SHANGHAI, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — Two operators were killed when a tower crane collapsed on Tuesday at a power plant in Shanghai, local work safety officials said.

    The accident took place at 3:50 p.m. in the Shidongkou power plant, one of three key electricity bases for the financial hub, when the crane was being checked upon delivery.

    On Monday, a bridge crane collapsed at a Shanghai dock and crashed down on two freighters below, seriously injuring the crane operator and causing damage to the vessels.

    The work safety bureau of Baoshan District of Shanghai is investigating into the cause of Tuesday’s accident.

    MOSCOW, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — China and Russia will further promote trade and economic cooperation while bilateral trade volume is expected to exceed 50 billion U.S. dollars this year, senior trade officials of the two countries said here Tuesday.

    China and Russia will carry out a series of big projects in fields such as civil aviation, space exploration, energy machinery, said a statement issued after talks between visiting Chinese Minister of Commerce Chen Deming and his Russian counterpart Elvira Nabiullina.

    The two countries will also expand trade in machinery and electronic products sectors, encourage two-way investment, push forward regional cooperation, speed up cooperation in infrastructure construction, timber and resources processing industries as well as in logistics.

    The top trade officials also pledged to enhance coordination in solving problems raised in market access and trade, and create a sound climate for increasing two-way investment, said the statement.

    China proposed the two sides to strengthen cooperation in regard to customs in a bid to facilitate trade, which Russia welcomed.

    According to Chen, closer cooperation between China and Russia bears even more extraordinary significance at the moment when the world’s financial markets are troubled by the credit crunch.

    Trade between China and Russia surged by 23 percent year on year to hit 43 billion dollars in the January-September period of 2008; while the target for 2010 is 60-80 billion dollars.

    HONG KONG, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government announced on Tuesday that it will use the exchange fund to guarantee the repayment of all bank deposits in the special administrative region until 2010.

    The measure, announced along with the establishment of a contingent system for local banks to access capital, will remain in force until 2010, when the measures are subject to reassessment, said Henry Tsang, Financial Secretary of the HKSAR government.

    The two measures to safeguard banking stability, announced at a press conference with immediate effect, “are precautionary and pre-emptive in nature,” and “there was no serious issues in the banking sector,” he said.

    Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Joseph Yam, who also appeared at the press conference, said he believed the expanded deposit guarantee scheme will give local residents ” infinite confidence” in the safety of their bank deposits.

    The new deposit protection scheme will cover all the deposits in local authorized institutions with full repayment, compared with the previous scheme’s cap of 100,000 HK dollars (12,800 U.S. dollars).

    Local broadcaster RTHK said the bank deposits in authorized institutions currently totaled around 6 trillion HK dollars (769 billion U.S. dollars).

    The contingent capital system will make additional capital available to locally incorporated licensed banks on request and subject to supervisory scrutiny, Tsang said.

    There are currently 23 incorporated licensed banks in Hong Kong.

    The HKSAR government decided on the unusual measure of expanding the deposit protection scheme because it was an unusual period of time, given the current financial turmoil, said Yam, who had also weathered the Asian financial storm a decade ago.

    Yam emphasized that he believed that the HKSAR government will not need to use even “a cent of the exchange fund” to repay the bank deposits before the end of 2010.

    Bank of East Asia had experienced a bank run recently following rumors questioning the bank’s financial stability. The dust settled shortly after when the bank disclosed its financial conditions and the HKSAR government pledged help to dispel the rumor.

    Local residents welcomed the full deposit protection scheme and some members of the Legislative Council said the measures, like similar moves by other economies, could help boost the confidence of local residents in the safety of their deposits.

    One of the academicians, however, said the measures could mean risks for the HKSAR government and that authorities need to strengthen the regulation and supervision.

    Tsang said he was aware of the different views on the deposit protection and the concerns about possible moral hazards.

    ”I have set a time limit for these measures in order to allay such concerns. Moreover, the measures are not just about protecting banks, they are also about protecting the people in our community,” he said.

    BEIJING, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — A sampling survey released on Tuesday revealed about 85.6 percent of Chinese minors between nine and 16 were Internet users.

    Released by China Youth Social Service Center (CYSSC), the survey found about 90 percent of minors living in cities had used the Internet, while the proportion in urban areas was 70 percent.

    CYSSC, China Youth University for Political Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) jointly conducted the survey of 7,700 minors, as well as their parents and some teachers, in 10 major cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing from August to December 2007.

    The survey was conducted amid reports that more and more Chinese minors were alleged Internet addicts which worried their parents and brought much problems to themselves.

    According the survey, 82.6 percent of minors had their own blogs and more than 80 percent had taken Internet courses. More than half enjoyed online chatting and 71.9 percent used the Internet as a method to acquire news.

    About 58 percent regarded entertainment as the main purpose to use the Internet and only 6 percent specified using the Web for communication and making new friends.

    In addition, the survey found the minors had different favorite places to use the Internet.

    For minors in rural areas, 35 percent chose Internet bars as the main place to get connected. For those living in cities, 76 percent preferred home and 10 percent Internet bars.

    URUMQI, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — Quake-hit Wuqia County, a mountainous area in the far west of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, was hit by an early winter when the first snowfall on Tuesday left more than 400 families in the cold, local authorities said.

    After several days of rain, the snow began to fall early on Tuesday, lowering the temperature to minus 3 to minus 4 degrees Celsius in the 7,800-square-km quake zone, according to the county meteorological station.

    ”My house has cracks and I dare not live inside any more,” said herdsman Muzhali, who built a yurt in the courtyard in Ulugqat, one of four towns hit by the quake. The cold draft blew in from almost everywhere, leaving his wife with a cold.

    ”We need a cotton tent,” said Tursun, 58, holding a three-month-old baby in her arms. Her family and another 20 villagers crowded in a temporary yurt without enough room to lighta fire.

    A 6.8-magnitude earthquake jolted the county on the evening of Oct. 5, affecting 7,645 people. More than 700 houses suffered structural damage, while four collapsed. No casualties were yet reported.

    As of noon Tuesday, the quake-hit zone had received donations of 700,000 yuan (about 103,00 U.S. dollars), 100 tents, 300 quilts and 500 clothes, which were far from enough, said Fan Baojun, the county’s Communist Party chief.

    ”We still need more than 400 tents, 400 tonnes of flour, 1,200 tonnes of coal and 600 tonnes of animal feed for the winter,” he said.

    The quake zone stands about 2,700 meters above sea level in the Pamirs mountain range. It is bout 100 km from the county seat of Wuqia at the conjunction of the south of the Tianshan and Kunlun mountains.

    The regional earthquake monitoring network had observed 1,237 aftershocks as of 10 p.m. Monday, with the largest 5.9 on the Richter scale.

    More than 30,000 people were dispatched to help build houses and investigate the losses caused by the quake. The county seat was more than 1,500 km from Urumqi, the regional capital. Poor traffic conditions and telecommunications made it difficult to transport supplies from outside.

Backgrounder: U.S. Financial Crisis    

    PHNOM PENH, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Tuesday that China was not affected severely by the global financial crisis and could help deal with it.

    ”I hope China could help deal with the global financial crisis because China still has a large amount of foreign-exchange reserves and potential of economic growth,” Hun Sen said at the two-day Fourth Asia Economic Forum held here.

    China will get a little bit impact from the global financial crisis, he added.

    Hun Sen said that the global financial crisis now is not strange for Asian countries because they had a financial crisis in1997, in which a few countries in Asia got impact and were saved by economic super powers.

    ”When we had the Asian financial crisis in 1997, China became the helper for the countries which got impact from the crisis,” he said, adding that the EU and the U.S. also intervened with the crisis.

    The global financial crisis will be discussed at the Asia Europe Summit in Beijing on Oct. 24-25, which will help to solve matters of the global financial crisis, Hun Sen said.