介绍:
This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Yun Feng in Beijing. Here is the news.
Evening viewers in much of Asia and early risers in parts of the Americas were treated to a stunning lunar eclipse recently, though clouds obscured it for some.
Lucky ones saw the moon turn orange or red in what is known as a "blood moon". The hue results from sunlight scattering off Earth's atmosphere.
Whoops of joy erupted at the Sydney Observatory in Australia as the moon made a brief appearance.
An observatory astronomer said it was spectacular; and the cloud certainly got in the way, but people have seen it during totality, which is always the highlight to see the lovely, reddish-brown color.
In Japan, clear skies turned partly cloudy as the eclipse progressed, but some people who gathered on the rooftops of skyscrapers in Tokyo saw the moon turn a rusty brown when the clouds cleared.
66-year-old homemaker Yoshiko Yoneyama said that when the sun, the moon and the earth aligned, she got the feeling that she was also a part of the solar system.
Viewers in China also saw the lunar eclipse. Ten-year-old primary school student in Beijing Yu Xuan said this was his first time to see it, and he is expecting another lunar eclipse next year.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
More than 470 million people have traveled in China during the National Day holiday which ended last week, up more than 10 percent from the same period last year.
The travelers contributed to almost 250 billion yuan, or around 40 billion U.S. Dollars, in tourism revenue, up 16 percent year on year.
In a related development, Tibet saw a record influx of 740,000 tourists during the National Day holiday.
From October 1st to 7th, the autonomous region received almost 300,000 overnight tourists and 450,000 one-day travelers. The total number of tourists grew almost 13 percent compared with the same period last year. Tourism revenue hit almost 340 million yuan, or around 55 million U.S. Dollars, in the past week.
On October 3rd, 124,000 tourists arrived, the most for any single day in Tibet.
With its rich and relatively untapped tourism resources, the southwestern region received 13 million tourists last year, with tourism revenue accounting for more than one-fifth of the local economy in Tibet.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Yun Feng in Beijing.
South China's Guangdong Province has reported more than 1,400 new dengue fever cases last week, bringing the total number to almost 24,500.
Local health authorities said that during the past National Day Holiday week which falls between October 1st and 7th, more than 1,000 new cases were found daily.
The disease has been detected in almost all the 21 prefecture-level cities in the province. The capital city of Guangzhou has seen the most cases with around 20,800, followed by the cities of Foshan and Zhongshan.
By the end of last week, a total of six fatalities have been reported, with five in Guangzhou and one in Foshan.
The Dengue Fever is a mosquito-borne, potentially fatal disease that affects between 50 and 100 million people in tropical and subtropical regions every year, causing fever combined with muscle and joint aches.
The outbreak of the disease this year is believed to be the worst in 20 years.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
A new Sino-American joint venture hospital will be built in south China's Guangdong Province.
Funded by a Chinese health-care investment company, "MGH Hospital China" will be run by Massachusetts General Hospital, MGH, and Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
A cooperation agreement was signed a few days ago, describing a state of the art hospital with technology, equipment and personnel from MGH, alongside a research and teaching center to train Chinese staff.
Founded in 1811, MGH was the first, and is still the largest, teaching hospital attached to Harvard Medical School.
"MGH Hospital China", with 500 beds, will be based in Zhuhai City near Macao.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Yun Feng in Beijing.
China will launch a new "constellation" of marine surveillance satellites in 2019 to monitor ships, oil rigs, marine disasters and land-based resources.
The satellites will be capable of operating around clock in all weather conditions. They will be able see meter-long objects from space and generate high-definition imagery of both land and ocean surfaces.
Officials say the satellites will play an important role in reinforcing China's marine rights protection, marine law enforcement, management of its offshore waters, as well as marine disaster relief and reduction.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
In another development, China's Beidou navigation satellite system is being more frequently applied in the country's civil projects.
In Shenyang city in northeast China, there has been surging use of the system in environmental sanitation, logistics and school buses, with the mapping largely used to beef up management efficiency and road safety in the city.
Local officials say the system will play a bigger role in government administration, fishery and emergency rescue in the future.
The system is one of the four largest in the world. Its service currently covers the Asia-Pacific region. The local government is aiming to make it a global system by 2020.
