SAN JOSE (AFP) — Chinese President Hu Jintao headed to Cuba for the second leg of a Latin America tour that began with the launch of free trade talks with Costa Rica.

The trip came as China expands its diplomacy and investment on the whole continent, with an eye on natural resources and developing markets for manufactured goods and even weapons.

Hu was due to arrive in Havana late Monday for a two-day visit, following a G-20 meeting in Washington, and before heading to an Asia-Pacific summit in Peru on November 22.

Hu’s symbolic stopover in Costa Rica was the highest-level visit by a Chinese official to the Central American country and came a little over a year after San Jose gave up six decades of ties with Taiwan….

Gourmet grub from the government’s Special Food Supply Center:
“BEIJING - While China grapples with its latest tainted food crisis, the political elite are served the choicest, safest delicacies. They get hormone-free beef from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, organic tea from the foothills of Tibet and rice watered by melted mountain snow.

And it’s all supplied by a special government outfit that provides all-organic goods from farms working under the strictest guidelines.

That secure food supply stands in stark contrast to the frustrations of ordinary citizens who have faced recurring food scandals — vegetables with harmful pesticide residue, fish tainted with a cancer-causing chemical, eggs colored with industrial dye, fake liquor causing blindness or death, holiday pastries with bacteria-laden filling.

Now that the country’s most reputable dairies have been found selling baby formula and other milk products tainted with an industrial chemical that can cause kidney stones and kidney failure, many Chinese don’t know what to buy. Tens of thousands of children have been sickened and four babies have died…”

“SHENZHEN, China (AFP) - A fire and subsequent stampede at a club in southern China killed 43 people and left 88 injured, state media said Sunday, in the latest incident highlighting China’s abysmal fire safety record.
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The blaze late Saturday at the Dance King nightclub in the city of Shenzhen, near the border with Hong Kong, was caused by a fireworks stunt that went wrong, witnesses and state media reports said.

There were hundreds of people crammed into the club when the fire started, triggering a stampede because there were not enough exits for everyone to escape quickly.”

A landslide has led to many dead and missing, and changes in Party leadership:

“BEIJING (AFP) - The death toll from a landslide that engulfed a northern Chinese town rose to 178 on Friday with the discovery of 27 more bodies, state-run Xinhua news agency said.

State media on Thursday had quoted Minister of Work Safety Wang Jun saying “several hundred” people were thought still buried in the mud that swamped the town of Taoshi after a mining waste reservoir burst its banks on Monday.

But Xinhua’s latest death toll report said rescuers had now combed through 90 percent of the affected area, indicating the toll may not rise much further, but also that hope had largely faded of finding any survivors.”

A health ministry investigation will lead to punishment for producers of contaminated baby milk powder:

“BEIJING (AFP) - China on Friday vowed to punish those responsible for contaminating baby milk powder that has killed one infant and sickened dozens, as it emerged the producer knew about the problem a month ago.

The health ministry said an initial investigation had confirmed the tainted milk powder was to blame for the nationwide spate of cases of kidney stones in babies, the state Xinhua news agency reported.

Investigators also found the producer of the formula, Sanlu, knew it was contaminated with melamine in August, but did not release the information until after reports of sick babies began to emerge this week, the ministry said.

‘Those responsible for the contaminated milk will face severe punishment,’ Xinhua quoted an official with the government investigation team as saying. …”

China announces an ambitious new space launch:
“BEIJING (AFP) — China’s rulers are looking to catapult overflowing pride and patriotism from the Beijing Olympics into another stratosphere when the nation’s first ‘taikonaut’ walks in space this month.
Amid high inflation and other economic concerns, analysts say China’s space programme offers the communist leadership an important platform to maintain a popularity boost given to them by staging a successful Olympics.
‘China’s space programme reflects the power and legitimacy of the Communist Party,’ Morris Jones, an Australian space analyst and writer who has closely studied China’s space efforts, told AFP.”

Bones and pottery from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties were damaged by railway construction workers:

“SHANGHAI (AFP) - - A Chinese construction company severely damaged relics dating back more than 3,000 years while building a section of a high-speed rail linking Beijing and Shanghai, state media reported Tuesday.

Work was halted on the section of rail in the eastern city of Nanjing and the company faces a fine of up to 500,000 yuan (73,000 dollars) for ignoring warnings that the site contained ancient treasures, the China Daily said.”

“BEIJING (AFP) - China’s Olympic gold medallists will get cash rewards of 350,000 yuan (51,000 dollars), nearly twice the amount given for the Athens 2004 Games, state media reported on Tuesday…”

China Development Bank has bid more for Dresdner Bank, but political considerations make Commerzbank the likely winner:

“FRANKFURT (AFP) - The German insurance group Allianz is to decide on Sunday what to do with troubled banking unit Dresdner Bank, and is in talks with Commerzbank and the Chinese bank CDB, a press report said Tuesday.

The Allianz supervisory board has been called to meet on Sunday, the business daily Handelsblatt said, quoting sources close to the matter who added that the “race is still on” for Dresdner Bank, which suffered serious losses after the US subprime mortgage-linked market meltdown.

Allianz is expected to retain around 30 percent of the bank’s capital however, to be able to continue selling insurance products at its branches, the newspaper said…”

American pro-Tibet activists have been deported:

“BEIJING (AFP) - China has deported eight Americans who were detained in Beijing last week after a wave of pro-Tibet protests coinciding with the Olympics, the US embassy here said Monday.

Two other detained foreigners, a Briton and a Tibetan-German, were also reported to have been put on planes out of China, although there was no immediate official confirmation that this had happened.

‘Chinese authorities informed us last night that the eight individuals, detained August 20 and 21 respectively, were deported by Chinese authorities,’ a US embassy spokeswoman told AFP…”