■ Hong Kong
Smuggled chickens seized
Officials have seized about 6,000 live chickens being smuggled into the territory from China, the government said. The seizure on Tuesday highlights the challenges the territory faces as it tries to protect against the threat of bird flu spreading from mainland China, where several outbreaks have been reported in the past year. The 6,000 birds were found in two containers at a cargo handling area, the government said in a statement. The truck driver surrendered the birds, which were then destroyed, it said. Laboratory tests run on samples from the chickens showed no sign of bird flu.
■ China
Wedding guests hospitalized
Fifty people were hospitalized with food poisoning after eating a catered meal at a wedding banquet, state media said yesterday. No one was reported dead from the incident on Sunday in Shaanxi Province's Hua County, the official Xinhua news agency said. About 200 people attended the wedding, which was catered by a local restaurant in the township of Guapo, it said. It said 23 of the 50 people who became sick shortly after eating at the banquet were released from hospital by Tuesday, while another 27 were still being held for observation.
■ China
Election protesters arrested
Police have arrested three residents of Shadui village, Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News reported. Allegedly upset because the local government failed to issue certificates that would allow them to vote in a village election, Shadui villagers scuffled with police two weeks ago. The three were arrested when they protested again in a follow-up demonstration.
■ China
Elderly Catholic priest freed
An elderly bishop belonging to China's underground Roman Catholic Church has been released after spending more than 10 months in police custody, a Vatican-affiliated missionary news agency reported on Tuesday. Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo (賈治國), 70, has returned to his home in Zhengding and has been free to receive visits from priests of his diocese, AsiaNews said. Government agents seized Jia on Nov. 8, arresting him for the eighth time in two years. AsiaNews reported that during his latest detention the bishop was interrogated and pressured to adhere to the Communist Party-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association, which rejects Vatican authority.
■ China
Teachers ditch marriages
Chinese education officials have scrapped a plan to trim jobs that allowed teachers who have children but not spouses to continue working. The plan prompted a rash of divorces, a Chinese newspaper said yesterday. The plan to cut teaching jobs at primary and middle schools in Dandong, Liaoning Province, had resulted in 41 teachers at a single school filing for divorce in a week, the Shanghai Daily reported. "In comparison, their town had a total of 34 couples who divorced in the whole of 2005," the paper said. The numerous divorces alerted officials, who suspended the plan and persuaded 39 of the 41 teachers to re-marry their former spouses, it said.
■ Italy
Tarantulas' silky secret
Tarantulas secrete sticky silk from their feet to help them adhere to shiny surfaces, scientists have learned. Spiders are already known to have two mechanisms that give them their ability to walk upside or cling to smooth vertical surfaces. One is the use of thousands of tiny hairs that generate a weak electrical bond -- called the van der Waals force -- with the surface. Another is tiny claws that lock onto rough surfaces. But scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart have now found -- in tarantulas, at least -- a third gripping tool: microscopic nozzle-like structures on their feet that secrete a viscous silk-like filament.
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