CHENGDU, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — Millions of rural families in southwestern Sichuan Province whose houses were leveled by a 8.0-magnitude earthquake in May 2008 would move into permanent newhouses by the Chinese lunar new year, provincial Party chief said on Friday.

    More than 1.5 million rural families would all have new houses by Feb. 14, or the Spring Festival, Liu Qibao, Secretary of Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, made the pledge at a national meeting the provincial capital.

    A total of 5.38 million households in the province had their houses damaged or evened, and 1.5 million of them needed to be rebuilt, Liu said.

    According to Liu, all the students in the province’s quake-hit area who lost their classrooms would also move into permanent school buildings by the Spring Festival.

    In addition, 93.7 percent of the reconstruction projects for medical facilities in the province have been started.

    The central and provincial governments have also increased the reconstruction investment from its planned 885.8 billion yuan to 938.6 billion yuan (138 billion U.S. dollars) last year.

    HONG KONG, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) on Friday launched the SkyPier, a new cross-boundary ferry terminal, to further facilitate strong demand for cross-boundary transport between the airport and the Pearl River Delta region.

    The SkyPier is an important link between the airport and the Pearl River Delta region, said Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, at the opening ceremony held at the pier on Friday.

    He said an international aviation hub underpins Hong Kong’s efforts to enhance our competitiveness through the development of the four traditional pillar industries, in particular tourism and trade and logistics.

    The new SkyPier is part of HKIA’s near-term growth projects to enhance service levels and meet future demand, and the pier efficiently conveys passengers traveling between the Pearl River Delta and the world via HKIA, said Marvin Cheung Kin-tung Marvin Cheung Kin-tung, Chairman of the Airport Authority Hong Kong.

    A temporary SkyPier opened in 2003 and served almost 10 million passengers.

    The new 16,500-sqm permanent SkyPier is eight times the size of the temporary facility, and designed with a maximum capacity for 8million annual passengers.

    Currently, high-speed ferries make an average of 85 trips everyday, shuttling around 5,000 passengers between HKIA and eight ports in the Pearl River Delta and Macao, including Zhongshan, Zhuhai Jiuzhou, Dongguan Humen, Guangzhou Nansha, Shenzhen Shekou and Shenzhen Fuyong as well as Macao’s Taipa and Maritime Ferry Terminal.

    Travelers using the SkyPier are not required to go through immigration and customs formalities at HKIA.

    Passengers en route for overseas destinations via HKIA’s SkyPier are also exempt from paying the Hong Kong Airport Departure Tax of 120 HK dollars.

    The time for passengers to travel between the ferry pier and Terminal 1 is also shortened to about four minutes, half of the time previously required.

    The 20,000 square meter North Satellite Concourse is also launched on Friday. Ten extra bridge-served parking stands for narrow-bodied aircraft are built to serve the rising number of narrow-bodied aircraft using the airport.

    URUMQI, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — Liu Yaohua, vice chairman of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, was removed from post Friday.

    The decision was made at a meeting of the CPPCC Xinjiang regional committee. He was also deprived of membership of the CPPCC Xinjiang regional committee.

    Liu served as director of the regional Public Security Department, but was sacked on Sept. 5 in 2009.

   BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — The first Mr. Gay China pageant due to start Friday night in Beijing was cancelled, an organizer said minutes before its scheduled opening.

    Organizer Niu Niu said the event was called off because of application problems.

    Another organizer Ben Zhang told Xinhua earlier that they hadn’t applied to the government to hold the event.

    An audience of around 200 was expected to attend the pageant set to take place in a Beijing nightclub.

    Organizers earlier said the Mr. Gay China Pageant would include a fashion show and a question and answer round.

    ”The pageant will let people know more about gays and help our society to understand them better,” said Zhang Beichuan, a Chinese scholar on homosexual studies, Friday.

    Surveys showed that people who knew gays in person had much greater acceptance of the gay community, the scholar told Xinhua.

    Sociologist Li Yinhe with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has estimated that there were 36 to 48 million homosexuals in China.

    GUIYANG, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — Qiao Hong, former general manager of Shanghai-listed Kweichow Moutai Co. Ltd, maker of China’s famous Moutai liquor, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve after being convicted on corruption charges Friday.

    The sentence at Zunyi Municipal Intermediate People’s Court in Zunyi City, southwest China’s Guizhou Province, also deprived Qiao of his political rights for life and ordered the confiscation of his property.

    Qiao, 56, was charged with taking bribes and being unable to account for his assets.

    The court heard that Qiao accepted more than 100 bribes totaling 13 million yuan (1.9 million U.S. dollars) from 2000 to 2007, when he was general manager of the company. In addition, he and his brother Qiao Jianhua took other bribes worth 2.18 million yuan.

    Qiao could not explain the sources of 8.2 million yuan of his property, the court heard.

    A spokesman with the court said the sentence showed leniency, taking into consideration that Qiao was cooperative in the investigation and he surrendered his illegal earnings.

    Qiao’s brother, Qiao Jianhua, was sentenced to 11 years in jail with a fine of 500,000 yuan at the same trial.

    Kweichow Moutai is a listed arm of the state-owned Moutai Group. Qiao was appointed general manager of Kweichow Moutai in August 2000. He had previously served as deputy director of the Guizhou Provincial Bureau of Light Industry.

    He was put under investigation for bribery in May 2007.

    Caijing magazine reported on Dec. 30, 2009, that Qiao was alleged to have taken bribes from dealers and advertising companies. He was also suspected of taking bribes from sponsors during the 2002 World Cup in the Republic of Korea, and arranging a trip to the World Cup for outstanding salespeople.

    The report said Qiao had 14 properties to his name, but his home provided by the light industry bureau was modest.

    Kweichow Moutai has not been affected by the corruption case. Stocks of Kweichow Moutai Co. gained 0.79 percent to hit 169.87 yuan on Friday. The company’s 2008 sales revenue reached 8.2 billion yuan, 13.88 percent up from 2007.

    The company has been scaling up production over recent years. The company’s liquor production surpassed 20,000 tonnes last year, 2,000 tonnes more than that in 2006.

    Unlike other Chinese liquors, Moutai is aged for five years before being sold.

    JINAN, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — Sea ice off China’s east coast is killing fish stocks and causing huge losses to the fishing industry — and the ice is set to worsen, the State Oceanic Administration warned Friday.

    Almost 30,000 square km of sea ice was covering up to 40 percent of the Bohai Sea off east China’s Shandong Province, said Lin Shanqing, director of disaster relief department of the State Oceanic Administration.

    Lin said sea ice in Liaodong Bay had expanded to almost 70 nautical miles off the coast Friday from 60 nautical miles on Tuesday. Sea ice in Laizhou Bay and Bohai Bay both expanded to 30 nautical miles Friday from 20 nautical miles on Sunday.

    The worst sea ice in 40 years appeared began early January along the coasts of the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea as cold fronts pushed temperatures below minus 10 degrees Celsius, according to the National Marine Forecasting Station on Sunday.

    Lin said the severe conditions would not improve in the next week.

    Sea ice had affected fisheries of Shandong’s Qinghai, Yantai, Weihai port cities, as stocks died and boats were trapped in port.

    The direct economic losses of the fishing industry in Weihai City was estimated at 420 million yuan (61 million U.S. dollars), according to the city’s ocean and fishery bureau.

    In Yantai City, 200 boats were trapped in Haimiao port, Laizhou Bay, for more than a month.

    An oil tanker was trapped in ice in the Bohai Sea Thursday, but was towed to port without casualties or oil leakage.

    Shandong Provincial oceanic and fishery department had issued warnings of sea ice and began 24-hour monitoring of conditions Tuesday.

Special report: Global Climate Change