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Chinese police investigating 5 missing teens issue further warnings about telecoms crime
Chinese police investigating 5 missing teens issue further warnings about telecoms crime

South China Morning Post

time6 days ago

  • South China Morning Post

Chinese police investigating 5 missing teens issue further warnings about telecoms crime

Chinese police are investigating at least five cases of teenagers who have gone missing recently and are suspected of being caught up in scam centres , including some who have lost contact with their families after travelling to Myanmar Police in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province in central China, issued a notice on Wednesday, confirming the disappearance of an 18-year-old high school student who had travelled to a city in Yunnan province, in southwestern China, at the border with Myanmar. According to his parents, the student surnamed Hu left school to look for a job in Hefei in April. But in late June his mother could not find him at his workplace. 03:32 'We're not scammers': China, Thailand join forces to free thousands from Myanmar scam hubs 'We're not scammers': China, Thailand join forces to free thousands from Myanmar scam hubs He was reported last seen near a restaurant in Jinghong, Yunnan, after coming out of Xishuangbanna airport on June 5, having flown from Nanjing. Jinghong police said they had no further information about him. Hu's disappearance is not an isolated case. In the past month, many teenagers aged 18 or 19 who set out to travel or work during the summer holiday reportedly travelled to Yunnan without their families' knowledge, and then lost contact in the border area. According to Elephant News, an official news outlet in Henan province, a mother in Hubei urgently sought help on Tuesday, saying that her high school student son and two of his classmates had lost contact after going to Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture on June 24, and that they were suspected to be in Myanmar, where telecoms-related crime is rampant. Hubei police confirmed the case, saying that the three students had arrived in Xishuangbanna prefecture on June 25 and lost contact with their families and friends two days after their arrival. Their last message was sent from abroad, police said. The mother in Hubei said her son had previously met a 'buddy' on the internet who had invited the three to go to Yunnan with him, saying he was 'delivering rhino horns'.

China flips switch on cutting-edge energy facility with incredible power: 'It's the start of a new wave'
China flips switch on cutting-edge energy facility with incredible power: 'It's the start of a new wave'

Yahoo

time15-07-2025

  • Business
  • Yahoo

China flips switch on cutting-edge energy facility with incredible power: 'It's the start of a new wave'

A new energy storage plant featuring sodium- and lithium-ion batteries has opened in China's Yunnan province. The energy storage station, operated by China Southern Power Grid, is approximately 33,333 square meters in size and features over 150 battery compartments, according to CnEVPost. The station's leader told news agency Xinhua that it has a top response speed that's six times faster than other sodium-ion batteries. It can also store up to 800,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day, which is enough to power approximately 270,000 households. PV Magazine explained that the station can serve over 30 wind and solar plants to mitigate the impact of intermittent supply. The article highlighted that the power station can adapt to changing energy access and stabilize delivery. Combined, these benefits make it easier for cities, companies, and everyday people to have an energy source they can rely on. And one they can trust to release less planet-warming pollution than dirty fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services pointed out, a cleaner environment reduces the likelihood of respiratory and heart conditions. While there are many ways to store energy, sodium-ion batteries are gaining popularity. CnEVPost emphasized that this is because sodium is more abundant, easier to extract, and costs less. Additional reporting from Sodium Battery Hub detailed that this system can adapt to temperature variations and has a longer life cycle than lithium models. Energy storage plays a crucial role in the transition to greener energy sources. As more solar and wind stations emerge, engineers believe that the rapid construction of lithium-sodium battery storage will be critical, per Sodium Battery Hub. Many companies continue to address the need for energy storage plants, like this flywheel facility or this compressed carbon dioxide option. For now, people are excited about this new development in China. Should the U.S. invest more in battery innovations? Absolutely Depends on the project We're investing enough We should invest less Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. On a post on the China Southern Power Grid Facebook page, one commenter said, "Look forward to experiencing more developments in cleaner, and greener energy!" On Threads, Earthly Education shared the news about the energy storage plant, writing, "It's the start of a new wave in clean energy storage, promising faster, greener, and more affordable solutions worldwide." Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.

The Crash No One Sees Coming: Food System Failure
The Crash No One Sees Coming: Food System Failure

Forbes

time15-07-2025

  • Business
  • Forbes

The Crash No One Sees Coming: Food System Failure

PANZHIHUA, CHINA - MARCH 9: (CHINA OUT) A farmer walks on a dried-up field on March 9, 2010 in ... More Yanbian County of Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province, China. There was no rainfall in nearly half year in Panzhihua, resulting in no harvest of crops in many areas. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, severe drought had hit over 4.09 million hectares of farmland in southwestern China since early March, with more than 2 million hectares seriously damaged. The affected regions are in Yunnan Province, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guizhou Province, Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality, which contribute to about 16 percent of the country's annual grain output. (Photo by) 'We're losing 120 calories per person, per day, for every degree of global warming.' That stark data point from a 2025 Nature study signals more than a threat to food security, it points to a growing risk to global financial security. Food system instability exposes markets to cascading shocks: inflation, trade disruption, insurance losses and sovereign credit stress. Yet these risks remain largely unaccounted for in core financial systems. Despite mounting exposure to climate-driven volatility, financial systems, from asset pricing models to fiscal and monetary policy frameworks, still treat food risk as peripheral. This disconnect is no longer sustainable. As climate extremes intensify, the next financial crisis may not come from housing or tech, but from a climate-driven breakdown in the global food system. The Climate-Finance Disconnect Climate models show that under high-emissions scenarios, global staple crop yields could fall by 20% to 35% by century's end, even with adaptation. A recent study in Nature estimates wheat, maize, and soybean yields may decline by nearly a third if warming exceeds 2°C. Maize alone accounts for nearly 40% of global grain production. These aren't just commodities, they are pillars of food security, trade, and inflation control. Reduced crop yields lead to supply shocks, fuelling inflation. That inflation prompts central banks to raise interest rates, tightening credit and increasing debt pressure, especially in food-importing nations. Some of these disruptions unfold suddenly, like the 2007–2008 food price crisis that triggered unrest in over 30 countries or the Ukraine war that sent wheat and fertilizer prices soaring. Others build more slowly, as years of slow decline can steadily erode farm margins, strain rural credit systems, and increase sovereign exposure to food volatility. Both pathways, acute shocks and chronic pressures, pose serious, under priced risks to financial stability. Daniel Blaustein-Rejto, director of food & agriculture at the Breakthrough Institute explains that a common misunderstanding in both policy and financial circles is that research says climate change will cause yields to collapse outright. While that's not the case, climate change will significantly slow their growth. Compared to a world without warming, even modest yield drag could destabilize markets built on expectations of consistent gains. Insurance markets, already struggling to price climate-related risk in agriculture, are sounding the alarm. According to a 2025 report by Howden and the European Investment Bank, only 20–30% of European farmers have insurance coverage for climate-related losses, leaving potentially billions in uninsured losses. The report warns that climate change 'could render parts of the food system fundamentally uninsurable.' As private insurers retreat from high-risk areas, public institutions are forced to absorb growing losses, adding fiscal pressure to agriculture-dependent economies. Commodity market volatility grows as investors speculate on food scarcity, amplifying systemic risk. As Dr. Howard Botts, chief scientist at geospatial risk intelligence firm Cotality says, 'The agricultural sector is deeply tied to both physical and financial risk, and climate-driven shocks in insurance availability will not stay contained.' Crop failures can lead to loan defaults among farmers and agribusinesses, threatening the stability of local banks. In regions where agriculture comprises a significant share of GDP, this creates a hidden but potent channel of financial contagion, one largely absent from most macroeconomic risk models. Widely used tools like the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) don't account for the cascading effects of food system degradation: soil depletion, water scarcity, nitrogen runoff, biodiversity collapse. Agriculture is not only a major source of methane and nitrous oxide, but its degradation strips away natural buffers that once absorbed shocks, stabilized local climates, and protected communities from cascading economic disruption. Venture capitalist Ibrahim AlHusseini, founder of FullCycle puts it bluntly: 'Declines in staple crop yields will drive structural disruption across the food system. Insurance models aren't accurately pricing yield risk, and agri-finance exposure is heavily concentrated in vulnerable regions. A sudden repricing could ripple through commodities, food company valuations, and sovereign debt markets.' Markets also fail to price in tail risks, like multi-year droughts or concurrent crop failures in key regions. Climate volatility is accelerating, with swings between drought and deluge (what climate scientist Daniel Swain has called hydroclimate whiplash) becoming more common. These events disrupt yields, strain supply chains, and destabilize inflation metrics. Max Dugan-Knight, who leads research on extreme weather and climate change's impact at Canada's Deep Sky Research, warns that markets are still failing to price in long-term tail risks, even as the probability of extreme events like crop failure-inducing heatwaves has increased twentyfold. He adds: 'Both extreme heat waves and prolonged drought are major risks for the agricultural sector and neither have been properly reckoned with by financial markets. These risks operate on a long time horizon, and markets are still primarily responding to short-term price signals.' Without models that reflect these interconnected risks, capital continues to flow toward systems that accelerate ecological breakdown. Some versions of the SCC place climate damages as low as $50 per ton, but models that factor in food system collapse push it toward $200–$400. Until these tools evolve, financial markets will remain blind to one of the most significant systemic threats of the century. Food system risk is not just mispriced, it's misgoverned. It falls between the cracks of institutional responsibility, where no single actor sees or manages the full picture. Treasuries tend to treat food shocks as a humanitarian issue, while central banks ignore it in inflation forecasts. Many investors think of agriculture in ESG terms, rather than integrating it into mainstream risk models or financial decision-making. Meanwhile regulators often treat food supply chains as private logistics problems, not strategic infrastructure. The 2025 G7 Finance Ministers' communiqué, for example, made no mention of food systems, insurance risk, or agriculture's exposure to climate volatility, despite clear evidence that food prices drive inflation, trade imbalances, and sovereign credit stress. As Francisco Martin-Rayo, chief executive of climate risk platform Helios warns, 'The G7 keeps talking about climate in abstractions, but they're dodging the real problem: our global food system isn't adapting.' He adds, 'Delay means stranded irrigation infrastructure in failing regions, collapsing crop insurance pools, and escalating sovereign credit risk tied to food volatility. Even with adaptation, wheat and maize are projected to drop 30–40% by century's end. That's not a future risk, that's an underwriting crisis in motion.' This isn't just a public policy failure; it's one of market design. Financial models still favor short-term yield over long-term resilience, and risk management tools lag behind today's climate reality. The climate-driven insurance retreat is already underway, but asset repricing lags. This mirrors the U.S. housing market, where insurers pulled out of climate-vulnerable areas long before home prices reacted. As Max Dugan-Knight of Canada's Deep Sky Research explains, 'In both real estate and agriculture, insurance becomes most important right when it also becomes most expensive. Only a very developed and robust insurance market can survive rapid changes in levels of risk. Failures in the insurance market do not stay within insurance. They soon impact broader financial markets.' Food systems may be on a similar path, where insurers act early, but capital markets respond only once the consequences are too large to ignore. In 2025, The Grocer published a letter from 20 senior UK food executives warning that just-in-time supply chains, short-term contracts, and siloed oversight are leaving the sector unfit for climate shocks. Their call: treat food security as critical infrastructure and build systemic resilience before the next collapse. A New Framework For Risk And Resilience The global financial system remains structured around assumptions of abundance and stability, but the food system is now becoming an active vector of volatility. Dugan-Knight observes, 'Food price increases are already happening, but distinguishing climate impact from tariffs and general inflation is difficult. Financial actors may be tempted to write it all off as temporary, ignoring the growing underlying climate risk.' To avoid another crash born of ignored risk, finance and policy leaders must treat food systems as financially material, not a background variable. That means revising credit and insurance models, investing in soil and water resilience, and funding diversified food systems that can withstand disruption. The parallels to the 2008 housing crisis are hard to ignore. There, systemic fragility was masked by financial models that failed to capture real-world risk. Food may be next. Without decisive action, climate-driven shocks to the food system could ripple outward, triggering broader financial contagion. Ensuring stability will require building climate-resilient food systems, an imperative that financial markets can no longer afford to overlook.

Where lychees came from and why in Chinese culture they're an auspicious symbol
Where lychees came from and why in Chinese culture they're an auspicious symbol

South China Morning Post

time06-07-2025

  • Science
  • South China Morning Post

Where lychees came from and why in Chinese culture they're an auspicious symbol

'Eating three hundred lychees every day, I would long live in Lingnan.' The sentiment of Song dynasty poet Su Shi towards this popular summer fruit is echoed by many across Asia today. From Hong Kong to Hanoi and Maoming to Muzaffarpur, mounds of dusty-pink lychees can be found in wet markets and on the sides of streets at this time of year. Their thin leathery skin peels easily to reveal luscious translucent-white flesh that covers a shiny seed and has a heady floral flavour. Native to southern China and northern Vietnam, lychees appear in historical records in China as far back as 200BC. Lychee can be found in wet markets and at street-side stalls across Asia in the summer months. A 2022 report published in the scientific journal Nature Genetics used DNA sequencing to theorise that the first lychees appeared tens of thousands of years ago in what is today Yunnan province in southwest China.

A ride through Wanfenglin, Guizhou's best-kept secret
A ride through Wanfenglin, Guizhou's best-kept secret

South China Morning Post

time04-07-2025

  • South China Morning Post

A ride through Wanfenglin, Guizhou's best-kept secret

No matter how hard I turn the throttle, the most macho sound coming from this rental e-moped is a gentle whirring, not the throaty roar I am used to when renting motorbikes elsewhere in Asia. But even if green electric technology has stripped the growl from one of my favourite modes of travel, I have found somewhere in the southern Chinese countryside I can ride without a driving licence. And I have found a spot that seems perfect for motorised travel – offbeat and less visited. Wanfenglin labourers cut grass and arrange it into haystacks. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng In Guizhou's southwesternmost corner, Xingyi is a borderland that grazes Yunnan and Guangxi provinces. Closer to Yunnan's capital, Kunming , than to Guizhou's Guiyang, what Xingyi lacks in the Miao and Dong ethnic-minority character found on the eastern side of this hilly southwestern province, it makes up for with jagged natural beauty. Advertisement Less than 20km south of Xingyi township is Wanfenglin, a fertile valley of rice fields and quaint villages hemmed in by limestone karst formations that look like the forest-clad humps of a half-buried giant camel caravan. In many respects, the scenery rivals that of Guangxi's main tourist draws, Guilin and Yangshuo, as well as the rock pinnacles of the Shilin Stone Forest, to the east of Kunming, in Yunnan. Nevertheless, Wanfenglin ('forest of 10,000 peaks') remains under the radar. That may be because high-speed trains don't pass by yet. In fact, there is just one train from Kunming a day: the K1206, leaving Kunming at 7.58am and arriving at Xingyi at 1.58pm, taking six hours to cover the 285km. Alternatively, one could take a four-and-a-half-hour bus ride from the central Guizhou town of Anshun, 218km to the northeast. A farmer in Wanfu village rakes maize in front of a mural-covered home. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng In truth, Wanfenglin has not remained entirely untouched by tourism: it has been declared a scenic area, with an entry fee and opening and closing times – which nobody seems to collect or respect during my visit. In the tradition of scenic areas across China, tourist shuttles – large golf-cart-like vehicles with open sides and a plastic roof – leave from the car park at the valley's northern end, where the No 301 bus from Xingyi stops. The hop-on-hop-off shuttle costs 120 yuan (HK$131) for a full valley circuit, making 11 stops at photo-friendly locations that include Upper and Lower Nahui villages and the Eight Diagrams Field: a large paddyfield whose canals and terraces form concentric circles and geometric patterns. The price includes access to Wanfenglin's main tourist viewpoint. Before the ride ends, the shuttle stops at a karst formation museum near the valley's central village, Wenbeng. Unlike most other scenic areas in China, however, taking the shuttle bus is not the only way to get around Wanfenglin. Pretty much every little shop and guest house at the northern end of the 6km-long valley – where the hobo-chic Yi Yu Hostel, hemmed in by walls of golden, tall corn and paddyfields, has sparkling dorms and pleasant doubles – rents out pushbikes, electric mopeds and golf-cart-like three-wheelers. Costing 30 to 50 yuan per day, these electric vehicles are a dream come true for those who enjoy exploring independently, and mine has the word 'Sweet' stencilled above its front headlight. A street-food vendor in Upper Nahui village, where most of the stores also function as vehicle-rental shops. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng Eighteen years ago, when I was one of many foreign travellers exploring the domestic-tourist-free and hostel-strewn lanes below Yangshuo 's otherworldly karst pinnacles, I wished a place that begged to be explored independently could offer the simple moped rentals available across neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam , which contributed so much to making those Southeast Asian hotspots appealing destinations. Today, I am realising that Yangshuo dream 850km to the west.

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