JOURNEY TO ANTARCTICA: China's 26th Antarctic expedition team arrives at Fremantle port, Australia, on board of Xuelong icebreaker on March 18 for the supply replenishment during the expedition journey (CUI JING)

Shanghai Airport Expansion

The second terminal of the Shanghai Hongqiao Airport came into operation on March 16 ahead of the opening of the Shanghai World Expo amid the city's efforts to build a "world-class" traffic hub. The extension of Shanghai's subway Line 2, which has links with the new terminal, started operating the same day.

The 360,000-square-meter terminal, with a new runway and 45 airplane parking bays, is expected to boost the airport's annual transportation capacity to 40 million people, said Shen Xiaosu, Deputy Director of Shanghai's Urban, Rural Development and Traffic Committee.

Eleven domestic carriers have already moved their services to the new terminal. The old terminal will be used by some budget airlines and chartered flights to Japan and the Republic of Korea, according to the airport's website.

Doctors Without Cigarettes

Thirteen Chinese medical colleges will introduce smoking control courses into their curriculum to educate future medical workers on the dangers of smoking, that they will show to their patients. Surveys show that more than half of China's male doctors are smokers.

The initiative will be the first time Chinese universities have offered such courses, Shen Huahao, Vice Dean of the School of Medicine at Zhejiang University, said on March16. The school is among 13 medical colleges, including Peking Union Medical College and medical schools at Peking University and Fudan University, to take part in the program.

At least 6,500 students are expected to take the courses each year as part of a five-year anti-smoking education program, Shen said.

Mobile Porn Crackdown

Authorities shut down or blocked more than 140,000 mobile WAP sites offering pornography for mobile phone users in a five-month crackdown, said Zhou Huilin, Deputy Director of the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publication, on March 15. The move, Zhou said, had "clearly cleansed the Internet environment."

"In the next stage, we'll target serious criminal activity related to mobile porn WAP sites with servers overseas, as many sites were moving their servers overseas to avoid supervision," he said.

China stepped up its war against Internet pornography in the campaign, which was launched in August last year by nine government and Party departments. Internet users in China had reached 384 million by the end of 2009, with 233 million, or 60.8 percent of the total users, accessing online content via mobile phones, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

China's Jumbo Jet

China is slated to complete the draft design of its first independently developed jumbo jet by the end of this year, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The homegrown jumbo jet, known as the C919, is expected to be put into production next year and enter service in 2016, said its chief designer Wu Guanghui.

Test flights will be conducted in 2014 in several regions under differing climate conditions. A 168-seat model and a 156-seat model of the jet would be developed, with more models expected in the future to meet the demand of different carriers, said Wu.