Inaccurate stories removed from textbook

Controversial parts of a textbook for primary school students, including a story about Thomas Edison saving his mother, will be removed from a new edition for the autumn semester, according to its publishers.

A Chinese-language textbook for Grade 2 students includes a story that Edison's mother needed surgery for appendicitis, but light in the operating room was too dim, so the inventor - only 7 years old at the time - came up with the idea of placing mirrors near an oil lamp to better illuminate the room.

Some teachers complained that the text is incorrect, as the world's first appendectomy is widely believed to have been carried out in 1886, while Edison would have been 7 in 1854.