Today's Links: Mistress revolt, Thomas Friedman and the AIDS epidemic

• Shaanxi official fired after mistresses revolt [Shanghai Daily]
  11 angry mistresses have caused Pang Jiayu, 63, former top political adviser in Shaanxi Province, to lose his job.


• China pledges more support to Caribbean region [Xinhua]
  China plans to offer 4 billion yuan (US$530 million) in low-interest loans to Chinese firms in three years to encourage more investment in Caribbean regions.


• Western acts rock Beijing music fest [AFP]
  Thousands of Chinese music fans flocked to a park in Beijing this weekend to see some of the West's most subversive bands, who infused the annual Pop Festival with serious rock-and-roll attitude.


• Gays take center stage in contest for academics [Shanghai Daily]
  Winners of the country's first award for homosexuality studies were announced in Shanghai yesterday, with eight final prize winners presenting papers on the topic.
  


• Macau's big gamble [The Atlantic]
  Even as foreign investors pour billions into ever-glitzier casinos, the tiny peninsula’s bid to become the Vegas of the Orient depends on China’s larger willingness to embrace transparency and the rule of law.


• Thomas Friedman gets the middle finger in the Middle Kingdom [Rebecca Mackinnon]
  It's not every day that you get to sit and watch a senior Chinese diplomat rip Thomas Friedman "a new one" (as we say in American colloquial parlance) as all the Chinese members of the audience cheer him on. But on Friday morning in a panel discussion titled "China's Soft Power" that's what happened.


• China reports leap in new HIV/AIDS cases [Reuters]
  China reported 18,543 new cases of HIV/AIDS in the first half of this year, state media said, near the number for the whole of 2006.


• Beijing's fastest-growing export is inflation [Sunday Telegraph]
  The emergence of China as a commercial superpower is, by some way, the most important economic phenomenon of our time. In the last few years, analysts of the global economy have had to rewrite their computer models and recalibrate their slide rules to cope with the People's Republic.

Photo from 2 dogs.