China will pull thousands of pesticides from the shelves to help improve food safety, according to the Agriculture Ministry. Chinese farmers are often bewildered by the country's under-regulated pesticides market, with some 23,000 products sold under 16,000 names. Right now there are more than 1,700 in common use, but there is a kaleidoscope of product names that a lot of people don't know.

An environmental assessment of Xiamen's plans to build a plant to make paraxylene, also known as PX, a petrochemical used in polyester and fabrics, is complete and the public has ten days to submit opinions, the Xiamen city government said on its website. The local government and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, which conducted the assessment, would "go through all channels to broadly listen to citizens' opinions and suggestions about the environmental assessment report." Notices on the Xiamen website also advised citizens to go online or to a local library to learn more about the assessment.

Beijing on Tuesday released a set of norms for the city's urban management officers, in a bid to promote "civilized methods" of law enforcement ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games. The norms, which will be in effect from January 2008, which include newly-made principles of how urban management officers should exercise their power and responsibilities, require them to maintain "civilized language" and "dignified conduct" in the process of law enforcement, and ban any abuse of power or verbal and physical assault on others.

China will closely monitor the effects of water and air pollution on human health in an action plan launched on Wednesday. "The National Action Plan on Environment and Health (2007-2015) is intended to control the influence of environmental factors on the human body," vice-minister of Health, Chen Xiaohong, was quoted as saying. Chen added it would "reduce environment-related diseases to safeguard the health of the public."

Social Affairs

Global warming is threatening the ecology of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and the warming climate has caused more meteorological disasters than ever in Tibet, as reported by the Tibet Regional Meteorological Bureau. Problems such as receding snow lines, shrinking glaciers, drying grasslands, and desert expansion are increasingly threatening the natural eco-system in the region.

Rice-growing areas of south China have been hit by drought. In the province of Jiangxi, rainfall since the beginning of October has fallen by 90 percent from the average. Rainfall also fell by 86 percent in Hunan, the country's largest rice-growing province. The Gan River and Xiang River, which run through the two provinces, have seen their lowest water levels in history.

Social Affairs

An increase in pollution charges will force more than a thousand chemical plants on the shores of east China's Taihu lake to close, six months after an outbreak of algae bloom cut off water supplies to a nearby city. In late May and early June, China's third biggest lake was covered in a thick foul-smelling canopy of green algae that left tap water undrinkable for more than 2.3 million residents of Wuxi city. From next year, plants around the lake will have to pay 10.5 yuan (US$1.4) for the discharge of each kilogram of chemical oxygen demand (COD), a measure for pollution.

Several weeks after officials warned of a potential "ecological catastrophe" caused by landslides and pollution at the Three Gorges site. Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said China must "double its efforts" to protect the ecology and geological safety of China's controversial Three Gorges Dam project. Work "shall never be lax" on afforestation, soil and water conservation projects, as well as sewage and waste disposal. He also added that emergency shelters must be built for local residents to evacuate to in order to escape geological disasters.

China has promised that its basic medical and health care system will cover all rural residents by 2010. The Ministry of Health, on behalf of the Chinese government, made the promise at a two-day forum on China's rural health care services, organized jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the China's Ministry of Health. The government's investment will account for the main part of the fund for the system and the government will also encourage other public bodies and individuals to raise funds for the system.

Social Affairs

Birth defects in Chinese infants have soared nearly 40 percent since 2001, and the rise is related to the country's worsening environmental crisis, according to a report from China's National Population and Family Planning Commission. The rate of defects has risen from 104.9 per 10,000 births in 2001, to 145.5 in 2006, affecting nearly one in 10 families. Shanxi province, China's coal heartland, had the highest rate of defects due to environmental pollution.

China has built a 1.5-kilometer earthen dam to protect a dinosaur fossil site from being washed away by floods. Workers in China's northern Heilongjiang province took three years to complete the embankment, which could effectively protect the dinosaur mountain from threats of water erosion and floods, according to the Jiayin Dinosaur National Geologic Park Administrative Bureau. Thousands of dinosaur fossils have been unearthed from a mountain that adjoins the river forming the China-Russia boundary and 13 skeletons have been assembled so far.

Social Affairs

China and the European Union have launched a US$248 million campaign to clean up the country's two largest river basins. The five-year program to clean up the Yangtze and Yellow river basins will work out policies on pollution control and promote public awareness about reducing industrial pollution and waste discharge. The project will also pay people living in China's southwestern provinces to plant trees in an effort to improve the ecology along the Yangtze River.

China is to relocate at least four million more people from the Three Gorges Dam reservoir area in the next 10 to 15 years to protect ecological safety. Chinese officials recently warned that the world's largest hydropower project threatens to take a heavy environmental toll on the area, citing the possibility of erosion and landslides on steep hills around the dam.