China is hoping to make the internet available in aircraft cabins, high speed trains or even remote mountainous areas, thanks to six communication satellites it’s planning to send into orbit this year, according to China National Radio.

The first satellite – Shijian-13 – is to be launched on a Long March 3B (also known as the CZ-3B) rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center (XSLC) in April.

Shi Jian 13 is an experimental geostationary satellite, designed to test electric propulsion, with an orbital life of 15 years, according to Gunter’s Space Page.

Deputy chief designer, Wang Min, says it’s the country’s first high-throughput satellite (HTS). It’s capable of relaying traffic many times the speed of traditional fixed satellite services (FSS), for the same amount of allocated frequency on orbit, according to intelsat.com.

Later in the year, the scientific research satellite Shijian-18 will be delivered into orbit by the Long March 5B rocket in mid-2017, according to Space Flights News.

Zhou Zhicheng, director of the communications satellite department of the China Academy of Space Technology, said the launch of these communications satellites will help improve the prospects for China’s satellite mobile communications system.

On a global scale, 24 communications satellites operating in orbit currently were manufactured by Chinese organizations, according to China National Radio.

Police in south China’s Hainan Province have seized 1,060 kilograms of methamphetamine, sometimes referred to as ice, the largest ever haul of the drug in the province, police said Thursday.

Nine suspects, including the alleged ringleader, surnamed Zhuang, and drug producers, were arrested on Jan. 8, said a police officer with the provincial public security department at a press conference.

Based in the provincial capital Haikou, the gang contacted dealers in Guangdong Province and also sold the drugs to other areas of Hainan.

Hainan initiated a three-year drug control campaign from November 2016, and started offering up to 100,000 yuan (14,600 U.S. dollars) to informants the next month.

To date, more than 1,700 suspects in connection with drug-related crimes have been caught in over 1,500 cases, up 193 percent and 207 percent year on year, respectively, according to the police officer.

A total of 3 million yuan has been awarded to informants so far.

With the development of drones, airliners’ safety has been threatened in recent years. Since the beginning of 2017, the safety of some airliners was influenced by drones.

Huang Hao, vice-general manager from Baiyun International Airport, said they are designing an electronic fence to block unmanned aircraft from flying in sensitive areas.

Huang also said they will establish the electronic fence to block UVA within airport boundaries. Once UVA enters into its boundary, the electronic fence system will disturb the UVA system and make it return automatically. Also, the Baiyun International Airport will cooperate with the local government and the police to strengthen the safety campaign and the daily monitor.

Yang Jieqiong, the deputy secretary-general of Shenzhen UAV Industry Association, said that there are more than 50,000 unmanned aerial vehicle (UVA) players in China, and more than half of them are in the Pearl River Delta region. The number of the UVA players is still increasing rapidly. Most of players do not have qualifications for UVA operation.

Technical measures could be taken to block UVA from the airport, said Yang. However, these technical measures have not been used in airports in Guangdong Province. Moreover, Yang calls for strengthening law enforcement and establishing real-name registration system for UVA players to ensure the safety of airliners.

The electronic fence is expected to be launched within the year.

The Chinese tradition of giving monetary gifts on wedding or funeral banquets has been around for centuries, but the hosting of various banquets aiming to make money has become an unbearable burden especially in rural areas.

Hosting banquets under different pretexts aiming to make money has become an unbearable burden especially in rural areas. [Photo: Xinhua]

During important occasions like weddings and funerals, the family would host open-air banquets for friends and relatives, and those who are invited will pay an amount of money, depending on closeness, as a gesture of affection and care.

“I spent over 40,000 yuan (US$ 5,824) last year on various banquets,” said a winery boss surnamed Yang in a small town in central China’s Hunan Province. “This way of returning other’s favor is really costly.”

In some places, however, banquets are also held for various reasons. Moving into a new house, family members getting enrolled into college and celebrating someone’s birthday are some of the justifiable excuses. And there could be also not-so-justifiable ones like hosting a banquet to “prevent miscarriage” for pregnant women and to “start a new life” after being released from prison.

Relief fund used for monetary gifts

Those banquets could be a huge burden for some people, especially in rural areas.

“The average annual income of a farmer is between 30,000 and 40,000 yuan, and some people are spending half of it to pay for monetary gifts on those occasions,” said Lyu Caifu, a farmer at the Three Gorges Reservoir Region in Chongqing Municipality.

Some low-income families are even drawing on their government allowance for those banquets, he added.

Hosting banquets under different pretexts has grown into a vicious cycle. Understandably, those who have paid could rack their brains to find any excuses for others to return the favor.

Tightened regulatory measures

Many places have rolled out measures to cure the “endemic” disease, with some targeting party and government officials and some the general public as well.

Regulations may vary from region to region but they mostly forbid any banquets except for wedding and funerals and limit the scale as well as attendees of those events.

As for punishment, party cadres are regulated based on party discipline. Some have even been removed from their current posts and expelled from party membership; non-party members were often investigated by the public security department or food and drug regulators. For example, a town in the Three Gorges Reservoir Region stipulated that the violator will be disqualified from enjoying subsistence allowances.

Some places have seen preliminary results. “Much of our burden has been lifted since then,” said Yao Qiong, a self-employed business owner in a small town of Chongqing.

In the past, the average annual amount paid on banquets was over 40,000 yuan, and the number has reduced to only 3,000 yuan after the campaign.

There were also some controversial measures adopted during the campaign. Some cities even banned wedding banquets for second marriages and a declaration needs to be filed ahead of hosting a banquet.

“Local government has the responsibility to curb unhealthy customs, but it should never cross the line,” said Li Ping, a professor at Renmin University of China (RUC). Li advised the local community to formulate its own rules after soliciting opinions from the masses and lead the transformation of old habits in a step by step manner.

A fossil of a long-necked marine reptile unearthed in Yunnan province shows the creature that lived millions of years before dinosaurs was developing an embryo, an indicator that it gave birth to live offspring, scientists said on Tuesday.

The discovery at the Luoping Biota National Geopark of the pregnant long-necked marine reptile that lived about 245 million years ago proved the live birth of the unusual fish-eating reptile, known as the Dinocephalosaurus, or terrible-headed lizard, according to research published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Our discovery pushes back evidence of reproductive biology in the group by roughly 50 million years, and shows that there is no fundamental reason to suggest that archosauromorphs, or ruling reptiles, did not give live birth,” said Liu Jun, the lead author of the research and a paleontologist at Hefei University of Technology in Anhui province.

“Evidence of live birth among this category has never been discovered. The findings have changed our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate reproductive systems,” he said.

Liu added that some reptiles – including about 20 percent of the world’s 9,400 species of snakes and lizards – give birth to live young.

The fossil was uncovered along with another 20,000 fossils at the geopark in 2008.

With the help of other researchers, Liu was able to restore the fossil to its original shape and identify the creature in 2011. It is now preserved at the Chengdu Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources.

“I think you’d be amazed to see it, with its tiny head and long snaky neck,” said Mike Benton, a paleontologist a the University of Bristol, who took part in the research.

The species had one of the longest necks relative to body size of any living creature to have existed. It was an estimated 4 meters long, with a slender neck roughly 1.7 meters long, Liu said. It had paddle-like flippers, a small head and a mouth with teeth, including large canines, perfect for snaring fish.

“The identification of the embryo as the reptile’s baby, rather than one of its hearty meals, proved key to the whole research.

“In aquatic amniotes, prey is usually swallowed head first and this orientation is maintained during digestion and disarticulation. Therefore, the neck-forward position of the embryonic skeleton suggests that the included skeleton was not ingested prey, but was an embryo,” the researchers wrote.

“We note that the embryo demonstrates the curled posture typical associated with vertebrate embryos.”

Liu said the fact that the Dinocephalosaurus did not lay eggs has its advantages, as having live births would have been highly adaptive to reproduction in the sea.

“It is also an indicator that marine reptiles practically dominated the oceans at that time,” he added.