介绍:
This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
Senior Chinese lawmakers have expressed concerns over the country's low energy efficiency and high emissions. The move follows a recent report which suggested that China is lagging behind its energy conservation and emission reduction targets.
Members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress held panel discussions on the report drafted by the State Council, China's cabinet.
According to the report, though China has made great efforts in cutting emissions and energy use, it still faces serious challenges due to its development pattern and poor technology.
China has targets for emission cuts and energy saving, in which energy consumption per unit of GDP drop by 16 percent, and carbon dioxide emissions drop by 17 percent, by next year from the levels of 2010.
However, up to now, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP have dropped by 9 and 10 percent respectively, and the country is still facing "a grim situation" in order to meet the targets.
Environmental experts say China is facing considerable challenges in its energy conservation and emission reduction initiatives; and the country's extensive growth model was to blame.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
The Beijing International Film Festival united directors and industry insiders from home and abroad in discussing China's place in world cinema.
With the domestic film market booming, Hollywood is hungry to tap this emerging potential source of profits, while Chinese filmmakers are desperate to get more exposure for their movies abroad.
Director Alfonso Cuaron says the paradigm is to cooperate with Hollywood, and that will make Chinese movies more global.
As the second-biggest film market in the world, China has many facets that attract this Oscar winner. The director says China has huge audiences that love cinema and the investors create venues for people to watch films. But more importantly, it speaks for filmmakers who make films that connect with audience.
His blockbuster "Gravity," a particular hit in China, follows a stranded U.S. astronaut who finds refuge in the Chinese space station Tiangong-1 and returns to Earth aboard the Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou.
He says the Chinese elements in the film made a connection with Chinese audience.
The popularity of foreign films in China is indicated by statistics from consulting agencies which show that imported movies' box office almost doubled from 9 billion yuan in 2008 to 18 billion yuan last year, or almost 3 billion US dollars.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
American Telephone and Telegraph Company, AT&T, plans a major expansion of super-fast Internet services to cover as many as 100 municipalities in 25 metropolitan areas in the United States.
The service, called GigaPower, has a 1 gigabit per second speed that is about 100 times what U.S. consumers typically get with broadband. That means faster video downloads and the ability for more devices to connect to the network without congestion.
AT&T currently has such speeds in Austin, Texas, and has committed to offer the service in Dallas. The company is also in advanced talks to bring GigaPower to two additional markets in North Carolina.
A rival offering from Google, known as Google Fiber, is available in Kansas City and is coming soon to Austin and Provo, Utah. Smaller companies and public utilities offer or plan such speeds in a handful of other markets throughout the U.S.
AT&T Inc. said Monday that the specific number of markets beyond its initial four will depend on discussions with local officials and assessments of potential demand. The company said it may start building some of the new networks by the end of the year.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Astronomers have discovered what they say is the most Earth-like planet yet detected - a distant, rocky world that's similar in size to our own and exists in the Goldilocks zone where it's not too hot and not too cold for life.
The find excited planet hunters who have been scouring the Milky Way galaxy for years for potentially habitable places outside our solar system.
Astronomer Geoff Marcy from the University of California in Berkeley, the United States who had no role in the discovery, said this is the best case for a habitable planet yet found; and the results are absolutely rock solid.
The planet was detected by NASA's orbiting Kepler telescope, which studies the heavens for subtle changes in brightness that indicate an orbiting planet is crossing in front of a star. From those changes, scientists can calculate a planet's size and make certain inferences about its makeup.
The newfound object, dubbed Kepler-186F, circles a red dwarf star 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. A light-year is almost 6 trillion miles.
The planet is about 10 percent larger than Earth and may very well have liquid water - a key ingredient for life - on its surface.
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