From Al-Jazeera English:The Beijing Olympics are still 5 months away but they're attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. Human rights campaigners have been staging protests, demanding China be called to account for its human rights record in Tibet. Owen Fay reports on protests designed to place pressure on Beijing. Related stories: New York Times: Tibetan Marchers Arrested in India AHN: Tibetan Exiles Embark On Hunger Strike In India To Protest Against Arrests International Herald......

China confirms presence of toxic substance in bead toys [Economic Times] China's quality control watch dog has confirmed that the bead toys which the US and Australia have recalled in millions over safety fears contain toxic substance. US sees no rapid shift in China's currency reserves [AFP] Amid a plunging US dollar, China has again threatened to diversify its mountain of dollar foreign reserves but US officials are unperturbed while experts do not see a......

According to anonymous MLB officials, the American professional baseball league is making plans to send a few teams to Beijing to play exhibition games during their pre-season spring training. The games would be held in March, five months before the start of the 2008 Olympics, and take place at Beijing's Wukesong Field, a small stadium with a capacity of 15,000 that will host the Olympiad's baseball events. The Beijing games are a part of an......

Pigs are back in the headlines once again, and with a vengeance. Here is an interesting juxtapose of three pig-related news stories found via the informative China Digital Times. We first read on the Beijing News that a "Zero-Profit Pork Alliance" consisting of about 150 supermarkets in Chongqing that came together on Aug 10 in a bold move to slow down and reverse rising pork prices has all but collapsed: The participating stores did surprise......

What did Mattel do to stop the toys? by Fons Tuinstra of China Herald: Even a hundred TV-shows cannot hide that something is seriously wrong in the way quality control is done in this country. And yes, there is now a fair amount of China-bashing going on, but that is very well deserved China-bashing. But the question what Mattel, and other companies, have been doing to stop this scandalous export of faulty products is a......

Jodi Xu of the TIME Beijing Bureau writes in a post entitled Now it's Fake Water that really got us wondering about the RMB6 tubs of water that we get in our apartment: This morning, I heard the news that half of Beijing’s bottled water is counterfeit. I was horrified. It seems that illegal factories fill the used plastic bottles from the tap or with perfunctorily filtered water. The bottle tops and tape that they......

[*WARNING: Not recommended for current/ex/recovering teachers as this gave us flashbacks of our own students from hell.] The Beijing Haidian District Art Vocational School (北京市海淀区艺术职业学校) has found itself in the centre of a controversy when a video clip of several students abusing a 70-year teacher was circulated online on video sharing sites and enraged netizens across China, sparking a debate over the state of the morals of Chinese youths today. Angry netizens have overwhelmed the......

Baidu Sued For Copyright Infringement "Video downloads of Guangdong Meng Tong Culture's licensed historical costume drama series "Zhen Guan Chang Ge" were found on Baidu space channel (hi.baidu.com). ... Meng Tone is asking Baidu to pay 440,000 Yuan in compensation." China vows to revamp leprosy villages "The disease has now been officially eradicated in China, but the villages remain partly because the patients were unable to rebuild their lives after being institutionalised for decades."......

For our Beijing readers, from James Kynge: We are holding a candlelit vigil for Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter who has been held in Gaza for several weeks. Contrary to recent reports, Alan has been confirmed as alive by Palestinian authorities, and various initiatives aimed at his release are gathering momentum. This is a crucial time. The BBC is organising vigils for him in several capitals around the world to show support for his release.......

Chinese man dies during gaming session "The 26-year-old man, surnamed Zhang from the city of Jinzhou, died Saturday after a marathon gaming session from what a doctor said was overwork and obesity." Tom Online apologizes to The Beijing News for copyright violation "Tom Online apologized to The Beijing News for republishing articles from the paper without authorization between 2003 and 2006 and will provide compensation, Tom Online said in a statement." China Confirms Human......

We don't know honestly. We ride Shanghai's metro every day and have only used Beijing's a couple times back in 2004. Still, seeing Beijing ranked No. 9 (and Shanghai unranked) in this list of the top 11 underground transit systems in the world surprised us a bit — because all the China subway hype we hear is about Shanghai's fast-growing system (or maybe that's just because we live in Shanghai?). Here's what the list, from......

DNA technology has lead many to ponder what could actually be in the world. For some of us, our links with DNA technology stays closer to a key tool in the endless variations of CSI and as a means to revive lost species in Jurassic Park. However, perhaps soon on the tip of each person's tongue will be the application of DNA hereditary testing and its potential for re-writing Chinese history. For residents of the......

China confirms satellite test, allays fears "'What needs to be stressed is that China has always advocated the peaceful use of space, opposes the weaponisation of space and arms races in space.'" China sticking to one-child policy despite gender gap "China will not loosen its one-child policy, despite a top family planning official’s acknowledgment Tuesday that it was partly to blame for a worsening problem of too many boy babies and not enough girls......

From The Search Engine Journal we discovered that Baidu won an intellectual copyright infringement case against some major music companies. From Interfax: Baidu, the largest Internet search engine in China, won an MP3 copyright infringement lawsuit against seven Hong Kong music companies today, a company official said. The Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court overseeing the case ruled that the accusations brought against the Chinese search giant do not have adequate legal support. "This is good......

The Beijing News recently reported on the unveiling of a 24-carat gold-plated 7-metre high statue of Chairman Mao in Changsha, capital of his home province of Hunan. Agence-France Presse notes that the report "did not disclose the cost of the project, but said a local pharmaceutical company footed the bill", and that the statue has "triggered a heated debate over the Internet on the need for such a lavish display". Particularly interesting are the following......

July 31 was "Chinese Valentine's Day" or qi xi, and in a calculuated attempt to subvert the hegemony of the Western version of the holiday, there were loads of public qi xi activities across China's cities. For example, what better way to celebrate love than a kissing contest? We found mention of three, in Beijing, Wuhan, and Taipei (all of these come with pictures, it's worth a look). The Beijing and Taipei kissing contests were......

Robots will perform tai chi at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo: "Our advanced robots will perform with Chinese characteristics," said Chen Jiaxiang, a senior engineer of the service robots project of the Shanghai Electric Group, at an Eastern Forum of Science and Technology. The Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering are also developing the robots. Chen introduced two human-shaped robots -- they can play music and perform shadow boxing. "We......

In Beijing, a Norwegian exchange student has suddenly found himself in the epicenter of a campus wide crisis, with thousands of students calling for his expulsion. The Beijing News first broke the story yesterday. This is what went down, according to the article, and we paraphrase: During a football game between teams of local and exchange students at the University of International Business and Economics, a Norwegian student, after scoring, went over to the opposing......

Danwei directs us to this short film by Anna Sophie Loewenberg from last week's MIDI Music Festival in Beijing. Makes Shanghaiist wish we went to the event or, more to the point, wish that Shanghai had something similar. Not sure if it would work here or not -- get on it, Brad. Maybe we'll try to hit the MIDI next year, although it doesn't seem like it will be the same. The movie's message is......

The famous first line of Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi's poem on the Jiangnan region goes like this: 江南忆，最忆是杭州 (I recall fondly Jiangnan, and most of all Hangzhou). Well, Hangzhou's been getting its fair share of media buzz lately. For example, Taiwan's Lien Chan, who of late has become the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist) Party's ambassador of good will to China, was mugging it up there yesterday with his surgically enhanced wife. We hear that a......

A "cancer village" 220 km from Shanghai.Illegal abortions performed by at least three Shanghai hospitals.A little food poisoning never killed anyone. (Not true.)Oh, great. A new Tiffany store minutes from our apartment.Bokee signs agreement to distribute Movable Type blogging software in China.It was inevitable. The Beijing Olympic mascots have their own TV show.The majority of Chinese internet users are "male, unmarried, under 30, with educational levels below Bachelor's degree and monthly income less than 2,000......

From ChinaTechNews.com, a story that would make IBM proud: The Beijing Science and Technology Commission has unveiled the "Chang Feng" PC, a computer designed for farmers and users in rural areas. ... All the software in the computer is designed to meet the specific demands of the rural areas. For example, farmers can search for information on how to grow crops and they can also locate agricultural experts to help them. There are over a......

The Beijing Tigers are gunning for a sweep today in their best-of-five China Baseball League championship series with the Tianjin Lions. Game 3 starts at 3 pm today at Beijing's Lu Cheng Stadium. A win would give Beijing its third consecutive CBL title. According to the league website (English version) today's game will be broadcast by Beijing Television, and Shanghaiist admittedly has no idea whether we get that channel in Shanghai or not. We'll be......