China Chronicles August 30, 2012
- Strong gales stop trains in Xinjiang
TRAIN services have been suspended on a railway in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region because of strong winds, railway authorities said today.
Wind speeds reached more than 160 km per hour around 7:40 am on a section of railway between the Turpan and Yu'ergou train stations, forcing two trains to come to a halt, said a spokesman for the railway bureau of the regional capital of Urumqi.
Train K169 bound for the city of Korla from the city of Xi'an and train K9768 bound for Urumqi from the city of Aksu were stopped, stranding passengers on the train and at nearby stations, the spokesman said.
Train services had yet to be resumed as of 10 am today.
- Drivers blamed for collision that killed 36
Both drivers of the sleeper bus and the methanol-loaded tanker were found guilty of breaking the traffic law and causing a rear-end collision that killed 36 people in blaze in northwestern Shaanxi Province last Sunday.
The driver of the long-distance sleeper bus died in the accident while the two tanker drivers have been held by police and may face criminal charges, investigators sent by the State Council said yesterday.
The disaster happened in Yan'an City on Sunday afternoon when the bus ran into the rear of the tanker and was engulfed in a raging fire on the Baotou-Maoming Expressway. The bus was full at the time and only three passengers survived. They are still being treated for burns in a local hospital.
Thirty-five of the dead have been identified and authorities have worked out a compensation plan for the victims' families.
- Drivers blamed for deadly highway accident in northwest China
The drivers of both the bus and the methanol-loaded tanker were found to break traffic laws and cause the fatal rear-ended collision which left 36 dead in northwest China's Shaanxi Province last Sunday.
The driver of the double-decker sleeper bus died in the accident while the two drivers of the tanker have been put under police control. They may face criminal charges, an investigation team set up by the State Council announced yesterday.
The accident happened in Yan'an City at around 2am on Sunday, when the bus crashed into the tanker and caught fire on the Baotou-Maoming Expressway. The 39-seat bus was full at the time of the crash, with three survivors sent to local hospitals for treatment.
The identities of 35 people have been confirmed and the compensation plan for the victims' relatives has been drafted.
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2012-08-30/034925063454.shtml
- 19 dead, 28 trapped after China colliery blast
NINETEEN miners have been confirmed dead and 28 others are still trapped underground after a gas blast occurred in a coal mine yesterday afternoon in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Sichuan Daily said today.
A total of 154 miners were working underground at the Xiaojiawan Coal Mine in Panzhihua City when the blast occurred at around 6pm, the newspaper said.
As of 7pm yesterday, 104 people had been lifted out of the mine and were rushed to seven hospitals in Panzhihua. But three miners died on route to hospital, the report said.
Sixteen of 50 workers trapped underground have been confirmed dead. Six of the trapper miners have been rescued by 6am.
Rescue work involving more than 70 people is underway. A work team led by Yang Dongliang, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, is on the way to the mine to oversee the rescue work.
The coal mine is owned by Zhengjin Industry and Trade Co Ltd in Panzhihua, some 750 km southwest of the provincial capital Chengdu.
Sources said the owner of the mine has been put under police custody for investigation. - Rattana@Köln (8x11 film slitter test result-2)
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20120825
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Dots report : Minor black & whie
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Film wide : 9.30mm - 9 dead, 44 trapped after China colliery blast
NINE miners have been confirmed dead and 44 others are still trapped underground after a gas blast occurred in a coal mine yesterday afternoon in the southwestern province of Sichuan, local government said today.
A total of 120 miners were working underground at the Xiaojiawan Coal Mine in Panzhihua City when the blast occurred at around 6pm, sources with the rescue headquarters and the city government said.
As of midnight, 70 people had been lifted out of the mine and were rushed to seven hospitals in Panzhihua. But three miners died at hospital, according to the sources.
Six of 50 workers trapped underground have been confirmed dead.
Rescue work involving more than 70 people is underway. A work team led by Yang Dongliang, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, is on the way to the mine to oversee the rescue work.
The coal mine is owned by Zhengjin Industry and Trade Co Ltd in Panzhihua, some 750 km southwest of the provincial capital Chengdu.
Sources said the owner of the mine has been put under police custody for investigation. - 50 miners trapped after coal mine blast
ABOUT 50 miners are trapped underground after a gas blast at a coal mine in southwestern Sichuan Province yesterday. A total of 120 miners were working underground when the blast happened at around 6pm in the mine in Panzhihua. As of 9:30pm, 70 people had been rescued and brought to the surface but the others remained trapped.
- Plane turns back after 'threat'
An Air China flight heading to New York returned to Beijing last night after "receiving a threatening message."
The Boeing 747 - flight CA981- landed at Beijing Capital International Airport at around 8:30pm about eight hours after it had set off for John F. Kennedy Airport.
"The flight returned to Beijing for the sake of passenger safety as it received a threatening message," the carrier said on its Weibo microblog shortly after the landing, without giving any further details.
Everyone was asked to get off the plane and airport police carried out security checks on the taxiway, according to passengers.
The airport later announced that "nothing abnormal has been found after the overall inspections."
Photographs posted online showed dozens of uniformed police on the taxiway while passengers lining up for inspection.
The Boeing 747 flight took off again at just after midnight to take the passengers to their destination, the airlines said on its website.
"We had little idea that the plane was flying back until it landed at the Beijing airport again," said Wang Qiang, a passenger onboard who was going to New York to take part in an international conference.
Wang said he suspected the plane might be flying back because of the route information on the screen in front of him but a flight attendant told him there was "something wrong with the screen."
Shortly before landing, there was an announcement that the plane was encountering some turbulence and attendants asked passengers to close all the window shades.
"But when we opened the sunshades again, we saw the ground of Beijing," another passenger said.
The pilot told passengers the plane had received a threatening message and all passengers needed to go through inspections.
"I have never seen so many police officers waiting at the runway," the passenger said.
All the passengers kept calm and had cooperated with the police carrying out the security checks, the airport a! uthority said.
- Scholars infuriated by dictionary's use of English
AN editor has come under fire over the inclusion of 239 English words, mostly acronyms or abbreviations, in the latest edition of the Modern Chinese Dictionary.
She was accused of being disrespectful to the Chinese language and causing it "severe damage."
However, Jiang Lansheng, chief editor of the sixth edition published on July 15, said the additions were to make it easier for people to know the meaning of English words in everyday use, yesterday's Beijing Youth Daily reported.
Jiang was responding to a petition signed by more than 100 scholars from across the country saying the editors had damaged the language and might even have broken the law.
They said printing the English words was encouraging readers to replace Chinese words with English ones. "A Chinese dictionary serves as the standard for the use of the Chinese language. Now that the Chinese dictionary collected English words to replace certain Chinese words, it is a serious damage to the Chinese language," Li Minsheng, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
The scholars also said adding English violated the Law on Standard Spoken and Written Chinese.
"The adding of English words into the Chinese dictionary indicated that it is normal to allow words of English and other foreign languages to replace Chinese words," Fu Zhengguo, a reporter with People's Daily and a petition organizer, told the newspaper.
Fu said the inclusion of words such as NBA and GDP would result in a language that was a "bizarre mixture of Chinese and English."
Fu said the petition had been submitted to the General Administration of Press and Publication, China's publishing watchdog.
Jiang said she respected the scholars' opinions but added: "Which of our country's laws requires that Chinese dictionaries cannot explain English letters?"
She said: "In people's daily life they meet a lot of English letters such as ATM, GDP and CPI, but how can th! ey know the meaning of those words? That should be the responsibility of a dictionary as a reference book."
"We chose words according to the frequency of their use and relevance to people's daily life," Jiang said. "A reference book collects English words not to encourage others to replace Chinese words, but simply to make it easier for readers to know them."
This year's edition was not the first to include English words. There were 39 in its third edition and more than 120 in the fifth.
"If they keep growing, we could have over 10,000 English entries in 100 years," said Fu, who has proposed that English words should be translated into their Chinese equivalents before including them in the dictionary.
Fu's concerns were not shared by Mei Deming, a professor of the English language at Shanghai International Studies University.
"Language is always developing while absorbing new elements," Mei said.
And at a meeting of linguists in Beijing last night, most agreed with the use of some short English terms. Jinan University's Guo Xi said: "Languages borrow from each other when the two are in contact. A living language must absorb new elements."
Su Peicheng from Beijing University said he couldn't find any laws that said putting English words in Chinese dictionaries illegal.
- Officer 'fully liable' for accident
A POLICE officer behind the wheel of a patrol car when it hit and injured seven people last week in the southwestern Chinese city of Nanning should take full responsibility for the accident, local police said yesterday.
The officer, identified by the surname Liao, was driving and another officer was in the car when it hit two electric cyclists and then another five pedestrians near a market at around 5pm on August 21.
The police bureau in Nanning said it had completed its investigation which found Liao fully liable for the accident. However, Liao was not likely to go to jail, as tests for alcohol in his blood had proved negative, it said.
The bureau said Liao had been driving at a speed of 45kph in a 40kph area and failed to take proper measures to prevent the collisions.
Two people were seriously injured, but their injuries were not life-threatening. As of yesterday, three of the seven injured had been discharged from hospital.
The accident hit the headlines after an account was posted on Weibo, saying the police car hit civilians and dragged an electric bike for more than 100 meters before stopping.
Questions were raised over whether the officers were drunk and whether they had attempted to flee the scene, as the car did not immediately stop after hitting the pedestrians.
The bureau said the car stopped about 60 meters past the spot where the collisions occurred, a reasonable distance, and there were no signs the driver had accelerated after hitting the pedestrians.
It said that Liao was on duty at the time of the accident as he and the other officer were on their way back to a police station after a meeting downtown. Liao was not illegally using the car for personal reasons.
- Home of butterfly lovers fails to fly with tourists
VISITORS to Runan County, branded the hometown of the "butterfly lovers," China's answer to Romeo and Juliet, find a scene of desolation.
A lone archway stands in front of a run-down village. Dying trees flank an empty promenade leading to two ramshackle gravestones, whose fading epitaphs suggest they belong to Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, figures portrayed in classic Chinese folklore as having turned into butterflies after society rejected their union.
Most structures are new, hinting at the place's great ambitions not so long ago, but now the scene tells a story of how a Chinese town eager to dig up its cultural gold in the rush toward prosperity has ground to an embarrassing halt.
The story began years ago, when many Chinese localities zealously contended to be recognized as the hometowns or resting places of historical celebrities or mythological figures, hoping such fame could bring in tourists and investment.
In 2005, Runan County in central China's Henan Province was recognized as the hometown of Liang and Zhu by the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society. At the time, six Chinese cities argued the couple belonged to them.
Knowing the impoverished farming town could not fund the project, officials in Runan reached out for investors. One entrepreneur promised 200 million yuan (US$31.5 million) in investment.
The government then leased land from villagers to plant trees befitting scenic spots. They built a promenade and in 2011 unveiled an archway bearing the inscription "Hometown of Liang and Zhu."
But the tourists stayed away and the businessman suddenly withdrew due to "economic problems."
- Grassland doctors help save babies' lives
HERDSMEN living on the remote Zhuaxixiulong grassland in Gansu Province used to depend on luck when it came to the survival of their newborn children. Now, they can rely on doctors.
The township hospital in Zhuaxixiulong, in Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, has seen 31 expectant and new mothers this year, with all the babies receiving a clean bill of health, said Li Yu, the hospital's deputy head.
Li said every pregnant woman admitted to the hospital is given five physical examinations before delivery, as well as regular checkups for both her and her infant for the following three months.
The services were nonexistent 12 years ago, when many expectant mothers refused to give birth in hospital due to their inconvenient location, poor economic conditions and a tradition of home births, Li said.
"When they felt the baby was coming out, they sought help from 'experienced' elderly women in the village. But as a result of improperly conducted births, many babies contracted pneumonia right after birth and died before their fifth birthday," Li said.
But conditions have changed since then, with hospital births becoming the norm, helping to reduce infant mortality rates.
"More than 1,500 babies are born in our county each year, and 99 percent of pregnant women give birth in hospital," said Jia Sandan, director of the county's maternal and child health center.
The shift is part of the government's decade-long efforts to promote hospital deliveries and improve health care for newborns in rural areas.
According to Ministry of Health statistics, the mortality rate for children under the age of five dropped from 61 deaths per 1,000 births in 1991 to 15.6 per 1,000 births in 2011.
Government has set a target of reducing the ratio to less than 13 by 2020. But the infant mortality rate in rural areas is nearly three times that of urban areas, with premature births, pneumonia, congenital heart disease and accidental asphyxia claiming many children.
To n! arrow th e yawning urban-rural gap, the central government launched a campaign to promote hospital births in central and western rural areas in 2000, expanding it nationwide in 2009.
The campaign provides a subsidy of 400 yuan (US$62.92) for women who choose to give birth in hospitals.
From 2009 to 2011, the central government poured 7.9 billion yuan into the program, raising the country's rural hospital birth rate to 96.7 percent from 92.3 percent in 2008.
(Xinhua)
- Officials punished after blast death toll cover-up
THE head of the work safety authority in central Henan Province has been sacked and several other officials dismissed or suspended for covering up the death toll of a fireworks factory blast.
The June 18 explosion at the Dongtun Fireworks Factory in Huaiyang County left 28 people dead and 20 injured, but local officials initially reported just seven deaths and 14 people with injuries.
The head of the county, Hu Jingxu, and two deputy directors, Lei Tingjun and Zhang Haiyang, were suspended while the director of the county's work safety bureau, Fan Minhua, and several other major county officials were sacked, the Henan Administration of Work Safety said.
An initial investigation found that five workers had been killed at the scene and two died after emergency treatment failed.
But local villagers had their doubts about the accuracy of the casualty numbers and alerted provincial authorities early this month.
The province's work safety bureau, after checking with villagers and the local hospital, found that the death toll was 21 higher than local officials had said and there were six more injured.
Of the 20 injured, nine have retuned home but 11 remain in hospital.
At the time of the blast, the factory was operating illegally as it had been ordered to suspend production after the expiry of its license.
- Dom Cafe@Köln (8x11 film slitter test result-2)
Jimmy101cactus has added a photo to the pool:
20120826
Minox AIII-41809
Fomapan 100
Rodinal Special
13min.20℃
Tap Water
DIY reel in JOBO Tank
Dots report : Minor black & whie
Scratches report : none
Film wide : 9.30mm - 义乌
- 义乌
- 义乌
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