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.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
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