CHINA
Gas blast kills at least 12
At least 12 people were killed and nearly 140 injured yesterday, when a gas line explosion ripped through a residential compound in Hubei Province at about 6:30am, local officials said. Rescue efforts were continuing, the disaster management bureau in the city of Shiyan said in a statement, although it was unclear how many people might still be trapped under the debris. Videos filmed by witnesses and verified by Beijing News show several buildings reduced to rubble and rescue workers carrying shocked survivors on stretchers. The blast ripped through one of the city’s vegetable markets that was filled with shoppers and local residents eating breakfast, an eyewitness told the Global Times. “I heard a loud bang and immediately ducked under the table, thinking it was an earthquake,” a man who owns a small restaurant near the explosion site told the newspaper.
SYRIA
Shells hit hospital, 18 dead
Shelling of the rebel-held city of Afrin on Saturday killed at least 18 people, many of them when a hospital was hit, a war monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that a doctor, three hospital staff, two women and two children died at al-Shifaa Hospital in the city which is held by Turkish-backed rebels. A rebel commander also died at the hospital, the observatory said, adding that 23 people were injured. “The shelling targeted several areas of the town and hit the hospital,” observatory director Rami Abdel Rahmane said. “Most of the victims died in shelling on the hospital,” the Britain-based monitoring group said in a statement. The artillery fire originated from Aleppo Province “where militia faithful to Iran and the [Syrian] regime are deployed, near the zones run by Kurdish forces,” it said. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces denied any involvement in the shelling.
UNITED STATES
Biden to honor Pulse victims
President Joe Biden said on the fifth anniversary of a mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that he would sign a bill naming the site as a national memorial. The deadliest attack on the LGBTQ community in US history left 49 people dead and 53 people wounded. Biden said in a statement on Saturday that he has “stayed in touch with families of the victims and with the survivors who have turned their pain into purpose” and described the club as “hallowed ground.”
UNITED STATES
Man’s novel stress tactic
A Chicago bus driver looking for a way to relieve stress during the COVID-19 pandemic jumped into Lake Michigan for a 365th straight day on Saturday. Dan O’Conor said he started jumping into the lake at Montrose Harbor on the city’s North Side last year to relieve stress. “It was during the pandemic, it was during the protest, it was during an election year... So it was somewhere where I could come down here and block all that noise out and kind of be totally present with me in the lake, and find some moments of Zen,” the father of three said. He continued jumping into the lake through the fall before the hard part: hacking a hole in the ice on the frozen lake that was big enough for him to jump through during the winter. “People started asking me what this was benefiting and how they could support... When I started posting the videos on Twitter and Instagram... I got more wind in my sails there because people started commenting like: ‘This makes my day, it’s nice to see this,’” he said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
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