Millions of audience entered 2025 with China Media Group (CMG)'s New Year Gala which started airing on Tuesday evening.
Entitled "Sail into 2025," the gala sets its main stage at the Tianping Lake at the foot of Mount Tai in Tai'an, a city in east China's Shandong Province, the native home of Confucius (551-479 BC), one of the greatest Chinese philosophers and educators and founder of Confucianism.
Unfolded in six chapters, the gala opened with an integrated art performance blending a variety of art forms, including folk music, traditional Chinese operas, martial arts, rhythmic gymnastics, and parkour.
Advanced technologies like augmented reality (AR) and extended reality (XR) facilitate the attempts to give audience an immersive experience, with displays of drones and robots over the lake.
The gala is broadcast on several CMG's TV and radio channels, as well as new media platforms across China, marking a spectacular start to 2025.
CMG's New Year Gala brings audience into 2025
CMG's New Year Gala brings audience into 2025
The death toll from a landfill collapse in the central Philippine city of Cebu has risen to eight by Monday morning as search and rescue operations continued for another 28 missing people.
The landfill collapse occurred on Thursday as dozens of sanitation workers were working at the site. The disaster has already caused injuries of 18 people.
Family members of the missing people said the rescue progress is slow, and the hope for the survival of their loved ones is fading.
"For me, maybe I’ve accepted the worst result already because the garbage is poisonous and yesterday, it was raining very hard the whole day. Maybe they’ve been poisoned. For us, alive or dead, I hope we can get their bodies out of the garbage rubble," said Maria Kareen Rubin, a family member of a victim.
Families have set up camps on high ground near the landfill, awaiting news of their relatives. Some people at the site said cries for help could still be heard hours after the landfill collapsed, but these voices gradually faded away.
Bienvenido Ranido, who lost his wife in the disaster, said he can't believe all that happened.
"After they gave my wife oxygen, my kids and I were expecting that she would be saved that night because she was still alive. But the night came and till the next morning, they didn't manage to save her," he said.
Death toll in central Philippine landfill collapse rises to eight
