Roundup October 30

• Source: Global Times
• [02:12 October 30 2009]
• Comments

Flotilla to the rescue

A Chinese navy flotilla will depart the Zhoushan Islands today to escort merchant vessels and protect them from pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, a spokesman with China's People's Liberation Army Navy said on Thursday.

The flotilla is the fourth contingent China has deployed to the region since the end of last year.

Missile frigates FFG-525 Ma'anshan and FFG-526 Wenzhou will replace the radar-evading hulled FFG-529 Zhoushan and FFG-530 Xuzhou from the PLAN's third flotilla, which set sail to waters off Somalia in June.

The navy flotilla would take part in international humanitarian rescue missions.

Food poisoning suspected in death

One villager died and 46 others were hospitalized after they ate fish from a reservoir on Tuesday in South China's Guangdong Province, a local official said on Thursday.

An old lady surnamed Mao in her 80s was found dead Tuesday night, after eating pomfret from the Lengshuidong reservoir in Jiubei township, Lianzhou.

Forty-six others who also ate the fish were hospitalized. They had symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea and muscular soreness.

By on Thursday afternoon, six villagers had been discharged from hospital, and others were in stable condition, according to the official.

Police officers face charges

Two former senior police officers in Chongqing Municipality will be prosecuted next month, said Chongqing's Procurator Yu Min on Thursday.

Wen Qiang, formerly the No 2 figure in Chongqing police and director of the justice bureau before he was arrested, and Peng Changjian are among the 52 public servants who are being investigated for shielding gangs, said Yu.

Wen has allegedly provided a "protective umbrella" for local gangs, and was also suspected of crimes including rape, money laundering, illegally holding firearms and accepting bribes.

Peng allegedly took 820,000 yuan ($120,000) and HK$100,000 ($12,900) in bribes and offered assistance to illegal business operations.

Fastest supercomputer

The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) unveiled China's fastest supercomputer on Thursday that could rival the world's most powerful computing devices.

The supercomputer, named Tianhe, meaning Milky Way, is theoretically able to do more than 1 quadrillion calculations per second (one petaflop) at peak speed and is expected to process seismic data for oil exploration, conduct bio-medical computing and help design aerospace vehicles.

Global Times/Xinhua