Twenty-seven people were killed in a bus crash in southwest China yesterday, police said, in the country’s deadliest road accident so far this year.
The crash took place on a highway in rural Guizhou Province when the vehicle carrying 47 people in total “flipped onto its side,” Sandu County police said in a statement published on social media.
The remaining 20 people were being treated for injuries and emergency responders were dispatched to the scene, police said, without providing any more details.
The crash happened in Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture — a poor, remote and mountainous part of Guizhou, home to several ethnic minorities.
Two social media posts, which have since been deleted, by the China Road Network monitoring service said that the accident occurred at about 2:40am, screenshots circulating on Sina Weibo showed.
Social media users angrily asked why a passenger bus was traveling down a highway in the early hours of the morning, when many major roads in the province have been closed to regular traffic.
One hundred toll stations are shuttered in Guizhou because of COVID-19 restrictions, and long-distance passenger journeys across China are banned from running between 2am and 5am.
Guizhou is in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak that has seen more than 900 new infections in the past two days alone.
Its provincial capital, Guiyang, home to 6 million residents, was locked down earlier this month.
The bus was traveling southward in the direction of Libo County, the police statement said.
STRING OF CRASHES
Road accidents remain fairly common in China, where irregular enforcement and lax safety standards have resulted in a string of fatalities over the past few years.
In June, a driver was killed after a high-speed train derailed in the same province.
In March, a passenger jet crash killed all 132 people on board, marking the deadliest aviation accident to take place in China for decades.
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
CANCER: Jose Mujica earned the moniker ‘world’s poorest president’ for giving away much of his salary and living a simple life on his farm, with his wife and dog Tributes poured in on Tuesday from across Latin America following the death of former Uruguayan president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics. He was 89. Mujica, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost his battle against cancer after announcing in January that the disease had spread and he would stop treatment. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi wrote on X. “Pepe, eternal,” a cyclist shouted out minutes later,
RSS