The Associated Press reports: " Two men were detained for spreading a rumor that hundreds of terrorists have arrived in a southern Chinese city, police said, just days before a new ban on falsifying terror information takes effect...A photo posted by the police shows the notice warning company employees that 300 people from the far northwestern region of Xinjiang who were trained by the Islamic State group had arrived in Guangming...The violence, which has left hundreds of people dead in and outside Xinjiang in recent years, has prompted China's government to launch an anti-terror campaign in Xinjiang and, most recently, to approve the country's first anti-terrorism law."
CNN reports: "China has expressed its displeasure at a ragtag band of Filipino activists who have waded into a regional dispute over territory in the South China Sea...'We once again urge the Philippine side to withdraw all its personnel and facilities from the Chinese islands and reefs it is illegally occupying,' spokesperson Lu said. Some 47 young activists landed on the island to protest China's aggressive actions in the South China Sea, according to Joy Ban-eg, a spokesperson for the group. 'China has no right to order us or direct us to stay away from our own territory,' Ban-eg said."
Huffington Post reports: "Air pollution in China could be big business. Two of the world's largest technology firms, IBM and Microsoft, are vying to tap the nascent, fast-growing market for forecasting air quality in the world's top carbon emitters...Official interest has also been boosted by China's preparations to host the Winter Olympics - Beijing's smog is worse in the colder months - in 2022...IBM's first client was the city of Beijing's environmental protection bureau, which bases its color-coded pollution alerts on the technology. The company launched a 'Joint Environmental Innovation Center' - staffed by government and IBM scientists - with the bureau earlier in December, allowing officials to better model pollution reduction scenarios during the worst episodes."