At least 13 people were killed and 28 injured in a fire at a large condominium complex in southern Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City on Friday.
Residents startled awake by loud noise and smoke signalled for help with lit mobile phones and crawled on to cranes from their balconies to escape. Police said it was unclear if anyone was missing.
Police rescued more than 100 residents while more than 1,000 escaped the fire themselves, state media quoted the city's police and fire department as saying.
"We were sleeping when the fire alarm went off, we all rushed out to the staircases. It was very hot and dark," condominium resident Le Thi Cam told online newspaper VnExpress.
"We were awakened by loud noise. We ran out of the apartment but there was a lot of smoke. We only had enough time to grab the mobile phone, wet some towels to cover ourselves and ran out," another unnamed resident said.
The three buildings with 14 to 20 floors have more than 700 flats. They were built six years ago in Vietnam's southern commercial hub, formerly called Saigon.
State media said most people died of suffocation or jumping from high floors.
The official Vietnam News Agency said more than 200 firefighters took more than an hour to put the fire under control.
The fire started in the basement garage, with state media saying doors that separated the garage from the upper floors should have been shut, but they were opened, which allowed the smoke to rise to the upper floors.
Major General Phan Anh Minh, the city's deputy police chief, said the fire could have started from a motorbike's electrical system but the possibility of explosions has not been ruled out.
In 2002, a fire at a trade centre in downtown Ho Chi Minh City killed 60 people in one of Vietnam's worst fires.
Thank You for Banking with Us
Director: Laila Abbas
Starring: Yasmine Al Massri, Clara Khoury, Kamel El Basha, Ashraf Barhoum
Rating: 4/5
Singham Again
Director: Rohit Shetty
Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone
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MWTC
Tickets start from Dh100 for adults and are now on sale at www.ticketmaster.ae and Virgin Megastores across the UAE. Three-day and travel packages are also available at 20 per cent discount.
Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
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Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
TRAP
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Director: M Night Shyamalan
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Director: Christian Carion
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Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla
Director: Raed Zeno
Rating: 4/5
The Case For Trump
By Victor Davis Hanson
Whiile you're here
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Results
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COMPANY PROFILE
Dubai works towards better air quality by 2021
Dubai is on a mission to record good air quality for 90 per cent of the year – up from 86 per cent annually today – by 2021.
The municipality plans to have seven mobile air-monitoring stations by 2020 to capture more accurate data in hourly and daily trends of pollution.
These will be on the Palm Jumeirah, Al Qusais, Muhaisnah, Rashidiyah, Al Wasl, Al Quoz and Dubai Investment Park.
“It will allow real-time responding for emergency cases,” said Khaldoon Al Daraji, first environment safety officer at the municipality.
“We’re in a good position except for the cases that are out of our hands, such as sandstorms.
“Sandstorms are our main concern because the UAE is just a receiver.
“The hotspots are Iran, Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, but we’re working hard with the region to reduce the cycle of sandstorm generation.”
Mr Al Daraji said monitoring as it stood covered 47 per cent of Dubai.
There are 12 fixed stations in the emirate, but Dubai also receives information from monitors belonging to other entities.
“There are 25 stations in total,” Mr Al Daraji said.
“We added new technology and equipment used for the first time for the detection of heavy metals.
“A hundred parameters can be detected but we want to expand it to make sure that the data captured can allow a baseline study in some areas to ensure they are well positioned.”
COMPANY PROFILE
● Company: Bidzi
● Started: 2024
● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid
● Based: Dubai, UAE
● Industry: M&A
● Funding size: Bootstrapped
● No of employees: Nine
Brief scores
Toss India, chose to bat
India 281-7 in 50 ov (Pandya 83, Dhoni 79; Coulter-Nile 3-44)
Australia 137-9 in 21 ov (Maxwell 39, Warner 25; Chahal 3-30)
India won by 26 runs on Duckworth-Lewis Method
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Engine: Two-litre four-cylinder turbo
Power: 235hp
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The specs
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The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
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Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
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