Abortion pill to cut gerbil population

(AP) – Forestry officials in the country’s far west have resorted to scatring abortion pills near gerbil burrows in a bid to halt a rodent plague threatening the desert region’s fragile ecosystem.
The pellets, which resemble bran feed, have “little effect on other animals,” but can prevent egnancy in gerbils and also induce a miscarriage in [...]

Blacklist

Blacklist
This is a column of words or phrases commonly misused by Chinese speakers. If you’re planning to be an English teacher, reporter or employee of a multinational company, then watch out for this page each week.
Local professor: Zhu Shida
1. Transplant tourism
When you suddenly find yourself face-to-face with such a phrase, you will probably not understand [...]

Manchester festival makes room for Elbow, Hallé and Kraftwerk

(The Guardian)They’re both as Manchester as you can get and both immensely respected for their artistic excellence, so there was a sense of appropriateness when yesterday it was announced that Elbow and the Hallé will collaborate for the city’s second festival of new work.
The Manchester International Festival was established in 2007 as a biennial event [...]

Sina sponsors China Open in tennis gala

By Huang Daohen
The 2009 China Open, the country’s top level tennis event, got a financial boost Wednesday when it signed a sponsorship deal with Sina.com.
According to the agreement, Sina.com, the country’s most popular Web portal, will invest up to 100 million yuan to promote this year’s joint WTA and ATP tour, the event’s organizer told [...]

Will The Stone Roses really come back?

(The Guardian)
The Stone Roses have at least 21 nights scheduled for a comeback tour in the UK and America this summer, according to the reports in the Mirror. Despite frontman Ian Brown telling journalists last summer there was “no chance … not in the next three lifetimes” of his former band reuniting, today’s report claims [...]

Catching the First Rain

The second part of the German delegation, which arrived in the village on Thursday, ran into a sudden shower.