Saturday - August 01, 2020

Another one of those “you don’t even have to look” news stories

Couple Pleads Guilty to Stealing Children’s Hospital Trade Secrets

Hmm ... betcha it’s two chinks who work there.

A Chinese woman and her husband pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Thursday to conspiring to sell scientific trade secrets to the Chinese government and to wire fraud focused on research, identification, and treatment of a wide range of pediatric medical conditions.

Li Chen, 46, and her husband, Yu Zhou, 49, made the plea via video conference. The couple both worked at the National Children’s Hospital’s Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio, for a decade before being arrested in California in July 2019. The case was unsealed in August 2019 when they appeared in federal court in Ohio.

“Chen admitted to stealing scientific trade secrets related to exosomes and exosome isolation from Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Research Institute for her own personal financial gain,” the Department of Justice press release on the case said. “They are charged with conspiring to steal at least five trade secrets related to exosome research from Nationwide Children’s Hospital.”

“Exosomes play a key role in the research, identification, and treatment of a range of medical conditions, including necrotizing enterocolitis (a condition found in premature babies), liver fibrosis and liver cancer,” the press release said.

“Once again we see the People’s Republic of China (PRC) facilitating the theft of our nation’s ingenuity and hard work as part of their quest to rob, replicate and replace any product they don’t have the ability to develop themselves,” said John C. Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security. “Far from being an isolated incident, we see the PRC implicated in around 60 percent of all trade secret theft cases

Too bad we don’t have enough intelligent white kids to study hard and learn to work in these fields. Instead we coddle them and give them awards for showing up, and then screw ourselves for the almighty bottom line by flooding our colleges, medical research and high tech fields with spies. Every defense industry, every aerospace industry, every medical industry, every tech industry, every grad school. Every advancement we’re working on, every project is staffed full of Chinese, and an awful lot of them are sneaking stuff out the backdoor. China is asshoe. 

Posted by Drew458     on 08/01/2020 at 04:18 PM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the news •  
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   Monday - July 13, 2020

China Is Bugging Me Again

  

I’m really getting tired of this. First it was the brown marmorated stinkbug. Then it was the ash borer, which cost our condo park dozens of trees. Now it’s the spotted lanternfly. We’ve got so damn many of them I felt the need to look them up online.

And what a surprise, we’re under lockdown for this bug. Quarantine. Gee, wonderful. And their favorite tree to munch around here is the Eastern Black Walnut, one of which grows right over our patio. I call it the toilet tree, because all it does is drop shit on us all year long. Now there are so many of these bugs, which suck sap and pee out “honeydew” in copious quantities, that it feels like a light misty rain out there. And we’ve got dozens and dozens of the little black ones, dead, all over the patio.

Spotted Lanternflies Land in New Jersey
Invasive Pest Identified in Warren County [ and Hunterdon and half a dozen other counties in NJ ]

Some people may think it is a moth but it’s really the Asian plant hopper known as the spotted lanternfly (SLF), Lycorma deliculata (White) and is a member of the order Hemiptera, family Fulgoridae. In the USA, spotted lanternfly is an invasive species that could be very devastating to some New Jersey crops and hardwood trees.

This insect was accidentally introduced into Pennsylvania and was confirmed in the state in September 2014. At first it was only found in Berks County, however, today it has spread throughout Pennsylvania and to neighboring states, including New Jersey.

New Jersey populations were first detected in 2018 are currently primarily distributed along the state’s border with Pennsylvania. In response, the NJ Department of Agriculture has issued an eight-county quarantine. People and businesses travelling in and out of these counties (Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Mercer, Salem, Somerset, and Warren) should inspect vehicles for hitchhiking SLF and inspect outdoor items such as packing bins, firewood, paving stones, lawn equipment, etc. for egg masses (see checklist). Quarantine compliance will reduce the spread of SLF to new areas and counties thereby protect New Jersey resources including forests and agriculture.

https://www.nj.gov/agriculture/divisions/pi/prog/spottedlanternfly.html

I tipped off the condo association here, and submitted a report to the Ag Department at Rutgers. Hey, if they want to come and chop down that tree, fine by me. We hate it.

All 3 of these bugs first showed up in eastern PA. I wonder what massive Chinese import center is there?

China is asshoe.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/13/2020 at 06:00 PM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the news • Daily Life •  
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   Tuesday - July 07, 2020

China Is Asshoe, part 3 million and 4

Got Your Data? So Does China.

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday warned Americans that the Chinese government’s theft of American information is taking place on so large a scale, suspected incidents make up nearly half of his bureau’s counterintelligence cases.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington, Wray said that Chinese thefts amount to “one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” and that the American people are the victims.

“Of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently under way across the country, almost half are related to China,” Wray said. “And at this very moment, China is working to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research.”

In fact, Wray said that most Americans have already been affected.

“If you’re an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data,” he said.

As an example, Wray noted that in 2014 Chinese hackers stole more than 21 million records from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

On the one hand, China Is Asshoe. They lie and cheat and steal and distort the truth.

On the other hand, this report is from the FBI. They lie and cheat and steal and distort the truth.

I don’t trust either of them. 

Posted by Drew458     on 07/07/2020 at 04:48 PM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the news • Crime •  
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   Monday - June 29, 2020

Plenty Yuan Made Selling Traditional Chinese Medicine For COVID

I see saffron, star anise, mushrooms, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, shredded garlic and a couple other seed or fruit things. Looks like a nice spice mix for some curry. If the mix is 1800 years old, it can’t exactly be a secret formula, can it?

Spice mix fights COVID and wins? Heard about this a couple months ago; they were going to sell tons of it to Africa and make billions.

Question is, does it actually work? Do we have “official” studies, or is this “merely anecdotal”? Or total BS?

Chinese medicine makers have reaped stunning results in the first quarter.

One of China’s treatments for Covid-19 is a controversial traditional Chinese medicine inspired by a medical textbook written 1,800 years ago. The huge popularity of the drug – the Lianhua Qingwen capsule – has produced massive fortunes for the company behind it, as well as its shareholders.

Beyond the increased sales from the coronavirus pandemic, however, traditional remedy makers still face an uphill battle to prove their medical efficacy, maintain their domestic market share and win recognition overseas.

“Sales income from the Lianhua Qingwen capsule almost doubled in the first quarter of this year,” said Wu Xiangjun, general manager of Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical, which produces the drug, in a written exchange with the South China Morning Post. “We continue to actively push for the product to be registered and sold overseas.”

The capsule, developed in 2003 to treat severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), extracts the essence of 13 herbs based on prescriptions that date back to classic medical texts written during the Han dynasty (206BC–220AD).

In February, it became part of China’s national standard therapy for Covid-19 patients, along with two other traditional Chinese medicine formulas. There is currently no known cure for the disease.

Chinese embassies also included it in a care package sent to Chinese students overseas alongside masks and disinfecting wipes. The drug is now sold for as much as £19 (US$24) on e-commerce site eBay in the UK for a box that is priced at about 25 yuan (US$4) in China.

Thanks in part to officials’ promotion and support, the pandemic has cemented the important role of traditional Chinese medicine in the country’s health care system, despite intense controversies over its effectiveness. It accounts for 18 per cent to 30 per cent of China’s 2 trillion yuan (US$283 billion) drug market, according to various estimates.

~~~~

Related:

[ June 1 ] Customs officers seized tens of thousands of capsules of a Chinese medication falsely advertised as a treatment for COVID-19.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized three parcels of Lianhua Qingwen Jiaonang on Tuesday at the International Mail Facility at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Each box contained 9,600 capsules for a total of 28,800 capsules and a total domestic value of $28,797, according to a news release. All of the shipments originated from China.

The medication is known to have been used to treat some COVID-19 patients in China and other countries. But its effectiveness is unknown and it remains an unapproved medicine for use in the United States.

So if it hasn’t been tested or trialed, it’s kind of wrong to say it’s falsely labeled. “Unapproved” might be a better descriptor. But right now it can’t be packaged as a medicine and distributed in the USA. Maybe they should label the pills “seasoning for one garden salad”?



~~~~

Speaking of untested and unapproved ...

Randomized controlled trials(RCTs) regarding Lianhua Qingwen Capsules for treatment of viral influenza were searched in the CNKI, WanFang, VIP, SinoMed and PubMed. The quality of papers selected based on the inclusion criteria were assessed according to the Cochrane collaboration method and Meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.3 software. A total of 8 articles were included, with a total sample size of 955 cases, including 478 cases in the treatment group, and 477 cases in the control group. In terms of the therapeutic effect, Lianhua Qingwen Capsules group was superior to the control group, ...  In terms of adverse reactions, the control group was superior to Lianhua Qingwen Capsules, ... Lianhua Qingwen Capsules has a better therapeutic effect on viral influenza, but the incidence of adverse reactions is high, and its safety must be taken seriously. Given the small number of documents included and the low quality, the efficacy and safety of Lianhua Qingwen Capsules shall be confirmed by more high-quality clinical studies.

But they keep telling us that SARS COV-2 is not the flu, and nothing like the flu! So why treat it as if it was the flu?



~~~~

Meanwhile, 7 weeks ago over in Singapore:

Yiling Pharmaceutical (002603.SZ) announced that it has obtained the product listing approval issued by the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) of Singapore which grants Lianhua Qingwen Capsule the initial sale authorization in the country. The approval certifies and registers Lianhua Qingwen - a traditional Chinese medicine commonly used for the prevention and treatment of viral influenza - under the category of Chinese Proprietary Medicines (CPM).

Developed under the guidance of collateral disease theory, the medicine is listed as the recommended medicine for the treatment of cold and influenza by China’s National Health Commission and National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Composed of 13 Chinese herbs, the TCM has been found in the clinical research that it is effective in alleviating the influenza-induced symptoms like fever, cough and fugue.

Lianhua Qingwen also plays a pivotal role in the prevention and control of COVID-19 in China. Lianhua Qingwen was shown in a clinical trial to improve the recovery rate of patients infected with COVID-19. The latest research by State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Diseases, the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University has revealed that Lianhua Qingwen significantly inhibited the SARS-COV-2 replication, affected virus morphology and reduced the virus load in the infected cells in vitro.

~~~~


China TCM seems to have at least SIX herbal mixes that seem to help”

Traditional Chinese medicine has been playing a critical role in the prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of novel coronavirus pneumonia. Official figures showed that 91.6 percent of the patients in Hubei province, and 92.4 percent of patients nationwide have been treated with TCM.

Three formulas and three medicines have proved to be effective in treating the infection, according to the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Here is a list of them.

Remember when Hubei Provence was on the verge of annihilation one week, and seemingly perfectly cured the next? IIRC they claimed TCM as the reason, and the West ignored that. Barbaric folk remedies. Shamanism. Maybe somebody in the West out to do a study or three ...

Posted by Drew458     on 06/29/2020 at 11:56 AM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the news • pandemic and epidemic diseases •  
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   Thursday - March 19, 2020

Pat Lets It Fly

To quote Pat

Nobody’s feelings were consulted during the making of this video. Anyone who has a problem with that can drop dead.

Does he mention how much of our media is owned by China? Oh, we all saw a couple months back how they own the NBA, and we all know the MSM has been soft on commies since 1925, but it’s rather in-your-face at this point.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2020 at 10:21 PM   
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   Monday - February 17, 2020

Well no kidding, again

Chinese Report: Kung Flu may have come from virus lab in Wuhan

Tell us what we all figured out at least 6 weeks ago.

Chinese scientists believe the deadly coronavirus may have started life in a research facility just 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market.

A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province.

‘The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,’ penned by scholars Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao claims the WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats.

It also mentions that bats - which are linked to coronavirus - once attacked a researcher and ‘blood of bat was on his skin.’

The report says: ‘Genome sequences from patients were 96% or 89% identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus originally found in Rhinolophus affinis (intermediate horseshoe bat).’

It describes how the only native bats are found around 600 miles away from the Wuhan seafood market and that the probability of bats flying from Yunnan and Zhejiang provinces was minimal.

In addition there is little to suggest the local populace eat the bats as evidenced by testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors.

Instead the authors point to research being carried out withing a few hundred yards at the WHCDC.

One of the researchers at the WHCDC described quarantining himself for two weeks after a bat’s blood got on his skin, according to the report. That same man also quarantined himself after a bat urinated on him.

I am not sure how honest a news source the UK Daily Mail is. About average I’d guess, although they run a whole lot of tabloid level stuff.

I saw this news at ZeroHedge the other day, a web site that has gone over the tinfoil edge.  Ok, I want to believe they’ve gone over the edge, after reading a very long, very detailed, but generally only lightly referenced paper there the other day. It traced (and connected all the dots of) viral research back to (Wiki link) psychotic war criminal Dr. Ishii, Unit 731, and the death camps in Japan in WWII to the US military germ warfare programs of the 50s to specifying all the crop and livestock attacks the CIA made on Cuba. the disease attacks in Central America, how the Army released Lyme disease from Plum Island, how Hantavirus was used in the Korean war and may have been engineered to kill Native Americans, and on and on. Mentions in detail that even today there are companies contracted with our government growing anthrax and other diseases thousands of liters at a time. A tiny part of that massive essay was that yes, the Wuhan virus was engineered almost right next door to the wet market, and even names the researchers involved. Horry Clap. And this 2 hour read was really only about bio-warfare efforts in our country. God knows what goes on in China and Russia and elsewhere.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/17/2020 at 10:25 AM   
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It’s A Sign

A gigantic swarm of locusts that belong to a plague that has ravaged millions of acres of crops across east Africa has been spotted reaching the Chinese border.

Billions of the insects have destroyed food supplies across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia in what has been described as the worst plague for decades.

With vast swathes of the population in the region already facing food shortages due to poverty, the United Nations has warned action must be taken to avoid another “shock” to the region.

But footage has now surfaced showing thousands of the locusts seemingly reaching the border of China, adding yet more problems to a country struggling to contain the deadly coronavirus.

The clip is believed to have been taken on the Xinjiang border in the east of the country on February 15.

It shows the blue sky filled with the locusts as far as the eye can see. The plague has flown across the Red Sea into Europe and Asia in recent days.

Pakistan – which borders China – recently declared a national emergency over the locusts.

Great, locusts in southern Europe. At some point the colder northern climate will stop them, but all around the Med it’s nice and warm all year long.

Xinjiang is the far northwest corner of China, the empty zone where less than 10% of the land is habitable. It’s a huge area, bordering Mongolia, Kazahkstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, with microscopic borders with Russia and Afghanistan as well. Relatively no one lives there; population is just 30 people per square mile. In China. But that low number coupled with the huge area means it has a population of over 23 million. This is where the Uighur people live, those not in concentration camps; the Islamic Chinese who are more ethnically Turkish and Mongolian than Asian Chinese.

Perhaps China will release hundreds of thousands of ducks and chickens to eat the locusts and grow fat. It’s been done before, but birds can only eat so much.

Meanwhile, add famine to pestilence and death. That leaves only one more horseman to go.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/17/2020 at 09:54 AM   
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   Thursday - February 13, 2020

Whistling Past The Graveyard

I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna, I don’t wanna, I won’t ... ach crivens, I have to.

•   China is switching to a new and faster method to identify infected people, which will skew the numbers a bit until it becomes more widely used. Hopefully this new method is more accurate, and concomitant with greater reporting transparency. IOW, stop fudging the published data.


•   In the meantime, reports surface that Chinese men are 9 times more likely to get it than Chinese women. Smoking and other bad habits may be factors, like diabetes and eating rice.


•   Asians - Chinese specifically - appear to be more susceptible overall.



The conspiracy squad is getting really amped up. How amazing is it, that after a generation or so of China’s One Child policy that saw a huge spike in the numbers of surviving male children, that a winnowing disease that seems to target those excess males shows up, just a few blocks from the top bio weapons / virology research lab in the country? Seeded of course, with bio agents stolen from Canada a couple years back, and also perhaps with this Boston area college Leiber/Zaosong/Chinese military thing ...

[ January 28, 2020 ] A Harvard University professor and two other Chinese nationals were federally indicted in three separate cases for allegedly lying to the US about their involvement with China’s government, the US attorney for the district of Massachusetts announced Tuesday.
...
Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, who is the chair of Harvard’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department, is accused of lying about working with several Chinese organizations, where he collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chinese entities, US Attorney Andrew Lelling said at a news conference.

According to court documents, Lieber’s research group at Harvard had received over $15 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, which requires disclosing foreign financial conflicts of interests.

The complaint alleges that Lieber had lied about his affiliation with the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and a contract he had with a Chinese talent recruitment plan to attract high-level scientists to the country.
He was being paid $50,000 per month by the Chinese university and given $1.5 million to establish a nanoscience research lab at WUT, the complaint said.

CNN has reached out to an attorney for Lieber. In a statement, Harvard called the charges “extremely serious.”

“Harvard is cooperating with federal authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, and is conducting its own review of the alleged misconduct,” the university said in a statement. “Professor Lieber has been placed on indefinite administrative leave.”

In a separate indictment unsealed Tuesday, Yanqing Ye, a 29-year-old Chinese national, was charged with visa fraud, making false statements, conspiracy and being an unregistered agent, the US attorney’s office said.
Yanqing had falsely identified herself as a “student” on her visa application and lied about her military service while she was employed as a scientific researcher at Boston University, according to the indictment. She admitted to federal officers during an April 2019 interview that she held the rank of lieutenant with the People’s Liberation Army, court documents show. Yanqing is accused of accessing US military websites and sending US documents and information to China, according to documents.

Last week, a cancer researcher, Zaosong Zheng, was indicted for trying to smuggle 21 vials of biological material out of the US to China and lying about it to federal investigators, Lelling said.
Zaosong, 30, whose entry was sponsored by Harvard University, had hidden the vials in a sock before boarding the plane, according to Lelling.

[ sarc ] As a precaution against further incidents, DHS and FAA have now banned socks from all international flights. [ /sarc ]

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2020 at 11:30 AM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the news • Corruption and Greed • Health-Medicine • SPOOKS •  
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   Wednesday - December 18, 2019

Ever Seen A 15 Year Long Time Out?

China: While Parents Shop For New Audi, Their Kid Damages 10 New Cars In Lot

A three-year-old child racked up quite the bill for her parents after a recent trip to an Audi dealership in China. Local news reports that the small child managed to get creative on a number of brand new vehicles while the parents shopped around the showroom floor. The child reportedly used a small stone to doodle on the fresh paint and sheet metal of brand-new Audi cars and SUVs, as the photos published by Guilin News show below.

The nightmarish scenario (for both parties), took place in Guilin, China, and while most of the models that were damaged weren’t included in the news report, it does mention that some of the vehicles heavily scratched included an Audi Q3 and new 2020 Q8, which start at $34,700 and $68,200 in the U.S. Measurements taken by the dealership show that some of the scratches were as long as four inches, and in most cases, there were multiples per vehicle.

...

Because the parents and dealership couldn’t initially reach an agreement for the damages, the Lingui District People’s Court of Guilin City got involved in the matter. The dispute was finally settled this month with the court ordering the parents pay the dealership $10,025, a number that albeit lower than the original sum, was reportedly tough for the parents to swallow.

If the parents were shopping for a $68,000 car in China, then they’re bloody rich. The courts should have made them purchase all the damaged vehicles. Justice, according to the old Chinese proverb “you break it you buy it.” But no ... 10 grand will barely cover the repair cost.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/18/2019 at 11:18 AM   
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   Monday - November 23, 2015

b-b-q muslims?  chinese turn flamethrowers on muslim group in cave

Screw the “rights” groups.

The Chinese will and should do whatever it takes to secure the stability of their homeland.  Doesn’t matter if we don’t care much for their form of govt.
At this moment, we aren’t in a live gun fight with the lice who say they are Jihadists, and here the Chinese are. OK, they say they are but, just cos some rights group says otherwise, doesn’t mean the Chinese are lying.

So good for them. 
Well done China.  (well done? now that’s a hoot)

Here’s the headline.

Forces say they initially used grenades and tear gas to target attackers
Beijing says it is hunting ‘foreign-led extremists’ in Xinjiang
Rights groups say unrest due to controls on Muslim Uighurs

By Brendan Cole For Mailonline and Reuters

Chinese forces used a flamethrower to force more than 10 ‘terrorists’ from a cave in the western Xinjiang region in the hunt for what Beijing has called foreign-led extremists.

China said security forces had recently killed 28 members of a group that carried out a deadly attack at a coal mine in Aksu in September, the first official mention of the incident reported by Radio Free Asia about two months ago.

In its account, which could not be independently verified, the official People’s Liberation Army Daily said armed police had tracked the attackers into the mountains ‘like eagles discovering their prey’.

Rights groups say China has never presented convincing evidence of the existence of a cohesive militant group fighting the government.

Much of the unrest, they argue, is due to frustration at controls on the culture and religion of the Muslim Uighur people who live in Xinjiang.

Beijing vehemently denies accusations of rights abuses, though independent verification of the situation in Xinjiang is hard because of tight government controls on visits by foreign reporters.

WHO ARE THE UIGHURS IN CHINA AND WHAT ARE THEIR ASPIRATIONS?

The Uighurs are Muslims who see themselves as more culturally and ethnically tied to Central Asian nations than to China

They are an indigenous group who speak a Turkic language

They live in the Xinjiang region in western China and have had a long history of clashing with China’s central authorities.

The Uighurs’ case for greater autonomy strengthened after the collapse of the USSR and they saw independent Muslim states arise in Central Asia

Beijing is accused by some rights groups of suppressing demonstrations by the Uighurs

In a statement, spokesman for exile group the World Uighur Congress Dilxat Raxit said: ‘The Paris attacks gave China a political excuse to brazenly use flamethrowers to clamp down on unarmed Uighurs who have no just legal protection and who seek to avoid arrest.’

Senior Chinese officials have increasingly described the security challenges in Xinjiang as an important front in the global fight against terrorism.

Western nations, however, have been reluctant to cooperate in China’s anti-terrorism campaign there, nervous about being implicated in possible rights abuses.

source for unedited version and pix

Posted by peiper     on 11/23/2015 at 11:09 AM   
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   Saturday - November 07, 2015

Who Wants Take Out?

An attempt to make the world’s largest serving of fried rice has left officials in one Chinese city red-faced after criticism that some of the four-tonne portion was used to feed pigs.

Some 300 cooks—including local residents and foreign visitors—took part in the event in the eastern Chinese city of Yangzhou Thursday, churning out 4,192 kilograms (9,241 lbs) of fried rice, the city’s signature dish, according to China’s state news agency China News Service.

The amount of fried rice broke the record set at a culinary event last year in Turkey, where 3,150 kilograms (6,945 lbs) of fried rice was cooked, according to the Guinness World Records.

But Yangzhou officials had little time to celebrate the achievement.

Internet users slammed the event, with local media reports and video footage showing the rice being loaded into trash trucks.

Sharon Yang, the Greater China marketing director for Guinness World Records, said that the organizer had initially provided documentation suggesting that the rice was sent to five companies to be eaten by their staff but the world record attempt had since been disqualified because the dish wasn’t “entirely edible.”

“Following a further review of the evidence, it is now clear that over 150 kilograms of fried rice was not fit for human consumption,” she said. “We will not be able to accept claims for large food items if they prove to be inedible, or if they are prepared in such a way as to make them unfit for general consumption.”

How the hell do you cook rice so as to make it inedible? Especially if you’re a Chinese chef, and cooking rice is all you know how to do??

Posted by Drew458     on 11/07/2015 at 06:49 PM   
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   Sunday - October 25, 2015

china, golf and nuke reactor

I don’t play or follow golf, although we once lived in places right on the course.
Nice setting and housing assoc. took care of yearly painting if necessary and all the gardening.  Good life while it lasted and in all those years, which in truth weren’t too many and far short of what I’d have liked, only one ball came through a window.  Which was repaired by the assoc.  OK, so we did through our monthly contract with said assoc.

So generally, I skip over golfing news.  Don’t much care who wins what, but do understand that it takes a bit of skill to play well.
I like riding in the golf carts however.  In Palm Desert, lots of folks abandon their cars and do grocery shopping in their carts.  The super markets even have spaces just for golf carts.  Unfortunately, the markets back home aren’t as advanced as those here in the UK where, you can get home delivery and even the dairy still delivers if you want it.  But off the subject.
This is what I want to share.  Take a look, as Chinese buy up another bit of the island. Between them and the Arabs, there won’t be much left for the new immigrants. No worries.  They can always join the squatters and occupy whatever they want to, as a few of them already have.

HIGH PRICE FOR PLAYING A ROUND
By Chris Green

The historic club, regarded as the birthplace of the Ryder Cup, will charge existing members £100,000 to carry on playing.

Nestling in the Surrey countryside, its exquisitely manicured greens and fairways have long played host to elite golfers from all over the world, as well as a steady stream of millionaires – and billionaires – with a passion for the sport. Now, Wentworth is about to get even more exclusive.

New members of the historic club, which was founded in 1926 and is commonly regarded as the birthplace of the Ryder Cup, will now have to pay £125,000 for the privilege of playing on its hallowed courses under a shake-up ordered by its Chinese owners.
Wentworth’s existing members have also been told that they will have to pay £100,000 or face losing the right to play at the club, which was purchased for £135m by the Beijing-based Reignwood Group in September last year. Currently, the club’s 4,000 members pay a comparatively modest £8,000 a year plus a £15,000 joining fee.
Golfers who attended a meeting at the club on Tuesday evening were said to be “completely shocked” by the price hike, which will take effect from April 2017. Wentworth’s annual membership fee will also double to £16,000 as its owners set about upgrading its facilities, investing £20m over two years.
James Wyatt, one of the club’s current members, said there was confusion over whether the £100,000 fee was a one-off payment or a debenture which could be resold. “There was some doubt as to whether we’re looking at what we all think a debenture to be, or if it is really just a payment to the owners to fund their purchase and improvements in the club,” he told the BBC.

According to some reports, the new fees are an attempt by the club’s owners to reduce the number of existing members, allowing an influx of even wealthier individuals who can afford to pay six figure sums to play at Wentworth. Sir Michael Parkinson, a long time member of the club, has previously described the “barmy” policy as a “cull”.
Peter Alliss, the BBC golf commentator and honorary Wentworth member, said the debenture plan was “an extraordinary step”, adding: “there are very few people who have £100,000 to piddle away on their pleasures”.

complete version continued

But wait …. there’s just one more tiny item to share, no link and no long intro.
I thought you might find of interest that, according to the news, the present government has signed a deal with the Chinese.

TO BUILD A NUCLEAR PLANT WITH THE PURPOSE OF GENERATING CHEAP ELECTRICITY

Their investment is to be a third and will cost them $7b.  The French are involved too, but I can’t remember who the third party is.

I wonder who has the Alka Seltzer concession ... plop,plop fizz-fizz

Cheers All

Posted by peiper     on 10/25/2015 at 10:13 AM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the news • UK •  
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   Wednesday - May 13, 2015

A Very Sad Panda

Police in southwestern China arrested 10 people for killing a female wild giant panda, buying and selling its parts, state media said Wednesday.

The giant panda is an endangered species that tops China’s list of protected animals. Poaching them is rare, but panda parts are believed to fetch high prices on the black market because of their rarity.

China Central Television said forest police in Yunnan province recovered panda skin, panda meat, bones and an internal organ from the poachers and vendors. If convicted, the suspects could be jailed for years.

A recent census shows the wild panda population grew by 268 to a total of 1,864 in China since the last survey ending in 2003.

World Wild Fund for Nature has said poaching, a traditional threat to wild pandas in China, has declined but economic development has become a major threat. Hydropower plants, roads, and mining projects disrupt the animal’s natural habitat.

Still, Chinese officials say poaching rare animals and smuggling their parts remain a problem and that authorities are stepping up efforts to crack down on acts endangering rare animals.

I don’t know much of anything about traditional Chinese medicine, but it seems to be based on “find a really rare animal, kill it, and tell people that eating the bits will make their dicks hard”.  Thankfully, China has finally gotten around to making such things illegal. It only took them 4500 years.

Too bad it’s already too late for the northern white rhino, poached to extinction.

China Outlaws the Eating of Tiger Penis, Rhino Horn, and Other Endangered Animal Products

[May 2014] Consumers of endangered animal products in China face a risk of considerable jail time after the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress reinterpreted existing criminal laws last week to put greater pressure on those who eat or purchase protected species.

Chinese law makes it illegal to hunt and buy any of the country’s 420 protected endangered species, which include Asiatic black bears, South China tigers, golden monkeys, and giant pandas. But the statutory language is highly ambiguous.

The change adopted by the Standing Committee redefines what it means to purchase endangered species, making it illegal for anyone to knowingly buy or consume animals that were poached. The aim of the law is to crack down on the demand for endangered species, which are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine. Various animal parts are thought to offer assorted health benefits, like preventing cancer or relieving back pain.

Many of these species are also valued as a mark of status. Consumption has boomed in tandem with the country’s economy, and the demand has encouraged large-scale illegal hunting.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/13/2015 at 08:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Animals • CHINA in the news •  
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   Monday - October 06, 2014

china -vs - hong kong protesters?  the bigger they are won’t apply here whatcha think?

Some interesting stuff come my way and often it’s thought provoking.

I read the following in the Wall St. Journal (UK).  There are lots and lots of different people with differing thoughts on the subject. This is just one.
It’s written by Andrew Browne.

The democracy that was promised in 2017 will be heavily constricted.  But it will be one-man-one vote.  And the election will be competitive; candidates will have to appeal to voters.  That allows Beijing to say to Hong Kong; it’s better than anything Britain ever offered to you.  But the pro democracy protesters aren’t realists, they’re idealists.
Besides, the college students don’t remember British days.
( Andrew Browne) WSJ

Now then, I don’t know what that last line refers to.  What ill treatment did the Kongers suffer under Brit rule?
Lyndon ??

On the same subject a line from The Financial Times has this quote.

In the absence of reliable polls, it has been hard to gauge public sympathy for the demonstrations.  ( David Pilling )

On the other hand there is this from the CS Monitor.

Hong Kong democracy ‘grandfather’ says Britain was better than China

Activist and legislator Martin Lee – hit by tear gas while protesting this week – speaks of his life as a leading pro-democracy intellectual who has long fought for greater freedom in his native city. He says Britain should speak up now.
By Peter Ford, Staff Writer

A bit older, perhaps. But there is little about the lithe and youthful Mr. Lee to suggest that he is the grandfather of Hong Kong’s democracy movement. Now 76 years old, Lee was agitating for more democracy here 30 years ago, long before most of today’s protesters were born.
And in those days he was fighting the British, not the Chinese. At the time, Lee was not especially impressed by London’s half-hearted moves towards democracy before Britain handed its colony back to China in 1997. But distance or time seems to have lent enchantment to the view.
“The British did actually deliver partial democracy,” he says now. “The Chinese have delayed and delayed. And what they are offering now is pretend democracy. Hong Kong people will not accept it.”

more. Christian Science Monitor

Posted by peiper     on 10/06/2014 at 04:51 AM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the news •  
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