SHANGHAI: Thirty intellectually disabled teenagers and volunteers from 18 nations and regions shared their friendship, joy and ideas at a forum held on Friday to fight stereotypes and spread the message of the Special Olympics.The 2007 Global Youth Summit, in conjunction with the ongoing Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai, offered young people an opportunity to talk openly about their needs and expectations and seek ways to reverse stereotyped attitudes about those who are mentally disadvantaged .The 30 pairs of students each had a Special Olympics athlete accompanied by a peer from a middle school or college. The event also brought together adult celebrities from China and abroad to lend their support.At yesterday's summit, Piao Roubing, 17, an athlete from Northeast China, recalled her friendship with her partner, Zhao Xiaoyue, who now studies at a Shanghai university. After meeting at a community forum five years ago, the two have been in contact to share both their happiness and troubles."I was surprised when I received a short message from her one day to consult me about her pains in growing up," said the 19-year-old Zhao. "I feel I am very important to her and she encourages me to have the power and determination to change lives."Compared with many others, people with intellectual disabilities are more sincere and pure, Zhao said. "She once misunderstood my friendly roughhousing with other girls and offered to help me, which made me very impressed."Asked to describe her companion, Piao said the older girl was respectful, lovely and optimistic."She is a great sister," Piao said.The summit yesterday included a moving moment when Piao, with her eyes covered, was asked to identify Zhao among a group of individuals -- including movie star Colin Farrell -- by only feeling their hands.With little difficulty the girl recognized her friend's hand. "It's hard to describe very clearly, but the feeling (of her hand) is different."Participants at the summit also took part in interactive games, noting that the Special Olympics provides young people the opportunity to make an immediate difference in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities."I find friendship with my partner in basketball," said Serbian athlete Darko Boskovic.Global Youth Summits are held in conjunction with the Special Olympics World Games every two years. The inaugural Global Youth Summit was held in Anchorage, Alaska, the United States, during the 2001 Special Olympics World Winter Games.
The Chinese-African People's Friendship Association (CAPFA) will nominate 10 Africans Who Have Deeply Moved Chinese People next month, in a moved aimed at cementing civilian diplomacy between the two sides.The 10 candidates are expected to be unveiled at the next Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FCAC) late next year.Chen Haosu"CAPFA's recognition will benefit both peoples by enhancing mutual understanding and trust," Chen Haosu, president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, said.The awards will go to Africans "who have made great contributions to bilateral ties", Wang Tong, an representative of the CAPFA, said, adding that the association is identifying criteria of eligible candidates.The first round of nominations will involve all 131 councilors of the CAPFA, Liu Hongmin, also from the association, said."Our councilors include big Chinese entrepreneurs such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE, among others," he said. "They are the most suitable to put forward nominees because of their significant investments in Africa."Liu said the 10 winners will be just one part of the second China-Africa Friendship Award. The other part will be the 10 Chinese Who Have Deeply Moved the African People. This will be the second time such awards have been givenThe first 10 winners - which included doctors, journalists, scholars and politicians - were announced in Beijing during the FCAC in November 2006."These awards reflect sincere friendship and intense people-to-people communication, though China and Africa are distant from each other," Dai Yan, a former councilor in Ghana, said."But both peoples still have a long way to go to truly understand each other because of cultural differences," he said. More African people have traveled to China as bilateral ties have developed over the past years.The number of Africans coming to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, has increased by 30 percent every year since 2003. Most of these newcomers are traders.The city now has about 20,000 African residents, Huang Shiding, of the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, estimated.Beyond the world of business, "500-600 African students are studying in universities and colleges in Beijing," Wang said.Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, a growing number of Chinese people have settled down in Africa.In one reflection of the impact they are making, people in Nigeria crowned tribal chieftains from China in 2001 and 2007.
UNITED NATIONS -- China's special representative for climate change talks, Yu Qingtai, urged the international community to conduct substantive negotiations aimed at securing a new global post-2012 agreement on climate change by 2009.Speaking at the UN General Assembly debate on climate change, Yu said that the Bali roadmap, adopted at the UN climate conference last December by delegates from nearly 190 nations, is "only a beginning.""The international community must continue with the task of conducting substantive consultations and negotiations, so as to insure a final agreement on the post-2012 international cooperation on climate change within the next two years," he said.Yu emphasized that any framework for future arrangements must be firmly based on the principles established by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, particularly the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.The four building blocks of the roadmap -- mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer and financing, are all important components for developing an effective framework for responding to climate change, and should be given equal attention, and none of them should be neglected, he noted.Urging developed countries to further strengthen policies and measures aimed at emission reduction, the special envoy said the concerns by developing countries over adaptation, technology transfer and financing should be addressed in earnest, so that they will have the capacity to make greater contributions to confronting the challenge from climate change."The effectiveness of participation by the developing countries will, to a significant extent, depend on whether the developed countries will take substantive actions on financial and technological assistance," he said. "Effective mechanisms should be set up as soon as possible to insure that measurable, reportable and verifiable assistance be provided to the developing countries with regard to financial resources, technology and capacity building," he said.China takes climate change "very seriously" and have adopted various policies and measures to respond to the challenge, with " noticeable success," he said."While making our own due contribution, we will also help other developing countries to enhance their ability to adapt to climate change," Yu added.Representatives, including some 20 ministers, from more than 100 countries and international organizations attended the two-day high-level session and exchanged views on ways to move forward the negotiating process launched in the Bali conference.
XI'AN -- A fire burnt up trees and shrubs on a mountain that shrouds one of the most famed imperial mausoleums in the ancient city of Xi'an in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, but no damage was caused to the cultural relics, local museum officials said on Sunday.The fire broke out around 2:00 p.m. Saturday on the western part of a mountain that encased the tombs of a powerful Chinese empress Wu Zetian and her husband Gaozong in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The Qianling Mausoleum, as the tombs are called, reportedly houses the most precious possessions of the two rulers, including paintings, ceramics, calligraphy works and jewelry articles.The fire was fanned up by sandstorms which struck the area on Saturday, said Fan Yingfeng, curator of the Qianling Museum.More than 100 local villagers and 15 fire-fighters managed to put out the fire around 3:10 p.m. on Saturday. About 30 trees and a few shrubs were lost to the blaze.Initial investigation showed the fire was caused by a deserted cigarette end in the dry grasses."Although the fire didn't cause any major damage, it reflected an urgent need to educate residents in neighboring villages to guard against fire risks," Fan said.He said lessons should be learnt from the destruction of a 600-year-old Namdaemun gate in Seoul, one of the most treasured landmarks in the Republic of Korea. The two-tiered gate was set ablaze by a man upset over a land dispute.
WASHINGTON - Post-menopausal Chinese women who eat a Western-style diet heavy in meat and sweets face a higher risk of breast cancer than their counterparts who stick to a typical Chinese diet loaded with vegetables and soy, a study found. The researchers, writing on Tuesday in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, tracked about 3,000 women in Shanghai, about half of whom were diagnosed with breast cancer. Post-menopausal women who ate a Western-style diet -- beef, pork, shrimp, chicken, candy, desserts and dairy products -- were 60 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than those eating a diet based on vegetables and soy, the study found. The study found the increased risk most acute for cancer involving so-called estrogen-receptor positive tumors. The post-menopausal women with the Western-style diet experienced a 90 percent increased risk for this type of breast cancer. One of the researchers, Marilyn Tseng of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, said the study detected a much smaller increased breast cancer risk among younger women on a Western-style diet which was not statistically significant. Tseng noted that breast cancer rates among Asian women traditionally have been low but have been rising in recent years. Some experts have suspected that the adoption of a more Western diet may be at least partly to blame. "The increase in risk did appear to be due to the increase in red-meat intake," Tseng said in a telephone interview. "But we didn't do specific analyses to see if it could have been due to other parts of a western diet, like the high intake of desserts or high intake of dairy." The findings also suggested such a diet may increase breast cancer likelihood by increasing obesity, the researchers said. "We are the first to find evidence for an increased risk of breast cancer for a Western-style dietary pattern in an Asian population," the researchers wrote. They detected two dietary patterns in the women, who were diagnosed with their cancer from 1996 to 1998 and were subsequently interviewed about what they ate. One was a "vegetable-soy" pattern based on tofu, cauliflower, beans, bean sprouts and green leafy vegetables, with not much meat. The other was a "meat-sweet" pattern among women gravitating away from typical Chinese fare in favor of more Western foods. "Most studies have tended to look at single dietary factors. And what was unique about this study is that we tried to describe patterns of intake -- foods that go together, that seem to occur together in the diet," Tseng said.
Zi Beijia, a Chinese reporter who fabricated a TV news saying that Beijing dumpling makers used cardboard as a filling, was Sunday sentenced to one year behind bars with a fine of 1,000 yuan for the crime of "infringing commodity reputation".The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court heard the case in an open court.According to the court ruling, Zi, 28, was a temporary employee of the Life Channel of the Beijing Television Station before being arrested.In June 2007, he visited some steamed stuffed bun stands but failed to find any cardboard-filled buns.For pursuing career achievements, Zi, under an assumed name of Hu Yue, went to the No.13 courtyard inside Shizikou Village, Taiyanggong Township of Chaoyang District, and asked four migrant workers who had been preparing breakfast there to make meat buns for him with a lie that he will buy the stuffed buns in a large quantity.The four meat buns makers were identified as Wei Quanfeng, Zhao Xiaoyan, Zhao Jiangbo and Yang Chunling, all from Huayin, a city in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.Then Zi came to the same venue the second time and brought cameras, pork, flour and cardboard himself.In order to film the process, Zi is alleged to have instructed Wei and his fellow villagers to make "baozi" or meat buns by soaking and crushing discarded cardboard he had collected and mixing it with pork. The baozi were said to have been fed to dogs.Zi used a home DVD camera to film the entire process and turned in his report after he edited it.Zi hid the truth to the Beijing Television Station, enabling his program to be aired in a slot known as "Transparency" on July 8 at the Live Channel of the station. The program caused baneful social effects and severely ruined the reputation of the relevant commodities, according to the court ruling.Zi pledged guilty at the court and said he was muddled-head at that moment, which cheated Beijing Television Station and the audience.Zi made a sincere apology to the audience, Beijing Television Station and the people concerned. He advised journalistic staff to learn lessons from him and follow obey journalistic ethics.The court held that Zi, as a temporary employee of Beijing Television Station, deliberately fabricated news and hid truth to get his program aired and caused baneful effects. His behavior of fabricating and spreading fake news has infringed the reputation of certain food and his wrongdoing was serious. The verdict was made accordingly.
天津快速优化排名
BEIJING - China's quality control watchdog has rejected a Hong Kong media report which alleged the mainland had exported hairy crabs containing carcinogens to Taiwan, confirming that the mainland had not exported any hairy crabs to Taiwan so far this year."The mainland's quarantine authorities have not approved the exports as the two sides are still in talks about quarantine standards," said a spokesman with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (GAQSIQ ).Hairy crabs, mainly bred in East China's Jiangsu Province, have become a popular autumn delicacy in the mainland and have sold well in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and the United States.But in August the Taiwan authorities published new standards requiring the crabs to contain no detectable drug residues, despite an agreement met with the mainland in July."The new standards are too picky and have no scientific grounds, nor do they comply with the WTO rules," said the GAQSIQ spokesman."We have noticed that a group in Taiwan is trying to discredit mainland food products. Such politically driven acts will harm normal trade across the Taiwan Strait," said Li Weiyi, spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council earlier this week.Official figures show more than 99 percent of the Chinese foods exported to the United States, the European Union and Japan were up to standard in the first half of the year.China's number one hairy crab exporter, Wuzhong District of Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, sold 1,800 tons of hairy crabs abroad over the last two years.
Nearly 5,000 officials were punished for squandering public funds in the first half of this year, according to the Ministry of Supervision (MOS).The government took disciplinary action ranging from warnings to dismissal against 4,866 officials from the Communist Party of China and government bodies, after an investigation found their use of funds violated rules.The joint investigation of officials suspected of using public funds for banquets, overseas tours, luxury cars or entertainment was launched earlier this year by the MOS, the Ministry of Finance, National Office of Audit, Government Offices Administration of the State Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Earlier this month, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the Party's graft buster, slammed officials at a local procuratorate for taking an overseas tour on taxpayers' money.Xu Wenai, vice procurator-general of East China's Anhui Province, was removed from his post for wasting public funds on the trip to Finland.A delegation of 10 people from the procuratorate headed by Xu was found to have fabricated an invitation from the Finnish government in November 2006.The CCDI investigation found the delegation also tampered with business travel routes, adding a number of destination countries.The incident caused a nationwide stir, with many provinces considering tighter regulations to screen officials who plan to take overseas trips for international conferences or study.The central authorities have urged government at all levels to implement the country's anti-corruption policies and called on all Chinese officials to avoid wasting public funds.Xinhua-China Daily
BEIJING - China purchased at least 400 billion yuan (.6 billion) of goods and services in 2007, a new high compared to the 368.1 billion yuan recorded a year earlier, preliminary figures from the Ministry of Finance (MOF) revealed.Assistant Financial Minister Zhang Tong described the expansion as "outstanding" given the procurement stood at only 100 billion yuan in 2002, the first year the mechanism was introduced.The past five years have also witnessed an increasingly diversified government consumption that expanded from solely commodities in the beginning to services and engineering, he said. With 13,000 people engaged in purchasing nationwide, China has twice revised its procurement list to include 18 categories encompassing nearly 4,770 items.Energy-saving products accounted for a large percentage of the newly-added items. To lead by example, the government has pledged to reduce energy consumption for every 10,000 yuan of gross domestic product by 20 percent and pollutant emissions by 10 percent for the 2006-2010 period.This year, student textbooks for primary and junior high schools, medicine, farm machinery and other items to distribute to the needy free of charge or at inexpensive prices will be added to the list, Financial Minister Xie Xuren told a recent work meeting for 2008.Under a MOF directive promulgated last month, government procurement will favor independent innovation products starting this year, a practice, experts said, the United States adopted in the late 1950s to foster domestic high-tech industries, including aeronautic and astronautic technology, computing, semiconductors and integrated circuits.Qinghua University law professor Yu An said the move would provide good incentives for domestic firms to speed up technical innovation.MOF statistics revealed the procurement had spared an aggregate expenditure of at least 180 billion yuan between 2002 and 2007.The benefits, however, didn't drown out grumbles from the Heilongjiang provincial chapter of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, one of the country's eight political parties, beside the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC).At a meeting last month, the chapter held transparency in government procurement should be enhanced as some products were found to be overpriced, of unsatisfactory quality or without effective after-sales service.Tendering companies must be subject to real-time supervision to avoid bribery and kickbacks. Perpetrating firms must be blacklisted and banned from the procurement, while governmental departments must submit their accounting ledgers for regular auditing scrutiny, they said.
Construction workers toil on the roof of a new building being erected in Beijing April 1, 2007. [Reuters]Stronger-than-expected economic figures have prompted a number of international economic research institutions to revise upwards their forecasts for China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Almost all the major economic indexes in the first two months of this year have exceeded those for the same period last year. "The country's GDP growth in the first quarter will be faster than in the equivalent period last year and also that of the previous quarter," Chen Dongqi, deputy director of the Institute of Economic Research of the National Development and Reform Commission, said. The State Information Center has adjusted its GDP growth forecast for the first quarter from 10.2 percent to about 11 percent. Despite the government last year adopting a number of tightening measures, economic growth has shown clear signs of rebounding in the past quarter. Statistics show that urban fixed-asset investment picked up moderately to 23.4 percent year-on-year in January-February, and from about 20 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, reversing the trend of a gradual slowdown since last July. Meanwhile, the trade surplus registered a massive leap of 230 percent, and retail sales were up 14.7 percent on the first two months of last year. "Industrial growth is a key driving force behind overall economic growth, and power generation is also a useful indicator," Chen said. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's industrial output rose 18.5 percent year-on-year while industrial profits soared 43.8 percent in the first two months. Growth in power generation also accelerated to 16.6 percent year-on-year from less than 14 percent in the same period last year. Despite expectations the government will introduce another round of tightening measures soon, global investment bank, Lehman Brothers, still revised up its forecast for the Chinese economy. According to a recent report by the firm, the first quarter growth forecast has been raised from 9.8 percent to 10.1 percent, and the annual growth rate from 9.6 percent to 9.8 percent. "In the light of the stronger-than-expected figures in the first two months of this year and the likely policy responses, we have lifted our full-year growth projections for this year to 10 percent from 9.1 percent, based mainly on stronger growth in credit, investment and exports," Qu Hongbin, the chief China economist with HSBC, said. Domestic banks extended new loans of 982 billion yuan (7 billion) in the first two months of this year compared with 716 billion yuan ( billion) in the same period of 2006. The government forecast early last month that the country's GDP is to grow by about 8 percent this year. The country has just witnessed four consecutive years of double-digit growth, including 10.7 percent GDP growth last year, the fastest in a decade. The latest official forecast reflects the authorities' determination to shift the focus of economic growth from quantity to quality.