Helping Migrant Population

Zhang Xinfeng, Vice Minister of Public Security, said in Beijing that his ministry will soon issue a circular throughout China to improve access to better housing, medical services and education for the children of the country's colossal migrant population. China has 140 million farmers who have left their farmland to seek employment in cities, which account for about 10 percent of China's total population.

According to the released draft document, local governments are required to provide education for children of migrant workers; build dorms for migrant workers to improve their living conditions; raise their social insurance coverage; and provide them with the same free services available to city residents, such as infectious disease prevention and treatment, children's vaccinations and maternity care.

Wardens Turned Prisoners

China has punished 3,149 corrupt wardens over the past five years, according to the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

A number of senior wardens were caught taking bribes, including Li Wenhua, the former director of the Bureau of Prison Administration in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Li was involved in a case where the former chief warden of Chuanxi Prison, Wu Bangzhi, took more than 2 million yuan ($270,000) from a prisoner in return for secretly letting him out of confinement a number of times.

According to Chinese laws, procuratorates set up offices in prisons and centers of reeducation. Prosecutors corrected about 11,000 improper cases over the past five years and detected 26,000 cases of illegal detention, release and punishment.

Smooth Lunar Exploration

China's first lunar orbiter Chang'e-1, which is now circling the moon at a stable altitude of 200 km, has opened its facilities to transmit data back to the Earth, said Pei Zhaoyu, spokesman for the China National Space Administration on November 20.

He added that the orbiter is in good condition and facilities on board will be tested over the next few days.

The satellite has undergone a number of tests since it entered the moon's orbit on November 7. On November 19, it adjusted its position to point its probing facilities toward the moon, positioned the probe's solar panel toward the sun and the directional antenna toward the Earth to allow data to be transmitted back to the Earth.

Chang'e-1 is expected to relay its first picture of the moon in late November.

Global Warming Toll

Meteorological experts in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region have expressed concern that global warming is threatening the ecology of the region.

"The warming climate has caused more meteorological disasters than ever in Tibet. Problems like receding snow lines, shrinking glaciers, drying grasslands and desert expansion are increasingly threatening the natural eco-system in the region," said Song Shanyun, Director of the Tibet Regional Meteorological Bureau.

Song cited two major disasters in 2000, which caused total losses of 1.4 billion yuan ($189 million). In April 2000, a thawed snowcap triggered an almost unprecedented large-scale landslide in southeast Tibet. More than 300 million cubic meters of debris, piling up to 100 meters high, blocked a river and besieged more than 4,000 people. The other disaster was a once-a-century flood, which affected more than 60,000 people and inundated thousands of hectares of cropland.