Rural Schools In China Lack Students

Sat, 10 May 2008 10:39:56 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Residents say children as young as 12 have been recruited by child labor rings, equipped with fake identification cards, and transported hundreds of miles across the country to booming coastal cities, where they work 12-hour shifts to produce much of the world’s toys, clothes and electronics.

“Last year I had 30 students. This year there are only 14. All the others went outside to find work,” said Ji Ke Xiaoming, 35, a primary school teacher whose students in Erwu Village are mostly ages 12 to 14. “You know, we are very poor. Some families can’t even afford a bag of salt.”

China is now investigating whether hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poor children of the Yi ethnic minority group in Liangshan were lured or even kidnapped to work in factories that are increasingly desperate for the kind of cheap labor that powered China to prosperity over the past two decades.

Illinois Man Bags 92 Pound Carp

Sat, 10 May 2008 10:33:26 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: OMG!! This is kinda a wet dream for most of us in WV and he bagged it with a compound bow; that cheater! I would have rather seen him bring it in on 3 pound test while fishing for bluegill. I gotta forward this one to hubby if I can get him to open his email

Clip Source: www.thestate.com

Darin Opel is allergic to fish. If he eats one or something that has been fried in the same grease, the reaction swells his throat shut.

"That's why my buddies like to go fishing with me," said Opel, a 40-year-old operations manager from Worden. "I can catch them and handle them, but I can't eat them. They're the ones that get to take the fish home."

Nobody will be getting the fish Opel caught Sunday -- except maybe the Guiness Book of World Records.

Bowfishing for gar from the shore in backwater above the Melvin Price Lock and Dam No. 26 on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River near Alton, Opel shot a 92-pound, 8-ounce bighead carp with a compound bow and arrow.

"It was real heavy, like lifting a refrigerator," said Opel, who ripped his jeans on the arrow sticking from the back of the carp's head during the ruckus. "Once he got out of the water, he started fighting hard. He beat me up pretty good. He definitely got a few licks in."

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Rural Schools In China Lack Students

Illinois Man Bags 92 Pound Carp