Weston-super-Mare, England: A fierce fire destroyed a historic seaside pier in western England on Monday, quickly reducing the major tourist attraction to a smoldering wreck. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
CHENGDU, China: Awwww. Four giant panda cubs were born within 14 hours at a breeding center in southwest China, a mini baby boom for the rare animals, a state news agency reported Sunday. The center currently has 71 pandas in captivity.
WEILHEIM, Germany: A woman and her bright umbrella walks on painted pavement called the Kandinsky canvas. The canvas has 39 colors on 8,000 stones and covers an area of 2,100 square miles.
ISTANBUL: An unidentified Turkish man mourns over the flag-draped coffin of an explosion victim during a funeral ceremony. Investigators are trying to determine who was behind the deadliest attack against civilians in Turkey in nearly five years, a twin bombing that killed 17 people and injured more than 150 others in a crowded market.
Missile strike
Missiles hit a building in a Pakistani village on the border with Afghanistan on Monday, and intelligence officials said they were investigating reports that a senior Al Qaeda figure was among six people killed. Pakistan’s army said it had not confirmed the strike killed Abu Khabab al-Masri, an expert who trained terrorists in the use of poisons and explosives.
Bomb case
Police raided the home of an American citizen in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, and seized a computer from which an e-mail claiming responsibility for bombings that killed 45 people in western India was believed to have been sent, officials said Monday. The 48-year-old American has not been detained and is not currently a suspect, police said.
‘New behavior’
Iran’s president said in an interview broadcast Monday that he sees “common ground” with the West over his country’s disputed nuclear program, and “new behavior” from the U.S. that could merit a positive response. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he sees “new behavior” and is unsure whether it’s based on “mutual respect, cooperation and justice.”
Car sharing
Parisians and tourists so eagerly embraced a citywide bike sharing plan launched a year ago that the mayor is setting his sights on a four-wheeled version: electric cars. Under the plan, a driver could pick up a car on the Left Bank, snake up the slopes of Montmartre, then drop it off — and only pay for the minutes spent behind the wheel.
THE DIGITS
That’s the ticket
All tickets to Olympic events in Beijing have been sold, organizers said Monday, putting the games on course to be the first to ever sell out.
6.8 million
Olympic tickets on sale, both domestic and foreign
$645
Cost of most expensive tickets in Beijing for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony
30,000
Number of people who swarmed a Beijing ticketing center Friday when a final batch of tickets was released
