Society

Around China: Heroic student drowns

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-12 07:51

1 CHONGQING

Deadly driver asleep

A 26-year-old man who stayed up overnight to watch the World Cup last week fell asleep while driving a minibus in Chongqing, killing three pedestrians, including a pregnant woman. A four-year-old child was also seriously hurt.

The accident happened around eight o'clock in the morning, police said.

The minibus Liu Chengning was driving first touched a motorbike by the road, crashed into a crowd on the pavement, then ran into another minibus and an ice-cream stall.

The pregnant woman, with her father, had just gotten off the motorbike to catch a bus to the downtown area when the minibus hit them.

The driver has been arrested.

2 SHANGHAI

New Apple store opens

Apple on Saturday opened a new retail store in the Lujiazui district of Shanghai, its second such outlet in China.

The huge store, set in Shanghai's wealthy financial district, will sell Chinese gadget fans the latest Apple devices, including iPods, iPhones and iPads.

The Shanghai shop is the first of about 25 retail stores that Apple is planning to open across China over the next two years. The company opened it first retail store in Beijing in 2008, just before the Olympic games.

Claim of plagiarism

A netizen is claiming Professor Zhu Xueqing from the history department at Shanghai University plagiarized parts his earlier doctoral dissertation. The claim was made by a netizen named Isaiah in a series of articles posted online.

These articles were soon reposted on major academic websites, and Professor Zhu responded that he would provide a formal clarification when "the time was appropriate".

Isaiah, who claims to be a PhD student, made a careful comparison between Zhu's The Collapse of the Moral Republic and American scholar Carol Blum's Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue, and pointed out that Zhu not only copied Carol's work in several chapters, but also "borrowed" some concepts without any footnotes.

3 GUANGDONG

Have a say on safety

Guangzhou police are soliciting public opinion on a draft regulation on rail traffic safety during the period of the Asian Games.

The Guangzhou government is planning X-ray scanning for subway passengers and their carry-on luggage from Oct 28 to Dec 26 to ensure safety when the Asian Games and the Asian Para Games are held in the city.

According to the draft regulation, forbidden items include guns and knifes, as well as flammable and explosive materials. Commuters are even banned from carrying white liquor that exceeds 2 kg.

Police are accepting public input until Thursday.

No appeal for killer

A local Chinese court has rejected the appeal filed by a most-wanted serial killer who had been sentenced to death for murder, robbery and rape, a court verdict said.

The Foshan Municipal Intermediate People's Court in South China's Guangdong province on Friday upheld the death sentence of Cheng Ruilong without reprieve, but reduced the number of murder victims in his case from 13 to 11, as the bodies of a woman and her daughter allegedly killed by Cheng were never found.

Cheng, 37, was found to have committed a series of violent crimes in several provinces in southern and eastern China between May 1996 and January 2005.

Cheng was arrested in 2005 and sentenced to death by Foshan's intermediate court in February 2010.

4 JIANGSU

Heroic student drowns

A college student drowned after saving a 13-year-old boy last Thursday in Laorenqiao village of Gaoyou city.

Second-year college student Geng Gaopeng jumped into a river after he saw a boy rush into the water with his bike.

Geng, who could not swim, was carried away by the rapid currents after pushing the boy onto the bank.

Geng, who was on his summer vacation, had opened courses in his village for children left behind by parents who migrated to work in urban areas.

5 QINGHAI

Rebuilding temples

The Chinese government on Saturday started a massive multi-million-dollar project to restore 87 monasteries damaged in a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that shook a predominantly Tibetan area in Northwest China in April.

Monks and officials gathered at the new site of Trangu Monastery in Yushu, Qinghai province, for a brief ground-breaking ceremony. Monks from the 700-year-old monastery, whose former buildings collapsed in the quake, held a prayer service, chanting sutras and turning prayer wheels to mark the start of the rebuilding.

The three best-known monasteries damaged in the Yushu quake were Trangu, Gyegu and Renyak.

The repair of Gyegu Monastery also started on Saturday.

Qinghai's Ethnic Affairs Committee said the central government had earmarked 1 billion yuan for monastery restoration in Yushu. The construction will cover an area of 170,000 square meters.

6 BEIJING

Google license confirmed

A Chinese government official said on Sunday that China had approved renewing the operating license of Beijing Guxiang Information Technology Co Ltd, operator of Google's China website.

The official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who spoke anonymously, told Xinhua News Agency that the result of its annual checkup on Google was "approved after rectification".

In an application letter submitted to the ministry on June 29, Guxiang pledged to "abide by Chinese laws" and "ensure the company provides no law-breaking content".

China Daily - Xinhua

(China Daily 07/12/2010 page7)