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 Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
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
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