'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
Trucks carrying water and food on Sunday streamed into a Chinese city hit hard by flooding that killed at least 63 people, while soldiers laid sandbags to fill gaps in river dikes that have left neighborhoods under water.
Residents cleared away mud, wrecked cars and other debris after record rains that started Tuesday and flooded streets and disrupted train service in Henan province. The rains have subsided, but some neighborhoods were still waiting for water up to two meters (six feet) deep to drain.
The provincial government raised the death toll to 63 on Sunday, with five people missing, state TV reported. It said 8,876 homes had collapsed.
Trucks dropped off instant noodles and other goods at a stadium in Xinxiang, 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of the Zhengzhou, the provincial capital. Volunteers shifted pallets of drinking water stacked higher than their heads onto other trucks for distribution, occasionally breaking into cheers of, "Go, Xinxiang!"
The city was hit as the rains moved north from Zhengzhou, where flash floods killed more than 50 people, including 12 in the inundated subway system.
Business owner Han Yuan and her employees loaded boxes of disinfectant onto a truck for delivery to the city's Fengquan district, one of the worst-hit areas. "This is the city that raised me, and every one of us is devoting all we have to protect this city," she said.
Three military helicopters were used to bring drinking water, medicine, food and other relief items to about 20,000 people in inaccessible areas, including Xinxiang's Hongzhou and Yuhe townships, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Direct economic losses throughout Henan were estimated at 13.9 billion yuan ($2 billion), Xinhua reported. It said more than 1.1 million people had been relocated to safer areas.
Lu Qinghan, the owner of a recycling station, estimated she lost 30,000 to 40,000 yuan ($4,700 to $6,200), at least one third of her annual income, after floods washed away some of the station's waste material.
Her family got power back Sunday evening, but still needed clean water. Fengquan district residents lined up to register at a relief station for bottles of water.
"When (the flooding) was at its most severe, there was no electricity, and I couldn't see anything," Lu said. "When I smelled something different, the water was already reaching my bed."
Emergency crews were trying to close gaps in flood dikes that flooded sections of villages.
Soldiers and paramilitary police dumped stones and sandbags into a 100-meter-long (300-foot-long), eight-meter-deep (25-foot-deep) gap on the Weihe river in Xinxiang, the state-owned Global Times newspaper reported.
On Saturday, authorities intentionally had flooded parts of the nearby city of Hebi to lower water levels elsewhere, according to Shanghai online news outlet The Paper.
In Xinxiang, Zhang Meirong said she was so moved when people from Heze city in neighboring Shandong province came to help that she asked her daughter to take photos of them.
"I couldn't feel more touched," she said. "I didn't have much education, and I couldn't express it too well, but it's all in my heart."
------
Associated Press news assistant Caroline Chen contributed.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.