In the worst bombing on US soil since 9/11, three are dead and more than 100 are injured after two blasts ripped through a crowd at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on an otherwise perfect day.
You'll find updating coverage everywhere at this moment, led by the Boston Globe and Gawker, so we'll spare the words here. Just a little China angle though, via Reuters:
On the morning of April 9, a sow in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province gave birth to a dozen piglets, including this one with two heads. The adorable youngling is reportedly 28 centimeters long and weights 1 kilogram.
Don't get too attached though, because it's not expected to live long. Those with polycephaly don't usually survive to adulthood.
The pig is owned by a villager surnamed Ouyang, who hopefully thinks better of giving it a water funeral.
A major fire yesterday morning has killed at least 14 in Xiangyang, Hubei province, with another 47 injured.
Shanghai Daily reports that the blaze started at 6 am on Sunday from an Internet cafe before spreading to a nearby hotel.
An employee said that 42 of the hotel's 50 rooms were occupied at the time. He said some guests were saved by firefighters while other managed to escape by themselves.
Intrigue in the bird flu saga. A four-year-old boy in Beijing tested positive for H7N9 yesterday, according to the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau, but he has yet to show any symptoms. The boy’s parents, traders of poultry and fish, voluntarily went in to Beijing’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for tests recently. Only the boy’s came... Read more »
Pyongyang hosted the 26th annual Mangyongdae Prize International Marathon on Sunday, featuring a reported 251 runners, including 14 from countries such as Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ethiopia. The event was part of the country's ongoing celebrations for Kim Il-sung, whose birthday is today.
There's phallic -- the Washington Monument, skyscrapers, ice cream drumsticks -- and then there's penis. Behold the above, purportedly the new headquarters of People's Daily. As Hug China explains:
Pictures of the People’s Daily new headquarters that is under furnishing at the moment have gone viral on Chinese social media. One of the picture taken by a netizen from a special angle on April 11 when the top part of the building was framed with construction racks makes the construction look like a colossal human male genital.
Good news and bad news for those itching to watch Django Unchained. Seeing Red in China reports via China News that it might be returning to mainland China theaters, though likely not in its current form.
There have been reports today that Django could be resumed late this month in Chinese theaters, provided that director Tarantino will cut what the Chinese censors ask him to cut.
The New York Times elaborates:
A first-year student at Jinggangshan University in Ji’an, Jiangxi province was killed on April 9 when a basketball hoop fell on him. This is not in dispute. What is less certain, however, is why the steel hoop fell. “The basket leaned down so it was easy for the 1.71m-height boy to reach. And there was... Read more »
The lovably gullible editors at 21st Century Business Herald must really hate the genre of satire now. Just last month, this Guangzhou-based business weekly, one of the largest in the country, fell for a spoof on the website The Daily Currant claiming that Paul Krugman had gone backrupt. Very recently, they bit the bait again, this time dangled by The Borowitz Report.
![Metta World Peace May Be Coming To China, But Who Knows Because He’s Metta World Peace [UPDATE]](http://beijingcream.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Ron-Artest-in-China-150x150.jpg "Metta World Peace May Be Coming To China, But Who Knows Because He’s Metta World Peace [UPDATE]")
