Extra! Extra! AIDS, a victory for gay sex, and Ang Lee

• Web TV might be the answer to the prayers of foreign media companies such as News Corp.
• MTV and Baidu.com are working together to distribute music videos and other entertainment content online.
• Wal-Mart is going to invest $1 billion and double the number of its stores in China.
• Health official Hao Yang says that China is starting to resemble Africa in terms of the AIDS epidemic, with 190 new infections happening per day.
• AIDS prevention classes piss off the police:

  The Center for Disease Control in northeastern Harbin held the lecture last week, calling the group of more than 50 sex workers "sisters" and telling them to call if they need help, the Beijing News said.

  Local police said the lecture was "unacceptable", the newspaper said.

  "The usually underground prostitutes labeled their profession on their foreheads this time. Being unable to crack down, the police were really upset," it said. An estimated 650,000 people are living with HIV-AIDS in China, and health experts say the disease is moving into the general population with most new infections now spread sexually, although drug-users follow closely behind.

• Hong Kong has dropped a law punishing gay sex between men under the age of 21 with life imprisonment.
• Filmmaker Ang Lee is also going to serve as a consultant for the Beijing Olympics:

  The 51-year-old Oscar winner will advise a creative team headed by Chinese film director Zhang Yimou and boasting American Steven Spielberg, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) said on its website.

• China is building a wire fence along its border with North Korea. The Chinese Foreign Ministry responds: This has nothing to do with the situation in North Korea; we've been building the wall since the 1990s (report in Chinese).
• Around 100 sanitation workers in Lanzhou have gone on strike, citing that their wages did not meet the legally stipulated minimum wage of 430 yuan -- they were only paid about 360 yuan (report in Chinese).
• China's former first lady Wang Guangmei (wife of Liu Shaoqi) recently died. She was forced to wear a necklace of ping pong balls during the Cultural Revolution because of her habit of wearing decadent pearl necklaces even though she knew the bourgeoisie was evil. We think ping pong balls might be the new hipster fashion fad of 2007.
• Chongqing is going to start fining people who engage in online defamation. The fines, which will cover the popular online e gao (恶搞) satires of famous movies and people, will reach up to $625 US (around 5,000 RMB).

Photo from Slow Boat to China.