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New UN campaign focuses on food safety

The United Nations launched a food safety campaign on April 7 at a time when millions are dying of hunger or tainted produce, as more and more people fall ill from eating too much.

"Food safety, quality and quantity must go together," said Margaret Chan, director-general of the UN World Health Organization.

She was speaking at the Rungis wholesale market in Paris, where she launched World Health Day 2015 under the theme: "From farm to plate, make food safe."

Millions around the world wage a daily battle to obtain safe food, and the WHO says about 2 million people die each year from food-borne and waterborne diseases.

Many things can contaminate food on its long production chain including viruses, bacteria, parasites or chemicals from polluted water. Tainted food causes more than 200 diseases ranging in severity from diarrhea to cancers.

According to initial figures from a WHO report due to be released later this year, about 582 million people suffered from 22 different food-borne diseases in 2010, and 351,000 died.

More than 40 percent of people who fell ill were children under 5, and poor countries, particularly in Africa, were hardest hit.

AIIB scouts globally for top talent

The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank has not been formally established, but the global hunt for talent has already begun.

In early March, a workshop on the institutional development of the new bank was held behind closed doors in Beijing.

But only one of the attendees shown in a photograph published later was Chinese. That was Jin Liqun, chairman of the Multilateral Interim Secretariat of the AIIB.

The two-day workshop discussed the global financial and banking environment and the social framework of multilateral banks, governing structures and procurement policies. Similar topics were discussed at a meeting of delegates in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at the end of March.

The meetings drew officials from major multilateral financial organizations, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Executives with working experience in international institutions are what the AIIB is looking for as it seeks to develop standards relating to transparency and lending.

Matthew Dalzell, previously a special adviser to New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade who later worked for the World Bank, is now the senior operational expert in the Interim Secretariat, according to his page on LinkedIn, the online business connection website.

New air routes set to alleviate congestion

China aims to solve its serious air traffic congestion and flight delays by opening 10 one-way air passages, senior civil aviation officials said.

"Over the past 10 years, the number of flights using China's airspace has continued to increase 10 percent year-on-year, but our airspace that can be used by civil airlines is only one-third of that in the United States and the number of our air traffic controllers is about half of that of the US," said Che Jinjun, director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China's air traffic management bureau.

The limited airspace and shortage of air traffic professionals have resulted in severe delays, he added, noting that under the current airspace management mechanism, one feasible solution is to optimize current flight routes.

Wang Zhiqing, deputy head of the Civil Aviation Administration, said the nation's air traffic management system is expected to handle more than 10 million flights in 2017.

"The current air traffic management system makes it very difficult to spare a large area of airspace for airlines, so we have to make the best use of the existing resources," he added.

System targets Chinese tourists' behavior

A new measure has been introduced aimed at ending inappropriate behavior by Chinese tourists.

According to the China National Tourism Administration, such behavior includes violating order on public transportation - including flights - damaging public facilities or historical relics, ignoring social customs at tourism destinations, and becoming involved with gambling or prostitution.

Records will be kept by provincial and national tourism authorities for up to two years, starting from the day the misbehavior was confirmed by tourism authorities.

If necessary, they will also be handed to public security, customs, frontier inspection, transport and banking authorities. Tourists are allowed to appeal.

The move follows incidents involving Chinese tourists that triggered controversy.

During the three-day Tomb Sweeping holiday, three Chinese tourists were arrested in Japan for alleged sexual harassment. Under local law, one of them who allegedly used a mobile phone to take upskirt photos could face one year in prison or a fine of 1 million yen ($8,300).

In December, a flight from Bangkok to Nanjing was forced to turn back about 90 minutes after takeoff because two Chinese passengers created a disturbance.

Traffic woes increase on urban area roads

Nearly a third of the world's 50 most congested cities are in China, with Beijing ranking 19th, according to a traffic congestion report covering more than 200 cities worldwide.

Taipei is the most congested city in China, ranking 13th on the list.

Chongqing ranks 15th, making it the most congested city on the Chinese mainland, followed by Tianjin (17th) and Beijing, according to the report. Of the top 50 cities with the highest congestion levels, 15 are in China.

The report was released by TomTom, which makes navigation and mapping products and has its headquarters in Amsterdam. It covered 218 cities in 36 countries and regions. All data, collected last year, was based on GPS measurements from the company's traffic database.

Istanbul in Turkey was the most congested city, with a congestion level of 58 percent, which indicates a 58 percent increase in overall travel times in the city when compared with traffic flowing freely.

Activists seek proof of US weed killer's safety

Three environmentalists in Beijing have filed a case in Beijing No 3 Intermediate People's Court requesting that the Ministry of Agriculture make public toxicological test reports on the popular weed killer Roundup, a product of US agrochemical giant Monsanto that is in use around the world.

The court action comes a few weeks after an agency of the World Health Organization declared that an ingredient used in Roundup is likely to cause cancer.

The court accepted the case and included Monsanto as an interested party, Yang Xiaolu, one of the environmentalists, said in an interview on April 6. The court has yet to schedule the case, he said.

The court action was taken after the herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was classified as "probably carcinogenic to humans"by the International Agency for Research on Cancer - the cancer specialist of the World Health Organization - based on epidemiological, animal and in vitro studies.

Navy wins praise for evacuating foreigners

China has joined the elite humanitarian club of countries that are able to bring non-nationals to safety from danger zones, after evacuating hundreds of Chinese citizens and foreigners from war-torn Yemen.

The People's Liberation Army navy won global plaudits by conducting four major evacuations from two ports against a backdrop of gunfire and explosions.

Any single evacuation operation requires a considerable amount of planning and coordination. However, the obstacles faced when taking 279 foreigners from 15 countries to safety increase dramatically, not least because of the language difficulties.

To do it days after evacuating fellow citizens makes it all the more remarkable, observers said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing said in a statement on its website on April 2 that 10 foreign governments - Pakistan, Ethiopia, Singapore, Italy, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Britain, Canada and Yemen - had requested China's help.

Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said it was the first time China had carried out a specific evacuation of foreign nationals from a danger zone.

The first mission took place in the southern port city of Aden on March 29 when 122 Chinese people were evacuated.

Ranks of super wealthy soar despite slowdown

Although the nation's economic growth has slowed over the past year, the number of super rich people has expanded to a record high, according to the recently released China Ultra High Net Wealth Report 2014-2015.

The number of people from the Chinese mainland who hold assets worth at least 500 million yuan ($81.35 million; 74.31 million euros) has exceeded 17,000, according to the report.

From 2008 to 2013, the report generally listed no more than 1,000 names. The report was jointly released by China Minsheng Bank and the Hurun Research Institute on April 2 in Beijing.

But the number in this year's list reached an all-time high.

(China Daily European Weekly 04/10/2015 page2)