TANZANIA
Factory explosion kills 11
An explosion at a sugar factory killed 11 people and injured two others, police said on Thursday, with at least three foreigners among the dead. The accident occurred on Wednesday night at a facility in the eastern Morogoro region operated by Mtibwa Sugar, one of the nation’s main producers of the commodity. “The factory accident caused [the] death of 11 people and two others were injured,” regional police commander Alex Mkama told reporters. The fatalities included a Kenyan, an Indian and a Brazilian national, Mkama was quoted by the Citizen newspaper as saying. “There are reports that a steam pipe had leakage which caused the explosion,” he said. A pipe connecting one of the factory boilers with a turbine had burst causing the blast, said Shabani Marugujo, commander of the fire and rescue services in Morogoro.
UNITED STATES
Tornado kills five people
A deadly tornado that wreaked havoc in Greenfield, Iowa, left four people dead and nearly three dozen injured, officials said, while a fifth person was killed elsewhere. The twister that tore through the city on Tuesday was rated at least an EF3 by the National Weather Service and was so destructive that it took authorities more than a day to account for the area’s residents. It is believed that the number of people injured is likely higher, the Iowa Department of Public Safety said. The fifth person was killed about 40km from Greenfield when her car was blown off the road in a tornado, the Adams County Sheriff’s Office said. Monica Zamarron, 46, died in the crash on Tuesday afternoon, officials said. Officials have not yet released the names of the other victims. The severe weather turned south on Wednesday. In Texas, officials issued an emergency declaration in Temple, a city of more than 90,000 people north of Austin, after powerful storms ripped through the area.
JAPAN
‘Doge’ meme dog dies
The Japanese shiba inu dog whose photo inspired a generation of oddball online jokes and the US$23 billion Dogecoin cryptocurrency beloved by Elon Musk died yesterday, her owner said. “She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her,” Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog, thanking the fans of her dog called Kabosu, which was the face of the “Doge” meme.
VIETNAM
Hanoi fire kills 14 people
An overnight fire in an apartment building on a narrow alley in Hanoi killed 14 people and injured six others, state media said yesterday. The apartment building could only be accessed through an alley just 2m wide, preventing firetrucks from reaching it, and firefighters eventually contained the fire by using hoses, state media said. The fire started at about 12:30am and was accompanied by several explosions, the Vietnam News Agency said. It took an hour to extinguish. Neighbor Nguyen Thanh Trung said he was asleep when he heard the explosions and rushed out to see what was happening. “I could feel the shock at my house,” he said, adding that he along with others got a ladder to break the window to help people escape. State media reported the building had 24 residents at the time, seven in the owner’s family and 17 tenants. The injured are stable and being treated at Hanoi Transport Hospital. The fire started in the small courtyard in front of the building that was used as a garage for the sale and repair of electric bikes, state media reported. Trung said the family would often charge the bikes’ batteries at night.
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
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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