CAPITOL HILL ON ALERT

STUDY: CHINESE FACTORIES’ POLLUTION KILLS MANY

Air pollution from the manufacture of goods made in one part of the world but used in another killed more than 700,000 people globally in 2007, the most recent year for which figures were available for analysis, according to a new study in this week’s Nature.

Hardest hit were Asian countries, especially China, home to countless factories that produce choking levels of air pollution as well as popular export products such as smartphones, shoes and furniture. Most of the products and services driving those deaths, however, were bought or used in the United States and Western Europe.

The study’s authors focused on lives lost to an especially hazardous form of contaminant called fine particulates. These microscopic bits of pollution, which can travel deep into the lungs, have been linked to lung cancer, stroke and other diseases. INDONESIAN MAN SWALLOWED BY PYTHON

A missing Indonesian man was found inside a massive python on the island of Sulawesi, according to local authorities and news reports.

Villagers found the body of Akbar Salubiro, 25, after cutting open a 23-foot-long reticulated python, The Jakarta Post reported.

Salubiro was reported missing Monday after he failed to return from harvesting palm oil the previous day, a spokesperson for the police in West Sulawesi province told BBC Indonesia.

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State officials say inmates rioted at a psychiatric and medical block at a prison in northern Mexico, broke into a prison pharmacy and took drugs that caused the deaths of four of them. Twenty-one others were injured, including one guard, according to a Nuevo Leon state government statement on Wednesday. A suicide truck bomb targeted a police checkpoint in southern Baghdad on Wednesday night, killing 15 people and wounding 45, according to Iraqi officials. The bomber detonated an oil tanker laden with explosives, according to security and hospital officials. Three policemen were among the dead, while the rest were civilians. A number of policemen were wounded, the officials said.

JACK GRUBER, USA TODAY Law officers surround a black sedan Wednesday after a woman described as “erratic and aggressive” drove a vehicle into a U.S. Capitol Police cruiser. Taleah Everett, 20, was charged with seven counts of assault on a police officer, among other offenses.