In international news, grieving and angry parents who lost their children under collapsed schools during the Sichuan earthquake in China urged the government on Thursday to punish corrupt officials and incompetent teachers involved. The Chinese government says the earthquake killed 69,000 people, and another 18,000 are missing and likely dead. The dead include about 9,000 children who were killed in flimsy schools flattened during the quake. The loss of so many children is particularly painful in China, where the government’s family planning policies mean that most people have only one child.

Pi Shiqiu, grandmother of killed student: “Our child was the flower of the country, the future of our country. How could the Xinjian school just bury her like that? She would have been such a great talent for the country, and our whole family depended on her. The whole family! The children were all 'the only child' in the family.”