Death toll rises to 10 in Inner Mongolia flash flood
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The death toll from a flash flood that swept through a wild camping site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has risen to ten, with two people still missing, local emergency authorities said on Sunday, Xinhua reports.
The disaster struck around 10 p.m. Saturday in the upstream area of a river in Urad Rear Banner in Bayannur City, leaving 13 campers unaccounted for. They are from five families, including eight males and five females.
As of 3:30 p.m. Sunday, one person had been rescued, according to the city's emergency management bureau.
More than 700 rescuers have been promptly dispatched to the site, urgently searching for the missing.
The Ministry of Emergency Management has demanded full-scale operations to locate the missing and sent a work team to guide operations. The ministry warned travelers during flood season to avoid undeveloped wilderness areas and exercise caution in geologically hazardous zones.
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Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $40m to women who said talc to blame for cancer
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A California jury on Friday awarded $40m to two women who said Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder was to blame for their ovarian cancer, The Guardian reports.
The jury in Los Angeles superior court awarded $18m to Monica Kent and $22m to Deborah Schultz and her husband after finding that Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers.
Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice-president of litigation, said in a statement the company plans to "immediately appeal this verdict and expect to prevail as we typically do with aberrant adverse verdicts".
A spokesperson for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kent was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014, according to court records. Schultz was diagnosed in 2018. Both women are California residents who say they used J&J’s baby powder after bathing for 40 years. Their treatments for ovarian cancer have involved major surgeries and dozens of rounds of chemotherapy, they testified at the trial.
In closing arguments that Reuters viewed on Courtroom View Network, Andy Birchfield, an attorney for the women, told the jury that Johnson & Johnson knew as far back as the 1960s that its product could cause cancer.
Absolutely they knew, they knew and they were doing everything they could to hide it, to bury the truth about the dangers," Birchfield said.
Allison Brown, an attorney for Johnson & Johnson, said the only people to tell Kent and Schultz that their cancers were caused by talc were their lawyers, as the alleged connection isn’t backed by any major US health authority and there is no study that shows talc can migrate from the outside of the body to the reproductive organs.
They don’t have the evidence in this case, and they hope you don’t mind," Brown told the jury.
J&J is facing lawsuits from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they were diagnosed with cancer after using its baby powder and other talc products, according to court filings.
The company has said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer. J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product.
J&J has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a proposal that has been rejected three times by federal courts, most recently in April. The bankruptcies had put most cases on hold. Brown and Kent’s cases are the first to go to trial since the latest Chapter 11 attempt was dismissed.
Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in talc trials, with verdicts as high as $4.69bn awarded to women who said baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company has won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal.
The majority of lawsuits involve ovarian cancer claims. Cases alleging talc caused a rare and deadly cancer called mesothelioma make up a smaller portion of the claims J&J is facing. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months.
In the past year, J&J has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases, including one for more than $900m in Los Angeles in October.
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China launches Lijian-1 rocket, sending 9 satellites into orbit
Images | Xinhua
China on Wednesday launched a Lijian-1, also known as Kinetica-1 Y11, carrier rocket with 9 satellites, including one from the United Arab Emirates, onboard, Xinhua reports.
The rocket blasted off at 12:03 p.m. from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone near the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. It successfully sent the satellites into their planned orbits.
The UAE-led satellite, named 813, is designed for observing soil, the climate and the environment.
The launch deployed China's first remote-sensing satellite in the power industry, coded Jixing High-Resolution 07D01.
With a spatial resolution better than 0.5 meters, this satellite enables precise monitoring of the structural conditions of power grid equipment, such as transmission lines and pylons.
The satellite can perform continuous east-west strip observations, covering over 200 kilometers of transmission corridor in a single pass, according to the State Grid Electric Power Engineering Research Institute, one of its designers.
Compared to current satellite systems, this new satellite is expected to enhance surveying precision for transmission projects and line inspections by more than fivefold.
The satellite supports diverse applications, from managing ultra-high voltage (UHV) projects and assessing environmental impacts in transmission networks, to inspecting critical power corridors, issuing disaster warnings and evaluating post-disaster damage.
Also among the launch payload were two remote-sensing satellites dedicated to water resource monitoring, urban management, and digital transformation of a district in Hefei, capital city of east China's Anhui Province.
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An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred in northern Japan
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An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred in northern Japan, iz.ru cites the meteorological department.
At the moment, a tsunami threat has been declared.
A few minutes after the earthquake, another strong tremor occurred in the north of the country, which was also felt in Tokyo.
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Sri Lanka's extreme weather death toll rises to 607
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The death toll from adverse weather caused by Cyclone Ditwah has risen to 607 in Sri Lanka, Xinhua reports.
Another 214 people remain missing, while more than 2 million people from 586,464 families have been affected nationwide, said the DMC, adding that 4,164 houses have been destroyed and 67,505 others have suffered partial damages.
Meanwhile, the Department of Meteorology says rainfall in some parts of the country will increase on Dec. 9-11 due to the northeast monsoon conditions.
The National Building and Research Organization also issued a level-3 landslide early warning to multiple areas in Kandy, Kegalle, Kurunegala, Matale and Nuwara Eliya districts
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France arrests 4 more suspects in high-value Louvre jewel theft
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Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau on Tuesday announced the arrests of four additional individuals in connection with the theft at the Louvre Museum, Xinhua reports.
The suspects, two men aged 38 and 39 and two women aged 31 and 40, all from the Paris region, were taken into custody. The prosecutor's office said the charges against them would not be specified until the end of their police custody.
This latest round of arrests follows an initial wave of detentions and indictments in late October and early November.
The theft occurred on the morning of Oct. 19 in the Apollo Gallery of the Louvre Museum, where four individuals stole eight jewels valued at approximately 88 million euros. Initial findings indicate the perpetrators used a freight elevator to access an upstairs window, broke open display cases, and fled with the items.
Police and judicial authorities continue working to reconstruct the full chain of responsibility while pursuing multiple leads on the whereabouts of the stolen jewels.
On the same day, local media Le Parisien reported that the investigation had gained new momentum with the arrest of an additional individual described as the "fourth member" of the main group involved in the robbery. The suspect has been placed in custody, though no trace of the stolen jewelry has yet been found, the report said.
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212 dead due to adverse weather in Sri Lanka
Images | Xinhua
Adverse weather in Sri Lanka has killed 212 by Sunday afternoon, Xinhua reports.
Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Center said rescue teams are still searching for at least 218 people who are still missing across multiple districts.
The country's Ministry of Trade, Commerce, Food Security, and Cooperative Development said there is no shortage of essential commodities in the country.
The ministry said temporary shortages have occurred as a result of delays in transport disruptions caused by flooding. However, it emphasized that supplies are being replenished continuously. The government is ready to import additional quantities of any essential item should limited shortages arise, while ensuring protection for local farmers.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's Commissioner General of Examinations Indika Liyanage announced that the university entrance examination and all other scheduled exams have been postponed indefinitely due to the ongoing disaster. The revised schedule will be announced in due course, she said.
The Department of Meteorology said the effects of the cyclone is weakening across the country. Officials announced that the disruptions to electricity and water supply would be addressed in the coming days.
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