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NEWS |
US — A couple who let their teenage daughter turn into an invalid as cancer consumed her body were sentenced to 10 years in prison. Bill and Muriel Conroy told the judge that they thought that the lump on their daughter’s chest was due to an injury she suffered while moving a television.
The lump was Hodgkin’s disease, prosecutors said. The lump grew until it obstructed her airway and in December 2000 her heart stopped beating. She was revived after being rushed to the hospital but she lost the ability to talk and walk.
Her parents were sentenced for aggravated child neglect. (Source: www.cnn.com)
China — The Mainland is expected to ease restrictions and issue more insurance licences this year after an eight-year suspension.
An official with the development and reform department of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (‘CIRC’) said the watchdog is going to allow more domestic companies to operate in the insurance industry.
Since 1996, no new domestic firm has been given an insurance licence by the CIRC. The official said the CIRC’s decision to issue licences to new Mainland companies would attract more players to tap into the Mainland insurance market. He also said the commission has received 28 applications for setting up insurance companies involving capital of 27.4bn yuan.
Hao Yansu, director of the Insurance Department of Central Finance and Economics in Beijing, said, ‘the reason for the CIRC not issuing insurance licences to new domestic players since 1996 was because they wanted to create a better environment for the fast development of domestic insurance companies. The eight-year period has served as a growing space for the domestic players set up in or before 1996. He believes that the CIRC strategy to let domestic players grow up has done a good job and that they ‘are strong enough to face any challenge now’. (Source: www.thestandard.com.hk)
China — Twenty-three countries pledged recently to continue modifying their domestic roadways to accommodate international trade and exchanges when they signed an intergovernmental agreement on the Asian Highway Network.
‘What we are trying to do through the Asian Highway Network is to create the same types of opportunity that exist in the coastal areas for the wide hinterland countries, particularly to provide opportunities for landlocked countries and their neighbours to be able to trade more effectively,’ said Barry Cable, chief of the Transport and Tourism Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific.
The highway would serve as a means for mainly Central Asian countries to share in the prosperity of the rest of the region and create a nexus with the European market.
Currently, there is also a railway network agreement that is being worked on meant to function similarly as the highway link. Cable said that a substantial amount of negotiations would take place between countries over the next two years to agree on a railway network similar to the highway link. (Source: www.china.org.cn)
UK — The Sexual Offences Act tightens anti-child sex abuse measures. Home Secretary David Blunkett said the new act replaces laws which were ‘based on the Victorian era’.
Anyone convicted of contacting a child with the intention of committing a sex offence will face up to 10 years in jail under a new grooming offence. Mr Blunkett said ‘[The] new laws offer increased protection, especially to children and vulnerable people, combat modern crimes such as grooming and, for the first time, do away with discrimination by applying the law equally to men and women.’
Juries would also be able to assume there was no consent if a rape victim was asleep, unconscious or disabled, or if there was violence or threats involved.
The aim of the reforms is to ensure there is an increase in the conviction of rape, which currently stands at just 7%. (Source: news.bbc.co.uk)
China — Almost all kinds of investment projects in China, including those of steel, aluminium and cement production as well as office building, golf course, urban railway, exhibition centre and shopping mall construction are undergoing a nationwide check-up and many may be halted this year.
Those projects banned by national policies or conflicting with laws and regulations on land management should be halted, whereas those not in compliance with environmental protection norms, urban construction blueprints, approval procedures or loan policies should be suspended, according to the circular released by the General Office of the State Council.
Early this year, the Communist Party of China (‘CPC’) and the government sent clear signals to take concrete actions to appropriately control the scale of investment in fixed assets and firmly halt haphazard investment and low-level, redundant construction in a number of industries and regions. The Chinese government had made up its mind to take decisive measures to curb the overheating economy.
However, China’s fixed asset investment still reached 879.9bn yuan (US$106bn) in the first quarter of this year, up 43% over the same period last year, according to the latest figures from the National Bureau of Statistics. (Source: www.china.org.cn)