Beijing to Get Two New Churches ...26 Schools Receive Yellow Card Warnings ...More Passengers Take Trains since Railway Acceleration ..."Artificial Beauty" Refused Approval and May Sue Pageant Organizers ...
Beijing will have two new churches by the end of the year.
The municipal government has set aside 40 million yuan, or about 4.8 million US dollars, to support construction of two churches in cooperation with the Municipal Christian Association.
The two new churches are located in Chaoyang and Fengtai districts, which at present do not have any operational Christian churches.
The two churches will each have seating for about 1,000 people.
Beijing currently has more than 40,000 Christians, over 60 Christian clerics and eight registered churches.
As a temporary measure, the Xijiao Hotel in Haidian District and the Catholic Church on Dongjiaominxiang in Eastern District may hold religious services for foreign nationals in Beijing.
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The Ministry of Education has issued yellow card warnings to 26 universities and colleges nationwide whose faculties and teaching facilities are not up to standard.
Though these schools are not prohibited from enrolling students, they are not allowed to increase student numbers.
They must also increase their investment and improve student's living conditions and teaching facilities.
Colleges and universities that receive red card warnings have to suspend enrolling students.
Since 2002, no schools have got red cards, while some 20 to 30 schools get the yellow card warning every year.
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In the four weeks after China launched its largest scale railway speed increase on April 18, trains across the country carried more than 93 million passengers, up 5 percent year-on-year.
Nearly 29 million passengers took mid and long-distance trains during the period, up 17 percent.
In addition, most trains were running on time.
It was China's fifth large-scale railway speed increase since 1997, and involved adding over 3,500 kilometers of new lines to the express railway network and raising the speed of major lines to 160 kilometers per hour.
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Known as an "man-made" beauty, Yang Yuan, an 18-year old model, were barred from competing for Miss Beijing in the 2004 Miss Intercontinental competition because of her artificial beauty.
Yang threatened later to sue the organizers on stopping her from competing.
But to everyone's great surprise, Yang torn apart the organizer's approval notice saying she felt like being fooled and threatened to go on suing.
Earlier the Beijing organizing committee side refused to allow Yang to participate in the competition saying candidates should demonstrate their real beauty. It would be unfair to the other candidates if they allowed a "man-made" beauty to participate.
But Yang's lawyer says as no competition regulation rules out such people taking part in the contest, claiming that the wording of the phrase "an artificial beauty" in the organizing committee's notification was a personal insult to Yang.
This February, Yang Yuan spent some 13,250 US dollars on cosmetic surgery in Beijing to change her plain-looking face as a way to brighten up her future modeling career.
