Taiwan kicks off plan to build its own submarines
Taipei (AFP) Dec 29, 2014 -
Taiwan said Monday it was launching a project to build a fleet of its own submarines, after years spent waiting in vain for US models.
Deputy Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told parliament the ministry has approved guidelines for the design contract for an Indigenous Defence Submarine.
"This means the military has officially kicked off the self-built submarine project," legislator Lin Y ...
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China businessman jailed for 13 years over tiger feast
Beijing (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
A Chinese businessman who bought and ate three tigers has been sentenced to 13 years in prison, state media reported Tuesday.
The wealthy real estate developer, identified only by his surname Xu, has "a special hobby of grilling tiger bones, boning tiger paws, storing tiger penis, eating tiger meat and drinking tiger blood alcohol," the official Xinhua news agency said in June when he went o ...
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China firms fined record $26m for polluting river
Beijing (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
Six Chinese companies have been fined $26 million for discharging tens of thousands of tonnes of waste chemicals into rivers, state media said, the biggest such penalty ever in China.
The firms in Taizhou in the eastern province of Jiangsu were sued by a local environment protection organisation and were found to have dumped 25,000 tonnes of waste hydrochloric acid into two rivers, the Xinhu ...
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China to give parents of wrongfully executed man $330,000
Beijing (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
A Chinese court will give the parents of a teenager wrongfully executed for murder and rape 18 years ago more than two million yuan ($330,000) compensation, it said Wednesday.
Hugjiltu, who was convicted, sentenced and executed in 1996 at the age of 18, was exonerated earlier this month by a court in Inner Mongolia, nine years after another person confessed to the crime, in a case that highl ...
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Police 'killing' triggers online uproar in China
Beijing (AFP) Dec 29, 2014 -
A Chinese police officer has been arrested after a female migrant worker was allegedly beaten to death in a case which sparked anger over the authorities' latest apparent abuse of power.
The arrest over Zhou Xiuyun's death earlier this month, reported by the state-run Global Times newspaper on Monday, has triggered a wave of online commentary in China, where rights groups say abuse and viole ...
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Climate change: In 2015, the long march to Paris
Paris (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
Agreements on climate change - to paraphrase what the 19th-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck said about law-making - are like sausages.
It's best not to know how they are made.
On December 11 2015, 195 states are scheduled to strike a deal in Paris to curb the fossil-fuel gases imperilling Earth's climate system.
The outcome will be determined in the coming months by Bism ...
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5.5-magnitude quake jolts Taiwan
Taipei (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
A 5.5-magnitude undersea earthquake struck Taiwan Wednesday and shook buildings in the capital, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
The quake struck at 3:54 pm (0754 GMT) with its epicentre 87.5 kilometres (54 miles) southeast of the northeastern city of Yilan at a depth of 83.1 kilometres, the central weather bureau said.
Residents on many parts of the island fe ...
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Alleged Kenya poaching boss a 'flight risk', court told
Mombasa, Kenya (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
A court in Kenya was urged Tuesday not to grant bail to a suspected ivory trafficking ringleader, with the prosecution arguing his release would be a major blow to the fight against rampant poaching.
Kenyan national Feisal Mohammed Ali, who figured on an Interpol list of nine most wanted suspects linked to crimes against the environment, was arrested by international police agents in Tanzani ...
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'AIDS demolition team' report roils China netizens
Beijing (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
A property developer in China reportedly hired a group of people with HIV to harass residents into leaving their homes, sparking anger from the country's Internet users on Tuesday.
The case is the latest to highlight widespread discrimination in China against people living with HIV and AIDS.
It also underscores the unscrupulous lengths to which some real estate firms and officials will ...
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Tehran air pollution puts nearly 400 in hospital
Tehran (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
Almost 400 people have been hospitalised with heart and respiratory problems caused by heavy air pollution in Tehran, with nearly 1,500 others requiring treatment, an official said Tuesday.
Year round, more than four million cars spew exhaust fumes into the atmosphere of the Iranian capital. The situation worsens in winter, when cold air leads to a carcinogenic fog that blankets the city. ...
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53 dead in Philippines flooding and landslides
Manila (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
The death toll from flooding and landslides in the Philippines wrought by tropical storm Jangmi rose to 53 Wednesday, officials said, with some regions saying they were caught off guard by the deluge.
In Catbalogan town in Samar province 19 people died in a landslide that left homes and vehicles buried under rocks and mud, local Mayor Stephany Uy-Tan said, adding that the town had been surpr ...
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Hong Kong protest teenager sent to children's home
Hong Kong (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
A 14-year-old Hong Kong girl arrested for scribbling graffiti on a wall famous for the pro-democracy messages it carried has been sent to a children's home, her lawyer said Tuesday.
Police detained the girl for chalking a flower on the "Lennon Wall", a staircase at the main Admiralty protest site which became plastered with brightly-coloured notes of support for the democracy movement durin ...
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Genomes of healthy newborns to be sequenced as part of new study
Boston, Maine (UPI) Dec 30, 2014 -
For some time, researchers have been predicting that the future of medicine will involve the integration of genetic sequencing - healthcare personalized according to DNA, from cradle to grave. That future has arrived, as a number of hospitals are set to begin sequencing the genomes of healthy newborn babies as part of a new research effort called the the BabySeq Project.
As part of sev ...
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Russia to build world's largest DNA databank
Moscow (UPI) Dec 30, 2014 -
Great Britain is home to the Frozen Ark project, an effort to preserve the DNA and living cells of endangered species. The San Diego Zoo has been operating a so-called frozen zoo - freezing animal semen, feces and other samples in liquid nitrogen - since 1976.
But Russia's Moscow State University aims to outdo them both, several times over. The research university recently received a ...
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Somalia says top Shebab intel official killed in US air strike
Mogadishu (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
A top intelligence official with Somalia's Al-Qaeda-affliated Shebab rebels was killed in a US air strike on Monday, Somalia's government said.
"In a joint operation last night by the Somali national security and the United States, Al-Shebab intelligence chief Abdishakur, also known as Tahlil, who replaced the recently arrested former chief, was eliminated," Somalia's National Security Agenc ...
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China New Year stampede kills 35 in Shanghai
Shanghai (AFP) Jan 01, 2015 -
A New Year's stampede on Shanghai's historic waterfront killed at least 35 people and injured dozens more, with witnesses saying revellers had scrambled for fake money thrown from a building.
The disaster happened in a crowded square shortly before midnight late on Wednesday as people packed the Bund area to usher in 2015, according to a city government statement.
A photo on the website ...
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Hong Kong culls 19,000 birds amid avian flu alert
Hong Kong (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
Hong Kong culled thousands of chickens Wednesday after the potentially deadly H7N9 bird flu virus was discovered in poultry imported from China, days after a woman was admitted to hospital with the disease.
Authorities found the virus in samples taken from 120 chickens imported from the nearby Chinese city of Huizhou and slaughtered nearly 19,000 birds, including 11,800 chickens.
"The ra ...
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AirAsia disaster rekindles pain for MH370 relatives
Beijing (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
Tearful relatives of those on board missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 said Tuesday their torment has been awakened anew by the AirAsia loss in Indonesia, nine months into their nightmare.
"It is just like what happened nine months ago when I heard the news of MH370," said Steven Wang, whose 57-year-old mother was on the flight which remains one of the biggest aviation mysteries ever.
...
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Floods kill 21 in Malaysia, waters recede
Kuala Lumpur (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
At least 21 people have been killed and eight others are missing after the worst flooding in decades across Malaysia's northeast, police said Wednesday, with almost a quarter of a million people displaced.
They said 14 of the deaths were recorded in the worst-hit state of Kelantan, where some 158,476 people were displaced.
Four people died in Terengganu and three in Pahang state. There a ...
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Migrants from 'drifting' ship arrive in Italy
Gallipoli , Italy (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
Some 700 illegal migrants rescued from a ship near the Greek island of Corfu arrived in Italy on Wednesday, after their boat was intercepted while "drifting" towards the coast.
Dozens of official cars met the migrants as they arrived in the port of Gallipoli, in the southeast of Italy, at around 0230 GMT on Wednesday morning, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.
Police and maritime ...
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Revellers welcome 2015 but celebrations turn deadly in China
Shanghai (AFP) Jan 01, 2015 -
Millions of revellers took to the streets around the world from Sydney to New York to usher in 2015 on Thursday, but in China celebrations turned to tragedy when 35 people were killed in a stampede in central Shanghai.
As the rest of the globe celebrated with spectacular fireworks displays in cities from Sydney to Moscow, chaos broke out in China's financial hub as people packed the Bund dis ...
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Myanmar police charge China mine protesters over demo
Yangon (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
Several protesters against a Chinese-backed mine in central Myanmar have been charged with holding an illegal demonstration, police said Wednesday.
They were among 100 activists who scuffled with police on Monday evening near the Chinese embassy in Yangon.
The protesters demanded the closure of the Letpadaung copper mine in the Sagaing region, where a female villager was shot dead during ...
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China December manufacturing index at 49.6: HSBC
Beijing (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
China's manufacturing activity contracted in December, HSBC's closely watched purchasing managers' index (PMI) showed Wednesday, as the world's second-largest economy is buffeted by domestic headwinds.
The British banking giant's final PMI for the month came in at 49.6, HSBC said in a statement, slightly up from a preliminary reading of 49.5 but still the lowest in seven months.
It also ...
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China regional jet certified to fly domestic routes
Shanghai (AFP) Dec 31, 2014 -
A Chinese-developed passenger plane has been certified by the country's aviation regulator, clearing the way for the ARJ21 regional jet to fly domestic routes, the manufacturer and state media said.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on Tuesday officially deemed the ARJ21 airworthy, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
A spokesman for Shanghai-based Commercial Aircraf ...
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Email, Internet remain top workplace tools: study
Washington (AFP) Dec 30, 2014 -
Americans see email and the Internet as the most important tools for productivity at work, and still prefer landlines over cellphones for the office, a study showed Tuesday.
The Pew Research Center found 61 percent of those surveyed cited email as "very important" for their jobs and 54 percent said the same for the Internet.
The figures were even higher for office-based workers.
Mor ...
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