51 children, three teachers hurt in chemical attack on kindergarten in China

Agencies
November 12, 2019

Yunnan, Nov 12: At least 54 persons, including 51 children, sustained burn injuries after a disgruntled man broke into a kindergarten and sprayed a corrosive chemical on students in southwest China's Yunnan province, authorities said on Tuesday, in one of the deadliest attacks on schools in the country.

The incident took place on Monday in the city of Kaiyuan, when the 23-year-old man, surnamed Kong, climbed into the kindergarten and sprayed caustic soda (sodium hydroxide), state-run Xinhua news agency quoted authorities of the city.

Fifty-one children and three teachers sustained burn injuries and were sent to the Kaiyuan People's Hospital and the PLA 926 Hospital for treatment, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted the Kaiyuan Municipal Government as saying.

The condition of two children was stated to be serious, the report said.

At about 3.35 pm (local time) the man climbed into the Dongcheng Kindergarten and sprayed sodium hydroxide on children, it said.

He was detained about 40 minutes after the attack, police said.

Initial inquiries indicated that the man was acting out of "revenge at society", but the investigation was continuing, the report said.

Sodium hydroxide also known as caustic soda has a highly caustic base and alkali that decomposes proteins at ordinary ambient temperatures and may cause severe chemical burns. It is highly soluble in water, readily absorbs moisture and carbon dioxide from the air.

Attacks by, what police generally label as, disgruntled people in China targeting especially kindergartens as well as civilians in public places to vent their anger have become common in recent years.

This attack was the worst in recent years as most of the attacks in the past were carried out using knives.

In September, eight students of a primary school in China's Enshi city were killed and two others injured in a brutal knife attack carried out by an ex-convict.

The attack took place on Chaoyangpo grade school in Baiyangping, Enshi, Hubei province.

In May, 13 people were injured, two of them critically when a car driven by a disgruntled man ploughed through pedestrians in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

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Agencies
August 3,2020

Manila, Aug 2: The number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines has exceeded the 100,000 marks with a record 5,032 new infections registered on Sunday, the Health Ministry's data showed.

With the total cases now reaching 103,185, the spread of COVID-19 in the Southeast Asian nation is steeply rising. The daily growth rate just this Thursday set a record at over 3,800 cases, the next day there were nearly 4,000 new infections detected and on Saturday, over 4,800 cases were detected.

More than 65,000 people have recovered from the ailment, while 2,059 people have died.

The Philippines' epidemiological dynamic mirrors that of many Southeast Asian nations, where COVID-19 infections have only recently begun to climb. 

Most other nations in Europe and the Americas experienced an initial spread of the virus which later tailed off only to begin climbing again after easing of restrictions.

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Sydney, Jul 28: Nearly 3 billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Tuesday, triple the group's earlier estimates.

Some 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs were impacted by the country's worst bushfires in decades, the WWF said.

When the fires were still blazing, the WWF estimated the number of affected animals at 1.25 billion. The fires destroyed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres) across the Australian southeast, equal to about half the area of the United Kingdom.

"This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history," said WWF-Australia Chief Executive Officer Dermot O'Gorman in a statement.

The project leader Lily Van Eeden, from the University of Sydney, said the research was the first continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires, and "other nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere".

The total number included animals which were displaced because of destroyed habitats and now faced lack of food and shelter or the prospect of moving to habitat that was already occupied.

The main reason for raising the number of animal casualties was that researchers had now assessed the total affected area, rather than focusing on the most affected states, they said.

After years of drought made the Australian bush unusually dry, the country battled one of its worst bushfire seasons ever from September 2019 to March 2020, resulting in 34 human deaths and nearly 3,000 homes lost.

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News Network
May 15,2020

May 15: Global deaths linked to the novel coronavirus passed 300,000 on Thursday, while reported cases of the virus are approaching 4.5 million, according to a news agency tally.

About half of the fatalities have been reported by the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy.

The first death linked to the disease was reported on January 10 in Wuhan, China. It took 91 days for the death toll to pass 100,000 and a further 16 days to reach 200,000, according to the Reuters tally of official reports from governments. It took 19 days to go from 200,000 to 300,000 deaths.

By comparison, an estimated 400,000 people die annually from malaria, one of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases.

The United States had reported more than 85,000 deaths from the new coronavirus, while the United Kingdom and Italy have reported over 30,000 fatalities each.

While the current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of patients, public health experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.

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