Demolishers attempted to take down this building, but instead of falling to the heap of rubble we’ve come to expect from demolition crews, the building cracked in half. Half fell to one side, the other remained precariously standing. [Daily Mail reports that it was later taken care of the good old way: with a big ass crane]
There is a grueling application process to be accepted into China’s manned space program, including, I kid you not, a breath test.
State media Sina.com reports that bad breath/otehr personal stench is grounds for immediate disqualification.
“Bad body odour will affect the colleagues in the narrow confines of a space shuttle,” said Shi Binbin, a doctor with the 454th Air Force Hospital in the east Chinese city of Nanjing.
A runny nose is also a definite obstacle to joining China’s space race for much the same reason, according to the report.
The hospital recently completed a rigorous first screening of candidates, who had to satisfy 100 requirements, to eliminate those obviously unfit to serve China in space.
But the battery of tests were only the first of three aimed at selecting China’s new breed of astronauts that will pick up from the pioneers chosen in 1997.
Discarded early in the process were those with scars — as they may burst open in the extreme conditions in space, the report said. And candidates must also show they have no family history of serious illnesses going back three generations.
But the biggest hurdle may yet lie ahead - as any prospective astronaut’s wife will have the final say.
If she does not like the idea of her husband going into space, he will not be allowed to enter the programme — no matter how he has performed up until then, the report added.
China became the third nation to put a man in space when Yang Liwei piloted the one-man Shenzhou-5 space mission in 2003.
Last September, the Shenzhou-7, piloted by three “taikonauts” or astronauts, carried out China’s first space walk.
China will launch a space module next year and carry out the nation’s first space docking in 2011 as a step towards its goal of building a space station, state media said earlier.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities are ending the practice of serving poisoned chicken as a detoxing meal.
The dish, served mostly at eateries in southern Guangdong province, is prepared by forcing a venomous snake to bite a live chicken until it dies.
“Not only is it cruel and blood-thirsty, but totally amoral,” the Chongqing Business Daily cited a neighbor to one of the restaurants as saying.
Though no one has yet been posioned, health authorities have told restaurants to stop serving hte controversial dish.
BEIJING (Reuters) -China, who has the most smokers in the world, is finally banning smoking in all medical facilities….as of 2011.
China not only has the most smokers, 320 million, but they also have some of the cheapest cigarettes, and are the world’s largest fag producers. More than half of all male Chinese doctors smoke. No word on the female rate, or if they let ladies be doctors.