A New Zealand couple whose 2-year-old triplets were killed last year in a mall fire in Qatar’s capital is celebrating the birth of twins.
Martin Weekes said Poppy, a girl, and Parker, a boy, were born on Wednesday by Cesarean section at 36 weeks. He said his wife, Jane, and the twins are healthy and hope to return home from Auckland’s North Shore Hospital next week.
He said he and Jane had mixed emotions about having more children after the deaths of Lillie, Jackson and Willsher in May last year.
‘DIFFICULT DECISION’
“It wasn’t a difficult decision based around the fact that Jane and I really love being parents,” he said. “But it was obviously a difficult decision in that you can never replace the children that you had and you never want to. You keep thinking, ‘Am I doing the right thing for Lillie, Jackson and Willsher?’”
Nineteen people died in the Doha blaze. Thirteen of the victims, including the triplets, were children attending a daycare center.
Investigators blamed faulty wiring. Qatar in June convicted five people over the fire, including one of the country’s diplomats, Sheik Ali Bin Jasim Thani Al Thani, and his wife.
The couple co-owned the daycare center. All of those convicted are currently free on appeal.
Weekes said he found it difficult to understand why they are not in jail.
“One of the prime defendants is still acting as Qatar’s ambassador to the European Union,” he said. “It’s frustrating, and difficult that we have to go through this again at the retrial.”
GOOD WISHES
However Weekes, 47, said he is focusing on the good wishes he has been getting from people around the world.
He said he found it particularly emotional when he first held the twins against his bare chest with a blanket over them.
It reminded him of a similar moment he shared with the triplets and he said he wept as he realized his dead children would never get to meet the new babies.
Weekes said the twins are getting to meet his three teenage children from an earlier marriage.
“Jane and I are overwhelmed with the human kindness of people in New Zealand and around the world, how happy they are for us,” he said. “It’s just amazing.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in