Hero porker survives 36 days in China quake rubble

SHAKE AND BLOW

"It didn't look like a pig at all when it was saved. It was as thin as a goat!" a witness told Xinhua news agency - guess it won't be going to market then.

Critically endangered Indonesian rhino seriously ill
A member of the world's most threatened rhinoceros species is seriously ill in Indonesia, a forestry official said Monday. Torgamba, a male Sumatran rhino living in Lampung province on Sumatra island, is suffering from chronic kidney problems and anaemia, ministry spokesman Masyud told AFP. "Torgamba is 28 years old, quite old for a rhino. He is now under close monitoring by our staff," he said. Torgamba was moved to the Way Kambas national park after being captured in 1985, Masyud said. Around 275 Sumatran rhinos are thought to still live in the wild, with the most significant populations in Indonesia and Malaysia, according to the International Rhino Foundation. The species is considered to be the most endangered of the rhino family due to its rapid rate of decline. A close relative, the Javan rhino, is the rarest of all rhino species, with only around 50 believed to be in existence.

by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) June 23, 2008
A pig that survived for 36 days buried beneath rubble in quake-hit southwest China on a diet of charcoal has been hailed as a symbol of the will to stay alive, state press reported Monday.

The pig, who weighed nearly 150 kilograms (330 pounds) at the time of the magnitude-8.0 earthquake on May 12, had lost two thirds of its weight when found last week, the Chongqing Evening Post said.

"It didn't look like a pig at all when it was saved. It was as thin as a goat!" a witness told Xinhua news agency.

According to the report in the Chongqing Evening Post, the pig survived on water and a bag of charcoal that had been buried with the one-year-old in the ruins of Pengzhou city, Sichuan province.

Although charcoal has no nutritional value, it is not toxic either and it filled the pig up, it said.

The curator of the local Jianchuan Museum has already bought the pig for 3,008 yuan (436 dollars) and will keep the animal for the rest of its life "as a living symbol of the earthquake disaster," the report said.

The museum has named the pig "Zhu Jianqiang," which means "Strong Pig," it added.

Owner Wan Xingming had given up the animal for dead, but when he heard that soldiers were going to clean up the rubble around his house on June 17, he rushed back to warn them that the dead pig could be infectious.

That is when the skinny porker was pulled out of the rubble.

Wan said he was willing to sell the pig for 3,008 yuan, charging 10 yuan for each pound it had previously weighed and adding eight yuan for good luck, the paper said.

Nearly 88,000 people were left dead or missing following the May 12 quake, the biggest earthquake disaster to hit China in three decades.`

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SHAKE AND BLOW

Tenth death confirmed after Japan quake: official

Kurihara, Japan (AFP) June 16, 2008
Another body was pulled Monday from a resort in northern Japan hit by a powerful earthquake, bringing the total death toll from the disaster to 10, an official said.

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