LANDMARK SUCCESS: A celebration is held on the icebreaker Snow Dragon carrying China's fourth scientific expedition to the North Pole after it crossed the Arctic Circle on July 20 (ZHANG JIANSONG)

Flooded Provinces

Floods and landslides triggered by torrential rains in southern parts of northwest China's Shaanxi Province have left at least 41 people dead and 107 others missing as of July 20, the provincial government said. Heavy rain ravaged 22 counties in three cities from July 16-18, with precipitation up to 330 mm in the worst hit areas, a record since 1953.

In Shaanxi's neighboring Sichuan Province, at least 32 people have died and 38 are missing in floods triggered by torrential rains that began on July 17, provincial flood control authorities said on July 21.

The rains abated on July 19 after sweeping across 20 major cities and prefectures in the province. A total of 11.96 million people in 85 counties were affected.

Fighting Human Trafficking

Police across the country will treat all cases of missing children and women more seriously and set up separate special investigation teams for each of the cases in the latest bid to curb human trafficking, the Ministry of Public Security has announced.

"This is the first time the ministry has made clear such a mechanism," Chen Shiqu, chief of the ministry's anti-trafficking office, told China Daily on July 20.

The move, which follows a nine-month campaign against human trafficking, aims to provide more manpower and resources for cases involving missing children and women. During the nine-month campaign that kicked off last April, the country's police rescued a total of 14,717 children and women nationwide.

Donors Needed

Only 1 percent of Chinese patients in need of certain transplant surgeries receive donated organs, according to a statement issued at a press conference by the Chinese Medical Association on July 17.

The press conference was hosted as part of the fourth sports games for people who have had transplant surgeries, which ran from July 16-18 in Tianjin.

The games, sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association, are organized to boost the confidence of recovered transplant patients and to call upon more people to become organ donors, noted medical officials.

According to the statement, China has about 1 million people in need of kidney transplant surgeries and 300,000 patients seeking liver transplants every year, but only 1 percent of them have such surgeries due to the lack of available organs.

Reckless Working

Illegal production, operations and construction caused 502 major work-related accidents in China during the first half of the year, Luo Lin, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, said on July 19.

A total of 2,652 people were reported injured, killed or missing in these 502 accidents, and the figure showed an increase of 576 victims over the first half of 2009.

From January to June, the number of extremely large production accidents (causing more than 10 deaths) rose 36.4 percent from last year to 45, resulting in 764 people being killed or listed as missing, according to Luo.

Luo also said increasingly fast-paced production activities and this year's frequent rains and landslides have added risks to China' s workplace safety.