Briefly

Track-laying completed on railway sea crossing

Track-laying work on the country's first high-speed railway sea crossing was completed on Tuesday morning in East China's Fujian province. The 277-kilometer railway links Fuzhou, the provincial capital, with Xiamen, a port city. With a designed speed of 350 km/h and eight stations along the route, it is expected to slash the travel time between the two cities to just one hour. Construction workers overcame problems including the complicated marine environment and adopted advanced track-laying techniques to improve efficiency. On average, about 6 km of track was laid per day, according to China Railway Nanchang Group Co. The railway construction project is expected to be completed in 2023.

Guideline aimed at curbing online crime

A guideline to improve the efficiency in dealing with online criminal cases was released on Tuesday, following the rapid growth of online crime in recent years. Jointly issued by the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security, the guideline clarifies procedure-related problems, such as what counts as a crime scene and ways to collect evidence, in a bid to help in the fight against internet-related offenses and create a safer online environment. For example, it stipulated that online crime scenes include the places where network servers are located, where online services are provided as well as where victims suffer from financial loss. Given that online criminal cases usually involve a great deal of evidence that either cannot, or does not need to be collected, the guideline permits investigators to gather a certain proportion of evidence for explanation and elaboration.

One-off subsidy for farmers in difficulties

In response to the rising price of agricultural inputs, China has issued another one-off, central budget funded subsidy totaling 10 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) to grain growers to support farms this autumn, the Ministry of Finance said on Monday. A total of 40 billion yuan has been issued from the central budget so far this year to alleviate the impact of rising input prices on the incomes of farmers. All those burdened by the increasing costs will receive the subsidy, including operators of family farms and agricultural cooperatives. Local authorities are urged to allocate the money swiftly and in full via easy access schemes such as a card system, the ministry said.

HPV vaccine shows efficacy in trial

A recent study has found that China's first self-developed HPV vaccine Cecolin can offer adult women full immunity against two types of human papillomavirus. A group of Chinese researchers analyzed data from 66 months of follow-up visits as part of the bivalent vaccine's Phase 3 clinical trial and found that its efficacy against high-grade genital lesions, typical symptoms of cervical cancer, was 100 percent. Furthermore, the E coli-produced HPV 16/18 recombinant vaccine realized a 97 percent efficacy against persistent HPV infections, according to the study published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. The clinical trial included 7,372 healthy women aged 18 to 45, with 3,689 in the vaccinated group and 3,683 in the control group. The cumulative incidence in the vaccinated group was noticeably lower than that in the control group, according to the study. Cecolin was jointly developed by Xiamen University and Xiamen Innovax, making China the third country in the world to attain an independent cervical cancer vaccine supply after the United States and the United Kingdom. It earned the World Health Organization prequalification in October 2021.

China Daily - Xinhua