IRELAND
Gas station blast kills seven
The number of people killed in an explosion at a gas station in County Donegal on Friday has risen to seven, with search and recovery efforts continuing, police said yesterday. The explosion happened shortly after 3pm at the Applegreen station on the outskirts of Creeslough. Eight people were receiving treatment in hospital, police said. They have not addressed the cause of the explosion. Photographs from the scene showed a residential unit above the station store with walls blown out and a partially collapsed roof, and debris scattered across the forecourt where several vehicles were parked. Local Sinn Fein lawmaker Pearse Doherty said at the scene on Friday that the “massive explosion” was heard from miles around, adding that the gas station was the only supermarket in the village, also housing a post office and hairdressers and that it would have been busy at that time.
INDIA
Twelve die in bus fire
At least 12 people died and two were in critical condition after a bus caught fire in Nashik yesterday, a police official said. More than 30 injured were being treated at the local Civil Hospital, while an investigation into the cause of the accident was underway, another local police said. The bus caught fire after hitting a diesel tanker, local media reports said. Videos on social media showed the bus engulfed in a massive ball of fire. “Anguished by the bus tragedy in Nashik. My thoughts are with those who have lost their loved ones in this mishap,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on Twitter, adding that families of the deceased would receive 200,000 rupees (US$2,415) each, while the injured would get 50,000 rupees each.
HONG KONG
Diamond sells for US$57m
A rare pink diamond on Friday sold for HK$453.2 million (US$57.73 million), setting a record for price per carat paid at auction for any diamond or gemstone Sotheby’s said. The 11.15-carat Williamson Pink Star fetched the second-highest price paid at auction for any jewel, Sotheby’s added. The winning bid, by an undisclosed buyer from Boca Raton, Florida, was more than twice the estimated US$21 million sale price. The stone was the second-largest pink diamond to be sold at auction. Pink diamonds are the rarest of the precious gems and the most in-demand on the global market. The world record for a pink diamond was set in 2017, when a stone known as the CTF Pink Star was sold in Hong Kong for US$71.2 million.
NEW ZEALAND
About 250 pilot whales die
About 250 pilot whales died after beaching on Chatham Island where the shark risk makes attempts to refloat them too dangerous, the government said yesterday. The pilot whales, members of the dolphin family, were reported to have been stranded on Friday on the northwest of the island, the Department Of Conservation said. “We do not actively refloat whales on the Chatham Islands due to the risk of shark attack to both humans and the whales themselves,” it said in a statement. A trained team euthanized surviving whales to prevent further suffering, it said. Indigenous peoples of New Zealand and Chatham Island were present to give support, it added. Such strandings are “not uncommon” in the Chatham Islands, off the eastern coast of South Island, it said, adding that the largest recorded event involved an estimated 1,000 whales in 1918.
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
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