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/ 10 January 2006
An estimated 96-million people, or 7,4% of China’s 1,3-billion population, share the surname Li, state media on Tuesday quoted a survey as saying. The next-most-popular Chinese surnames were Wang and Zhang, at 7,2% and 6,8% respectively, the official Xinhua news agency said.
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/ 10 January 2006
A leading United States lawmaker warned Chinese officials on Tuesday that Beijing is risking a protectionist backlash in Washington if it doesn’t take steps to cut its -billion trade surplus with the United States. Without Chinese action, ”Washington may take measures to reduce the trade imbalance by reducing Chinese exports to the United States,” said United States Senator Max Baucus.
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/ 10 January 2006
China’s $2.3-billion Nigerian oil venture is a major step forward for the energy ravenous country as it seeks to power its fast-growing economy but analysts said on Tuesday the race was just heating up. China National Overseas Oil Corp’s purchase of a 45% stake in the Akpo field is the biggest overseas investment by Beijing since China National Petroleum Corp’s took over PetroKazakhstan for $4,18-billion in October.
Harbin’s popular annual ice festival has opened with an official declaring it free of the toxic chemicals that polluted the northern Chinese city’s water supplies late last year, state press said on Friday. The ice festival, which opened on Thursday, is one of the few tourism drawcards for Harbin, an otherwise bleak industrial city of nine million people.
Yao Wenyuan, the last surviving member of the Gang of Four, who has died aged 74, was a literary polemicist whose pen, under Mao Zedong’s patronage, launched the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76). His vitriolic essays provided ammunition for Mao and his wife, Jiang Qing (Madam Mao) in their campaign to destroy senior communist leaders.
Microsoft was under the spotlight on Friday over its blocking of a Chinese internet blogger, in the latest case of a major Western technology firm helping Beijing curtail free speech. The MSN Spaces-hosted web log, or blog, belonging to Beijing-based media researcher Zhao Jing was closed down this week after he posted articles critical of a management purge at the Beijing News daily.
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/ 30 December 2005
Chinese police have closed 598 websites in a crackdown on pornography, but online gambling and fraud are growing, state media said on Friday. The communist government encourages internet use for education and business but has launched repeated campaigns to stamp out material deemed obscene or subversive.
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/ 29 December 2005
China’s coldest restaurant is doing a roaring trade as deep winter sets in, with customers flocking to the all-ice building and its steaming "hot pot" meals, state press reported on Thursday. The restaurant can accommodate 100 patrons, who reportedly love the novelty of even the bar, tables and chairs being made from ice.
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/ 26 December 2005
A Christmas Day fire at an unlicensed bar killed at least 26 people and injured eight in a Chinese city near Hong Kong, the government said on Monday. The fire broke out at 11pm local time on Sunday evening in Zhongshan, which abuts the former Portuguese colony of Macau west of Hong Kong, the official Xinhua news agency said.
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/ 25 December 2005
A bus ran off a road in northern China into a freezing section of the Yellow River, leaving 28 people missing and presumed dead, official media said on Sunday. The accident occurred late on Saturday in Hanggin prefecture of the Inner Mongolia region, state-run China Central Television said.
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/ 23 December 2005
Ski season opened in China about a month ago, with skiers and snowboarders flocking to about a dozen stations on the weekends for a few days of carefree careening down the slopes — albeit slopes covered with artificial snow. Nanshan, a 10-slope village is run by private owners looking to cash in on the latest fad to captivate the country’s wealthy urban dwellers.
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/ 23 December 2005
A gas explosion inside a highway tunnel under construction killed 42 people and injured 11 others in south-west China’s Sichuan province, the government said on Friday. The explosion happened at an intersection of a highway being built to link the smaller cities of Dujiangyan and Wenchuan.
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/ 22 December 2005
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) is likely to reduce its crude oil production after the high-demand northern-hemisphere winter, the group’s president said on Thursday. ”I expect Opec to decrease output for the second quarter,” Sheikh Ahmad Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah said.
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/ 21 December 2005
A chemical spill from a zinc smelter has polluted the Beijiang River in southern China’s Guangdong province, forcing the suspension of water supplies in two cities, state media said on Wednesday. Cadmium levels reached 10 times the safety limit near Shaoguan city on the Beijiang.
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/ 19 December 2005
Chinese broadcasters have tidied up Wisteria Lane, the fictional suburban setting for the American comedy series Desperate Housewives, an official said on Monday. A Chinese-dubbed version of the show was to debut late on Monday on China’s state-run CCTV8 channel.
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/ 16 December 2005
Coffee grower Denis Cruz sniffs a handful of yellow-green beans produced from his Honduran farm and sighs. ”They would be worth more if I could sell them through Fair Trade,” he says, ”and the land would be healthier — there wouldn’t be the same pressure on it.”
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/ 15 December 2005
At least 10 people died when a hospital in north-east China’s Jilin province caught fire on Thursday, forcing desperate people to jump from the building to escape the flames, state media and officials reported. The fire started at the City Centre hospital, Liaoyuan city’s largest, at about 4.30pm local time.
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/ 10 December 2005
The death toll in a massive coal-mining accident in northern China rose to 90, as the country’s Cabinet ordered the establishment of a special commission to investigate, state television reported on Saturday. A mixture of airborne coal dust and colourless, methane-laden gas known as fire damp ignited to cause the blast on Wednesday.
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/ 7 December 2005
Asia has become a happy hunting ground for many golf stars who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars — and in one case, millions — just to turn up. While officials refuse to discuss figures, Colin Montgomerie reportedly pocketed 000 in fees at last week’s UBS Hong Kong Open — more than his 000 dollars for winning the event.
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/ 7 December 2005
Divers have been recruited to search the flooded shafts of a northern Chinese coal mine for 42 missing miners, the government said on Wednesday. Rescuers have been working for days to locate the workers, who were trapped in an underground flood last Friday at the privately owned Sigou Coal Mine.
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/ 5 December 2005
A city of more than half a million people was forced to cut off its water supply as a toxic slick slowly moved down one of China’s large rivers towards the Russian border, state media said on Monday. The taps were turned off Sunday in Jiamusi, home to 550 000 people, as the potentially lethal chemical pool approached along the Songhua river.
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/ 4 December 2005
Forty-two miners were trapped for a second day on Sunday in a flooded mine in central China, as more than 200 rescuers raced against the clock to pump out water to save them, state media said. The miners have been trapped since shortly before midnight late on Friday when the Sigou mine suddenly flooded, according to the Xinhua news agency. The mine is located in Shisi township, Xin’an county, Henan province.
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/ 3 December 2005
Simon Yates of Scotland fired a course-best nine-under-par 61 to lead the UBS Hong Kong Open as records tumbled on Saturday. European Order of Merit champion Colin Montgomerie was just two shots back as play continued in the ,2-million co-sanctioned tournament.
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/ 3 December 2005
The United Nations Security Council’s decision to organise a briefing on Myanmar casts the spotlight on the reclusive generals whose disregard for human rights has made the country a pariah state.. The decision came after an Asian human rights watchdog group released what it called the most comprehensive report on torture in Myanmar, accusing the generals of ”brutal and systematic” abuse of political prisoners.
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/ 3 December 2005
Sixteen workers were killed and 42 others remained trapped in two separate coal mine accidents in China, state media reported on Saturday, as the toll from a massive mine blast in the northeast rose to 169. The accidents were the latest disasters to strike China’s mines, which are considered the most dangerous in the world, especially in recent years as demand for raw materials has escalated to help fuel rapid economic growth.
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/ 2 December 2005
Tiny Laos is often seen as sparking little interest in a dynamic Asian region, but 30 years after the communists took power, it is at the heart of a struggle for influence among its neighbours. Chinese investments, the daily traffic of people along the border with southwestern China’s Yunnan province and the rising number of Chinese vehicles in Laos show Beijing has a keen eye on the Laotian market.
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/ 30 November 2005
China’s central government on Wednesday blamed managers of a north-eastern mine for a huge explosion that killed at least 150 people, saying obvious signs of danger emerged days before the blast. As rescue efforts wound down, the government’s work-safety watchdog turned its focus to the cause of the blast.
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/ 29 November 2005
The death toll from an explosion at a coal mine in north-eastern China rose to at least 146 on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency said. Three miners were still listed as missing, nearly two days after the Sunday night cave-in at the state-run Dongfeng coal mine, near Qitaihe city in Heilongjiang province.
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/ 29 November 2005
Officials declared water safe for drinking on Tuesday in a northern Chinese city where supplies to 3,8-million people were shut down for five days after a pollution scare in a nearby river, but residents remained wary about taking their first sips. Russian authorities are bracing for the toxic spill to reach the border within days.
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/ 28 November 2005
An explosion at a coal mine in remote north-eastern China killed 134 workers and left another 15 trapped underground, China News Service said on Monday, amid frantic rescue efforts to find survivors. A total of 221 miners were underground when the cave-in occurred.
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/ 28 November 2005
Eighty-eight miners were killed and another 36 remained trapped underground after an explosion on Sunday at a coal mine in China’s north-east Heilongjiang province, state press said on Monday. Xinhua news agency said a rescue team of 269 people was involved in the search for those still trapped.
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/ 27 November 2005
Zhang Xuping and his family dashed out of their home as soon as they felt the ground shaking. Minutes later, their neighbour was killed and buildings near them collapsed as a strong earthquake rolled through their village in central China. The quake killed 15 people and injured more than 450 others in two provinces.