CRI中国国际广播电台 News & Reports, 2012-08-18（打印版）

The United Nations is set to end its monitoring mission in Syria on Sunday, just days before its mandate expires.

Brittain says it will not allow safe passage out of the country for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been taking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao meets visiting Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla Miranda over bilateral ties.

And China's first bank for sci-tech innovation, the SPD Silicon Valley Bank, opens in Shanghai.

The United Nations is due to end its monitoring mission in Syria on Sunday, just days before its mandate expires.

A 30-person strong civilian office is going to be set up in Damascus to maintain political contact with Syria.

"The Security Council has established two conditions in order to extent or not the presence of UNSMIS in Syria. Those two conditions were the cessation of the use of heavy weapons and the reduction in violence from all sides. So, in my briefing today to the council on behalf of the Secretary-General, I informed the council that those two have not been achieved. So the mission will come to an end at midnight on Sunday."

Meantime, UN officials are expressing hope that veteran envoy al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, who has previously served in Afghanistan and Iraq, will take over as the international mediator to replace Kofi Annan who resigned two weeks ago.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague says London will not be allowing Assange safe passage out of the country:

"We're disappointed by the statement by Ecuador's Foreign Minister today that Ecuador has offered political asylum to Julian Assange. It's important to understand that this is not about Mr Assange's attitudes at WikiLeaks or the attitude of the United States of America. He is wanted in Sweden to answer allegations of serious sexual offences. We are determined to fulfill our legal obligations under the extradition act to Sweden."

Meanwhile, the Organization of American States met yesterday to discuss the dispute between Ecuador and the United Kingdom.

"The Ecuadorian government today wishes to file on record before this Inter-American organization that the United Kingdom's attitude violates the norms of international law, every state ought to resolve their differences by going through the channels of conflict resolution as prescribed in international law."

Earlier, Britain had threatened to raid the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Assange and extradite him to Sweden.

Assange's defence team is vowing to take the case to the International Court of Justice if Britain doesn't let him go.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says Sino-Costa Rican relations not only benefits the peoples of both countries, but also promotes China's friendliness with Central America.

Wen Jiabao made the comments when meeting with visiting Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla Miranda.

"China has only established the diplomatic ties with Costa Rica for five years, but there are good progress in the cooperation of politics, commerce and culture. An important symbol is that we have reached a Free Trade Agreement which has been in effect. This will boost the development of the economies of both countries for sure. "

For her part, Laura Chinchilla Miranda said that Costa Rica was willing to enlarge cooperation with China in various fields, including trade, infrastructure, and education.

Costa Rica will also play an active role to promote China's cooperation with Latin American countries during its rotating presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

Chinese Rear Admiral: Chinese Ocean Surveillance Ship Patrols off the Coast of the Diaoyu Islands

Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo, director of the Expert Consultation Committee of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, says China has taken effective actions to defend the country's sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands. Yin confirmed that China has sent its ocean surveillance ship to patrol in waters 12 nautical miles off Diaoyu Islands.

"Our country has taken effective measures to assert China's sovereignty over the islands. For example, Chinese ocean surveillance ship patrols in waters 12 nautical miles off Diaoyu Islands and expel Japanese patrol ships. When the Japanese patrol ships come to intercept us, we warn that 'the Diaoyu Islands belong to China and you have intruded into China's territorial waters'. Both this action and the Hong Kong activists' actions are actions to safeguard state sovereignty."

Yin also believes that Japan's arrest of the 14 Chinese is in gross violation of international law.

South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers has confirmed that the clashes between police and the protesting miners have left at least 36 people dead.

The shootout erupted Thursday afternoon as police attempted to disperse armed striking miners at Lonmin' s Marikana mine in the northern province.

Secretary General of the National Union of Mineworkers Frans Baleni has demanded a full investigation:

"Any of our members if they can be found to be involved one way or another with violent activities, the NUM will deal with those members. We are also appealing that the police and law enforcement agents must fully investigate this carnage which led to ten people (being killed), but to ensure that there is successful prosecution."

President Jacob Zuma has said he is "shocked and dismayed" at what appears to be one of the bloodiest police operations since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.

World grain prices have surged due to the ongoing US drought, the worst in more than 50 years. It has brought formidable challenges to the stability and development of developing countries especially those poor countries.

An expert with International Food Policy Research Institute is calling on the international community to take measures to rein in the prices increases.

Fan Shenggen, director general of International Food Policy Research Institute, says this year's US drought has caused the second surge in world grain prices in five years.

At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, crop prices have soared in response to drought damage. The corn price has reached record high of 8.4 US dollars a bushel.

"The next year will see the influence of this year's drought. Far more important is that there will be more extreme weather in the future. It will affect the world grain production more often. Therefore, it will continue affecting us in the future."

In such a case, analysts worry that grain exports may be banned because many poor countries suffered great difficulties in the last food crisis.

Fan says that the US as the biggest country of grain export should take some measures to handle the food price influence because of the US drought.

"US should first stop the production of biofuels. The US uses 40% of corn to produce biofuels. This is the main reason of corn shortage, also the reason for corn price hike."

The food security refers to the international stability and development especially the developing countries. Fan believes the developing countries should accord great importance to the food supply and adopt timely measures to tackle high grain prices.

"For the developing countries, they should use some of their food reserve to help those people in need. In the long term, these countries should invest more on agricultural research to improve the country's grain production. Moreover, they should invest more in climate change."

Fan also notes the food security is very pivotal for China with the largest population in the world. Fan says China has many ways to guarantee food security. First, China has more potential to increase its food production. Furthermore, the country could increase other countries' production through investment and technology transfer. As long as the world market has ample agricultural products, China could even import them to ensure food supply.

China's first bank for sci-tech innovation, the SPD Silicon Valley Bank, has opened in Shanghai.

The project is jointly invested by the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and America's Silicon Valley Bank with 157-million-U.S-dollars.

"Such a bank will focus on the small and medium-sized sci-tech enterprises and centralize its resources to serve them and satisfy their needs. It will play a leading role in promoting the whole financial industry to serve the small and medium-sized sci-tech enterprises."

The bank is the first financing joint-venture approved by China's Banking Regulatory Commission since 1997.

If digital reading is a trend that book fairs have paid a lot of attention to, the ongoing Shanghai Book Fair has been trying something new to make it more digital by using social networking websites to promote itself. Let's find out more with Yunfeng.

Chen Zhengyun is an animation editor who has been visiting the Shanghai book fair since its inception. He says he found useful information on weibo.

"I used sina weibo's search engine to find some interesting events. I am working in the animation industry. I found some of the activities during this book fair helpful to me."

Chen is among over 300 million users of sina weibo, a twitter like Chinese social networking site. Shuxiangshanghai meaning "the book's fragrance in Shanghai" is the official organization users among many that officially connect to the Shanghai Book Fair. It now has more than 110 thousand followers and the numbers keeps rising quickly. Zhou Siqin is the deputy director of the Shanghai Press and Publication Bureau's General Office.

"During this past few days, we obviously feel that the book fair has become a hot topic on weibo, and the number of followers is rising quickly."

To better promote the activities and events of the book fair, Zhou Siqin said her ten people team started Shuxiangshanghai weibo more than half a year ago. Every day they release news about the fair, and select and post related weibo that has been posted by partners. Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing Group has its own weibo, and been cooperating well with Shuxiangshanghai. Chen Zheng is the President. He explains why the publishing house also values weibo so much.

"We consider Weibo a new way of marketing for our books. Before and during the events we hold we would post weibo to inform our followers. "

The Literature and Art Publishing House invited Cloud Atlas's David Mitchell to this book fair.

Chen Zheng further tells that weibo posts helped to make the Shanghai book talk a successful one.

"His Shanghai fans are looking forward to his coming. Before he came to Shanghai, David Mitchell visited Beijing. Two staff from the company followed him in Beijing and kept updating his whereabouts and activities there onto weibo. Our followers on weibo knew this and became anxious to see him appear at the Shanghai book fair."

In a way, sina weibo's more than 224 thousand entries with key words "2012 Shanghai Book Fair" shows the enthusiasm that the readers love this year's book fair. In fact, the organizer has to add evening shifts to cater for more visitors who want to visit the down venue, the exhibition center in Shanghai.

Freshmen from various chinese provinces can get a special subsidy from the government this year.

Students from poor families can receive up to 1000 yuan to cover travel expenses from their home to the universities.

China Education Development Foundation has started a program under the Education Ministry to subsidize poor high school graduates from 22 provinces in middle and western China.

Students can get 500 yuan to cover the travel fee and short-term living cost if they are admitted by universities or colleges located in their province of origin.

Director of the program Mr. Zhang says the program fills in the gap between high school and universities, and ensures the continuity of subsidy to students.

"China has set up a complete system to help and support poor students, which can cover preschool period, compulsory education, high school, and also university. The point is some students cannot afford the traveling expenses, and they do not have money for living after arriving at the university. So this project aims at solving these problems."

"Money for our project comes from a special public lottery welfare fund generated by the central government named 'Plan Runyu'. The total amount of 140 billion yuan will be used to help 220 thousand students in middle and western China, which has covered 4.2 percent of the high school graduates this year."

Students can apply for the subsidy from their high schools or go directly to a local Student Assistance Administration.

An official at a local administration of Changsha County in Hunan Province says students must go through an investigation into the financial conditions of their families before the money is handed down.

"We have quotas. Not every poor student can get the money. There is no clear standard for defining poor. But we do have an evaluation procedure for those admitted by universities and have difficulties. They should apply first, and than wait for schools to publish the result."

The official adds, due to weak publicity of the project and some poor families having no access to the media, some students have missed the application deadline.

The subsidies will be given out to students before the end of this month, since they are setting out for schools in September.

The Ministry of Education now says more security guards will be deployed in primary and middle schools as well as kindergartens to maintain better schoolyard security.

It announced that by 2013, the education facilities in the country will have at least one guard.

It also said there will be safety education before holidays and after new semesters begin. Also, there will be at least one safety emergency drill during each semester.

Besides, patrolling and cutting out safety irregularities around schools will also be introduced.

In one of these cases, a doctor in Nanping county, East China's Fujian province, stabbed eight students to death in a primary school in March 2010.

As summer vacations coming to an end, many high school students faced with piles of homework found a solution - hiring ghostwriters.

Some university students stayed at the campus during the summer holiday and make money by doing homework for senior high school students.

They even say a large discount will be given to the students if they organize themselves in groups of at least 10.

According to a news report, a whole class at a middle high school in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, sought help from ghostwriters during this summer vacation.

Teachers and parents, who are well aware of the phenomena, say they understand the students, as they are faced with too many assignments.

Experts say this also contributes to some students wanting to seek overseas schooling, where they consider could really sharpen their abilities of learning and researching.

The European Commission said it could shortly make legislative proposals that force manufacturers to distribute tobacco products across Europe in plain packaging.

The move comes following a ground-breaking Australian court ruling, which requires cigarettes to be sold in un-branded uniform packaging with graphic health warnings.

The World Health Organization, which blames smoking for six million deaths per year, expressed its hope that the decision taken in Australia would trigger a global "domino effect."

(参考) Cigarette packaging designs have become increasingly luxurious and exquisite: soft or hard paper, plastic or metal packs holding five, eight, 16 or 20 cigarettes incorporating dull polishing, gold-stamping or platinum-plated surfaces and with an upper hinge, side hinge or sliding lid are all examples of this trend.

It's found that white U.S. men and women with 16 years or more of schooling have life expectancies far greater than black Americans with fewer than 12 years of education.

They say that education exerts its benefits on healthier lifestyles, better ability to cope with stress, and more privileged social position.

Therefore, scientists call on policymakers to implement educational enhancements at young, middle, and older ages for people of all races, to reduce the large gap in health and longevity that persists today.

CRI中国国际广播电台 News & Reports, 2012-08-18（在线收听）