分类： society

A close call for a liquor store employee in a wild animal encounter that unfolded in a populated area, as the worker escaped a leopard attack with only narrow margins to spare. Local authorities have confirmed that after a tense nearly five-hour operation to contain and secure the unrestrained animal, wildlife teams successfully captured the leopard. Following the capture, wildlife officials completed the process by releasing the big cat back into its natural wild habitat, following standard animal management protocols for unexpected urban-wildlife intersections. The incident highlights growing instances of wildlife venturing into human-populated zones as habitat boundaries shift, prompting local officials to reiterate guidance for residents on how to respond safely when encountering wild animals in developed areas. No serious injuries were reported beyond the fright of the encounter, and the leopard was confirmed to be unharmed during the capture and release process.

GUWAHATI, India – Rescue operations for trapped workers at a collapsed hydropower tunnel in India’s Himalayan state of Sikkim concluded Thursday, after recovery teams pulled the bodies of the final 13 missing workers, raising the total confirmed death toll to 25.

The tragedy unfolded on Monday, when a methane gas buildup ignited a powerful explosion inside the tunnel of the under-construction 500-megawatt Teesta Hydroelectric Project. The site sits roughly 40 kilometers south of Sikkim’s capital Gangtok, in the seismically active Teesta River basin. The blast trapped dozens of workers deep underground, leaving no chance of survival for those caught in the disaster. Multiple state and national agencies launched a coordinated four-day rescue effort, but operations were slowed significantly by high levels of toxic gas lingering inside the tunnel, according to official statements.

After all trapped workers’ remains were recovered, search teams conducted a full final structural inspection of the damaged tunnel, the Sikkim state government confirmed in an official release. In response to the disaster, authorities have assembled a high-level special committee to launch a full investigation into the causes of the explosion. The panel will also be tasked with outlining new regulatory safeguards to prevent similar deadly accidents on future infrastructure projects.

This latest industrial disaster has drawn renewed attention to systemic construction safety risks across India, where the country’s rapid push for large-scale infrastructure expansion frequently clashes with challenging geographic conditions, inconsistent safety oversight, and common construction lapses. Experts note that the Teesta River basin, where the hydropower project is located, presents uniquely high dangers for underground construction. The region is marked by young, geologically fragile rock formations intersected by frequent fractures and naturally occurring underground pockets that can trap ancient gases such as methane. Combined with ongoing seismic activity and unpredictable subterranean conditions, tunnel projects in the area carry inherently elevated risk.

This disaster is far from an isolated incident in India. Just this year, a coal mine explosion in neighboring Meghalaya state claimed the lives of 18 workers. In 2023, a major tunnel collapse on an infrastructure project in northern Uttarakhand state trapped 41 workers for 17 days before a dramatic multi-week rescue effort successfully freed all those stuck underground.

MUMBAI, India — A viral photo captured outside a Mumbai police precinct tells a story of quiet defiance that has come to define India’s spreading “Cockroach” protest movement: a blue police van fills the shot, and 27-year-old Rhiya Ahir plants herself in its path, her hoodie soaked through from a sudden downpour, one palm pressed firmly against the van’s cold metal exterior. Behind the windshield, uniformed officers look on. Inside the vehicle, a group of young demonstrators sat detained, swept up during a mass protest Wednesday in India’s financial and commercial hub. What began as a spontaneous act of solidarity for Ahir has turned her into an unexpected face of a movement that started more than a month ago and now resonates far beyond its original roots.

The protest movement, nicknamed the “Cockroach” protests by participants, first erupted over widespread allegations that highly competitive entrance exams for top medical school positions and coveted government jobs had been compromised by widespread question paper leaks. What started as outrage from young job and education seekers has rapidly swelled into a broader movement, drawing in working professionals, working-class families and longstanding critics of the government. It has become a public outlet for accumulated frustration across a wide swath of Indian society over systemic economic inequality, limited opportunities for young people, and perceived government indifference to widespread public concerns.

On the day of the Mumbai demonstration, Ahir told reporters she had only been waiting to meet friends before joining the planned protest when she spotted the police van carrying detained protesters. Instead of turning away, she approached the officers and asked a straightforward question: did they have the legal required paperwork to justify the detentions of the young activists?

Dissatisfied with the vague and inadequate response she received from the officers, Ahir first walked alongside the moving van as it prepared to depart, keeping pace to continue her challenge. When the vehicle accelerated and she could no longer keep up on foot, she made the split-second decision to step directly in front of the van, blocking its path completely.

Ahir recounted later that she could not stand by and watch as peaceful demonstrators, who were ordinary Indian citizens, were treated like common criminals simply for exercising their right to protest. In response to her blockade, the van’s driver revved the engine loudly, the sudden roar of power a clear attempt to intimidate her into moving. Ahir admitted that in that moment, she acknowledged the very real risks: she could have been arrested, detained alongside the other protesters, or even seriously injured if the driver followed through on the implicit threat. Even so, she refused to step back. She held her position firmly, refusing to move until police agreed to release the detained young protesters. Eventually, officers conceded, and the demonstrators were set free.

In an interview after the confrontation, which lasted roughly 40 minutes from start to finish, Ahir acknowledged she had been afraid throughout the standoff. But her conviction that she was acting in the right outweighed her fear. “I knew one thing,” she said. “If I had started this, I had to end it.” Her act of individual defiance is just one of many that have fueled the growing movement, which has now spread beyond Mumbai to other major Indian cities, with demonstrators holding mass sit-ins in the national capital even as police have stepped up efforts to crack down on gatherings.

On a seemingly ordinary school day in July 2025, catastrophe struck the busy Dhaka neighborhood of Uttara, when a Bangladesh Air Force training jet crashed straight into Milestone School and College — a private educational facility teeming with hundreds of active, unsuspecting students. The impact and subsequent raging fire turned a hub of learning into a scene of unthinkable chaos, leaving 34 dead and 160 more injured. Most of the casualties were children, making this the deadliest aviation disaster Bangladesh has witnessed in more than half a century.

Now, one year after the tragedy, survivors and grieving family members gathered in Dhaka this week to honor the lives lost — and to reiterate their desperate demand for long-overdue accountability and transparency. For many of the young survivors, the physical and psychological scars of that day remain a daily prison. Sixth-grader Nure Jannat Yusha, who suffered burn injuries in the crash, describes constant fear and trauma that has shattered her once-normal life. “Even now, if I go to school and see a plane, I feel afraid. I can’t sleep at night. In my dreams, someone is throwing me into the fire,” she told BBC Bengali. Once a student who dreamed of becoming a professional dancer, Yusha has abandoned that aspiration; she no longer has any interest in attending classes, gripped by constant paranoia that another plane will fall from the sky. Her story is far from unique.

Fifth-grader Mehreen, another injured student, can no longer attend school at all. Her injuries leave her in severe pain when exposed to even small amounts of sunlight, and the trauma has erased her once-sharp ability to learn and retain information. “Earlier, if I read something, I would memorise it in two minutes. Now I can’t memorise a line in two hours,” she explained. Like Yusha, she struggles with nightly insomnia and recurring nightmares, unable to outrun the memory of the crash.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Bangladesh’s government established an investigative commission to unpack the causes of the crash. The committee submitted its final findings to state officials last November, but the full report has never been released to the public. A leaked copy obtained by BBC Bengali has revealed damning conclusions that contradict early official claims. Contrary to the Bangladesh Armed Forces’ initial statement that the crash was caused by an aircraft mechanical fault, the investigation found the jet itself had no technical failures. Instead, the report attributes the disaster to multiple systemic failures: the pilot lacked sufficient training, there was inadequate ground supervision for the training flight, Milestone School violated critical building safety codes (including only having a single exit for nearly 900 students), and hundreds of other buildings — including multiple schools and hospitals — located near Dhaka’s international airport have illegally violated height restriction rules, putting thousands of lives at risk daily.

Grieving family members say these unaddressed safety lapses mean the same disaster could happen again. Mansur Helal, whose wife Mahreen Chowdhury — a schoolteacher at Milestone who died saving trapped students from the burning building — told the memorial gathering that the status quo is unacceptable. “No one can give a guarantee that another plane will not fall onto this school in the future,” Helal said, noting that between 2,500 and 3,000 students still attend the campus daily. “This is truly a horrific situation.”

Helal and other attendees are demanding three core actions: the immediate public release of the full investigative report, full implementation of the compensation and support measures already recommended by the commission, and sweeping policy changes to restrict hazardous training flights over densely populated residential and educational areas and enforce building safety codes around the airport. While the commission already called for financial compensation and expanded care for survivors, none of these measures have been put into practice one year on.

At Tuesday’s memorial, Health Minister Sardar Sakhawat Hossain stated the government would provide support to survivors requiring ongoing medical care, and Zubaida Rahman, wife of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, praised survivors for their courage, calling it “a source of inspiration for the nation.” But those words have done little to address the unmet needs of families still waiting for answers, and survivors still struggling to rebuild their lives shattered by a disaster that could have been prevented.

In late June, graphic footage of a horrific animal abuse incident in southern China’s Guangdong province ignited widespread public fury that has spilled across national borders, becoming a global rallying cry for long-overdue animal cruelty laws in China. The video, which shows four boys under the age of 14 beating three newborn stray puppies to death with sticks before burning their mother, a stray dog named Wang Wang, to death while the children laughed, quickly spread across Chinese social media platforms, triggering an immediate wave of shock and grief.

Chinese authorities responded to the outcry by moving to scrub most posts and mentions of the incident from domestic internet platforms, citing the need to protect the privacy and welfare of the underage perpetrators. In an official statement, local officials urged the public to stop sharing the disturbing footage, avoid so-called cyberbullying of the minors, and maintain a supportive environment for youth rehabilitation. Following the incident, Jieyang city authorities announced that the four boys would not face any criminal charges, and would instead be transferred to a specialized youth education facility; no further details on the placement or the facility’s programming have been released to the public.

This official response has not quieted public anger, and instead amplified calls for systemic change: China currently has no standalone national legislation that criminalizes animal cruelty, leaving abuse cases without consistent legal consequences. While Chinese censors have restricted broad circulation of the full video and removed high-profile posts from public figures that called for animal protection reform – including posts from Chinese actor Du Jiang and Taiwanese actress Joe Chen – discussion of the incident and the broader demand for animal cruelty laws persists. Trending keywords related to Wang Wang and animal protection remain accessible on major Chinese platforms, and many domestic users have found creative ways to keep the conversation alive, despite repeated content removal restrictions.

The censorship push has also driven animal rights advocates to organize action outside mainland China to amplify their cause, turning a local incident into an international movement. In New York City’s iconic Times Square, a large digital billboard now cycles images of Wang Wang every 35 minutes, bearing the moving caption: “She was loved. She wanted to live. She should still be here.” Near the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan, a second billboard displays Wang Wang nursing her puppies with the message: “This planet is their home too. Justice for Wang Wang.”

CK, a Taiwanese activist who contributed NT$30,000 (approximately $930) to fund the Taipei billboard, told reporters she was left unable to eat or sleep normally for days after seeing the killing footage. She explained that the cross-border campaign was organized to create collective momentum for change, saying, “It makes everyone feel like we’re speaking out together on this issue, rather than airing our individual opinions online. The world needs to know about the cruelty these dogs have been subject to.” CK has also set up public accounts on global social platforms including Reddit and X to share the incident with international audiences, while another Taiwanese activist named Elara used artificial intelligence to translate a full summary of the incident into more than 10 languages, including Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian, to widen global outreach. Activists in Hong Kong and Macau have also raised funds to place awareness posters on public buses and trains across both regions.

Within mainland China, grassroots action continues to gain traction across public and commercial spaces. During a recent professional football match in the northeastern city of Dalian, a large stadium screen displayed a cartoon tribute to Wang Wang and her puppies before kickoff, with the message: “Every life deserves respect and kindness.” Domestic Chinese brands including beauty label Amortals and streetwear brand Wah Yan Ching Nin have funded public awareness ads outside major shopping malls across the country, calling for an immediate end to animal abuse and passage of national anti-cruelty legislation. Even on e-commerce giant Taobao, sellers are offering stickers and car decals featuring Wang Wang and her puppies to raise awareness, while Weibo users continue to post calls for sustained action, urging supporters not to let public discussion fade.

International animal welfare organizations have also been drawn into the campaign. The Italy-based International Organisation for Animal Protection announced it has received more than 100 public reports from people across the globe calling for the group to intervene, and has formally requested additional information on the incident and broader animal protection policy from Chinese authorities.

The incident has sparked broader debate over competing ethical priorities: China’s decision to restrict identification of the underage perpetrators aligns with global standards that typically protect the identities of juvenile offenders to avoid long-term psychological harm from public exposure. Even so, many activists argue that the lack of national animal cruelty legislation is the core systemic failure that allowed this incident to occur without legal consequences, and that public outcry is necessary to force long-term reform. The Wang Wang killing is the latest in a string of high-profile animal abuse cases that have galvanized Chinese public opinion in recent years, with the graphic, visceral footage of the killing striking a particularly deep emotional chord with animal lovers across the country. One anonymous animal welfare advocate from eastern China told reporters, “We can’t make our voices heard, so many people outside China are actively helping us to share this message.”