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Sleet triggers rises in road accidents, fatalities in Beijing A two-day sleet storm, along with days of haze, has caused treacherous road conditions in the capital, triggering more than 2,000 traffic accidents yesterday and leading to at least four deaths, authority estimated. The Jingping Expressway, linking downtown Beijing to its suburban Pinggu District, witnessed a 20-pileup yesterday morning, mainly due to its sleepy and heavily frozen road surfaces. Two died, two got severely injured and other 15 slightly wounded in the accidents, Beijing Times reported today. "The road is too sleepy! I couldn't stop even I saw the accidents in front of me," a driver said. Another death occurred in downtown Beijing when a van suddenly crashed into a tree on the roadside, and Miyun County in Beijing as of yesterday afternoon reported one death. Weather forecast showed today's Beijing has a sunny day, but in the next two days, sleet storms, icy rains and snows will hit the ci...

31 January 2013 Last updated at 17:56 ET The Wall Street Journal says it is taking 'extensive measures' to protect its computer systems Hackers from China have infiltrated the computer systems of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in the second such attack on a major US news outlet. The Journal says the hackers were trying to monitor its China coverage. The New York Times reported earlier that Chinese hackers had "persistently" penetrated its systems for the last four months. Beijing has been accused by several governments and companies of carrying out cyber espionage for many years. China's foreign ministry dismissed the New York Times' accusations as "groundless" and "totally irresponsible". "China is also a victim of hacking attacks. Chinese laws clearly forbid hacking attacks, and we hope relevant parties takes a responsible attitude on this issue," said spokesman Hong Lei. 'Ongoing issue' The ...

31 January 2013 Last updated at 07:34 ET Article written by Damian Grammaticas China correspondent Red alert? Across Beijing, there is no escaping the blanket of pollution All week in Beijing, in offices and homes, in lifts and shops, restaurants, taxis and buses, one topic has dominated conversation - Beijing's foul air. The descriptions of the grey smog that's hung over the city get more and more extreme: "Airmageddon", the "Airpocalypse". Walking out into Beijing's streets is like plunging into a swirling soup. The pollution swathes the city, wreathing everything in grey. To get a sense of it take a look at this slideshow of before and after pictures that give a sense of what China's toxic sky is really like. A combination of coal emissions, dirty diesel and industrial gases, the smog has smothered everything for days. On Thursday, levels still hovered around the "very unhealthy" mark. As the official Xi...

China has started criminal investigation into its top energy administrator for fraudulently trying to arrange a bank loan for a businessman after a journalist blew the whistle on the scandal on the Internet. Liu Tienan [file photo] "Relevant departments of the central government have launched a criminal investigation in response to my whistleblowing," Luo Changping, deputy managing editor of Caijing magazine, wrote on his twitter-like Sina Weibo yesterday. In a weibo post on December 6, Luo claimed that Liu Tienan, head of the National Energy Administration, helped to arrange US$ 200 million in bank loan for businessman Ni Ritao. Ni sought the loan from two Chinese banks, claiming that the money would be used for the acquisition of New Skeena, a Canadian pulp mill - which he had already bought. The attempt to get loan nearly succeeded and Liu's family had reportedly received kickbacks from Ni. The National Energy Administration issued denials ...

The New York Times said it had fallen victim to hackers possibly connected to China's military, linking the sophisticated attacks to its expose of the vast wealth amassed by Premier Wen Jiabao's family. China, which has blocked the US newspaper's website ever since its report on Wen's relatives came out in October, said it was "groundless" to suggest any state-endorsed program of hacking. "To arbitrarily assert and to conclude without hard evidence that China participated in such hacking attacks is totally irresponsible," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters in Beijing. But computing experts hired by the New York Times to clean up its systems said the attack bore all the hallmarks of other hacking cases where China's military has stood accused of directing intrusions into IT systems. The hackers have over the past four months infiltrated Times systems and snatched staff passwords, and their probing has been pa...

Narrative of an empty space Behind the row over a bunch of Pacific rocks lies the sad, magical history of Okinawa A CLUTCH of five uninhabited islets and three rocks, cast adrift out in the currents of the Western Pacific, recently demonstrated their power to convulse East Asia. China, which (along with Taiwan) claims them, calls them the Diaoyu islands; to Japan, which controls them, they are the Senkaku islands. In September the Japanese government bought the three islets it did not already own from their private landlord. That set off a storm of protests in China, a slump in Japanese exports to China and in Chinese tourists to Japan, and incursions by Chinese vessels into the waters around the Senkakus. In theory, ownership is straightforward. But out in the ocean, things are not so clear. The question of who the islands belong to is obscured by the fog of history, and many furlongs of water.   The Senkakus have long been known to sailors from the Okinawa chain of island...

The Philippines will buy 12 South Korean FA-50 fighter jets to strengthen its poorly-armed military, government spokesmen said Wednesday, amid increasing maritime tensions with China. The FA-50s will be the first fighter jets to be operated by the Philippine air force since it retired the last of its US-designed F-5 fighters in 2005, said President Benigno Aquino's spokesman Edwin Lacierda. "We don't have any existing jets right now that are in use, therefore it is necessary for us to upgrade. This is part of the ongoing process of modernising our military hardware," he told reporters. Lacierda said the jets would be used for "training, interdiction and disaster response" and would use their aerial cameras to survey areas. He stressed that the planned purchase was "not aimed at any particular country" despite the new tensions with China over conflicting maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea. Defence departm...

A Chinese armed police officer passes through Chang'an Avenue during the flag-raising ceremony in Tiananmen Square, as severe pollution hit Beijing on Tuesday. Photo: CFP  Murky haze continued to shroud large swathes of China on Tuesday, prompting choking residents to point the finger at the country's top oil firms for allegedly producing substandard gasoline and diesel, an accusation denied by the oil giants. Analysts have proposed an energy structure adjustment as the ultimate solution.A total of 1.3 million square kilometers of the country was enveloped by dense haze, covering most parts of northern and eastern China, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which graded the air quality of Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang in Hebei and Jinan in Shandong as level 6, indicating "serious pollution." The National Meteorological Center (NMC) on Tuesday issued a yellow warning for the haze, implying moderately smoggy weather. The Beijing Environmental...

  The whistle-blower responsible for exposing the sex video scandal that has toppled six local Party and government officials and another five State-owned enterprise executives in Chongqing declined on January 28 to hand over more evidence on the case to Chongqing police, citing concerns over the safety of his source. Zhu Ruifeng, a Beijing-based blogger with the Hong Kong-registered anti-corruption website jdwsy.com, walked out of a Beijing police station on January 28 after a seven-hour negotiation session with two Chongqing police officers. Global Times, Jan. 29, 2013:  Some officials ensnared in honey trap 'yet to be netted' A press officer surnamed Zhang from Chongqing's public security bureau told the Global Times that the police are doing all they can in terms of the investigation and will inform the public of any updates in a timely manner. Xinhua, Jan. 25, 2013:  SW China police bust sex video extortion ring Police in Southwest China's Chongqing...

SSTL has been awarded the contract by the National Space Organization (NSPO) in Taiwan for the design and manufacture of up to twelve satellite platforms for the FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 constellation. The contract was awarded in an open international competition, with SSTL providing the most cost-effective solution. The FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 mission is a joint civil programme between NSPO and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US, and is to provide continuity for the highly successful FORMOSAT-3 mission. The new constellation is intended to comprise twelve spacecraft and is to collect atmospheric data at low and mid latitudes and improve regional and global weather forecasting for over 5000 registered users across the globe. It will also provide scientific data in support of climate studies and ionospheric science. Launch of the first six spacecraft in the constellation is being targeted in 2016. Under the contract, SSTL will design and manufa...

Seven people have been detained after being implicated in the scandal of the "house sister," a woman alleged to have illegally amassed 20 homes using multiple identities. They will be subjected to criminal investigation for their suspected violations, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday. Previous investigation found Gong Ai'ai, a resident in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, has at least two identities and hukou, Chinese household registration records. Chinese netizens dubbed her "house sister" as she reportedly owns 20 homes worth a total of about 1 billion yuan (159 million U.S. dollars), some of which were purchased using her fake identities. Read More @ Source

Carbon monoxide kills 12 in NE China mine CARBON monoxide has been blamed for the Tuesday deaths of 12 workers in a coal mine in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, a local official said today. Three workers entered the Yongsheng mine in Dongning County to pump out water before passing out from carbon monoxide poisoning around 10:30 am Tuesday, said Zhang Fuguang, deputy head of the county government. Zhang said an initial investigation showed that a dense buildup of carbon monoxide in the mine was caused by self-igniting coal in an old mine located adjacent to the Yongsheng mine. The mine's managers organized volunteer rescue efforts to locate the workers, but the rescuers were also poisoned, as they had no equipment to detect the carbon monoxide. More than 30 professional rescuers arrived Tuesday afternoon and pulled 20 people out of the mine, including the trapped workers. Twelve of the people, including the head of the mine, died despite medical treatment. The othe...