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/ 26 September 2007
China’s huge Three Gorges Dam hydropower project could spark environmental catastrophe unless accumulating threats are quickly defused, senior officials and experts have warned. Dam officials warn that areas around the dam are paying a heavy, potentially calamitous environmental cost.
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/ 23 September 2007
Ruthless defending champions Germany and the top-ranked United States stormed into the Women’s Soccer World Cup semifinals on Saturday, leaving North Korea and England to rue missed chances. The Germans beat the Koreans 3-0 in Wuhan with Kerstin Garefrekes pouncing in the 44th minute.
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/ 21 September 2007
The world’s largest toy maker, Mattel, apologised on Friday for damaging China’s reputation after recent massive recalls of its Chinese-made toys, admitting it targeted some goods that were actually up to scratch. Mattel has come under scrutiny following the recall of about 21-million of the toys in a span of five weeks.
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/ 20 September 2007
Under President Hu Jintao, China has emerged as an increasingly polished diplomatic actor, but its foreign performances are often marred by the failure of a rickety bureaucracy to meet international expectations. Accompanied by a throbbing media soundtrack about a ”rising China”, Beijing’s go-between role in crises from Darfur to North Korea has drawn criticism from Western powers wanting tougher steps.
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/ 19 September 2007
Tropical storm Wipha lost much of its punch as it roared ashore over densely populated eastern China on Wednesday but continued to rake the region with heavy rains and high winds. The former typhoon had sparked the evacuation of more than two million people.
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/ 19 September 2007
Typhoon Wipha made landfall in eastern China on Wednesday, knocking out power and water supplies to tens of thousands of residents, but promptly lost strength as it travelled inland. Officials said it was too early to assess damage on the coast, but there were not immediate reports of casualties.
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/ 18 September 2007
China, the world’s fastest-growing aviation market, will need 3 400 new airplanes worth about $340-billion over the next 20 years, United States aircraft maker Boeing said on Tuesday. The forecast marks a dramatic increase from an earlier prediction by Boeing of 2 900 aircraft in the period from 2005 to 2025.
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/ 18 September 2007
China’s most populous city, Shanghai, and outlying areas were bracing for Typhoon Wipha on Tuesday, relocating hundreds of thousands of people to safer areas. The typhoon, a storm packing winds of more than 180km/h was expected to make landfall in east China around midnight, after gale-force winds and driving rains have first swiped northern Taiwan.
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/ 17 September 2007
South Africa’s Sasol, the world’s largest maker of oil from coal, is in talks with Chinese oil major Sinopec on coal liquefaction projects. China, the world’s top coal producer and consumer, is encouraging coal-to-liquid projects to reduce its dependence on imported oil.
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/ 15 September 2007
A Chinese journalist jailed while working for the New York Times was released on Saturday, ending a controversial prison term that highlighted the country’s tough media controls. Zhao Yan, looking noticeably thinner, was greeted by a small group of family and friends, including his daughter and sister, when he emerged from prison.
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/ 15 September 2007
Shanghai, a city which Taiwan has threatened to bombard in the event of conflict, held a major air raid drill on Saturday, a sign that China still views war as possible with the self-ruled island it claims as its own. The drill was scheduled for the same day as a rally in Taiwan where the ruling party aimed to mobilise one million people to support Taiwan’s bid for United Nations membership.
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/ 13 September 2007
Children turned on parents, students denounced their teachers and Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed: ”To rebel is justified” — the Cultural Revolution was a defining, if terrifying, experience for many Chinese. This turbulent period provides the social backdrop that shaped the formative years of rising political stars like Li Keqiang, Li Yuanchao and Xi Jinping, who lived through the chaos.
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/ 11 September 2007
A television reporter claims to have discovered China’s answer to the Loch Ness monster, state press reported on Sunday. Local journalist Zhuo Yongsheng shot footage of six "seal-like" creatures in the north-eastern Tianchi Lake, which local legend has long said is home to Loch Ness-style monsters.
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/ 11 September 2007
Chinese officials straining to stifle protest ahead of a key Communist Party congress have been paying to have troublesome petitioners held in violent squalor in a secretive Beijing prison, many complainants said. Eight petitioners told Reuters of being held in the prison with dozens of others who had come to the capital to press grievances.
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/ 9 September 2007
Taiwan was flushed with pride on Sunday as favourite son and world famous director Ang Lee took the Venice film festival’s top award for his steamy thriller Lust, Caution, just two years after winning with Brokeback Mountain.
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/ 8 September 2007
China blasted planned meetings between Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian and African allies this weekend. Chen was scheduled on Sunday to meet leaders from Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Malawi, São Tomé and PrÃncipe, and Swaziland — an apparent attempt to cut into rival China’s growing influence in the region.
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/ 6 September 2007
From the German chancellery to the Pentagon, government computer networks have been targeted by cyber spies that media reports say were directed by China’s military. The reported Pentagon attack was the ”most flagrant and brazen to date”, said Alex Neill, an expert on the Chinese military at London’s Royal United Services Institute.
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/ 5 September 2007
Reigning champions Germany go into the fifth women’s Soccer World Cup finals next week under huge pressure with the powerhouse United States team desperate to reclaim the trophy. The US, who won the tournament in 1991 and 1999, have drawn the short straw and are in the ”Group of Death” along with North Korea and Sweden, who lost to Germany in the final four years ago.
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/ 4 September 2007
The vast majority of Chinese schoolchildren chose to stay home and surf the internet during the summer holidays rather than play outside, state media said on Tuesday. The poll of 103 children aged four to 14 found that just 4% chose to do outdoor activities during the holidays and only 9% took part in summer educational camps
Police in China’s capital said they will start patrolling the web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user’s browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal internet content. Starting on September 1, the cartoon alerts will appear every half hour on 13 of China’s top web portals.
At least 31 people died and nine more were missing after heavy rainstorms hit south-west China, state media reported on Tuesday. Xinhua news agency said 17 people were killed and three others were missing after the torrential rains in Sichuan province in the past several days.
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday expressed ”grave concern” over reports that Chinese army hackers had penetrated German government computers systems and he vowed to crack down on such activity. ”We in the government took [the reports] as a matter of grave concern,” Wen said after meeting visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Polluters along two of China’s main rivers have defied a decade-old clean-up effort, leaving much of the water unfit to touch, let alone drink, and a risk to a sixth of the population, state media said on Monday. Half the check points along the Huai River and its tributaries in central and eastern China showed pollution of ”grade five” or worse — the top of the dial in key toxins.
China has launched a four-month ”war” on tainted food, drugs and exports, state media reported on Friday, as beleaguered officials embraced time-tested campaign tactics to clean up the country’s battered image. Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi said the campaign would focus on problem products that have corroded consumer confidence in the ”made in China” label.
There is ”no hope” of finding survivors from a flood in a Chinese coal mine, which has trapped 181 workers, a senior official said on Thursday, adding those responsible for the disaster will be handed over to the law. The miners have been trapped since last Friday, when a river dyke burst during torrential rain.
Desperate efforts to save 181 Chinese coal miners from two shafts flooded with water and mud faced near impossible odds on Wednesday, as a safety official said mine owners had failed to anticipate the threat of disaster. The miners have been trapped since Friday, when a river dyke burst in torrential rain, sending water surging into the shafts.
Chinese rescuers frantically pumped water from flooded mine shafts on Monday with little hope that about 180 miners trapped for three days might be alive and as officials revealed they knew of the danger. The disaster in the eastern coastal province of Shandong is just the latest to strike China’s coal industry, the world’s deadliest.
Typhoon Sepat swept China’s southern coast on Sunday, forcing almost a million people from their homes and spawning a tornado that smashed buildings and killed at least nine people. The tornado cut a corridor of destruction 800m wide, wrecked 156 houses and injured more than 60 residents in Zhejiang province.
Distraught relatives protested and demanded answers on Sunday, two days after a collapsed dike in eastern China flooded two coal mines, leaving 181 workers missing and feared dead. State media said the breach in the dike had been closed, but gave no indication if there were any signs of life.
More than 180 coal miners were trapped underground in eastern China on Saturday after heavy rain caused a river to flood and inundate two separate pits, the latest accident to hit the world’s deadliest mining industry. The official Xinhua news agency said 584 miners were rescued after Friday’s incident.
Communist authorities have banned most state media from reporting on the deadly collapse of a bridge in southern China, with local officials punching and chasing reporters from the scene, reporters said on Friday. The harassment and the reporting ban, issued by the Central Propaganda Department, came on Thursday.
Beijing banned more than one million cars from its roads on Friday in a test run to improve air quality for the Olympics, easing gridlock but failing to lift a curtain of smog from the capital. More than 6Â 500 traffic police were on duty across the city to ensure car owners observed the ban, while an extra two million more trips were expected to be taken on subways and buses during the day.