SUMMER JOY Tibetans enjoy a colorful performance on September 3 to celebrate the
annual Yogurt Festival in Lhasa, which lasts from August 30 to September 5

Training for More Students

Twelve vocational high schools will be built in the Pearl River Delta over the next few years to train up to 100,000 students from less-developed areas of south China's Guangdong Province, to meet the soaring demand for skilled workers in the region, a local education official said on September 1.

The delta region has long faced a shortage of labor, and skilled workers are now in particularly high demand as the region seeks to switch focus from labor-intensive manufacturing to value-added industries.

Lai Hongying, a publicity official with the education department, said that by 2011, the province aims to train 2 million students a year, up from 1.3 million last year.

Raising the Poverty Line

The government may raise the poverty line to enable more people to get state benefits to meet their needs, officials and experts said on September 2. The State Council will discuss such a proposal by the end of the year.

The proposal to raise China's poverty line was put forward when the global yardstick was changed after the World Bank (WB) raised its poverty threshold from $1 to $1.25 a day.

According to the WB, the number of people living below the poverty line in China fell from 835 million in 1981 to 207 million in 2005. During the same period, the number in the rest of the world fell by 500 million.

The proposed change could serve as a call for China to take greater steps to lift more people out of poverty.

Highway Reopens

The road from Dujiangyan to Wenchuan, the epicenter of the May 12 quake in southwest China that left 69,226 people dead, reopened to traffic on September 2.

The road was once deemed by experts as needing at least three years to reopen. Vehicles had to detour along 800 km of mountainous road and cross two 4,000-meter-high mountains to transport necessities there after the earthquake.

The road is part of national highway No. 213, which runs from Lanzhou in northwestern Gansu Province, to Mohan in southwestern Yunnan Province.

Antarctic Studies

China will set up a new observatory station in Antarctica at the region's highest peak within two years, according to the Polar Research Institute of China.