A 62-year-old man travelling from mainland China died in Hong Kong from bird flu on Friday, the second such death this winter, the Hospital Authority said.
The man, who visited the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in mid-December and was hospitalized in the neighbouring city of Dongguan earlier this week, died from H7N9.
The patient was admitted to hospital in Hong Kong on Wednesday, the authority said. It wasn’t immediately clear how or where he contracted the virus.
He had said he hadn’t had any recent exposure to poultry or wet markets, according to the Centre for Health Protection.
Hong Kong has confirmed three human cases of H7N9 in three weeks as fears grow over the spread of the disease in South Korea, Japan and China.
All three patients in Hong Kong had visited southern China. The second case was confirmed last Friday, while the first patient died from H7N9 on Christmas Day.
In mainland China, H7N9 has killed at least four people this season, with the latest death reported in the eastern province of Shandong on Thursday. At least 19 infections have been confirmed.
China saw its last major bird flu outbreak in late 2013 and early 2014, when 36 patients died and the agricultural sector suffered more than $6 billion in losses.
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A court in the Chinese city of Nanjing has jailed two men for swindling customers of their savings through a fake bank, state media report.
The men, surnamed Zeng and He, were found guilty of pocketing 435m yuan (£51m; $63m) from some 400 customers.
The sentences were upheld at a second trial, said the People’s Daily, and the men have been jailed for nine and nine-and-a-half years respectively.
The facility, actually a co-operative, resembled a state-owned bank inside.
It had tellers‘ windows, uniformed clerks, and even similar deposit slips.
But while it had some legitimacy as a rural co-operative, it did not have the necessary permits to operate as a bank.
The Mengxin Village Economic Information Professional Co-operative was first set up in 2012 as an agricultural consultancy, reported People’s Daily.
In 2013 its founders began advertising attractive interest rates for customers who banked their savings with them, even though it was not authorised to collect savings.
One of the founders, He, had previously worked in a state-owned bank and trained employees according to bank standards.
The newspaper quoted a former employee surnamed Song as saying that they were told to dodge questions from customers.
„Depositors would ask questions about our co-operative, the scope of our business, our registered capital. We would vaguely reply saying we didn’t know and our bosses had all the licences.
„If we were asked if our co-operative was a bank, we would reply that it was about the same. We were told by He to give such replies,“ Mr Song said.
The co-operative’s illegal activities were eventually found out when a businessman who was not paid the promised interest on his money went to the police in 2014, which prompted a deeper investigation.
The story shocked many in China – already used to fake food and product scandals – when it first came out. Many commented on the crime’s audacity and the fact that the „bank“ was able to operate for a long period of time without detection.

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The annual winter Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in China started again on January 5 and will last at least one month, depending of weather evolution. Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang Province, is located in Northeast China and receives cold winter wind from Siberia. The 33rd session is held from January 4, 2017 to March 2017.
While ice sculptures are erected throughout the Harbin city, During the festival, there are ice lantern park touring activities held in many parks in the city. This year, the theme is „Bright Pearl of the Crown of Ice and Snow.” The festival includeS Yabuli alpine skiing, winter-swimming in the Songhua River and the ice-lantern exhibition in Zhaolin Garden. It has a traditional program that shows the most excellent ice lanterns. With water, lights and the natural ice from the Songhua River running through this city as the material, the ice lanterns are made by freezing water, piling up ice or snow, then carving, enchasing and decorating. Other large ice and snow festivals include Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada’s Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway’s Holmenkollen Ski Festival.

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Harare – This is the grim concrete enclosure that’s now home for some of
the latest batch of elephants shipped from Zimbabwe’s beautiful Hwange National
Park to a zoo in China.
China’s Shanghai Daily has published a black and white picture
of what it says are two of six „African elephants“ just arrived at
Hangzhou Wildlife World in Zhejiang
Province.
Though the site doesn’t confirm that these elephants came from
Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Management Authority this week
confirmed the export in late December of 35 elephants to China. Hangzhou
Wildlife World is one of three zoos named by the paper as destinations for the
elephants.
The export has provoked criticism from animal lovers who say
it’s unfair to separate young elephants from the rest of the herd. But Zimparks
says the trade is necessary „to generate financial resources for
conservation programmes“.
There will be concerns raised not only over the concrete
enclosure the animals are being held in (apparently they’re currently in
quarantine) but also over the diet they’re being fed. It consists of
„carrots, sugar cane, apples and hay“ – a far cry from the diet
Zimbabwe elephants would be accustomed to in Hwange National Park, where they
were captured. Elephants in Zimbabwe might occasionally eat sugar cane if they
raid fields, but only in the southeast of the country.
The Shanghai Daily said: „Two of the elephants are male and
the rest are female. The animals weigh about 1 ton on average. They are all
about 1.6 metres tall and around three years old.
„The six elephants must spend 30 days in routine isolation
for quar­antine and inspection purposes before they can meet visitors in the
spring,“ the report said.
Wildlife At Risk International, an animal rights group, lamented
the conditions the elephants were being held in. „Wild elephant calves,
brutally taken from their mothers, flown halfway across the globe, this is what
their new world looks like,“ the group said in an online update.
Zimbabwe says it began exporting elephants to China in July 2015
and had by early last year exported about 100 sub-adult elephants, mostly aged
between five and seven. Environment Minister Oppah Muchinguri says she will
carry on with the trade despite opposition.

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