Venezuela’s cooperation with Big Sister China [Voltaire Network] President Hugo Chávez with Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-director of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. Since 1998, when Chávez was elected President, trade between China and Venezuela has jumped from 200 to 16,000 million dollars in 2011. Since 2009, a boost in Sino-Venezuelan cooperation can be remarked in agriculture, energy, housing, telecommunications, trade, transport and tourism. Great energy projects have seen the light of day during the last three years, from drilling oil in Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin to creating a Sino-Venezuelan company to manufacture oil tankers and an oil refinery. “Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world”, says President Hugo Chávez. “All the oil China needs is here in Venezuela”. The Faja del Orinoco contains 520 billion barrels of crude oil. Officials from PDVSA meet regularly with Chinese oil industry colleagues to plan further steps of oil extraction, building petroleum platforms, oil refineries and a fleet of oil tankers.
People's Liberation Army. The People's Liberation Army (PLA; simplified Chinese: 中国人民解放军; traditional Chinese: 中國人民解放軍; pinyin: Zhōngguó Rénmín Jiěfàngjūn) is the military of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and was established on August 1, 1927 as the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army. August 1 is celebrated annually as PLA Day. The modern PLA consists of four professional service branches: the People's Liberation Army Ground Force, the People's Liberation Army Navy, the People's Liberation Army Air Force and the Second Artillery Corps. It is the world's largest military force, with a strength of approximately 2,285,000 personnel, about 0.18% of the country's population. The People's Liberation Army's insignia consists of a roundel with a red star bearing the Chinese characters for Eight One, referring to August 1 (Chinese: 八一), the date of the 1927 Nanchang Uprising.
Mission statement[edit] Former CMC Chairman Hu Jintao has defined the missions of the PLA as:[7] History[edit] 1950s, 60s and 70s[edit] China’s Land Bridge to Turkey creates new Eurasian Geopolitical Potentials [Voltaire Network] With the planned connection of the Marmaray project under the Bosphorus to the Edirne-Kars high-speed railway line, a train line from China’s easternmost Lianyungang to Spain and England would be completed.
(Map: Yunus Emre Hatunoğlu) China and Turkey are in discussions to build a new high-speed railway link across Turkey. If completed it would be the country’s largest railway project ever, even including the pre-World War I Berlin-Baghdad Railway link. The project was perhaps the most important agenda item, far more so than Syria during talks in Beijing between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Chinese leadership in early April. The proposed rail link would run from Kars on the easternmost border with Armenia, through the Turkish interior on to Istanbul where it would connect to the Marmaray rail tunnel now under construction that runs under the Bosphorus strait.
Then it would continue to Edirne near the border to Greece and Bulgaria in the European Union. Russia’s Land Bridge. Will China's economy collapse?-On the Edge with Max Keiser-04-06-2012. India launches social integration schools. India launches social integration schools By Raja Murthy MUMBAI - India's Supreme Court on April 12 upheld the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, a landmark but logistically-loaded law to educate millions of disadvantaged children in private schools, alongside children from middle class and wealthier families.
A unique provision in the RTE, possibly the first of its kind in the world, compels private schools nationwide to reserve 25% of admissions each year to children from poor families without charging them any fee. [1] The local or central government will pay a standard school fee for children admitted under this category, irrespective of the fee the private school charges all students. Boarding schools are exempt from this law. The April 12 ruling came from the Supreme Court rejecting representatives of some private schools saying the RTE Act violated their right to run their institutions without any governmental interference.
Notes 1. China gives currency more freedom with new reform.