China Chronicles June 26, 2012
- All state-owned cultural venues open for free
ALL public libraries, art museums and cultural centers should be open to the public free of charge by the end of this year, the Ministry of Culture said yesterday.
Public fund to operate these cultural facilities has been included in the central government budget, China National Radio quoted the ministry as saying.
The ministry will closely supervise the use of the fund and ensure its efficiency. Meanwhile, an internal evaluation system will be introduced to improve the management of these cultural facilities.
- 2 given death for making drugs from nasal drops
TWO men who extracted nearly 107 kilograms of drugs from nasal drops were sentenced to death yesterday by a court in Foshan City, Guangdong Province.
Liang Yongren and Pang Xiying were found guilty of selling and making drugs in a trial at the Foshan Intermediate People's Court, today's Guangzhou Daily reported.
Another convict, Liao Yongfa, who provided technical help to Liang and Pang, received a death sentence but with a reprieve.
Liang and Pang made nearly 107kg of methamphetamine, a psycho-stimulant drug, from nasal drops in just a few months, the court said.
A man who sold 30,000 bottles of nasal drops to Liang and Pang was sentenced to one and a half years and fined 7,000 yuan.
- Chinese President talks with astronauts aboard Tiangong-1
Chinese President Hu Jintao came to the Beijing Aerospace Control Center today and talked with astronauts who were conducting scientific tests in Tiangong-1 space lab module.
The President was accompanied by senior leaders Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang.
Hu expressed his sincere greetings to the three astronauts.
"You have spent nearly 10 days in the space, we care about you. How are you feeling?" asked the President.
"We are feeling good. Chinese astronauts have their own home in the space now. We are proud of our country!" answered veteran astronaut and mission commander Jing Haipeng.
Hu said he was glad to see the astronauts in good condition and asked whether they were going well with their assignments.
Jing told the President that all work was going smoothly, the manual docking had been completed successfully and that the crew members were doing space scientific experiments as planned.
- Shooting at lunch II@Shanghai
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JOBO tank with DIY 8x11 reels/version III - Drought leaves 4.3m people short of drinking water
SEVERE drought has been plaguing areas along the Yellow and Huaihe rivers due to a lack of rain and high temperatures.
Temperature rising to over 35 degrees Celsius in some areas will make the drought worse, the meteorological center said.
Some 4.28 million people and 4.85 million livestock are said to be suffering from a shortage of drinking water in parts of Henan, Anhui, Shandong, Yunnan and Hubei provinces and Inner Mongolia. In Hubei alone, 813,000 people are short of water in about 30 cities, where reservoirs hold 22 percent less than last year.
- 12 killed as rainfall batters south China
AT least 12 people have been killed, with another eight missing as of late yesterday, as downpours continued to batter China's south, forcing the evacuation of millions of residents.
The rain, which began late Thursday, triggered floods in 42 rivers in nine provinces including Jiangxi, Guangdong, Yunnan and Hunan, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said.
It issued an emergency alert at 2pm yesterday asking local governments across the country to ensure the safety of reservoirs and dams.
The hardest-hit area was southern Guangxi, where at least eight people have died since Thursday in the autonomous region.
In Hezhou, more than 10,000 people were evacuated and economic losses of 200 million yuan (US$31.4 million) incurred, flood control officials in the city said. One resident died in a hospital after suffering serious injuries in a landslide, while another was crushed to death in a house collapse.
Rainstorms and gales have also hit the southern coastal city of Beihai over the past several days and are set to continue.
Shipping routes from Beihai to Weizhou Island and from Beihai to Haikou, capital of the southern Hainan Province, were suspended from 8am on Sunday, the local maritime department said.
In east China's Zhejiang, heavy rain forced 17,000 people to relocate and affected the lives of more than 350,000 others since June 22. A 12-year-old girl died when her house was buried in a landslide on Saturday in Zhejiang's Songyang County.
Rain has been battering central China's Hunan Province since Thursday, killing one person, leaving another missing and affecting the lives of 138,000 others, officials said.
Details of another seven people missing have not been revealed by authorities.
A landslide in Hunan's Chenzhou city blocked roads and rivers and stranded 130 tourists.
More rain and storms are expected to hit Zhejiang, Fujian and Anhui provinces in the east, as well as Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinc! es in th e southwest.
"The rain will extend to southwest China areas and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the next three days and may bring the floods in those areas," the National Meteorological Center said yesterday.
Water levels at the Three Gorges Dam indicate that a major flood on the upper Yangtze River may be on the way, according to the Yichang Maritime Safety Administration.
- China calls for restraint
CHINA called for calm and restraint yesterday after Turkey accused Syria of shooting down one of its jets and summoned a NATO meeting to discuss a response.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said: "We hope that the parties concerned will exercise calm and restraint and adhere to diplomatic channels."
- Scene set for astronauts' return
PREPARATIONS are under way for the return of China's Shenzhou-9 spacecraft and its crew of three to an area of grassland in the country's north on Friday.
Personnel responsible for retrieval, search and rescue missions have arrived at the landing area in Siziwang Banner of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and drills are being held in advance of the landing.
All eight previous Shenzhou spacecraft have landed in the sparsely populated area where most people are engaged in farming on the grassland.
The astronauts on board Shenzhou-9 - Liu Wang, Jing Haipeng and Liu Yang, China's first woman in space - conducted the country's first manual space docking procedure on Sunday with the orbiting Tiangong-1 lab module and have lived in the country's trial space station for about a week.
The spacecraft will separate from the module and begin its flight back to Earth on Thursday. The return module with the three crew will separate from the spacecraft after it enters the Earth's atmosphere.
Parachutes will help reduce the speed of the module as it falls and a rocket will fire to further slow the module shortly before it lands.
Wu Ping, a spokeswoman for China's manned space program, said an upgraded video monitoring system had been installed around the landing zone to transmit details to the control center in Beijing.
Search teams will be able to locate the module after it lands in the fastest time possible after many drills, she said.
Landing is considered the most dangerous phase of the mission apart from the launch as the return module has to crash to the ground. China doesn't possess a space shuttle like the United States which can land on a runway just like ordinary aircraft.
The next space mission will see Shenzhou-10 dock with Tiangong-1 with astronauts onboard, Wu said. She said detailed plans would be made after the completion of the current Shenzhou-9 mission.
China will train and send foreign astronauts into space on Shenzhou spacecraft i! n the fu ture, Wu said.
The country has been cooperating with Pakistan on space exploration, she said.
"However," she added, "China is still at the basic step of manned space exploration and needs a lot more missions and experiments to gain experience."
- Microblog proves a godsend for monk
LIKE all Buddhist monks, Yancan spends most of his day seeking enlightenment.
But unlike most monks, Yancan often stays up until midnight using a microblogging site to spread the word among more than a million followers002E
Yancan is abbot of the Shuiyue Monastery in north China's Hebei Province. For over 20 years, the Zen monk has passed his knowledge on through sermons and lectures. But now, the power of the Internet has given him a new avenue through which to spread his wisdom.
Yancan rose to online prominence last week, when a video of him being harassed by monkeys near E'Mei Mountain, a sacred Buddhist site, was uploaded to the Internet.
Yancan quickly amassed a large following on Sina Weibo, with his posts forwarded thousands of times over since the video's debut, helping him to bring his thoughts to a much larger audience.
"I only hope to shore up positive energy on the web, where people vent too much anger and frustration," Yancan said.
Yancan has written more than 11,000 posts since he opened his Weibo account two years ago. Most reflect a Buddhist interpretation of ordinary life issues, ranging from the pains of growing up to dealing with the national college entrance exams.
"Life inspires me, and then I write what comes to my mind," the monk said.
Yancan's positive approach stands out among the verbal abuse common to social messaging sites. His humorous demeanor and laid-back approach have charmed the public. "Life itself is too serious, so I try my best not to be," Yancan said.
Yancan recently conducted an online interview on Sina Weibo, inviting questions. He received about 30,000 queries, and responded to many in typically witty fashion.
Liu Xiaoying, a professor at the Communication University of China, attributed Yancan's rise in popularity to the fact that the Internet allowed more people to discuss life freely.
Yancan has not been spared criticism. Some have described him as "ignorant of his proper duties" and eve! n accuse d him of lacking "Buddhist purity."
The criticism confuses the monk. "Isn't it a good thing? Everybody laughs and no one gets hurt," he said. "I am duty-bound to propagate Buddhism. The new age needs us to change."
- stacks of power
- Corruption cited for Shandong official's ouster
A DEPUTY governor of eastern Shandong Province who is at the center of lurid online allegations has been expelled from the Party for serious disciplinary and legal violations, the People's Daily said on its website yesterday.
Huang Sheng was also dismissed from all government posts by the State Council, or China's Cabinet, and the Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Huang took huge bribes and used his position to advance the interests of others, which caused massive economic losses to the country, the statement said.
All of his ill-gotten money has been confiscated, and he is under the criminal investigation for corruption. The statement also said Huang was "morally corrupted."
Online speculation about the findings against Huang ran rampant, including claims that he took bribes of US$9 billion, kept 46 mistresses and owned 46 properties. But the central government didn't confirm any of the claims as the investigation is ongoing.
Huang, a native of Weihai City in Shandong, joined the Party in 1975 and started his political career as a military cartographer. He was promoted to a post as a government official in 1984, assigned as the mayor of Dezhou City in 1996 and elected as deputy governor in 2007.
He was among seven ministerial-level officials who were investigated for suspected embezzlement or bribery in China last year.
The most famous case was that of former Railway Minister Liu Zhijun, who was sacked in February and then detained amid a graft probe that involved a series of railway projects. The State Council has said Liu should also be held responsible for the bullet train crash last July that killed 40 people in the eastern city of Wenzhou.
Others included Tian Xueren, the former executive vice governor of Jilin Province in northeast China, and also Wu Zhiming, the former secretary general of the government of Jiangxi Province.
- Privacy concerns lead to site suspending service
A website copied from Facemash, Facebook's predecessor, and popular at a university in a central Chinese city has suspended service after students asked police to probe privacy violations.
Hust-facemash.com, Facemash's copycat in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, provided a similar "hot or not" game for students in Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
It took student certificate pictures from the school's online information platform and allowed visitors to compare the student pictures of two girls side-by-side and let them choose who was "hotter."
Many students were outraged by what they considered the site's violation of individual privacy. But the site said its main aim was to warn the school of security loopholes in its online platform and urge it to step up protection for students' personal information rather than to show girls' pictures.
The website couldn't be accessed as of yesterday and it claimed the system was under temporary maintenance. It didn't say whether it was forced to shut down by authorities or because of widespread criticism.
The website designer, whose identify wasn't disclosed, was believed to have transferred the web server to California to avoid domestic punishment.
The mysterious inventor didn't try to conceal his admiration for Mark Zuckerberg, who created Facemash when he was a Harvard University student, and attached his words on Hust-facemash.
Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, opened Facemash on October 28, 2003. He hacked into Harvard University's website and stole photos to have students picked "hot boys and girls."
However, the website was shut down by Harvard executives a few days after it opened. Zuckerberg faced charges of violating copyright, breach of security and violating individual privacy.
He also faced expulsion from Harvard. However, all the charges were eventually dropped, and on February 2004, he launched Facebook, now the world's largest social network service.
- Bomber's death sentence upheld
THE Hubei Provincial Higher People's Court yesterday upheld the death sentence for a convict who set off a homemade bomb in a bank robbery attempt in December, killing two people and injuring 15.
Wang Haijian, 25, was sentenced to death last month on homicide charges. He triggered the deadly explosion outside a China Construction Bank outlet in Wuhan, the provincial capital, on December 1.
Wang appealed the ruling by Wuhan Intermediate People's Court and the case went to the higher people's court on June 13. His lawyer insisted Wang neither robbed the bank nor intended to kill and requested a psychological test for Wang.
But the higher people's court rejected his appeal and upheld the original sentence.
Wang's accomplices, Wang Wei and Wan An'an, sentenced to 10 years and six years respectively, also failed to win a more lenient sentence in their appeals.
Wang Haijian began learning to make explosives in October 2010 and later tested his bombs with Wang Wei and Wang An'an. The three plotted to rob a bank, but the other two pulled out.
The blast killed two passersby, left 15 with minor injuries and caused financial losses of 127,000 yuan (US$20,320).
Wang Haijian's death penalty is still subject to review by the Supreme People's Court.
- Down from Everest
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Lost valley on the way back from Everest to Tingri, out of traditional roads.
Himalayas in the background - 广东省，高要新桥
- heroes in broad day light
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- heroes in broad day light
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- heroes in broad day light
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- in our eyes
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