The Ministry of Culture has agreed to build an experiment zone in China’s northwestern Qinghai Province to protect Tibetan ecological and cultural heritage.

According to Wang Dongmei, head of the culture and sports bureau in the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai, the zone will cover the city of Yushu and its adjacent counties.

On the zone’s protection list are the physical and cultural heritage items related to the local Tibetan people in the Sanjiangyuan area, which is home to the headwaters of the Yangtze, Yellow, and Lancang (Mekong) rivers, Wang said.

Yushu is home to seven national-level cultural heritage sites, 29 provincial-level sites as well as two historical villages. The song and dance, costumes of ethnic minorities, and metal forging techniques are all listed as intangible heritage in China.

Wang told Xinhua that Yushu has eleven national items of intangible heritage and 24 national “cultural inheritors.”

“The experiment zone will help boost protection of Tibetan culture and local ecology as a whole, and sustainable development of the society and economy,” said Tsering Teg, governor of Yushu.

Yushu has recovered from a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit the region on April 14, 2010. It affected 246,800 people, leaving 2,220 dead and more than 100,000 homeless.

Labour’s Shadow
Secretary of State for Housing John Healey MP, responding to the government’s
announcement on renting, said:

“These disappointing proposals fall far short of what is
needed.

"Government figures show that affordable housebuilding has
fallen to the lowest level in 24 years, with the number of homes being built
for social rent now at the lowest level since records began.

"Ministers continue to do next to nothing to help people who
rent from a private landlord and have consistently blocked Labour’s attempts to
change the law to control costs and give renters security.

"Ministers even voted down Labour’s efforts to ensure
that private rented homes were simply fit for human habitation.

"After seven years of
failure on housing, renters deserve better than this.”

Andy McDonald MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary
of State for Transport, commenting on a report
by the Commons Transport Select Committee, said:

“Privatised rail has left us with a fragmented and
inefficient network that drives up costs and under delivers.

“A railway works best as an integrated network but
privatisation and franchising have meant breaking it up to create opportunities
for companies to extract a profit, resulting in costly inefficiencies. For
example, hundreds of people are employed full time on the railway to argue
about which company is responsible for delays.

“It’s not just that money which should be used to
improve services or keep fares down is syphoned off or wasted, we have a
confusing fare structure and services are disjointed and difficult to use for
passengers.

“The current system is broken. It is time for
our railways to be run under public ownership, in the public interest as an
integrated national asset with affordable fares for all and long-term
investment in the railway network.”

China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) has promised severe punishments for economic crimes that affect interests of lots of people, including illegally absorbing public deposits and fundraising fraud.

It also urged procuratorates to give more priority to the prevention of financial risks, cracking down on crimes such as money laundering and underground banking, and take an active part in Internet financial risk management, according to an SPP statement.

The SPP also pledged to strengthen work against manipulation and insider trading in securities and futures markets, and in supervision of property markets.

High-profile cases of financial crimes have been reported in China in the past years, including the illegal fund-raising activity of Ezubao and the case of Xu Xiang, general manager of a Shanghai-based investment company indicted for allegedly manipulating the securities market.