China yesterday announced the removal of the head of one its major state-owned firms, conglomerate China Resources, for suspected law violations, state media reported using terms which typically refer to corruption.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party sacked Song Lin (宋林) as chairman and party chief of China Resources, one of just over a hundred key state-owned enterprises administered directly by the central government, Xinhua news agency reported.
China Resources Co, a Fortune magazine Global 500 company last year, has a range of business interests including the retail, power, property, natural gas and pharmaceutical sectors, according to its Web site.
Song was suspected of “serious violations of discipline and law,” Xinhua said, but gave no details.
The announcement of Song’s removal came just two days after the party’s corruption watchdog said the executive was under investigation.
A journalist with the Economic Information Daily newspaper, which operates under Xinhua, has accused him of accepting bribes, laundering money and keeping a mistress.
Song denied those claims in a statement a day before the investigation was announced, calling them a fabrication.
The South China Morning Post yesterday linked Song to an employee of Swiss financial services firm UBS in Hong Kong, saying the company was now conducting an internal investigation on the issue.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never