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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing. Here is the news.
China's central environmental authority has ordered local government to tackle pollution with Baiyangdian Wetland in north China's Hebei Province.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection and the provincial government of Hebei jointly invited officials of the municipal government of Baoding for a talk on this issue.
The Baoding government was ordered to practice its duty and strengthen management of construction projects around the wetland, which is north China's largest freshwater wetland around 150 kilometers away from Beijing.
The wetland is known for scenic views and ecological functions. It is also an important site for migratory birds on the East Asian-Australian flyway.
Earlier reports revealed that some unauthorized development projects have polluted the environment and caused damages to the wetland's ecology.
During the talk, officials from the ministry's environmental inspection department urged local officials to conduct a thorough check and strictly punish environmental violations in the area.
No industrial waste can be discharged into the wetland. Domestic sewage runoff by nearby residents should be properly handled; and illegal aquaculture and tourism projects in the wetland will be cleaned up.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Researchers have set free 3,000 artificially-bred Chinese sturgeons into the Yangtze River, in an effort to save the species from extinction. The Chinese sturgeon is a rare aquatic species that has lived through the dinosaur age.
This has been the 57th in a row by the Chinese Sturgeons Research Institute to release artificially-bred sturgeon. Advanced methods have also been adopted to help scientists track their whereabouts.
The Chinese sturgeon is a critically endangered species native to China. It is strictly protected by the Chinese government, and was named a "national treasure", much like its mammalian counterpart, the giant panda.
The Chinese sturgeon has a habit of upstream migration; it dwells along the coasts of China's eastern areas and migrates back up rivers for propagation. It has the longest migration route of any sturgeon in the world, with a single trip measuring more than 3,200 kilometers up the Yangtze River.
In the 1970s, an estimated 2,000 Chinese sturgeon spawned in the Yangtze River every year. However, due to water projects, busy traffic and pollution, the number of wild sturgeons has fallen from around 1,000 in 1982 to 50 now.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are playing an increasingly important role in China's battle against pollution.
During the latest air pollution inspections in Beijing and surrounding areas, law enforcement officials of the Ministry of Environmental Protection deployed UAVs to check key places.
The vehicles were responsible for the discovery of at least one environmental violator in Hebei's Handan city, where the air quality ranks among the worst in China. Two outdated pieces of machinery were found hidden in an iron and steel company factory. Government inspectors came to the site immediately to deal with the issue.
Five other enterprises were also found violating pollution control guidelines during the inspections.
With strong determination to fight pollution, UAVs have been frequently used to monitor pollution discharge and the operation of desulfurization facilities of companies related to steel, coking and electricity industries.
The UAVs used for environmental protection collect information with installed remote sensors, including digital cameras in high resolution, infrared and laser scanners and magnetometer. Some are even installed with infrared thermal imager which can show the operation of facilities at night.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing.
Almost 100 Tsinghua University students have signed a pledge to advocate gender equality at an event held at the university to launch United Nations-backed solidarity campaign "He-For-She" in China.
Roberta Clarke, regional director of UN Women Asia Pacific, said at the event while the pledge is symbolic, specific action is encouraged to contribute to social change.
Clarke called on those who sign up to define what they will do to make a difference. She distinctly referred to the issues of gender inequality including a preference for boys which has led to a skewed sex ration in China.
The campaign is aimed mainly at males, engaging men and boys in removing the social and cultural barriers that prevent women and girls from achieving their full potential.
The organizers of HeForShe claim to have received gender equality commitments from hundreds of thousands of men around the world, including Heads of State, CEOs and global luminaries, since it was launched in September.
23-year-old graduate student at Tsinghua, Long Yifan, said girls and women are still disadvantaged in China, particularly in the job market.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Massive crop failure was reported in rice fields where strains developed by China's "father of hybrid rice" Yuan Longping were cultivated.
Significant crop loss caused by rice blast, a deadly disease affecting cultivated rice, hit almost 700 hectares of rice fields last year in Anhui province, a major rice producer in East China.
In the worst-hit areas, the yield of rice plummeted from 7,500 kilograms per hectare in average years to 750 kilograms per hectare last year, or even to none.
Local farmers blamed misleading advertisements for their loss.
On the package of seeds sold to farmers, the ad claims the strains have high disease-resistance levels, with an incidence rate of 25 percent. But inside the package, a piece of paper is attached, which says the seeds are of level-9 disease-resistance, suggesting the possibility of catching a disease is as high as 100 percent.
In response, the Yuan Long Ping High-Tech Agriculture Company says the poor yield in the autumn harvest season last year was mainly a result of a natural disaster which affected not only rice fields of the hybrid-rice strains developed by the company, but also other varieties.
The Yuan Long Ping High-Tech Agriculture Company was founded in 1999 to promote super high-yield hybrid rice.
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