Category: Uncategorized

The Swiss bar that was the scene of a fire that killed 40 people and injured 116 hadn’t undergone safety checks for five years, authorities say.

The mayor of Crans-Montana, Nicolas Feraud, told a Tuesday press conference that he could not explain why the La Constellation bar hadn’t been checked in so long, but that the council was “profoundly sorry”.

“We regret that – we owe it to the families and we will accept the responsibility,” he said.

He added that sparklers – which are believed to have caused the fire – will be banned in local venues. Local authorities will now bring in an external contractor to inspect and audit all 128 venues in the area.

Feraud conceded there was a team of five people inspecting more than 10,000 buildings – and explained that in 2016, four village councils had merged to become a larger authority: Crans Montana.

Taking repeated questions on why the bar had not been checked in so long, Feraud said: “I have no answer for you today.”

“We’re profoundly sorry about that and I know how hard that will be for the families.”

“I’m not resigning, no, and I don’t want to,” he later added.

He said it would be “down to the judges to know whether we’ll be part of this case or not”, referring to the criminal investigation that has been opened by Swiss prosecutors.

The survivor of a gang rape in the northern Indian state of Haryana has been discharged from hospital a week after her horrific assault, a police official told the BBC.

The 26-year-old mother-of-two was taken to hospital in Faridabad city on the morning of 30 December with serious head and facial injuries and several fractures.

Her sister said she was out visiting a friend and was waiting for transport just after midnight when two men in an ambulance offered her a lift. They drove her to a deserted place where they raped her and then threw her out of the speeding vehicle.

A police spokesman said they had acted swiftly and arrested the two men and seized the vehicle.

The woman was discharged by the hospital on Monday night following treatment and surgeries.

Senior police official Mukesh Kumar told the BBC that they have approached the court to allow her to visit the prison for an “identification parade”.

Once the court order comes, she would be asked to pick out the two suspects from a crowd of men.

The police said the crime took place on the intervening night of 29th and 30th December.

“The incident took place between 12.30 and 02:00. One stood outside the van and kept an eye on the surroundings while the other raped the woman inside the van,” Yashpal Yadav, public relations officer of Faridabad police, said.

Police had questioned the suspects, who were later produced in court and sent to prison, he added.

A doctor at the hospital where the survivor was treated had said that the woman was brought in “at around 05:30 on 30 December… she had a lot of injuries”.

Shalini Chopra, a social worker and an opposition politician, who spoke to the survivor after she was discharged from the hospital told the BBC that the woman was “better but still in pain”.

The case has provoked anger and outrage in India and drawn comparisons with the horrific gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in Delhi in December 2012.

That crime had made global headlines, led to huge protests in Delhi and several other cities and forced the government to introduce tough new anti-rape laws that included the death penalty for the most gruesome attacks.

Four men convicted of the gang-rape and murder were hanged in 2020. One of the rapists died in prison while a juvenile was freed after spending time in a reform centre.

But despite the heightened scrutiny of sexual crimes since then, tens of thousands of rapes and sexual assaults continue to be reported every year.

According to latest police records, 29,670 rapes and 2,796 attempted rapes were reported in 2023. In addition, police also recorded 849 cases of child rapes and 94 cases of attempted rapes of children.

Netflix has pulled a Chinese drama series from its Vietnam platform after Hanoi objected to an episode featuring a map with contested territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The 27-episode romance drama Shine on Me includes images of the so-called nine-dash line which Vietnam has condemned as “inaccurate” and “infringing upon national sovereignty”.

China uses the line in its maps to demarcate its territorial claims in the South China Sea. Vietnam is one of many countries that object to these claims.

Vietnam’s culture ministry issued a demand for the series to be removed on 3 January and gave Netflix 24 hours to comply.

A BBC check on Tuesday found it could no longer be viewed on Netflix’s Vietnam platform.

The disputed map appears several times in episode 25 of Shine On Me, in a scene about China’s solar power potential.

The show’s main characters attend a lecture where a map of China which shows part of the nine-dash line is projected on an auditorium screen.

Shine On Me is popular within China and other territories, ranking among Netflix’s Top 10 shows in Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam before it was pulled.

Beijing has not officially commented on the ban, although its state-run newspaper Global Times published an article on Tuesday urging Hanoi to “separate cultural exchanges from [the] South China Sea issue”.

In recent years China has increasingly asserted its claims of sovereignty over several land parcels and their adjacent waters in the South China Sea, despite complaints from Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.

Beijing has expanded some islands and built structures on them, and conducted sea patrols which at times have resulted in heated confrontations with the Philippine navy.

China argues that various pieces of evidence, from pottery shards to navigational guides used by Chinese fishermen, back up its claims of historical sovereignty.

In 2016 an international tribunal in The Hague ruled against Chinese claims in the South China Sea, but Beijing did not recognise the judgement.

The dispute between Beijing and Hanoi particularly centres on the Paracel and Spratly island chains, which the nine-dash line loops around on Chinese maps.

China says its right to the area goes back centuries to when these island chains were regarded as integral parts of the Chinese nation.

Vietnam hotly disputes this, saying China had never claimed sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea before the 1940s.

Hanoi says it has actively ruled over the Paracels and the Spratlys archipelagoes since the 17th Century and that it has the documents to prove it.

There are many issues that could provoke public uproar in Vietnam – including what citizens consider insulting depictions of the Vietnam war – but the nine-dash line is one that consistently draws authorities’ attention.

On most other issues, the Vietnamese government actively works to contain anti-China sentiment, but criticism affirming Hanoi’s claims in the South China Sea is one of very few forms of protest it deems acceptable.

Between 2019 and 2024, Vietnam filed eight written takedown requests with Netflix, according to the streaming platform’s reports.

In 2023, Vietnam had also ordered Netflix to remove another Chinese drama, Flight to You, over a similar map.

Chinese dramas are not the only productions to be banned by Vietnam for featuring the nine-dash line.

Authorities banned Warner Bros’ Hollywood blockbuster Barbie in 2023, and DreamWorks’ animated film Abominable in 2016, for similar reasons.

Additional reporting by Sen Nguyen in Bangkok