China describes Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg’s two-day fence-mending visit to Beijing as candid and in depth.

But, if there has been an improvement in ties after Steinberg’s talks with his Chinese counterparts, it was not evident at the media briefing given by the Chinese Foreign Ministry after his departure.

Spokesman Qin Gang repeated in the determined tone used in recent weeks that, if the bilateral relationship is to continue on a stable path, it is up to Washington to make amends and push the relationship back to more friendly terms.

He says Washington has to sincerely respect China’s core interests and specifically mentioned Taiwan and Tibet, referring to the U.S. arms sales to Taipei and the White House meeting with Tibet’s exiled leader, the Dalai Lama – just two of several issues that have angered Beijing.

An American embassy spokesman told VOA it is too early to assess the impact of the deputy secretary of state’s visit.

“Our goal has always been to make our relationship more mature to weather any issue good or bad, to [a point] where we can continue to the number of dialogues and numerous lines of communications we have to overcome our differences and find areas of cooperation,” he said.

His response emphases how the slightest nuances of the talks will be poured over by both sides for true their meaning and significance.

In the talks, Steinberg pressed Beijing to consider sanctions against Iran because of Tehran’s nuclear program. But, with oil interests in the country, Beijing is reluctant to upset a key ally.

And Qin again said China, which has the power to veto any UN Security Council sanctions – still believes there is room for diplomacy.

U.S. officials say they will offer clearer insight into Steinberg’s talks Friday.

The deputy secretary of state has flown on to Tokyo to meet Japanese government officials.

By Peter Simpson
Via

The proposal is spearheaded by Professor Brian Williams of the South African Center for Epidemiological Modeling and Analysis (SECEMA). It calls for blanket HIV testing for most of the world’s population, and those found HIV positive would be put immediately on a lifetime course of anti-retroviral drugs.

Past and Future

Professor John Hargrove, director of SECEMA in Stellenbosch, says, “What we’ve done in the past with HIV is try every manner of means that we can to stop people infecting each other. But generally that’s been by way of trying to change the way they behave, to convince them that they should use condoms, that they should only have one partner and so on and so forth,” he says.

However, that approach has not always been successful.

“In particular, we are seeing very little sign in South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana of any great change in behavior and certainly no great decline in the HIV prevalence.”

Hargrove says Williams bases the strategy on mathematical models.

“If you were in a place where you’ve got very high HIV prevalence, if you were to test the whole population, on average once a year and start people immediately on anti-retrovirals as soon as they were HIV positive, then you could actually reduce the incidence sufficiently that you would drive the epidemic to extinction within the foreseeable future. That is of the order of 30 years. I think that’s what’s radical about it.”

The logic behind it

“If you reduce the viral load, the amount of virus in the blood, then you radically reduce the infectiousness. So, if in fact you get people very soon after they are HIV positive and put them on anti-retrovirals, you reduce the aggregate viral load in the entire population. And therefore you will reduce the rate at which new infections occur,” he says.

By putting people on treatment sooner rather than later and by continuing current treatment programs, overall new infections might be held in check.

“Of course you will still have a lot of HIV-positive people in the population, but slowly as people just die out…. The mathematics of it simply indicate that if we manage to do this…this will be the logical outcome,” he says.

Targeting the most sexually active

The head of the South African Center for Epidemiological Modeling and Analysis says, for example, in Botswana the highest proportion of people on anti-retrovirals are those over 40 years old.

“But those people who are much more sexually active,” he says, “the people in their late teens and early 20s, who are HIV positive, they are very, very seldom on anti-retrovirals. So those people who are most likely to spread the infection are the least likely to be on anti-retrovirals. That’s the essential point.”

Strictly voluntary

Such a testing program could raise privacy issues in many countries. Hargrove says the strategy does not call for mandatory HIV testing.

“We are not suggesting at all that there will be any form of coercion. It would just be suggested to people very strongly that they may want to consider having an HIV test,” he says, “And that if in fact they are HIV positive, and if they want to, they will get free anti-retrovirals and they will have it for the rest of their lives.”

The idea of putting people on AIDS drugs long before their immune systems collapse has been circulating for a while. Critics say one of the problems is that such a move could break the budgets of national AIDS programs in many countries. Hargrove disagrees.

“The cost actually will be approximately the same over the next 40 years whether we continue what we’re doing right now or if we put into place what Brian (Williams) suggested we do. The big difference is that if we continue the way we’re going now and if we do not manage actually to drive down (HIV) incidence by other means, then in 40 years…we will still be faced with the same costs,” he says.

The South African professor says, however, “If we put in this more radical approach and reduce incidence to very close to zero, (in) 40 years…we will not have a problem to face.”

The plan was presented to the American Association for the Advancement of science meeting in San Diego, California.

Via

Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal ruled Thursday that the murder trial of Nancy Kissel was flawed and ordered that she be held in custody while undergoing a new trial.

Kissel’s lawyers had argued that prosecutors used improper evidence to challenge her credibility during her trial in 2005. In those proceedings, Kissel was sentenced to life in prison.

Kissel, dubbed the “milkshake murderer,” was convicted of giving her husband a sedative-laced milkshake and then clubbing the Merrill Lynch & Company banker to death in 2003.

Kissel admitted that she killed her husband, saying he was abusive.

Prosecutors argued that Kissel planned the attack, and noted that her husband was worth $18 million in life insurance, investments and properties.

Via

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu issued a statement Friday, urging the United States to, in his words, “immediately withdraw” plans for a meeting between President Obama and the Dalai Lama.

Ma indicated that the meeting could further hurt Sino-American relations, which are already strained because of a U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, disagreements over China’s currency exchange rate and U.S. concerns over Chinese internet censorship.

Zhu Weiqun, the vice-minister of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which handles Tibet issues, recently made the same point.

Zhu says if the U.S. leader chooses to meet with the Dalai Lama, it will threaten trust and cooperation between China and the United States.

The White House Thursday confirmed that President Obama will meet the Dalai Lama on February 18, despite China’s objections. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Mr. Obama will meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader, a fellow Nobel laureate, as an internationally respected religious figure.

The United States recognizes Tibet as a part of China, but has urged Beijing and the Dalai Lama to talk together to address differences over the region’s future.

China took over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama fled to exile in India in 1959, after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in his homeland. China considers the Dalai Lama a separatist and has tried to isolate him by urging foreign leaders not to meet with him.

The Dalai Lama repeatedly has said he is not seeking independence for Tibet, but instead wants what he describes as a high level of genuine autonomy for his homeland.

China has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid to Tibet, in an effort to ensure stability by actively raising living standards there. Tibetan exiles accuse the Chinese government of discriminating against and repressing their culture and religion.

Via

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三鹿破产已裁定终结 结石患儿难获任何赔偿

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已有48名遇难矿工家属签署赔偿协议

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黑龙江鹤岗矿难已致104人遇难

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鹤岗矿难已致92人遇难 16人仍被困

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爆炸前53分钟 新兴煤矿已收到瓦斯警报

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鹤岗矿难煤矿事发前正预备上市

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鹤岗煤矿救援已完成90%工作面搜救工作

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鹤岗矿难已致87人遇难 21人仍被困

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黑龙江鹤岗矿难6名重伤员已脱离生命危险

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鹤岗矿难已致42名矿工遇难 420人升井

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朝鲜人权决议案已被提呈为联合国议案

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韩军方称已进入全面备战状态应对朝鲜挑衅

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网传重庆女护士”艳照” 相关医院已报案

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调查称广州四成国企已减薪或计划减薪

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2009年9月【重慶“打黑”】
长春发生持枪抢劫银行案已造成1死1伤

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重庆市公安交管局局长陈洪刚因涉黑被查

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俄机构建议将海参崴租给中国 并入哈尔滨管理

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新疆通报已抓获”针刺”案嫌犯75名

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重庆打黑专案组已由14个增至200个

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河北所有通过公路进京旅客须实名登记

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乌鲁木齐“针扎”案件:已有531人被刺伤

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统计局总经济师称中国经济最坏时期已过去

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2009年8月【果敢事件】
统计局称北京已达到上中等国家富裕水平

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缅甸果敢冲突或已致大量伤亡 具体情况不明

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缅甸政府军已占领果敢

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缅甸”华人特区”冲突加剧 传特区主席已逃亡

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民政部酝酿出台慈善信息公开办法

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西安一公司多人涉嫌发帖诽谤人大代表被抓

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河南立案调查为验肺民工做开胸手术医院

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村民被拘19天死亡续:”发烧死”成网络流行语

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疑遭炸弹威胁阿富汗客机抵达乌鲁木齐

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阿富汗首航乌鲁木齐航班传有炸弹 中方拒绝入境

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阿富汗方面称喀布尔飞往乌鲁木齐客机未遭劫持

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杭州公安局就保时捷撞死人案召开新闻发布会

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2009年7月【新疆暴亂】
黑龙江牡丹江市出租车集体停运7天

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日本外务省证实允许热比娅访日 已发放签证

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检察人员遭劫持后被逼强暴女生女子最后死亡

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杭州“5·7”交通肇事案公开宣判 胡斌被判三年

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伊斯兰教协会副会长:必要时关闭清真寺不违教规

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新疆慈善总会已收到社会各界捐款逾200万元

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新疆暴力事件死亡人数达156人 抓捕1434名嫌犯

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乌鲁木齐“劫”后见闻：的士司机吓得腿软

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乌鲁木齐发生打砸抢烧严重暴力犯罪事件

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成都公交车特大放火案告破 疑犯当场死亡

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2009年6月【綠壩事件】
湖南郴州火车站内列车相撞 已致3死60余伤

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广东韶关玩具厂斗殴事件虚假信息散布者被查获

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谷歌中国涉黄风波评论合集

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湖北省委书记省长亲赴石首 平息群体事件

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周迅刘璇称与深圳市长许宗衡案无关

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工信部:上网过滤软件不监控网民

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美12架“猛禽”战机空降日本 美军紧急备战朝鲜

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2009年5月【鄧玉嬌事件】
中共巴东县纪委等严肃处理”邓玉娇案”中涉案人员

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重庆一煤矿发生矿难 已致25人死亡

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重庆松藻同华煤矿瓦斯突出致30人死亡

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沈阳公审蚁力神案 55人涉嫌合同诈骗等罪

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女服务员刺死官员续：律师控告黄德智涉嫌强奸

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朝鲜宣布已进行第二次地下核试验

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北京广安门枪案续:警方证实系枪托伤人

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警方称刺死官员案女服务员未被强奸

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杭州飙车案肇事者被起诉 受害者父母获赔113万

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湖南株洲市区高架桥发生坍塌事故 此前曾预爆

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公安部长批示公安局政委女儿冒名上学事件

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四川省内共计5335名学生在汶川地震中遇难或失踪

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外交部回应美总统“世界新闻自由日”涉华言论

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2009年4月
重庆渝中解放碑下一名男子疑自焚

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贵州多名公职人员嫖宿幼女案:将不公开审理

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2009年3月
重庆市长称哨兵遭枪击与警惕性不高有关

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天津蓟县妇幼保健院五患儿死亡系院内感染所致

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2009年2月
南京原国土局长网上发帖回应家有4套住宅质疑

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审判红色高棉：康克由和他的集中营

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The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour is on its way to the International Space Station.

NASA launched the shuttle from the Kennedy Space Center on the Atlantic coast in Florida early Monday. A Sunday morning launch had been called off because of poor weather at the launch site.

The six astronauts aboard the shuttle arescheduled to deliver parts to the International Space Station for the last major construction operation on the orbiting outpost, which is almost complete.

Endeavour is carrying a connecting node, Tranquility Node 3, and the Cupola, a robotic control station with six windows around its sides and another in the center that provides a 360-degree view around the International Space Station.

Following this 13-day mission, four more shuttle flights are planned before the fleet is retired at the end of this year.

U.S. President Barack Obama, in the budget he presented to Congress last week, has canceled the space agency’s plans to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020.

Via

Government estimates released Monday indicate strong growth in the industrial and services sector is helping the economy rebound after slowing in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The forecast of 7.2 percent growth for the fiscal year that ends in March comes amid growing optimism in India.

Consumers have returned to shopping malls, and sales of cars and mobile phones have picked up rapidly in recent months. Many companies are posting good profits and hiring new staff. Economists say India’s recovery has been largely driven by strong domestic consumption among its more than one billion people.

Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla says that even the agriculture sector, which has shrunk in the wake of a widespread drought last year, could revive because of good winter harvests by farmers.

“The fourth quarter we are expecting it to be much better, more robust so overall agriculture is not going to see the kind of dip which was initially out,” Chawla said.

Although farming contributes relatively little to the country’s gross domestic product, it remains a key concern because two-thirds of the country’s population depend on agriculture for a living.

However, economists say uncertainties lie ahead. The shrinking agricultural output last year has stoked high inflation and led to a huge jump in food prices. This in turn has brought pressure on the government to scale back the stimulus measures that infused billions of dollars into the economy and helped its recovery.

A top official at the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, says the government will have to contemplate tightening monetary policy as the economy strengthens.

“It has been my consistent view that if it looks that the economy is back on seven plus per cent growth path, which it clearly now is, yes, we should say the stimulus has succeeded and we should begin to phase it down,” Ahluwalia said.

Stock markets and the private sector have been wary of such a move by the government, hoping it will not set back the tentative recovery.

However, the Indian government’s estimates of a return to a high growth path are backed by international institutions such as the World Bank. In a report last month, the World Bank said that economic revival in India remains resilient despite a slow global economic recovery.

Via

“1235 airlines,
80,000-kilometer railway,
3,730,000-kilometer road,
and enormous number of rivers,
like blood vessels spread,
dedicated to the peak of public transport in the Spring Festival travel season,
year by year.

150,000,000 Chinese people left their family,
to cities, big cities, the capital city,
for better jobs, better schools and hospitals,
now they are on their way home.

Seeing the whistling trains come close,
please salute,
to one tenth of wandering China,
to those Chinese living elsewhere.”

– http://news.163.com/special/000137OF/chunyun2010.html

Via news.duke.edu

DURHAM, N.C. — Duke University has forged new cooperative partnerships in China which will significantly increase the university’s presence in that country and create new opportunities for education, research and public service.

The partnership agreements were formally announced today (Friday) during Duke President Richard H. Brodhead’s trip to China, which culminated in a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of a planned Duke University campus in the city of Kunshan. Kunshan, located in the Yangtze River Delta, boasts one of the fastest-growing economies in China.

The Duke-Kunshan campus, a partnership between the university and the municipal government, will include a five-building teaching, research and residential center built by the municipal government.

Duke’s Fuqua School of Business will lead the first phase, which will focus on executive MBA and non-degree executive education programs, a pre-experience management training master’s degree, training of Ph.D. students and the recruitment of top faculty.

The campus, which will eventually encompass 200 acres, will feature classroom and meeting space, faculty offices, conference center space, an incubator building offering wet and dry laboratory space and faculty office space, and lodging for students, faculty and staff.

Construction of the five buildings, designed by the architectural firm Gensler, will begin immediately and is expected to be complete in 2011.’ Q, |. I; M: v! `

“We look forward to working with the Ministry of Education, the government of Kunshan, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University to support education and business development in this most dynamic region of China,” Brodhead said.
“The Duke-Kunshan campus will create great learning opportunities for our students, and represents a new model of international educational collaboration.”

Future activity on the Duke-Kunshan campus will include programs from Duke’s schools of public policy and environment, and its global health institute, among others, as education and research opportunities are developed.

“The world will increasingly rely on university graduates and faculty members who have been trained in global settings,” Sheppard said. “It is our true pleasure to enter into partnerships that will help China address its immediate needs for talent development, while also creating unique opportunities to educate future leaders.”

Duke already has a significant and historical connection to China. More than 600 Chinese students are currently enrolled at Duke, and the university operates a number of collaborative programs with Chinese institutions in medicine, global health, law and international development.

The company said it had detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.” Google says further investigation revealed that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.” Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results” on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.

(The New York Times)

searchengineland.com sent some questions to Google, and received answers from the company:

Can you say more by what you mean about intellectual property? Are you talking some of the code that runs Gmail or what?

This is the subject of an ongoing investigation, and we simply cannot comment on the details.

It sounds like you’re saying the Chinese government was behind this. Is that the case?

We’re not going to speculate, because we don’t know. What’s clear is that the environment in which we are operating in terms of an open Internet is not improving in China. That, combined with these attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered, mean that we’re no longer comfortable self-censoring our search in China.

Is the censorship ended as of 3pm Pacific, or is there a phase out?

Via the blog post [we've said]: We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.

Google’s official blog post:

A new approach to China

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.