■ China
Rabies deaths soar
Guangdong Province has reported more than 300 deaths from rabies last year, the highest number in a decade, as its increasingly affluent population buys more dogs, state media said yesterday. Rabies killed 306 people in the province last year, up 24.9 percent from 2004, the China Daily said. Last year, 330,000 people sought treatment for rabies in Guangdong and 500,000 were vaccinated. There were 1.5 million reported dog bites or scratches. Some 2,660 people died of rabies in China in 2004, according to Ministry of Health figures.
■ India
Man thrives on lizard diet
Mukesh Thakur, 25, in Gujarat state consumes up to 25 lizards a day, a news report said on Wednesday. Thakur is known locally as "the lizard boy" and has been popping the reptiles since he was five years old, IANS news agency reported. Thakur's family says he developed the addiction as a child. He came across a lizard while playing and popped it in his mouth and since then has been eating up to 25 lizards a day. They say his strange diet has had no effect on his life except that he is restless if he fails to get a lizard, the report said.
■ China
Quarrying destructive
The scenic Songshan mountains surrounding the famed Shaolin Temple are being ravaged by extensive stone quarrying, the Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. More than 20 quarries in the mountains are blasting away forest cover and leaving vast shelves of exposed rock, Xinhua said. "The beautiful landscape of the mountains has been destroyed," Xinhua's report said. Protection efforts are hampered by the area's division into three jurisdictions, Xinhua said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese