Ship, tanker collide near Chinese port

Ship, tanker collidenear Chinese port
BEIJING -- A Chinese ship collided with a Maltese-registered oil tanker, spreading an oil slick across a swath of the Bohai sea, state media reported today.
The collision took place early Saturday about 25 miles east of the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin, the official Xinhua News Agency reported in a story posted on its Web site. No one was injured. The Tianjin Maritime Bureau sent seven vessels to clean up the spill at the accident site, the report said.
Preliminary inquiries indicate the Tasman Sea tanker, which was bound for Tianjin carrying 80,000 tons of oil, was anchored off the coast when the accident took place, the report said.
As a result of the collision, an oil slick 2.5 miles long and 1.4 miles across spread from the damaged tanker into the Bohai Sea, the report said. It was not immediately known how much of the oil had spilled.
The Chinese ship, Shunkai No. 1, had just left the port when the accident took place. The collision "seriously damaged" the bow of the Chinese vessel causing it to take on water. However, the vessel was in no danger of sinking, the report said.
Astronauts say theybenefited from delays
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The three men who will move into the international space station for the winter say they benefited from all of space shuttle Endeavour's launch delays. The extra time allowed them to get more sleep and hit the gym.
The two weeks of postponements also pushed the shuttle flight into normal daylight working hours and out of the deep graveyard shift.
"Physically, the delays helped us," said Kenneth Bowersox, the astronaut who will take over as the next space station commander.
Bowersox and the six others aboard Endeavour were expected to arrive at the space station this afternoon, ending a two-day chase. Astronaut Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin will join Bowersox on the station. After training for five years for a four-month space station stint, Bowersox said it was hard to believe he was finally on his way.
"I can't wait," he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday night. "I've seen two or three sunrises during the last couple days and I can't believe how many more I've got ahead of me. But I think every day is going to be precious up here." Bowersox will replace Russian cosmonaut Valery Korzun as the space station's skipper.
Congregation askedto take HIV tests
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A Baptist minister took an HIV test in front of his congregation then implored parishioners to do the same after church as part of an effort to raise awareness about AIDS.
Of the 700 members of the True Bethel Baptist Church who watched the Rev. Darius G. Pridgen endure the needle prick, 105 stopped by a nearby charter school to be tested for the virus that causes AIDS, the Buffalo News reported.
Before lively hymns and scripture readings during Sunday worship, Pridgen warned dozens of teenagers in the church about the dangers of sex and promiscuity.
"Once you catch [AIDS], you don't just get rid of it. Do not let yourselves die for a few minutes of pleasure," he said.
The effort for mass HIV screening through a church is believed to be one of the first of its kind in the nation, organizers said.
Miss World pageant
LONDON -- The organizers of the Miss World beauty pageant said today they were not to blame for the Muslim-Christian bloodletting in Nigeria touched off by a debate over the morality of the contest.
More than 200 people have died in riots that erupted last week, forcing the relocation of the contest from Abuja, the Nigerian capital, to London. Miss World President Julia Morley said the contest had been used as a "political football" and blamed the violence on a Nigerian newspaper article suggesting Islam's founding prophet would have approved of the pageant.
Though Nigeria has a long history of Muslim-Christian hostility, she said it was not a mistake to choose the country as a site for the contest.
"What was a mistake was a journalist making a remark he shouldn't have made," Morley told a news conference at a hotel near Heathrow Airport after her return from the west African nation.
The article deeply offended Muslims who had objected to the contest as promoting promiscuity. Though the newspaper, ThisDay, published an apology, riots broke out, first in the northern city of Kaduna, then in Abuja.
Associated Press