. Video and photos in local media showed smoke and fire at the scene, with highway rails slanting downward into the flames. Blackened cars could also be seen on the slope leading down from the highway. Rescue workers have taken 30 people to the hospital, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
VIETNAM
Explosion kills six
Six people were killed and seven injured in an explosion at a timber factory in southern Vietnam yesterday, local reports said. The incident occurred at about 8am at the Binh Minh Wood Production Co in Dong Nai province, with the media reporting it was caused by a malfunctioning boiler. “Arriving the site, I saw a horrifying scene: debris scattered everywhere and several bodies lying in the yard,” a witness quoted by news site VNExpress as saying. State media photos of the site — where about 30 employees were working at the time — showed part of the building had collapsed, with the corrugated iron roofing flung to the ground.
CHINA
Virologist allowed into lab
The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China said he was allowed back into his lab after he spent days locked outside, sitting in protest. Virologist Zhang Yongzhen (張永振) early yesterday wrote in an online post that authorities had “tentatively agreed” to allow him and his team to return to his laboratory and continue their research for the time being. Zhang had been staging a sit-in protest outside his lab since the weekend after he and his team were suddenly notified they had to leave their lab, a sign of Beijing’s continuing pressure on scientists conducting research on COVID-19. The Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center previously said Zhang’s lab was being renovated and was closed for safety reasons. However, Zhang said his team was not offered an alternative until after the eviction and the new lab did not meet safety standards for conducting their research.
UNITED KINGDOM
Migrant sent to Rwanda
Britain has sent a first asylum seeker to Rwanda as part of a controversial but voluntary scheme for irregular migrants whose applications have been rejected, British media reported on Tuesday. The government last week adopted a highly criticized law allowing irregular migrants to be deported to Rwanda. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government plans to begin the expulsions by July. However, the man who left the UK on Monday had agreed to be sent to Kigali following his asylum rejection at the end of last year, several media said. The African national left on a commercial flight, they said. In exchange for his agreement to leave Britain, he is due to receive up to ￡3,000 (US$3,746), according to government sources quoted by the Times. The Home Office did not confirm the reports. “We are now able to send asylum seekers to Rwanda under our migration and economic development partnership,” a government spokesperson said.
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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