新闻纵贯线 The Beijing Hour updated 20:00 2013/07/25（打印版）

Welcome to the Beijing Hour, coming to you live from the Chinese capital, I'm Ben Leung.

Plus Special reports is a feature on left-behind children visiting their parents in the cities.

Beijing will be cloudy tonight with a low of 24 degrees Celsius. Tomorrow showers with a high temperature of 30.　

Meanwhile Shanghai will be cloudy tonight, with a low of 30,　cloudy tomorrow, with a high of 39.

Lhasa will have light rain tonight, 12 degrees the low, showers tomorrow with a high of 21.

Heavy rain has been falling in Gansu Province which was hit by an earthquake on Monday, and this has hampered the transportation of relief materials into the disaster zone.

As CRI's He Fei reports, relief materials such as tents and quilts remain in short supply.

The heavy rain has muddied rural roads and made it impossible for vehicles to reach residents in some villages of Minxian county, which was the hardest hit in the quake.

Local officials said that due to the roads being blocked, relief goods can only be transported on foot to some areas.

"Currently we have enough drinking water and instant noodles, while tents, beds and quilts are still badly needed. We are in a mountainous region with high altitude, so residents can not sleep without beds. The current storage of these materials can not even meet the needs for one third of victims. "

The civil and financial departments of Minxian County are in charge of the reception, storage and distribution of relief materials.

Auditingand discipline inspection and supervision departments are also involved to ensure the transparency.

The heavy rain caused a landslide in the village of Yongguang, where more than 100 people who had been living in makeshift tents have been transferred to prefabricated housing.

In Zhongzhai township, local residents joined the relief effort, helping to unload materials as well as to repair blocked roads.

Zhang Zhengping is a local villager. His house, built in the beginning of this year, became dilapidated after the quake.

"It can not live in any more. Yesterday there was a landslide and we slept in the primary school. My family has 13 members and only two beds. So we let the children sleeping on beds and adults on the quilts paved on bare ground."

Zhang said in fear of further secondary disasters, residents of the village have all moved to relocation points down the hill.

China has reiterated its urgency to deepen reform in the medical and healthcare sector with a series of tasks to be finished within this year.

According to a recent report issued by the State Council, there are 26 tasks on the list, including the acceleration in building a national healthcare system, consolidating the basic drug system, improving the operation of grassroots medical institutions and promoting reform of public hospitals.

The outline also addressed a mechanism to assess and monitor the process while exercising the reform.

Latest statistics show that China's industrial performance has remained stable during the first half of this year.

And as mobile internet booms, insiders say information consumption is becoming a new popular hotspot.

China's industrial output has risen by 9.3-percent year on year during the first half of this year. But the growth is down 0.2-percent compared to the first quarter.

He also notes that information consumption has further boosted the economy since the begining of 2013.

According to Zhu, information consumption has reached 1.38 trillion yuan in the first 5 months, a nearly 20 percent annual growth, with new consumption patterns emerging.

"Wechat users have surpassed 400 million in the first half of this year. Internet flow has risen 56.8% due to increasing wechat users. The overall e-commerce market has reached 5.4 trillion yuan, up 38.5%. The sales growth of both smart phone and smart TV surpassed 25%."

Zhu Hongren says the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and relevant departments are coming up with new measures to boost information consumption and domestic demand.

However, the rapidly developing consumption raises issues such as privacy protection and online trading security.

Zhu Jun, an official at the ministry, says a series of measures will be mapped out to address that issues.

"The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued protection regulations to information on tele-communication and internet. The ministry will further strengthen security measures. "

Zhu notes that the telecommunications service providers have been required to improve their users' real information protection.

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to continue collecting data on US phone calls.

Lawmakers rejected the amendment that would have blocked funding for the National Security Agency's program, which gathers details of every call made by or to a US phone.

"The yeahs (voting yes) are 205 and the nays (voting no) are 217, the amendment is not adopted."

Whilst critics say the proposal violates the public's rights, supporters of the amendment say the practice is essential to America's counter-terrorism efforts.

They argue that the surveillance operations have been successful in thwarting at least 50 insurgency plots across 20 countries, including a dozen directed at the US.

These NSA surveillance revelations were made public by former U.S. intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, who's currently awaiting in Moscow's airport awaiting for asylum papers.

The U.S. Federal Bankruptcy Court has rejected appeals aimed at derailing the first bankruptcy hearing on the city Detroit.

Judge Steven Rhodes made it clear that the court is in charge of handling the disputes of the city's pension and welfare.

Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said earlier that filing for bankruptcy was a violation of Michigan's Constitution.

In order to protect the pension welfare of retired workers, she demanded a revocation of the bankruptcy application.

By rescinding the appeals, it gave the Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his emergency manager Kevyn Orr some breathing space, but still leave more than 21,000 retired workers and 9,500 current employees in high risk of pension reduction.

The city filed for bankruptcy a week ago- making it the largest-ever municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

More than 1-hundred others are hurt after all 8 carriages of the high-speed train came off the tracks near Santiago de Compostela.

Local media say the train, which was traveling from Madrid to Ferrol, may have been traveling at more than twice the speed limit around a bend.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who's born in Santiago de Compostela, has arrived at the scene.

This is Spain's worst rail disaster in 40 years. Seven days of mourning have been declared in the Galicia region.

North Korea might station its troops in Kaesong Industrial Zone if the working-level talks with South Korea fails.

Park Chol-su, North Korea's top negotiator, told South Korean reporters in Kaesong that, quote, "talks are in danger of breakdown."

He added "if the fate of the Kaesong industrial zone is shattered in this way, military camps cannot help being restored ."

Media reports said Park suddenly visited the South Korean pressroom in Kaesong without prior warning.

The Yonhap News Agency goes further by saying that the talks between the two Koreas have actually broken down.

Differences remained over whether to adopt legal and administrative assurances to prevent

The joint industrial park has been suspended for over three months after Pyongyang pulled out 53,000 of its workers.

The Japanese government has welcomed US president Barack Obama's selection of the United States ambassador to Japan.

Obama has named Caroline Kennedy to the post. SHE is the daughter of former President John F Kennedy.

"We hear that Caroline Kennedy has the trust of President Obama and this appointment reaffirms the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance by the Obama administration and we highly value that stance."　

Kennedy is a lawyer by training and is a key supporter of Obama's presidential campaign. 　

If confirmed by the Senate, Miss Kennedy will replace John Roos, who's a wealthy former Silicon Valley lawyer and top Obama campaign fundraiser.

At least 11 people are confirmed dead after a boat carrying suspected asylum seekers sank off the Indonesian coast, with another 180 rescued.

Police chief Deni Ku-su-ma-bhak-ti of West Java where the boat capsized, says they will start investigating the case once the rescue operation is over.

"I hope we can find all of the passengers on the boat because the waves are quite high and strong. Fishermen are helping us with their boats. We'll hand the survivors to the immigration office. We will pursue finding the operator of the boat and smugglers."

The latest accident came days after Australia shut its door on would-be refugees arriving by boats. Instead, they will be sent to Papua New Guinea for assessment and eventual settlement.

Over a thousand people have died in the past decade whilst trying to reach Australia's Indian Ocean territory by boat.

The Colombian government says the country's internal conflict has claimed at least 220 thousand lives in the past five decades.

In a report, titled, "Enough Already: Memories of War and Dignity," it says most of the victims have been civilian non-combatants.

"No one can be indifferent towards the anxiety of the innocent, who are separated from their children, their partners and parents or are deprived of their land."

The report says most of the killings occurred after far-right militias backed by ranchers and cocaine traffickers emerged in the 1980s to counter the leftist FARC rebels.

It is estimated the number of Colombians forcibly displaced by the conflict stands at 5.7 million.

Five police officers have been injured in the Mexican state of Michoacan following clashes with gunmen working for a local drug cartel.

Gunmen for the Knights Templar carried out the retaliation after their leader, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, was captured by the government last week.

"We know that those news are not welcomed, they're news that we don't like to hear, but unfortunately they are news we need to have. It's not bad news to fight crime in order to secure our society."

Fighting between the Knights Templar and federal police has been intensifying over the past week in western Mexico.

It's also been reported that members of the cartel shot dead 5 demonstrators protesting against the group's violent tactics.

To wrestle control of the state from the Knights Templar, President Enrique Pena Nieto sent thousands of troops and federal police to the area two months ago.

As part of its effort to ease the traffic jams here in the capital, Beijing, the municipal government is to start a customized bus service.

It is estimated that a single bus could replace up to 30 private cars on the city's congested roads.

An online poll about the new service has already attracted about 90 thousand votes so far, with many showing great interest in the service.

By the end of next month, the first bunch of routes will be up for city dwellers to subscribe to.

The proposed seat-guaranteed, wi-fi enabled and air-conditioned buses successfully address the issue of overcrowding. However, people are questioning if this innovation is a way of solving the primary problem, congestion.

Zhu Liang is a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

"The biggest problem in Beijing is that there're way too many private cars, so the most direct way is to persuade car drivers, or at least some of them, to favor public transport. This customized express shuttle could act as an alternative for car drivers."

Although buses and subways here in Beijing form one of the most developed public transport networks in China, the city has failed to attract private car owners to embrace greener options.

The uncomfortable ride and the inconvenience caused by numerous transfer in public transport is not only time-wasting but also nerve-breaking.

When comfort is not a big worry, concerns centre on whether or not the price will be affordable.

Bus fares in Beijing for transit card holders currently stand at 0.4 yuan for adults and 0.2 yuan for students.

Hong Chongyue, the vice president of the Beijing Public Transport Group, says they are aiming to establish a monthly package deal at around 30 percent of the cost of driving a car.

"We'll charge 15 Yuan for a 20 kilometer return ride. But if you choose to drive a private car for as long as that, the cost could well surpass 50 yuan, given the amount spent on toll fees, fuel and parking lots."

To distinguish the new service from the existing community commuter express, Hong stresses that the customized bus will hand over the total responsibility over the initiative to passengers.

"In the past, we planned the routes first and passengers would apply for seats. But this time, the Group will plan routes according to the needs and load of passengers. We will then recruit potential customers via this platform."

The service is expected to mainly connect dense residential areas, such as Tiantongyuan and Huilongguan in northern Beijing, with main areas, such as the CBD in the east and the Financial Street in the west.

Chinese shares closed lower today, despite gains for railway-related companies after the central government promised to fully open China's railway construction market.

State-owned China Railway Construction Corporation added 2.9 percent while Beijing-based railway technology company Beijing Dinghan Technology surged 4 percent.

Japan's Nikkei plunged 1.1 percent as investors unloaded shares amid concern about overheating, while Canon tumbled following a weak earnings report.

China's job market showed some resilience in the first half of 2013 despite economic difficulties.

Figures from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security show that China has added 7.25 million jobs in the first six months of the year.

Meanwhile, the registered urban unemployment rate stood at 4.1 percent - that's below the official 4.6 percent red line.

The ministry added that the service sector, particularly Internet-related businesses, has helped absorb new labor.

The number of newly-added jobs increased most rapidly in underdeveloped western part of China whilst the job markets in east China are also picking up.

The State Council has decided to suspend the value-added tax and turnover tax for small businesses starting in August.

In China, small businesses refer to those with monthly sales of less than 20-thousand yuan.

The VAT itself refers to the tax levied on the difference between a commodity's price before taxes, and its cost of production.

In addition, the government has announced plans to set up a railway development fund using government investment and private capital.

Local governments and private firms will be allowed to take ownership and management rights for inter-city railway links and municipal rail links.

Earlier, the government also decided to simplify foreign exchange transactions in the services sector.

For more on these new measures, Beijing Hour's Paul James spoke to Mike Bastin, visiting Professor at China's University of International Business and Economics.

back anchor: That's Paul James speaking to Mike Bastin, visiting Professor at China's University of International Business and Economics.

The Bank of China has been allowed to assist overseas operations of Chinese enterprises - in order to make cross-border salary payments to their employees on the mainland in the RMB.

The overseas subsidiaries of Chinese companies can now pay wages, allowances and bonuses to their employees on the mainland in the Chinese currency.

Analysts say this marks an important step in the relaxation of foreign exchange controls.

The Bank of China is the nation's biggest foreign exchange bank and the second biggest bank by market value.

Apple says that its revenue from China fell by 14% year-on-year to 4.6 billion US dollars in the quarter ending June 29.

The figure - which represents a 43 percent decline from the previous quarter - marks the first time that Apple's revenue in China has fallen.

This is despite the fact that Apple shifted 31.2 million units of iPhones 5 worldwide during the same period - a better-than-expected result.

Analysts have attributed the sluggish sales in China to strong competition from other brands.

The likes of Samsung, HTC, as well as local brands Huawei and Xiaomi all reported a rise revenues in the second quarter.

US Pork producer Smithfield said the US government has decided to extend the review of its proposed merger deal with China's largest meat producer Shuanghui.

The US Committee on Foreign Investment is to take an additional 45-day examination of the deal.

The committee is in charge of scrutinizing deals involving foreign companies for potential national security concerns.

In late May, Shuanghui agreed to acquire Smithfield, the world' s largest pork producer and processor, for about 4.7 billion US dollars.

Should the deal be given the go-ahead, it would be the largest Chinese takeover of an American company.

The UK economy grew by 0.6% in the three months to June, up 0.3% from the previous quarter.

The Office for National Statistics said output grew in all of the construction, manufacturing and services sectors.

The figures mean that the British economy has now recouped almost half of its total 7.2% contraction during the 2008-09 recession.

Newly-released figures indicate that South Korea's economy grew 1.1 percent between April and June this year, beating market forecast.

Compared with the same period last year, the economy expanded by 2.3% - above the 2% forecast by most analysts.

South Korea has unveiled a series of stimulus moves over the past few months in an attempt to spur economic growth.

Heavy rain has been falling in Gansu Province which was hit by an earthquake on Monday, and this has hampered the transportation of relief materials into the disaster zone.

The former party chief of Chongqing Municipality Bo Xilai has been charged with bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.

The indictment paper was delivered to Jinan City People's Procuratorate in China's Shandong Province today.

According to the indictment paper, Bo abused his position to seek profits for others and accepted an, quote, "extremely large amount" of money and properties.

The paper said he also embezzled large sums of public money, seriously harming the interests of the state and people.