Flood Response

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao(center) inspects fl ood-ravaged Jilin Province in northeast China on August 3.

Torrential rains since June have affected nearly 4.6 million people in Jilin and forced the evacuation of more than 784,000. Rain-triggered floods killed at least 74 residents and left 71 missing.

In the hardest-hit areas, fl ash fl oods have cut roads, isolated villages and disrupted communications and water supplies.Direct economic losses are estimated at 26.4 billion yuan ($3.9 billion).

While visiting flood-affected people in Yongji County, Wen pledged to provide accommodation ahead of the coming winter for people whose homes had been ruined in the fl ooding.

SOCIETY

Fighting AIDS

China’s Health Ministry detailed a plan to fi ght co-infection of HIV and tuberculosis(TB) on August 3.

A ministry circular to health authorities across China said TB infection had become one of the leading causes of death among people living with HIV.

The ministry ordered HIV/AIDS prevention and control authorities nationwide and those responsible for fi ghting TB to step up cooperation in data sharing and testing.

The ministry ordered free treatment and follow-up visits to patients co-infected with HIV and TB once detected.

t分布随机近邻嵌入算法（t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding，t-SNE）是 Laurens于2008年提出的基于SNE的改进降维算法[13]。t-SNE将位于N维空间中的高维数据向量X1，…，Xn映射到D维空间中的低维向量Y1，…，Yn。其中yi与xi一一对应，使得低维空间中数据的分布可以反映出高维空间中数据间的关系。t-SNE的基本原理是将高维和低维空间中数据点之间的欧氏距离分别转换为两个n×n的条件概率矩阵来表示数据点间的相似性，然后最小化两个概率矩阵间的差别。

It required HIV/AIDS prevention authorities to provide at least one TB examination to people with HIV or AIDS patients every year.

An estimated 700,000 people live with HIV in China. In 2008, China reported that AIDS had become the country’s leading lethal infectious disease for the first time.

Education Loopholes

The Internet is the most important source of information about sexual knowledge for Chinese teenagers, as sex education at school and home is inadequate, according to a survey.

More than three quarters of the survey’s 3,000 teenage respondents said the Internet is their most important source of information about sex. Books and friends were the next most important. School and parents ranked as the two least important sources.

The China Youth Daily newspaper conducted the survey. Still, 71 percent of the respondents believed obscene content on the Internet disturbs teenagers.

Panda Boom

“Altogether 1,206 giant pandas are living in the mountains of Sichuan, making up at least 76 percent of China’s total,” the provincial forestry department said in a press release on August 2.

The endangered bears are found in 10 city and prefecture areas, it said. Another 246 pandas are living in captivity at the giant panda protection and research center in Wolong and the Chengdu research base,the world’s two largest centers for arti ficial breeding of the bears.

Sichuan has 41 nature reserves for giant pandas covering 2.34 million hectares in total.

Property Market

China provided 56,000 hectares of land for residential use in the first six months of 2010, up 135 percent over the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Land and Resources.

A signi fi cant increase in the availability of land for housing was reported in areas like Beijing Municipality, Guizhou, Jiangxi,Heilongjiang provinces and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, said a statement on the ministry’s website.

China implemented a series of measures to rein in soaring home prices and curb property market speculation in April.The measures included tighter scrutiny of applications for fi nancing, limiting of loans for third-home purchases and higher down payments for buying secondhomes.

Latest data indicated the red-hot property market has started cooling as average housing prices in 70 major cities fell 0.1 percent in June from May.

LAST-MINUTE PREPARATION On August 4, soldiers of air defense forces stationed in Shandong Province install a missile to be launched during a military drill on reconnaissance, early warning, electromagnetic interference and ground-to-air attacks

ECONOMY

Yuan on the Rise

The central parity rate of the yuan,China’s currency, advanced to a record high against the U.S. dollar on August 4.

The central parity rate of the yuan advanced to 6.7715 per U.S. dollar on August 4 from 6.7722 on August 3, according to China Foreign Exchange Trading System.

The central bank announced on June 19 this year that it would further the reform of the yuan exchange rate regime to improve its fl exibility.

Compared with June 18, the trading day just before the reform was launched, the central parity rate of the yuan has climbed 0.82 percent against the U.S. dollar until August 4 while depreciating 5 percent against the euro and 6 percent against the British pound.

Protecting Workers

The Chinese Government has begun to solicit public opinion on a set of draft regulations on the management of foreign labor service cooperation agreements that aim to protect workers sent overseas.

“Problems exist in China-foreign labor cooperation. In some cases, workers’ legal rights were not properly protected, which occasionally led to overseas labor conflicts and even mass incidents,” said a statement released by the Legislative Affairs Of fi ce of the State Council on August 3.

The draft rules have speci fi ed market admittance and responsibilities of foreign labor cooperation companies, as well as what the government’s role should be in foreign labor service cooperation agreements.

Tariff Removal

China has removed tariffs and value-added taxes on core equipment, components and raw materials imported and used in civilian hitech projects, according to a circular from the Ministry of Finance and related departments.

BUSY BORDER CITY Trains in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, loaded with imported crude oil and wood are waiting to be re-transported to the rest of China.Manchuria, a Chinese and Russian border city, has become a tourist and trade hotspot.In 2009, the volume of freight imported and exported through the city exceeded 25 million tons and the number of tourists it received surpassed 2 million. In August 2010, the freight volume and the number of tourists surpassed 100,000 tons and 50,000 a day

The move looks to encourage research and development of the nation’s hi-tech industry.

The projects that have been exempt from taxation include core electronics, high-end universal chips, basic software, integrated circuit-manufacturing equipment, new generation wireless mobile communication networks, and new drugs for prevention and treatment of some infectious diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis.

Telecom Deal

Nepal Telecom (NT) has signed contracts with Chinese telecom service providers ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co.Ltd. to work on a package basis to supply equipment to install the Next Generation Network in Nepal, according to local media reports on August 3.

The two Chinese fi rms will start work on the $19 million project soon by setting up the necessary infrastructure to make the service available within the next six months.

“Under Package A, ZTE will work to make the Next Generation Network service available in the Kathmandu Valley while Huawei will work elsewhere in the country under Package B,” said Pramod Kumar Gurung, an NT board member.

1. THE UNITED STATESVisitors examine a wheeled chariot, which belonged to Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun 3,000 years ago, at an exhibition in New York on August 3

2. VANUATUPacific Islands Forum leaders meet in Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila on August 4. Trade, development assistance and climate change were among the hot topics at their meeting

5. PAKISTANWorkers carry power generators,provided by China, at an airport in Rawalpindi on August 4. The Chinese Government provided 10 million yuan($1.5 million) in humanitarian relief to help Pakistan address the aftermath of the recent severe floods

3. KENYAA Kenyan boy participates in a gathering calling for a peaceful vote in the country’s second constitutional referendum since its independence at the Kenyatta International Conference Center in Nairobi on August 3, the day before the referendum was held

4. UNVitaly Churkin, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, introduces the agenda of the UN Security Council at an August 3 press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York. That day, Russia assumed the rotating Security Council presidency for August

6. LEBANONLebanese soldiers inspect a damaged building after an exchange of fire between Lebanese and Israeli troops along their border on August 3. The clash, which killed one Israeli and four Lebanese, was the fiercest one since the fighting between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah in 2006