The fire broke out around 6:51pm (2351 GMT) in a 25-apartment building near the Bronx Zoo, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the US financial capital.

A one-year-old child was among those killed as Red Cross volunteers handed out blankets and emergency responders set up a makeshift shelter in a nearby school on a bitterly cold night.

Firefighters put out a major house fire on Prospect avenue on December 28, 2017 in the Bronx borough of New York City. // AFP PHOTO

Tearful residents spoke of hearing shouts of “fire, fire” in the building and a mad rush to exit the property, battling past the smoke, with just the clothes on their backs into the sub-freezing night.

Mayor Bill de Blasio called it an “unspeakable tragedy,” in the middle of the holiday season when families come together, as the city of 8.5 million straddles Christmas and New Year festivities.

“Tonight here in the Bronx there are families that have been torn apart. This is the worst fire tragedy we have seen in this city in at least a quarter century,” de Blasio said.

 A handout photo made available by the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) shows FDNY members operating at the scene of a four-alarm fire at an apartment building in the Bronx, New York, USA, 28 December 2017. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

“I am sorry to report 12 New Yorkers are dead, including one child as young as one year old,” he told reporters after fire fighters extinguished the flames.

“There are four people critically injured who are fighting for their lives, other serious injuries as well,” he added.

The blaze began on the first floor and spread rapidly throughout the five-floor walk-up on Prospect Avenue, with fire fighters on the scene within three minutes, department chief Daniel Nigro told reporters.

– ‘Died on various floors’ –

Television footage showed fire fighters plucking panicked residents to safety from a fire escape.

Two of the dead were discovered in a bath tub full of water, where they had apparently sheltered from the blaze, US media reported.

Nigro said it was “way too early” to comment on the cause of the inferno.

People who evacuate from their house after a fatal major house fire on Prospect avenue on December 29, 2017 in the Bronx borough of New York City.  // AFP PHOTO

At least 12 people were rescued, but the search of the building continues, and the death toll could rise further, the mayor warned.

“This tragedy is, without question, historic in its magnitude. Our hearts go out to every family who lost a loved one here and everyone fighting for their lives,” said Nigro.

“People died on various floors, they range in ages from one to over 50,” he added. “In a department that’s certainly no stranger to tragedy, we’re shocked at this loss.”

It was the second deadly New York residential blaze in less than two weeks. A mother and three children were killed in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn when a fire tore through their home on December 18.

In March 2007, 10 people were killed in another fire in the Bronx that tore through a home to two immigrant families, itself the worst fire in the city since 1990 apart from the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The New York Times said Thursday’s blaze was the worst in the city since 87 people were killed in a 1990 inferno at a Bronx social club.

There has been a buzz about the man who plays the Flash in the TV series after an Instagram post of him and his fiancee, with a small building in the background, was uploaded recently.

Many Sabahans knew instantly that they were in Kota Kinabalu.

Thomas Grant Gustin, 28, better known as Barry Allen a.k.a Flash the superhero, was here in Sabah from Dec 17, and returned to the United States with his wife and some close friends and relatives yesterday.

Many people did recognise them but kept their distance. “They were very respectful. Most of them would just come up to us requesting for a photo if they saw us. There were not many who would sneak a picture or come rudely up to us,” he said.

Gustin was here for a customary wedding with his fiancee Andrea Thoma, 29, a physical therapist who is half-Kadazan.

Gustin and Thoma, when met during a dinner hosted by the Sabah Tourism Board on Dec 23, were both excited to learn more about the state and the Kadazandusun culture.

Gustin said it was his first time in the country, and that he found it very beautiful with amazing people.

He said he had been learning some simple Kadazan words including Kotohuadan which means thank you and Aramaitii! (a word used during celebrations to mean “cheers”).

“I have also been told that the people here can roll their tongues and pronounce rrrrr well,” Gustin said while demonstrating his newfound talent of rolling his tongue.

The customary wedding at their family home in Kg Kolopis Penampang on Wednesday was attended by only a handful of close friends and family including Thoma’s parents, elder sister and brother.

Thoma said though she was born in Ohio, the United States, and had lived there her whole life, she knew some of the culture practised in Sabah and can even speak a little Malay and Kadazan because of her mother.

“My mum makes sure that she speaks to us in Kadazan at times so that we would not be completely clueless about our other identity apart from being American,” she said.

She said her family returns to Sabah every few years so as not to lose touch with their Borneo heritage.

Thoma and her siblings love food with belacan or shrimp paste, thanks to their mother who always cooked whatever reminded her of home.

Gustin, however, has yet to try anything exotic as the Thomas are taking things one step at a time, not wanting to give him a culture shock.

Gustin said they would definitely be coming back often now that he is married to Thoma.

It is learnt that he is already talking about buying land and property here.

The couple plan to hold their wedding reception in the United States sometime next year.

The first self-service automated machine store is open for business in SS15, Subang Jaya. The store, which requires payment made via smartphone, attract curious onlookers to visit the store for a cashless shopping experience. One needs to download the app of Irishpay on handphone and complete the process of shopping via online transaction.

This store uses e-payment system and automated machine without any staff. This has effectively reduced labour costs and the shop operates for 24 hours.

Sin Chew Daily reporter visited the self-service store and found no staff in the store. Many members of public who visit the store due to curiosity made e-payment according to instruction. No dialogue is involved and process of purchase can be completed in five minutes using smartphone to scan for payment.

Currently the convenience store is selling small items such as snacks, beverages, condoms and others. The goods are labelled with mini flags such as China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and others to reflect the country of origin.

Currently the store only accepts payment via Irish pay. One needs to download the app on smartphone, fill up personal details and then log in to the main page. By scanning QR code of the product, one can make payment and collect the goods.

“To top value in the main page, the public is required to fill in the sum and then click on a connection linking to online transfer page of bank to complete the process.”

Xie Pei Qi, an auditor, brought her entire family to shop at the store and said she was attracted by the store. She completed transaction based on instruction pasted on the wall in less than five minutes.

Xie said it was a great experience of shopping without cash. She still has some worries of encountering faulty machines at late night having no one to turn to for help. A hotline for assistance may help to ease the anxiety of customers.

Lu Ding Shun, a shop operator next to the e-store, said the store only opens for public recently. Members of the public are seen visiting the shop to take photographs.

Lu, 60, is unfamiliar with new technology. Unless he is accompanied by his children, Lu said he would still opt to buy in traditional shop.

Salesman Lu Zhi Ming, 33, said the concept of 24 hours service is great as he is used to shop online.Yu Guangtai, 29, from Shandong, China, visits the e-store for the first time. He has not visited such shop in China and said the idea is new to him.

    The volcano, which roared back to life in 2010 after four centuries of silence, has been erupting steadily since 2015, displacing more than 3,000 families.

Wednesday’s eruption “was the biggest eruption this year, given the reach of the pyroclastic flow and the size of the area covered by the ashes”, local disaster agency chief Nata Nail told AFP.

Thousands were affected by the shower of volcanic ashes on the island of Sumatra but no one was severely injured because the dangerous zone was vacated earlier, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, said.

The eruption sent volanic ash down Sinabung’s slopes, destroying crops and causing misery to hundreds of farmers.

In May last year seven people were killed when Sinabung erupted, while a February 2014 eruption left 16 people dead.

Another Indonesian volcano, Mount Agung on the tourist paradise of Bali, has also been rumbling since September, forcing the evacuation of 140,000 people living nearby and prompting the closure of the island’s international airport.

Indonesia, the world’s most active volcanic region, lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where tectonic plates collide, causing frequent volcanic and seismic activities.//AFP

Visitors from the four countries wanting to enter or stay in Laos within 15 days do not need a visa, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release.

The move is part of the government’s campaign to attract more foreign visitors during Visit Laos Year.

More people from these four countries came to Laos last year, despite an overall drop of 10 percent in total visitor numbers last year compared to 2015.

Collectively, some 17,510 citizens of Scandinavian countries visited Laos in 2016, an increase from the 16,468 visitors recorded the year before.

Director General of the Tourism Marketing Department, Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism, Mr Soun Manivong, welcomed the move.

He said many countries had introduced incentives to attract foreign tourists as part of similar initiatives.

For instance, Indonesia waived the one-year visa requirement for ordinary passport holders from more than 30 countries during Visit Indonesia Year 2015.

Meanwhile, Malaysia reduced the landing fees for shuttle flights landing at its airports when the country launched Visit Malaysia Year.

“Many countries have introduced incentives to boost visitor numbers during promotional campaigns,” Mr Soun said.

He said the ministry had asked the government, via the National Committee for Visit Laos Year 2018 chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone, to waive the visa requirement for targeted countries.

In addition to the one-year visa exemption for nationals of Scandinavian countries, Laos has signed bilateral visa exemption agreements (long-term agreements) for ordinary passport holders from 11 countries, including Mongolia and Russia.

Benefiting from similar agreements are citizens of the other nine Asean member countries, namely Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Laos has also offered unilateral visa exemptions (long-term exemptions) to ordinary passport holders from Japan, Republic of Korea, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

The government expects that Visit Laos Year 2018 will attract at least 5 million foreign visitors next year, an increase from the 4.8 million tourists expected in the whole of 2017.

Plastic straws and food packaging are strewn between sunbathers, while surfers bobbing behind the waves dodge waste flushed out from rivers or brought in by swirling currents.

“When I want to swim, it is not really nice. I see a lot of garbage here every day, every time,” Austrian traveler Vanessa Moonshine explains.

“It’s always coming from the ocean. It’s really horrible,” she adds.

Often dubbed a paradise on earth, the Indonesian holiday island has become an embarrassing poster child for the country’s trash problem.

The archipelago of more than 17,000 islands is the world’s second biggest contributor to marine debris after China, and a colossal 1.29 million metric tons is estimated to be produced annually by Indonesia.

The waves of plastic flooding into rivers and oceans have been causing problems for years — clogging waterways in cities, increasing the risk of floods, and injuring or killing marine animals who ingest or become trapped by plastic packaging.

The problem has grown so bad that officials in Bali last month declared a “garbage emergency” across a six-kilometre (3.7-mile) stretch of coast that included popular beaches Jimbaran, Kuta and Seminyak.

Officials deployed 700 cleaners and 35 trucks to remove roughly 100 tons of debris each day to a nearby landfill.

“People with green uniform were collecting the garbage to move it away but the next day I saw the same situation,” said German Claus Dignas, who claimed he saw more garbage with each visit to the island.

“No one wants to sit on nice beach chairs and facing all this rubbish,” he added.

Bali’s rubbish problem is at its worst during the annual monsoon season, when strong winds push marine flotsam onto the beach and swollen rivers wash rubbish from riverbanks to the coast, according to Putu Eka Merthawan from the local environment agency.

“This garbage does not come from people living in Kuta and nearby areas,” he told AFP.

“It would be suicidal if Kuta people were doing it.”

– War on waste –

Some 72 kilometres from Kuta, Mount Agung has been threatening to erupt for two months, prompting tourists to cancel visits and displacing tens of thousands of villagers living within a 10 kilometre-radius of the volcano’s crater.

But the island’s waste problem is no less of a threat, said I Gede Hendrawan, an environmental oceanography researcher from Bali’s Udayana University.

“Garbage is aesthetically disturbing to tourists, but plastic waste issue is way more serious,” he told AFP.

“Microplastics can contaminate fish which, if eaten by humans, could cause health problems including cancer.”

Indonesia is one of nearly 40 countries that are part of UN Environment’s Clean Seas campaign, which aims to halt the tide of plastic trash polluting the oceans.

As part of its commitment, the government has pledged to reduce marine plastic waste by 70 percent by 2025.

It plans to boost recycling services, curb the use of plastic bags, launch cleanup campaigns and raise public awareness.

Still, the scale of the problem facing Indonesia is huge, due to its population of more than 250 million and poor waste processing infrastructure.

Hendrawan, who says both locals and tourists are responsible for the island’s rubbish problem, urged authorities to invest more resources to tackle the problem.

“The Bali government should spare more budget to raise people’s awareness to take care of local rivers, not to dump waste,” he said.

“The central government should boost the campaign to reduce use of plastic packaging and ban free plastic bags at convenient stores.”

The new direct international flights are part of AirAsia’s strategy to boost connectivity in line with the Sarawak government’s tourism efforts.

AirAsia Bhd commercial head Spencer Lee said the two new direct flights reflected its commitment towards expanding the market in Sarawak.

Commending AirAsia, Sarawak Tourism Board chairman Datuk Abdul Wahab Aziz said it augured well for the development of the tourism industry in Sarawak and the world.

“We hope and look forward to more international connectivity in the years to come,” he said.

The daily flight from Kuching to Shenzhen is at 10.45pm with the return flight at 3.50am the next day.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, Fri­days and Sundays, there will be flights from Singapore to Bintulu at 9.10am with the return flight at 11.25am.