(Reuters) – Republican lawmakers are “playing with fire” by contemplating even a brief debt default as a means to force deeper government spending cuts, an adviser to China’s central bank said on Wednesday.

The idea of a technical default — essentially delaying interest payments for a few days — has gained backing from a growing number of mainstream Republicans who see it as a price worth paying if it forces the White House to slash spending, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

But any form of default could destabilize the global economy and sour already tense relations with big U.S. creditors such as China, government officials and investors warn.

Li Daokui, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China, said a default could undermine the U.S. dollar, and Beijing needed to dissuade Washington from pursuing this course of action.

“I think there is a risk that the U.S. debt default may happen,” Li told reporters on the sidelines of a forum in Beijing. “The result will be very serious and I really hope that they would stop playing with fire.”    [FULL  STORY]

(Reuters) – Washington scrambled on Thursday to assess whether security had been compromised after Google Inc revealed a major hacker attack targeting U.S. officials that the Internet giant pegged to China.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addresses the Washington Conference on the Americas at the State Department in Washington May 11, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

“These allegations are very serious,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

“We take them seriously; we’re looking into them,” Clinton told reporters a day after the Internet giant said it had disrupted a campaign aimed at stealing passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists.

Google’s announcement fuels debate in Washington over China’s intentions in cyberspace, which the United States has identified as a potential flashpoint for future conflict.    [FULL  STORY]

(Reuters) – Suspicion that some individual or entity in China was behind a recent cyber attack on Lockheed Martin is growing among experts and agencies looking into the incident.

“It’s unclear at this point precisely who conducted the attacks, but given past history with these sorts of things, there’s a strong tendency to look east. The Far East, in fact, and a country that not so long ago hosted the Olympics,” said one U.S. official who asked for anonymity, but was reluctant to point the finger at China by name.

Official and private U.S. cyber-security told Reuters that forensic tracing of attacks like the one that caused Lockheed temporarily to instruct employees to curb remote access to company networks was notoriously difficult, and that clever hackers usually lay elaborate false trails to cover their tracks.

But a U.S. official familiar with progress on the investigation said there was increasing suspicion the Lockheed hack originated with “someone in China.”    [FULL  STORY]

(Reuters) – Hackers likely based in China tried to break into hundreds of Google mail accounts, including those of senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists, the Internet company said on Wednesday.

The unknown perpetrators, who appeared to originate from Jinan in Shandong province, recently tried to crack and monitor email accounts by stealing passwords, but Google detected and “disrupted” their campaign, the world’s largest Web search company said on its official blog.    [FULL  STORY]

Five years on, efforts to tell world about forced organ harvesting continue

Epoch Times
Mar 9, 2011
By Joshua Philipp

Organ Harvesting in China
The story was hard to stomach—gruesome, at the very least. What started as a rumor, however, would later unfold into a campaign of brutality and horror perpetrated by the Chinese regime.

International human rights lawyer David Matas was in his office when the story broke in March 2006. It flowed into his e-mail box along with the flood of human rights updates he reads daily.

It told the story of a woman under the pseudonym “Annie,” whose husband suffered nightmares, as he suffered for the terror he had inflicted on more than 2,000 people.    [FULL  STORY]

According to the People’s Daily , Chinese authorities have said that only China Telecom and China Unicom will be allowed to provide Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services to customers.

Both China Telecom and China Unicom — the former is the largest land-line telephone company in the country, the latter is the nation’s second-largest 3G mobile carrier — are state controlled.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which published the ruling earlier this month, has not set a timetable for implementing the new VoIP restrictions.

When it does, Skype will probably be barred. “[This] is expected to make services like Skype unavailable in the country,” the Communist Party’s official paper said.    [FULL  STORY]

Fanapi made landfall on the mainland on Monday, one day after slamming Taiwan with heavy rains, killing two people and leaving more than 100 injured on the island.

All of the mainland deaths occurred in southern China’s Guangdong province, which saw its worst rains in a century, the official Xinhua news agency said.    [FULL  STORY]

The Japanese government said it wanted to use all possible channels to avoid any further escalation.

China responded by saying it would not meet Japanese leaders on the sidelines of a UN summit in New York this week.

Beijing has demanded the release of the skipper, whose boat hit two Japanese patrol vessels in disputed waters.

The BBC’s Roland Buerk in Tokyo says Japan’s government is trying to persuade China to take the heat out of the damaging row.

The Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshito Sengoku, said officials “should be careful not to arouse narrow-minded extreme nationalism”, not just in China, but in Japan and other countries too.

Just hours later, the Chinese foreign ministry said a meeting between Premier Wen Jiabao and his Japanese counterpart Naoto Kan would be inappropriate.

The dispute began two weeks ago when a Chinese fishing boat collided with two Japanese patrol ships near uninhabited islands in the East China Sea which both countries claim, as does Taiwan.    [FULL  STORY]

Like during other mass events organized by the authorities, before November 12 when the Games begin there will be frequent inspection points around the city with often onerous demands on passers-through, the prohibition of balloons, kites, sky lanterns and carrier pigeons, and a regime of stiff fines for incompliants.

The Guangzhou police announced the measures on August 21, titled “Notice to Enforce Safe Knife Management in Guangzhou.” It goes for cleavers, large fruit knives, craft knives, files, and ceramic knives; only approved vendors can sell them, and buyers need to yield their name, address, ID number, types of knives, number purchased, and intended use. The policy has currently been put into effect in a few districts.

The police will also be inspecting all inbound vehicles at checkpoints along major roads into Guangzhou during the Games.

Internet users have called the measures boring, useless, a waste of resources, as well as a true reflection of how China’s rulers imagine the citizens to be enemies.    [FULL  STORY]

Chongqing City experiences the worst torrential rain of the year on July 9. (The Epoch Times photo archive)

The floods now besetting China may be related to the country’s trajectory of economic development, set by the Communist Party, which has pursued GDP growth at massive environmental cost and consequence, according to experts interviewed by The Epoch Times.

Southwestern China, stricken by severe drought in the first half of the year, is now suffering from flooding—along with three in four Chinese provinces, the worst since 2000.

Water resource experts believe that drought and flood are related, and that both are caused by water loss and soil erosion, which leads to a rupture of the ecological balance.

With thousands of potential and confirmed deaths so far, the heavy rain is expected to continue, putting more pressure on reservoirs and other flood control projects, according to forecasts by China’s National Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarter.

Dr. Wang Weiluo, a land-planning expert, has published numerous articles on China’s water resource issues for decades, and is a leading expert in the field. He stresses that excessive development of river projects, single-minded pursuit of GDP growth, the destruction of virgin forests, and especially the destruction of the Tibetan Plateau (which he considers China’s “water-tower”), are the largest contributing factors to the country’s droughts and floods.    more …