10:02 PM
gtventic
Smart Gilas Pilipinas vs Chinese Taipei Game Result: 95-78
Smart Gilas Pilipinas beats team Chinese Taipei during the quarterfinals of 2011 FIBA Asia championship held in Wuhan, China.
The Philippine team stunned Chinese Taipei with a 17-point lead, 95-78, on Friday, September 23.
Quarterscores: 9-23, 45-42, 70-57, 95-78
10:50 AM
gtventic
Imports surged by 30.2% from a year earlier to $155.6bn (£98bn), government data released over the weekend showed.
Exports rose by 24.5% resulting in a trade surplus of $17.8bn, down from a $31.5bn surplus in the previous month.
China is the world's second-largest economy.
10:52 AM
gtventic
The waves slamming the coast near the port city of Dalian in Liaoning province were brought by tropical storm Muifa as it skated off the coast, hitting a half-built dyke protecting the Jinzhou development zone, official news agency Xinhua reported.
According to the website of the People's Daily newspaper, the plant's storage area contains around 20 metal tanks holding oil-based chemicals.
"If the breach cannot be blocked up, toxic chemical products may spill, and that would be extremely dangerous," the newspaper website reported from Dalian.
Over a thousand firefighters, troops and border guards rushed to prevent sea water from creating a bigger hole in the dike, the People's Daily website reported.
2012 campaigns and the downgrade effect Nation's biggest risk factor: Slow economy Fallen SEAL was ‘willing to give his life' 9 out of 10 preschoolers' lunches reach unsafe temps NBC fixer killed by a rocket in Libya Exiled leader: Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet ‘possible’ Startup generation ready to fix economyChinese television news showed trucks and earth movers lined up to block the 200-meter-wide breach with rocks and concrete blocks.
State news agency Xinhua later reported that the situation has been "brought under control for the time being," as the breach has beenfilled.
The local government said it would quickly move the tanks containing dangerous chemicals, adding that it has put in place emergency measures in case of a chemical spill, Xinhua said.
According to the report, Troops and police also helped disperse nearby residents, who gave no details of any damage or injuries.
"We do not know anything about the spill, and we cannot say anything," said a woman working at the reception desk for the Fujia chemical company who was contacted by Reuters.
Calls to the development zone, Dalian government and Liaoning provincial government went unanswered.
A serious chemical leakage would be a fresh headache for Liaoning, which recently suffered an oil spill from two offshore platforms.
Pollutants from that spill have been found spreading to beaches, and been blamed for losses to tourism and aquatic farming businesses, Xinhua reported in July.
Serious damage avoided in China
So far, China has avoided any serious damage from Muifa, which weakened to a tropical storm from a typhoon as it approached the country's east coast over the weekend.
Shandong province, which is across the Bohai Sea from Liaoning province, moved hundreds of thousands of residents from coastal areas and ordered tens of thousands of boats and other vessels to stay in ports as the storm passed on Monday.
Earlier, the full brunt of the typhoon's core missed Shanghai, but strong gusts knocked down billboards and briefly cut power to at least two residential areas.
A day earlier, Muifa had moved along China's eastern coast as a typhoon and downed power lines, billboards and trees in Shanghai and brought heavy rain to coastal Shandong province.
Last week, Typhoon Muifa killed four people in the Philippines without making landfall and caused injuries and power outages when it passed the Japanese island of Okinawa on Friday.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
10:32 AM
gtventic
After beating defending champion Iran last Saturday, the Smart Gilas Philippine basketball team won its crucial game against Chinese Taipei on Sunday, 90-78 in Taipei.
Smart Gilas is now 2-0 in the team standings on the second day of the William Jones Cup 2011 at the Hsinjhuang Stadium in Chinese Taipei.
The scores:
SMART GILAS 90- Douthit 23, Aguilar 12, Casio 10, Hontiveros 9, Lassiter 9, Lutz 9, Tiu 8, Baracael 8, Barroca 2, Taulava 0, Ababou 0.
CHINESE TAIPER 78- Hsin 17, Wen 14, Chih 13, Cheng 9, Shou 8, I Chieh 7, Chin 6, Tsung 2, Chia 2,Douglas 0, Po 0, Hsueh 0
The quarterscores were 21-17; 49-36; 72-58; 90-78.
Other results on Sunday:
Malaysia lost to Jordan, 63-93
Korea stunned United Arab Emirates, 102-54
Iran deafeated Japan, 77-58
The Philippines now has 2 wins and 0 loss alongside Jordan and Korea.
The team will face Jordan at 3:00pm this afternoon.
11:47 AM
gtventic
APRelatives of the victims of China's train crash parade with a banner demanding the truth about the accident that killed 40 and injured 192 during a protest at Wenzhou South Railway Station on July 27.
By NBC’s Bo Gu
BEIJING – After a week of unusually outspoken outrage among the Chinese public over a high-speed train crash, Chinese authorities imposed a news blackout on the subject over the weekend.
For about a week the Chinese media enjoyed unprecedented freedom with reports on the deadly train crash in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou that killed 40 people and injured nearly 200.
Social media, especially the many Chinese equivalents of Twitter-like microblogs, buzzed with millions of messages questioning why the accident happened, whether or not rescue efforts had been botched and if the investigation was jeopardized by the train cars being buried shortly after the accident. Even state-run media ran reports critical of the powerful Railways Ministry and that questioned the government’s handling of the accident.
But the brief flurry of “free speech” didn’t last long.
Late on Friday evening, the propaganda authorities imposed a media ban on the train crash, forcing newspapers nationwide to pull their pages of coverage at the last minute. Investigative reports and commentaries were no longer allowed to be published – only positive news or information released by the authorities.
As one tweeter @twccl wrote on his Chinese Twitter page, "for the last 20 years, it has proved to be a joke every time you think freedom of speech in the mainland has become more tolerated."
Angry journalists and editors complained about having their stories pulled from the front page and posted their ditched pages on microblogs instead. “They can be so shameless…One night, all the media, including newspapers, Internet, print, video, are ordered to delete, scrap, be muzzled,” Gao Xubo, founder of the ChinaRFL web site wrote on his microblog. “This is humiliating to Chinese history and to Chinese people. This is one of the most notorious nights in human civilization. We give condolence for ourselves.”
People in China weigh in on the government's response to the high-speed train crash that killed 40 and injured 192.
‘A nest of corruption’
The outrage over the train crash had made citizen-journalists out of relatives and friends of victims.
Yang Feng, a young man who lost five relatives, including his mother and his pregnant wife, gathered more than 160,000 followers on his Sina.com microblog in just a few days.
Yang spoke directly to Premier Wen Jiabao, and demanded a thorough investigation into why his relatives were not found until 30 hours after the crash.
People have been particularly outraged that the Railways Ministry, which is responsible for overseeing high-speed rail transportation, was also handling the investigation and compensation for victims and their families. Several critics called for the entire organization, which has controlled China’s railway system exclusively for decades, to be disbanded.
He Weifang, an outspoken law professor from Peking University and a long-time critic of the government, published an open letter appealing for the disbandment of the Railways Ministry. "It’s not humane to let the one who made mistakes investigate how he made the mistakes and how much responsibilities he should take," He wrote.
Liu Junning, a politics scholar at the China Culture Study Institute, wrote on his microblog that the Railways Ministry is "a nest of corruption that only focuses on political achievements instead of serving the people."
Relatives of victims were particularly incensed by the fact that the ministry demanded to see a cremation certificate before they could be compensated, even though it had insisted on burying one of the train cars involved in the accident just one day after the crash.
Chang Ping, a journalist who was fired just a few months ago for his frank columns criticizing the government, posted a furious message on his microblog that was later forwarded far and wide: "This is the logic of robbers. As long as someone is confirmed dead, their relatives should be compensated. What has it to do with the Railways Ministry, whether the victims are cremated or buried or put in a crystal casket? You already killed them, and you want to make sure they are burned to ashes? Are there any murderers in this world more professional than you?"
5:17 PM
gtventic
Five self-branded "Apple Stores" were found to be selling Apple products without authorisation from the California-based company but only two were told to shut, officials said.
An investigation into the stores was apparently sparked by a storm of media attention over an elaborate hoax Apple shop discovered by an American blogger. The order did not apply to that store, which is applying for a reseller licence with Apple, a local government spokesman said.
"Media should not misunderstand the situation and jump to conclusions. Some overseas media has made it appear the stores sold fake Apple products," said Chang Puyun, spokesman of Kunming government's business bureau.
"China has taken great steps to enforce intellectual property rights and the stores weren't selling fake products."
Entire fake Apple shop found in ChinaOfficials are investigating whether Apple had applied with the Chinese government to have its store design and layout protected by law, Chang added.
Inspections of around 300 shops in Kunming were carried out after a blog post by an American living in the city exposed a near-flawless fake Apple Store where even the staff were convinced they were working for the iPhone and iPad maker.
'Look and feel'
In addition to protecting trademarks, Chinese law prohibits companies from copying the "look and feel" of other companies' stores, but enforcement is often spotty.
The United States and other Western countries have often complained China is woefully behind in its effort to stamp out intellectual property (IP) theft.
"We hope that they will take continuous action against other Intellectual Property Rights violations," Ioana Kraft, general manager of the Shanghai chapter of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, said in an emailed comment to Reuters.
In May, China was listed for the seventh year by the U.S. Trade Representative's office as a country with one of the worst records for preventing copyright theft.
Piracy and counterfeiting of U.S. software and a wide range of other intellectual property in China cost U.S. businesses alone an estimated $48 billion and 2.1 million jobs in 2009, the U.S. International Trade Commission has said.
Countless unauthorised resellers of Apple and other brands' electronic products throughout China sell the real thing but buy their goods overseas and smuggle them into the country to skip taxes.
Angry customers berated staff and demanded refunds at one of the fake stores late last week, uncertain of legitimacy of the products on offer.
All the five unauthorised Apple shops in Kunming were selling genuine Apple products bought from other authorised resellers in China, Huang Yinghui, an official at the city's business bureau, told Reuters.
Apple has just four genuine Apple Stores in China, in Beijing and Shanghai, and none in Kunming in Yunnan province. The company, which has 13 authorised resellers in Kunming, could not be reached for comment.
Apple's brand is the world's most valuable, worth some $153 billion, according to a study earlier this year.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
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