Chinese scientists revealed that showing pornography to pandas has helped increase the captive panda population, and said that they had successfully mated robot fish.
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Researchers in Japan captured a dolphin with legs.
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At the United Nations, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon is poised to be elected the next Secretary General. He will replace the outgoing Kofi Annan.
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China pledged to increase its peacekeeping presence in Lebanon to 1,000 troops.
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A woman in Hohhot, the capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia region, crashed her car while giving her dog a driving lesson.
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Chinese police investigating the alleged beating of a land rights activist have concluded that he broke his own neck.
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China announced that media outlets would be fined up to $12,500 if they reported on any “sudden events” without prior authorization.
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Police in the Chinese financial hub of Shanghai broke up a news conference by a group of haemophiliacs who say they contracted HIV/AIDS through contaminated blood transfusions, an activist said on Thursday. Journalists were detained and police surrounded the hotel where the event was taking place, said Wan Yanhai, the widely respected director of the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Health Education.
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A 24-year-old man tried to sell his soul on China’s most popular auction website and managed to get 58 bids before operators pulled his ad. “We pulled down the posting because we think only God can control souls,” Taobao’s public relations manager Tao Ran said. The man said a female journalist later bought his soul for a price he refused to disclose. “I will give it to her by express mail,” he said.
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China has suspended approval of, or rejected, proposed industrial plants worth billions of dollars because they could threaten the environment, an environmental chief said.
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China outlawed sexual harrassment.
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The United States thinks China is acting suspicious.
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Hundreds of protestors are dead. The Uzbek President, Islam Karimov, claimed that troops had opened fire on protesters only when they were advanced on.
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Iran threatened Saturday to resume producing nuclear fuel, and North Korea dismissed President Bush as a “philistine whom we can never deal with.”
A philistine is a crass prosaic often priggish individual guided by material rather than intellectual or artistic values.
Philip Zelikow, the interim director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center said, “Unfortunately, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and in particular, Iran continued to embrace terrorism as an instrument of national policy. Most worrisome is that these countries also have the capabilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and other destabilizing technologies that could fall into the hands of terrorists.”
President Bush on Monday chose John R. Bolton, a blunt-spoken conservative known for his sharp skepticism of the United Nations and international diplomacy, as the new American ambassador to the world organization…Mr. Bolton had been scathing in his criticism of the United Nations.
Kerry, the unsuccessful 2004 presidential candidate, said Bolton’s nomination “carries with it baggage we cannot afford.”…Even within the Bush administration, some said they were surprised that Mr. Bolton, who only last fall angered a room full of diplomats when he spoke disdainfully of the European effort to negotiate with Iran, was picked for such a sensitive job…During a particularly sensitive moment in talks with North Korea in August 2003, he described Kim Jong Il, the North’s leader, as a “tyrannical dictator” of a place where “life is a hellish nightmare.” North Korea then labeled him “human scum” that it would refuse to deal with…
Mindful that he, like the president, has sometimes questioned the relevance of the United Nations, Bolton said, “Working closely with others is essential to ensure a safer world.”