And in the Rest of the World…

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GONG xi fa cai on this sixth day of the Lunar New Year!

While you are munching on that piece of bak kwa, or busy collecting ang pows, here’s a look at how other cities in the world ushered in the Year of the Monkey.

One city painted their town red, while another mobilised more than 3,000 armed forces personnel to make sure its city was ready for CNY celebrations.

Check out the map below if you are curious to know which cities we’re referring to. Then read on for our selection of world news this week, from a fishball revolution to waves from outer space.

 

Elise Hu, NPR correspondent

“This was strong enough to not only be felt here in the [Taiwanese] capital city of Taipei but also in the southern provinces of China.”

Last Saturday, Taiwan was hit by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake, killing at least 94 people. Among the collapsed buildings was the Weiguan Jinlong building, where 92 bodies were found. Some 550 people were injured, and many still unaccounted for. Many have blamed shoddy construction for the collapse of the Weiguan Jinlong building, and developers have been arrested for investigations.

Ray Wong, member of Hong Kong indigenous

“Better to die with honour than survive in disgrace.”

Violence broke out in Hong Kong on Tuesday over what has been dubbed the “Fishball Revolution” . Riots erupted after police tried to remove illegal street hawkers in Mong Kok, on the first day of the Lunar New Year. The police have rounded up 38 protestors, charging them with rioting. However, this issue is merely symptomatic of the clash between the pro-Beijing government and the youth, and reveals the underlying fears of the erosion of Hong Kong’s traditions.

Alexander Dobrindt, German transport minister

It was shocking to see how both trains had smashed into each other. One of the trains had bored into the other.”

On Tuesday, two trains crashed into each other, killing 11 people. Both trains were travelling at 100km/h when they collided east of Bad Aibling, a town in southern Germany. While police have already recovered two black boxes, they are hoping to locate a third one, which they hope would provide answers to the cause of the accident. Investigators speculate that since the accident happened at a bend in the tracks, the drivers of the trains had not braked properly, or that there were signalling malfunctions.

Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, Interior Ministry spokesman

“Authorities are treating the attack as criminal and the attacker has been arrested.”

An attacker shot dead six people at an education department office in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan province on Thursday, killing six people. Early reports claim that the assailant was a teacher, but the state TV has said that the man was not an employee, but had business in the building. Police have arrested the attacker, and the authorities intend to charge this as a criminal act.

Kip Thorne, co-founder of the LIGO project

[The collision of two black holes] created a violent storm in the fabric of space and time, a storm in which the shape of space was bent this way and then that way.”

Scientists announced on Thursday that they have directly detected gravitational waves for the first time. The gravitational waves were detected with the use of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), a measuring device, after the collision of two black holes that created shock waves rippling across a billion light years of spacetime. This finding is especially significant, as it proves a portion of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity that has eluded scientists for decades.

Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church

“This [trip] will be a long and difficult journey.”

On Friday, Patriarch Kirill met Pope Francis in a historic meeting between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches in a little under 1,000 years. This meeting had been two years in planning, and observers hope that this meeting could signal the mending of the historical rift between both churches. In 1054, the previously unified Church split into the Western and Eastern Churches over theological differences, although this split would not officially be recognised till 400 years later.

 

Compiled by Cindy Co and Joshua Lim

Featured image Global by Flickr user Daniel Zedda. CC BY 2.0

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