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At least 13 students killed in China school fire: State media

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At least 13 students killed in China school fire: State media

The victims were identified as third-grade students from an elementary school in Henan province, according to reports.

A fire has ripped through a dormitory in a boarding school in central China, killing 13 students, state media reported.

One student was injured in the blaze at Yingcai School in Henan province’s Yanshanpu village, the Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

The victims were identified as third-grade elementary school students. A teacher told the state-run Hebei Daily that all of them were from the same class of nine and 10 year olds.

Firefighters managed to swiftly extinguish the blaze, which was reported at 11pm (15:00 GMT) on Friday and the head of the school was taken into custody while the authorities were investigating the cause.

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The injured survivor was being treated in hospital and reported to be “in stable condition”, according to Xinhua.

China National Radio reported that some windows on the school’s dormitory building were smashed and published photos showing police cordoning off a nearby area.

Yanshanpu village lies on the outskirts of Nanyang, a city of nearly 10 million.

Little information about the boarding school is publicly available, though social media videos published earlier showed young children including kindergarteners wearing smocks with the school’s logo as well as older children learning calligraphy.

The private boarding institution with a kindergarten and an elementary school gives students a break every two weeks, but not this weekend, reported The Paper, a news outlet supported by the Shanghai government.

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Many of Yingcai’s students are from rural areas, it said.

‘Too scary’

On Saturday, Chinese social media users expressed outrage about the fire and called for any safety lapses to be punished.

“It’s too scary, 13 children from 13 families, all gone in an instant … if there is no severe punishment their souls will not rest in peace,” one commenter on the Weibo social media site wrote.

China frequently experiences fires and other fatal accidents, largely attributed to lenient safety standards and inadequate enforcement.

In November, 26 people died and dozens were sent to hospital after a fire at a coal company office in northern China’s Shanxi province.

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Eleven people died in July after the roof of a school gym collapsed in the country’s northeast.

In April, a hospital fire in Beijing killed 29 people and forced desperate survivors to jump out of windows to escape.

After the coal company fire in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the country to “conduct in-depth investigations of hidden risks in key industries, improve emergency plans and prevention measures”.

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Argentina's Milei shuts up critics with miracle turnaround of economy, strong security policies

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Argentina's Milei shuts up critics with miracle turnaround of economy, strong security policies

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President Javier Milei of Argentina continues to stun his critics with an economy that has outperformed expectations and continues along an ambitious path for national security, including pursuit of a NATO global partnership. 

“The fact that you have a president, head of state, who is defending the free market, who is defending the role of entrepreneurs and businessmen as creators of value and just defending deregulation when the tendency in Latin America and much of the West has been to regulate the economy . . . I think that’s very positive, not only for Argentina, but for the region as a whole and maybe beyond,” Daniel Raisbeck, a policy analyst at the CATO Institute, told Fox News Digital. 

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Milei won the presidency in November last year and prompted concern from some in the West that he would lead his country down a road to ruin with libertarian policies that would make an already troubled economy even weaker. Voters wanted economic relief from a market hit with some of the highest inflation in the world. 

Those attitudes have shifted just months later as Milei has enacted a raft of policy changes: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to release a tranche of loans due to Argentina under a bailout program thanks to Milei’s government managing to create a fiscal surplus in the previous fiscal quarter and bring inflation down. 

ARGENTINA REPORTS ITS FIRST SINGLE-DIGIT INFLATION IN SIX MONTHS AS MARKETS SWOON AND COSTS HIT HOME

President of Argentina Javier Milei gives a speech after his Inauguration Ceremony at National Congress on December 10, 2023, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  (Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images)

Argentina’s inflation in March alone hit 287%, causing poverty to deepen, and citizens to take to the streets with strikes and protests against his policies. The monthly inflation rate was 25% in December when Milei first took office. 

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Milei then went on to significantly reduce spending with major cuts to public-sector wages as he suspended public works projects and cut subsidies. He also devalued the country’s currency by over 50%, which helped it stabilize in value even as the price of basic goods jumped. 

The monthly inflation dropped to 8.8% by April, marking the first single-digit inflation rate in over six months. 

Argentina recorded a $589 million budget surplus in January and continued to post a surplus for each of the first four months of 2024, even as the surplus shrank to $299 million in April, Reuters reported. This marks the country’s first quarterly surplus since 2008. 

Raisbeck stressed that Milei’s primary measure of cutting spending has proven highly effective, while arguing that the significant deregulation in other parts of the economy has helped it revive over those first months of the new administration. 

Argentina South America

Javier Milei of La Libertad Avanza lifts a chainsaw next to Buenos Aires province governor candidate Carolina Piparo of La Libertad Avanza during a rally on September 25, 2023, in San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images)

“Argentina was one of the most regulated economies in the world,” Raisbeck said. “So when you have a very well-thought-out package like the one that they introduced . . . and you get rid of as many of those regulations as you can, then it’s very positive.”

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AT LEAST 90 INJURED AFTER PASSENGER TRAIN HITS BOXCAR, DERAILS IN ARGTENTINE CAPITAL

He noted that Milei has not adhered to some of his more aggressive campaign promises, which included a promise to dollarize the economy and shut down the Central Bank, saying that it was a “non-negotiable matter.”

Even days after he won the election, Milei appeared to favor more moderate Cabinet members than many would have expected of a man who jolted the international community with his outsider attitude and plans. 

APTOPIX-Argentina-Protest

Students protest for more public university funding and against austerity measures proposed by President Javier Milei, featured on the sign, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, April 23, 2024. The posters read in Spanish, “With fascism, there are no rights,” center, and “Why so much fear to educate the people?” and “Defending the university is defending the country.” (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

The Wall Street Journal, in December 2023, argued that Milei’s tenure “may turn out to be pretty conventional,” with pro-market Economy Minister Luis Caputo leading away from Milei’s more radical plans. 

The promised dollarization has been delayed, and Raisbeck explained that Milei’s approach has relied heavily on using the Central Bank to help regulate the economy, though he argued that Milei’s policies remain libertarian due to the deregulation he has pursued in other areas. 

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Argentina-Economy

A vendor waits for customers at the central market for fruit and vegetables in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, May 10, 2024.  (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

“Everything related to deregulation is very libertarian, and we’ve seen great success already in the housing market, for instance,” Raisbeck said. “So that obviously brought a huge amount of supply that was suppressed because of price controls.”

Milei also brought Argentina back to the international foreground, with a stronger focus on national security and changing up the country’s goals from the previous administration – most notably, he rejected the invitation to join the China and Russia-led economic bloc BRICS. 

PERUVIAN LAWMAKERS BEGIN YET ANOTHER EFFORT TO REMOVE PRESIDENT DINA BULARTE FROM OFFICE

A man holds up a giant US dollar sign with President Argentina's President Javier Milei

A supporter holds a giant dollar bill with the face President elect Javier Milei as people start gathering outside National Congress ahead of his inauguration ceremony on December 10, 2023, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images)

Milei argued that it was not “opportune” for Argentina to join the bloc as a full member, according to German outlet DW. However, he will continue to develop ties with its members in the meantime. 

“They have a good security minister, Patricia Bullrich, who has experience because she was a security minister in the previous government,” Joseph M. Humire, the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, told Fox News Digital. “She has been able to get the ball rolling very quickly, and I think that was the benefit of having her in that position.” 

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Milei supporters in Buenos Aires

Supporters of presidential candidate Javier Milei gather outside his headquarters during the presidential runoff election in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, November 19, 2023.  (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Humire explained that Milei’s government has largely focused on clearing out external agitators, particularly those connected to Russian disinformation networks, which remain a paramount concern in most parts of the world as Moscow seeks to expand its influence. 

“The external forces are usually the key,” Humire said. “Usually, it’s the Russians. The Russians have probably the biggest disinformation networks to be able to amplify local grievances and turn them into this macro instability, and they did that in Colombia, in Chile.” 

“A lot of the specifics of the nation’s security has been in mitigating these agitation networks that create chaos throughout the country, and they have been neutralizing some of these threats while they’re studying others,” he added. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 815

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 815

Here is the situation on Sunday, May 19, 2024.

Fighting

  • Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region halted operations following a Ukrainian drone attack overnight, Interfax news agency reported. The refinery is a private plant with a capacity of 4 million metric tonnes of oil per year, about one million barrels per day.
  • Ukraine’s air force claimed it destroyed all 37 Shahed attack drones launched by Russia overnight. The regions targeted by the drones include Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy and Kherson.

  • The governor of Kharkiv said nearly 10,000 people had been forced to leave their homes since Russian forces launched a surprise ground attack on May 10. Russia claimed its military took control of another village, Staritsya, in the Kharkiv region near the Russian border.
  • Ukrainian prosecutors said Russian shelling killed a 60-year-old woman and injured three other civilians in the northeast city of Vovchansk, 5km (3 miles) from the Russian border. A 59-year-old man was also injured in the village of Ukrainske.
  • Russia said its forces shot down nine US ATACMS missiles over Crimea and at least 60 drones over Russian sovereign territory. Its forces also shot down a Tochka-U missile fired by Ukraine in Russia’s Belgorod region.
  • Belgorod regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a Ukrainian drone attack injured a woman and a man in the village of Petrovka. The two were treated for shrapnel injuries.

Politics and diplomacy

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged issues with staffing and “morale” within the country’s troops as he signed a mobilisation law that came into force on Saturday. Kyiv has lowered the age at which men can be drafted from 27 to 25 and tightened punishments for those who avoid the call-up.
  • Ukrainian prosecutors said they were investigating as a potential war crime a Russian air attack on a residential area of the regional capital, Kharkiv, in which six civilians were wounded, including a 13-year-old girl, 16-year-old male and an eight-year-old.
  • Ukrainian officials accuse Russian soldiers in Vovchansk of using dozens of captured civilians as “human shields” to defend their command headquarters.
  • Moscow denied deliberately targeting civilians even as thousands have been killed and injured since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
  • Poland announced it would spend $2.5bn to fortify its eastern border, which includes Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
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Ukraine investigates civilian injuries, battles rage in Kharkiv region

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Ukraine investigates civilian injuries, battles rage in Kharkiv region
Ukrainian prosecutors said they were investigating attacks on civilians in two cities in the northeastern region of Kharkiv and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reported successes by troops fighting a fresh Russian assault there on Saturday.
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