By Wang Yong 05.22.2012 18:50 Universities in the Grip of Corruption There's a market for degrees, tenures and titles – and it is supported by graft in the political system Some struggle to scale the ivory tower. Others walk into a hotel room with a bribe in hand. On May 4, a microblogger posted a message detailing the process for procuring a position in a Chinese university. He met a professor in Hunan Province who told him a hotel room was reserved as a meeting spot. Liu then told all potential applicants to meet him in the room at a certain time and to bring money. Lots of it. It's a method that's been recounted by professors across the country. Promotions, tenure and titles can ... Continue reading →

A toddler has finally been reunited with his father after being sold more than 10 times by human traffickers. Jiang Kehao, now 3 years old, went missing on July 9, 2010, from Xianju county in East China's Zhejiang province. Police said his mother, Li Zhengxiu, who has mental health problems, was persuaded to hand over her child by Gan Wenliang. Gan and his wife had promised to find Li a job in Anji, another county 300 kilometers away. However, once there, Gan took the child and sold him for 12,000 yuan ($1,900) to another man. Police discovered that the boy was then resold at least 10 times, each time for a higher price. Li, who was also sold to a man looking for a wife, ... Continue reading →

Better technology to boost weather manipulation, official vows Rainmaking technology will be better deployed and there will be more of it, a leading meteorologist promised. The country plans to increase artificial precipitation by 3 to 5 percentage points in the next five years, Zheng Guoguang, administrator of the China Meteorological Administration, said. Rainmaking technology in China lags behind the leading countries in the field by between 15 to 45 percent, depending on the region, he said. The arsenal targeting the weather includes more than 7,000 rocket launchers, at least 50 planes and nearly 7,000 guns. Management capability will also be enhanced, Zheng said during the National Weather Modification Conference in Beijing on Tuesday. According to Zheng, about 70 percent of natural disasters in China are ... Continue reading →

By Kate Kelland LONDON | Tue May 22, 2012 7:12pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have for the first time succeeded in taking skin cells from patients with heart failure and transforming them into healthy, beating heart tissue that could one day be used to treat the condition. The researchers, based in Haifa, Israel, said there were still many years of testing and refining ahead. But the results meant they might eventually be able to reprogram patients' cells to repair their own damaged hearts."We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young - the equivalent to the stage of ... Continue reading →

This is aimed at countering China�s infrastructure.Beijing has constructed fully metalled roads right up to the frontier on its side while Indian troops in several areas have to deal with dirt tracks. On the Indian side, construction of 73 strategic roads in the Himalayas has been bogged down due to various reasons, one of them being forest and wildlife clearances Act. Only 16 roads have been completed so far. In the sensitive Eastern Ladakh region, vast areas have been designated as �cold desert wildlife sanctuaries� despite the fact that not a blade of grass grows there and have a non-existent animal life. This flat plateau had seen major battles in the 1962 war. On similar terrain and ecology on its side, China has gone ahead ... Continue reading →

The story of Al-Jazeera English correspondent Melissa Chan's expulsion from China has a disturbing coda. "We kicked out that foreign bitch and closed Al-Jazeera's Beijing bureau. We should shut up those who demonize China and send them packing," CCTV talk-show host Yang Rui posted to his personal Weibo account last week. The post was translated late Friday by The Wall Street Journal. It is troubling enough that the English-speaking figurehead of a show titled "Dialogue" should launch an offensive personal attack against an international colleague. What's even more concerning is that, as the employee of a state media outlet, his comments are apparently sanctioned. Beijing announced a 100-day crackdown on illegal foreigners--those living or working without visas--last Tuesday, according to the BBC. (Chan and other ... Continue reading →

Nir Elias / REUTERSA view from the Shanghai World Trade Center building. China's most populous city and an aspiring global financial center, is also among the world's most vulnerable urban areas to a rise in sea levels as global warming melts polar ice. Shanghai’s skyline glitters with sleek financial skyscrapers and glossy residential towers, but below the city’s lustrous facade lies an enduring problem. Thanks to mass urban migration, soft soil and global warming, Shanghai is sinking, and has been for decades. Since 1921, China‘s most populous city has descended more than six feet. Across China, land subsidence affects more than 50 cities, where 49,000 square miles of land have descended at least 8 inches. It’s not just the numbers that are frightening: The problem ... Continue reading →

NARANGI, India — Dozens of dredging boats scour the bottom of the Vaitarna creek all day as workers build pyramids of excavated sand in the villages along its banks. By night, thousands of trucks clog a narrow highway to deliver the sand to construction sites in the sprawling commercial hub of Mumbai nearby. The fishing village of Narangi in western India and the sand-mining frenzy there illustrate one of the most important questions India faces in its march to become a 21st-century economic powerhouse: Can this nation of 1.2 billion people pursue economic growth without destroying its environment? Villagers say the rampant sand mining is depleting groundwater tables, increasing the risk of floods and ruining the quality of soil.The situation in Narangi is typical. Despite ... Continue reading →

Here's Chen Guangcheng arriving at Washington Square Village. He's speaking now. http://t.co/fOXV2PlN Continue reading →

The splashy introduction of the new LEGO friends line earlier this year stirred up a lot of controversy. My goal with this set of posts is to provide some historical perspective for the valid concerns raised in this heated debate. ———————— 1989-2003: Gender Ahoy! I discussed the introduction of LEGOs the invention of gendered minifigs, and early efforts to market separately to girls and boys in Part I of this series, covering 1932 to 1988. The segregation of LEGO into feminine and masculine sets would escalate beginning in 1989. That year the LEGO group introduced gender to the minifig in a big way with the new Pirates theme. The masculine figs sported copious facial hair and the lone feminine pirate had lipstick and a curved ... Continue reading →