7 killed in shooting in China-Vietnam border
HANOI, Vietnam—The Vietnamese government says seven people have been killed in a shootout between Chinese migrants and Vietnamese border guards at a crossing in the north of the country.
The government in the province of Quang Ninh says Vietnamese authorities early Friday detained a group of 16 Chinese including 10 men, four women and two children after they illegally entered the country.
It says they were being taken to the border to be returned to China when one of them seized a gun from a guard, killing one of them.
Vietnamese guards responded and an ensuing standoff and firefight left one other guard and five Chinese dead.
The government didn’t say whether the Chinese dead included children and women.
China: One-fifth of country’s farmland polluted
BEIJING (AP) — China’s government says in a report that nearly one-fifth of the country’s farmland is polluted, mostly from yearslong accumulations of toxins from factories, mining and agriculture.
The report raises sharp concerns about the country’s food safety after years of unbridled industrialization.
Results of a nationwide survey of soil samples taken from 2005 through last year show contamination in 16.1 percent of the country’s soil overall and 19.4 percent of its arable land.
More than 80 percent of the pollution is the result of inorganic toxins, with the top three identified as cadmium, nickel and arsenic.
The results were released jointly by China’s Environmental Protection Ministry and its Land and Resources Ministry.
