China Chronicles April 28, 2012
- Death toll in Yunnan knife attack rises to 2
THE death toll from a knife attack yesterday in southwest China's Yunnan province has risen to two after another victim died in hospital last night, local authorities said today.
A knife-wielding man, surnamed Yin, attacked five people near a coach station in the county seat of Fuyuan yesterday noon. He was seized by an auxiliary police officer and a taxi driver, according to a spokesman with the county's international communication office.
Yang Lihou, the taxi driver, and Jin Haoran, a pedestrian, died yesterday afternoon and yesterday night, respectively, after treatments failed, said the spokesman.
The other four injured people are receiving treatment in the People's Hospital of Fuyuan County, and two of them remain in critical conditions, he said.
Local police have detained Yin and are investigating the attack.
- Li meets Putin to expand economic, trade cooperation
CHINESE Vice Premier Li Keqiang met with Russian Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin in Moscow yesterday to exchange views on ways to boost bilateral economic and trade cooperation.
Li first congratulated Putin on his presidential re-election on behalf of the Chinese government and the Chinese people.
He said the two countries have forged a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination based on equality, mutual trust, mutual support, common prosperity and lasting friendship and bilateral relations have seen unprecedented development in recent years.
The vice premier called on both sides to spare no efforts to lift bilateral ties to a new height.
Economic and trade cooperation is an important cornerstone for Sino-Russian comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination and also an impetus to bilateral relations, Li said, urging both sides to increase pragmatic cooperation in all spheres to boost mutual development so as to benefit both peoples.
Li also put forward proposals on promoting economic and trade cooperation between the two countries.
He said China and Russia should improve the scale and quality of their economic and trade cooperation, expand mutual investment, optimize their trade structure and increase the technical content and added-value of their products.
Li called for advanced cooperation on strategic projects to boost both countries' economic competitiveness at the global level.
The two countries should conduct high-tech and innovative cooperation to meet the demands of innovative development and economic transition, Li said, adding that scientific research institutions, high-tech enterprises and universities from both sides need to cooperate directly to carry out a series of large-scale cooperation projects.
He urged closer bilateral cooperation at local levels, and quicker steps to boost cross-border infrastructure development.
The Chinese leader also hoped the two sides would deepen all-round and ! multi-le vel energy cooperation in the fields of nuclear energy, natural gas, oil, and coal so as to better serve the economic development of the two countries.
For his part, Putin said that thanks to the joint efforts of both countries, Russia-China relations have reached an unprecedented high level and bilateral cooperation has been expanded to cover more areas.
Li's visit will further enhance the development of bilateral pragmatic cooperation in all spheres, the president-elect said.
Putin also expressed Russia's willingness to work jointly with China to achieve the goal of increasing bilateral annual trade volume to US$100 billion in 2015.
He also said the two countries need to expand bilateral investment, reinforce cooperation in the fields of energy, science and technology, and innovation.
Li arrived on Thursday for an official visit at the invitation of the Russian government.
Russia is the first leg of Li's current European trip, which will also take him to Hungary, Belgium and the European Union headquarters in Brussels.
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- Oil giants agree compensation for spills that hit Bohai Sea
US energy giant ConocoPhillips is to pay 1.09 billion yuan (US$173 million) compensation for oil spills in north China's Bohai Bay last June, the State Oceanic Administration said yesterday.
The China National Offshore Oil Corp and the Chinese unit of ConocoPhillips will also pay 480 million yuan and 113 million yuan, respectively, for environmental protection efforts in the Bohai Bay, the administration said.
"The money will be spent, according to China's laws and rules, on the ecological construction in, and environmental protection of, the Bohai Sea, cleaning up petroleum pollutants in the sea, fixing damage to the marine ecological environment as well as monitoring and research on the impacts of oil spills to the ecosystem," the administration said.
However, it did not elaborate on how the spending will be arranged.
But according to an earlier news report, of the 1.09 billion yuan compensation fund, more than 3 million yuan will go to fishermen in Liaoning Province and another 3 million yuan each will go to fishermen in both Laoting County and Changli County, both in Hebei Province.
The oil spills in the Penglai 19-3 oilfield in Bohai Sea polluted over 6,200 square kilometers of water, an area about nine times the size of Singapore, and caused huge losses in the tourism and aquatic farming industries of Liaoning and Hebei provinces.
The Penglai 19-3 oilfield is one of China's largest offshore oilfields, with daily production of about 160,000 barrels. ConocoPhillips China operates the Penglai 19-3 oilfield, in which CNOOC, China's largest offshore oil producer, holds a 51 percent stake while ConocoPhillips holds 49 percent.
Early this month, CNOOC and ConocoPhillips agreed to pay more than 300 million yuan to compensate fishermen from Changli County and to restore the maritime environment, China National Radio reported.
In January, 29 fishermen in Laoting County sued the parent company of CNOOC Ltd for losses caused by the oil spill.
The ! fisherme n initiated legal proceedings against the China unit of ConocoPhillips and CNOOC, and said their losses were caused by the spills in the Penglai 19-3 field, CNOOC said.
Their claims include damages of 234.6 million yuan, 7 million yuan spent on valuation fees to determine their losses and relevant litigation costs.
The State Oceanic Administration said last November that negligence by a ConocoPhillips subsidiary caused the oil spills in Bohai Bay
- 107, and still at work ...
Huang Magan, 107, works on a loom at her home in Bama County in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region yesterday. The county, known worldwide as a longevity town, has 81 centenarians. This number includes six in Huang's village of about 500 residents. Her husband died in 1999 at the age of 96. Huang only gave up farm labor several years ago when her children talked her out of it fearing she would have an accident. But she is still active in embroidery and loom work and household chores such as washing clothes. Her home is also popular with tourists who she greets almost every day. Corn porridge is a main part of her diet.
- More tainted capsules, companies found
IN the latest nationwide inspections of medicine capsules, 74 batches made by 15 pharmaceutical companies were found to contain excessive chromium, the State Food and Drug Administration said yesterday.
The administration said it conducted checks on 117 producers and 941 batches of capsules. The toxic capsules will be recalled and destroyed, officials said. They said nine of the 15 companies were in Zhejiang Province, the main production area, while the others were in Chongqing and the provinces of Henan and Sichuan.
Producers' licenses will be suspended and people directly responsible will be "removed out of the medicine-production industry," officials said.
The scandal came to light when China Central Television reported that several companies were using industrial gelatin to make drug capsules. The gelatin contained chromium, which can cause kidney and liver damage and lead to cancer.
"Daily management and supervision is severely lax in these companies," FDA officials said. They have ordered all capsule manufactures to list their raw materials on the local FDA website so the public can be made aware of the ingredients.
The FDA issued an emergency notice calling for a halt to the sale and consumption of a list of drugs that may have been packed into tainted capsules. Many people started avoiding all drug capsules after the scandal was exposed.
Along with the checks, authorities have begun investigations into possible dereliction of duty among law-enforcement and safety supervisors.
Meanwhile, drug safety regulators in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region said yesterday that they were investigating a case in which a company dumped more than half a million medicine capsules, Xinhua news agency reported.
The capsules are being tested for chromium, said a spokesman with the food and drug bureau of Yinchuan City, the regional capital.
On Tuesday, some of the city's residents reported finding large quantities of green medicine capsules, as well ! as yello w and white powder, scattered on the side of a road near a residential community.
Follow-up investigations showed the capsules were dumped by Ningxia Tianma Pharmaceutical Science & Technology Development Co Ltd, the spokesman told Xinhua.
The spokesman said local authorities had recovered all the dumped capsules, seized the company's inventory and closed its production lines.
- Probe set for judge who issued too-light sentence
A county judge in central China's Henan Province who gave a lenient sentence to a convict by issuing false statements has been placed under criminal investigation for allegedly taking bribes.
The Shanxian County People's Court overturned verdicts handed down by Shui Tao and sentenced Yang Xinhua - who crashed his heavy truck into a family sedan and killed three people last September - to prison for 3 1/2 years instead of two years.
In a trial held in March, Shui claimed Yang paid 900,000 yuan (US$143,010) in compensation to the victim's family. But the car driver, Zhang Liqiang, said he had never received a cent from Yang.
Shui later pleaded that "his eyes blurred when making the ruling" and misread the report. He even owed it to a "vague" report issued by Zhai Ermin, judge at the Hubin District court, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.
According to the report, Yang promised to pay the compensation, but Shui claimed he mistook it as "Yang had compensated the victims" and gave him a lenient punishment.
"It is nonsense to make judgment based on this meaningless report," said Zhang's lawyer Mao Zhuanjiang.
Yang should have been jailed for three to seven years according to Chinese law.
When Shui tried to push responsibility to Zhai, the Shanxian court wrote Zhai an official letter, demanding he "give a detailed report about the trial."
"No payment had been made," a clearly upset Zhai wrote in his response.
- Bank robbery blast was 'abetted,' convict says
THE man who set off a fatal explosion in a bank robbery attempt last December testified yesterday that he was "abetted" to commit the crime at a court hearing in the central city of Wuhan.
Wang Haijian, 25, a rural resident in Hubei Province, said one of his two partners, Wang Wei, 30, encouraged him to make explosives and plan the robbery. But prosecutors insisted he was the main culprit rather than an accomplice and urged the court to give him a death sentence.
"We are trying hard to get him a reprieve and hope he won't be executed immediately," Wang's lawyer said.
In Wang's home village, hundreds of people signed a petition asking for lenient punishment because Wang "was a hard-working student and often helped villagers to repair their home appliances free of charge," the Guangzhou Daily reported.
The trio was charged with setting off explosives outside a China Construction Bank branch in Wuhan last December 1, which killed two people and injured 15.
Prosecutors said Wang put the hidden explosives in front of the bank office and detonated them at 5:30pm when bank clerks were carrying cash to a delivery truck.
Wang said he had planned to give up carrying out the robbery because the vehicle didn't park in front of the bank. But he felt so nervous that he "accidentally" pressed the button on a remote control, Dragon TV reported.
He didn't steal the money after the blast, said Hu Yanmei, Wang's lawyer, adding that he even took the risk to ask a cash vehicle security guard "Are you OK?"
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- Official detained in strangling death of his wife
A government official in Heilongjiang Province, northeast China has been detained after his daughter reported that he strangled her mother to death, according to news on Dahe.cn.
Her mother's body had strangling marks around the neck and congestion was found in her throat and lungs, police said.
Yao Guangwu, an official at the Shuanghe Township Government in Suiyuan City, was seen by his daughter beating her mother in a family dispute last Sunday night.
The 19-year-old daughter found her mother breathing feebly and asked her father to call the ambulance. Yao only made an effort to wake up his wife and didn't take her to a hospital. His wife stopped breathing half an hour later.
The daughter asked her boyfriend to post online that her father had killed her mother, and the police were alerted.
- Tiger photo liar released, may search for extinct animal again
ZHOU Zhenglong, a farmer who forged photos of near-extinct South China tiger to claim an award in 2007, was released this morning after serving five years in prison in northwest Shaanxi Province.
Prison officials said Zhou never admitted his guilt and often refused to do labor work in prison, citing illness, China Business News reported.
The 58-year-old farmer was arrogant, barely spoke to anyone, and never remarked on his fake tiger photos when teased by others.
Zhou lived in the mountains in Zhenping County, Shaanxi Province. In 2007 he fabricated photos of a South China tiger, a near-extinct species last spotted in 1986, and claimed he snapped the photos in the woods near his village.
The Shaanxi forestry department confirmed the sighting of a South China tiger without sufficient proof and the news drew wide suspicion in the country.
His wife said Zhou would probably search for the extinct tiger in the mountains again after his release.
- 3 detained over airport rage incidents
THREE airline passengers have been detained for 10 days and another fined 200 yuan (US$31.7) for creating disturbances at Guangzhou Baiyun Airport earlier this week, police said today.
One traveler, surnamed Yu, urged fellow passengers on a Shanghai Airlines flight from Guangzhou in Guangdong Province to Xiamen in Fujian Province to join him blocking a boarding gate in a bid to get compensation from the airline on Wednesday.
The flight had been delayed by thunderstorms, Guangzhou police said.
Officers took Yu away by force and gave him a 10-day administrative detention.
In a separate incident at the same airport also on Wednesday, three passengers on a China Eastern Airlines flight from Guangzhou to Nanchang in Jiangxi Province tried to enter the boarding area by force without undergoing security checks.
The trio, who damaged a glass door, were stopped by police. Two were detained for 10 days. The third person, who had a lesser role and apologized afterwards was fined 200 yuan, the police said.
Turbulence after Victoria Beckham Twitter pic
Turbulence after Victoria Beckham Twitter picNetizens think fashion designer's photo of herself buckled into a jump seat is cute. Cathay Pacific officials less soEver been on a flight waiting for the restroom and decided to park your butt on one of those horribly uncomfortable looking jump seats the airline attendants sit in when taking off and landing?"Cabin crew prepare for landing! Welcome to Beijing!!" tweeted Victoria Beckham.If so, you were likely told to move given those seats are reserved for cabin crew only.
Unless your name is Victoria Beckham.
The former Posh Spice/current fashion designer and wife of the planet’s second prettiest soccer player -- after Christiano Ronaldo, of course -- caused a stir this past week after she posted a Twitter photo of herself sitting with a Cathay Pacific crew member, apparently pretending to make an announcement on her Hong Kong to Beijing flight.
Some internet users criticized her for putting the flight at risk, others said people need to lighten up.
Most Chinese netizens who commented on the photo said they thought it was funny, including these Weibo users:
"I think the flight attendant next [to her] will be famous," said Beijing Shi Eer (北京事儿).
"Maybe [Beckham] thinks Chinese women's English is not standard enough," commented An zhi ru su (谙之如素).
"Thank god she's not flying the plane on behalf of the pilot," said Sha Chongyu (沙崇宇).
A Cathay Pacific spokesperson has since responded to the photo, saying Beckham and the flight attendant acted “inappropriately.” And that is not a reference to the attendant's pose.
Though there aren’t official regulations, attendants are advised to decline passenger requests to sit in a cabin crew seat.
The former pop princess was in the Chinese capital promoting her eponymous fashion line and other ventures, including a design collaboration with Range Rover that has her customizing its new Evoque car.
Her tweets have been tracking her Asian adventure -- this one on Wednesday shows the latest leg of her journey (Hong Kong) and another her partnership with retailer Lane Crawford there. Those heels don't look made for the city's footpaths.
And Beckham isn’t just impersonating flight attendants. This week, Beckham posted a Twitter photo of herself at a Beijing Starbucks, in uniform, asking “Who ordered the frap?”
If the size of her gams are any indicator, we’re willing to bet she only drinks skinny lattes.
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