Today's Links: Ex-Presidents get arrested, buildings collapse, and Beijing gets new money for its traffic problems

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  • Former Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian was finally arrested after five hours of questioning over various corruption charges on Tuesday. He has been accused of embezzling of 14.8 million Taiwan dollars (480,500 US) and otherwise using his Presidential powers illegally during his eight year term.
  • Five cement factory workers died on the job yesterday when a building in Donghe, Qinghai Province collapsed. Another worker was seriously injured and is in critical condition, but "might still survive", according to doctors. Officially, the building's collapse was not related to the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked the region on Monday.
  • Beijing has just committed RMB240 billion ($34 billion USD) to upgrade traffic infrastructure over the next five years. By 2012, the city is expected to have 420km of subway lines up and running. Oh, and that RMB240 billion sum? It's RMB70 billion more than Beijing spent in the five years leading up to the Olympics.
  • Jinan's China National Games Stadium caught fire for the second time in four months, this time requiring some 300 firefighters to help put out the blaze. The stadium, which is being built for next year's National Games, was supposed to be nearing completion.
  • On a happier note, the number of China-based environmental NGOs have doubled over the last three years.

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Comments (5) [rss]

Chen looks pretty happy for a guilty guy. Obviously a nod by the panda licking pan blue crowd to Beijing after Taiwan's free and independent citizens made their feelings about badirty China known to those visiting barbarians.

to nanheyangrouchuan,

good news: lapdogs are allowed behind bars in taiwan and you could apply for vacancy. when you got run over by car, at least "all free and independent" japwanese would cry over your body as ex-first-dog.
bad news: though your tongue is outstandingly sweet, only lapdog with shiny hairs is qualified which you unfortunately dont have.

@ nanhe

Sorry, this is unrelated. I was looking up some stuff about the algae outbreaks near Suzhou a bit back. I couldn't find the post with the original comments ..but, didn't you work in water conservation or something and had some kind of inside take on that? I remember the story including math games.

@ Andy,

Yes, I do water, but I don't remember any "math games" comments unless it is local officials tinkering with numbers. Are you referring to the Lake Tai blooms? I thought I saw leastman cooking algea clumps over a coal fire...

@ leastman

lay off the maotai.

to cover the azzhole of your master chen shui bian whose new name is no. 2630, how about lending your patented full metal slips to him, since his cell mate no. 2629 is an aggressive rapist whom you'd rather be killed in a dark lane than to live with.

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