World News by Wild Rose

A scorched hunk of metal that turned up in a US farmer’s cornfield may have handed China an awkward moment and technically an “international incident”, according to a British astronomer who has tracked rocket launches for more than 30 years. The farmer found the bowl-shaped object, measuring about 3.35 metres (11 feet) across, while harvesting corn in west-central Minnesota on October 14. Online, some residents joked that aliens had landed, while Chinese internet users said it looked like a...

Cell Press, one of the world’s leading scientific publishers, has launched an investigation after prominent Chinese biologist Rao Yi accused the editor-in-chief of a top medical journal of soliciting bribes from mainland authors. “Several important international academic journals have seen editors, and even editors-in-chief, soliciting and accepting bribes,” said Rao, a tenured chair professor at Peking University who stepped down as president of Capital Medical University last year, in a social...

By the time the Chinese navy hospital ship had docked in the Guinean capital Conakry earlier this month, patients were already queuing for free consultations. The queues in front of the Auspicious Ark were so long that some people were told to come back the next day, according to Guinean media reports. The ship, operated by the PLA Navy, offers a range of medical services wherever it stops, including surgery to treat cataracts, appendicitis and hernias as well as gynaecological care. On this...

For patients with advanced, metastatic cancer that has progressed despite systemic therapy – options remain critically limited. Now, Chinese scientists are pointing to an unconventional therapeutic agent – the element iron. This idea originated in industrial waste water treatment: iron can react with hydrogen peroxide to generate hydroxyl radicals, which degrade various organic and toxic molecules in waste water. Chinese scientists wanted to treat malignant tumours the way they treat waste water...

Chinese scientists have unearthed a fossil of the earliest known flightless bird, offering compelling evidence that not all early birds evolved to take to the skies. The discovery could also challenge long-held assumptions – including ideas dating back to evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin – that flightlessness in birds arose only as a secondary adaptation after earlier species had mastered flight. The 150 million-year-old fossil of the Late Jurassic avialan Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis found in...

A China-led international team has reported a new pre-earthquake phenomenon that has shown strong predictive potential for major earthquakes since 2022 with minimal failures. The anomalous seismic, magnetic and ionospheric resonance signals they observed – termed “seismo-ripples” by the researchers – are ringlike disturbance patterns triggered before earthquakes happen. Their findings challenge the long-standing scientific belief that these events are unpredictable, opening up a promising new...

A grassland fire in Mongolia has raised fresh concerns in China, underscoring the recurring risk of cross-border environmental hazards. This is not the first time an environmental disaster originating in Mongolia has threatened to cross the 4,700km (2,920 miles) border into China, with the impacts sometimes also affecting the Korean peninsula and Japan. The blaze, which erupted on October 8 in the inland country’s easternmost Dornod province bordering Russia and China, advanced rapidly towards...

A rare albino Asian black bear was captured on camera in China’s Shennongjia National Park

While Russian authorities have denied the death of a woman who worked in a laboratory at an anti-plague institute in Siberia was connected with the pathogen, the incident has sparked global concern – including in China – over a potential spread of the disease and a lack of transparency. US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to speak with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin after it emerged late last week that the 28-year-old female lab technician had been admitted to...

Chinese researchers have developed a catalyst that converts synthesis gas into sustainable jet fuel – a breakthrough that could boost production, help meet net-zero carbon goals and yield a gross profit margin exceeding 50 per cent. The team verified the efficacy of the chemical catalyst in a thousand-tonne pilot test and found that combining woody biomass-derived synthesis gas, or syngas, with the cobalt-manganese catalyst enabled the “highly efficient synthesis of jet fuel”. Based on a...

China has nominated health official Song Li to run for director general of the World Health Organization, the foreign ministry confirmed on Thursday. If elected, Song would be the first person from mainland China to head the United Nations health agency. China previously backed Margaret Chan, a Hong Kong-born doctor and former director of health of Hong Kong, who served as WHO director general from 2007 to 2017. Song’s nomination comes as the WHO faces a major funding shake-up following the US...

“Science has no borders,” Arup Neogi, an India-born scientist who works at a US-sanctioned university, told Chinese state media. Neogi’s speciality is photonics, the study of generating, controlling and detecting light. At the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in the southwestern city of Chengdu, he leads a team exploring the interconnection between light and sound. This university has one of China’s top electronics and communication programmes and has been on the...