Watches Jailed China Nobel winner asks wife to collect prize

Jailed China Nobel winner asks wife to collect prize


Protesters drink champagne as they celebrate jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize during a demonstration outside the China liaison office in Hong Kong October 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Bobby Yip)
BEIJING (Reuters) - Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has asked his wife to travel to Norway to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize, she told Reuters on Tuesday.

"Xiaobo told me he hopes I can go to Norway to receive the prize for him," Liu Xia said by telephone from her house where she is under virtual house arrest.


Protesters drink champagne as they celebrate jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize during a demonstration outside the China liaison office in Hong Kong October 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Bobby Yip)
"I think it will be very difficult," she added, when asked if she thought the government would allow her to go.

Liu Xia said the government had not yet explicitly told her she would not be allowed to go to Norway. The prize will be formally bestowed on Dec. 10 in Oslo.

China said on Tuesday that giving the Nobel Peace Prize to a jailed dissident showed a lack of respect for its legal system, in further criticism of an award that has stirred tensions over human rights.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Lincoln Fast)
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Enjoy China rails on about Norway and dissident's Nobel

China rails on about Norway and dissident's Nobel


Beijing, China (CNN) -- China on Tuesday stepped up criticism of Norway and the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a leading Chinese dissident.
Liu is serving an 11-year prison term after repeatedly calling for human rights and democratization.
"The Norwegian Nobel committee's decision to give Liu the Nobel Peace Prize will damage bilateral relations. There is reason for every Chinese person to be unhappy," Ma Zhaoxu, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a news briefing.
"We already made our position clear. Since reform and opening up, China has made remarkable progress," Ma said. "By giving a convicted person the Nobel Peace Prize, they show no respect for China's judicial system."
"It not only disrespects China, but also reveals their true intentions. If you try to change China's political system from the outside, or if they are trying to stop Chinese people from moving forward, that is obviously making a mistake," he added.
Video: China censors Nobel coverage Video: Wife of Nobel Prize winner detained Video: Liu Xiaobo wins Nobel Peace Prize
Liu was sentenced in 2009 for inciting subversion of state power. He is the co-author of Charter 08, a call for political reform and human rights, and was an adviser to the student protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Asked about Liu's wife, Liu Xia, Ma responded: "I do not know who you are talking about. I am not familiar with this person."
Liu Xia remains under house arrest in Beijing and has been banned from talking to friends or media, Liu Xiaobo's lawyer said. She is trying to visit the attorney to discuss an appeal to her husband's sentence.
"She is negotiating with the police on the terms of the visit," Shang Baojun, the lawyer, told CNN. "The issue of an appeal is not if, but when and how."
Shang confirmed that Liu Xia said her husband wanted her to go to Oslo to accept the award in December, but he is not optimistic about the prospect.
"It's way too early to think about her Norway trip, considering she can't even leave her house," he said.
Liu Xia briefly re-gained phone access Tuesday, talking to Shang and several friends, as well as a few media outlets, from a new mobile phone after police broke her old one. The new number has been disconnected again, her friends tweeted Tuesday evening.
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Watch UFO Sighting Causes Airport Closure in China

UFO Sighting Causes Airport Closure in China


Weather, terrorist threats--let's face it, airlines already have enough reasons for delays without bringing alien life into the mix. That, however, is seemingly what happened in the Inner Mongolia region of China, when a "flat and tubular" unidentified flying object shut down a major airport.

The UFO caused flights from Beijing and Shanghai to be diverted to other airports. This, according to British tabloid The Sun, is the third time this year that airfields in China have been closed because of unidentified craft.

This time the object was reportedly sighted via the radar screens of air traffic controllers who alerted the airport after failing to make contact with the object. A spokeswoman said of the event, "To guarantee security, aircraft had to land at secondary airports. Otherwise, it may have led to collision."

A space collision, naturally.
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Watch China and US in stand-off at climate talks

China and US in stand-off at climate talks


AFP/File – Smoke is seen rising from a chimmny in the northern port city of Tianjin where the UN Climate Change
TIANJIN, China (AFP) – UN climate talks were set to wrap up on Saturday with China and the United States locked in a stand-off, slowing down progress ahead of a major summit next month on global warming.
The major powers sparred throughout the six days of talks in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, prompting the hosts to warn on the penultimate day that the atmosphere for negotiation had deteriorated.
"I want to emphasise no compromise... on the interests of developing countries," the Chinese foreign ministry's special representative for climate change, Huang Huikang, told delegates on Friday.
"We are losing trust and confidence."
Delegates from more than 170 countries attended the latest round of the long-running United Nations negotiations that are aimed at eventually securing a binding global treaty on how to limit and cope with climate change.
World leaders failed to broker such a treaty in Copenhagen last year as developed and developing nations battled over who should carry more of the burden in cutting greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for global warming.
The Tianjin meeting was the last big gathering before an annual UN climate summit, which will be held in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10.
Delegates reported that progress had been made on some specific issues in Tianjin, but many others also said that negotiations were not moving quickly enough to limit global warming below dangerous levels.
"We want to call for greater urgency in the negotiations," Dessima Williams, Grenada delegate and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told reporters on Friday.
"We have seen some movement, we are pleased with the engagement and the atmosphere, but there's much more that needs to be done and greater urgency is needed."
Chinese delegate Huang on Friday repeated China's long-held positions that for progress to be made the United States and other rich nations must commit to making bigger cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
He said they must also give money and transfer technology to developing countries to help them cut their emissions and adapt to climate change.
"Now the key is there is a lack of substantive progress on the developed countries' side," Huang said.
The United States, meanwhile, has insisted all week that it will not provide climate funds unless the big developing countries such as China allow their greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts to be monitored and verified.
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Watch North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, 'visiting China with his son'

North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, 'visiting China with his son'

Speculation is growing that North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, is preparing to hand over power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, after reports that the two have travelled to China to win support for the change.

The reported visit comes weeks before a rare meeting of the North Korean Workers' party is expected to set in motion Kim Jong-un's accession in the world's only communist dynasty.

The South Korean broadcaster YTV and other media said the two were on their way to China, North Korea's only remaining ally, today. It would be Kim Jong-il's second visit this year.

Yonhap news agency quoted a senior official in Seoul as saying that "signs have been detected" that Kim had begun the journey on his special armoured train. "We are still trying to grasp the exact destination and purpose of the visit."

Kim is said to be afraid of flying, partly because travelling by plane makes him an easier target for assassination attempts.

Analysts believe the trip could be designed to introduce Jong-un to senior Chinese officials, and possibly to request aid and lay the groundwork for the resumption of six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

The visit comes a day after the former US president Jimmy Carter arrived in Pyongyang to seek the release of an American who has been sentenced to eight years in prison for entering the country illegally.

There was no word today on the progress of Carter's mercy mission, although reports suggested that the 85-year-old would return to the US with Aijalon Gomes, a 31-year-old an English teacher and Christian missionary, by Friday.

Carter, who arrived yesterday on a private jet accompanied by his wife, Rosalynn, is also expected to use the visit to engage in unofficial diplomacy with the regime, although the Obama administration has been quick to stress that he is on a private humanitarian visit.
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Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service China-N Korea river hit by floods

Enjoy Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service China-N Korea river hit by floods

More than 1,500 people have died in China in recent months.
China and North Korea have evacuated thousands of people from their homes after heavy rains burst the Yalu river, flooding areas near their border.

North Korean state media reported that 5,000 people had been moved in the city of Sinuiju and nearby villages.

China is continuing mass evacuations, with 94,000 people in the Dandong area being taken to safety after the Yalu burst its banks on Saturday.

Further rain is expected in the region, putting more pressure on rescue work.

North Korea's official KCNA news agency reported that water from Yalu - or Amnok, as it is known in Korean - had destroyed homes and buildings in five villages.

Sinuiju, in the North Pyongan province, was said to have been "severely affected", with residents trying to find safety on roof-tops or on higher ground.

The agency reported that Kim Jong-il, North Korea's leader, had deployed military units, including the air force and navy, to aid rescue efforts and move at least 5,150 people.

Sinuiju lies on a vital trade route for North Korea and previous flooding has exacerbated problems in a country where millions have died in famines over the last two decades.

'More rain'

In China, at least 200 houses have been destroyed in the city of Dandong, in Liaoning province, and four people are reported missing, state media say.

Xinhua news agency says that a local weather station on Sunday morning had forecasted more rains over the next 24 hours.

More than 1,500 people have died in China in recent months.

The latest flooding comes after the deaths of more than 700 people in China in a landslide triggered by heavy rains in Zhouqu county, Gansu, last week.

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Watched beng this China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy

Enjoy China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy
SHANGHAI — After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States, according to government figures released early Monday.
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The Takeaway: David Barboza on the Chinese Economy

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The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real and that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic superpower.

The recognition came early Monday, when Tokyo said that Japan’s economy was valued at about $1.28 trillion in the second quarter, slightly below China’s $1.33 trillion. Japan’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the quarter, Tokyo said, substantially less than forecast. That weakness suggests that China’s economy will race past Japan’s for the full year.

Experts say unseating Japan — and in recent years passing Germany, France and Great Britain — underscores China’s growing clout and bolsters forecasts that China will pass the United States as the world’s biggest economy as early as 2030. America’s gross domestic product was about $14 trillion in 2009.

“This has enormous significance,” said Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It reconfirms what’s been happening for the better part of a decade: China has been eclipsing Japan economically. For everyone in China’s region, they’re now the biggest trading partner rather than the U.S. or Japan.”

For Japan, whose economy has been stagnating for more than a decade, the figures reflect a decline in economic and political power. Japan has had the world’s second-largest economy for much of the last four decades, according to the World Bank. And during the 1980s, there was even talk about Japan’s economy some day overtaking that of the United States.

But while Japan’s economy is mature and its population quickly aging, China is in the throes of urbanization and is far from developed, analysts say, meaning it has a much lower standard of living, as well as a lot more room to grow. Just five years ago, China’s gross domestic product was about $2.3 trillion, about half of Japan’s.

This country has roughly the same land mass as the United States, but it is burdened with a fifth of the world’s population and insufficient resources.

Its per capita income is more on a par with those of impoverished nations like Algeria, El Salvador and Albania — which, along with China, are close to $3,600 — than that of the United States, where it is about $46,000.

Yet there is little disputing that under the direction of the Communist Party, China has begun to reshape the way the global economy functions by virtue of its growing dominance of trade, its huge hoard of foreign exchange reserves and United States government debt and its voracious appetite for oil, coal, iron ore and other natural resources.

China is already a major driver of global growth. The country’s leaders have grown more confident on the international stage and have begun to assert greater influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with things like special trade agreements and multibillion dollar resource deals.

“They’re exerting a lot of influence on the global economy and becoming dominant in Asia,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division. “A lot of other economies in the region are essentially riding on China’s coat tails, and this is remarkable for an economy with a low per capita income.”
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Celebrity enjoy this China holds day of mourning for Gansu landslide victims

We are saw this China holds day of mourning for Gansu landslide victims
China is holding a day of mourning for those killed in floods and mudslides, as the death toll rose to 1,239 people.

Public entertainment has been suspended, with cinemas and karaoke bars closed, and government offices and embassies are flying flags at half-mast, state media reported.

Teams are continuing to recover bodies in Gansu province in the wake of Saturday's landslides in Zhouqu county.

Another 505 people remain missing and thousands are in temporary shelters.

Continue reading the main story
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Chinese town reeling after landslide
Aerial view: Before and after
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Chinese health authorities say hygiene and safety for those left homeless is a priority, as concerns mount over a lack of clean drinking water.

Ahead of the day of mourning the Ministry of Culture issued a circular ruling that films, karaoke and online entertainment be suspended, Xinhua reported.

Shortly after midnight many Chinese websites had changed their front pages to black and white.

On Sunday morning, thousands of people gathered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to watch China's flag hoisted and then lowered to half mast.

Memorial ceremonies have also been held in Zhouqu itself and in Gansu's provincial capital, Lanzhou.

Threat of more floods
The BBC's Chris Hogg in Beijing says that large scale national mourning like this is rare in China.

There was a day of commemoration in April for the victims of the Yushu earthquake, and two years ago three days of mourning for the victims of the quake in Sichuan.


Threat of more floods
The BBC's Chris Hogg in Beijing says that large scale national mourning like this is rare in China.

There was a day of commemoration in April for the victims of the Yushu earthquake, and two years ago three days of mourning for the victims of the quake in Sichuan.

Continue reading the main story
Zhouqu landslide in figures


1,239 people confirmed dead
45,000 people evacuated
7,000-strong emergency crew deployed
300 buildings buried by mud
66% of county without power
Asian monsoon's range of devastation
In Zhouqu, soldiers are trying to remove debris from the Bailing River amid fears that more rain could cause it to overflow, causing more chaos for a town that is already one third underwater.

Heavy rain has been sweeping across central and western China for most of the week, with more rain forecast for Zhouqu county in the next few days.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs says at least 45,000 people have evacuated their homes.

Survivors are now living in tents, which are drenched through, pitched on unstable slopes.

Some cases of dysentery were reported by state media.

The government has brought in mobile water purification units, able to provide clean water for 30,000 people, according to China News Service.

Sichuan province to the south has also been affected, with 38 people still missing, after rains spread, triggering landslides.

According to Xinhua, the heavy rains have affected more than 305 million people across the country and cost $1.7bn (£1.1bn).
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