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News » Society » Typhoon Vicente makes landfall |
- Typhoon Vicente makes landfall
- Strong typhoon lashes Hong Kong
- China's CNOOC in $15bn takeover
- Baidu profits jump on advertising
- Beijing storm highlights risks for China's cities
- Typhoon warning as Vicente draws near
- Torrential rain spreads misery across nation
- Sansha's first mayor
- Mud wrestling with ducks
- 20 illegally traded millions in foreign money
- Fear rising in Macau as 3 murdered in 2 weeks
- Toxin probe shuts dairy
- Beijing storm highlights risks for China's cities
- Typhoon warning as Vicente draws near
- Torrential rain spreads misery across nation
- Sansha's first mayor
- Mud wrestling with ducks
- 20 illegally traded millions in foreign money
- Fear rising in Macau as 3 murdered in 2 weeks
- Toxin probe shuts dairy
| Typhoon Vicente makes landfall Posted: 23 Jul 2012 06:20 PM PDT TYPHOON Vicente made landfall in Chixi Town, south China's Guangdong Province, at 4:15am this morning, Guangdong Meteorological Bureau said. |
| Strong typhoon lashes Hong Kong Posted: 23 Jul 2012 07:38 PM PDT A strong typhoon hits Hong Kong overnight, leaving scores injured and hundreds of flights cancelled or delayed. |
| China's CNOOC in $15bn takeover Posted: 23 Jul 2012 07:53 AM PDT China's biggest offshore oil producer CNOOC is poised to buy Canada's Nexen for $15.1bn in what would be China's largest foreign takeover deal. |
| Baidu profits jump on advertising Posted: 23 Jul 2012 06:57 PM PDT Baidu, China's largest internet search engine, reports a 70% jump in profits amid continued growth in advertising revenue. |
| Beijing storm highlights risks for China's cities Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:47 AM PDT THE fierce rainstorm that claimed 37 lives over the weekend in Beijing has raised questions about the capital's ability to cope with flooding. Many roads in the city were submerged under waist-deep water for hours on Saturday during the downpour, the heaviest the city has seen in 60 years. The municipal government said as of Sunday night, 25 people had drowned, six killed in house cave-ins, five were electrocuted and one was killed by lightning. The rain and flooding also caused blackouts and traffic paralysis. As of yesterday, the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau expressway had still not reopened as part of it remained submerged. The disaster affected 1.9 million people and caused nearly 10 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) of damage, while the exact economic loss is still being verified by local governmental departments, according to Beijing flood control and drought relief headquarters. Urban flooding has been a chronic problem in China. This summer, rainstorms and flooding have wreaked havoc in many cities, including Guangzhou, Chongqing and Shenzhen. Experts believe the floods are largely the result of urbanization, with vast networks of roads and the elimination of greenbelts decreasing some cities' ability to cope with heavy rain. Wang Hao, of the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, said that more than 80 percent of Beijing's roads were covered in impermeable materials such as concrete and asphalt, which obstructed the infiltration of rainwater. However, an investigation led by Li Haiyan, a professor at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, said that about half of the drainage networks in Beijing were filled with sediment as thick as 10 to 50 percent of the pipes' diameter. Sheng Minzhi, an engineer at the Hangzhou Planning Bureau, said the mass construction of tall buildings and underground parking lots in some cities had also slowed the rate at which the ground can absorb rainwater. Wang Yi, an official with Beijing flood control and drought relief headquarters, said that the drainage systems of Beijing's downtown area were largely built to withstand rainfall of 36 to 45 millimeters per hour. Only a few places, such as the Tian'anmen Square, had a drainage system that could withstand 56mm per hour of rainfall. Xu Chenghua, an engineer at the Hangzhou Urban Planning Academy, said storm drainage systems in Chinese cities are supposed to be designed in accordance with the Urban Drainage Engineering Planning Regulations approved in 2000. Wang Zhansheng, an environmental and engineering professor at Tsinghua University, said the flooding would not be so severe if the drainage systems were designed to handle more severe rainfalls, adding that flooding could be avoided if the regulations took population growth, water usage and sewage treatment into consideration. A central government group responsible for drafting regulations related to urban drainage met on May 18 to discuss urban flooding. A source said new regulations are expected to be launched next year. However, Wang Hao said that since the lay-out and functional structure of cities were already in place, to renew drainage systems to the level of developed countries would be hugely expensive. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Typhoon warning as Vicente draws near Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:46 AM PDT FIERCE winds and downpours from Typhoon Vicente have hit coastal regions in south China with the eighth tropical storm this year moving northwestward at 20 kilometers per hour. It was expected to be over the coast of Shenzhen and Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province by this morning, the National Meteorological Center said. It has issued an orange alert for Vicente, the second highest level in China's typhoon warning system. Heavy rain and thunderstorms began to hit Hainan and Guangdong provinces, as well as Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, yesterday morning, and central and eastern Guangdong saw gales of 80kph. Rainstorms are expected in Guangdong and Hainan today and winds of up to 100kph may sweep through coastal areas. Train services between Beijing and Hainan's city of Sanya, as well as services between Hainan's capital city of Haikou and Shanghai, Changsha, Xi'an and Chengdu have been rescheduled. More than 33,500 fishing boats have been alerted to return to harbor. |
| Torrential rain spreads misery across nation Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:45 AM PDT TORRENTIAL rain has ravaged China's 17 provincial areas since July 20, leaving 95 people dead and another 45 missing, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said yesterday. Natural disasters caused by the downpours have affected about 6.23 million people in 264 counties in 17 provincial areas and forced the evacuation of about 567,000 people. The ministry reported 37 deaths in Beijing, 17 deaths and 21 missing in Beijing's neighboring Hebei Province, eight deaths and two missing in Sichuan, six deaths and four missing in Yunnan, five deaths in Chongqing, four deaths and one missing in Shanxi, three deaths in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, three deaths and 14 missing in Shaanxi. Rainstorms also destroyed 29,000 houses and damaged another 55,000. |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:44 AM PDT XIAO Jie was elected mayor of the newly established Sansha city in the South China Sea yesterday along with the director of the standing committee of the city's People's Congress. Xiao, 51, Hainan's agriculture chief, was elected in the first session of the first Sansha Municipal People's Congress held on Yongxing Island. Fu Zhuang, 56, deputy director of Hainan Provincial Civil Air Defence Office, was elected director of the standing committee of the city legislature. |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2012 09:54 AM PDT A woman smiles with her bounty in an "Ooze Carnival" held yesterday in Xiushan Island, Daishan County of Zhejiang Province. Thousands of tourists across the country and local residents participated in a series of activities including wrestling, speed skating and duck grabbing over a vast mudgy piece of land. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 20 illegally traded millions in foreign money Posted: 23 Jul 2012 09:14 AM PDT SEVERAL former employees of foreign banks are among the 20 suspects who have been arrested for laundering money worth nearly 5 billion yuan (US$783 million) through illegal foreign exchange transactions. The underground banking network has more than 20 accounts in the business hub of Shanghai, provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong, and several foreign countries, and profits from higher exchange rates by playing middleman. Ge Xiaoming, 41, a Shanghai native who has worked in a foreign bank for 16 years, and several other ring members gained many VIP clients in their careers, facilitating the illegal deals, the Beijing Times reported yesterday. They attracted many domestic and cross-border entrepreneurs in need of foreign currency because strict government rules don't allow foreign exchange of more than US$50,000 per person per year to avoid money laundering. Using Ge's syndicate, a foreign currency seller would transfer the required money to a domestic buyer's cross-border account, and the buyer remitted the equal sum of Chinese yuan to the seller's domestic account. But the buyer was required to transfer part to Ge and part to the seller at first for Ge to make his so-called introduction fees, and then Ge returned the remaining sum to the seller. Both sides got their desired currency and Ge gained 0.1 to 0.3 percent of the total sum, the paper said. Ge started the illegal business in 2009 after he opened two trading companies. Since many of his clients were domestic, he needed more overseas ones, so he worked with a man called Tang Jie in Shenzhen in south China. Just one year later, his network has gained a good reputation among small and mid-sized Chinese entrepreneurs who desired a lot of foreign currency while evading taxes, the paper said. Within the half month before he was arrested in the joint crackdown in May, he had done nearly 100 transactions, each earning him tens of thousands of yuan, police said. "I didn't know it was illegal," Ge said, stressing that he "just occasionally helped his friends." "If I had consulted with my lawyer, I wouldn't do it because I don't need it to live," Ge told the newspaper. Underground banking operations have severely disrupted China's foreign exchange management system and harmed the development of its banks. Last year, 39 underground banks were busted by police in cases that involved in excess of 70 billion yuan. |
| Fear rising in Macau as 3 murdered in 2 weeks Posted: 23 Jul 2012 09:14 AM PDT IN Macau, three killings in the past two weeks have raised fears that violent crime, for years a rarity in the world's gambling capital, is growing more common at the same time as the island's casino operators are struggling with slower growth. Police in the gaming and entertainment hotspot, a one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong, said a Chinese woman who also held a Japanese passport was found slain last Thursday in a residential area minutes away from the cavernous gambling halls of Sheldon Adelson's Venetian casino. That came just days after two Chinese were slain at the five-star Grand Lapa hotel, and at the end of June a senior figure in Macau's junket industry was severely beaten. By contrast, only five homicide cases were recorded between June 2011 and May 2012, according to Macau police statistics. There does not appear to be an obvious link between the June and July incidents, but security experts and Macau residents say the recent outbreak of extreme violence has its roots among Macau's junket operators - the shadowy companies that help bring the nation's wealthiest to the gambling tables. "Macau is going through a period of instability," said Steve Vickers, chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based Steve Vickers & Associates, a corporate intelligence and security consultancy. "There seems to be a disturbance ... amongst the lower end of the junket community," he said. Macau, which like Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, has boomed since the 1999 handover, with Las Vegas moguls including Adelson and Steve Wynn setting up glitzy casino hotels. But growth has slowed, causing junket operators to use more aggressive debt-collecting tactics. Many smaller firms are struggling. |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2012 09:14 AM PDT IT was mildewed cattle feed that caused a cancer-causing toxin to be found in the baby formula produced by Ava Dairy Co Ltd, and the dairy maker, based in Hunan Province's capital of Changsha, has been ordered to suspend operations to fix the problem, local authorities announced yesterday. Excessive amounts of aflatoxin were detected in samples of five batches of formula products produced by the firm between July and December of last year, the Guangzhou Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau announced over the weekend. The total amount of the five tainted batches amounts to 31 tons and most of them are sold in Hunan and Guangdong provinces. The Changsha Food Safety Commission ordered the firm to recall all the problematic formula, which will be destroyed to keep it from the market. Meanwhile, the Changsha quality supervision authorities have sealed the inventory of 55,100 bags of products produced by the firm recently to launch an examination on them to find out whether they also contain the toxin. Police have started to look into the case and those responsible will be investigated for criminal responsibility. Aflatoxin is produced by a fungus that grows on grains and can appear in milk of animals that eat affected grains. High levels of aflatoxin have led to cancer in animal tests. Aflatoxin has been found in milk from China's biggest dairy firm, Mengniu, and another company, Changfu. |
| Beijing storm highlights risks for China's cities Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:47 AM PDT THE fierce rainstorm that claimed 37 lives over the weekend in Beijing has raised questions about the capital's ability to cope with flooding. Many roads in the city were submerged under waist-deep water for hours on Saturday during the downpour, the heaviest the city has seen in 60 years. The municipal government said as of Sunday night, 25 people had drowned, six killed in house cave-ins, five were electrocuted and one was killed by lightning. The rain and flooding also caused blackouts and traffic paralysis. As of yesterday, the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau expressway had still not reopened as part of it remained submerged. The disaster affected 1.9 million people and caused nearly 10 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) of damage, while the exact economic loss is still being verified by local governmental departments, according to Beijing flood control and drought relief headquarters. Urban flooding has been a chronic problem in China. This summer, rainstorms and flooding have wreaked havoc in many cities, including Guangzhou, Chongqing and Shenzhen. Experts believe the floods are largely the result of urbanization, with vast networks of roads and the elimination of greenbelts decreasing some cities' ability to cope with heavy rain. Wang Hao, of the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, said that more than 80 percent of Beijing's roads were covered in impermeable materials such as concrete and asphalt, which obstructed the infiltration of rainwater. However, an investigation led by Li Haiyan, a professor at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, said that about half of the drainage networks in Beijing were filled with sediment as thick as 10 to 50 percent of the pipes' diameter. Sheng Minzhi, an engineer at the Hangzhou Planning Bureau, said the mass construction of tall buildings and underground parking lots in some cities had also slowed the rate at which the ground can absorb rainwater. Wang Yi, an official with Beijing flood control and drought relief headquarters, said that the drainage systems of Beijing's downtown area were largely built to withstand rainfall of 36 to 45 millimeters per hour. Only a few places, such as the Tian'anmen Square, had a drainage system that could withstand 56mm per hour of rainfall. Xu Chenghua, an engineer at the Hangzhou Urban Planning Academy, said storm drainage systems in Chinese cities are supposed to be designed in accordance with the Urban Drainage Engineering Planning Regulations approved in 2000. Wang Zhansheng, an environmental and engineering professor at Tsinghua University, said the flooding would not be so severe if the drainage systems were designed to handle more severe rainfalls, adding that flooding could be avoided if the regulations took population growth, water usage and sewage treatment into consideration. A central government group responsible for drafting regulations related to urban drainage met on May 18 to discuss urban flooding. A source said new regulations are expected to be launched next year. However, Wang Hao said that since the lay-out and functional structure of cities were already in place, to renew drainage systems to the level of developed countries would be hugely expensive. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Typhoon warning as Vicente draws near Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:46 AM PDT FIERCE winds and downpours from Typhoon Vicente have hit coastal regions in south China with the eighth tropical storm this year moving northwestward at 20 kilometers per hour. It was expected to be over the coast of Shenzhen and Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province by this morning, the National Meteorological Center said. It has issued an orange alert for Vicente, the second highest level in China's typhoon warning system. Heavy rain and thunderstorms began to hit Hainan and Guangdong provinces, as well as Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, yesterday morning, and central and eastern Guangdong saw gales of 80kph. Rainstorms are expected in Guangdong and Hainan today and winds of up to 100kph may sweep through coastal areas. Train services between Beijing and Hainan's city of Sanya, as well as services between Hainan's capital city of Haikou and Shanghai, Changsha, Xi'an and Chengdu have been rescheduled. More than 33,500 fishing boats have been alerted to return to harbor. |
| Torrential rain spreads misery across nation Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:45 AM PDT TORRENTIAL rain has ravaged China's 17 provincial areas since July 20, leaving 95 people dead and another 45 missing, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said yesterday. Natural disasters caused by the downpours have affected about 6.23 million people in 264 counties in 17 provincial areas and forced the evacuation of about 567,000 people. The ministry reported 37 deaths in Beijing, 17 deaths and 21 missing in Beijing's neighboring Hebei Province, eight deaths and two missing in Sichuan, six deaths and four missing in Yunnan, five deaths in Chongqing, four deaths and one missing in Shanxi, three deaths in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, three deaths and 14 missing in Shaanxi. Rainstorms also destroyed 29,000 houses and damaged another 55,000. |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:44 AM PDT XIAO Jie was elected mayor of the newly established Sansha city in the South China Sea yesterday along with the director of the standing committee of the city's People's Congress. Xiao, 51, Hainan's agriculture chief, was elected in the first session of the first Sansha Municipal People's Congress held on Yongxing Island. Fu Zhuang, 56, deputy director of Hainan Provincial Civil Air Defence Office, was elected director of the standing committee of the city legislature. |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2012 09:54 AM PDT A woman smiles with her bounty in an "Ooze Carnival" held yesterday in Xiushan Island, Daishan County of Zhejiang Province. Thousands of tourists across the country and local residents participated in a series of activities including wrestling, speed skating and duck grabbing over a vast mudgy piece of land. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 20 illegally traded millions in foreign money Posted: 23 Jul 2012 09:14 AM PDT SEVERAL former employees of foreign banks are among the 20 suspects who have been arrested for laundering money worth nearly 5 billion yuan (US$783 million) through illegal foreign exchange transactions. The underground banking network has more than 20 accounts in the business hub of Shanghai, provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong, and several foreign countries, and profits from higher exchange rates by playing middleman. Ge Xiaoming, 41, a Shanghai native who has worked in a foreign bank for 16 years, and several other ring members gained many VIP clients in their careers, facilitating the illegal deals, the Beijing Times reported yesterday. They attracted many domestic and cross-border entrepreneurs in need of foreign currency because strict government rules don't allow foreign exchange of more than US$50,000 per person per year to avoid money laundering. Using Ge's syndicate, a foreign currency seller would transfer the required money to a domestic buyer's cross-border account, and the buyer remitted the equal sum of Chinese yuan to the seller's domestic account. But the buyer was required to transfer part to Ge and part to the seller at first for Ge to make his so-called introduction fees, and then Ge returned the remaining sum to the seller. Both sides got their desired currency and Ge gained 0.1 to 0.3 percent of the total sum, the paper said. Ge started the illegal business in 2009 after he opened two trading companies. Since many of his clients were domestic, he needed more overseas ones, so he worked with a man called Tang Jie in Shenzhen in south China. Just one year later, his network has gained a good reputation among small and mid-sized Chinese entrepreneurs who desired a lot of foreign currency while evading taxes, the paper said. Within the half month before he was arrested in the joint crackdown in May, he had done nearly 100 transactions, each earning him tens of thousands of yuan, police said. "I didn't know it was illegal," Ge said, stressing that he "just occasionally helped his friends." "If I had consulted with my lawyer, I wouldn't do it because I don't need it to live," Ge told the newspaper. Underground banking operations have severely disrupted China's foreign exchange management system and harmed the development of its banks. Last year, 39 underground banks were busted by police in cases that involved in excess of 70 billion yuan. |
| Fear rising in Macau as 3 murdered in 2 weeks Posted: 23 Jul 2012 09:14 AM PDT IN Macau, three killings in the past two weeks have raised fears that violent crime, for years a rarity in the world's gambling capital, is growing more common at the same time as the island's casino operators are struggling with slower growth. Police in the gaming and entertainment hotspot, a one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong, said a Chinese woman who also held a Japanese passport was found slain last Thursday in a residential area minutes away from the cavernous gambling halls of Sheldon Adelson's Venetian casino. That came just days after two Chinese were slain at the five-star Grand Lapa hotel, and at the end of June a senior figure in Macau's junket industry was severely beaten. By contrast, only five homicide cases were recorded between June 2011 and May 2012, according to Macau police statistics. There does not appear to be an obvious link between the June and July incidents, but security experts and Macau residents say the recent outbreak of extreme violence has its roots among Macau's junket operators - the shadowy companies that help bring the nation's wealthiest to the gambling tables. "Macau is going through a period of instability," said Steve Vickers, chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based Steve Vickers & Associates, a corporate intelligence and security consultancy. "There seems to be a disturbance ... amongst the lower end of the junket community," he said. Macau, which like Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, has boomed since the 1999 handover, with Las Vegas moguls including Adelson and Steve Wynn setting up glitzy casino hotels. But growth has slowed, causing junket operators to use more aggressive debt-collecting tactics. Many smaller firms are struggling. |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2012 09:14 AM PDT IT was mildewed cattle feed that caused a cancer-causing toxin to be found in the baby formula produced by Ava Dairy Co Ltd, and the dairy maker, based in Hunan Province's capital of Changsha, has been ordered to suspend operations to fix the problem, local authorities announced yesterday. Excessive amounts of aflatoxin were detected in samples of five batches of formula products produced by the firm between July and December of last year, the Guangzhou Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau announced over the weekend. The total amount of the five tainted batches amounts to 31 tons and most of them are sold in Hunan and Guangdong provinces. The Changsha Food Safety Commission ordered the firm to recall all the problematic formula, which will be destroyed to keep it from the market. Meanwhile, the Changsha quality supervision authorities have sealed the inventory of 55,100 bags of products produced by the firm recently to launch an examination on them to find out whether they also contain the toxin. Police have started to look into the case and those responsible will be investigated for criminal responsibility. Aflatoxin is produced by a fungus that grows on grains and can appear in milk of animals that eat affected grains. High levels of aflatoxin have led to cancer in animal tests. Aflatoxin has been found in milk from China's biggest dairy firm, Mengniu, and another company, Changfu. |
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