Angry passerby pushes a "suicide jumper" off a bridge in S China

GUANGZHOU, May 23 (Xinhua) -- A passerby pushed off a
would-be "suicide jumper" off a bridge in Guangzhou city, southern China's
Guangdong province, for he was "too angry about the jumper's selfish activity,"
Saturday's China Daily reported.

Passerby Lai Jiansheng (L) pushes off a
would-be "suicide jumper", Chen Fuchao,off Haizhu bridge in
Guangzhou city, southern China's Guangdong province, May 21, 2009. (Photo:
Guangzhou Daily)
Photo
Gallery

The jumper, Chen Fuchao, attempted to become the
twelfth "suicide jumper" of the Haizhu bridge which has gained a reputation as a
macabre tourist destination after attracting 11 would-be suicide jumpers since
the start of April.

Chen Fuchao falls off a
bridgeafter being pushed by Lai Jiansheng in Guangzhou city,
southern China's Guangdong province, May 21, 2009.(Photo: Guangzhou
Daily)
Photo
Gallery

Lai Jiansheng, the 66-year-old man happened to pass
by the Haizhu bridge on Thursday morning when he found Chen sit at the bridge
threatening to jump off and had held up traffic around the bridge for almost
five hours.

Chen wanted to kill himself because he was in 2
million yuan of debt following a failed construction project.

After knowing the situation, Lai volunteered to talk
with the Chen to persuade him. After denied by the police, he broken through a
police cordon and climbed up to where Chen sat.

Lai first greeted Chen with a handshake, and then he
pushed him off the bridge. Chen fell 8 meters onto a partially-inflated
emergency air cushion, damaging his spine and elbow in the fall.

"I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very
selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest," Lai said.

Lai Jiansheng greets the crowd after he
pushed off would-be "suicide jumper" Chen Fuchaoon Haizhu bridge in
Guangzhou city, southern China's Guangdong province, May 21,
2009.(Photo: Guangzhou Daily)
Photo
Gallery

"They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead,
they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their
appeals," he added.

Lai was taken away by police after the incident. Chen
is now recovering in hospital.

Police sources said many suicidal people had
financial troubles, such as unpaid wages and some suffered from medical
conditions and injuries from workplace accidents.

"Traffic across the Haizhu Bridge, which is widely
regarded as an important scenic attraction, become worse," said a spokesman with
the Guangzhou public security bureau.

He said the situation caused chaos to residents,
adding that the city had to send a rescue vessel, an ambulance, several police
cars and fire engines each time when there was a "jumper."

Teaching driving on runway could have cost many lives

BEIJING, March. 18 (Xinhuanet)-- A man giving driving classes to his girlfriend on the runway forced a Phillippine plane to take off immediately after the aircrafthad landed to avoid a crash, according to newspapers.

The incident happened when Cebu Pacific plane carrying 80 passengerstouched down at Legazpi airport in the central PhilippinesSaturday but took off again as the van being driven by the couple crossed the runway, the newspapers said Tuesday.

The man is the son of a local aviation official, who has been ordered suspended from duty.

(Agencies)

New York City-sized ice collapses off Antarctica

The Wilkins Ice Shelf off the Antarctic Peninsula is seen breaking up January 18, 2009. (Xinhua/Reuters File Photo)
Photo Gallery

BEIJING,April 29-- A New York
City-sized Antarctic ice shelf has broken into icebergs this month after the
collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said
Tuesday.

"The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has
become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert,
glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space
Agency satellite images of the shelf.

Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile)
of ice -- bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City
-- has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.

She said 370 sq kms of ice had cracked up in recent
days from the Shelf, the latest of about 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula
to retreat in a trend linked by the U.N. Climate Panel to global warming.

The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that
broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently
pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Nine other shelves -- ice floating on the sea and
linked to the coast -- have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula
in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B
in 2002.

The trend is widely blamed on climate change caused
by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels, according to David Vaughan, a
British Antarctic Survey scientist who landed by plane on the Wilkins ice bridge
with two Reuters reporters in January.

Humbert said by telephone her estimates were that the
Wilkins could lose a total of 800 to 3,000 sq kms of area after the ice bridge
shattered.

The Wilkins shelf has already shrunk by about a third
from its original 16,000 sq kms when first spotted decades ago, its ice so thick
would take at least hundreds of years to form.

Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed
by up to 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) this century, Vaughan said, a trend climate
scientists blame on global warming from burning fossil fuels in cars, factories
and power plants.

The loss of ice shelves does not raise sea levels
significantly because the ice is floating and already mostly submerged by the
ocean.

But the big worry is that their loss will allow ice
sheets on land to move faster, adding extra water to the seas.

Wilkins has almost no pent-up glaciers behind it, but
ice shelves further south hold back vast volumes of ice.

The Arctic Council, grouping nations with territory
in the Arctic, is due to meet in Tromsoe, north Norway, Wednesday to debate the
impact of melting ice in the north.

(Source:
chinadaily.com.cn/Agencies)