| MAP | 6.7 | 2010/02/18 01:13:17 | 42.561 | 130.836 | 562.5 | CHINA-RUSSIA-NORTH KOREA BORDER REGION |
| Magnitude | 6.7 |
|---|---|
| Date-Time |
|
| Location | 42.561°N, 130.836°E |
| Depth | 562.5 km (349.5 miles) set by location program |
| Region | CHINA-RUSSIA-NORTH KOREA BORDER REGION |
| Distances | 110 km (70 miles) NE of Chongjin, North Korea 110 km (70 miles) SW of Vladivostok, Russia 580 km (360 miles) NE of PYONGYANG, North Korea 1080 km (670 miles) NW of TOKYO, Japan |
By Zuo Likun (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-02-10 10:34
Insomnia-inflicted Liu Xianjin, chief prosecutor in Maoming city, leaped eight floors to his death at his home in south China's Guangdong province at dawn on February 5.
This is the fifth publicized unnatural death of a Chinese official so far this year, according to available statistics summed by Nanfang Daily.
The macabre figure was thirteen in 2009, six of which occurred in December alone, the newspaper said.
1. CFR Recording Suggests Creating False Scarcity To Drive Up Demand ..."3 Nov 2009 ... Steve Watson | Laughter as dignitaries discuss making vaccine mandatory, tricking public into taking it."
2. CFR Unveils Global Governance Agenda"31 Mar 2009 ... Daniel Taylor | The Council on Foreign Relations, often described as the real state department, has launched an initiative to promote and ..."
3. Obama Picks CFR Insider to Head Treasury"Kurt Nimmo | Federal Reserve Bank of New York president, CFR member, and Rockefeller Group of Thirty insider Tim Geithner fits the bill for the sort of ..."
4. CFR Boss Richard Haass on Colbert"Colbert Nation | Richard Haass believes this century has the potential for America to cooperate with other countries to make the world safer, says Colbert ..."
5. Obama Feigns Ignorance of CFR, NAU"Kurt Nimmo | Makes a funny about secret handshakes and pretends he has never heard of the NAU."
6. CFR backs amnesty for illegals, opposes Arpaio-style raids"Pheonix BizJournal | A CFR task force headed by ASU professor Raul H. Yzaguirre and fmr. Gov. Jeb Bush outlines plans for guest workers and amnesty mirror ..."
7. Corporate CFR Members Get Most of the Bailout Money"25 Apr 2009 ... New American | Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner served as a staff member of the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations before ..."
8. We Are Change Confronts CFR Vice Chairman Robert Rubin"Rubin tells Change he is on the other side, that is to say the side that wants to destroy American sovereignty and marshal in a New World Order, ..."
9. CFR: Vaccines No More Harmful Than Tuna Sandwich"Kurt Nimmo | The 1500 percent increase in autism since 1991 is directly related to thimerosal in vaccines, not the consumption of tuna salad."
10. Napolitano Reports to CFR on Stasi Snoop Network"Kurt Nimmo | Napolitano says the state needs to recruit an army of spies, snoops , and rat finks."
11. Bill Richardson at 2008 CFR-meeting: Bilderberg Bankers are all ..."15 Apr 2009 ... New Mexico Governor and former democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson has stated that Barack Obama was favoured for the American ..."
12. CFR Professor Reveals Plot for Military Coup in 2012"FederalJack.com | During at panel session at the FIU New World Order Summit, Dr. Mark B. Rosenberg raised the concern about the possibility of a military ..."
13. Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman, CFR Member Picked for State ..."Wall Street Journal | The Obama administration picked Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Vice Chairman Robert Hormats to be the State Department's undersecretary for ..."
14. Obama Appoints Top Notch CFR, Bilderberg Members"Kurt Nimmo | The Obama administration is rife with CFR and Bilderberg operatives ."
Google's corporate development and chief legal officer, David Drummond, posted a statement Tuesday on the company's official blog, saying it was "reviewing the feasibility of our business operations in China."
According to the statement, the disputes with the Chinese government on Internet regulation and major cyber attacks on his company allegedly originated from China have forced Google to consider exiting.
For overseas businesses, including Google, they should respect laws and regulations as well as relevant policies of their host countries, which is a standard international practice for multinational companies.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Thursday at a regular press conference that "China welcomes international Internet companies to conduct business within the country according to law."
The world Internet giant has been blamed by the Chinese government for showing too many links to pornographic contents in its search results and thus breaking the Chinese law.
Currently, Google is also handling a case with Chinese writers over online books copyright disputes.
According to a list provided by Google at the end of 2009, its on-line library involves some 80,000 categories of Chinese books, 10 percent of which were works of 2,600 members of the Chinese Writers Association.
On the other hand, cyber attacks are a commonplace issue across the globe even if countries have been making every effort to combat hackers.
"China's law prohibits cyber crimes including hacker attacks," Jiang said
On Tuesday, China's largest Internet search engine Baidu, which is also Google's major rival in the Chinese market, suffered an hacker attack that paralyzed its website for more than three hours.
Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer has said that "There are attacks every day ...We're attacked every day from all parts of the world and I think everybody else is too. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary."
So it's far-fetched to blame China as a scapegoat for cyber attacks just because Google said something about that....
Asia has emerged as a diplomatic hornet’s nest for the U.S. even beyond the perennial threat of North Korea, with strains in Japan and China.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the Obama administration feels assured of Japan's commitment to the bilateral security alliance, even as Tokyo weighs abandoning the 2006 deal on relocating the U.S. Futenma military base.
Chinese officials have said that they plan to launch their Tiangong-1 space station by the end of next year or in 2011, according to a report on CCTV.
Qi Faren, Shenzhou-5 designer, said, “Quality is the key to technology. We must guarantee a successful launch. We will launch it whenever we are ready. It will be the end of 2010, or the beginning of 2011.”
Tiangong-1 will be an 8- ton orbital module. Artists concepts show it to be somewhat similar to the early Soviet Salyut space stations. Crews of the Shenzhou 8, Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10 spacecraft will conduct experiments aboard it during a 2-year period. The Shenzhou are based on Soviet-era Soyuz vehicles, which are still in use today.
The Chinese plan to fly several Tiangong stations, each with enhancements. Eventually, Tiangong will be modified to serve as a core module for a much larger facility, as was done with the Soviet Mir facility and the International Space Station.
Read the full story.
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/12/30/china-launch-tiangong1-space-station-2010/
BEIJING, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) — The following were the top 10 events around the world in 2009 as selected by Xinhua: 1. International naval forces jointly battle Somali pirates
Piracy continued to be rampant off the Somali coast in 2009. Nearly 40 vessels were hijacked and 500 crew members onboard have been held hostage so far this year.
China sent its first escort mission to the Gulf of Aden off Somalia on Jan. 7. Its fourth mission is now part of a multinational coalition of warships patrolling the pirate-infested area.
On Nov. 6-7, naval officers from Russia, India, the European Union, Japan and the multinational Combined Maritime Forces met in Beijing to coordinate their efforts to protect ships from Somali pirates.
2. Obama takes office, leading U.S. into era of change
On Jan. 20, Democrat Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th U.S. president, thus becoming the first African American president in the country’s history.
With the banner of “changes we believe” during his presidential campaign, Obama called for “a world without nuclear weapons” in an April address in Prague, sought “a new beginning” of relations with the Muslim world in Cairo in June, and looked to strengthen ties with the Asian countries in an Asian policy speech when he visited Tokyo in November.
President Obama brought about changes to U.S. foreign policy after he unveiled new Iraq and Afghanistan strategies, revised plans for a missile defense shield in Europe, and stressed his focus on Asia, especially on East Asia.
3. Six-party talks deadlocked after DPRK nuclear test
On Jan. 30, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced it was scrapping all agreements with South Korea preventing political and military confrontation between the two sides.
On April 14, the DPRK quit the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula in protest of a UN condemnation on its launch of a satellite.
On June 12, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution that allowed wider sanctions against the DPRK after Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test in May and fired several ballistic missiles in June.
In a letter to the president of the UN Security Council, the DPRK said “reprocessing of spent fuel rods was at its final phase” at the end of August.
When meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Oct. 5., top DPRK leader Kim Jong Il said his country was willing to attend multilateral talks, including the six-party talks, based on progress at the DPRK-U.S. talks.
4. U.S.-Russian satellite collision calls for better space traffic management
On Feb. 10, a privately owned U.S. communications satellite collided with a defunct Russian satellite about 790 km over Russia’s Siberia, spewing a pair of massive debris clouds and sparking fears that the debris might threaten other spacecraft.
The collision between the U.S. and Russian satellites, the first “car crash” in outer space, highlighted an urgent need to better manage increasingly dense space traffic.
The U.S. satellite was owned by the Iridium satellite company, which operates a constellation of 66 low Earth orbiting satellites that provide global mobile voice and data communications.
The Russian satellite Cosmos 2251 launched in 1993 was presumed non-operational.
5. China-U.S. relations redefined
On April 1, Chinese President Hu Jintao met with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama on the sidelines of a Group of 20 (G-20) summit on the financial crisis in London.
They agreed to build a positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship for the 21st century and establish the China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogues mechanism to deepen bilateral cooperation.
On July 27-28, the first round of the strategic and economic dialogues ended in Washington, with the two countries pledging to intensify bilateral ties and expand cooperation in economic and financial sectors as well as on major international and regional issues.
Hu made a five-point proposal on promoting China-U.S. relations while meeting with Obama in Beijing on Nov. 17.
6. Countries begin mass vaccination in fight against A/H1N1 flu
On June 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the A/H1N1 influenza alert to the highest Level 6, formally declaring that the outbreak had developed into a global pandemic.
On Sept. 7, China’s State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) approved the release of the initial batch of the A/H1N1 vaccine, making the country the first in the world to be ready with a vaccine against the virus.
Shortly afterward, a number of countries launched mass vaccination programs against A/H1N1 flu after Australia, Hungary and the United States approved the vaccines.
At least 11,516 people worldwide have been killed by A/H1N1 influenza since the new flu virus was first identified in April, the WHO said in a report on Dec. 20.
The virus remains active in regions across Europe and Asia, but the speed of its spread has eased, the report said.
7. Democratic Party wins landslide in Japan’s general election
On Aug. 30, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won the lower house election by a landslide, sweeping the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) out of almost unbroken power since 1955.
After the DPJ’s victory, Japan seemed to be on the road to a two-party system.
The DPJ formed a tripartite coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the People’s New Party (PNP) on Sept. 16. The DPJ-led government decided to abolish the top bureaucrats’ meetings so that it could put politicians in charge of decision-making.
In diplomacy, while maintaining Japan’s long-standing alliance with the United States, the new government sought to create a “relationship of equals.”
By urging the creation of an “East Asian Community,” Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama also wanted to forge stronger ties with neighboring Asian countries.
8. World economy slowly emerging from crisis
The world economy plunged into a severe recession triggered by the global financial crisis in September 2008. The recession dragged down the economic growth of the United States, the euro zone and Japan as well as the world’s emerging economies.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected in an October report that global output would contract 1.1 percent in 2009, the first time since World War II.
The Group of 20 (G-20) governments launched major fiscal stimulus programs to foster global economic recovery after agreeing to reform international financial institutions and tighten financial regulations at summits in London and Pittsburgh.
Through close global cooperation, the international financial market has been stabilized and major Western economies have shown clear signs of recovery in the second half of this year. The IMF predicts the world economic growth in 2010 will reach 3.1 percent.
9. Start of Lisbon Treaty opens new era for EU
On Nov. 19, Belgian Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy was chosen as the first full-time EU president and British EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton as foreign policy chief of the 27-nation bloc at a special EU summit.
On Dec. 1, the Treaty of Lisbon approved by all 27 EU members came into force, stating the EU is “heading into a new era.”
The treaty features new rules to accelerate decision-making so that the EU can respond more swiftly to global issues such as defense, energy security, climate change and migration.
The Lisbon Treaty is a simplified version of a constitution treaty that was approved by EU leaders in 2004 but was aborted due to French and Dutch voters’ rejection in 2005.
10. Copenhagen meeting ends with non-binding climate accord
Frequent extreme weather events in 2009 such as tropical cyclones and flooding aroused concerns by the international community. Some 15,000 representatives from 190 countries, including 100 heads of states or governments, gathered in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Conference on Dec. 7.
The participants were expected to renew emissions reduction targets after the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
After 13 days of hectic negotiations,the meeting ended with a legally non-binding Copenhagen Accord. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the Copenhagen talks took “a significant step forward” in committing countries to responding to climate change.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/29/2009 11:53 -0500It appears that even after thoroughly dominating the US legislative, judicial and executive branches, the long tentacles of the squid have been no better than the Mongolian hordes at overcoming the Chinese Wall (which is ironic seeking how easy it is to ignore the same construct internally between the firm's prop and flow traders...and yes, we will be posting our response to Goldman shortly, we have not forgotten). In the meantime, half a world away, a small Chinese power generator, Shenzhen Nanshan Power, is blatantly refusing to honor contracts with Goldman Subsidiary J. Aron for $80 million in derivative losses, and it appears that China itself has decided to stand behind the small company.
Shenzhen Nanshan Power (000037.SZ) (200037.SZ) said in a statement that it received several notices from J. Aron & Company, a trading subsidiary of Goldman Sachs (GS.N), for at least $79.96 million as compensation for terminating oil option contracts. "We will not accept the demand by J. Aron for all the losses and related interests," said Nanshan, in line with the stance it took last December. "We will try our best to negotiate with J. Aron and resolve the dispute peacefully...but the possibility of using a lawsuit can not be ruled out when talks fail," it added. "J. Aron told us in one notice that if we do not pay the money, they will reserve the right to launch a lawsuit and will not send us any further notice." The State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said in September that it would back state-owned companies in any legal action against the foreign banks that sold them oil derivatives, which resulted in losses when oil prices dived late last year. [ID:nPEK14474] A Beijing-based Goldman Sachs corporate communication official declined to comment.
Not sure what Hank Paulson's former firm would comment: alas the Chinese communist party still has to be filled with Goldman alumni. That being said, this is precisely the track that Goldman has been focusing on for the past few years. At this point, the firm realizes all too well that dominating power politics in China in the near futures is far more critical than complete control over D.C., as there is little the world's most important company can do domestically in the context of taxpayer capital transfer without a full fledged revolution.
Dr. Raju M. Mathew writes: China is always a mystery. Nobody knows the depth and complexity of the problems of the Chinese Economy and Society, including the scholars and bureaucrats in China. Their words or expressions are confusing and self contradictory. The Chinese mind has been shaped by Confucius, then a series of wars, defeats and external dominances; then Mao and Chinese Communism and finally the Market Economy and Globalization. Globalization made a small group in China as super-rich who want to have all the pleasures enjoyed by the western billionaires. READ MORE ....
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article16083.html
