DAP: The breaking news in Cambodia: “Feeding dead, Pchhum Ben festival in Cambodia” plus 9 more

KANDAL, Cambodia, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Since early Tuesday morning, Chhin Som, 65, has got up to prepare food, fruit, candles and incense sticks in order to bring to pagodas to dedicate to his deceased wife and ancestors on the occasion of Pchhum Ben festival, the country's second largest religious festival.

Chhin Som had spent his one-month savings of 100,000 riels (25 U.S. dollars) from his sales of farm-grown bananas to buy fragrant rice and meats to cook for his deceased wife and ancestors.

He believed that the food would be reached his wife and other ancestors through the Buddhist monks' dedication.

"This is the only way through the Buddhism that I can express my affection and memory to my wife who died last year and to other ancestors," said Chhin Som, a resident of Kandal province's Mukampol district, some 45 kilometers east of Phnom Penh.

During the jubilant occasion of Pchhum Ben day, Cambodian Buddhists bring food, cash, and praying things to offer to Buddhist monks in pagodas in order to dedicate to their deceased relatives and ancestors; in return, they wish for longevity, good luck, happiness and prosperity.

Chhin Som said he would bring food, some cash and other stuff to three pagodas in the district to wish his wife to be re-born in a better life.

The Pchhum Ben festival is usually celebrated on the 15th day of the tenth month in the Khmer calendar. Before the day of Pchhum Ben, there is Kan Ben festival lasting for 14 days.

During the 15-day period, every early morning at four, monks chant in religious language and laypersons gather at the pagodas to toss small and round pieces of sticky rice on the ground to feed the sinful dead ancestors and then offer food to the monks.

"Some ancestors had committed bad acts in former lives, so after their deaths, they become sinful spirits; and the toss of sticky rice is to feed them," venerable Seng Sovannarith, chief of the monks at Machoeum Sararam pagoda in Mukampol district, said Tuesday during a sermon.

According to Buddhism, it is believed that, during the 15-day period, the spirits of the dead ancestors walk the Earth.

"The period is the annual holiday for ghosts and spirits--they are allowed to visit their descendants on the earth and they go to seven pagodas searching for food that is offered to them through the monks," he explained.

Departed souls try to find their relatives at seven pagodas if they fail to find their families making offerings to dedicate to them, it is believed that departed souls will bother and curse their descendants throughout the year, he added.

"Traditionally, the festival is to dedicate to the souls of spirits, ancestors and the dead through reciting by Buddhist monks," he said. "It is also the time to pay gratitude to their parents and elderly people through offering cash and other gifts."

Buddhism is the state's religion in Cambodia with more than 90 percent of the country's 14.3 million people holding it.

The country has approximately 4,400 Buddhist pagodas with more than 50,000 monks in all 24 provinces and cities, according to the records of the Ministry of Cults and Religion.

About 80 percent of the population in this Southeast Asian nation lives in rural areas; however, most young adults have migrated to cities and towns for jobs, mostly in garment industry.

Pchhum Ben festival is also a time for family reunion.

"It's the jubilant occasion we can re-unite our family," Long Vicheka, 22, a garment worker in Phnom Penh, said on Monday before catching a taxi to his hometown in Kampong Cham, some 120 kilometers East of Cambodia.

Vicheka has 6 siblings living in different provinces in Cambodia.

"At this time of the year, all my siblings and their spouses always travel to the hometown to see my parents and other relatives," he said.

This year's celebration was made amid the disaster of Mekong River and flash floods hitting most parts of the country since last month. The floods have claimed at least 97 lives and affected 90,300 families, according to Phay Siphan, the spokesman for the Council of Ministers, on Monday.

KUNMING, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Five people have been confirmed dead and another two injured after a cave-in in a coal mine shaft Saturday in southwest China's Yunnan Province, the local government said Sunday.

The accident happened at 3:19 p.m. Saturday in a pit of the Yunwei Group affiliated to the Yunnan Coal Chemical Industry Group Co., Ltd. in  the Qilin District of Qujing City.

Seven miners were trapped underground and another 16 escaped after the accident happened, said an official with the Qilin District.

As of early Sunday morning, rescuers had retrieved five bodies. Another two rescued miners were in hospital but their injuries were not life threatening, he said.

The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

BEIJING, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- As China's economy has soared to the second place in the world, the country's scientific strength has also surged -- if only measured by the numbers. Chinese researchers published more than 1.2 million papers from 2006 to 2010 -- second only to the United States but well ahead of Britain, Germany and Japan, according to data recently published by Elsevier, a leading international scientific publisher and data provider. This figure represents a 14 percent increase over the period from 2005 to 2009. The number of published academic papers in science and technology is often seen as a gauge of national scientific prowess. But these impressive numbers mask an uncomfortable fact: most of these papers are of low quality or have little impact. Citation per article (CPA) measures the quality and impact of papers. China's CPA is 1.47, the lowest figure among the top 20 publishing countries, according to Elsevier's Scopus citation database. China's CPA dropped from 1.72 for the period from 2005 to 2009, and is now below emerging countries such as India and Brazil. Among papers lead-authored by Chinese researchers, most citations were by domestic peers and, in many cases, were self-citations. "While quantity is an important indicator because it gives a sense of scientific capacity and the overall level of scientific activity in any particular field, citations are the primary indicator of overall scientific impact," said Daniel Calto, Director of SciVal Solutions at Elsevier North America. Calto attributed China's low CPA to a "dilution effect." "When the rise in the number of publications is so rapid, as it has been in China -- increasing quantity does not necessarily imply an overall increase in quality," said Calto. He noted the same pattern in a variety of rapidly emerging research countries such as India, Brazil, and earlier in places like the Republic of Korea. "Chinese researchers are too obsessed with SCI (Science Citation Index), churning out too many articles of low quality," said Mu Rongping, Director-General of the Institute of Policy and Management at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China's major think tank. SCI is one of the databases used by Chinese researchers to look-up their citation performance. The alternative, Scopus, provides a wider coverage worldwide. "Chinese researchers from a wide range of areas and institutions are vying for publication, as it is a key criterion for academic appraisal in China, if not the only one. As a result, the growth of quality pales in comparison to that of quantity," said Mu, an expert on China's national science policy and competitiveness. On the other hand, China also falls behind the United States in multidisciplinary research, which is a core engine for scientific advance and research excellence. From 2006 to 2010, China published 1,229,706 papers while the United States churned out 2,082,733. According to a new metric introduced by Elsevier's Spotlight research assessment solution, China generated 885 competencies while the United States had 1,817. In other words, China's total research output is more than half that of the United States, while the number of competencies showing China's strength in multidisciplinary research is less than half that of the United States. Cong Cao, an expert on China's science and technology, put it more bluntly in an article he wrote: "When the paper bubble bursts, which will happen sooner or later, one may find that the real situation of scientific research in China probably is not that rosy." China has been investing heavily in scientific research and technological development in recent years to strengthen its innovative capacity, The proportion of GDP spent on R&D grew from 0.9 percent in 2000 to 1.4 percent in 2007, according to the World Bank. An IMF forecast in 2010 says China now ranks second globally in R&D spending. The IMF calculates China's R&D expenditure at 150 billion U.S. dollars when based on Purchasing Power Parity, a widely used economic concept that attempts to equalize differences in standard of living among countries. By this measure, China surpassed Japan in R&D spending in 2010. Many see China's huge investment in R&D as the momentum behind the country's explosive increase in research papers. "Getting published is, in some ways, an improvement over being unable to get published," Mu said. "But the problem is, if the papers continue to be of low quality for a long time, it will be a waste of resources." In China, academic papers play a central role in the academic appraisal system, which is closely related to degrees and job promotions. While acknowledging the importance of academic papers in research, Mu believes a more balanced appraisal system should be adopted. "This is a problem with science management. If we put too much focus on the quantity of research papers, we leave the job of appraisal to journal editors." In China, the avid pursuit of publishing sometimes gives rise to scientific fraud. In the most high-profile case in recent years, two lecturers from central China's Jinggangshan University were sacked in 2010 after a journal that published their work admitted 70 papers they wrote over two years had been falsified. "This is one of the worst cases. These unethical people not only deceived people to further their academic reputations, they also led academic research on the wrong path, which is a waste of resources," Mu said. A study done by researchers at Wuhan University in 2010 says more than 100 million U.S. dollars changes hands in China every year for ghost-written academic papers. The market in buying and selling scientific papers has grown five-fold in the past three years. The study says Chinese academics and students often buy and sell scientific papers to swell publication lists and many of the purported authors never write the papers they sign. Some master's or doctoral students are making a living by churning out papers for others. Others mass-produce scientific papers in order to get monetary rewards from their institutions. A 2009 survey by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) of 30,078 people doing science-related work shows that nearly one-third of respondents attributed fraud to the current system that evaluates researchers' academic performance largely on the basis of how many papers they write and publish. Despite rampant fraud, China will continue to inject huge money into science. According to the latest national science guideline, which was issued in 2006 by the State Council, the investment in R&D will account for 2.5 percent of GDP in 2020. "If China achieves its stated goal of investing 2.5 percent of its GDP in R&D in 2020, and sustains its very fast economic growth over the next decade, it would quite likely pass the U.S. in terms of total R&D investment sometime in the late 2010s," said Calto, adding that it is also quite likely that at some point China will churn out more papers than the United States. According to Calto, China does mostly applied research, which helps drive manufacturing and economic growth, while basic research only accounts for 6 percent, compared with about 35 percent in Germany, Britain, and the United States, and 16 percent in Japan. "In the long term, in order to really achieve dominance in any scientific area, I think it will be necessary to put significant financial resources into fundamental basic research -- these are the theoretical areas that can drive the highest level of innovation," Calto said.

KATHMANDU, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Nepal's Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) has been closed for half an hour after a bomb alert for the Spice Air jet scheduled for Indian capital New Delhi Sunday morning, an airport source said.

All domestic and international fights at the airport have been grounded now and the passengers on the plane have been evacuated after the bomb alert.

Nepali Army and security persons are checking the plane now. Further details are not available.

NANJING, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Three workers died after falling into a drainage pit Sunday morning in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, local government authorities said.

The accident happened around 6:13 a.m. when the three workers were clearing drainage pipelines. They fell into a 6-meter-deep pit, with harmful methane gas in it, said authorities with Nanjing municipal government.

The three were confirmed dead after being pulled out around 7:40 a.m. by rescuers.

KATHMANDU, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Nepal's Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) has been closed for half an hour after bomb alert in the Spice Air jet preparing to fly to New Delhi, India late Sunday morning, airport sources said.

JAKARTA, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) - A suspected suicide bombing in a church in Solo of Central Java killed one person and injured at least 10 others on Sunday, local television reported here. The explosion took place at 10:55 a.m. local time. An eyewitness reported that at least ten people had been rushed to a hospital.

JAKARTA, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) - Suicide bombing in a church in Solo of Central Java killed one and injured at least 8 others on Sunday, local television reported.

PHNOM PENH, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian government said Saturday that the flooding that has hit the country since last month brings less worries, despite a close watch continued, a government official said.

Mao Hak, deputy director general of Ministry of Water Resource and Metrology said, as of Saturday afternoon, the water level in the upper part of the Mekong River is already subsided.

However, he said, the recent days of high water rise in the upper part will continue to hit the lower part of the country including Phnom Penh, but it will not hit hard.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen scheduled to convene a special Cabinet meeting early next week on this urgent issue.

Phay Siphan, spokesman of the Office of the Council of Ministers said Saturday evening that a special Cabinet meeting will be held on Monday to discuss on flooding and damages and further actions to be taken so as to help those affected by the flooding.

On Friday, the government released the latest report saying at least 58 people, including a British national, were killed in the country since the flooding began in August.

Siem Reap province, home of the world's tourist destination-- was hit hard by flooding as a result of heavy rain falls over the past few days, but was also a little subsided on Saturday afternoon.

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met Saturday with foreign leaders and diplomats on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

During his meeting with Nepalese Prime Minister Babu Ram Bhattarai and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha, Yang said that China appreciated the Nepalese government's firm support for China on issues concerning its core interests such as Taiwan and Tibet.

In recent years, the two countries have established a comprehensive cooperative partnership that will carry on from generation to generation, he said.

In order to further promote China-Nepal relations, the two sides need to maintain the momentum of high-level exchanges, enhance trade and economic cooperation, and increase people-to-people exchanges, Yang said.

China respects Nepal's choice of development path based on its national condition and hopes for stability and development at an early date, Yang said.

Bhattarai and Shrestha said that Nepal and China are friendly neighbors accommodating each other's concerns.

Nepal is willing to work with China to elevate bilateral ties to a new height, they said.

During talks with his Vietnamese counterpart, Pham Binh Minh, Yang said that China-Vietnam relations, which enjoy a brilliant prospect, have developed steadily in recent years.

On the issue concerning the South China Sea, the two sides need to handle the relations from a strategic perspective, patch up differences, actively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and promote practical cooperation, he said.

Minh said Vietnam stands ready to work with China to enhance mutual trust and friendship between the two peoples.

Vietnam is willing to make efforts with China to properly handle the disputes over the South China Sea, he added.

In talks with Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, Yang said bilateral ties have ushered in a new development phase since the two countries established a comprehensive, strategic, cooperative friendship.

The two sides should strengthen cooperation and coordination on multilateral issues, said Yang.

Hor said his country appreciated China's assistance for Cambodia's economic and social development.

And the two countries have also conducted effective cooperation within the ASEAN-China framework, he said.

The two sides also lauded the follow-up action guidelines of the DOC and agreed that it is the first imperative to conduct practical cooperation on issues concerning the South China Sea.

In discussion with Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota, Yang said that China-Brazil relations have maintained a good momentum of rapid development.

The two countries have conducted close communication and collaboration on major regional and international issues and made positive contributions to safeguarding the interests of developing countries and promoting world peace and stability, he said.

China and Brazil need to further expand cooperation in various areas and deepen their strategic partnership, Yang said.

Patriota said Brazil hopes to strengthen trade and investment cooperation with China, make joint efforts to meet global challenges and promote the democratization in international relations.