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/ 16 January 2008
German engineer Michael Bosch is not fazed by the lack of a gym and other creature comforts at his budget hotel in a converted Shanghai office building. He’s stayed at such hotels on nearly a dozen trips to Chinese cities. ”All I need is a clean, warm place to sleep. I don’t care so much about service,” the 32-year-old said as he waited for 10 minutes for a distracted receptionist to attend to him at a Motel168 on the edge of Shanghai’s financial district.
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/ 16 January 2008
When Zhi Lijiang first signed up to be an Olympic volunteer for the 2008 Beijing Games, she could hardly have imagined she would be playing the role of a Canadian tourist in English and etiquette classes. The classes are all part of Beijing’s effort to get its population to speak English to welcome the millions of foreigners expected to flood to the city in this Olympic year.
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/ 11 January 2008
More than 100 000 Chinese died in workplace accidents last year, including on the roads and railways, but the figure was down one tenth from 2006, a senior official said on Friday. Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, said 101 480 people died, but that government education and publicity campaigns were paying off.
Chinese opera, a massive fireworks display and a mystery ending will mark the highly anticipated opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, media reported on Wednesday. The ceremony’s artistic director, Zhang Yimou, China’s most famous filmmaker, has dropped the first hints on the show’s content.
A pig genetically modified in China to make it glow has given birth to fluorescent piglets, proving such changes can be inherited, state media said on Wednesday. The sow was one of three pigs who had fluorescent green protein injected into their embryos when they were bred in December 2006 by scientists in north-east China.
Scientists in China have identified about 400 genes that appear to make some people more easily addicted to drugs, opening the way for more effective therapies and addiction control. Experts believe genetic factors account for up to 60% of a person’s vulnerability to drug addiction, with environmental factors accounting for the remainder.
Xing Houyuan’s advice to investors who seek her out is patient and practical: do due diligence on any potential partner, clarify its ties to the government and make sure you control any joint venture. Her words would have sounded familiar to any firm trying to enter China in the 1980s and 1990s. But the nervous-looking man who had just shown Xing his proposal was Chinese, and he was looking to do business in Africa.
China has announced new rules to control the explosion of audio-visual content on the internet, in a move seen as an effort to transfer the government’s television- and radio-censorship model to websites. Only state-controlled entities will have the right to operate websites that post audio-visual material under the new regulations.
The names of three banks and the word "stocks" beat "sex" to become four of the most Googled words in China last year, according to a Google China list seen on Thursday. China Merchants Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank ranked second, third and sixth, according to a list supplied by Google China on its website.
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/ 31 December 2007
The wife of a top sports anchor on Chinese state television has created a buzz in the blogosphere by crashing an Olympic media event — to publicly accuse her husband of adultery. A video clip of Zhang Bin’s wife, Hu Ziwei, commandeering a microphone at a presentation of its coverage plans was easily one of the most viewed items on a Chinese video site on Monday.
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/ 25 December 2007
Deposed Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra said Tuesday he wanted to return to Thailand in February, as he called for reconciliation with the military following weekend elections. Thaksin, who was deposed by a military coup 15 months ago, also insisted he did not want to return to politics following the polls.
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/ 24 December 2007
China has sanctioned state-owned companies to examine three possible strategies to block BHP Billiton’s proposed takeover of mining giant Rio Tinto, a report said Monday. Strategies include forming a domestic consortium to bid for Rio Tinto, a joint bid by domestic and foreign firms, or purchasing Rio shares on the open market.
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/ 19 December 2007
The hardest part is yet to come for Beijing Olympic organisers, heading into 2008 with all plans in place but potential pitfalls aplenty in the run-up to the event in August. Traffic congestion, closely linked to air quality, food security, media freedom and human rights as well as boycott calls are issues likely to flare up again over the coming months.
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/ 18 December 2007
China, widely criticised for cruelty to animals bred for consumption, is drafting new standards on animal slaughter to make the practice more humane, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. The central province of Henan has already adopted the measures, which include stunning the animals before killing them.
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/ 18 December 2007
The World Bank is planning projects in Africa with China’s Export-Import Bank to address concerns that Beijing is taking more than it gives as it scours the continent for oil and minerals. World Bank president Robert Zoellick said the pros and cons of the country’s push into Africa had been an important topic during his talks with senior officials.
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/ 13 December 2007
A restaurant fire in southern China killed has killed 10 people, state media reported on Thursday, hours after an apartment fire killed 21 in the eastern part of the country. Xinhua News Agency said the fire at a restaurant in the booming manufacturing city of Dongguan in Guangdong province also injured nine.
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/ 13 December 2007
United States Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came away from two days of talks on Thursday convinced that China sees the need for a stronger yuan. Although the grand-sounding ”strategic economic dialogue” apparently produced slim pickings, Paulson said it provided a sound foundation on which to expand cooperation.
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/ 8 December 2007
The father of China’s latest bird-flu victim also has the disease, officials said on Friday, prompting World Health Organisation fears of possible human-to-human transmission. A Health Ministry statement said a 52-year-old man named Lu in the eastern city of Nanjing had the H5N1 strain, which killed his son on Sunday.
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/ 7 December 2007
The death toll from China’s latest major coal mine disaster rose to 105 on Friday, official media said, as hope for survivors ebbed and anger mounted over a litany of mistakes that compounded the tragedy. Twenty-six more bodies were recovered on Friday morning following a gas explosion at the mine in northern China’s Shanxi province.
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/ 6 December 2007
Ninety-six miners were feared dead after a coal-mine gas blast in northern China on Thursday, a grim toll likely caused by illegal mining and possibly made worse by delays reporting the accident, the Xinhua news agency said. Rescuers had found 70 bodies in the village-run mine by early evening and were searching for at least 26 more.
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/ 6 December 2007
At least 40 people were killed and 74 others trapped underground after an explosion at a coal mine in northern China on Thursday, with a group of rescuers among the missing, officials said. The gas blast occurred just after midnight at a mine in Linfen city, a coal-rich area in Shanxi province, the state administration of mine safety said.
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/ 5 December 2007
More than 100 000 people lined the streets around Bangkok’s glittering Grand Palace on Wednesday to cheer Thailand’s revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej as he celebrated his 80th birthday. The crowds, dressed in yellow shirts and waving flags emblazoned with a royal emblem, lined the broad tree-fringed avenues leading to the palace.
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/ 5 December 2007
The Chinese military has added mobile showers to its ever more sophisticated arsenal, state media reported on Wednesday. The camouflaged vehicle can be set up in five minutes and allows 20 men to shower simultaneously within a narrow 10-square-metre space, the Xinhua news agency said.
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/ 4 December 2007
Food prices may climb for years because of expansion of farming for fuel, climate changes, and demand from richer consumers in fast-growing developing nations, a report said on Tuesday. Biofuel expansions alone could push maize prices up over two-thirds by 2020 and increase oilseed costs by nearly half.
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/ 27 November 2007
Several times this year, Tan Mingzhu had the terrible feeling her home in central China was about to collapse in on her family. Frightening tremors rocked their simple concrete dwelling 4km from China’s mammoth Three Gorges Dam, ripping floor-to-ceiling cracks in the walls, and she doesn’t hesitate in assigning blame.
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/ 26 November 2007
Chinese leaders hailed images sent back from from the country’s first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers. Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the probe Chang’e 1 into space and around the moon, proclaimed the mission a complete success.
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/ 25 November 2007
Bravehearts Scotland won their first World Cup title in dramatic style on Sunday, beating tournament front-runners the United States at the third play-off hole. Eight-time European number one Colin Montgomerie and young gun Marc Warren went one better than last year when they lost a spirit-crushing play-off to Germany.
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/ 24 November 2007
South Africans Trevor Immelman and Retief Goosen are hoping their experience as former winners of the World Cup will give them an edge in the final round of this year’s tournament at Mission Hills. In Saturday’s fourball or better-ball format, the duo combined for a six-under-par 66.
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/ 24 November 2007
The bodies of 31 victims of a landslide in central China are so badly crushed that DNA samples may be needed to identify them, state media reported on Saturday. A long-distance bus was buried under an avalanche of boulders, earth and mud at the entrance to a railway tunnel being built in Hubei province near China’s massive Three Gorges Dam.
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/ 23 November 2007
Americans Boo Weekley and Heath Slocum hit a solid three-under-par 69 to retain a one-shot lead over their more fancied rivals after the second-round foursomes at the Golf World Cup on Friday. England topped the leaderboard by two shots midway through the round, but they found the alternate-ball format more taxing and a late bogey dragged them down.
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/ 22 November 2007
Global warming is one of the most significant threats facing humankind, researchers warned, as they unveiled a study showing how climate changes in the past led to famine, wars and population declines. The world’s growing population may be unable to adequately adapt to ecological changes brought about by the expected rise in global temperatures.
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/ 21 November 2007
China has committed to sending an engineering unit of peacekeepers to Darfur at the end of the week, the top United Nations peacekeeping official said on Wednesday. China has about 1 800 peacekeepers deployed abroad, making it the second-largest contributor after France.