Tougher law to curb water pollution (China Daily)

BEIJING -- China's top legislature on Thursday adopted an amended water pollution law that toughens punishment of company officials through hefty fines.

The revised Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law was passed at the 32nd session of the Standing Committee of the Tenth National People's Congress (NPC), which concluded here on Thursday. The law, with eight chapters and 92 provisions, will take effect on June 1.

"Enterprise heads directly responsible for causing severe water pollution incidents and others with direct responsibility will be fined up to half of their income of the previous year," said the law. Enterprises would be held responsible for 30 percent of the direct losses of any serious water pollution incident they cause and 20 percent for incidents of medium consequences. Previously, corporate executives faced only administrative penalties.

"The amount of fines should be imposed according to the severity of violations, and too little money cannot effectively tackle the long-standing problem of 'low violation cost'," said a statement of the NPC's Law Committee issued in December. The law also stipulated that the country would set up its water protection goal as well as an assessment system, which would be applied to local officials. Whether they reach the goal will be directly connected with their performance evaluation, according to the law. It allows environmental protection departments and relevant social organizations to support water pollution victims in lawsuits and the government encourages law firms and lawyers to provide legal aid to the victims. It added a provision to stipulate that the aquiculture industry should properly use nutrient feed in a bid to prevent over-nutrition.

Water pollution is among the top environmental concerns of the Chinese government and the public. A 2006 survey found that surface water generally was classified as containing intermediate levels of pollution, but one third of the 744 samples tested were graded at the worst pollution rating. The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) handled 161 emergency environmental pollution incidents in 2006, of which 59 percent involved water pollution.

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Electron Gets Film Debut In First-ever Video Of Its Kind (

It may not have won an Oscar, but the tiny electron has finally made its film debut. A new video shows how an electron rides on a light wave after just having been pulled away from an atom. This is the first time an electron has ever been filmed in this way, and the results are presented in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Previously it has been next to impossible to photograph electrons accurately since their extremely high velocities have produced blurry pictures. In order to capture these rapid events, extremely short flashes of light are necessary, but such flashes were not previously available. With the use of a newly developed technology for generating short pulses from intense laser light, so-called attosecond pulses, scientists at the Lund University Faculty of Engineering in Sweden have managed to capture the electron's motion for the first time.

"It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10^-18 seconds long, or, expressed in another way: an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe," says Johan Mauritsson, an assistant professor in atomic physics at the Faculty of Engineering, Lund University. He is one of seven researchers behind the study, which was directed by him and Professor Anne L'Huillier.

With the aid of another laser these scientists have moreover succeeded in guiding the motion of the electron so that they can capture a collision between an electron and an atom on film...

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Former Khmer Rouge leader to 're-enact' crimes for judges (The Guardian)

February 22 2008

The Khmer Rouge's chief interrogator who headed the notorious prison where 14,000 Cambodian men, women and children met their deaths is to return to the scene of his alleged crime next week to stage a ghoulish "re-enactment".

Images of genocide victims are displayed on the walls of the Tuol Sleng Musuem of Genocidal Crime, formerly the Khmer Rouge torture centre run by Kaing Guek Eav. Photograph: Corbis

The extraordinary scene will see 65-year-old Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, guide investigating judges from Cambodia's UN-backed genocide trial through the Tuol Sleng torture centre almost three decades after he fled the advancing Vietnamese troops that ended the Khmer Rouge's four-year reign of terror.

Several of only seven people who survived their incarceration in the former school in Phnom Penh's suburbs will join the party next Wednesday. Afterwards they will give taped evidence in a "confrontation" with their Khmer Rouge jailer at the tribunal's headquarters.

A day earlier, Duch, who is charged with crimes against humanity along with four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders, will be taken to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek on the capital's outskirts where most Tuol Sleng inmates were murdered and buried in shallow graves.

Duch, who was a maths teacher before joining the revolution to establish a peasant utopia, will explain to the French co-investigating judge, Marcel Lemonde, and his Cambodian counterpart, You Bun Leng, the details of what happened there in the years after 1975, when up to 1.7 million people died.

The first war crimes trials are due to begin later this year, confounding the fears of many of the Khmer Rouge's victims that the communist ideologues responsible for killing a quarter of the population through torture, execution, disease and starvation might never be brought to justice.

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Renting a girlfriend (China Daily)

An engineer at an IT company in Shanghai, rented a girl to be his girlfriend in an attempt to please his parents during the Spring Festival holiday - but his plan backfired.

"I am 28 years old and have no girlfriend. My parents worry about me being single so I thought I would please them by asking a woman to pretend to be my girlfriend," Zhou Chao said.

He paid the woman and took her home but his parents found out and were angered by their son's action.

Zhu Yi, a social affairs expert in Chongqing, said both Zhou and his parents were in the wrong. Zhou should not have resorted to cheating to please his parents and they should not have pressurized the young man.

(Chongqing Commercial Daily)

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China confirms new human bird flu case (China Daily)

China's Ministry of Health on Monday confirmed a human case of H5N1 bird flu in the central Hunan Province.

A 22-year-old man surnamed Li in Jianghua County, Yongzhou City, suffered fever and headache on January 16 and was hospitalized on January 22. His symptoms worsened despite treatment.

Li died at 5 pm on January 24 after all rescue measures failed.

His specimens tested positive for the bird flu virus strain H5N1, said the country's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The report didn't identify how he might have contracted the disease.

The virus is most commonly passed from sick poultry to humans who have close contact with infected birds.

The local government undertook prevention and control measures once the case was reported. Those who had close contact with Li were put under strict medical observation. So far, none have shown signs of the disease, the ministry said.

The case has been reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), authorities in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and some foreign governments.

The latest confirmed case of human bird flu took place in the worst snow-stricken province of Hunan, where prolonged low temperatures, icy rain and heavy snow have caused blackouts and traffic chaos.

On February 15, the Ministry of Health said that no cases of infectious epidemic or mass food poisoning were reported in China's snow-stricken areas by Feb. 14, and that the death toll caused by infectious diseases in the snow-stricken areas showed no year-on-year increase in the past month.

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Kosovo awaits recognition, China deeply concerned

Kosovo looked forward on Monday to recognition by the Western powers headed by the United States, who went to war to save its Albanian majority, but Russia served notice the new state will never be forced on its Serb allies.

Beijing: China deeply concerned

China expressed grave concern over Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao on Monday.

"Kosovo's unilateral act can produce a series of results that will lead to seriously negative influence on peace and stability in the Balkan region and on the realization of building a multi-ethnic society in Kosovo, which China is deeply concerned about," said the Chinese spokesman.

Beijing said the settlement of the Kosovo issue concerns the peace and stability in the Balkan region, the basic norms governing international relations and the authority and role of the UN Security Council.

The spokesman added that China has always held that the best way to resolve the Kosovo issue is that Serbia and Kosovo reach a plan acceptable for both sides through negotiation.

"China calls on the two sides of Serbia and Kosovo to continue to seek a proper solution through negotiation within the framework of international law, and the international community should create favorable conditions for this," Liu said.

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