A bus driver in China narrowly escaped being impaled by a large blue lamppost that slammed into the windshield of his bus as he was conducting his daily route.
A massive sinkhole apparently brought on by heavy rain opened up in Shezhen, China, swallowing a security guard alive and causing nearby residents to evacuate. Yang Jiabin, 25, was walking in the Futian district near new construction yesterday afternoon when the ground gave way beneath him, opening into a 26 foot-wide, 52 foot-deep crater; despite the quick arrival of rescue workers, he reportedly died on-scene. The incident was capture on two closed-circuit TV cameras, and video was quickly uploaded to the Chinese sharing site Youku:
Sky News correspondent Mark Stone was detained by Chinese police in Beijing this morning while in the middle of a live segment on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Most of the episode—include the moment they were detained, and Stone's conversations with one officer in the midst of their detention—was captured by Sky's camera operator and broadcast live to viewers of the English cable channel. (The entire incident was also captured by another police officer, who filmed the incident on a portable camera.) Stone says that they were detained for saying an unspecified word ("protest"? "Massacre"?) during the report; the English-speaking cop with whom he talks says they were stopped from filming because they didn't have the right permits. [TV Newser]
Earlier this week, nearly 6,000 dead pigs were found floating in the Huangpu River, roughly 40 miles north of Shanghai. As terrible and disconcerting as the discovery must have been for Shanghai's 23 million residents, who receive their tap water from the river, the news got worse when authorities realized the pigs were infected with porcine circovirus, which, according to health officials, isn't transferrable to humans but still, not a great thought. In fact, according to ABC News, some residents showed "black humor" by referring to their drinking water as "pork broth." But not to worry! The Chinese government is now saying that, after testing the city's tap water, it's perfectly safe to drink, shower in, cook with, etc.
A tubby middle-aged man traveling by plane to the Northeast Chinese city of Harbin chose vanity over his veins last week and ended up in the hospital as a result.
A man in China was ordered to pay $300 in damages after sending a bottle of his sperm to a woman as a token of his love.
New York Times columnist and culture scholar David Brooks had some thoughts this week about the difference between hardworking Chinese students and lazy American students. The Chinese, he wrote, see education as a moral enterprise, built around the cultivation of discipline and other internal virtues, while Westerners focus on learning about things and are hung up on "critical inquiry" and "sharing ideas."
A top level government official from China who missed his flight not once but twice took his frustrations out on the boarding desk — and the entire unfortunate episode was caught on CCTV cameras.
The New York Times is reporting that members of China's most advanced hacking group have been traced to the same small neighborhood as a Chinese Army base, a revelation that all but confirms that the Chinese military is behind the attacks. The hackers, known as the "Comment Crew," have targeted various parts of the U.S. government as well as major corporations like Coca-Cola and, more troubling, a company that has remote access to more than 60 percent of the oil and gas pipelines in North America. Mandiant, the same American computer security company the Times used to rid its networks of hackers last year, traced hundreds of attacks — 90% of the ones they examined — to the Shanghai neighborhood that houses the base, called P.L.A. Unit 61398.
The New York Times was the victim of an elaborate hacking attack from China, according to a report in Wednesday's Times. The attacks, which have been on-going for the past four months, were apparently in retaliation for an article the Times published about the vast wealth accumulated by Chinese Prime Minster Wen Jiabao's family.
A truck hauling over 1,000 cats stuffed into some 40 cages was involved in a traffic accident in Changsha, the capital city of China's Hunan province, giving local animal activists time to free them.
The Google Translation of this harrowing story out of Guangzhou, China, leaves much to be desired, but the gist of it is that a mentally ill woman deemed "suicidal" in local media reports tried to stab passers-by on Baogang Avenue only to be thwarted by a teenager in hot pants and knee-high boots who apparently knows taekwondo.
A "millionaire woman" from Wuhan City in Central China has spent the last 15 years working six days a week as a street cleaner in order to show her kids the value of a hard day's work.
