News: August 2008 Archives

NTDTV speaks to Natan Galkovitch, one of 100 victims of terror in Israel who are now suing the Bank of China for not preventing money that was transferred to the Hamas, and Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an attorney for the plaintiffs. Among the claims of the suit:...beginning in July 2003, the Bank of China executed dozens of wire transfers for the terrorist groups totaling several million dollars. Many of the transfers were initiated in the Middle East, sent to branches in the U.S. then to an account......

Cara Anna of AP writes that the increasingly sensitive trial of Yang Jia, the "cop-killer", which was postponed till after the Olympics, is likely to end in a death sentence for the man. However, many among the Chinese public are sympathetic to the man after Xinhua's report of Yang's earlier rejected claim for psychological damage and Southern Weekend's long, sympathetic front-page story which asked what could have made a young, quiet man who liked travelling want to take so many lives. In a telephone interview with AP, Yan Lieshan, editor of the highly respected Guangzhou-based paper, said:"That's the so-called......

From Reuters:Shanghai police will post photos and videos of jaywalkers in newspapers and on TV in a bid to shame them out of breaking traffic rules, local media reported on Thursday. Offending pedestrians, moped riders and cyclists would be snapped at selected intersections and their images put in regular columns and on special television programmes set up by police, the Shanghai Daily said. The scheme had come under fire from lawyers who said public humiliation was too steep a punishment for jaywalking and warned of defamation lawsuits against police. "It's a principle of law that a penalty should match......

This article in the China Daily caught our attention:Three hundred and twelve travelers were found to be HIV positive in the first seven months of this year, up 19 percent year-on-year, a report released Tuesday showed. They were among 756,000 travelers who received random blood checks at border crossings, according to the report compiled by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). The increase in positive cases was mainly due to the growth in the number of people who underwent the checks, Xia Wenjun, a press officer with the administration, said. Such random checks were conducted......

Manuela Parrino, an Italian woman who has lived in Beijing for the last 41/2 years said she was "fed up with all the visiting journalists talking negatively about China." She decided to prove China's commitment to free speech during the Olympic Games by applying to protest against pollution, with her 4 year old son, in one of the designated zones. After 9 hours, over 2 days, of officials trying to dissuade her cause, and parrying almost nonsensical questions from the local police officials, Manuela's application was unsuccessful because her son was deemed "too young". ...

Chinese online trading site, Alibaba, plans to expand to Europe. The company behind the site will open a London office, as part of a project called "Road to London", which aims to encourage Chinese companies to invest in the next Olympic host city.As we told you earlier, an album called Songs For Tibet, was released on iTunes just three days before the Olympics, causing its online store to be blocked in China. Now however, iTunes Music Store has been reopened, in a new and Songs For Tibet-free version, somehow the censors......

Beijing resident Yang Jia, stood trial on Tuesday at the Shanghai No 2 People's Intermediate Court for murdering six Shanghai policemen in July this year. As we told you earlier Yang was caught and interrogated by Shanghai police for riding a stolen bicycle on October 15, 2007. After he had been released Yang sued the interrogating officers for psychological damage and later returned to the police station and killed six officers. According to Global Voices Online, Yang has his fair share of support on the internet with netizens saying that Yang was the victim of police brutality and......

Those of you who want to buy a cheap DVD of the Olympic opening ceremony had better hurry up as the Shanghai Culture Inspection Team is planning a crackdown on pirated versions of this show. No worries though, the official DVD of the ceremony will still be available RMB 55. Just as school is about to start Shanghai has been listed as the most expensive city for university and college students in mainland China. According to the China News Agency's, a university student in Shanghai needs to spend about RMB1000 on......

According to the Wall Street Journal, a lawsuit against the Bank of China has been filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming that Bank of China transferred millions of dollars for terrorist groups bent on attacking Israel, ignoring demands by Israeli counterterrorism officials to halt the practice. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of more than 100 victims of terrorism in Israel and alleges that the money was transferred for the militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Iran and Syria, and processed through Bank of China's branches in the U.S. and China. "I don't know about the......

Got photos of this morning's storm or the flooding that followed it that you'd like to share? Email them to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically show up on our Contribute Page. Flickr users, simply tag your photos "shanghaiist"....

The World Expo Tunnel, which stretches beneath the Huangpu River, connecting Pudong and Puxi reached its full length on August the 20th: it's 2.67 kilometers long, and located 1.117 kilometers below the river.The soccer World Cup qualifier match between North and South Korea has been moved from Pyongyang to Shanghai, because the North had refused to play the anthem or fly the flag of its opponent (technically the two Koreas are still at war). The match is scheduled for September 10, sounds like an interesting game, eh?Migrant workers in Shanghai will......

According to China Radio International the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing has opened a 24 hour hotline "providing advice and technical support in the event of attacks by nuclear, biological or chemical weapons". The hotline number is 010-66880120, we suggest you write it down or add it to you cell phone contacts — you never know when you'll need to report a nuclear attack. Photo by givepeaceachance...

In this video Al Jazeera reports on two elderly Beijing residents who tried to organize protests against evictions in the capital. For these women, who are both in their 70s, this has had far reaching consequences. ...

For those of you still dwelling on the age of a certain Chinese gymnast, we've got good news for you: Someone is more obsessed about the controversy than you! A blogger has done some internet sleuthing (see here and here) that has some people convinced that He Kexin (何可欣) is all of 14 years old (Olympic rules state that gymnasts must be 16). All the cyber-digging might be in vain, however — we doubt the IOC is going to do anything about this....

Hua Guofeng, the man to whom Chairman Mao was supposed to have said before his death, "With you in charge I'm at ease", and who ruled China briefly before slipping into obscurity when Deng Xiaopeng took over has died at the age of 87. In the early days, Hua was widely credited with the downfall of the Gang of Four but that all changed after Deng took over.An earlier report by The Times (UK) that three Uyghur pilots have been grounded over security fears has been rubbished by Li Jian,......

Two Shanghai software professionals have been deemed guilty of copyright infringement after selling pirated Microsoft programs. According to Shanghai Daily, the pair had bought genuine Microsoft software to get a permission agreement and added pirated software to it to make buyers believe they were buying the genuine article.Although we're used to hearing about Chinese copyright infringement, the China Tech News reports that a majority of pirated Olympic broadcasts were made outside of China: About 1,600 pirated broadcasts happened across the world, of which 85% were done in developed countries. Only about 100 came......