Thursday, July 5, 2007

Another wrinkle in the great Chinese food scandal…

The new "China Syndrome," part one

You may remember the hit 1979 movie called "The China Syndrome," starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas. It was about cover-ups of safety violations at an American nuclear power plant.

Ironically, the movie was released just days before the real-life partial meltdown at Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In the film, the phrase "china syndrome" referred not to anything as insidious as faulty Chinese materials the reactor core was built from, but to the facetious notion that, should a "total meltdown" occur, the plant would have burned clear through the Earth to China. (And, actually, the plant responded exactly as programmed and shut down with no injuries at all - but you know Hollywood.) But as usual, I digress…

Today, there's a different deadly threat to the safety of American citizens that really DOES center on China: The flow of tainted foodstuffs and other ingestible products for both animal and people.


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Pet Shop Heist

Dogs aren't the only ones that should be neutered.

CCTV shows family stealing dog

Wednesday Jul 4 13:00 AEST
Stolen Italian greyhound, Coco.

By ninemsn staff

Security cameras have captured a family of four stealing a $700 pure-bred puppy from a pet shop at a Melbourne shopping centre on the first day of the school holidays.

The puppy, known as Coco, was returned to Pets At Home in Fountain Gate Mall about 12.30pm today — two days after it was stolen, the shop's managing director David Herman said.