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【本期文稿】

This is Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. Here is the news.

Police have smashed a major human trafficking ring and rescued 36 children who were abducted to be sold.

Police in east China's Fujian Province received information in May about a suspect surnamed Tan who was believed to be involved in child trafficking.

Further investigations found a major child trafficking ring spanning seven provinces and municipalities. Tan and other suspects were found to be responsible for the trafficking of dozens of infants since 2014.

In another case, police in several other provinces coordinated their efforts to crack down on another child trafficking ring, and 160 people were arrested. 

The Ministry of Public Security said China has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to the trafficking of women and children, and it will continue to pursue these traffickers.

The ministry will also target the "buyers" in human trafficking cases.

This is Special English.

China has issued a guideline on improving work safety, seeking to plug the holes in its supervision mechanism, laws and safety standards to effectively prevent accidents.

It has vowed to optimize its supervision and management mechanism as well as laws and regulations to "significantly" reduce workplace accidents by 2020.

The guideline was jointly issued by the Party Central Committee and the State Council. It said China will not sacrifice safety for development.

The guideline has clarified the definition and division of responsibilities concerning workplace safety. Meanwhile, China has plans to amend its criminal law to include workplace malpractices that easily lead to major accidents.

It noted the country will increase financial input to enhance workplace risk control and prevent work-related illness, while improving management and auditing to make sure the money would be wisely spent.

It said China's work safety has been improving, but more efforts are needed as many problems remain.

The guideline came after a series of deadly accidents, including mining disasters and power plant collapse. In one of the accidents in November, 74 people were killed when a platform for a cooling tower being constructed as part of a power plant collapsed in east China's Jiangxi Province. 

You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.

Scientists claimed they have figured out how the world's biggest and most-valuable diamonds formed.

In a study published in the U.S. journal of Science, scientists said large gem-quality diamonds, including the world-famous Cullinan and Lesotho Promise, may be born in metallic liquid deep inside Earth's mantle.

The research team, led by Evan Smith of the Gemological Institute of America, reached the conclusion after examining so-called "offcuts" of massive diamonds, which are the pieces left over after the gem's facets are cut for maximum sparkle.

They found tiny metallic grains trapped inside in more than 30 exceptionally large stones, which are made up of a mixture of metallic iron and nickel, along with carbon, sulfur, methane and hydrogen.

The inclusions led the researchers to reach the conclusion that diamonds formed in the Earth's mantle, but they did so under conditions in which they were saturated by liquid metal.

Most diamonds formed at depths of 150 to 200 kilometers under the continents and shoot to the surface in volcanic eruptions. But the large, rare stones formed at extreme depths, likely within 360 to 750 kilometers in the convection mantle, where rocks are known to be mobile.

This is Special English.

U.S. researchers have taken inspiration from the human brain in creating a new "deep learning" method that enables computers to teach themselves about the visual world largely on their own, much as human babies do.

In the test, the new image-processing system "deep rendering mixture model" can learn largely on their own about how to distinguish handwritten digits using a standard data-set of 10,000 digits written by federal employees and high school students. 

In results, the researchers said they trained their algorithm by giving it just 10 correct examples of each handwritten digit between zero and nine and then presenting it with several thousand more examples that it used to further teach itself.

You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.

The world's first cloned goat bearing superfine cashmere wool was born in north China's Inner Mongolia.

The goat was born and is raised in a base for animal husbandry research conducted by experts from agricultural universities and academies in Inner Mongolia and southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The cashmere fiber from the goat is less than 14 micrometers thick, much finer than the average of 16 micrometers grown by the famous Erlang Mountain goats in Inner Mongolia. 

This is Special English.

Every day, trains full of laptops and other electronics products as well as auto parts depart a remote village in southwest China heading for Europe.

For five years, trains have delivered laptops for Hewlett-Packard, car window regulators and semi-conductors, from Chongqing Municipality to Europe.

Since the trains started in 2011, there has been a business boom in the mountain city. It imported more than 2,000 cars on the international rail network in the past two years.

Six years ago, the city was struggling to attract businesses which mostly centered on China's coastal areas where there are convenient shipping.

With the launch of the trains, the city got more deals because train transport costs only around one-fifth of air transport, and one-third faster than shipping by the sea.

As prices along the eastern seaboard rose, industries began to move inland. In 2010 Hewlett-Packard established a computer production line in Chongqing, seeking government help to launch a rail network to transport products overseas. That was when the China-Europe rail network was launched.

Following the footsteps of Hewlett-Packard, other brands including Acer, Toshiba and Apple set up bases in Chongqing to take advantage of the rail line.

You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at [e-mail]. That's [e-mail]. Now the news continues.

When it comes to surgical procedures to enhance beauty, Chinese women are twice as generous than their global peers.

According a report based on a survey by Insightful Engineers, a market research consultancy in the United Kingdom, the survey found that Chinese women spent the equivalent of around 580 yuan, roughly 84 U.S. Dollars, per month. That's more than twice the global average of about 250 yuan, and 150 yuan higher than the second group on the list, women from South Korea.

A plastic surgeon from Shanghai said Chinese women are displaying an increasing interest in a range of surgical procedures, mainly to look prettier, rather than fighting aging, which may help explain why the population of plastic surgery receivers in the country is much younger than in other places.

The report also said that 74 percent of Chinese respondents associate beauty directly with facial appearance, the highest of all surveyed countries. The biggest concern for Chinese women is flabby skin and crow's feet, the little wrinkles at the corner of the eyes.

The survey interviewed 7,700 "aesthetically aware" women from 16 countries, who were between 18 and 65 years of age.

This is Special English.

Paris' first perfume museum, the Grand Musee de Parfum, has opened its doors, inviting visitors to discover perfume history through a quite innovative sensory and olfactory exhibition.

The museum's president said the Grand Musee du Parfum was created after noting the absence of an emblematic place for French perfumery in Paris despite the sector's flourishing influence abroad.

The museum gathered major players in French and international perfume industry, including the Federation of Beauty Enterprises, the French Syndicate of Perfumery and the International Flavors and Fragrances.

It has three spaces with one area dedicated to the history of perfumes.

Alongside the permanent exhibition, many events and workshops for young people are planned at the museum and intend to bring together the visual arts, gastronomy, live entertainment, literature and cinema around perfume.

France has the world's leading cosmetics-perfumes sector and its turnover totaled 25 billion euros, roughly 26 billion U.S. Dollars, in 2014. 

You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.

British actor Colin Firth dwells on the virtue of restraint in a wide-ranging conversation with Raymond Zhou on the art of acting. 

Colin Firth joked that he was looking for offers in Chinese films, adding that he hoped to work with Chinese directors including Zhang Yimou.

The light-hearted revelation came at the end of an hourlong talk, moderated by yours truly, which was designed to encompass the highlights of an illustrious career of the much honored British actor.

Titled "A Colin Firth Retrospective", the conversation was, in turn, part of a program for the 2016 China-Briton Film Festival held in the Beijing suburb of Langfang.

Firth received a lifetime-achievement award at this festival when it opened on Dec 12.

The 2010 Academy Award winner for best actor, for The King's Speech, did not randomly pick a few big names from China's booming film industry to please the host country. But he did his due diligence.

Firth said he was impressed by how seamlessly American actors Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody fitted into the epic tale on the 1942 famine. He also liked the 2012 movie Mystery, and said Farewell My Concubine was one of the best movies in world of cinema.

And he was plugged in to the latest in Chinese showbiz, aware of the publicity blitz whipped up by The Great Wall, the epic tale of fighting monsters on the best-known Chinese landmark, which is a Sino-US co-production that stars Matt Damon.

This is Special English.

China's northernmost province of Heilongjiang will hold an "Ice and Snow Day" to warm up its winter tourism industry and sluggish economy.

The provincial legislature adopted a decision to hold the event on Dec. 20 each year, starting this year. State-owned winter sports facilities will be open to the public for free during these event.

Travel agencies and key scenic spots will offer discounted tickets to tourists on Ice and Snow Day.

The province's bitter winter, which lasts 120 days, used to be an obstacle to the area's development. However, Heilongjiang has taken measures to turn the cold, snowy season into a resource to boost its economy, which has slowed in recent years amid the country's economic restructuring.

The "Ice and Snow Day" will make more people to enjoy ice and snow, creating a favorable environment for developing the winter economy and tourism.

This is Special English.

The Maldives tourism industry has seen a remarkable growth in 2016, contributing to strengthening the island's economy.

A press statement by the Maldives Embassy in Colombo said the growth has been achieved with the dynamic economic policies introduced by the country to transform the economy of the Maldives.

This year, the Maldives unveiled seven new resorts, featuring the world's largest underwater restaurant.

The government said 20 new resorts will be unveiled in 2017.

With the opening of the new resorts and influx of tourism investments, the tourism industry has become a catalyst for the governments' key pledge of youth employment.

That is the end of this edition of Special English. To freshen up your memory, I'm going to read one of the news items again at normal speed. Please listen carefully.

Police have smashed a major human trafficking ring and rescued 36 children who were abducted to be sold.

Police in east China's Fujian Province received information in May about a suspect surnamed Tan who was believed to be involved in child trafficking.

Further investigations found a major child trafficking ring spanning seven provinces and municipalities. Tan and other suspects were found to be responsible for the trafficking of dozens of infants since 2014.

In another case, police in several other provinces coordinated their efforts to crack down on another child trafficking ring, and 160 people were arrested. 

The Ministry of Public Security said China has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to the trafficking of women and children, and it will continue to pursue these traffickers.

The ministry will also target the "buyers" in human trafficking cases.

That is the end of today's program. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing, and I hope you will join us every day, to learn English and learn about the world.

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