China Wants Hefty Fines For Viral Video Creators Who Binge Food and Drinks

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Lawmakers in China are considering new legislation that would impose fines against anyone who creates videos where people eat large quantities of food or binge drinks, according to a new report from Chinese state media outlet China News. The proposed media rule, part of broader legislation to discourage food waste, would also allow…

After 44 Years, China Becomes the Third Country To Return Moon Samples To Earth

Long-time Slashdot reader cusco writes:
In the first return of a lunar sample since the Soviets in 1976, the Chang’e 5 spacecraft landed Thursday in Inner Mongolia with 2 kilograms of material drilled from as much as two meters below the surface… On December 3, the ascent stage took off from the moon with the sample, docking with the orbiter three days…

Taiwanese Horror Game Pulled From Sale Again After Backlash in China

An award-winning Taiwanese horror game was removed from storefronts by the beleaguered developer CD Projekt Red amid a backlash from Chinese gamers, hours after it was put on sale. From a report: Devotion, a PC game that chronicles the life of a Taiwanese family in a religious cult in the 1980s, was released to critical acclaim in February 2019. But shortly…

Mount Everest, Earth’s Tallest Mountain, Just Got Taller By About a Meter

China and Nepal say they have determined the “most accurate height of Everest that we have ever had,” calculating it to be about 8,848.86 meters (29,031.7 feet) high. That’s almost a meter taller than the mountain’s previous recognized height. CNET reports: The two countries, which border each other at the mountain’s summit, shared the news in a joint virtual briefing Tuesday…

Bloomberg Columnist: Bitcoin is Part of a Real Monetary Revolution

In an eloquent essay, Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson argues that “We are living through a monetary revolution so multifaceted that few of us comprehend its full extent.” The technological transformation of the internet is driving this revolution. The pandemic of 2020 has accelerated it… Covid-19 has been good for Bitcoin and for cryptocurrency generally. First, the pandemic accelerated our advance into…

China’s Chang’e 5 mission is orbiting the moon!

China’s robotic Chang’e 5 will be the 1st sample-return from the moon since the 1970s. It launched successfully last week atop a Chinese Long March 5 rocket. Now it’s reported to have entered orbit around the moon. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/china-moon-mission-change-5-sample-return…

China’s Xi Jinping Warns Against Protectionism in Apparent Swipe at US

President Xi Jinping has pegged China as the pivot point for global free trade, vowing to keep his “super-sized” economy open and warning against protectionism in a global economy eviscerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. From a report: Buoyed by the signing of the world’s largest trade pact over the weekend, Xi said the Asia-Pacific is the âoeforerunner driving global growth” in…

China’s President Xi Jinping Personally Pulled Plug on Jack Ma’s Ant IPO

Chinese President Xi Jinping personally made the decision to halt the initial public offering of Ant Group, which would have been the world’s biggest, after controlling shareholder Jack Ma infuriated government leaders, WSJ reported Thursday, citing Chinese officials with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The rebuke was the culmination of years of tense relations between China’s most celebrated entrepreneur…

China Is Blocking the WHO From Investigating the Origins of the Coronavirus

schwit1 writes: The coronavirus was first reported to have originated at an animal market in Wuhan, China, however numerous observers have already questioned this account of the virus’s origins. Among other issues, the original host animal — a species of bat — was not sold at the particular animal market, and the city of Wuhan is home to virology labs where…

China’s Leaders Vow Tech ‘Self-Reliance,’ Military Power and Economic Recovery

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: China’s Communist Party emerged from four days of meetings behind closed doors in Beijing declaring the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, a “helmsman” who would lead “the ship of socialism sailing into the wind and waves with determination.” At a time when other world leaders remain consumed by the coronavirus pandemic,…