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After hearing about dental work containing lead, because it's made in China, I called my dentist to see if the crown material (porcelon-based) is made in China. He didn't know, but gave me the name of the company, "Cerec." I e-mailed the company, and am awaiting an answer.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have arrested a prominent Internet dissident for violating his probation terms, a rights group said, as the country steps up a pre-Olympic crackdown on dissent to ensure the Games go smoothly. Du Daobin, from the central province of Hebei, was given a suspended sentence for subversion in 2004 having been detained by police in Wuhan for posting online essays in support of fellow dissident, Liu Di. Du was then released into house arrest, Reporters Without Borders said in an emailed statement, but was arrested this week having been accused of posting articles on overseas websites...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US lawmakers Wednesday accused China of reneging on a commitment to improve human rights when it won the right to host the Olympics, saying it had instead intensified a crackdown on dissent. "There were early indications that China was prepared to improve its behavior as the games approached," said Howard Berman, the Democratic head of the House of Representatives foreign affairs panel. But "the hope was short-lived, as China failed to honor these commitments," he said, citing as examples Beijing's "failed" pledges to allow greater press freedoms and improve its general human rights situation. Reporters Without Borders...

As a volunteer of the 29th Olympic Game that will be held in Beijing soon,I gave up my summer holiday and have been working in the Olympic village since 20th this month.Every day,we work really hard to prepare well for the coming of the big event,and I'm wondering if anyone here will come to Beijing.

Taiwan's Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) is urging its government to fund an Indigenous Defence Fighter upgrade programme, adding that the project is even more urgent after the USA delayed approving a crucial arms package for the island. AIDC unveiled the first two F-CK-1C/D prototypes in 2007 and hoped to begin serial production of the aircraft this year. It has also proposed upgrading half of Taipei's fleet of 130 A/B-model IDFs, the last of which was manufactured in 1999, but this has been put on hold as Taiwan's cabinet has not approved funding. "Senior ministry of national defence officials said...

The Obama campaign website makes no mention of missile defense. Indeed, there is no national security issue area as there is on the McCain site. Discussion of defense topics is subordinated under the heading of foreign policy. This reflects Obama’s focus on diplomacy over military options. For example, consider the following statement, “Iran has sought nuclear weapons, supports militias inside Iraq and terror across the region, and its leaders threaten Israel and deny the Holocaust. But Obama believes that we have not exhausted our non-military options in confronting this threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them. That’s...

BEIJING: Deliberate explosions on three Chinese buses killed at least three people and injured 14 in the southwestern city of Kunming on Monday, media said, amid a security clampdown ahead of next month's Beijing Olympics. The official Xinhua news agency blamed the blasts on "sabotage" and said police had started roadside checks in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, to try to find the person or persons responsible. It did not elaborate. The attack happened less than three weeks before the Beijing Games which China has warned could be a target of terror attacks. An explosion on one bus happened...

......And they're not just worried about the athletes. They're concerned that the bad air might trigger cardiovascular problems for people in the stands. Even if the spectators survive the games, they might be at higher risk of developing a blood clot while sitting through the plane ride home. In 2007, researchers at Northwestern University solved the mystery of why greater numbers of people were dying from heart attacks and strokes within 24 hours of a spike in the level of tiny particles that spewed from diesel trucks, buses and coal-burning factories...... What researchers, including lead author Dr. Gokhan Mutlu, pulmonary...

A German television report on the availability of gene doping in China has stunned anti-doping experts shortly before the Beijing Olympics. In a documentary broadcast late Monday by ARD television, a Chinese doctor offers stem-cell therapy to a reporter posing as an American swimming coach. The report, filmed with a concealed camera, shows the doctor with his face blurred speaking in Chinese and offering the treatment in return for $24,000 US, according to a translation provided by the ARD television In the documentary, the reporter posing as an American swimming coach meets with the head of the gene therapy department...

BEIJING -- Chinese police officials have forced some Beijing bar owners to sign secret pledges promising to prohibit blacks from entering their bars during the Olympics next month, a Hong Kong newspaper says. The police denied the report yesterday, and most bars denied any knowledge of the pledges. But many African residents of Beijing say they are facing harassment from police and discrimination from bars as the Olympics approach. "Bar owners near the Workers Stadium in central Beijing say they have been forced by Public Security Bureau officials to sign pledges agreeing not to let black people enter their premises,"...

In the end, this new copyright law is going to suffer the same fate that many other well intentioned laws have suffered in China; most people will probably never even hear about it. I was just in an Internet cafe yesterday. To my right someone was giggling as they watched Meet the Fockers and to my left someone else was spellbound by an old episode of Prison Break. What did I think? I guess I was happy that they could find some enjoyment in the midst of the harsh reality that probably confronts them every day in this developing country.

A study published in China alleges that air quality near the main Olympic venues fails the government's own "safe" target for dust particles on most days. The authorities say that air quality now nearly always meets overall pollution targets. Days that do are called "blue sky days". In a last ditch effort to ensure unbroken "blue sky days" for next month's Games, the authorities yesterday implemented a final shutdown of heavily polluting industries across the city and neighbouring provinces. They also banned cars from the streets on alternate days, depending on whether their licence plates are odd or even. They...

The month-long algae outbreak on a tributary of the Yangtze River, blamed on large numbers of phosphor mines and processing factories, has sent an alert to environmental authorities to raise water treatment standards in the Three Gorges Dam area. Large areas of algae bloomed on June 16 on a 25 km section of the Xiangxi in Xingshan county, Hubei province, forcing thousands of residents to stop drawing water from it, the Xinhua News Agency reported Monday. Cai Qinghua from the Institute of Hydrobiology under the Chinese Academy of Science, said: "This is the first time the Three Gorges Dam area...

Thousands of people who suffered severe allergic reactions after sitting on their sofas were victims of a toxic gas emitted by an anti-mould agent, a study has concluded. Hospitals across northern Europe have treated thousands of patients with symptoms which appeared to range from skin cancer and chemical burns to severe eczema. The British cases have been linked to an estimated 100,000 sofas sold by Argos, World of Leather and Walmsley Furnishing manufactured in China by a company called Linkwise. A study in Sweden has concluded that the skin conditions were a reaction to the gas created during the sublimation...

Olympic Athletes Wearing Masks Could Cause China to Lose Face U.S. Committee Developed a Model in Secret; Jarrod Shoemaker Ponders the Geek Factor By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS and STEPHANIE KANG July 21, 2008; Page A1 U.S. triathlete Jarrod Shoemaker has a decision to make at the opening ceremony of the Olympics next month in Beijing: Should he strap on a mask? Chinese officials insist the notorious Beijing air will be cleaner by August, making such contraptions unnecessary. Concerned about the pollution, the U.S. Olympic Committee is distributing a high-tech mask, developed in secrecy, to its more than 600 Olympians. If athletes...

Energy: Big Oil is easy to kick around — just ask any Democrat in Congress. But China's threats to Exxon Mobil are in another league. Its bid to use Exxon Mobil as a wedge against its rival Vietnam is a case in point.What China's doing in the South China Sea these days is not trade, but blackmail to assert regional dominance. On Sunday, the South China Morning Post reported Chinese officials are threatening to exclude Exxon Mobil from doing business in China if it doesn't pull out of an exploration deal with Vietnam's state oil company, PetroVietnam. The region in...

ASIA/CHINA - Bishop Joseph Jiang Mingyuan passes away: clergy, religious, and laity of Zhaoxian remember him as a zealous priest and a holy pastor, a resplendent example of faithful and sincere witness to the Lord and His Church, even in times of hardship Biancun (Agenzia Fides) – On July 13, at 77 years of age, His Excellency Joseph Jiang Mingyuan, Bishop of Chaohsien (Zhaoxian) and Administrator of Xingtai, in the Province of Hebei (continental China), passed away at 3:30 am at the residence for elderly clergy in Biancun. In December 2004, he suffered his first stroke, from which he was...

BEIJING - Three separate bus explosions killed at least three people and injured 14 in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming on Monday, media said, amid a security clampdown ahead of next month's Beijing Olympics. The causes were not immediately clear, but the blasts came within a matter of hours of each other in the capital of Yunnan province and less than three weeks before the Beijing Games, which China has warned could be a target of terrorist attacks. An explosion on one bus happened at the Panjiawan stop at 7.10 a.m. and the second blast was nearby, the official...

NEW DELHI: For more than a decade, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing giants that make the American mortgage market run, have attracted overseas investors with a simple pitch: The securities they issue are just as good as the U.S. government's - and they usually pay better. The marketing plan worked: About one-fifth of securities issued by Fannie, Freddie and a handful of much smaller quasi-government agencies, some $1.5 trillion worth, were held by foreign investors at the end of March. One-tenth of all American mortgages are, in effect, in the hands of institutions and governments outside the United...

The best thing about democracy is that elected officials are expected to care about voters’ wellbeing and to be willing to provide help when voters are in need. But New York City Councilperson John Liu Democrat did not seem to care when he shut out some of his constituents who came to complain about attacks and death threats from pro-communist mobs that occurred in Liu’s district...Falun Gong practitioners contacted Liu shortly after the attacks started, only to be rebuffed again and again. Meanwhile, they found Liu’s door was wide open to their attackers. Besides meeting with the attackers, Liu also...

BEIJING, July 21 (Reuters) - One of Beijing's most important subway lines seized up on Monday when the mass of passengers forced workers to close off entrances for safety on the first working day of pre-Olympic traffic restrictions. Passengers were being allowed off Line 2, which runs in a loop around central Beijing, but not on to it. At least one major transfer station, at Jianguomen, was closed. "There is a big crush of passengers. We've had to close the line for safety reasons," said a subway worker, standing in front of locked gates at the Fuxingmen station, a transfer...

One of our family’s reasons for immigrating from Russia to the West (in 1972) was the danger to the free West from totalitarian societies like Russia and China. But hey presto! In 1986, Eric Drexler had finished a cycle of his nano research and published the results in a volume, entitled “Engines of Creation” and containing a chapter entitled “Engines of Destruction,” such as weapons that can destroy a country without the latter’s retaliation, that is, without “mutually assured destruction.” What is “mutually assured destruction”? Every powerful nuclear country can prepare a secret depository of nuclear bombs. After an enemy...

On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today's standards utterly offensive) new method to 'tame' and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent. 'My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,' wrote Galton. 'I should expect that...

HONG KONG - CHINA has warned Exxon Mobil Corp to pull out of an exploration deal with Vietnam, describing the project as a breach of Chinese sovereignty, the South China Morning Post reported on Sunday, citing unnamed sources. The article, which cited 'sources close to the US firm", said Chinese diplomats in Washington had made repeated verbal protests to Exxon Mobil executives in recent months, and warned them its future business interests on the mainland could be at risk. The protests involve a preliminary co-operation agreement between state oil firm PetroVietnam and Exxon Mobil covering exploration in the South China...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke. With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way. The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and...

may not be surprising that, as befits any mad dictator, President Mugabe is now the proud owner of a palatial £4.5 million mansion in Harare and a similarly lavish country hideaway, each fitted with the latest electronic security systems, including anti-aircraft missiles. But why should all this have been provided for him by the People's Republic of China? The explanation lies in a deal struck in 2005 whereby Mr Mugabe handed over to China his country's mineral rights, including the world's second largest reserves of platinum, worth £250 billion.

Last September, the deputy director of a local Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in central China led a team to investigate the illegal discharge of waste water by a pharmaceutical factory. While the director was taking a sample of the waste water, he inhaled the fumes and passed out. Later he was diagnosed as suffering from poisoning and hospitalised. Commentators called this a "lucky" incident. If it had been a local resident, rather than an EPA official, who had passed out after going near the sewage, it would not have been considered newsworthy. Such incidents are common in many parts of...

Ever wonder (in your worst nightmares) what it might be like to live in a totalitarian state like China? This is the kind of power government has in the Communist country - they are shutting down a modern city in order to cut pollution levels for the Olympics: Half of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles will be pulled off the roads and many polluting factories will be shuttered. Chemical plants, power stations and foundries left open have to cut emissions by 30 percent - and dust-spewing construction in the capital will be halted. In a highly stage-managed Olympics aimed at showing...

Across China, Security Instead Of Celebration Washington Post[Saturday, July 19, 2008 11:54] Police Crack Down on 'Hostile Forces,' Apply New Safety Measures By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service YENGISHAHAR, China July 19 - Shortly after dawn on July 9, the local government here bused several thousand students and office workers into a public square and lined them up in front of a vocational school. As the spectators watched, witnesses said, three prisoners were brought out. Then, an execution squad fired rifles at the three point-blank, killing them on the spot. The young men had been convicted of having connections...

Gordon Brown aide a victim of honeytrap operation by Chinese agents David Leppard and Claire Newell A top aide to Gordon Brown has been a suspected victim of a “honeytrap” operation by Chinese intelligence agents. The aide, a senior Downing Street adviser who was with the prime minister on a trip to China earlier this year, had his BlackBerry phone stolen after being picked up by a Chinese woman who had approached him in a Shanghai hotel disco. The aide agreed to return to his hotel with the woman. He reported the BlackBerry missing the next morning. The aide, whose...

Police kill two in SW China clash: reports Sat Jul 19, 10:58 PM ET Police have killed two people in a clash with villagers in southwestern China in the latest outburst of social unrest in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, an activist group and state media said on Sunday. The clash occurred Saturday morning in remote Yunnan province when more than 1,000 local rubber growers protested in a dispute over the sale of their crops, the Hong Kong Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said. Police called in to quell the protest in Menglian county then battled with the...

3 shot in press conference gun blast Created: 2008-7-19 0:24:19 Author:Yang Lifei THREE reporters in Sichuan Province were injured at Nanchong City Public Security Bureau when a confiscated gun accidentally went off, Chongqing Times reported yesterday. The gun was used for hunting birds and was loaded with buckshot at the time of the accident, the report said. Su Dingwei, a reporter from West China City Daily, was in stable condition after surgery. Wang Xiaofeng from Chinanews.com.cn and Zhang Yicheng from Nanchong Daily received minor injuries, the report said. The accident occurred 10 minutes after a public security bureau press conference...

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) - For "reasons of safety", bars are forbidden to serve "blacks"" and Mongolians or place tables in the street. Street musicians are being banned, and so is buying medicines containing "stimulants" without a prescription. Prohibitions are on the rise for the Olympic capital, while the first leaks reveal a grandiose fireworks display for the inauguration. Bar owners around the Workers' Stadium in downtown Beijing say that public security officials are telling them not to let in "blacks" and Mongolians, and many of them have even had to sign a pledge. The official reason is the fight against drugs...

China is abandoning Chairman Mao's dream to make Beijing a workers' paradise, rebuilding it under the cover of a "green" Olympics as a capital for its 21st century empire. In a display of the city's determination to improve its air quality, officials this week vaunted the closure and relocation to the coast of its biggest polluter, the smoke-stacked mini-state of Capital Steel. Three of its blast furnaces stand blackened and idle, along with two of its three steel mills. A fourth furnace will shut on Sunday, when for the sake of the Olympics industrial production will be reduced across five...

New Delhi – Anecdotal reports by health-care workers in Africa and Southeast Asia reveal a worrying new trend: Drugs successfully used for years to combat malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV are failing more and more often. Misdiagnosis of disease, coupled with the (related) misuse and overuse of drugs, likely plays a role, especially in resource-constrained countries where scientific diagnostic tests are unavailable or too expensive to be practical. But many doctors suspect another culprit: counterfeit drugs. Nothing is more dangerous for a poor patient with a potentially fatal disease than taking drugs that do not work. Not only can faulty drugs...

The Chinese Communist leaders would like the rest of the world to believe that China is a unique historical and economic case. Are we to understand China based on some universal rules of human evolution? Or should we share a Sinocentric interpretation of everything that happens in this supposedly different civilization? It seems to me that China is, of course, different, as any nation is, but she does follow a well-known cycle which already took place in the West. Thus, Alexis de Tocqueville could be more relevant today to understand where China stands than Confucius. In "The Ancien Régime and...

THE OLYMPICS PART ONE: BACKGROUND Published July 19th, 2008 As we approach the August 8th opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the XXIX Games of the Olympiad in Beijing, People’s Republic of China, it seems fitting to try to understand exactly what these “games” are. Their history may be examined on various websites, one of the best being http://www.musarium.com/kodak/olympics/olympichistory/. The Official Website of the Olympic Movement declares: “Olympism is a state of mind based on equality of sports which are international and democratic. It is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body,...

China's breathtaking transformation of their own country over the past couple of decades is accompanied by robust new Chinese enterprises all over the world. In this report on China's activities in Africa, the Chinese are seen to be involved in infrastructure projects across this vast continent. Everything about Africa is writ large - during the past twenty years, as China's economy exploded, Africa's population doubled. There are now over 900 million people living in Africa, and collectively the Africans have lower per capita wealth than the peoples of any other continent. But the potential in this vast land mass of...

The entire world may not have sat up and taken notice in the last week, and that is probably just fine with China, which has just made a major move into central Africa. With its agreement to lend $5 billion to Congo, what might have often looked like a grab-bag approach to the African continent by a country with only sporadic involvement there has finally taken on a distinct outline. .............................................. It must be said that China has chosen a daunting proving ground for its long-held ideas about engagement with the developing world, which could be summed up as "it's...

They have been called the “Fifty Cent Party,” the “red vests” and the “red vanguard.” But China’s growing armies of Web commentators—instigated, trained and financed by party organizations—have just one mission: to safeguard the interests of the Communist Party by infiltrating and policing a rapidly growing Chinese Internet. They set out to neutralize undesirable public opinion by pushing pro-Party views through chat rooms and Web forums, reporting dangerous content to authorities. By some estimates, these commentary teams now comprise as many as 280,000 members nationwide, and they show just how serious China’s leaders are about the political challenges posed by...

SHANGHAI: Ernest Ndukwe, head of the Nigerian telephone regulator, had personal guides for shopping, sightseeing and dining when he visited Hong Kong this month, all courtesy of Huawei Technologies. Huawei, the biggest Chinese telephone-equipment maker, and rival ZTE, could be in joint control of more than half the Nigerian cellphone equipment market by 2007, four years after they started operating in the most-populous African nation, Ndukwe said in an interview this month. Their prices in Nigeria are 40 percent lower than those of companies like Ericsson and Alcatel- Lucent, he said.Huawei and ZTE, both based in Shenzhen, are courting officials...

BEIJING, May 14 -- China announced Monday that it had launched a Chinese-manufactured communications satellite into orbit on behalf of Nigeria, marking the first time China has built a commercial satellite and put it into orbit on contract for another country. The launch, in Monday's pre-dawn hours from the Xichang space center in southwestern Sichuan province, was viewed as another sign of China's increasing prowess in space and its determination to be among the world's great powers seeking to utilize the reaches of outer space for benefits on Earth. The country's space agency, which is managed by the military, sent...

HONG KONG - China Development Bank may be turning its attention from taking a piece of troubled Citigroup to investing in Nigeria, seizing an opportunity to channel its monumental resources toward the oil-rich West African country. China Development Bank is one of the three policy banks created by Beijing, placed under direct jurisdiction of China’s State Council and charged with funding major infrastructure projects. It is in talks to buy a $5 billion stake in Nigeria's United Bank for Africa, the biggest financial institution in West Africa by asset value. The Chinese lender is bargaining for some management control of...

FROM MATHIAS OKWE, ABUJA REPRIEVE may not be long in coming to the nation's pitiable infrastructure as China has promised to help out with about $50b (six trillion naira). The fund according to the Finance Minister, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman is to help rehabilitate the nation's contemptibly poor infrastructure. Already, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed between the Africa Finance Company (AFC) on the one hand; and the Managing Directors of Zenith Bank, Oceanic Bank and First Bank on the other on behalf of other Nigerian financial institutions with the Chinese Export Credit Guarantee Agency called SINOSURE for the...

By Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON, July 10 (Reuters) - China is ramping up financing for power and transport projects in Africa, with the majority in four countries endowed with natural resources, according to a report by the World Bank on Thursday. The report, which looks at the growing role of the Chinese government as a financier of infrastructure projects in Africa, estimates China's funding for roads, railways and power projects peaked at $7 billion in 2006 from just $1 billion a year between 2001-03. The bulk of those commitments were to Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Ethiopia and is welcome in a...

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) - For "reasons of safety", bars are forbidden to serve "blacks"" and Mongolians or place tables in the street. Street musicians are being banned, and so is buying medicines containing "stimulants" without a prescription. Prohibitions are on the rise for the Olympic capital, while the first leaks reveal a grandiose fireworks display for the inauguration. Bar owners around the Workers' Stadium in downtown Beijing say that public security officials are telling them not to let in "blacks" and Mongolians, and many of them have even had to sign a pledge. The official reason is the fight against drugs...

Candid Camera: Severe Atmosphere, Beijing Police Patrol with Assault Weapons for First Time By Boxun Jul 18, 2008 - 3:09:14 PM With less than 20 days until the Olympics, Beijing's streets have seen an increase in Peoples Armed Police in full riot gear, police with special duties and regular beat police. The police are carrying semi-automatic assault weapons for the first time. From the grim expressions on these policemen's faces, it is clear that they are prepared for a surprise attack. Beijing citizens expressed to Boxun that not even after the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989 did police...

Threat of ‘no-fun’ Olympics By Mure Dickie, Geoff Dyer and Jamil Anderlini Published: July 18 2008 20:47 | Last updated: July 18 2008 20:47 Just three weeks before the Beijing Olympics, concerns are growing that China’s sweeping security measures could end up sucking all the fun out of the world’s biggest sportsfest. Pre-Olympic jitters are almost a tradition but a Chinese visa crackdown that has sent visitor numbers plunging, heightened security checks, dire warnings of terrorist attack and curbs on Beijing nightlife have led to some observers dubbing the 2008 Olympics the “no-fun Games”. Michael Payne, the International Olympic Committee’s...

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have replaced top police and security officials in the Muslim dominated Xinjiang province, which is the hotbed of separatism and political violence. They have also closed down 41 "illegal" places of worship. These places of worship were used as training ground for conducting a "holy war", Chen Zhuangwei Chen, the police chief of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province, said.

Ahead of the summer Olympics, Apple on Saturday will open the doors to its first retail store in China, a glass-enclosed high-profile shop situated in Beijing's newest retail development: the Village at Sanlitun. Keeping with his tradition of attending Apple's gala international retail launches, our friend Gary Allen from ifoAppleStore has made the grueling journey across the Pacific to be on hand for tomorrow's grand opening at 10:00 a.m. Allen reports that Apple's space within the Sanlitun complex "is nearly invisible from the street," because it sits within the center's inner courtyard. "But once you see it, it’s impressive --...