China ready to roll out 35 high-speed rail lines by 2012

October 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - India has proposed annual bilateral dialogues with the United States and the European Union to exchange notes on the issue of climate change, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has said. The proposed dialogue with the Europeans and the Americans could be on the lines of the first India-China energy dialogue scheduled to take place in New Delhi Oct 21, he said at a press conference here Friday at the end of his US visit.

September 20th, 2009 Pandas to return to famous China reserve in 2012BEIJING — Sixty pandas relocated last year from a famous Chinese nature reserve after their breeding center was severely damaged by a massive earthquake will return home after repairs in 2012. The panda breeding center in the Wolong nature reserve in southwest China's Sichuan province is undergoing a 379 million yuan ($55 million) reconstruction expected to be completed by 2011, the official Xinhua News Agency said late Saturday.

September 18th, 2009 PYONGYANG - North Korea's top leader Kim Jong Il on Friday met with Chinese President Hu Jintao's special envoy, Dai Bingguo, in Pyongyang. According to Xinhua, Dai delivered Hu's letter to Kim, saying, "the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government have attached great importance to the relationship between China and the DPRK" In the spirit of "inheriting the tradition, facing to the future, developing the good-neighborly relations and strengthening the cooperation," China is ready to consolidate and develop the relationship between the two countries, Xinhua quoted Hu's letter, as saying.

September 14th, 2009 LONDON - A French teenager was so lost sleeping between rail tracks that he did not even realise how close he was to death when a high-speed train passed over him. According to the police, the driver of the TGV train between Paris and Quimper in Brittany noticed the 19-year-old man lying stretched out on his stomach between the rails when the train approached him close to the western town of Vannes.

August 31st, 2009 YANGON - China Monday announced the handing over of 225 railway carriages to Myanmar as part of a deal agreed by the two countries in 2008. The carriages include 20 passenger and 200 freight coaches, and five engines.

August 6th, 2009 China negotiator optimistic on climate treatyBEIJING — China's top climate envoy said Wednesday he is optimistic that upcoming negotiations will produce a new treaty to fight global warming, but said developed countries have slowed the process by not setting emission-reduction targets. The nature of global warming means the cost of failure is too high, Yu Qingtai told a news conference.

July 31st, 2009 CARACAS - Venezuela and China signed a $7.5 billion agreement Thursday that includes the construction of a 468-km railway in the country with Chinese support, officials said. Public Works Minister Diosdado Cabello told reporters that the railway - which will run from the town of Tinaco, in the northwestern state of Cojedes, to Anaco, a city in the northeastern state of Anzoategui - is the biggest project Venezuela is undertaking outside of the oil industry.

July 24th, 2009 BEIJING - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Friday urged China to become a role model for developing nations in responding to climate change by promoting clean energy and investing in "green" economic growth. "China has long been the world's fastest-growing major economy," Ban said in a speech in Beijing.

July 9th, 2009 BEIJING - China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, has revealed that Chinese women would soon be seen in space. During a web chat with the official Xinhua news agency, Liwei said: "The selection (of China's first woman astronaut) is underway I believe Chinese women will be seen in space in the near future." Yang, now 44, made history when he voyaged beyond the planet's atmosphere for 21 hours aboard the Shenzhou V spaceship in 2003.

June 19th, 2009 LONDON - The Chinese economy, hit very severely by the global economic crisis, could dip one more time if the government does not roll out structural reforms that would seek to curb 20 years of excessive dependence on exports, a leading Chinese economist has warned. Delivering a speech at the London School of Economics Thursday, Yu Yongding, director general of the Institute of World Economy and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also warned that two decades of investment-driven growth strategy had led to serious problems with over-capacity.

May 14th, 2009 NEW DELHI - A group of US school students have made a new world record by drumming for 27 hours and 23 seconds. Students at Rock Hill High School in South Carolina began the drum roll at 5pm on May 8 and continued to play until around 8pm the next day.

April 29th, 2009 Table tennis wants revised schedule for 2012 GamesYOKOHAMA, Japan — The International Table Tennis Federation wants to alter the schedule for the 2012 London Olympics so that singles matches are played ahead of the team events. Team events were played before the singles competition at the Beijing Games, but the ITTF will propose to the International Olympic Committee that singles matches be staged first in London.

April 20th, 2009 China Telecom 1Q profit down 27.4 percentBEIJING — China Telecom Ltd. said Monday its first quarter profit plunged 27.4 percent as demand for traditional fixed-line telephone services weakened.

April 17th, 2009 BEIJING - The World Bank said Friday it approved loans totalling $450 million to finance road and rail projects in central and western China. The bank said $300 million would help finance a 857-km rail line linking Guizhou and Guangdong provinces.

March 12th, 2009 BEIJING - A research paper issued by the China Policy Institute of the University of Nottingham (UK) has revealed that China is likely to overtake Japan to become the world's second largest economy, either this year or by 2010. Yao Shujie, the author of the research paper told China Daily in a telephonic interview, "Right now, we don't have figures for Japan's GDP in 2008, but I think China may have already overtaken Japan last year." Shujie had predicted in 2007 that China would reach the second position in the world's economic pecking order in 2018.