CHINA
School collapse kills three
Three children in a kindergarten in a northern town were killed when a classroom building collapsed, state media said. The children died on Saturday after they were rushed to a hospital with severe injuries, Xinhua news agency said. A man who answered the telephone at the local county government of Yongqing in Hebei Province yesterday confirmed the three deaths, but declined to give more details or his name. The China Central Television said another child was injured at the private kindergarten and that police held in custody the person in charge of the facility while investigating the cause of the collapse.
CHINA
Travelers to be punished
Authorities have vowed to severely punish four travelers involved in a hot water air rage assault against a Thai flight attendant following public outrage over their behavior. China National Tourism Administration on Saturday said the incident damaged the nation’s image. A local passenger on Thursday berated a crew member of the budget airline Thai AirAsia before pouring hot water on her during a charter flight from Bangkok to Nanjing. The flight returned to Bangkok and the pilot asked the passenger and three others to disembark. They were reportedly upset over sitting arrangements.
MALAYSIA
Woman caught with drugs
An Australian woman has been arrested after allegedly being caught with 1.5kg of crystal methamphetamine, an official said on Saturday. The woman’s name is yet to be revealed, but Australian media reports said she is a 51-year-old mother of four who was arrested in Kuala Lumpur in transit from Shanghai to Melbourne.
UNITED STATES
Storm roughs up California
Californians were cleaning up on Saturday after a major storm soaked the drought-stricken state before moving east to drop rain on Arizona. Perhaps the biggest job was in Camarillo, about 80km northwest of Los Angeles, where a mudslide made 13 homes uninhabitable on Friday. The debris flowed down a hillside burned by wildfire last year. In South Los Angeles, a rare tornado touched down briefly, triggering cleanup efforts, while in northern California, residents of two trailer parks in Redwood City were bailing floodwaters and in Sonoma County, locals were relieved that the Russian River did not overflow its banks. More rain was forecast to hit the north of the state from yesterday and soak the south from today, though the weather is not expected to equal the strength of Saturday’s storm.
UNITED STATES
School shooter suspect held
A 22-year-old man arrested in connection with a shooting outside an alternative high school in Portland, Oregon, had ties to a gang, as did two of the victims, police said on Saturday. Sergeant Pete Simpson said Lonzo Murphy is a “person of interest” in the Friday shooting, but officers are not prepared to say whether he was the gunman, Simpson said. Authorities are trying to find two other people connected to the shooting near Rosemary Anderson High School. Three were hospitalized, including a 16-year-old girl who was critically wounded, while a fourth person was grazed by a bullet and treated at the scene. Simpson said two male victims have ties to gangs. The victims are students or in affiliated job training programs, authorities say. “The proximity to the school was happenstance, if you will. It doesn’t sound like it had anything to do directly with the school,” Simpson said. Investigators were led to Murphy after receiving information, Simpson said. He was pulled over early on Saturday and arrested on a parole violation. Officers found a handgun “consistent with what we were looking for related to this case,” Simpson said, but officers cannot say yet whether it is tied to the shooting.
UNITED STATES
Bird forces plane landing
A Southwest Airlines jet heading to the Washington area made an emergency landing at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Friday after being struck by a bird. Authorities say the airliner made a safe nighttime landing. Anne Arundel County fire department officials say they were alerted about a plane in distress near Gibson Island in the Chesapeake Bay. The island is about 24km southeast of the airport. Some witnesses told WJZ-TV that they saw a burst of fire from the jet. The airline said the pilot declared an emergency and landed the plane safely. Flight 3118 originated in San Antonio, Texas, and Southwest says it was carrying 142 passengers and a crew of five. The plane has been taken out of service to be inspected.
PUERTO RICO
US$28,000 of chicken stolen
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? For one set of thieves, it was the eggs. Days after police reported that thieves stole nearly half a million eggs from a north coast warehouse, authorities on Saturday reported that 9,072kg of chicken had been stolen elsewhere on the island. The thieves made off with the poultry from a truck parked outside of a warehouse in the central region. Police said the chicken is worth US$28,000. No one has been arrested.
‘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