Premier Li Keqiang called for maintaining the stability and development of the Tibet autonomous region when he joined a panel discussion with National People’s Congress deputies from the plateau region on Tuesday.

Tibet has a special place in the country’s overall development, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, “with Comrade Xi Jinping as its core”, has further made the region a priority since the 18th Party Congress in 2012, the premier told deputies during the ongoing NPC annual session.

This year will see further endeavors in promoting Tibet’s stability and development, which complement each other through focusing on key ways to improve local people’s livelihood, Li said. He vowed to improve public services in areas such as education, healthcare and heating.

He also said this year will see more efforts to develop Tibet’s special and competitive industries such as tourism, clean energy and ethnic medicines, under the premise that the ecology must be stringently protected at the world’s roof.

At an average altitude of about 4,000 meters, Tibet is sparsely populated－about 3.75 million people in multiple ethnic groups living on 1.2 million square kilometers of land, which accounts for one-eighth of China’s landmass.

Last year, Tibet’s annual GDP growth hit 11.5 percent, ranking first among China’s provincial-level regions.

In addition, the country will strengthen support and funding for Tibet’s transportation and power-grid infrastructures, he said.

The premier also vowed to intensify efforts in poverty alleviation, especially for those living near the nation’s borders, by creating better living conditions and industries.

He said unity should be strengthened to help all ethnic groups get along with each other, promote religious harmony as well as safeguard social stability and long-term peace.

On Tuesday, three other members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee－Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan and Wang Qishan－also joined discussions of NPC deputies.

Yu, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, met with deputies of the Taiwan delegation. He called for adhering to the policies of peaceful reunification and one country, two systems, as well as the 1992 Consensus that is characterized by the one-China policy in dealing with cross-Straits ties.

Yu said that any form of separatist actions to achieve Taiwan’s independence will be opposed and contained to safeguard peace and stability across the Straits.

Chinese police caught 19,345 telecom fraud suspects in 2016, according to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) on Wednesday.

The SPP increased efforts to crack down on telecom and Internet fraud and supervised the handling of 62 major telecom and Internet fraud cases last year.

The cases included one that allegedly triggered the death of Xu Yuyu, a high school graduate in Shandong Province, who died of cardiac arrest after losing her tuition money to telecom fraud, the SPP said.

In May 2016, the SPP issued a circular urging procuratorates at all levels to tighten crackdowns on telecom and Internet fraud.

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) destroyed a transnational telecom fraud gang in Cambodia, catching 39 suspects and paying compensation of more than 360,000 yuan (52,173 U.S. dollars)to 21 victims.

The SPP and the MPS have issued a joint guideline on such cases explaining punishment and case management for telecom and Internet fraud crimes.

As Head of the Accelerator, Lucy will be responsible for building strong relationships between defence and security departments within the UK Government, industry, academia and other partners, to accelerate the delivery of innovative ideas for the security and prosperity of the UK.

Launched in December 2016, the Accelerator fast-tracks innovative, game-changing ideas by funding their development and connecting suppliers to end users at an early stage of development. By matching them with expert Innovation Partners to and guiding them through the process, we help turn their ideas into marketable products and defence and security capabilities.

Backed by a rising defence budget and the £800 million Innovation Fund, the Accelerator is a key conduit for transforming Defence’s creative culture as part of the Defence Innovation Initiative. This investment helps deliver future battle-winning technologies, keeps our Armed Forces safe in challenging environments and creates prosperity. The Accelerator will also work with security departments from across government to strengthen the national security of our nation.

Lucy joins the Accelerator from the Home Office where she most recently led the science and technology, and private sector engagement work strands for the review of the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy.

Rob Solly, Division Head for the Defence and Security Analysis Division within the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and Interim Head of the Accelerator said:

I’m delighted to welcome Lucy as Head of the Accelerator. Lucy’s passion for innovation and strong leadership skills will be vital in taking the Accelerator through to full operating capability; ensuring innovative ideas can be taken forward for the benefit of our Armed Forces and the security of the UK. Her expertise in horizon scanning and security technology and her knowledge of digital ethics and identity, social and behavioural science, make her a perfect candidate for this role.

Over the last two months, the Accelerator has launched two routes to funding: Themed Challenges and the Enduring Challenge, and is developing new collaboration mechanisms to be launched later this year.

Our themed competitions help our customers find solutions to specific challenges. These are announced throughout the year. The first Innovation Fund challenge was launched in February to revolutionise the human-information relationship for Defence.

The Enduring Challenge, launched in January, casts the net wider to provide a route into defence and security for any supplier who thinks they have an idea that can benefit UK Defence and Security, at home or abroad.

It exists because we can’t possibly know all the potential solutions and novel approaches out there – whether that’s more advanced technical capability, how we work or operate, or how we train our people.

This year the Enduring Challenge has secured £6 million, including a second phase of new funding. The first phase will look at ideas in their early stages, while the second phase will nurture promising projects, as well as offering an alternative route for more advanced ideas and technologies.

More than 50 percent of people are optimistic about their incomes increasing in 2017, with rural people expressing more confidence than their urban counterparts, according to a recent survey report.

About 55 percent respondents in rural areas believe that their annual income will rise in 2017, compared to 53.4 percent people in urban areas, according to the report released by the China Central Television, which surveyed 570,000 people.

China has implemented favorable policies to help reduce the rural-urban income gap. In 2016, China lifted 12.4 million people out of poverty.

The report said people in ten provincial-level regions were most confident of increased annual income: Qinghai, Tibet, Hainan, Jilin, Ningxia, Anhui, Shandong, Shaanxi, Guizhou and Chongqing, all regions where a large number of poverty alleviation projects are located.

People with annual family revenues below 10,000 yuan (1,449 U.S. dollars) tended to focus on relocating projects, vocational education and small loans as a way of escaping poverty.

The survey hopes its results will provide valuable reference for national policies.

The report said that happiness did not arise from high income. People with family income exceeding 1 million yuan did not feel happier than those with income between 80,000 to 120,000.

In first-tier cities, education and entertainment were the top choices for people to spend money, according to the report.

The report also showed that people who have a partner feel happier than those who are single. People with partners but who were yet to marry were happiest.

Nearly 80 percent of young people interviewed said that they liked to live in good quality rented apartments with stable rental periods.

Tourism, digital products, and household appliances were the top three expected purchases in 2017, with tourism the top choice for the last three years, the report said.

Nearly 220,000 people have registered themselves as organ donors in China, and the number is expected to increase rapidly with the help of internet technologies, according to the China Organ Donation Administrative Center.

The number of people who have registered to become volunteers for organ donation in China reached 219,365 on Monday, up from 66,000 on March 20, Hou Fengzhong, deputy director of the center, said on Tuesday.

On Monday, guided by Chen Jingyu, a leading lung transplant surgeon from Jiangsu province and a deputy to the National People’s Congress, Shen Jinjin, a public health expert and an NPC deputy from Jiangsu, registered online to become an organ donor, with the whole process taking less than a minute.

Shen said that, as a doctor, his “biggest wish is to see more donors, so patients waiting for organ transplants don’t die while they are waiting due to a lack of organs”.

The number of organ donation volunteers has increased rapidly in the past few years due to the use of internet technologies, according to the China Organ Transplantation Development Foundation.

The foundation cooperated with Alipay, the online payment platform of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, meaning that since Dec 22, real-name users of Alipay have been able to register to become organ donors on the payment platform in just 10 seconds, said Zhao Hongtao, deputy secretary-general of the foundation.

In two and a half days, more than 86,200 people registered to become donors, which is equivalent to the total number of registrations for the previous two years, Zhao said.

Registering to become a donor volunteer does not mean people are obliged to donate their organs after death, and they can cancel their registration any time at their will, the foundation said.

Huang Jiefu, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee and chairman of the China National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, said the concept of organ donation should be promoted using internet technologies.

“Such methods can help promote the idea of organ donation among the public, particularly the younger generation, who are major internet users,” Huang said.