Cancer Village in Southwest China

In Qujing city, Yunnan Province of southwest China, there is a cancer village. 11 people in the village have died since the year of 2002. A chemical plant has piled chromium slag near the village for 10 years, as China Central Television reported.

Tons of highly toxic industrial waste were dumped illegally by a chemical plant in rural areas of Qujing, causing livestock deaths and soil and water pollution.

A Chemical Plant in Qujing City attracted media attention recently after it had piped 5,000 tons of chromium tailings near a local reservoir that feeds one of China's largest rivers.

People can contract lung cancer when inhaling compounds that contain chromium, while chromium in drinking water can also cause cancers.

Xinglong Village, the name means prosperous, near the plant is now more widely known as "Cancer Village," because 14 people had suffered from cancers in the past 10 years according to officials, although villagers claim the number is far higher, CCTV reported.

Some late-stage lung cancer patients were following a traditional folk remedy by eating more than 50 bedbugs every day in an effort to relieve the illness, CCTV said.

The plant, built around 2000, set up a yard to hold chromium slag about two kilometers from the village. The pile was about 80 centimeters tall and surrounded by a brick wall. No tree or grass could be seen near the pile, CCTV said.

"An increasing number of villagers caught cancers, including intestinal, lung and liver, after the plant was built near the village," CCTV quoted a villager as saying.

"The nearby hospitals have received 14 cancer patients, 11 of whom have died, from 2002 to 2010 in the village," said Zhang Xin, deputy director of Luliang's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, villagers told CCTV that at least 30 people had suffered from cancers in the past 10 years.

"I have four friends caught cancers in recent years and three of them have died... the rate is too high," a villager said. He said people in the village were worrying all the time that their relatives or themselves would have cancers, while people in neighboring counties dared not buy fruit or vegetables from the village.

"We have complained to the county government for numerous times, but they said they could find no evidence to prove the chemical plant was the main cause," another villager told CCTV.

The public health and environmental protection authorities tested the drinking water of the village in May 2007 but found chromium and other heavy metal elements in the water within the allowable standard, CCTV said.

Qian Xin, director of the county's disease control center, told the Daily Economic News that the high rate of cancers might also be related to people's eating habits. Local people like eating salted vegetables and meats that could cause cancers.

The plant was closed after the recent water contamination scandal, but the chromium pile has yet to be removed.

Polluted water in the Chachong Reservoir has been blamed for the death of 77 livestock so far.

The chemical plan is one of Asia's largest producers of chromium sulfate, a chemical leather tanning agent, Xinhua news agency said.

Some of the polluted water in the reservoir has already been processed and drained into the Nanpan River. This river forms the headwaters of the Pearl River, a major river that flows through southern China.

According to a spokesman from the Qujing city government, more than 9,000 tons of chromium-contaminated soil have been cleaned up and relocated by the company.

"The chromium waste contains hexavalent chromium, which is highly toxic and carcinogenic. It can dissolve in water and flow into the reservoir when it rains," said Yin Zhengwu, deputy head of the environmental monitoring unit of Qujing's Qilin District.

To avoid further pollution, 40,000 cubic meters of chromium-contaminated water were drained from the reservoir into the Nanpan River after being processed in accordance with national safety standards, Xinhua quoted Yang Shuxian, director of the Qujing Environmental Protection Bureau, as saying yesterday.

The city's drinking water supplies were not affected, the bureau said. Yunnan's environmental authorities said the Pearl River's water quality complied with national standards.

U.S. Vice President Biden Go to eat local food in Beijing

On August 18, U.S. president Joe Biden went to a small restaurant Yaoji to taste local food in Beijing during his visit to China. Outside the restaurant, there were many armed police on guard.

Shenzhen Shuts Down 156 Companies for its Green Universiade

Shenzhen City authorities, the host city of the 11-day 2011 Summer Universiade in eastern China's Guangdong Province, announced the shutdown of 156 enterprises after kicking off the university games on August 12.

City authorities forcibly closed 156 companies which failed the environmental assessment, as part of its environmental goals, according to a statement by the Habitat Environment Committee (HEC) of Shenzhen City.

The local authorities have launched an overall environmental campaign as well as ten other designated city-wide actions since 2007, including a "Green Commuting" campaign to reduce single-passenger commutes and increase investment in new-energy public vehicles.

Lin Hanzhang, deputy chief of the HEC, said local authorities warned heavy polluting factories of the new environmental requirements since March.

New regulations directed at six local power plants and about 1,500 heavy industry firms in Shenzhen led to an estimated decline of nitrogen oxide's annual emissions by 8,000 tons, sulfur dioxide's by 40,000 tons and volatile organic pollutants by over 20,000 tons, the committee said.

A "Green Commuting" campaign was launched, calling on local citizens and enterprises to reduce vehicle usage during the Shenzhen games. In total, the owners of about 40,000 cars, among which 92 percent were private registrations, agreed to give up driving during the event, said Huang Guoqiang, a spokesman for the games.

A total of 2,011 new-energy vehicles of various kinds have been put on the road to serve the Universiade, accounting for 52.8 percent of the vehicles scheduled for the sports event. Among these vehicles is the launch of 1,649 new-energy buses, making the city's new-energy bus fleet the largest in the world.

The deputy director from the environmental monitoring center of the committee, He Long told Caixin that the air quality of Shenzhen has reached its cleanest levels in the past ten years.
More than 12,000 participants from 152 delegations registered for the Shenzhen Universiade, the biggest international event ever held in Shenzhen, according to the games' official website.

China Slows High-Speed Trains

China has decided to revise maximum travel speeds for trains on its high-speed rail network, citing safety concerns. According to the new scheme, trains with a maximum design speed between 200 to 350 kilometers per hour will have travel speeds slowed by 40 to 50 kph during operation.
Sheng Guangzu, Minister of Railways said in an interview with the official Xinhua News Agency on August 10 that ticket rates for high-speed rail will also be revised accordingly.

On the same day, the State Council, China's cabinet, instructed an overall inspection of high-speed railways, including projects still under construction. Newly built high-speed railway projects will operate trains at lower speeds and renewed safety appraisals will be required for projects that have yet to begin construction, according to decisions made at a State Council conference chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.

Two bullet trains collided last month in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, killing at least 40 people.
A high-speed rail link between Beijing and Shanghai was opened in late June. The 1,318-kilometer line, China's longest, experienced two major arrival delays due to power outages prior to the Wenzhou accident, apart from a number of train-related malfunctions.

China began its leapfrog high-speed railway network construction in 2004. The marquee infrastructure project has come under increasing public scrutiny following a corruption scandal that toppled former rail minister Liu Zhijin in February.

Man dresses as carrot to propose to his girlfriend in public along with 49 carrot friends

A man and his 49 friends dressed up as carrots wearing sunglasses to propose to his girlfriend on Aug 7, in Qingdao city.
After meeting his girlfriend at the local shopping plaza, Mr. Pang hide himself to the bathroom and quickly changed into his suit.
When he returned his was joined by pals and they all started bopping away to music - much to the amazement of Pang's girlfriend.
When they finally stopped for a breather, a hush descended over the crowd and a recording of Pang's voice was played over the loudspeaker.

'Six months ago I met you,' his voice began.
'I still remember your shyness at our first date, my longing for the next date and my excitement when the first time I held your hand at the movie theatre.'
Suddenly Pang threw off his suit and got down on one knee to ask his girlfriend to marry him. Naturally she said yes - much to the gathered crowd's delight.

According to Pang he had spent three weeks planning the stunt.

Policeman returns lost 130,000 dollars in Shenzhen

Zhang Yuan is a 21-year-old armed policeman in southern China Shenzhen city. He was on duty at Shenzhen Foreign Languages School, the venue of the 2011 Universiade basketball match, when he found a bag containing 130,000 dollars cash in a bathroom on last Sunday.

Zhang immediately reported the find to his supervisor. They found the owner three hours later. The owner Ye, 57, had borrowed the money from a friend to buy a property in Shenzhen on Sunday. He took the money to a basketball match between Mexico and South Korea. During the game, he went to the toilet where he received a phone call from his friend and left the toilet in a rush for the rest of the game. Ye offered Zhang 30,000 yuan as a reward, but Zhang refused.

Chinese "Twitter" Enhance Public's Supervision of Gov't

In China, the website weibo.com has gathered more than 140 million users since it was allowed to get online 2 years ago. In Chinese, weibo means microblog. Just like twitter, people can tweet or retweet short message on the site and follow other people. Message can spread very soon in short time.

A decade ago, the most favored medium for Chinese people to air their complaints was perhaps through the state-owned China Central Television network.

However, the Internet has superseded television as the most popular means for the airing of discontent, with microblogs leading the charge.

Microblogs came to prominence in China just two years ago, but have exploded in popularity. Sina Weibo, one of the country's most popular microblog providers, has allowed the country's citizens to supervise - and criticize - China's government in ways that were never thought possible before.

In comparison to microblogs, traditional media entities face technical and systematic restrictions in their efforts to observe and supervise the government. The Internet and its vast number of microbloggers are now able to make up for this deficiency, according to Zhan Jiang, a professor of journalism at the Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Microblogs make it easy for people to speak their thoughts in real-time, essentially making their public voices louder, according to Professor Zhan.

Sina Weibo was launched in August 2009. Since then, it has attracted more than 140 million registered users, with the number expected to exceed 200 million by the end of this year, according to the company.

Microblogging services enjoyed "explosive growth" in the first six months of this year, with the number of registered microblog users surging by 208.9 percent to reach 195 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

WIRED WATCHDOGS

A 2010 report quoted by the Beijing-based newspaper International Herald Leader said that more than one-fifth of the 50 most-discussed public events in 2010 were first reported on by microbloggers.

Traditional media outlets have blind spots in performing their role as "society's watchdog." However, microblogs have allowed ordinary citizens to fill in these gaps.

During the recent crises of confidence faced by the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) and Beijing's Palace Museum, microbloggers were the first to report on the scandals. Traditional media outlets scrambled to cover the stories after they broke online.

The RCSC came under fire following a scandal revolving around a young woman calling herself "Guo Meimei." The woman claimed to be a general manager for "Red Cross Commerce," a group that the RCSC said does not exist.

The woman posted photos on her microblog detailing her lavish lifestyle, provoking the ire of netizens who speculated that she might have funded her extravagant purchases by embezzling money from the Red Cross Society.

The Palace Museum was thrown into the spotlight after microbloggers accused it of concealing an incident in which an antique was damaged by a testing instrument due to an operational error.

Xie Yungeng, an expert on media economics and management at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said many officials are unaware of the powerful influence of microblogs. "They lack an awareness of new media. They are too arrogant to care."

BOOSTING TRANSPARENCY

Perhaps the greatest example of the power of the country's microbloggers came after last month's fatal high-speed train crash in the eastern city of Wenzhou. Forty people were killed in the accident.

Netizens took to their keyboards to express outrage over the way China's railway authorities handled the accident, while others offered condolences to the victims.

Following the public outcry, government authorities promised an "open and transparent" investigation regarding the cause of the crash, as well as increased safety checks for high-speed railways and slower operating speeds for high-speed trains.

The general offices of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, and the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee issued a circular 10 days after the crash, stating that information on major emergencies and items of public concern, such as government efforts and the results of official investigations, should be released to the public in an "objective and timely manner."

The People's Daily, the CPC's flagship newspaper, urged officials to answer questions from Internet users in a timely and accurate fashion and to brush up on their online communication skills in a recent article titled "How to Speak in the Microblog Era."

The article encouraged officials to address public concerns through online platforms and not to shy away from answering thorny questions. "Online performance reflects an official's all-around capability," the article said.

However, a survey quoted by the Guangzhou Daily newspaper earlier this week showed that 80 percent of the country's microblog users have doubts regarding the authenticity of information posted on microblogging sites.

Of the survey's 2,960 respondents, one-third believe that there is too much "negative and worthless information" posted on microblogs, while over 11 percent argued that the authenticity of the information posted on microblogs is difficult for most people to verify.

Man Commits Suicide by Subway in Shanghai

In Shanghai, a middle-age man died Sunday morning after jumping off a subway platform and being struck by a moving subway car, local police said.

According to eyewitness accounts and footage from the subway station's security cameras, a man jumped onto the tracks at the Yishan Road subway station at 6:45 a.m. He was hit by a train approaching the station and died after being rushed to a local hospital.

Police have not been able to identify the man, but initial probes indicate that the death was a suicide。

Farmer Jailed for Assisting Friend Suicide

Zhong Yichun was an elderly farmer from east China's Jiangxi Province. He never expected that helping his friend Zeng Qingxiang to commit suicide would bring him a two-year prison sentence.

Zhong buried Zeng last October as part of an agreement they made regarding Zeng's suicide. Zeng overdosed on sleeping pills and laid in a hole in the ground; Zhong called out to him 15 minutes later to ensure that he was dead before burying him.

A police investigation showed that Zeng suffered from a mental illness and had begged Zhong to help him commit suicide several times.

In May of this year, the Longnan County People's Court sentenced Zhong to two years in prison after convicting him of criminal negligence resulting in the death of another person.

Zhong did not confirm Zeng was dead before burying, the court found. An autopsy report showed that Zeng died from suffocation instead of from an overdose of sleeping pills, which meant that he was still alive when he was buried.

Zhong insisted on his innocence and appealed the sentence. However, the Intermediate People's Court in the city of Ganzhou rejected his appeal earlier this month.

The case has aroused a nationwide discussion on euthanasia. In China, euthanasia is prohibited by law. In Zhong's case, it didn't matter whether or not he had a criminal motive to kill Zeng, as his legal punishment would've been doled out regardless of his intent.

However, the center of the debate revolves around the definition of Zhong's behavior - was it a case of intentional homicide, or simple negligence?

Zhong's case reflects one of the key concerns regarding euthanasia shared around the world.

Governments in the Netherlands, Belgium and some states in the United States have legalized assisted suicide. However, most governments regard it as a form of criminal homicide.

Even in the Netherlands and Belgium, it is still technically considered to be homicide, although it is not prosecutable if the doctor meets certain legal conditions.

The Supreme Court of India ruled in March that hospitals may offer "passive euthanasia" to patients with terminal diseases under the supervision of courts. The ruling marked the first time for euthanasia to be legally permitted in India.

"If euthanasia can be accepted by the general public, it is an advancement of both society and morality," said Ma Xuesong, a scholar from the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences.

Ma said the gap between China and places that legalized euthanasia lies in the quality of medical service and legislation.

Euthanasia, a very complicated issue that involves many factors such as jurisprudence, ethics and medical technology, is difficult to handle in practice.

Some experts argue that China is not prepared or mature enough to legalize euthanasia.

Lin Cunbao, chief partner of the Baohui law firm in Guangdong, said those who are against euthanasia hold the view that the right to life is above other considerations.

Yan Sanzhong, director of the Department of Law at Jiangxi Normal University, said China should analyze the basic principles of its criminal law and take steps to gradually promote the legalization of euthanasia.

"China should first accumulate judicial experience in handling cases regarding euthanasia. The Supreme Court can then come up with judicial interpretations and guidance and finally legalize euthanasia at the proper time," said Yang.

Whose mum is this girl?

This old woman want to give her husband a surprise. So she asked her daughter to do something on her face.