■ China
Main bridge collapses
A bridge collapsed in northeastern China yesterday, sending vehicles tumbling into a river below but no information was available on casualties, an official said. The 500m Tianzhuangtai bridge in Panjin, in northeastern Liaoning Province, collapsed at 7:02am, the Xinhua news agency said. "According to local sources, at least three vehicles were seen to be thrown into the river," Xinhua said. "Two people returned alive by swimming to the shore." The bridge connects Panjin and Yingkou.
■ South Korea
`Garbage' dumplings found
South Korean stores removed dumplings from their shelves yesterday after a government watchdog disclosed that food processing firms had used rotten ingredients in the popular dish. The Korea Food and Drug Administration said at least 19 firms had produced what newspapers called "garbage" dumplings by using imported radish from China that was unfit for human consumption. Dumplings, prepared by stuffing seasoned minced meat and vegetables inside a flour-based "skin," are popular in South Korea, China, Japan and elsewhere in Asia. "The companies were found to have used harmful radish for their dumpling products," said administration chief Shim Chang-koo.
■ South Korea
Rivals hold military talks
South and North Korea yesterday held a working-level military meeting to follow up on agreements reached at ground-breaking general-level negotiations last week. Colonels from both sides met at the North's border town of Kaesong to discuss how to implement a tension-reduction package agreed at the earlier talks, Seoul's defense ministry said. The working-level meeting came a day after North Korea's military issued a statement accusing Seoul of raising tensions along a disputed sea border by deploying more navy ships to the area. However, Seoul's Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said the North Korean delegation took a "sincere" attitude at the follow-up military talks.
■ China
Pandas bounce back
The most comprehensive survey yet of China's giant panda population shows they are clawing their way back from the brink of extinction, with 40 percent more than previously thought in the wild, the World Wildlife Federation said yesterday. The survey documented at least 1,590 of the endangered species in the wild -- a sharp rise from the 1,110 reported in 1988, the last time a survey was conducted. The four-year joint study attempted to count every panda, as opposed to previous studies which extrapolated numbers of pandas from selected parts of panda habitats.
■ China
Olden golden bra surfaces
Archeologists have dug up a 1,000-year-old padded bra in Inner Mongolia, a news report said yesterday. The gold-colored bra was found in a tomb in the autonomous region's Aohan banner, according to the South China Morning Post. Archeologist Shao Guotian said the bra dated back to the Liao dynasty and described it as made of fine silk with shoulder and back straps. "It is just like brassieres of today," he said. "It's a pity most of the cotton padding in the cups has already decayed."
■ Germany
Bombing injures 22
At least 22 people were wounded when a bomb packed with nails exploded in a busy shopping district in the western German city of Cologne, police said yesterday, raising their casualty toll. However the condition of one of the wounded, who was in a critical state after the blast rocked a mainly-Turkish neighborhood known as Little Istanbul on Wednesday, has stabilized. An investigation into the blast, the first of its kind in Germany in years, continued overnight but police have been unable to establish the reason behind it, although it appears unlikely it was a terrorist attack.
■ Germany
Delinquents jailed
A court on Wednesday jailed the teenage ringleaders in a class of students that tortured a schoolmate for months and posted film clips of the abuse on the Internet. The three teenagers, identified only by their first names, were found guilty of torturing the victim known as Dieter, then aged 17, nearly every day between last November and January this year. The members of class 03B at the Werner von Siemens school in Hildesheim in northern Germany took turns beating Dieter with iron bars, pummelling him with their fists and kicking him while he lay on the floor nearly every day over a three-month period. The abuse was only discovered after Dieter began to suffer from psychological problems.
■ Germany
Stop hoarding coins: bank
The eurozone is running out of coins because too many people are hoarding their small change in jars and piggybanks at home rather than spending it in shops. The warning was issued yesterday by the German central bank which said there was a particular problem in Germany, and that this was being compounded by China, a country whose ravenous appetite for steel, a component of some of the euro coins, had caused a sharp rise in the cost of making coins. The answer, the Bundesbank insisted, was for people in Europe to stop leaving their coins "on the hall table."
■ Venezuela
Observers may be limited
Electoral authorities may consider limiting the role of international observers in an Aug. 15 referendum against President Hugo Chavez because of fears they may be biased against him, an election official said on Wednesday. Oscar Battaglini, one of five National Electoral Council directors organizing the recall vote, said he personally opposed the presence of observers from the Organization of American States and the Atlanta-based Carter Center. "Their role could be limited, or maybe they won't be there. I don't think they should be there because of the way they behaved," Battaglini said.
■ Canada
Legal weed urged
Decriminalizing marijuana in Canada could provide a C$2 billion (US$1.5 billion) tax windfall, according to a study by a right-wing think-tank, released on Wednesday. British Columbia's illegal marijuana growers produce a crop with a street value of more than C$7 billion annually, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute said. The institute said it was time for Ottawa to decriminalize pot, and that taxing its sale in Canada could generate over C$2 billion a year in government revenue -- money that is now going to organized crime.
■ Argentina
Contractors lose fingers
Two Argentine contractors hired to cut illegal connections to power lines were attacked in a rundown Buenos Aires suburb and each had a finger cut off in retribution, police said on Wednesday. Illegal power tapping is rife in Argentina, which is still grappling with the fallout of a punishing economic crash in 2002 that has left half of the population in poverty, unable to afford basic food and clothing -- let alone electricity. The attack highlights widespread social anger at mostly foreign-owned firms that are battling to return to profit after losing billions of dollars.
■ United States
Huge man rescued
A man weighing 408kg complained of shortness of breath on the hottest day of the year Wednesday, and firefighters spent more than two hours rescuing him from his fifth-floor Manhattan apartment, which he had been unable to leave, the Fire Department said. Lawrence McConneghey, 36, was taken to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition last night. McConneghey could not walk, the authorities said. He was carried by firefighters and paramedics down four flights because the building's elevator did not work.
■ Belgium
Judges' phones tapped?
The judge presiding over the trial of Belgian child rapist Marc Dutroux may have had his phone tapped, a newspaper reported Wednesday. A correspondent for the Libre Belgique reported a bizarre sequence of phone calls in which he was able to listen to judge Stephane Goux talking to other senior magistrates. Last Friday at about 10:00pm, the daily's court reporter Jean-Claude Matgen reported a strange call at his home. "He couldn't intervene but could hear two voices," including that of Karin Gerard, head of the Brussels appeal court, and Philippe Morandini, a magistrate involved in the Dutroux trial. They were holding a bland conversation. The paper said that its reporter as well as Gerard and Morandini had filed a formal protest asking if their phones were tapped.
■ United States
Santa Cruz guns for Rummy
Attention Donald Rumsfeld: the Santa Cruz City Council wants you out. The council for the California city of about 55,000 people doesn't have any power over national affairs but apparently wanted to have its say. It voted 5-1 in favor of a resolution calling for the defense secretary to be impeached and demanding a full investigation into Iraqi prisoner abuse by US troops. Councilman Ed Porter said the revelations about what went on at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have diminished the country's moral standing.
■ United Kingdom
Fridge find a shocker
A British man visiting his son's house opened a fridge door to get some milk and discovered the dismembered remains of the son's wife inside, a report said yesterday. The man had let himself into the couple's home in the plush southwest London suburb of Kingston-upon-Thames after finding no one at home, the Sun newspaper said. On the fridge shelves he found the dismembered body of South Korean-born Kang Tae-hui wrapped in plastic bags. Police were hunting for the son, named as 34-year-old Paul Dalton, it added, while the father was receiving counselling. "It was a horrific experience and he is extremely shaken up by it," a police source was quoted as telling the paper.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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