Free Republic

Membership gifts have been used to avoid detection of bribery China's top anti-graft official Wang Qishan on Monday urged disciplinary and supervisory staff to return all membership cards gifted by others. The chief of the Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said during a videophone meeting that the campaign aims to send a signal to the Party and society that anti-graft officials are taking real action to improve their working style as required by the new leadership in December. The country's top leaders have required officials to reduce meetings, condense paperwork, minimize traffic disruption during official visits and exercise frugality....

Pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical may have sickened or killed 39,000 cats and dogs nationwide, based on an extrapolation from data released Monday by one of the nation's largest chains of veterinary hospitals. Banfield, The Pet Hospital, said an analysis of its database, compiled from records collected by its more than 615 veterinary hospitals, suggests that three out of every 10,000 cats and dogs that ate the pet food contaminated with melamine developed kidney failure. There are an estimated 60 million dogs and 70 million cats in the United States, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. The...