What Da Hell is going on in China!

[YoRel]

7 children killed at China school in latest attack

HANZHONG, China – A man charged into a kindergarten in northwestern China with a cleaver Wednesday and hacked to death seven children and two adults — the fifth such rampage in less than two months. The attacker then went home and killed himself.

The assault, which left 11 other children hospitalized, occurred despite heightened security countrywide, with gates and cameras installed at some schools and additional police and guards posted at entrances.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100512/...dents_attacked
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[El Mayimbe]

China is in the midst of transferring millions of poor farmers intot he cities, expect more turmoil in the months/years to come

[liL Ray]

there is something more to all these killing of children in schools...

[panklady]

This is terrible, absolutely terrible. What is REALLY going on?

[mjoseph]

As China’s economy booms, syphilis epidemic emerges

By Bill Schiller
Asia Bureau
BEIJING—China’s explosive economy is fuelling another explosion in Chinese society: the fastest growing epidemic of syphilis in modern times.

A paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine Thursday calls the epidemic “a major scourge,” and notes that “no other country has seen such a precipitous increase in reported syphilis cases” since penicillin was broadly introduced to the world in the 1940s.

Untreated, syphilis can cause brain damage and even death.

China had nearly eradicated the disease 50 years ago.

But the booming economy and changing social mores have brought it back with a vengeance.

“Syphilis has become a major scourge lurking in the shadows of a country that has rapidly ascended to the status of a global economic powerhouse,” say the reports authors, lead by Dr. Joseph D. Tucker of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

How Chinese media – which is tightly controlled by the government – will react to the report remains to be seen. In China there remains a profound social stigma attached to sexually transmitted diseases.

But the report’s authors point out that success against the scourge in China can only be achieved if government heath authorities give the problem broad recognition and invest more money in publicizing the problem and increase testing.

On average, more than one baby per hour was born with congenital syphilis in China in 2008, a total of nearly 9,500 cases, the report says.

That number represents a 12-fold increase in the five years between 2003 and 2008.

The report notes that death rates among such newborns can exceed 50 per cent.

The report, entitled “Syphilis and Social Upheaval in China,” also notes that syphilis is now, “the most commonly reported communicable disease in Shanghai,” news expected to be less than welcome in China’s largest city which officially opened its doors to the world in recent days, hosting the 2010 World Expo.

Organizers have said they expect to see as many as 70 million visitors to what was once called a “world’s fair,” with as many as 95 per cent of them Chinese from other parts of the country.

The report emphasizes the link between China’s booming economy and the spike in the sexually transmitted infection.

It also notes that people with syphilis have an increased risk of both acquiring and transmitting HIV infections.

“After China’s economy became increasingly market-based in the 1980s, the growing numbers of Chinese businessmen with money and young women without money translated into expanded demand and supply for the country’s commercial sex industry,” the report says.

Migrant workers, who are said to number as many as 200 million in China, are also especially vulnerable.

But bearing the biggest burden, according to Chinese national surveillance data, are female sex workers and men who have sex with men, in part, the report notes, because of unsafe sexual practices.

The report also notes that in China, “one third of men who have sex with men are married and the transmission of syphilis to their wives and then children (at birth) is an important consideration.”