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China's move to construct five tunnels to open up a new section of the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) last month has signalled Beijing’s intent to go forward with ambitious projects despite India’s increasingly vocal concerns and rising security concerns in the restive disputed region. In a major project that will ensure year-round land connectivity linking China and Pakistan through PoK, the China Road and Bridge Corporation has constructed five seven km-long tunnels on the Karakoram Highway. Earlier, this particular section had been cut off on account of a barrier lake formed at Attabad, which had blocked access since...

50-lane highway resembled car parkVehicles are seen stuck in a traffic jam near a toll station as people return home at the end of a week-long national day holiday, in Beijing, China. (Reuters) You might never complain about the morning rush hour again in your life after you see how thousands of cars in China were brought to an absolute halt at a toll booth in an epic traffic jam. As many as 50-lane highway resembled a huge car park when almost half of China's 1.3 billion people returned to work after the National Day holiday, reports 9news.com.au. After the...

Video at link. A US-based human rights group says the nephew of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has been arrested on suspicion of murder. It says the arrest was made in revenge for Chen's actions. ChinaAid Association on Friday revealed the photo of a notification of arrest issued by police authorities in Shandong Province. The notice says the arrest took place on Wednesday. The group quoted the nephew's lawyer as saying that he wounded 3 intruders with a knife at his home in Shandong Province on April 26th after noticing that his parents had been beaten up. More than 20 people...

Unable to clean air completely for APEC, China resorts to blocking data By Simon Denyer and Xu Yangjingjing November 10 BEIJING – China has made a gargantuan effort to clear Beijing’s smoggy air for an important regional summit this week, closing hundreds of factories and forcing cars off the road, but its efforts have only been partially successful. On Monday afternoon, the U.S. Embassy air quality monitor reported a reading of 157, a measurement classified as “unhealthy”. Red-faced, the Chinese government has come up with an innovative solution – block the data from being displayed on local smart phone apps...

China may ban Facebook, but not its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who entertained an audience of students in Beijing with a 30-minute chat in his recently learned Mandarin Chinese. There was no explicit discussion of China’s ban on the social media site, which has been in place since 2009, though an indirect reference to it drew laughter during the question-and-answer session Wednesday at the prestigious Tsinghua University. Both Zuckerberg and the university posted video clips of the Q&A online. […] “Speaking of China, I have a more difficult question for Mark, which I hope will not get me fired. What are...

Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung claimed Sunday that local democracy protests raging for over a month are, “not entirely a domestic movement, as external forces are involved.” American businessman Mark Simon has been thrown into the eye of this storm as one of the alleged external forces. “Former American Military Intelligence Officer Turned Next Media Executive,” charged a typical headline about him in the pro-Beijing press. Next Media is a leading pro-democracy publishing company in Asia. Raised in Falls Church, Va., Mr. Simon played football at East Carolina University and attended Georgetown University before a 25-year career in the...

The bidding process for the 2022 Olympics was a disaster for the International Olympic Committee. Democratic nations are no longer buying the argument that hosting the games is a wise investment. Every potential 2022 host city with a democratic government eventually pulled out of the bidding, many over economic concerns, leaving Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan as the IOC's only two options. Academics have been saying for years that hosting the Olympics doesn't make economic sense. The costs are typically larger than expected, the infrastructure needed for a big sporting event isn't the same as the infrastructure needed for daily life,...

The bidding process for the 2022 Olympics was a disaster for the International Olympic Committee. Democratic nations are no longer buying the argument that hosting the games is a wise investment. Every potential 2022 host city with a democratic government eventually pulled out of the bidding, many over economic concerns, leaving Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, as the IOC's only two options. Academics have been saying for years that hosting the Olympics doesn't make economic sense. The costs are typically larger than expected, the infrastructure needed for a big sporting event isn't the same as the infrastructure needed for daily life,...

Occupy Central movement is aimed at challenging China's supreme power organ. People have been staging protests in Hong Kong seeking the "real universal suffrage." They attempt to force the central authorities to change the decision of China's top legislature. A decision made on Aug. 31 granted universal suffrage in the selection of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)'s chief executive on the basis of nomination by a "select committee". The decision possesses unchallengeable legal status and authority. It is "a certain choice and the only choice" to safeguard the decision, in line with the "one country, two systems" policy...

Saucy young Beijing girls in low-cut tops and booty shorts walk their crabs down the street in Sanlitun, drawing many gawkers. We assume they didn't have time to walk their jumbo shrimp, or crayfish. Pedestrians snap pictures of the ladies and their curious "crabwalk".

Beijing (AFP) - Beijing on Wednesday closed the first of four large coal-fired power plants that are set to be shut down as part of efforts to curb its choking air pollution, media reported. The 50-year-old Gaojing Thermal Power Plant is to be replaced with a gas-fired power station, one of four that is to be built as the Chinese capital aims to boost its reliance on cleaner energy, Xinhua news agency said. The other three major coal-fired power plants in Beijing will be closed by 2016, the state-run agency added. A five-year plan was introduced in the city last...

<p>MILAN (AP) — Foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna confirm that names of two nationals listed on the manifest of the missing Malaysian airlines flight match passports reported stolen in Thailand.</p> <p>Italy's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that an Italian man whose name was listed as being aboard is traveling in Thailand and was not aboard the plane.</p>

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The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city's natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises. The futuristic screens installed in the Chinese capital usually advertize tourist destinations, but as the season's first wave of extremely dangerous smog hit - residents donned air masks and left their homes to watch the only place where the sun would hail over the horizon that morning. Commuters across Beijing found themselves cloaked in a thick, gray haze on Thursday as air pollution monitors issued a severe air warning and...

The first fatal case of bird flu in North America has been reported in Canada. Officials in Canada said the victim, who was from Alberta, had just returned from Beijing. The unnamed victim, who was not identified, died on January 3, having been admitted to hospital on Jan 1. Four days earlier the victim, whose sex was not disclosed, had complained of a headache and fever. Rona Ambrose, the Canadian health minister, insisted this was an isolated case, although officials are trying to contact others on the flight.

Beijing’s skyscrapers receded into a dense gray smog Thursday as the capital saw the season’s first wave of extremely dangerous pollution, with the concentration of toxic small particles registering more than two dozen times the level considered safe. The air took on an acrid odor, and many of the city’s commuters wore industrial strength face masks as they hurried to work. The city’s air quality is often poor, especially in winter when stagnant weather patterns combine with an increase in coal-burning to exacerbate other forms of pollution and create days-long periods of heavy smog. But the readings early Thursday for...

BEIJING — A medicine mogul spent six years building his own private mountain peak and luxury villa atop a high-rise apartment block in China’s capital, earning the unofficial title of “most outrageous illegal structure.” Now, authorities are giving him 15 days to tear it down. The craggy complex of rooms, rocks, trees and bushes looming over the 26-story building looks like something built into a seaside cliff, and has become the latest symbol of disregard for the law among the rich as well as the rampant practice of building illegal additions. Angry neighbors say they’ve complained for years that the...

Explosion in arrivals hall at Beijing airport - media reports The blast occurred in the arrivals hall of terminal three, Xinhua news agency reported. The agency gave no immediate details on the cause of the blast or the potential number of casualties. But local media quoted by the South China Morning Post said there had been at least one victim of the blast – a wheelchair user – who was rushed to hospital. His condition remains unknown.

HONG KONG – Hundreds of thousands of protesters, some waving British colonial-era flags and sporting Edward Snowden masks, were to march in Hong Kong later Monday to denounce the city’s leaders and demand universal suffrage on its handover anniversary. Organizers said they expected more than 400,000 people to take part in the annual rally for democracy, which comes amid concerns in the southern Chinese city that Beijing is increasingly meddling in its local affairs. The annual march underscores the growing gulf between Hong Kong and the mainland 16 years after the city ceased to be a British colony and returned...