The shark fin soup, a luxury dish in Chinese cuisine, but criticized by environmentalists for the cruel method of obtaining its main ingredient, will be removed from official banquets in China.
A department of the State Council (Executive) has sent a notice to all government departments at all levels to stop serving this soup at banquets, which many heads of state and government of other countries have tried on official visits to China.
For the fins, the fishermen catches the shark, cuts off the tip and throws them back into the sea, where sharks die hopelessly, losing the ability to swim. This is a method that environmentalists consider extreme cruelty, and a waste.
It is estimated that this soup has killed 70 million sharks, whose limbs are sold to over a thousand dollars per kilo in the market of Hong Kong.
This has caused 17 percent of shark species in serious danger of extinction, according to the WildAid organization, a top campaign officials.
This past year, it has included the participation of oriental celebrities, including former basketball star, Yao Ming, actress Zhang Ziyi, and director, Ang Lee .
Thousands of people are planning viewing parties for the solar eclipse on May 20, a rare event in which the sun appears as a thin ring behind the moon. The eclipse will start in Asia on Monday morning, when it will be visible in southern Japan and southern China. In the U.S., the eclipse will be visible in northeast Texas through New Mexico, northeastern Arizona, southern Utah and Nevada, northern California and southwestern Oregon on Sunday night.
“I encourage anyone who has the opportunity to see this, because although it happens occasionally, is a fairly rare event,” said Jeffrey Newmark, a specialist in solar physics at NASA.
During an annular eclipse, the moon does not block the entire sun but leaves a bright ring of light visible at the edges, according to NASA.
“For the eclipse of May, the moon will be as far away from Earth than ever achieved, which means it blocks the smallest possible portion of the sun, and leaves the largest possible bright ring around the outside,” says the agency on its website. An annular eclipse last appeared in the U.S. in 1994. The next solar eclipse will be on November 13 and is expected to be visible in northern Australia, according to NASA.
In the western United States, more than 1,000 people could flood the small town of Kanarraville, Utah, a town of 300 inhabitants, to achieve one of the best views of the event on Sunday, said Bonnie Char, spokeswoman for the tourist office Cedar City. The people are calling eclipse “Ring of Fire”.
China and the U.S., the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world.
The Asian giant is the largest coal producer in the world and also the largest emitter of CO2 ( 24% of the total in 2009 ). Last 2009, its greenhouse gases rose by 9% (the U.S. fell 7% in the same year).
Its rapid and strong economic growth in coming years, with consequent emission of greenhouse gases, can jeopardize the efforts of other party states to the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change.
But China also wants a chance to reach its full industrial development , just as had the United States or the European Union before they began to worry about reducing emissions.
It also requires rich countries as a whole and MTO to reduce their emissions by 2020 at least up to 40% (compared to the levels of 1990).