China Chronicles April 25, 2012 A
- Suspect in Beijing hospital stabbing attack arrested
POLICE have captured the suspect who stabbed and seriously injured a Beijing hospital doctor on April 13.
Lu Fuke was caught in Zhuozhou, a city close to Beijing in Hebei Province. He allegedly stabbed Xing Zhimin, an ear-nose-throat physician of the Peking University People's Hospital, Beijing Public Security Bureau said yesterday.
Lu was also suspected of injuring another doctor in another hospital in the city's Fengdai District on the same day.
Lu's motives for the attacks are still unknown and police investigation is still going on.
Xing suffered a gash in the right side of her neck and a vein was severed. She is still being treated in the intensive care unit.
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- Ancient Buddhist temple of Yungang caves
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- Preserved fruit in health scare
PRESERVED fruits sold in some stores, including Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Laiyifen outlets, contain an excessive amount of food additives which may be harmful to the liver and kidneys, China Central Television claimed yesterday.
It also said it found evidence of extremely filthy surroundings during production.
The CCTV investigation into some plants of raw material for preserved food in Linyi, Shandong Province, described the process of making dried salted peaches as "shocking."
The Xinglong Preserved Fruit Factory, which doesn't have hygiene or food production certificates, provides dried fruit for preserved fruit processing companies in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. A reporter found that the peaches, some of which were rotten, were pickled in outdoor pools which were surrounded by garbage.
Workers added sodium metabisulfite to the pool to keep the peaches looking fresh, and the water in the pool would be discharged directly into the streams near the village.
"Environment protection officials would come and fine us," a worker told CCTV. "If the additives go into the river, the water becomes undrinkable."
Sodium metabisulfite is allowed in preserved fruit production, but the sulfur dioxide residue should be less than 0.5 grams per kilogram.
The factory, however, said they used additives according to their clients' requirements. "Companies in Guangdong want more additives but those in Hangzhou want less," said Zhou Qixi, an official with the Xinglong factory.
After the dried peaches were ready, workers packed them in woven bags once used for animal feed that hadn't been cleaned.
Some of the dried fruit goes to Tangqi Town in the eastern city of Hangzhou, where there are a number of preserved fruit processing companies.
They are the suppliers for some leading snack sellers, such as Shanghai-based Laiyifen Co Ltd.
Laiyifen issued a statement last night saying it was very concerned about the problems revealed in the CCTV report! , and th at it was investigating the supplier mentioned in the report.
The company also said in its statement that if customers suspected any problems with any of its snacks, they can ask for a refund at Laiyifen's local outlets.
In the plants in Tangqi, CCTV reporters found that the dried fruit from Shandong would be cut into pieces and soaked in water. After soaking, workers would add more food additives. "We never measure the additives," a worker told CCTV. "And I don't really know what they are."
CCTV sent samples to the Beijing Center for Physical and Chemical Analysis for tests. The results showed that the products contained excessive amounts of artificial sweeteners, food colors and bleaching agents.
"The food additives may cause harm to people's livers and kidneys if they eat many such preserved fruits for a long term," said Li Keji, a professor at Peking University's school of public health.
- Death crash bus driver tests positive for drugs
The driver of a Shanghai tour bus that collided head-on with a truck, killing 14 people and injuring 20 others, has been detained after he tested positive for drugs after the accident.
Police said yesterday the driver had taken methamphetamine, or ice, with friends on the Friday night.
Wang Zhenwei should take full responsibility for the accident, police from Jiangsu Province said yesterday after ruling out the possibility of any mechanical problems.
Three of Wang's friends have also been detained for drug abuse, Shanghai police said.
Wang had not had enough sleep before he set off from Shanghai to Changshu in Jiangsu Province early on Sunday morning, police said.
They found that Wang stayed at an Internet cafe on Friday night after taking drugs and drove a group of tourists to Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province the next morning.
The 38-year-old drove back to Shanghai on Saturday night but spent another night in an Internet cafe before Sunday morning's deadly journey. Wang had slept for less than four hours in two days, police said.
The bus was heading to Changshu for a flower show when it crashed through a guardrail into the opposite lane of an expressway at about 9:30am to collide with the truck.
Six passengers and the truck driver were killed instantly while seven other passengers died in the hospital. Wang, from Shandong Province, suffered only slight injuries.
He had worked for the bus company for just two months, said Zhao Yuli, an official with the Shanghai Yiliu Vehicle Renting Service Co in Pudong's Nanhui area, which hired the bus to the travel agency that organized the tour.
Zhao said Wang had all the necessary qualifications and the bus, which had been in service since December 2010, had been inspected before leaving.
Meanwhile, another 14 of the injured were transferred to Shanghai from Changshu yesterday, the Shanghai Health Bureau said.
The only passenger left in Changshu is in a stable condition. But the bure! au said the injuries meant transportation was out of the question.
The 14 patients, whose injuries were not serious, are being treated at Shanghai's Changhai and Zhongshan hospitals.
Four seriously injured patients are being treated at Shanghai No. 6 People's Hospital after they arrived there on Monday.
Meanwhile, police have launched a nationwide program of testing coach drivers for drug use, Xinhua news agency said.
The program will run to the end of June and anyone found to have a history of drug use will be suspended and those found addicted would lose their driving licenses and be banned from the business, Xinhua reported, citing a Ministry of Public Security statement.
Police will also inspect the operation of coaches. Coach firms and travel agencies will be suspended if they fail to adopt safety measures, and coaches that do not meet safety standards must not be used.
So far this year, the number of traffic accidents involving coaches was more than 40 percent higher than in the same period of last year, and the casualty rate in such incidents had risen by 158.2 percent, the ministry statement said.
- Tainted infant formula
TWO batches of infant formula made by Cradle Dairy and Happy Prince Dairy in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province contained a life-threatening bacterium and were being sold in Guangdong Province, the provincial quality supervisors said.
Tests showed Cradle's Gaiweijian formula produced last July and Happy Prince's Jin100 formula produced last September were tainted with enterobacter sakazakii, a highly deadly bacterium.
It can cause septicemia, meningitis and necrotizing enterocolitis with a mortality rate of over 50 percent, especially for premature babies. It is a newly emerging pathogen in dairy products.
Poor management of the manufacturing process, the breakage of packaging and insect bites might lead to the pollution, Wang Dingmian, an industrial expert, told the New Express. However, many factories don't have effective measures and monitoring equipment to detect enterobacter sakazakii, Wang said.
The tainted dairy products were found only in stores in the Guangdong cities of Yingde and Chaozhou. Big supermarkets like Carrefour and ParknShop didn't sell them in Guangzhou and other cities in the province, the paper said.
"Though I never purchased the two brands, I was still afraid because the increasing reports of substandard infant formula and milk powder really worry me," a young mother told the newspaper.
- Big gelatin maker using waste bone, report says
THE country's biggest gelatin producer, in northwest China's Qinghai Province, has been accused of making gelatin from bones sorted by waste-recycling stations.
Investigation by 21st Century Business Herald, a Guangzhou-based business newspaper, found Qinghai Gelatin Co always had a shortage of animal bones, the main production material to produce foodstuff gelatin.
The company made 4,500 tons of gelatin out of 36,000 tons of animal bones in 2008. But the top five suppliers combined contributed only 22 percent of the materials, according to the firm's 2011 annual report. Another 20 percent came from outside the city, where the company built a bone-processing center.
"Many of the animal bones used by Qinghai Gelatin are bought from waste-recycling stations," said a resident living near the company.
He said he was also told by a friend in the gelatin industry that many companies are collecting bones from restaurants' leftovers, said the newspaper story.
"The raw material mainly come from slaughter factories but they are also collected from restaurants," said a worker in a small gelatin company.
He said many of the bones in recycling centers were also restaurant leftovers.
Residents said the company was discharging wastewater illegally, having built hidden pipes to discharge industrial sewage into ditches, causing the groundwater to turn rancid.
"A bad smell keeps coming out of the company and we dare not open the window in summer," said a neighborhood resident. Neighbors also suffered from dust and noise and often found cars covered with white, pungent dust.
One letter complained that the gelatin company was only 15 meters from the residential area, when the law says it should be at least 4.2 kilometers away.
- Sheep modified to have 'good' fat is cloned
CHINESE scientists have cloned a genetically modified sheep containing a "good" type of fat found naturally in nuts, seeds, fish and leafy greens that helps reduce the risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease."Peng Peng," which has a roundworm fat gene, weighed in at 5.74 kg when it was born on March 26 in a laboratory in the far western region of Xinjiang.
"It's growing very well and is very healthy like a normal sheep," said lead scientist Du Yutao at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen.
Du and colleagues inserted the gene that is linked to the production of polyunsaturated fatty acids into a donor cell taken from the ear of a Chinese Merino sheep. The cell was then inserted into an unfertilized egg and implanted into the womb of a surrogate sheep.
"The gene was originally from the C. elegans (roundworm) which has been shown in previous studies to increase unsaturated fatty acids, which is very good for human health," Du said.
China, which has to feed 22 percent of the world's population but has only 7 percent of the world's arable land, has devoted lots of resources in recent years to increasing domestic production of grains, meat and other food products.
But there are concerns about the safety of genetically modified foods and it will be some years before meat from such transgenic animals finds its way into Chinese food markets.
"The Chinese government encourages transgenic projects but we need to have better methods and results to prove that transgenic plants and animals are harmless and safe for consumption, that is crucial," Du said.
Apart from BGI, other collaborators in the project were the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shihezi University in Xinjiang.
The United States is a world leader in producing GM crops. Its Food and Drug Administration has already approved the sale of food from clones and their offspring, saying the products were indistinguishable from! those o f non-cloned animals.
- Elephant in the woods
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- Relief
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- New temple
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- Porsche, 911, 997, GT3RS, Luk Keng, Hong Kong
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I think that's the most stunning looking GT3RS I've seen. Everything is perfect in this shot, lighting is very good.... funny thing is I was sitting eating noodles when I took it :)
- Feeding Frenzy
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Koi and Goldfish practically walk on water competing for morsels of food from visitors.
Beijing Olympic Park, Beijing, China - One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
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Feeding frenzy.....
Beijing Olympic Park, Beijing, China - French duet on wheeled piano
Two French artists perform on a mobile piano today near a bridge in the Slender West Lake in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. Their music and unique performance attracted many people at the lake, which is a famous tourist destination.
- Coach-truck collision kills 13, injures 12 in central China
At least 13 people have been confirmed dead and another 12 injured after a coach collided with a truck Monday afternoon in a road section in central China's Henan Province.
Local authorities in Wuyang County said today that the head-on collision occurred at around 2:30pm Monday in Mengzhai Township, leaving three dead on the spot.
Rescuers rushed 22 injured people to hospital, but 10 of them died later.
The investigation into the accident is underway.
- Gelatin maker used bones from trash
A major gelatin producer in northwest China was accused of making edible gelatin from bones sorted by waste recycling stations.
The Qinghai Gelatin Company in Qinghai Province always had a shortage of animal bones. Its top five suppliers contributed only 21.87 percent of its raw materials, according to the company's 2011 business report.
A local resident said many of the animal bones used by the company were bought from waste recycling stations and from restaurants, a report on 21chb.cn said.
The company was also accused of discharging waste water illegally. Residents said the company built hidden pipes to discharge industrial sewage into ditches, causing the ground water to turn rancid. Neighbors dare not open windows in summer.
The company, China's biggest gelatin producer, has an annual output of about 5,000 tons. About 70 percent of its gelatin goes to the pharmaceutical industry; the rest is used in food.
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