Don't Google "Nobel Peace Prize" in China

If you are in China and want to find out who won this year's Nobel Peace prize, good luck!

With news media across the globe reacting to this year's Nobel Peace Prize announcement, authorities in the winner's homeland are racing to delete his name from all public domains on the internet and off.

Type "Liu Xiaobo" -- or "Nobel Peace Prize," for that matter -- in search engines in China and hit return, you get a blaring error page.

It's the same for the country's increasingly popular micro-blogging sites. "Nobel Prize" was the top-trending topic until the authorities acted to remove all mentions of the award.

Propaganda officials have also pulled the plug on international broadcasters -- including CNN and BBC-- whenever stories about Liu air.

For most ordinary Chinese, the only glimpse of the story came when an anchor read a short statement from the foreign ministry on state TV, blasting the Norwegian Nobel committee's choice of an imprisoned Chinese dissident for the prize "a blasphemy."

Tweets are coming in from China over Twitter, but many Chinese are doing so at their own risk.  One user tweeted his unfortunate experience: "My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize."

This is al unfortunate and awful for the people of China.  Even relatives of Liu are being cautios of what they say for fear of what may happen to them.

Huge Chinese Traffic Jam Goes On and On and On and...

Thousands of vehicles were still stuck Monday in a more than 62-mile traffic jam leading to Beijing that has lasted nine days and highlights China's growing road congestion woes.

The Beijing-Tibet expressway slowed to a crawl on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks heading to the capital, and compounded by road maintenance work that began five days later, the Global Times said.

The state-run newspaper said the jam between Beijing and Jining city had given birth to a mini-economy with local merchants capitalising on the stranded drivers' predicament by selling them water and food at inflated prices.

That stretch of highway linking Beijing with the northern province of Hebei and the Inner Mongolia region has become increasingly prone to massive jams as the capital of more than 20 million people sucks in huge shipments of goods.

The latest clog has been worsened by the road improvement project, made necessary by highway damage caused by a steady increase in cargo traffic, the Global Times said.

China has embarked in recent years on a huge expansion of its national road system but soaring traffic periodically overwhelms the grid.

The congestion was expected to last into mid-September...What!

Floods Devastating Asia

 

In China, hundreds have died and more than 1,100 were missing Monday from landslides caused by heavy rain that has flooded swaths of Asia and spread misery to millions.

In Pakistan, the United Nations said the government's estimate of 13.8 million people affected by the country's worst-ever floods exceeded the combined total of three recent megadisasters - the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Rescuers in mountainous Indian-controlled Kashmir raced to rescue dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and find 500 people still missing in flash floods that have killed 140.

The Chinese death toll jumped to 337 late Monday after Sunday's landslides in the northwestern province of Gansu - the deadliest incident so far in the country's worst flooding in a decade. A debris-blocked swollen river burst, swamping entire mountain villages in the county seat of Zhouqu and ripping homes from their foundations.

More rain is expected in the region over the next three days, the China Meteorological Administration said. On Monday evening, clouds were building ominously over the mountains where the mud started flowing.

"We were dumbfounded by the enormity of the flood situation when we got to the scene," said Chen Junfeng, a disinfection specialist whose army battalion was the first on the scene Sunday.

Photos showed wrapped bodies tied to sticks or placed on planks and left on the shattered streets for pickup. APTN footage showed workers lifting an empty coffin. In many parts of rural China, coffins are bought as insurance for old age.

Chinese Daredevil Jumps Under Train and Lives

The man hoped to achieve fame online.  I think he accomplished it.

The 28-year-old performed the stunt one night at a deserted station on the Shanghai subway.

He filmed a train pulling into the platform and jumped onto the tracks as it drew close.

He then lay flat on his back and carried on filming as the train passed overhead.

The whole incident was captured on CCTV.

The train conductor slammed on the brakes and, fearing the worst, went to check under the train.

To his amazement the man he had just run over was standing before him alive and well.

He told him he had slipped off the platform but confessed it was a stunt after he was arrested by police.

He said: "(I thought) if I filmed from under the train, I would get a great view down there as the train passes over.