Headlines in China: Hillary, chemical fire, albino whale

China is a frustrating place for a newshound; not because the government doesn't let you get the news, most Chinese people around me don't care about the news. Even more frustrating is that Western journalism training taught me nothing about the priorities of Chinese editors.

Case in point: the China Daily stuck in my door every morning by the fuyuwan is often yesterday's paper. It is because of this that I hadn't heard about the chemical plant explosion that killed 18 people and injured as many as 60 in Yizhou city in the Southern province of Guangxi. It wasn't until I turned on BBC World News (which is occasionally yesterday's news also) to hear about the Democratic National Convention that I heard of the 11,500 citizens being evacuated from the city for fear of poisonous, sulfurated hydrogen and carbon monoxide, according to the International Herald Tribune site.

That said, the Guangxi spill is one of the top five stories on both the China Daily Web site and the South China Morning Post Web site. Surprisingly, the domestic story plays second fiddle to Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention and a story about an albino whale.  Though no new news is coming on the Hillary front, the albino whale was found off the coast of Australia and has been named Wilgi Ma Nung, white whale in an Aboriginal dialect.