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Thailand’s new Cabinet on Tuesday began delivering government policy address before the Parliament in a two-chamber joint session despite that anti-government protesters continued a besiege around the parliament compound in an attempt to block the session.

Somchai Wongsawat, the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, began delivering the policy address after President of Parliament Chai Chidchob announced the session to kick off at around 10:45 a.m.(0345 GMT).

Of the 320 senators and members of parliaments present at the session, 310 voted to agree, which met a 50-percent-quorum, on proceeding with the scheduled session for a government policy address and a following debate by Senators and House Representatives.

Somchai outlined the one-year initial-stage policy platform and a three-year long-term plan, with the priority being “reinstall national unity.”

Meanwhile, thousands of anti-government protesters led by People ’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) who besieged the Parliament and Metropolitan Police Bureau compound continued demonstrations.

Police in early morning shot tear gas into the protesters in front of the Parliament to open access for the MPs and ministers to get into the compound. After the policy address began, protesters and police at the Metropolitan Police Bureau were seen firing tear gas at each other.

Thai Army Chief Anupong Paochinda on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Somchai Wonsawat to dissolve the parliament and the protesters of People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) to end rallies immediately, or will encounter the confrontations with “civil disobedience”.

Anupong made the “suggestions” on Wednesday afternoon at a press conference after holding an urgent meeting among military and police top brass, business leaders and academics.

Thailand’s House Speaker Chai Chidchob on Sunday expressed confidence that the government can deliver its policy statement to the parliament on Monday and Tuesday despite the mass protest led by anti-government Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship (DAAD).

Chai Chidchob said he had no plans to relocate or postpone the session because he believed MPs from different provinces will be able to coordinate with the DAAD core members, urging them not to incite unrest during the policy delivery.

Chai Chidchob believed the DAAD demonstrators also care for the country and want to see the country progress.

However, he said the parliament and security officials had set up a war room to monitor and assess the situation.

Supporters of the DAAD on Sunday morning started to gather at Sanam Luang (Royal Field) in central Bangkok and in front of the parliament, in an attempt to prevent the coalition government led by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to delivery its policy statement on Monday and Tuesday as required by law.

The DAAD leaders said on Sunday the protests were aimed to pressure Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve the House to return the mandate to the people because the current government was established with a coup in disguise.

The complete works of Ji Xianlin, a well-known Chinese scholar and translator, was turned over for printing on Monday, its publisher, the Beijing-based Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP), said Tuesday.

It will comprise 30 volumes or nearly 10 million Chinese characters, and will include all Ji’s works since the 1920s.

The FLTRP will publish eight volumes this year, focusing on his literary works including prose, memoirs and his diary.

“Some of the works are being published for the first time,” the FLTRP said on its website.

As a birthday present, all the volumes will be completed by Aug. 6, 2010 when Ji turns 99.

Chai Jianhong, a famous scholar and the director of the complete works’ editorial board, said there were nearly 200 kinds of books by Ji in the market, printed by more than 70 publishers.

“Some of them are of poor quality, some even changed the title or wording of the original works, and some were not authorized by Ji,” Chai said.

Ji’s son Ji Cheng said, “Though my father’s eyesight is deteriorating, his mind is sober. He cannot write himself, but he didn’t stop writing.”

He said a man was now in charge of organizing his father’s oral works.

Ji, a former deputy president of Peking University, is known for his translation works and studies of Sanscrit and other ancient Indian languages.

Though older Chinese wives still prefer to shop the neighborhood street markets for fresh food, the fast pace of urban life has made young professionals and singles with little time or skill to cook for themselves to opt for frozen food.

In major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, supermarkets with well-stocked frozen food departments are becoming permanent fixtures, with freezer cases full of attractively designed packs featuring everything from dumplings, rice balls and spring rolls to prepared poultry and vegetables.

Among all frozen foods, the largest sector is ready-meals, which mainly consist of traditional foods such as dumplings, which account for 60 percent of the market as a whole.

Li Qian, a bank clerk at Agricultural Bank of China, Guangzhou branch, told the Global Times, “I often go back home at around 9 pm on work days, and I either eat at a restaurant or buy fast frozen food like dumplings, since it doesn’t take much time.”

Li’s case is typical in urban China.

Increasingly more people, especially urban residents, purchase frozen foods for the convenience, freshness and neatness. The frozen food industry has grown at an average rate of 20 percent annually since the early 2000s.

Meng Suhe, secretary-general from Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology (CIFST), told the Global Times that, the number of registered frozen food companies in China is over 2,500, and most are run by families or individuals. The frozen food companies had a total sales volume of 1.99 million tons last year.

According to a research from Global Business Insights, a UK-based market research consultant firm, China’s frozen food market was valued as 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) at the end of 2008.

The research predicted that the total frozen food market will grow by over 30 percent in constant value over the next five years, to reach over 130 billion yuan ($19 billion).

Hot competition

As the industry has grown, so has the competition. Three companies, Sanquan Food Co Ltd, Zhengzhou Synear Food Co Ltd, and Longfong Food Co Ltd, dominate half of the market.

Among the three, 25 percent of which belongs to Sanquan, according to the latest research report from the Changjiang Securities released on August 5.

“Chinese top frozen food companies experienced a big price war in 2003, now they are heading for an even tougher war to establish their superiority,” Shao Wenzhong, an analyst from Changjiang Securities, told the Global Times.

“Compared with Western countries, there are less varieties of frozen food in China, which results in less focus on specific brands by customers,” Shao explained.

“In 2008 when Beijing was hosting the Olympic Games, Synear and Sanquan both launched their new brand based around the Games. One was named Bawang (The Overlord) and the other was named Zhuangyuan (The Very Best).”

“However, responses showed that most customers didn’t notice the differences between the two. Some of them even claimed they both were from one company,” Shao said.

“Therefore, if a company wants to attract more customers, it should make itself stand out from the others,” he noted.

Wan Chai Ferry, a well-known frozen food brand from United States-based food giant General Mills, is one good example for setting up a brand. The brand is popular in South China, especially in Guangdong and Hong Kong.

Though the brand only occupies 10 percent of the frozen food market, the gross profit rate of the company reached over 40 percent, 3 percent higher than the number of Sanquan.

“Wan Chai Ferry grades itself a high-end market position due to its niche where the income of customers is generally higher. The average price for the brand is around 35 yuan ($5) per kilogram, 20 percent higher than average,” Shao said,“Wan Chai Ferry customers have a lot of brand loyalty and less sensitive to price fluctuations.”

But he added that its lack of variety, like the larger companies, would be future stumbling block.

Building bigger

Two major players have also been expanding their production facilities during the last two years. Sanquan, for example, invested 250 million yuan ($36.5 million) at the end of 2007 on three factories in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, Chengdu, Sichuan Province and Taicang, Jiangsu Province. By doing so it enlarged its production capacity from 99,000 tons in 2007 to 117,600 tons in 2008, and plans another 220,000 tons increase in 2010.

Synear also took an aggressive step. It plans to enlarge its production capacity from 360,000 tons to 500,000 tons at its old production base in Zhengzhou, by 80,000 tons in Chengdu, by 120,000 tons in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province and by 100,000 tons in Guangzhou, totaling 800,000 tons in the next three to five years.

Shao said China’s frozen food industry will not thaw anytime soon. “The history of the frozen food industry in the Western countries shows there will often be a strong rebound after a financial crisis. This is because spending on frozen foods is linked to the economy. And now the economy in China is getting better, the frozen food industry is riding the wave as well.”

Another Hollywood sequel reigned over the box office in North American theaters this weekend, as 20th Century Fox’s “Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer” raked in about 57.4 million dollars in ticket sales over the three-day period, preliminary estimates showed Sunday.

The second “Fantastic Four” film adapted from Marvel’s best-selling comic series slightly surpassed the 56.1 million-dollar opening of its predecessor two years ago, according to Los Angeles-based box office tracker Media By Numbers.

The new film, in which the quartet of astronauts-turned-superheroes reunites to rescue the world by taking down the Silver Surfer, features a special-effects-laden script and stars the chrome-plated surfer who looks like an Oscar statue with super skills.

Warner Bros’ “Ocean’s Thirteen,” the third version of the rat-pack revival, was in second place this weekend with 19.1 million dollars in sales in its second week, while Universal’s comedy “Knocked Up” was in third place, with 14.5 million dollars in weekend sales in its third weekend.

After four weeks in release, Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” slipped to the forth with 12 million dollars in sales this weekend, and Sony’s animated film “Surf’s Up” about surfing penguins was at No. 5 with 9.3 million dollars.

The 12 top-selling films over the weekend took in a total of 138.8 million dollars this weekend, down 4 percent from the same period last year as box office slipped for the third straight weekend in North America.

It put Hollywood’s earlier expectation of a record summer season in doubt and studios executives now pin their hopes on potential blockbusters like “Transformers” and a new Harry Potter sequel in coming weeks.

HIV patients in China are still being ostracized from society despite greater public awareness about the disease, according to a survey by a Beijing-based research group.

Of the 956 respondents from the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, 99.5 percent said they understood that HIV could be transmitted through contaminated needles, blood transfusion and unprotected sex while 90.4 percent recognized that it could be passed from mother to child, according to a survey conducted by the Capital View Research. Over 70 percent said they knew AIDS testing was free.

However 20 percent thought they could contract HIV in plunge baths, swimming pools and other public places frequently visited by HIV carriers.

Only 32.8 percent of the respondents said they would care for HIV sufferers and only 30 percent said they had greater tolerance for HIV carriers after being exposed to AIDS awareness campaigns.

Five percent admitted that they would actively discriminate against HIV patients and 36.6 percent said they had absolutely no regard for them.

The Ministry of Health said last week that by the end of October, a total of 183,733 people had been officially reported to have contracted HIV, 39,644 more than at the end of 2005,

Thirty-seven percent of HIV infections were caused by drug users sharing contaminated needles and 28 percent were caused by unprotected sex, according to Hao Yang, deputy director of the ministry’s Bureau of Disease Control.

China issued its first regulations on AIDS in February this year, banning discrimination against sufferers and requiring regional authorities to provide free testing and treatment.

Less than a year after its launch, India’s first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayan I, knocked off the country’s endeavor to assert its power in space, after it lost radio contact with the mission control following a technical glitch believed to have been caused by a burst of sun spot activity.

Though the state-run Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) hailed the moon mission a “great success” despite abandoning it midway, experts have claimed that the mission, which put India in an elite club of countries — the United States, Russia, Japan, China and members of the European Space Agency — and was expected to last two years, has shattered India’s dream of taking the first key stride towards landing an unmanned moon rover by 2012.

“The 100 million U.S. dollar moon mission survived for only 315days. It was scheduled for two years. Now, the satellite is to crash onto the lunar surface. It’s a great loss to India’s space explorations. The abandoning of the mission has dashed the country’s most ambitious effort in space explorations. It was a major boost to the country’s space program, particularly with India competing with Asian nations like China and Japan in this field,” said space analyst R.K. Roy.

The Chandrayan I vehicle was launched in October 2008 and successfully inserted into lunar orbit on Nov. 8, 2008. On Nov. 14,2008, the Moon Impact Probe separated from the Moon-orbiting Chandrayaan at 20:06 Indian Standard Time and impacted the lunar south pole in a controlled manner, making India the fourth country to place its flag on the Moon.

India Sunday formally called off the Chandrayaan-1 moon mission, with the ISRO losing its radio contact with the craft.

“There was no possibility of retrieving it. (But) it was a great success. We could collect a large volume of data, including more than 70,000 images of the moon. In that sense, 95 percent of the objective was completed,” ISRO chief Madhavan Nair told media in Panaji, the capital of western state of Goa.

“Most of the missions are expensive between one and 2 billion U.S. dollars. India can be proud as Chandrayaan-1 was less than 100 million U.S. dollar mission. We started the Indian mission inviting queries, the response was very good. We spent 85 million U.S dollars, while 30 million U.S. dollars were spent by the other partners. No country has done mission of this kind for less than 500 million U.S. dollars,” Nair had said.

However, not everybody agrees with that.

“Whatever the ISRO says, the mission is a great loss for India, both monetarily and scientifically. Many did not welcome the efforts in the beginning when it was launched, saying it’s a waste of resources in a country where millions still lack basic services. But we the scientific fraternity took it in a positive stride. But, it now shows that India still lacks in expertise. They should have anticipated these glitches which the mission can face,” said Mumbai-based scientist Deb Sharma.

“It’s unbelievable, the mission that was expected to last for two years, could not complete even a year. What is this? Hardly people know that one focus was to prospect the lunar surface for natural resources, including uranium for nuclear fuel. And, ISRO is saying that it’s a great success, all this to save face,” he added.

But justifying ISRO’s efforts and pinning hope on the collected data, Professor Narendra Bhandari, a member of science advisory board of Chandrayaan-1, told media, “it is difficult to ascertain reasons for loss of contact. We’ve excelled in departments like propulsion system, reaching the moon in a precise manner. However, the thermal profiling and the sun sensors on the satellite did not give the expected result. The most important thing for us now is to ascertain answers from the collected data.”

Local media too commented on the Chandrayan’s failure. “India’s lunar honeymoon is over,” the country’s leading English daily The Times of India said.

Political analyst Prof. Ajay Singh commented on the issue like this: “For a lay man, the mission is equally important as that to a scientist. It’s a something that gave India a cut above others. But, scientists are trying to justify that a two-year mission could complete 95 percent of its work in less than a year. This is just an excuse.”

The fact is that India’s first rendezvous with the moon was cut short halfway due to some unexplained mishap. Clearly, lessons are to be learned before the launch of Chandrayan-2, he added.

No radioactive, toxic or viral substances, such as AIDS, were found in blood samples taken from victims of the recent spate of syringe attacks in Urumqi after being tested at a laboratory in Beijing, an expert said Sunday.

But Qian Jun, director of Disease Control and Biological Security Office with China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, said: “Although no radioactive or toxic substances were found, some patients showed various levels of anxiety and depression and have been recommended for psychological counseling.”

On Saturday, the first group of syringe attack suspects went on trial in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, following a series of attacks on at least 500 people in the city since mid-August.

Two men and a woman were given sentences ranging from seven to 15 years in jail for syringe stabbings or robberies in which they threatened their victims with needles. Both trials took place in the Uygur language according to the defendants’ wishes, with interpretation in Mandarin.

The court sentenced 19-year-old Yilipan Yilihamu to 15 years in prison for injecting a hypodermic needle into a woman’s buttocks on Aug 28 at a roadside fruit stall.

Yilihamu initially denied the charge but later changed his plea to guilty after evidence was shown in court. He plans to appeal.

“The penalty given to Yilihamu is appropriate because his action caused public panic and led to grave consequences. He violated the Criminal Law,” Chen Jing, a professor with the Law School of Xinjiang University, told China Daily.

“It’s only been just over two weeks between the arrest and sentencing of the suspect. The speedy trials showed the government’s determination to crack down on crime and to foil any attempts to undermine social stability.”

In a separate trial in the same court, Muhutaerjiang Turdi, a 34-year-old man, and Aimannisha Guli, a 22-year-old woman, were sentenced to 10 years in jail with a fine of 5,000 yuan ($732) and seven years in prison with a fine of 3,000 yuan respectively, for robbing a taxi driver on Aug 29.

The two threatened a taxi driver with a syringe and robbed him of 710 yuan in order to buy drugs. Guli was captured on the day of the robbery and Turdi turned himself in to police three days after.

The court also found that Turdi was given a 14-year jail term for robbery in 2001 and was released in September last year. Guli was sentenced to a year in prison in January 2007 for theft and released in October of the same year.

“The court made a fair judgment,” Xu Chun, a lawyer with the Gonglian Law Office based in Urumqi, told China Daily.

But some Urumqi residents believe the suspects should have received harsher sentences.

“I think all three of them should get at least life imprisonment as they have caused a massive scare among people and everyone in the city has been deeply affected,” a 27-year-old Urumqi resident speaking on condition of anonymity said Sunday.

On the other hand, people with comparatively wider knowledge of law believe the punishment was accurate and appropriate.

“Given the consequences of the criminals’ crimes, objectively speaking, such a result is enough to punish them as well as sound an alarm to the general public”, said 72-year-old Ma Wenxu, an imam with the Luyuanjie Mosque in the city.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is on its way to China to meet with investors in that country on the state of Nigerian banks and on the need to ensure continuous partnership with the banks following the crisis in the Nigerian banking sector.

Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, director-general of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), made the disclosure in Lagos after meeting with CBN Governor Lamido Sanusi on Friday.

She debunked claims that the apex bank is looking for foreigners to buy over the banks, noting that the trip to China is not intended to sell the banks to the Chinese, the Vanguard newspaper reported on Saturday.

According to the official, the apex bank chief and other officials will be traveling to China this weekend or Monday to hold a town hall meeting with Chinese investors.

She said the meeting is to assure the Chinese investors that the banks are safe, sound and to brief them on recent developments in the banking sector while seeking closer partnership with the country’s banking sector.

Okereke-Onyiuke said the reason for the trip is because most of the banks in Nigeria have correspondent banking relationship with banks in China, noting that it is necessary to allay their fears on situation in the country.

She added that the CBN governor and the new helmsmen of the five banks intend to parley with the capital market community on its return from its China.

She said the meeting will pave a way for consultations on how to address the issue of stockbrokers’ indebtedness to the banks.

The country’s apex bank governor recently removed heads of Afribank, Intercontinental Bank, Union Bank, Oceanic Bank and Finbank for piling up billions of dollars in bad debts.