CHINA
Nine held over cave-in
Police in the central city of Changsha announced the detention of nine people yesterday over a collapsed building, as increasingly desperate rescuers comb the debris for any survivors. The building housed a hotel, apartments and a cinema. It caved in on Friday afternoon, leaving a gaping hole in the dense streetscape. At least 18 people were trapped and another 39 had not been heard from, the Changsha mayor said. Five people were rescued from the pancaked structure overnight on Friday. Police wrote on Sin Weibo that the building’s owner and three others responsible for its design and construction were yesterday detained on suspicion of “major responsibility for an accident.” Another five people, all members of a private building inspection firm, “provided a false safety report after conducting a building safety audit of the hotel,” they said.
? UKRAINE
Angelina Jolie visits Lviv
Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie visited the city of Lviv on Saturday. Jolie, 46, is a special envoy for the UN Refugee Agency, which says that more than 12.7 million people have fled their homes in the past two months, which represents about 30 percent of the country’s prewar population. During the visit to the Lviv train station, Jolie met volunteers working with the displaced, who told her that each of the psychiatrists on duty spoke to about 15 people per day. “I know how trauma affects children. I know just having somebody show how much they matter, how much their voices matter, I know how healing that is for them,” Jolie said. The star was later spotted in a Lviv cafe by Maya Pidhoretska who posted a video on Facebook. “I am having a coffee and I see Angelina Jolie in Lviv,” reported the surprised Lviv resident.
UNITED KINGDOM
Lawmaker quits over porn
A lawmaker from the governing Conservative Party has resigned after admitting he watched pornography on his phone in the House of Commons chamber. Neil Parish, a member of Parliament since 2010, announced his decision on Saturday after pressure from members of his own party who sought to defuse sleaze allegations before the UK holds its local elections on May 5. Parish, chairman of the house’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, stepped down after what he described as a moment of “madness.” He said he was trying to look at a tractor Web site, but stumbled into a porn site with a similar name and watched it for “a bit.” “My biggest crime is that on another occasion I went in a second time, and that was deliberate,” he told the BBC.
CANADA
Polar bear surprises town
A polar bear was on Saturday spotted in Quebec, prompting wildlife officials to warn residents of a small town stunned by the very rare appearance. The bear was seen in the morning hours in Madeleine-Centre in the Gaspesia region, a peninsula along the south bank of the Saint Lawrence River, witnesses said. As of Saturday afternoon, officials were still trying to find the animal. “The dog was barking and I heard my partner yell, ‘There’s a bear, there’s a bear,’” said Sophie Bonneville, who lives in the town of 2,000 people located 800km east of Montreal. Bonneville said nobody in town had ever seen a polar bear so far south, not even wildlife officials. “People thought it was a joke,” she said. “How could a bear cross the ice pack, swim and make it here? Even people on the north bank have not seen such a thing,” she said. “With climate change, anything is possible,” she added.
UNITED STATES
Tornado wreaks havoc
A tornado that barreled through parts of Kansas destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes and buildings, injured several people and left more than 15,000 people without power, officials said on Saturday. In addition to wreckage from the tornado itself, three University of Oklahoma meteorology students traveling back from storm chasing in Kansas were also killed in a crash on Friday evening, officials said. More than 1,000 buildings were affected when a strong twister swept through Andover on Friday evening, authorities said. In the daylight on Saturday, emergency crews found a more widespread path of destruction than was earlier estimated. Andover Fire Chief Chad Russell said earlier that some neighborhood homes “were completely blown away” and entire neighborhoods were wiped out.
UNITED STATES
Naomi Judd dies aged 76
US country music star Naomi Judd, half of the Grammy-winning duo The Judds, has died at age 76, her family announced on Saturday, the day before her group was due to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. “Today we sisters experienced a tragedy,” actress Ashley Judd and singer Wynonna Judd, the other half of The Judds, said in a joint statement posted on their Instagram accounts. “We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness... We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by the public.” Over the course of their joint career, Naomi and Wynonna Judd had 14 No. 1 hits and won multiple music awards, including five Grammys. On Friday, the Country Music Hall of Fame had announced on Instagram that The Judds would join its ranks for helping “take country back to its roots in the 1980s with lean, tuneful songs.”
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS