Police in China have arrested six people and detained 41 others for allegedly distributing milk powder tainted with the same chemical which killed infants in a 2008 scandal, state media said yesterday.
Three of the six were employees of a factory in the northwestern province of Qinghai, which last month was found to have shipped milk powder contaminated with melamine up to 500 times beyond the permitted limit to neighboring Gansu Province, Xinhua news agency reported.
The three others arrested were suspected of involvement in hiding tainted milk products that should have been destroyed in 2008 and then selling them to the Qinghai plant, the agency said, citing food safety authorities.
More than 124 tonnes of the milk powder in Qinghai have been seized since then, while another sweep found 103 tonnes of milk powder from four dairy brands in Hebei and Shanxi provinces and Tianjin laced with melamine, Xinhua said.
Melamine is used to make plastics but has been widely and illegally added to dairy products in China to give the appearance of higher protein content.
In 2008, it was found in products from 22 Chinese dairy companies in a massive scandal blamed for the deaths of at least six infants and for making 300,000 others ill across China.
It also led to huge worldwide recalls of Chinese dairy products.
China’s government has repeatedly said all tainted products were seized and destroyed after the scandal and that there was no further public health threat, but reports of contaminated products continue to trickle out.
Earlier this month, China’s health ministry refuted claims that milk powder produced by the NASDAQ-listed Chinese company Synutra had caused three infant girls to grow breasts.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WAR: Ursula von der Leyen said that Europe was in Kyiv because ‘it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake. It’s Europe’s destiny’ A dozen leaders from Europe and Canada yesterday visited Ukraine’s capital to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion in a show of support for Kyiv by some of its most important backers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the visitors greeted at the railway station by Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha and the president’s chief of staff Andrii Yermak. Von der Leyen wrote on social media that Europe was in Kyiv “because Ukraine is in Europe.” “In this fight for survival, it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is
RSS