Heyuan Deputy Mayor Zhu Weiwei and Tustin Mayor Charles Puckett exchange gifts after signing agreements for their towns to become international sister cities on Oct 23 at the second US-China Sister Cities conference held in Chicago. Hezi Jiang / China Daily China and the US have two new sister-city partnerships. Tustin, California and Heyuan, Guangdong province, and Yorba Linda, California, and Tongchuan, Shaanxi province signed sister-city agreements on Oct 23 in Chicago, adding to the more than 200 US-China sister cities and 41 sister states and provinces. “They (China) count 10 percent of all of our partnerships,” said Mary Kane, president and CEO of Sister Cities International, founded as an initiative by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 to promote people-to-people diplomacy. “We hope to learn about municipal management from Yorba Linda, and they will learn about our traditional culture,” said Yang Changya, mayor of Tongchuan, a city undergoing a transformation from an economy reliant on coal and construction materials to a more sustainable city and travel destination. “We lost our sister city Matamata in New Zealand due to political change,” Tustin Mayor Charles Puckett said. “Now we are getting a new sister.” Puckett was introduced to the city of Heyuan during a trip to China in 2014 and fell in love with it immediately
Ming the panda gets behind the camera for photographer Bert Hardy in 1939 in London Zoo. In the chair is Hardy’s son Mike. Getty Image She was black, white and furry, far from home, and loved having her tummy tickled, especially by princesses.
Chinese pharmacologist Tu Youyou, pictured in 2011, jointly won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine along with Irish-born William Campbell and Japan’s Satoshi Omura, the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute announced on Monday. Tu won part of the prize for discoveries related to a novel therapy against malaria. Xinhua / Jin Liwang The Nobel Prize for Medicine awarded this week focuses on three dreadful parasitic diseases – elephantiasis, river blindness and malaria – that still ravage mankind, “debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions people annually”, the Nobel Committee said in its citation. Parasitic diseases have plagued humankind for millennia and persist as major global health problems, especially for the world’s poorest populations, those who can least afford exotic cures. Chinese scientist Tu Youyou was awarded half the prize and the other half went to two scientists who also came up with “powerful new means to combat” these afflictions. Japanese microbiologist Satoshi Omura focused on a group of bacteria, streptomyces, that live in the soil and were known to produce a plethora of compounds with bacteria-fighting powers. Omura, who has two PhDs in pharmaceutical sciences and chemistry and is professor emeritus at Kitasato University in Japan, was said to carry a plastic bag with him, even when he played golf, to collect soil samples. He was able to isolate and mass-reproduce literally thousands of bacteria that showed promise fighting parasites, picking the 50 best.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CAI MENG, LI WEN AND SONG CHEN / CHINA DAILY President Xi Jinping leaves Beijing on Tuesday for his first state visit to the United States, with negotiations between the two countries on many key sectors close to a successful outcome.
A labourer walks past the gate of the headquarters of Baosteel Group Corp. in Shanghai, in this April 1, 2010 file photo. [Photo/Agencies]More rational management system to be set up in the next five years China unveiled on Sunday a new stage in the reform of State-owned enterprises – part of a comprehensive strategy to speed up the nation’s economic transition
Author: Stephen Olson, Hinrich Foundation The verdict on China’s recent currency devaluations differs depending on who you listen to. To some, the devaluations are either a positive and responsible step in the direction of a more market-determined exchange rate and…
Professor Klaus Kaufmann, head judge for the piano category, plays at Huafa and CPAA Grand Theater in Zhuhai, where the international contest will be held. Provided to China Daily An upcoming international classical music competition in the southern coastal city of Zhuhai, Guangdong province, will make its debut on Sept. 13. The two-week Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians is named after the great Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and will be the first endeavor between the Zhuhai government and the Mozarteum University of Salzburg, a top music academy in Europe. The event will be held in Zhuhai every two years. The competition will comprise two categories — piano and violin — with each category separated into three different age groups: Up to 14, 17 and 23.
