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.
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
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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
RSS