Briefly

Bus plunges off bridge, 40 killed

Islamabad, Pakistan A bus collided with a truck and plunged from a bridge Wednesday near Islamabad, killing at least 40 passengers and injuring 10, police and rescue officials said.

The accident took place at the Kaak bridge, 15 miles east of the capital, police official Mohammed Zafar said.

Naeem Tarar, an official at Edhi Foundation, the country’s main emergency relief agency, told reporters that the bus was en route to Islamabad when it collided with a truck, and fell from the bridge.

Explosion kills 15 in Chinese coal mine

Beijing A coal mine blast in central China killed at least 15 people, including two rescuers trying to save trapped miners, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday.

Eighty-five miners were underground when the explosion occurred at 4:50 p.m. Tuesday in Shaanxi province, the agency said.

In addition to the 15 people who were confirmed dead, seven people were missing Wednesday morning as search efforts continued, Xinhua said.

The mine is owned by the Huangling Mining Co. Ltd. and went into operation in 2001.

China’s mines are the world’s deadliest, with 6,702 deaths reported last year in explosions, cave-ins and other disasters.

Videos educational for U.S.-born panda

Beijing American-born panda Hua Mei is pregnant, just months after she settled into her new home in southwestern China, state newspapers reported Wednesday.

The 4-year-old panda, whose name means “China-America,” was the first foreign-born panda to return to its ancestral homeland. She arrived in February from the San Diego Zoo, where she was born to two pandas on loan from China.

Chinese veterinarians, concerned that she had little knowledge of sex after living only in captivity, showed her videos of mating pandas to prepare her for a series of “blind dates.”

That education appears to have paid off. Hua Mei became pregnant by natural means and is due in September, the Beijing Morning Post reported, citing researchers at the Wolong Giant Panda Protection Center in southwestern China.

Tutu’s reasons for cancellation unclear

Montgomery, Ala. Desmond Tutu did not cancel his trip to Alabama because of a personal emergency, his personal assistant said Wednesday, disputing a claim made by the organizer of a fund-raiser.

“It is my understanding that Archbishop Tutu is returning to South Africa, but there was no family or personal emergency,” said Lavinia Crawford-Browne in a telephone interview from Cape Town, South Africa.

Crawford-Browne would not discuss Tutu’s decision not to attend the luncheon in Montgomery to raise money for poor children in Alabama and South Africa. But earlier, she told the Cape Argus, an online publication in South Africa, that problems including unpaid hotel costs prompted Tutu to call off the visit.

The Rev. James William Webb had said that Tutu received a call from South Africa just before he was to board a flight from Nashville, Tenn., to Montgomery Tuesday morning and promptly changed his plans.

Webb said Tuesday the call likely involved Tutu’s family but would not elaborate.

“I was there and I know what happened and I can’t speak to what (Crawford-Browne) says,” Webb said on Wednesday. “There was nothing about hotel accommodations.”

Tutu, 72, retired from office as Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town in 1996 and was named archbishop emeritus shortly after. He won the 1984 Peace Prize for his anti-apartheid advocacy.