SPORTS KIDS: Children from a Roller Skating Club in Huainan City, Anhui Province, perform on August 8, the third National Fitness Day (CHEN BIN)

Aircraft Carrier

China's refitted aircraft carrier platform left its shipyard in Dalian in northeast China's Liaoning Province on August 10 to conduct its first sea trial.

Military sources said the trial was in line with the carrier's refitting schedule and would not take a long time. Refitting work will continue after the vessel has returned to port.

Cyber Attacks

China suffered about 493,000 cyber attacks in 2010, half of which originated from abroad, according to a report issued by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China on August 9.

Most of the attacks came in the form of malicious "Trojan" software used by hackers to gain access to target computers, the report said.

It said 14.7 percent of the malicious programs came from Internet Protocol addresses (IPs) located in the United States and another 8 percent came from IPs located in India.

Hackers reportedly tampered with nearly 35,000 Web pages—including 4,635 government websites—in the past year, up 67.6 percent from a year earlier. The report concluded 60 percent of the websites of ministry-level government departments are at risk of being hacked.

Gender Imbalance

A senior health official has pledged to intensify efforts to address China's increasing gender ratio imbalance.

China's sex ratio at birth was 118.08 boys to 100 girls in 2010, 116.9 in 2000, 111 in 1990 and 108 in 1982, according to census data.

"The gender ratio imbalance can be attributed to a number of causes; a traditional preference for sons, the practice of arranging for sons to take care of elderly parents, illegal sex-selective abortions and other factors," Vice Health Minister Liu Qian said at a press conference on August 9.

A slew of measures have been taken to address the problem, including improvements to the social security network and a crackdown on sex-selective abortions, he said.

According to Liu, doctors found to be practicing non-health-related sex determination or sex-selective abortions will be stripped of their licenses and any medical institutions found to be involved will also face severe penalties.

Hepatitis Immunization

China's national immunization program has successfully protected 80 million people from infection with the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) over the past 19 years, the Ministry of Health said.

HBV was first included in the national vaccination program in 1992.

Ministry data show inoculations have also prevented 19 million additional children from becoming carriers of the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) over the same period. HBsAg is an early indicator of acute hepatitis B.

About 93 million Chinese are HBV carriers, accounting for more than a quarter of the world's total.

Preserving History

Local officials said a project to protect the ruins of the 10th-century Guge Kingdom, located in west Tibet's Ngari Prefecture, had started in May. It is estimated the project will cost 57.4 million yuan ($8.9 million) over the next five years.

Workers will repair the ruins' structure, bind the earth in the surrounding mountains, to prevent landslides, and preserve the ancient Buddhist murals in the area's caves, said Li Xingguo, head of the Cultural Bureau of Ngari.

The local government previously conducted two "rescue preservation" projects to protect the ruins in 1985 and 1997.