Cross-Straits charter flight sets off for Tomb-sweeping Day
A China Eastern flight left Shanghai for Taipei on Wednesday, kicking off a series of seasonal cross-Straits charter flights for the traditional Chinese tomb-sweeping festival.
Altogether 146 passengers, mostly Taiwanese working in Shanghai, were on board China Eastern's flight MU5005 from Shanghai's Pudongto Taipei on Wednesday, sources with the airline company said.
A total of 14 charter flights will fly between Shanghai and Taipei from Wednesday to next Monday, operated by China Eastern and Shanghai Airlines based in the mainland, and Taiwan-based China Airlines and EVA Air.
Charter flights will also fly from Guangzhou and Xiamen to Taipei and vice versa around the tomb-sweeping day that falls on Friday, April 4.
The day, also known as the Qingming Festival, is an occasion to remember the dead.
The first non-stop charter flights across the Taiwan Straits were launched for Chinese Lunar New Year in 2005, the first direct air links across the Straits in more than five decades.
The service is also available during important holidays, including the traditional Dragon Boat Festival in early summer, and the Mid-Autumn Festival in the autumn.
Former legislator jailed for 'erotic robberies'
A FORMER legislator of Nanchong City in Sichuan Province was sentenced to 20 years' jail for organizing five "erotic robberies".
A court of Sichuan's Chengdu City upheld the term to Zhou Xiuzhen April 1.
Zhou, who was once famous for establishing a school that welcomed needy and abandoned children in Nanchong's rural areas, was found to have plotted to rob several Netizens from December, 2006 to January, 2007.
Zhou advertised girls on the Internet and tricked men into thinking they were meeting women for one-night stands.
As soon as victims entered hotel rooms Zhou had reserved, she would raid the room with three thugs, and threaten, rob and beat the men.
Zhou told the court she needed the money to offset her school's one million yuan debt.
She spent more than 400,000 yuan to build the school in 2002 but it soon plunged into financial crisis as few local families could afford tuition fees.
Foreign language courses in China draw 50 million people
China has nearly 50 million people who are learning foreign languages at schools and language institutes, an official of the Ministry of Education (MOE) said.
Colleges offer courses in more than 60 foreign languages, Dai Weidong, professor with the MOE advisory board for foreign language teaching, told an international symposium that concluded over the weekend.
More than 900 colleges offer an English major, he said, and of those, more than 600 can confer a bachelor's degree and more than 200 can confer master's degrees.
There are more than 800,000 students majoring in English in China.
(编辑： 方娟静 )