World Briefs

Chinese diners are flocking to a restaurant in Beijing whose house speciality is pig intestine in soup after US Vice President Joe Biden lunched there last week, The Global Times reported yesterday.

Mr Biden took time out from official talks in the Chinese capital to eat at the small, family-run eatery in downtown Beijing, earning plaudits from netizens and headlines in China’s state-run newspapers praising his “noodle diplomacy”.

Since then, queues have formed outside the restaurant and people have travelled from around China to sample the “vice President’s meal” – pork buns, noodles and cucumbers. (AFP)

Returned books

Berlin’s Central Library is to return books the Nazis stole from the Social Democratic Party, including an English-language copy of the Communist Manifesto.

The copy dates from 1883 and is believed to have belonged to Friedrich Engels, who penned the original German work with Karl Marx in 1848.

The library said the work is one of some 70 to be returned to the party which was banned in 1933 after Hitler came to power. (PA)

Holiday bomb plot

Ukraine’s security service said yesterday it had arrested three people for plotting a bomb attack in the capital Kiev during this week’s post-Soviet Independence Day celebration. The SBU security service said the three were arrested in a rented apartment in the town of Vasylkiv, about 40 kilometres southeast of Kiev, where they were making a bomb filled with nails. Officials did not identify the three suspects’ party affiliation, noting only that they also had political literature with them in their apartment.

Ukraine will mark the 20th anniversary of its post-Soviet independence tomorrow – a national holiday that will witness a parade in Kiev and a series of protests by supporters of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. The former pro-Western Prime Minister is currently under arrest and facing an abuse of power trial that may put her in jail for up to a decade. (AFP)

Elusive yeast

Deep in the forests of South America’s Patagonia region, scientists have tracked down the wild ancestor of the yeast that makes cold-brewing ale possible, according to a US study published yesterday.

The finding provides the missing piece in a centuries-long tale of beer-drinking, that began with the first batches of European lager brewed in the cool, dank caves of Bavaria.

The origin of the hybrid yeast used for making the popular golden brew has been a persistent mystery. (AFP)

Fatal test

A woman was shot dead while she and her husband test-fired weapons outside a Pennsylvania gun shop.

Police believe the 61-year-old and her husband were at the rear of the building when the gun the man was holding went off, striking her in the body. She was pronounced dead at a hospital and the shooting remains under investigation. (PA)

Home pizza

An American who missed his hometown pizzas took 150 of them with him when he returned home 1,400 miles away after a visit.

David Schuler went back to Jackson, Mississippi with the £900 worth of frozen pizza from Stoughton in Massachusetts. He drove the distance in 24 hours, munching on pizzas he kept on the passenger seat. (PA)

Skirt ban

A UK school concerned about rising hemlines has become the latest to ban girls from wearing skirts.

Northgate High School in Ipswich, England, has removed skirts from its approved uniform list to stop students coming to lessons in “inappropriate attire”.

It is the third school in the town to introduce such a ban. (PA)

Toxic vinegar

Eleven people in China have died and about 140 have fallen ill after consuming vinegar stored in plastic barrels that once contained anti-freeze, officials and state media said yesterday.

Villagers in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang – home to the mainly Muslim Uighur minority – reported feeling sick after breaking the daily fast for Ramadan on Friday. An initial probe found the victims had consumed vinegar from plastic barrels that used to contain antifreeze – a toxic engine coolant – but police were yet to confirm the source of the poisoning, the Xinhua news agency said. Children as young as six were among the dead and one person remained in a critical condition in hospital. (AFP)