Month: May 2019

The Los Blancos defender has hailed the Belgian’s qualities, but says it is not his place to suggest transfer targets to the club’s hierarchy

Real Madrid skipper Sergio Ramos has labelled Eden Hazard a “top” player ahead of the Belgian’s rumoured relocation to Spain – but insists he’d never get involved in suggesting transfer targets.

The 33-year-old was speaking at a hastily arranged press conference at the club’s Valdebebas training complex on Thursday, where he announced his intention to stay with Los Blancos.

Hazard has been the subject of much speculation in recent months, and appeared to confirm he had made his last appearance in a Chelsea shirt on Wednesday, following their Europa League final triumph over London rivals Arsenal.

While Chelsea wait for a definitive offer from Real Madrid for the 28-year-old playmaker, Ramos was quick to point out that although he holds Hazard in high regard, he draws the line at getting involved in transfer activity. 

“I consider Eden Hazard to be a really, really top player,” Ramos told reporters.

Later he added: “I do not give advice to anyone, nor does it depend on me whether or not Hazard is signed, for example.

“This is an area outside of my domain. I’m the captain, and there are other departments to oversee the likes of recruitment at the club.”

After stating his desire to stay in the Spanish capital, Ramos, whose 606 appearances rank him fifth in Real history, insisted his desire to add to his treasure trove of trophies is as strong as ever. 

And the centre-back, whose haul includes four La Liga and four Champions League trophies, is hoping this summer’s new arrivals will help them achieve even more success both domestically and in Europe.    

“I still have the same desire to push for glory and win titles,” he said.

“I am optimistic about the immediate future of the club with the new players that will arrive.

“My intention is to construct a new Real Madrid with the president (Florentino Perez) and start to look to the future. 

“I still have the physical strength to play for the club.”

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The Romeo & Julia Kören ensemble from Sweden is going to bring William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, to Beijing on June 13 and 14, with two shows at Tianqiao Performing Arts Center.

Adapted and directed by Benoît Malmberg and composed by Clément Janequin and Joaquin des Prez, the 70-minute performance combines a selection of musical pieces and fragmented dialogues.

Romeo & Julia Kören’s Macbeth premiered in 1997 and has since been performed at Shakespeare festivals in Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Denmark.

The Romeo & Julia Kören ensemble was formed in 1991 and performs a mix of singing, dance and theatre. It has toured more than 35 countries including China, the United States, Russia and Germany.

RIO DE JANEIRO – FIFA’s appeal committee has upheld a life ban on former Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) president Marco Polo Del Nero for corruption, the sport’s global governing body said on Monday.

The 78-year-old was guilty of accepting bribes and kickbacks as well as violating rules related to conflict of interest and general conduct, FIFA said in a statement.

The ruling comes just over a year after FIFA’s ethics committee barred Del Nero from all football-related activity and fined him 1 million Swiss francs ($1 million).

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Del Nero was suspended by FIFA in December 2017 after being charged by the US authorities with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.

Investigators said the Brazilian participated in a scheme that awarded lucrative rights agreements for tournaments such as the Copa America, the Copa Libertadores and the Copa do Brasil.

His predecessors Ricardo Teixeira and Jose Maria Marin were also indicted on similar charges as part of a global investigation by the US department of justice.

Del Nero and Teixeira have not been extradited while Marin was found guilty by a New York court and sentenced to four years in prison last August.

An 80-day-old boy, the youngest recipient of a liver transplant in the country, is recovering well, a Shanghai hospital said on Tuesday. His mother, the donor, is also in good health.

Renji Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, where the transplant was performed on May 16, said the newborn, who was suffering from acute liver failure and weighed only 5.2 kilograms before surgery, will be discharged soon.

“The baby is now very active. His milk intake is within normal range and he smiles often. His skin has turned fair from severely yellow,” said Qiu Bijun, a doctor on the team that performed the transplant.

Doctors found the boy and his mother have the same blood type, and imaging evaluations found she was a suitable donor. The surgery on the mother took two hours and the one to transplant a section of the mother’s liver that weighed 180 grams into the infant took six hours.

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Qiu said the liver would grow with the boy and it was unlikely he would need a second transplant in the future.

The hospital said it was the first time a liver transplant has been performed on an infant younger than 100 days. Renji Hospital has been ranked the best in the world in terms of the number of liver transplant surgeries for children for seven years, with high success rates of surgery and long-term survival.

Chief surgeon Xia Qiang, who is also the head of the liver surgery department at the hospital, said a key challenge of a transplant operation on such a small baby lies in reconstruction of the tiny anatomic structures of the liver, which is done under magnifying glasses and microscopes.

“It also made it challenging that the child had been critically ill, which posed higher requirements for perioperative anesthesia and intensive care,” he said.

The boy, who was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on Feb 25, showed symptoms of congenital liver disease a month after being born. He was taken by his parents to Shanghai Children’s Medical Center for medical treatment on May 14.

The infant showed symptoms of acute liver failure, including consciousness disorder, collapse of coagulation system and severe jaundice. A liver transplant was the only hope for him to survive, the doctors said.

It had been a race against time to save the boy’s life, Qiu said. “It took only less than 48 hours for the boy to be transferred to our hospital for the transplant,” Qiu said. “The hospital has accomplished more than 1,800 liver transplants on children since 2006, which meant we had the experience and confidence to go with adequate discussions of the surgical plan.”

Haidian district in Beijing has built a smart secure room for storing examination papers and will use it in this year’s gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam, which will take place in about one week, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

A first in the capital, the smart secure room uses face recognition system to verify the identity of anyone entering the room. The whole process, from entering the hall of the building where the secure room is located, fetching gaokao exam papers, to leaving the building, will be traceable.

Haidian district has further improved its tracking management system of exam papers, said an official from the district’s education commission. The system, used to only track the transportation of exam papers, now has added a 360-degree video surveillance feature. It enables real-time remote monitoring of transport vehicles of exam papers and the exam paper boxes aboard.

The system can also pinpoint the real-time location of the vehicles, broadcast time of arrival, issue warnings of emergency and handle the matter in a timely manner, said the official.

More than 10 million high school seniors in China will sit the gaokao this year. Haidian has 12,565 gaokao takers, the most among all districts in Beijing.

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Private companies may get nod for developing, running industrial parks

Manufacturing and modern services firms from overseas will get incentives to invest in China’s economic and technological development zones as part of the country’s ongoing efforts to boost foreign investment, an official said on Wednesday.

Tang Wenhong, head of the department of foreign investment under the Ministry of Commerce, said at a news briefing that the country will further unleash the potential of its national economic and technological development zones to attract overseas investment.

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According to a guideline published by the State Council on Tuesday, the opening-up of these zones will be bolstered by attracting private and overseas investors to develop and run industrial parks with distinctive features.

Companies and investors from Hong Kong, Macao and foreign countries will be encouraged to participate in the running of international cooperation parks in the development zones, which has reached a total of 219 nationwide.

“The coordination between Chinese and foreign businesses will improve and in turn boost the industry chain of the manufacturing sector. This will help businesses to better adapt to the global value chain,” Tang said.

The ministry will conduct research on supportive policies for the zones in developing sectors such as smart manufacturing, biopharmaceuticals, digital economy and smart manufacturing, he said.

More measures will be taken to make the business environment of the zones fair, transparent, predictable and compatible with international practices and ensure that domestic and foreign businesses are treated as equals, he said.

According to the guideline, the development zones will be urged to intensify efforts to attract more headquarters, research and development and financial departments of international companies.

For overseas professionals that are urgently needed by businesses in the zones, the age limit for work permits would be relaxed further, the guideline said, adding that more policies will be rolled out to ease procedures for high-caliber overseas talents in border entries, residence and permanent residence permits.

The country’s economic and technological development zones contributed to 11.3 percent of its total GDP, 10.6 percent of fiscal revenue and 20.4 percent of foreign investment in 2018, according to the Ministry of Commerce. The total volume of exports and imports in the zones reached 6.2 trillion yuan ($898.6 billion), or 20.3 percent of the country’s total, up by 10.8 percent year-on-year.

Wang Shouwen, vice-minister of commerce, said at the briefing that the development zones will take the lead in cutting licensing red tape, simplify approval procedures and move forward with online administrative services.

“We will support their continuous efforts in attracting international high-end industry resources and developing advanced manufacturing and modern services,” he said.

SHENZHEN — If you feel like you are losing your hair, you are not alone. For those born in the 1990s, “almost going bald” has been a catchphrase on Chinese social media for years.

Though some say it is a self-mockery amid mounting stress at work, more young men, many still at college, are seeing receding hairlines.

A survey shows that baldness is coming earlier to young Chinese. In the country, more than 250 million people suffer from hair loss and more men than women complain about excessive balding.

The post-1980s and post-1990s generations account for over 70 percent of the population, according to the China Association of Health Promotion and Education.

In a survey of 643 universities by China Youth Daily, more than half of the college students said they suffered from hair loss and over 60 percent had taken measures to slow it.

30-year-old Yu, a university lecturer, said he started to get serious about preventing hair loss when he was a sophomore.

Like many young Chinese who fret over thinning hair, Yu said the problem had proved to be a major headache in finding a life partner and it could sometimes count against them in job interviews.

“Daily loss of hair is a normal occurrence. In fact, the average person loses between 50 to 100 hairs a day,” said Jia Lijun with the Shenzhen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital. “However, there are certain factors that can cause young people to shed more than usual, such as stress, lack of exercise and insomnia.”

Increasingly stressful lives are leading to hair thinning and hair loss. Yu said he always stayed up late due to a heavy study load at college and his busy work life resulted in a poor diet.

Excessive stress, anxiety and poor health habits usually lead to hormone imbalances and premature baldness, Jia said.

As the problem nags more younger Chinese, many admit that hair loss has affected their confidence, said Tan Wenyong with the Shenzhen Hospital of Southern Medical University.

Once a niche market, hair-growth products have grown into a multi-billion yuan industry.

Data released by China’s National Health Commission indicates that the country’s hair health industry will expand by 260 percent annually in the following decade and urban people’s spending on hair care products and hair-loss treatment will surge by 30 percent in the years to come.

In early February, Yu spent nearly 100,000 yuan (about $14,925) on a hair transplant with a per graft-fee of 16 yuan. “The surgery almost wiped out all my savings, but I felt it worthwhile because I regained the thickness of my hair as well as my confidence,” Yu said.

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Qingdao, a popular coastal destination in East China’s Shandong province, is due to welcome its first ocean-themed music festival, the Tsingtao International Music Festival, this summer.

The festival will run from Aug 2 to 11 at the Qingdao Yuedu Music Valley that lies in the city’s Jimo district.

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Centered around the theme of the ocean, the festival will consist of 10 concerts that showcase representative Chinese classical and folk music compositions, works by Western classical masters and other original compositions created by artists especially for Qingdao.

A festival orchestra has been formed specifically for the event, which comprises 95 musicians drawn from orchestras based in China and from abroad. The orchestra plays a vital role in the festival, as it is responsible for all the major performances including both the opening and closing ceremonies.

“For this first year, the festival will only run for 10 days, but if the festival is extended in future, we will have a lot more work to do,” Ye Xiaogang, chairman of the Chinese Musicians Association and head of the symphony orchestra, said at a recent news conference promoting the festival.

For the opening ceremony, the orchestra will perform La Mer (The Sea) by French composer Claude Debussy, under the baton of Hu Yongyan, the Chinese-American conductor and music director of the festival.

Originality being a core value of the festival, a number of Chinese composers have been invited to write songs and compositions for the symphony orchestra that pertain to the rich history and culture of Qingdao.

The closing ceremony will feature a symphony concert titled The Sound of the Sea, featuring The Light of Qingdao, an original composition written by Ye Xiaogang, Zhang Qianyi, Yin Qing and Shu Nan.

In celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Qingdao Symphony Orchestra will present a concert titled Ode to the Red Flag in the factory of FAW Jiefang Automobile.

As well as songs composed for Qingdao, the concert will also include classic patriotic works such as the eponymous symphonic poem, the Yellow River Piano Concerto and the song, My Chinese Heart.

“We have chosen this special venue for the concert so we can truly bring music to the factory. I believe the choice of the venue is itself a very innovative and intriguing proposition,” Ye says.

The Qingdao Yuedu Music Valley is a music resort that covers concert halls, a museum, an exchange center and other cultural organizations in its 3-square-kilometer area, with the aim of helping Qingdao to evolve into an even more modern and dynamic international city.

“We will continue to host the music festival every year in the future. Through this festival, we aim to enhance the development of the city’s cultural sector and introduce more artistic events to Jimo district and Qingdao city,” says Zhang Jun, secretary of the Jimo district committee of the Communist Party of China.

The Macao Government Tourist Office recently held an event at Beijing’s Legendale Hotel promoting its delicious cuisine, cultural sites alongside some colorful artistic performances.

Cheng Weidong, vice president of MGTO, delivered a speech, summing up the performance of the Macao Special Administrative Region’s tourism industry over the years. He said that last year, more than 25.3 million visitors from the Chinese mainland traveled to Macao, representing an increase of 13.8 percent over the same period in 2017, and making the mainland Macao’s largest source of tourists.

He added that the MGTO has been working closely with travel agencies and airlines from the Chinese mainland to attract more visitors.

Since its opening on Oct 24, 2018, and as of March 31, the number of those who visited Macao via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge exceeded 2.5 million.

Additionally, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Macao’s return to China, on the 20th day of each month from May to November, there will be lucky draws in Macao’s designated tourism information centers where tourists can win creative cultural souvenirs.

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Huawei Technologies Co filed a motion on Wednesday to accelerate its lawsuit against the United States government, as the Chinese tech company said it has great confidence in the case and hopes to bring it to an early conclusion.

The move came two months after Huawei sued the US government over a measure that bars federal agencies from using its products. This is part of a broader push by the world’s largest telecom equipment maker to pursue fair competition and treatment in the global tech arena through legal means.

Huawei said at a news conference in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, that it had filed a motion for summary judgment in a court in Plano, Texas, where it filed the case. The motion asks the court to declare the ban unconstitutional.

Song Liuping, Huawei’s chief legal officer, said the federal ban, outlined in section 889 of the 2019 US National Defense Authorization Act, is unlawful as it singles out a person or a group for punishment without trial.

“Politicians in the US are using the strength of an entire nation to come after a private company,” Song noted. “This is not normal, almost never seen in history.”

The senior executive added that the US government has provided no evidence to show that Huawei is a security threat. “There is no gun, no smoke, only speculation.”

A motion for summary judgment is one party’s effort to bring an early end to a lawsuit. Huawei is using it to request the court to rule in its favor as a matter of law.

The company said this case presents pure questions about law and does not at this point involve any dispute over facts. The US court has scheduled a hearing on Huawei’s motion for Sept 19.

“If the court grants Huawei’s motion for summary judgment, the case is over. It will not go into a trial at all. But the US government can appeal to a higher court,” said Li Lan, a Shenzhen-based lawyer of Jincheng Tongda & Neal law firm.

Huawei is facing a crackdown from the US, which accuses the company of posing risks to its national security. Huawei has repeatedly denied the accusations and said these claims were not supported by factual evidence.

Huawei is not the first foreign company to sue the US government. In 2015, Chinese machinery manufacturer Sany settled a lawsuit with the US government, which forbade its project in Oregon on national security grounds.

In 2017, Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky unsuccessfully sued the US government over a ban on its products.

Huawei said in a note that “We have a different and much stronger case than Kaspersky.” For example, the US ban not only bars all US government agencies from buying Huawei equipment and services, but also bars them from contracting with or awarding grants or loans to third parties who buy Huawei equipment or services.

A partner at a Beijing-based law company who wished to remain anonymous, said: “The Huawei case is very different from the Kaspersky ban. The ban on Huawei is significantly broader, manifestly targets one company and is punitive in nature.”

Earlier this month, the US government added the Chinese company to its Entity List, barring Huawei from accessing any US technologies without special approval. Song said the move is affecting its more than 1,200 suppliers and threatened to affect its 3 billion individual customers in 170 countries and regions.

“Huawei is considering taking legal or administrative action to fight the US list ban,” Song said, “It sets a dangerous precedent. Today, it is telecoms and Huawei. Tomorrow, it could be your industry, your company, your consumers.”

On Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang also urged Fed-Ex to explain why it rerouted four Huawei parcels to the US without the Chinese company’s authorization.

“If it is not an isolated incident, FedEx needs to explain why such misdeliveries occurred to Huawei’s parcels several times,” the spokesman said.

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