Thursday, July 05, 2007

At least China's indifference to humanity isn't just to the rest of the world

They pick on their own people too...

A large explosion has levelled a karaoke nightclub in northeast China killing 25 people and leaving another 33 injured.

State media did not give a cause for the blast on Wednesday night in the town of Tianshifu in Liaoning province.

[snip]

China has recently seen a spate of explosions, fires and accidents in shopping malls, cinemas and other public places despite repeated government promises to improve safety standards.
And forget about drinking water:

Beijing - Contamination of a river in east China by chemical plants upstream has left 200,000 people without water for two days, local media reported Wednesday. Water supplies were cut Monday afternoon in Shuyang county of Jiangsu Province after ammonia and azote polluted the Xinyi River, which originates in Shandong Province, according to Xinhua news agency.

The pollutants detected were about three times the upper limit for drinkable water. The exact cause of the poisoning was still unclear, however waste water from chemical plants upstream were suspected.

Which might explain why some Chinese do this:

Beijing, China (AHN) - In an attempt to gain healing powers, villagers in central China boiled a ton of dinosaur bones into soup or ground them to a powder for traditional medicine. They believe that the bones belong to flying dragons had special powers.

According to AP reports, these fossils were being sold in the Henan province as "dragon bones" at about 4 yuan (50 cents) per kilogram (2.2 pounds). Villagers also feed the calcium-rich bones, boiled with other ingredients to children as a treatment for dizziness and leg cramps.

The practice of grounding the bones to make a paste to apply directly to fractures and other injuries had been going on for at least two decades. In Henan's Ruyang County, scientists have recently excavated a 60-foot-long plant-eating dinosaur, which lived 85 million to 100 million years ago.

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