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News » Society » Tibetan mother in self-immolation |
- Tibetan mother in self-immolation
- China reiterates low tar cigarettes not better
- Spain 4 South Korea 1: Torres on target as champions send out ominous warning
- The girl who updated her Facebook status to JACKPOT!
- Crouching tiger 'hidden vice girl': Star accused of sleeping with politician linked to the murder of Old Harrovian
- DIGITAL INK: Don't buy stuff you don't need
- Disbelief over claims Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress was paid £70million to sleep with Chinese Communist officials
- 13 bound and shot dead 'for defecting': Observers discover fresh Syrian massacre as U.N. prepares for special emergency session
- A Hong Kong Craze Cools
- Kraft Craves More of China’s Snacks Market
- General Electric Will Open More Innovation Centers in China
- Panetta Heads to Asia to Back Allies, Avoid Riling China
- Have You Heard… Panetta Heads to Asia to Back Allies, Avoid
- The baby now arriving ...
- China backs Kofi Annan efforts
- Pink? Wen told to think again
- Rail ministry in products probe
- Trains to go faster again
- Top meat firm's sausage tainted with bacteria
- Police assign blame for fatal crash
| Tibetan mother in self-immolation Posted: 30 May 2012 08:51 PM PDT A Tibetan mother of three dies after setting herself on fire in Sichuan province, two reports say, days after two men set themselves on fire in Lhasa. |
| China reiterates low tar cigarettes not better Posted: 30 May 2012 06:32 PM PDT CHINA reiterated that low tar cigarette will not reduce the harm caused by smoking, and more than 3 million Chinese will die each year from smoking by 2050, if no measures are taken, according to a report issued by the Ministry of Health yesterday. |
| Spain 4 South Korea 1: Torres on target as champions send out ominous warning Posted: 30 May 2012 04:11 PM PDT Fernando Torres scored on his return to the international fold as Spain continued their preparations for Euro 2012 with an impressive 4-1 win over South Korea in Bern. |
| The girl who updated her Facebook status to JACKPOT! Posted: 30 May 2012 03:11 PM PDT That's the cruel joke about Mark Zuckerberg's new bride. So what did first attract her to the geek who's now worth £12 billion? |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 02:55 PM PDT The stunning 33-year-old, one of China's highest-paid stars and a three times BAFTA nominee, has vehemently denied a string of shocking allegations which emerged in Chinese media. |
| DIGITAL INK: Don't buy stuff you don't need Posted: 30 May 2012 01:29 PM PDT As frequent visitor to Nehru Place, I can say that I've been propositioned with offers of software and game DVDs innumerable times. |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 12:38 PM PDT The stunning 33-year-old, one of China's highest-paid stars and a three times BAFTA nominee, has vehemently denied a string of shocking allegations which emerged in Chinese media. |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 09:59 AM PDT Syrian activists claimed that the victims were army defectors killed by Assad's forces, although it has not possible to verify their accounts. |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 09:53 AM PDT  Source: Wall Street Journal By Te-Ping Chen and Jason Chow The flood of mainland Chinese shoppers coming to Hong Kong to snap up luxury goods, expensive homes, art and wine is slowing. Earlier this month, the usual flocks of mainland tourists that fill the city during Golden Week, a Chinese holiday period, were conspicuously smaller. Likewise, interest in local art auctions and real estate among mainland consumers flagged in the latest quarter. In recent years, the number of mainland tourists crossing the border to shop and see sights in Hong Kong has ballooned to more than 28 million a year—quadruple the city's population. They have given rise to blocks of glittering storefronts filled with luxury retailers eager to cater to such visitors. Shifting economic winds are affecting the trend, though. Growth on the mainland is easing, credit is getting tighter and more people are worried about the global economy. Some Chinese tourists, meanwhile, are simply going elsewhere. On several blocks of one of the city's main streets half of the stores are now taken up by watch and jewelry vendors, says UBS economist Silvia Liu. But they have seen sales growth slow, with combined watch, jewelry and gift sales for this year's first three months increasing 19% from a year earlier, compared with 47% for all of 2011, UBS reports. For some retailers, sales are even falling. Karson Choi, chairman of luxury-watch retailer Halewinner Group, says his company's same-store sales dropped 10% to 15% compared with last year, when they grew by upward of 25%. Halewinner has 10 stores in Hong Kong and relies heavily on shoppers from the mainland: About 70% of the watches it sells locally are to mainland buyers, who spend an average of 70,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$9,000) on time pieces by brands such as Jaeger-LeCoultre and IWC. While demand in Hong Kong may have flagged, it has hardly gone away. "If last year, they bought 10 watches, now, they're buying eight," says Mr. Choi of his mainland customers. Still, it can be a painful shift. Last week Tiffany, citing softening growth in China, among other factors, said its net sales would grow 7% to 8% this year, down from a previously expected 10%. The jewelry retailer, which has 19 stores in mainland China and 10 in Hong Kong, said same-store Asian-Pacific sales rose 10% in the year's first three months, compared with 26% during the same period last year. Tiffany stock took a pounding on that news and is down 16% since the end of last month. Shares of Hong Kong's major jewelers also have been hammered this month, with Luk Fook Holdings International Ltd. falling 19% and Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd. Overall growth in visits from mainland tourists to Hong Kong has been "decelerating quite sharply" in recent months, says Credit Suisse analyst Gabriel Chan. The number of Hong Kong-bound mainland Chinese visitors in the first quarter rose 17% from a year earlier, compared with the 36% year-over-year growth seen in the preceding quarter, UBS says. It isn't all a reflection of the economy. Nine years after mainland China first began granting individual visas for mainland Chinese to visit the city, Hong Kong is no longer such an exotic destination. "Instead of going to Hong Kong to shop four times a year, why not save money and go to Korea or Japan once?" Mr. Chan says. Some luxury retailers continue to enjoy buoyant—if slower—growth rates with Chinese shoppers. At Burberry Group, same-store sales growth in China for 2011-12 was "well over 20%," although that is slower than the 30% growth seen in 2010-11. Burberry saw 37% growth in Asian-Pacific retail revenue for the six months ended in March, in contrast to the 51% growth seen during the six months ended in September last year. For the Louis Vuitton brand, Asian revenue increased 17% in the first quarter, slower than the 24% growth in the same period of 2011. Louis Vuitton is owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Mainland Chinese buyers have pulled back on art and real estate. Sotheby's said that in the spring of 2010, art buyers from mainland China accounted for nearly half of the overall sale value at its Asian auctions. This spring, they accounted for 20% to 25% of the overall sale values. In Hong Kong's turbocharged real-estate market, where Chinese have increasingly bought up the most expensive properties, their share of sales of new offerings fell to 37% of the market in the first quarter from 38% in last year's fourth quarter, according to Midland Holdings, a real-estate agency. For sales of previously owned homes, 8.4% of the total in dollar terms were purchases by Chinese mainland buyers, falling from 15.6%. As mainlanders venture farther abroad, Europe and other Asian countries are big beneficiaries of the Chinese tourist boom. Global Blue, a company that helps tourists get tax refunds from their shopping abroad, said it processed 59% more tax refunds to Chinese shoppers during the 12-month period ended in March 2012 from the same period a year earlier. Global Blue operates in 35 countries, mostly in Europe but also Japan, Singapore and Korea. Shopping in the U.K. was particularly active: Global Blue saw tax refunds from Chinese shoppers go up 64% in that period. Hong Kong sales are still getting boosted by the absence of high import duties and luxury taxes, which make luxury goods as much as 30% cheaper than if bought in mainland China, says Aaron Fischer, a retail analyst at brokerage firm CLSA. "There is a slowdown. We expected one after the incredible growth last year," he says. "Hong Kong is down, but it's not doing as badly as China," where sales growth is depressed even further because shoppers are becoming more price-sensitive. China's retail sales grew 14.8% year to year in this year's first quarter, compared with 16.3% growth in the same period last year.         |
| Kraft Craves More of China’s Snacks Market Posted: 30 May 2012 10:05 AM PDT  Source: Wall Street Journal By Laurie Burkitt BEIJING—Kraft Foods Inc. is hoping Ritz crackers that taste like beef stew and Oreos that taste like birthday cake will help it reverse its trailing position with the world's largest population of snackers. The world's No. 2 food company by revenue after Nestlé SA plans to unveil a slew of new products, broaden distribution channels and rev up marketing in fast-growing China, said Shawn Warren, Kraft Foods China president, in an interview. The U.S.-based company aims to capture more of China's snack-food market, which is expected to reach an estimated 77 billion yuan ($12 billion) by year-end, up 44% from 2008, according to research firm Euromonitor International. "We want to lead the industry here," said Mr. Warren, who declined to disclose spending figures and other specifics. Crucial to the effort will be an the addition of products designed to please Chinese palates. Kraft recently introduced cookies that taste like the sort of white cake eaten at birthday parties. They join Kraft's other cookie flavors in China, including green tea, ice cream, and mango and mandarin orange. Kraft also will broaden its Ritz line, Mr. Warren said. Ritz is a wheat-based cracker sold with cheese and peanut-butter fillings in the U.S. In China, Kraft is launching Ritz with a potato base and flavors labeled "fantastic beef stew" and "very spicy chicken." But the Northfield, Ill., company faces shop shelves in China jammed with products from increasingly powerful international and domestic competitors. It will need to persuade increasingly health-conscious Chinese consumers that it has offerings for them. The snack-food segment is fragmented and full of rivals that have niches in products that are uniquely Chinese, said Torsten Stocker, a partner at U.S.-based consulting firm Monitor Group. The top 10 snack-food sellers by market share in China are dominated by Chinese companies—and Kraft doesn't rank among them, according to Euromonitor. Want Want China Holdings Ltd., a Taiwan-based company, ranks No. 1 in market share, according to Euromonitor's most recent data. U.S.-based PepsiCo Inc. is the No. 5 snack-food company here. It has been expanding its Lay's brand in China to suit Chinese tastes, launching potato-chip flavors such as lobster cheese and lemon tea. Kraft's goals come as it plans to spin off its snack-food business by year-end to form Mondelez International Inc., which will aim to capitalize on growth opportunities in emerging markets such as China. Oreo, which Kraft launched in China in 1996, is a close second to a Chinese, Nestlé-owned brand in terms of share of the country's cookie market, according to Euromonitor. Cookie sales in China rose to 38 billion yuan in 2011, up 53% from five years earlier, Euromonitor says. With brands including Toblerone and Cadbury chocolates, Halls cough drops and Tang flavored-drink mix, Kraft already has gained a strong hold in China, consultants say, but they add that the company has room to grow in the country.  Kraft plans to broaden its distribution channels to go deeper into China, beyond the 250 cities where it has sales bases. It also hopes to bolster its marketing with more well-known figures such as former basketball star Yao Ming, whom the company tapped in 2010 to appear in its commercials. The company also is tweaking its packaging to appeal to local consumers. It plans to roll out Ritz crackers and Chips Ahoy cookies in portable cuplike packages that resemble ramen-noodle containers. "The society is shifting, and there's a greater need for food that is on-the-go," Mr. Warren said. Wei Xiaopo, an analyst at brokerage firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, said acquisitions will be one of the main ways that food companies can gain ground in the fragmented Chinese market. Nestlé gained the top ranking in the sweets category by acquiring last year Chinese candy company Hsu Fu Chi International Ltd., a maker of sweet-onion- and cucumber-flavored cookies. Mr. Warren declined to say whether Kraft will follow Nestlé's lead with an acquisition of a major local competitor. The company plans to follow the recipe it used with Oreo's expansion across China, Mr. Warren said, adding that it also will focus on developing new products, which accounted for 30% of revenue from China in 2011. Mr. Warren said he is aware that Chinese consumers are increasingly worried about their health. To address that concern, the company has developed a cracker line, Pacific, with flavors such as sesame and red date that Chinese consumers associate with health and traditional Chinese medicine. Kraft's snack business has gained attention by adopting the new Mondelez name. The business doesn't yet have a Chinese moniker, said Mr. Warren, who added that it will likely be introduced later this year. Mr. Warren declined to say where China is likely to stand as a percentage of sales at the snack-food business, and Kraft doesn't break out country data. But China has been a key driver for Kraft's overall growth for years, with sales from the country having increased about 60% year-to-year for the past five years, Mr. Warren said.         |
| General Electric Will Open More Innovation Centers in China Posted: 30 May 2012 09:58 AM PDT  Source: Bloomberg News General Electric Co. (GE), with businesses ranging from energy to health care to aviation, plans to open its second China innovation center in Xi'An city to be closer to customers in faster-growing regions. The company intends to set up more centers in China after opening the Xi'An facility in the central province of Shaanxi this summer, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt said at a briefing today in Chengdu, western China. GE is working on two to three more joint ventures in the country, according to Immelt, who said it's too early to provide details. GE is carrying out projects as part of a $2 billion commitment made in late 2010 for innovation and technology partnerships over three years in China, where annual revenue gains of 20 percent contrast with negative growth for the company. Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE today opened an $80 million center in Chengdu for researching products in areas including health care, energy and transportation. "We expect to see steady and consistent growth in China over a period of time," Immelt said at the briefing to open the Chengdu center. "Our revenue growth in China is 20 percent a year, which is quite substantial." GE recorded revenue declines for the three years through 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sales from the U.S., the largest revenue contributor, dropped 7.1 percent last year, the data show. The company is focusing on international markets and plans to boost sales outside the U.S. to 65 percent of total industrial revenue by 2020 from 59 percent now, GE said in a presentation on its website March 7. China Products China, Australia and Peru are among the so-called growth markets that GE projects will account for half its industrial revenue by 2020, Vice Chairman John Rice said in March. GE's center in Chengdu will mainly focus on developing new health-care products aimed at solving rural medical needs, while the Xian center "focuses more on lighting and coal," Immelt said today. At the Chengdu center, hospital simulation areas have been set up where GE customers can try new products in recreated maternity wards or intensive care units, and then suggest modifications. GE researchers are working on medical devices better suited for rural markets, including a handheld ultrasound, and teleconference facilities allowing doctors in a city hospital to diagnose patients sitting in a county-level clinic. China is trying to improve quality health-care for its poorest citizens, including setting up community level health clinics throughout its rural districts and training thousands of general practitioners to staff them.         |
| Panetta Heads to Asia to Back Allies, Avoid Riling China Posted: 30 May 2012 10:11 AM PDT  Source: Bloomberg News By Gopal Ratnam Defense Secretary Leon Panetta leaves today on his first visit to Asia since the Pentagon said in January it would "rebalance" military strategy toward a region President Barack Obama has called critical to U.S. interests. Panetta's challenge is to assure the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and other nations in the region that the U.S. supports them while stopping short of confrontation with China, according to Stephen Biddle, senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "He's walking a tightrope," Biddle said in an interview. Allies in the region want the U.S. to serve as a counterweight as China becomes increasingly assertive in disputes over matters such as mineral rights in the South China Sea, he said. At the same time, those countries have close economic ties to China and don't want to "get into a conflict with the other major power in the region," Biddle said. Panetta will stop in Honolulu, headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command, before traveling to Singapore for an annual Asian security summit, followed by two-day visits to Vietnam and India. The trip will be the first opportunity for Panetta to explain fully how the U.S. strategy will be applied in practice, according to defense officials who spoke to reporters yesterday on condition of anonymity because many of the consultations will be in private. In January, the Pentagon released its strategic guidance that cited U.S. economic and security interests extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia to the Indian Ocean region and South Asia. It said the U.S. military will "rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region." Risk of Friction In the absence of clarity, the strategy may be seen as an effort to contain China, and such "a rivalry will increase friction and conflict," Singapore's Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said at a conference in April in Washington. Panetta portrayed the strategy as one of both wariness toward China and collaboration in a speech yesterday to graduating midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. "China's military is growing and modernizing," Panetta said. "We must be vigilant. We must be strong. We must be prepared to confront any challenge. But the key to that region is going to be to develop a new era of defense cooperation between our countries, one in which our military shares security burdens in order to advance peace." The U.S. strategy was described as a "pivot to new realities" by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said in a November article in "Foreign Policy" magazine that it began a long-term engagement with allies in the region. 'Gratuitously Offended' Since then, U.S. officials including Panetta have said the new strategy isn't a pivot away from concerns such as turmoil in the Middle East or from allies including the 27-state European Union. "Enlightenment was advanced when administration leaders realized they had gratuitously offended European allies and gratuitously provided Beijing's hawks with ammunition to argue that America was formally and openly instituting a policy of containing China," Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, wrote in a May 20 article on the Daily Beast website. Panetta will speak at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based policy group. During the two-day conference, Panetta also plans to meet with his counterparts from Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, Vietnam, Brunei and India, the defense officials said yesterday. Conference in Singapore Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, are also among U.S. defense leaders who will attend the Singapore meeting, the officials said. In Vietnam, Panetta will meet with his counterpart, Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh, to discuss implementing a defense memorandum of understanding the two countries signed last year, the defense officials said. The agreement made in September calls for regular top-level meetings as well as cooperation on maritime security, search and rescue, peacekeeping activities and humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Closer military relations between the two countries, including sales of equipment, are being held back because of U.S. concerns about human-rights abuses in Vietnam, said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Vietnam Human Rights Last year, Vietnam convicted 33 bloggers and rights activists of crimes for expressing political and religious beliefs, New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Jan. 11. Authorities arrested at least 27 other activists and held two in detention for more than a year without trial, the group said. Improved military relations with the U.S. would help Vietnam gain better understanding of events in the South China Sea, Hiebert said. Vietnam and China have clashed over oil exploration rights in the sea. China's neighbors reject its map of the sea as a basis for oil and gas development. Oil reserves in the South China Sea may be as much as 213 billion barrels, according to Chinese studies cited in 2008 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In India, Panetta plans to meet with officials led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defense Minister A.K. Antony, according to the Pentagon. Goal in India Panetta's goal in India is to find ways for more routine technical cooperation, the U.S. defense officials said. India is the only country mentioned as a partner in the Pentagon's January strategy document and is one of the biggest buyers of U.S. weapons. U.S. arms sales are a "big part" of U.S.-India cooperation, Nancy Powell, the U.S. ambassador to India said in a May 18 speech in New Delhi. India may order as much as $8 billion in U.S. military equipment, in addition to the $8 billion it already has acquired, said Karl Inderfurth, who holds the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. India also holds more joint military exercises annually with the U.S. than any other nation, about 50 a year, Inderfurth said. India has no intention of "putting all their defense eggs in one basket," said Inderfurth, who has served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs. "Indians have a view of strategic autonomy and have no desire to enter a pact with the U.S." India has made clear to the U.S. that it will not be part of any regional group or coalition aimed at containing China, Inderfurth said.         |
| Have You Heard… Panetta Heads to Asia to Back Allies, Avoid Posted: 30 May 2012 10:14 AM PDT |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 10:21 AM PDT A woman surnamed Xiao who had just given birth is carried from a train at about 6:30am at Jiujiang Railway Station in east China's Jiangxi Province yesterday. Just over an hour earlier, Xiao felt her pregnancy was about to come to fruition on the train traveling from Beijing to Jiangxi's Nanchang City. The train staff immediately put an emergency plan into operation by setting up a temporary delivery room and sending for paramedics to deliver the child. At 5:40am, the baby was born. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| China backs Kofi Annan efforts Posted: 30 May 2012 10:19 AM PDT CHINA yesterday reiterated its opposition to military intervention in Syria amid outrage over the massacre of 108 people, nearly half of them children, and called again for all sides to support mediation efforts by Kofi Annan. "China opposes military intervention and does not support forced regime change," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a daily news briefing. "The fundamental route to resolving (the crisis) is still for all sides to fully support Annan's mediation efforts." |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 10:18 AM PDT THE story of a Chinese primary school boy "challenging" Premier Wen Jiabao for offering him a pink schoolbag has become a favorite among Chinese. Wen recently visited children of migrant workers who had moved to urban areas to find work, offering them his good wishes ahead of International Children's Day, which is tomorrow. Wen was making an inspection tour of the Wuling mountainous area in central China's Hunan province, visiting students' dorms and talking with teachers, students and their parents. Wen offered schoolbags to students as gifts during his visit to Maoping Primary School on May 25, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. He offered an 8-year-old boy, Long Yingjun, a pink schoolbag, which had been handed to Wen by a staff member. Long rejected it, saying: "I'm a boy. I don't want the color." Wen immediately changed it for a blue schoolbag and gave it to him, saying: "Oh, I forgot you are a man!" Long took the schoolbag and saluted Wen. Everyone at the scene was highly amused, Xinhua reported. Online, there was much praise for the boy's bravery in speaking out in front of one of the country's top leaders. Wen urged local authorities and schools to guarantee food safety for students, particularly those whose parents were not around to supervise their diets. Local governments in Hunan are taking part in a national program designed to improve nutrition at rural schools, with the central government offering schools a daily subsidy of 3 yuan (about 47 US cents) per student toward purchasing nutritious food. China's rapid industrialization has resulted in a growing number of rural "left behind" children - those whose parents have moved to urban areas to seek work. The children are often placed in the care of relatives or friends. Hunan is home to 140,000 such children. The premier acknowledged the contributions migrant workers are making toward boosting China's economic growth, reassuring them that their children will be well taken care of in their absence. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Rail ministry in products probe Posted: 30 May 2012 10:16 AM PDT CHINA'S railway ministry is to investigate equipment produced by a German company after media reports that its products had failed tests. However, Halfen Group's Chinese branch told Shanghai Daily yesterday that the company provided quality products for China's high-speed railways and it had not received any complaints about poor quality. The People's Daily website reported yesterday that Halfen's cast-in channels, used to support equipment such as wires, signals and electrical devices, fell short of quality standards. Earlier this month, Century Weekly magazine raised doubts over whether the products were imported from Germany, as the company claimed, or were made in local factories. Both media organizations cited tip-offs from unnamed insiders. The website said tests by China's steel material quality testing center and another two institutes showed that the channels failed strength and fire-resistance tests. People.com.cn said it acquired channels from two sections of the under-contruction Shanghai-Kunming railway line and sent them for testing. Two pictures on the website showed the channels marked with the Halfen name. "There is no so-called high quality or low quality, there is only one quality standard for Halfen that we have in Europe and in China as well," said Stanislas de Ferrieres, general manager with Halfen (Beijing) Construction Accessories Distribution Co Ltd. He said the company had documentation to prove the products were from Germany. However, he did not produce it yesterday. He said he had visited a section on the Shanghai-Kunming line in central China before the media reports and "no problems were found there." However, salespeople with the company hinted that some products might have been replaced by local products but still marked as Halfen. Stanislas de Ferrieres said it was questionable whether the channels mentioned in the media reports were actually made by Halfen. The company said earlier that Halfen channels "meet all the technical specifications from China's Ministry of Railways." |
| Posted: 30 May 2012 10:16 AM PDT CHINA'S high-speed trains are to speed up again. A decision to slow them down that was taken after a fatal crash last July had been "expedient," according to the country's largest train maker. Zhao Xiaogang, chairman of China CSR Co, said the Shanghai-Beijing high-speed rail line would operate at top speeds of up to 380 kilometers per hour, up from 300. |
| Top meat firm's sausage tainted with bacteria Posted: 30 May 2012 09:04 AM PDT THE country's leading meat products brand, Shuanghui, is stuck in quality scandal again after industrial and commercial authorities in Guangzhou reported that a type of Shuanghui's cumin-flavored sausage contained excessive bacteria, which may cause diarrhea. The Guangzhou Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau didn't specify what bacteria was involved. Guangzhou officials said the sausage sold in Guangzhou was produced on March 16, and has been removed from shelves and destroyed. Meanwhile, a netizen from central China's Henan Province said when he washed Shuanghui frozen pork ribs, many maggots emerged from the meat. The Henan-based company, however, denied the accusation, calling it a local media plot. The netizen, whose screen name was joe-cn317, said on Weibo.com that he bought a pack of Shuanghui frozen pork ribs from the company's chain store in Zhengzhou, Henan's capital city, on Sunday. When he washed the ribs with hot water at home, he was shocked to see dozens of white maggots emerge on the surface of the water, he said. The post received wide concern around the country, as Shuanghui was embroiled in a food-safety scandal last year. Shuanghui Group issued a statement, saying that Liu asked for compensation of 1,500 yuan (US$236) and refused to cooperate with the group's investigation of the affair. Later the company found out that Liu was working for a local media, it said. The company said it double-checked the production of the complained batch of pork ribs and found no problem. Liu denied that he was blackmailing the company. "What I want is only a sincere apology," he said. "I don't blackmail anyone." In March last year, China Central Television reported the group purchased pig feed containing clenbuterol, a chemical that can prevent pigs from accumulating fat. It is banned as an additive in pig feed in China because it can end up in the flesh of pigs and is poisonous to humans if ingested. The company later apologized. |
| Police assign blame for fatal crash Posted: 30 May 2012 09:04 AM PDT PROSECUTORS in the southern city of Shenzhen are investigating a deadly car crash after people speculated that the owner of the luxurious car at fault conspired with police to shift responsibility for the accident to a scapegoat. On Saurday, a GTR sports car worth more than 1.5 million yuan (US$235,000) was speeding at more than 150 kilometers per hour hit a taxi, which caught fire and burned three people inside to death, police said. A man surnamed Hou turned himself in to police seven hours after the accident, and police say he is in fact the drunk driver who caused the crash. Deng Zhaokai, an official with the Shenzhen police, said Hou, a native of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is a friend of Xu Chuhui, the businessman who owns the luxurious car. Hou was driving the car borrowed from Xu when the accident happened. Xu Wei, spokesman for the Shenzhen police, said that no one shirked responsibility in the case. Police revealed video footage that showed Hou, wearing a shirt and a pair of flip-flops, walked out of a private club with three women about 2:50am and unlocked the car around 3am, while surveillance footage from Xu's home showed he didn't leave his house until 4:23 am. To prove Xu's innocence, police released pictures showing him with no injuries. They also disclosed DNA test results that show Hou's blood was found in the vehicle. But the public remained suspicious because police didn't provide complete video footage of the accident. |
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