CHINA
Tianjin building fire kills 10
Ten people were killed yesterday morning in a fire that broke out in a residential building in northern Tianjin, local authorities said. Flames tore through the 38th floor of the apartment building, leaving 10 people dead and five people hospitalized with minor injuries, the city government said in a statement on social media. An unknown number of “responsible personnel” are in custody while the cause of the fire is being investigated, the statement said. A “rigorous probe” is to be conducted to find “hidden dangers” that could cause fires, it added. An area of about 300m2 was damaged, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the local fire department.
CHINA
Man repaints lines on road
A man fed up with sitting in traffic during his daily bus commute came up with a brazen way of solving the problem — repainting the lines on the road. The man, identified only by his surname, Cai (蔡), was seen in surveillance footage painting his own arrows at a junction in eastern Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, to redirect the traffic as cars maneuver past him, regional newspaper Modern Express said. Police fined the 28-year-old 1,000 yuan (US$151.42) after he was spotted crouching in the middle of the busy road with a can of white paint, the newspaper said. “I take the bus to go home after work every day, passing by that place,” Cai said in what appears to be a police video obtained and published by the newspaper. “The traffic jam there is always pretty bad, but I saw there are only a few cars in the lane that turns left, so I just want to expand one driving lane by adding one straight arrow.” Authorities later ordered maintenance workers to remove Cai’s handiwork from the road, but police released him after fining him.
JAPAN
Explosion kills at least one
At least one worker was killed and 11 injured in an explosion and fire that broke out yesterday at a chemical factory just a few kilometers from Mount Fuji. Residents living within 100m of the factory were ordered to evacuate as 17 fire engines and nearly 60 firefighters battled the blaze. Plumes of thick black smoke billowed into the sky from the factory belonging to Arakawa Chemical Industries, which manufactures chemicals for the paper industry. “A 64-year-old worker, who had earlier been missing, was found dead,” Fuji fire service official Takahiro Suzuki told reporters. Eleven other workers were hurt, three seriously, he said, updating an earlier announcement that 14 people had been injured. The casualties were all male and aged in their 20s to 60s. Officials said it was not immediately clear exactly what was burning, but the factory operator denied risks of potential contamination or pollution.
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
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
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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