Week 3 - Thirty-six killed in Shanghai stampede

People unable to contact friends and relatives streamed into Shanghai’s hospitals yesterday, anxious for information after a stampede during New Year’s celebrations in the city’s historic waterfront area killed 36 people in the worst disaster to hit one of China’s showcase cities in recent years.

The Shanghai government said 47 others received hospital treatment, including 13 who were seriously injured, after the chaos about a half an hour before midnight. Seven of the injured people had left hospitals by yesterday afternoon.

The Shanghai government information office said one Taiwanese was among the dead, and two Taiwanese and one Malaysian were among the injured.

The three Taiwanese work for the same accounting firm and were visiting China, Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation said.

One sustained minor injuries, while the other was still hospitalized for further observation, foundation spokesperson Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) said.

The foundation contacted China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Shanghai City Government’s Taiwan Affairs Office yesterday morning when it learned of the incident, Maa said.

Taiwan hopes the Shanghai government will look into the situation and offer aid as soon as possible if it receives any more reports of Taiwanese being injured, Maa said.

The deaths and injuries occurred at Chen Yi Square in Shanghai’s popular riverfront Bund area, an avenue lined with art deco buildings from the 1920s and 1930s when the city was home to international banks and trading houses. The area is often jammed with people during major events.

At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, police brought out photos of unidentified dead victims, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around. Not everyone could see, and young women who looked at the photos broke into tears when they recognized someone.

A saleswoman in her 20s who declined to give her name said she had been celebrating with three friends.

“I heard people screaming, someone fell, people shouted: ‘Don’t rush,”’ she said. “There were so many people and I couldn’t stand properly.”

Xinhua news agency quoted a woman with the surname Yin who was caught with her 12-year-old son in the middle of crowds of people pushing to go up and down steps leading from the square.

“Then people started to fall down, row by row,” Yin said.

Shanghai No. 1 People’s Hospital vice president Xia Shujie told reporters that some of the victims had suffocated.

Relatives desperately seeking information earlier tried to push past hospital guards, who used a bench to hold them back. Police later allowed family members into the hospital.

CCTV America, the US version of state broadcaster China Central Television, posted a video of Shanghai streets after the stampede showing piles of discarded shoes amid the debris.

Yesterday morning, dozens of police officers were in the area and tourists continued to wander by the square, a small patch of grass dominated by a statue of Chen Yi, the city’s first communist mayor.

Steps lead down from the square to a road across from several buildings.

“We were down the stairs and wanted to move up and those who were upstairs wanted to move down, so we were pushed down by the people coming from upstairs,” an injured man told Shanghai TV.

“All those trying to move up fell down on the stairs,” the man said.

Xinhua quoted witness Wu Tao as saying some people had scrambled for coupons that looked like dollar bills bearing the name of a bar that were being thrown out of a third-floor window. It said the cause of the stampede was still under investigation.

Who: people in Shanghai

What: 36 people stampeded to die

When: Fri, Jan 01, 2015

Why: so many people crowed in Shanghai and made chaos there when they were leaving

Where: Shanghai, China

How: stampeded by people in chaos

stampede 踩踏

chaos 混亂

riverfront Bund area 濱河外灘地區

Week 2 - Toyo Ito's National Taichung Theater on Display

Displaying architecture in a gallery is always a challenge. This is especially true with a building still under construction. And even more so when that building is Taiwan’s National Taichung Theater—unarguably Tokyo architect Toyo Ito’s most ambitious project to date. Taking Ito’s structural know-how and spatial ingenuity to new limits, this extraordinary complex appears as a rectangular block. But contained within is a spectacular 3D grid of tubular voids hinted at by the hourglass-shaped cutouts that define the elevations. Expanding and contracting, the hollows accommodate the various programmatic pieces, including a 2014-seat theater, an 800-seat theater, and a 200-seat black box. Slated for a grand opening in November 2015, the design and construction of this important work is the subject of TOTO Gallery MA’s latest exhibition titled The Making of the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House 2005-2014. (Built by the Taichung City Government, Republic of China (Taiwan), the building was renamed the National Taichung Theater shortly before the exhibit opened.)

The building began in 2005 when Ito was awarded its commission after winning an international competition. But the exhibition opens with Ito’s earlier competition entry for the Forum for Music, Dance and Visual Culture in Ghent, Belgium. In response to the medieval city’s poche-style urbanism, he proposed a boxy volume and carved out the needed spaces. Though his idea did not succeed in Belgium, it wooed the jury overseeing the Taiwanese competition and is the starting point of the Gallery MA show.

Mounted chronologically on the walls of the gallery’s lower level, drawings and photos document the complex’s initial development, while study models in the middle of the room are evidence of the trial and error approach necessitated by Ito’s unique architecture. Upstairs, the gallery turns its attention to construction via video commentaries and photo essays. But the most of effective means of explaining Ito’s architecture is the 360-degree, virtual site visit.

Donning a programmed headset transports the viewer to the heart of the building as it is taking shape. A tilt of the head in one direction orients the eye towards a shadowy recess, while leaning in another unveils a cavernous room. Here skin and structure become one and floors, walls, and ceiling merge into a single, but complexly, curving surface. Both primordial and futuristic, the interior morphs continuously, like a dreamscape come to life.

Unsurprisingly, the nuts and bolts construction is one of the most curious aspects of this building. Offering a behind-the-scenes look is the full-scale mock up of a wall section displayed in Gallery MA’s exterior terrace. It illustrates the walls’ assembly by revealing an elaborate web of rebar bent by hand that functions as a three-dimensional truss. This is covered with metal mesh and finally topped with a smooth coating of concrete, completely concealing all of these intricate underpinnings. On its own, the fragment resembles an abstract sculpture, but its bold shape enables the viewer to imagine how the walls’ irregular geometry will mold the interior space.

Considering the theater’s unconventional form and construction, the displays are pretty conventional by and large. But they succeed in building expectation and excitement for what shows signs of becoming a masterpiece.

structural know-how: 結構知識

spatial ingenuity: 空間智慧

3D grid of tubular voids : 3D網狀格子(網格

hourglass-shaped: 沙漏狀

programmatic: 綱領性

Belgium: 比利時

Woo: 拉攏

nuts and bolts construction: 螺母和螺栓建設

exterior: 外觀

terrace: 陽台

What:  National Taichung Theater

When: 23 November 2014

Who: Toyo Ito

Where: Taichung City

Why:

How: 

Week 1 - Missing students murdered: Mexico.

Suspects said to be gang members have confessed to killing 43 missing Mexican students, burning their bodies for 14 hours and tossing their remains in a river, Mexican authorities said, in a case causing widespread revulsion.

Authorities say the aspiring teachers vanished after gang-linked police attacked their buses in the southern city of Iguala on Sept. 26, allegedly under orders of the mayor of Iguala and his wife in a night of terror that left six other people dead.

The police then reportedly delivered the 43 to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, who told investigators they took them in two trucks to a landfill and killed them.

If the confessions are proven true, the mass murder would rank among the worst massacres in a drug war that has killed more than 80,000 people and left an estimated 22,000 others missing since 2006.

The Iguala case has drawn global condemnation, highlighted Mexico’s struggle with corruption and undermined Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s assurances that national violence was down.

“To the parents of the missing young men and society as a whole, I assure you that we will not stop until justice is served,” Pena Nieto said.

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam stopped short on Friday of declaring the 43 dead and said an Austrian university would help identify the remains.

He said officials would consider the students missing until DNA tests confirm the identities.

However, he added that there was “a lot of evidence ... that could indicate it was them.”

Three Guerreros Unidos members confessed to killing the students after police handed them over between Iguala and the neighboring town of Cocula, Murillo Karam said, showing videos of the confessions.

The bodies were set on fire with gasoline, tires, firewood and plastic, in a 14-hour-long inferno downhill from a Cocula garbage dump, he said.

“The fire lasted from midnight to 2pm the next day. The criminals could not handle the bodies until 5pm due to the heat,” he said.

They then crushed the remains, stuffed them in bags and threw some in a river, before burning their own clothes to hide evidence.

However, the parents, who distrust the central government, said they would not accept that their children are dead until they get a final ruling from independent Argentine forensic experts who are taking part in the investigation.

“As long as there is no proof, our sons are alive,” Felipe de la Cruz, a spokesman for the families, said at a news conference from the missing young men’s teacher-training college near Chilpancingo.

Authorities have now detained 74 people in the case, including Iguala’s ousted mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda.

Authorities say Abarca ordered the officers to confront the students over fears they would derail a speech by his wife, who headed the local child protection agency.

Suspect: 嫌疑犯

Allegedly: 據稱

Gang: 幫; 幫派

Landfill: 垃圾掩埋場

Inferno: 地獄

 Forensic: 法庭的

Where: Mexico City, Mexico

What: Missing students murdered

When: Nov 09, 2014

Why: Students who went to the speech of Mrs. Locations and protested were attacked by the police

Who: 43 missing Mexican students

How: killing 43 missing Mexican students, burning their bodies for 14 hours and tossing their remains in a river

Week 7 - Tragedy strikes Nepal again as 17 trekkers die in heavy Himalayan snow

Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) -- Tens of thousands of international visitors come to Nepal each year to explore the spectacular Himalayan Mountains, providing poor communities with millions of dollars that they desperately need.

The perils of that endeavor revealed themselves in stark fashion Tuesday, when at least 17 people from around the world died after being trapped in heavy snowfall while trekking at high altitude.

A dozen of the deaths were in the popular Annapurna region, Nepal army spokesman Niranjan Shrestha said, while another five were in the neighboring Manang district.

Officials say more people are missing and it is feared the toll could rise.

This is already one of the deadliest such tragedies in the history of Nepal, a nation of about 26 million known worldwide for its spectacular mountain ranges, including Mount Everest.

The deaths -- said to be the result of two days of unusually heavy snow caused by Cyclone Hud-hud in eastern India -- come only six months after tragedy last struck on the slopes of Mount Everest.

Then, a bruising avalanche of ice swept 16 Sherpas to their deaths. After the accident, which came right before the peak season in May, many Sherpas refused to climb and at least six companies that lead Everest expeditions called off their 2014 climbs.

While only the fittest sign up for a mountaineering feat like climbing Everest, trekking through the dramatic Himalayan landscape -- while challenging -- is accessible to many more.

Last year, 102,000 foreigners came to Nepal to take part in trekking and mountaineering, the vast majority of them trekkers.

The Annapurna region is the most popular trekking area in the country and attracts many visitors every fall, the better of the two seasons -- the other being spring -- to join organized multiday hikes.

Conditions in the Himalayas can be cruel. But trekkers dying in snowstorms is almost unheard of.

Bodies buried under snow

The loss of lives Tuesday will affect many nations, and could dent confidence in an industry vital to Nepal's economic well-being.

Of the 12 killed in the Annapurna region, only four bodies have so far been recovered, of two Poles, an Israeli and a Nepali.

Eight more remain buried under the suffocating snow. Their nationalities are not known, said Shrestha, the army spokesman. It is unclear if any more are missing, he said.

The trekkers died Tuesday evening near the iconic 5,416-meter (17,770-foot) Thorung La Pass in Mustang district, the highest point of the 21-day Annapurna Circuit trek, he said.

"Those who stayed back in lodges because of poor weather survived," he said.

Two army helicopters on Wednesday rescued 38 more trekkers who were trapped in the unseasonably heavy snowfall, Shrestha said.

Baburam Adhikari, the top government official in Mustang district, said 244 trekkers crossed the Thorung La Pass and came to the village of Muktinath on Monday and Tuesday. But there is no information on how many began the trek from the other side of the pass in Phedi.

"We do not know how many are missing, but there is a possibility that there are people missing," he said.

Those who died seem to have lost their way in the snow. A rescue team found a group of German tourists at midnight Tuesday, he said.

Search operations will continue Thursday.

About 50 kilometers (31 miles) to the west, five people -- two Slovaks and three Nepalis -- are missing after an avalanche Tuesday night at the base of Mount Dhaulagiri, the world's seventh-highest mountain, police and a local outfitter said.

Injured trekkers rescued

Meanwhile, five more trekkers -- four Canadians and an Indian -- died in remote Manang district Tuesday, and their bodies were found Wednesday, Manang district police official Narayan Datta Chapagain told CNN via phone.

A Nepal army helicopter rescued three injured Canadians and their Nepali guide from Manang, Chapagain said, adding that he did not know about the condition of the injured.

The details of the deaths of the four Canadians and one Indian are unclear, according to Chapagain, but he said they were caused by heavy snow.

Nepal's government has said it aims to welcome some 2 million visitors annually by 2020, with tourism central to a sustainable national economy.

It usually rakes in about $3 million from Everest climbers during the May high season.

But most of the nearly 500 who had planned the ascent in 2014 abandoned their climbs, with only one Chinese woman making it to the summit.

Trekkers 跋涉者;登山者

Altitude 海拔

Cyclone 氣旋

peak season 旺季

trek 長途跋涉

Who: people who traveled in Himalayan Mountains, Kathmandu, Nepal

What: Avalanche in Himalayan Mountains

When: October 14, 2014

Why: two days of unusually heavy snow caused by Cyclone Hud-hud in eastern India

Where: Kathmandu, Nepal

How: 

Week 6 - Japan volcano death toll hits 48

The death toll from a sudden volcanic eruption in Japan hit 48 yesterday as rescuers discovered 12 new bodies in so-far unexplored areas of the ash-covered peak.

The figure makes the eruption of Mount Ontake, which was packed with hikers when it burst angrily to life on Saturday lunchtime, the worst volcanic disaster in Japan in almost 90 years.

Up until Sunday 36 bodies had been found, but many of those remained on the ruptured mountain as toxic gas and the risk of further eruptions forced emergency workers to suspend operations.

The grim news of more deaths came after media reports earlier suggested as many as 20 people remained unaccounted for, with an area of the volcano still spewing steam and gas.

Some of the about 1,000 troops, police and firefighters combing the volcano succeeded in bringing down 14 more of the bodies that were discovered on Sunday, with another 10 still there.

An official at Nagano Prefecture’s crisis management office said helicopters had been used to ferry the dead from the mountain, whose pockmarked landscape bears witness to the huge volume of ash and rocks flung from the volcano.

“We believe there are more people still missing, but we don’t know how many there are,” the official added.

Broadcaster NHK said earlier in the day rescuers had seen more bodies that they had not yet been able to access.

Hiking is a hugely popular pastime in Japan, with mountain trails promoted by tourism officials, who ask walkers to sign in when they begin their trek and sign out again when they finish, but a local tourism association told the Asahi Shimbun that usually only 10 to 20 percent of hikers register before entering the mountains in high season.

The report said 327 hikers had registered their presence on Mount Ontake at the time of the eruption.

Rescuers are hoping that many of those who cannot be contacted simply forgot to let mountain managers know they were safe.

Nagano Prefecture has posted a notice on its Web site calling for information on hikers on the list.

However, there exists the grisly possibility that many more perished.

“We don’t know if there are people buried deep down under accumulated ash,” a senior police official told the Asahi Shimbun.

The local fire department said 71 people are missing, while Nagano Prefectural police have received hundreds of reports of people whose whereabouts are unknown, a police spokesman said.

Authorities cautioned that some of those reports would likely have nothing to do with the disaster, which happened without warning during a busy weekend.

Hundreds of people were on the slopes of the volcano as rocks, ash and smoke poured from the fractured crater. Many made it down safely, but dozens were trapped on the peak.

Autopsies conducted on the first 12 people whose bodies were retrieved showed they all died from injuries caused by rocks hurled high into the air by the eruption.

Aerial footage showed a sticky blanket of ash smothering the upper slopes. Craters that appeared to be up to a meter across revealed where some of the projectiles had landed.

The roof of one of the huts near the caldera, where hikers are believed to have sought shelter, had been punctured by rocks as they plunged back to earth.

Volcanic tremors have been detected constantly since Saturday’s eruption, with underground water boiling into steam and breaking or moving rocks, a vulcanologist at the meteorological agency said.

The agency warned yesterday that the eruption was still under way and noted that smoke had been seen issuing from the Mount Ontake as of 9am.

Until yesterday the single biggest death toll from a volcano was 43, when Mount Unzen erupted in southwestern Japan in 1991.

In 1926, 144 people were left dead or missing after the eruption of Mount Tokachi in northern Japan, according to the meteorological agency.

From: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2014/10/02/2003601100

ash-covered 覆蓋火山灰的

remain unaccounted for 下落不明的

spewing steam 水蒸氣

fractured crater 火山斷裂口

What: volcanic eruption in Japan

When: Thu, Oct 02, 2014

Who:

Where: Nagano Prefecture, Japan

Why: eruption difficult to predict

How: 

Week 5 - Gas blasts in Kaohsiung

A series of powerful gas blasts killed at least 25 people and injured up to 267 before dawn today in Greater Kaohsiung, overturning cars and ripping up roads as terrified residents fled an inferno.

The explosions sparked massive fires which tore through the Cianjhen District (前鎮), leaving a yawning trench running for hundreds of meters down the middle of a major thoroughfare and littering the streets with dead bodies.

Dramatic video footage captured by dashboard cameras inside cars showed multiple blasts and pillars of flame erupting from manholes as drivers frantically tried to avoid being engulfed.

In its latest update, the National Fire Agency said the blasts killed at least 25 people and revised the number of injured to 267. Four firefighters who rushed to the scene after residents smelled gas were among those killed in the blasts.

The explosions, believed to have been triggered by gas leaking from underground pipelines, were powerful enough to upturn whole cars and split open

paved roads. One street had been ripped along its length, swallowing several

fire engines and other vehicles.

Witnesses reported seeing bodies strewn across the streets.

“I saw fire soaring up to possibly 20 stories high after a blast and fire engines and cars being blown away while around 10 bodies lay on the street,” eyewitness Johnson Liu said.

Local television aired footage from a dashboard camera capturing a loud explosion which tore up the road in front of a blue truck as it waited at a junction. Rocks and debris could be seen showering down on the street before the footage faded to black.

A second dashboard camera uploaded online showed a car frantically making a U-turn after the initial explosion only to hurtle towards another inferno coming up from beneath the road.

“I’m scared to death”, one of the occupants was recorded saying. “It’s like a bombing, let’s hurry.”

Residents were seen carrying the injured on makeshift stretchers as ambulances rushed to the scene and firefighters in yellow overalls began removing bodies from the area.

“The explosions were like thunder and the road in front of my shop ripped open. It felt like an earthquake,” the Central News Agency (CNA) quoted a witness as saying.

The fire agency said 22 firefighters were among the injured and two were unaccounted for.

“The local fire department received calls of gas leaks late Thursday and then there were a series of blasts around midnight affecting an area of 2 to 3 square kilometers,” the fire agency said in a statement.

A city government official said the blazes had mostly been extinguished or burned themselves out by mid-day, but a few fires were continuing. City authorities said they had sealed off 6km of road.

Residents described how the neighborhood smelt strongly of gas before the disaster.

One local resident surnamed Peng said: “There was a heavy odor of gas and ... then I heard explosions and saw fire spurting from a store.”

“My house shook as if there were an earthquake and the power went out,” CNA quoted her as saying.

Emergency rooms in city hospitals were packed with casualties and officials warned that the death toll was expected to rise.

The city government was evacuating more than 1,100 residents from the affected areas to schools and shelters as they tried to locate the source of the leaks and warned people to stay away.

The Ministry of National Defense dispatched about 1,400 soldiers to the scene to help with the disaster effort.

It is not the first time Kaohsiung has experienced a fatal gas blast. In 1997, an explosion killed five people and injured around 20 when a team from Chinese Petroleum Corp, Taiwan (中油) tried to unearth a section of gas pipeline in a road construction project.

gas blasts 氣爆

footage 鏡頭

dashboard cameras 行車紀錄器

engulfed 吞沒

underground pipelines 地下管線

dispatched 出動

Where: Kaohsiung 

What: gas blasts

Why: be triggered by gas leaking from underground pipelines

When: Fri, Aug 01, 2014

How: through the bombing of gas blasts

Who: people in Cianjhen District and so on

Week 4 - Global Ice Bucket Challenge

Global Ice Bucket Challenge helps change the lives of kiwis living with MND

The global social media phenomenon, the Ice Bucket Challenge, has bought in much needed funds for kiwis living with MND and raised unprecedented awareness of the fatal disease says Beth Watson, President of the Motor Neurone Disease Association of New Zealand.

The challenge, known overseas as the ALS[1] Ice Bucket Challenge, sees participants have a bucket of ice water tipped on their head to promote awareness of motor neurone disease (MND) and encourage donations to MND. Beth was an early participant in New Zealand after being challenged by Carol Birks, the President of the International Alliance of ALS/MND Associations.

The challenge has raised at least £1 million (NZ$1.9 million) in the United Kingdom and US$88 million (NZ$105 million) for ALS in the United States where the challenge originated.

In New Zealand, National Manager of the Motor Neurone Disease Association Grant Diggle says it has generated huge interest from the public since it went viral during July and August this year, including around $15,000 in donations when MND NZ usually receives around $2,000 on average, a month.

One person who will undertake the challenge this Saturday is 40-year-old doctor, Claire Reilly from Geraldine, who is living with MND.

“When I was training to be a doctor at Otago this was the disease we all feared the most. That’s because it’s like slowly watching your body die. You’re still the same person you’ve always been but now you’re locked in a body that won’t listen,” says Claire.

“This year about 100 people will die from MND and another 100 will be diagnosed. It doesn’t discriminate and most of those diagnosed will die within two to five years.

“I’m hoping that by tipping a bucket of water over my head that I can do something about this dreadful illness,” says Claire.

The association thanks Claire and other New Zealanders who have undertaken the challenge or supported those who have.

“We are really humbled by Claire’s efforts. As if having MND isn’t challenging enough,” Grant says.

“We’d like to thank everyone who has rallied around the cause and supported people living with MND in New Zealand – we welcome any donation big or small. The funds will be used to help people with MND in New Zealand get the right help at the right time. Funding our fieldworkers is an ongoing challenge for us.

“While the amount of money and awareness raised here is small by global standards, it is significant for the near 300 people in New Zealand currently living with MND and will certainly help the Association to support them as they battle with this illness,” says Grant.

“And the massive amount of money raised globally is certainly good news for kiwis with MND if it helps to fund an eventual treatment,” he says.

From: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1408/S00515/gobal-ice-bucket-challenge-helps-change-lives.htm

When: Thursday, 28 August 2014

Where: New Zealand

What: Gobal Ice Bucket Challenge

Who: Motor Neurone Disease Association NZ

Why: Raised unprecedented awareness of the fatal disease, MND

How: The challenge, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

KEYWORD

kiwis living 新西蘭人的生活

MND 運動神經元病

President of the Motor Neurone Disease Association of New Zealand 新西蘭的運動神經元疾病協會主席

diagnosed 診斷