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(XINHUA) |
Ye Shiwen, a 16-year-old swimmer, won the women's 200-meter individual medley on December 15 at the Istanbul 2012 Short Course World Championships, becoming the first Chinese to grab gold at the Asian Games, Olympics as well as short- and long-course world championships.
She won the 200-meter individual medley at the 2011 World Aquatic Championships in Shanghai alongside the 200-meter and 400-meter individual medleys at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. Ye also scooped the 200-meter individual medley title at the 2012 London Olympics, breaking the record.
Born in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, Ye began swimming at 6. She joined the Zhejiang provincial team in 2007 and China's national team in 2010.
More than 600 members of the Almighty God cult across China had been detained by the police for spreading rumors of an impending apocalypse on December 21, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Most of the cult members apprehended by the police were detained for five to 10 days for disturbing social order, in accordance with the Regulations on Administrative Penalties for Public Security.
"Most of the cult's members are unemployed people in urban areas or low-income groups hit by illness or disaster. People in their 40s make up the majority," said Ma Qiang, an officer with the Qinghai Provincial Public Security Department.
The sect, sometimes known as Eastern Lightning, claims to be an offshoot of Christianity, but would be barely recognizable to Western Christians. Founded in 1990 in central China's Henan Province, it states that Jesus has been resurrected as a Chinese woman.
"There are no records and explanations of doomsday in Christian doctrines, which differentiates Christianity from the cult," said Tong Ping'an, head of the Qinghai Provincial Christianity Association.
Tales of a female Jesus and a Great Red Dragon, have been used to convert people to the cult, distort the Bible, cause panic and disrupt the normal religious order, according to Tong.
China's space probe Chang'e-2 has scanned the surface of an asteroid approximately 7 million km away from Earth, announced the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense of China on December 15.
Chang'e-2 passed by Toutatis, named after a Celtic god, on December 13 at 4:30 p.m. Beijing time, according to a statement of the administration.
The probe came as close as 3.2 km from Toutatis and took pictures of the asteroid at a relative velocity of 10.73 km per second. It was the first time a spacecraft from Earth has come so close to the asteroid.
Before China, only the United States, the EU and Japan were able to examine an asteroid using a spacecraft.
Sources with the administration said that Chang'e-2 is continuing its deep space travel and will reach a distance of more than 10 million km away from Earth in January 2013.
Chang'e-2 was launched on October 1, 2010 and later orbited the moon to finish a more extensive probe than its predecessor Chang'e-1.
The China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences on December 18 established a research center for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) resources.
Research results are expected to help the government and TCM industry insiders have a better understanding of the country's herbal resources.
Wang Guoqiang, Vice Minister of Health and Director of the State Administration of TCM, said at the center's inauguration that herbal resources have become increasingly scarce in China due to profit-driven over-exploitation.
Wang identified a lack of overall planning in exploitation and protection, which should be based on scientific research and survey, as an outstanding problem for the development of TCM.
China conducted a nationwide survey of herbal resources in 2011, which covered their distribution, production and natural environment.
The Warm China 12.1 fund has benefited some 15,749 AIDS-affected children, according to a statement released on December 16 by the All-China Women's Federation, a joint supervisor of the fund.
The fund started in 2008 and is providing an annual allowance of 1,000 yuan ($160) for each eligible child. "It is available to orphans with AIDS and children in extreme poverty caused by the disease in more than 300 counties in 15 provincial-level regions across China," said the statement.
The charter of the fund provides that the money should be used to guarantee the orphans' access to normal living and learning conditions during nine years of compulsory education.
The focus of the fund also includes pairing orphans with volunteer families and other community-based activities.
In the latest National Human Rights Action Plan, the Chinese Government pledged to guarantee the rights to life, education, health care and other rights of AIDS-affected children.
According to the Ministry of Health, 17,740 AIDS-related deaths were reported in China from January to October, a year-on-year increase of 8.6 percent.
China established a state-level lab in Beijing on December 18 to develop technologies to minimize the damage of nuclear and biochemical disasters on human health and the environment.
The lab will focus on technologies that can evaluate and monitor damage, protect people, facilities and the environment in the event of nuclear and biochemical disasters, and repair the damage, said Pei Chengxin, the lab's director.
The lab is attached to an institute under the People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Armament Department, which has developed several key technologies for civilian use in monitoring poisonous gas and biochemical threats.
With the support of military research, the lab is expected to develop related technologies for civilian use and train more scientists in this field, Pei said.
The new lab also merges a state-level laboratory of analytic chemistry, a PLA institute on environmental science and a lab on chemical warfare protection.
Out of concern for its air quality, Beijing has stepped up efforts to phase out old and highly polluting motor vehicles, the local environmental watchdog said on December 18.
A total of 515,000 obsolete motor vehicles have been taken off the city's roads over the past two years, exceeding the goal of removing 400,000 such vehicles that was set in a municipal five-year plan (2011-15), according to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.
Motor vehicles contribute to about 22.2 percent of a city's PM2.5 data, a gauge monitoring fine airborne particles 2.5 microns or less in diameter, and old vehicles release more pollutants, said Fang Li, a spokesman for the bureau, citing an analysis of the city's pollution sources.
Beijing suffers from poor air quality, with this year's average PM2.5 data reaching 70-80 micrograms per cubic meter, twice the regulated standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter.
Fang said that motor vehicles that have been in use for more than eight years account for about 20 percent of the city's car population, but they create more than 60 percent of the air pollution.
According to a municipal plan on air pollution control, Beijing hopes to implement the stricter State VI emissions standard, which is equivalent to the Euro VI standard, by 2016. | 
