A shopping centre near Milan is claiming an unusual record – the biggest vertical garden in the world, covering a surface of 1,263 square metres with a total of 44,000 plants.

The huge garden, which was inaugurated in 2010 but was only certified as a record this week, was designed by architect Francesco Bollani who headed up a creative team that included an architecture studio from Montpellier in France.

“It took us a year to grow the plants in a greenhouse and 90 days to build the façade,” Bollani told AFP. “It was like building a giant Lego!”

The previous record was held by a Madrid garden covering 844 square metres.

The garden helps regulate the temperature in the shopping centre in Rozzano and, by reducing direct sunlight, it helps keep energy consumption low.

It also absorbs carbon dioxide and reduces ambient noise to a minimum.

US giant panda gives birth

A giant panda at Washington’s National Zoo has given birth to a cub, the zoo said yesterday, ending its seven-year spell without panda offspring.

The panda, Mei Xiang (picture), gave birth late on Sunday at the zoo’s panda complex, the zoo said in a statement.

She was artificially insemin-ated in April using thawed frozen sperm from the zoo’s other giant panda, Tian Tian, after he failed to impregnate her.

Chief veterinarian Suzan Murray said that, despite looking tired, Mei Xiang was sitting up and cuddling the cub more closely whenever it cried out.

Noodles at McDonald’s

Fast food chain McDonald ’s is branching out: after salads and wraps, the burger restaurant is entering the noodle business.

As from tomorrow, McDonald’s will add Asian noodle boxes – “McNoodles” – to its  menu, but only in Austria and only for a two- or three-month trial period.

“They could theoretically become a fixed item one day,” McDonald’s Austria spokesperson Ursula Riegler said.

This world premiere follows another Asian trend recently adopted by McDonald ’s in the Alpine country: bubble tea, originally a milky black tea with tapioca balls drunk through a wide straw, now also available in other flavours.

The Asian trend has taken Austria by storm in the last 12 months, with new bubble tea shops springing up almost on a weekly basis in Vienna.

400-year-old sunken cargo

A huge cargo of elaborate marble stonework that sank to the bottom of Poland’s Vistula river four centuries ago has reappeared after a drought and record-low water levels revealed the masonry lying in the mud on the river bed.

Archaeologists believe the stonework was part of a trove which 17th-century Swedish invaders looted from Poland’s rulers and loaded onto barges to transport home, only for the booty to go to the bottom when the vessels sank.

Researchers knew about the artefacts on the river bed where the Vistula passes through the Polish capital, but before the drought, retrieving them was a painstaking task because they were under several feet of water.

Now, though, the masonry – large blocks of carved marble which were used in the columns, fountains and staircases of Polish palaces – is lying exposed apart from a coating of foul-smelling yellow mud.