Near to Zero Dropouts
The number of school dropouts from China’s nine-year compulsory education system had fallen to 831 by the end of November 2020, marking a monumental 99.9 percent decrease from 2019, the Ministry of Education said.
The achievement is another significant step in the nation’s goal to have zero dropouts among primary and middle school students. In 2019, the dropout figure was 600,000, said Lu Yugang, Director of the ministry’s department of basic education.
Meanwhile, the number of dropouts from registered impoverished families has been reduced from 200,000 in 2019 to zero in 2020, he added.
Ensuring all students have access to compulsory education is an important part of the country’s poverty alleviation efforts, and the ministry has made great efforts to prevent students from dropping out of school, Lyu said. After thorough research and comparison with records from public security authorities, the ministry has set up records on all dropouts, he said.
SOUTH AFRICA Recovering Economy
South Africa’s economy has begun showing signs of recovery after the gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 13.5 percent quarter on quarter in the period from July to September in 2020, “largely as a result of the easing of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions,” statistics agency Stats SA said in a statement on December 8, 2020.
In annualized terms, the statistics agency’s preferred measure, third-quarter growth reached 66.1 percent, after falling back by 51.7 percent in the period from April to June in 2020.
Stats SA Statistician-general Risenga Maluleke said all key sectors grew in the quarter. “All industries recorded an increase in economic activity compared with the second quarter, with manufacturing, trade and mining leading the charge,” he said. The three sectors contributed 16.2, 14.6 and 11.8 percentage points respectively to the GDP growth.
CHINA Biodiversity Protection
Southwest China’s Yunnan Province has taken multiple measures to protect biodiversity in recent years, local authorities said.
The province has continuously carried out species rescue and protection efforts, especially for plant species with extremely small populations (PSESP), said Wang Weibin, Deputy Director of the provincial forestry and grassland administration.
More than 120 rescue and protection projects targeting such plants have been implemented in the last five years, and 30 protection zones of different sizes have been marked. With these projects and zones, Yunnan is effectively preserving and restoring incredibly rare plants such as pinus squamata, or the Qiaojia pine, he said.
Yunnan was the first province in China to put forward a PSESP protection initiative in 2004.
CHINA Landing on Moon
China’s Chang’e-5 probe has completed sampling on the moon, and the samples have been sealed inside the spacecraft, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced on December 3, 2020. Launched on November 24, 2020, the spacecraft landed on the north of the Mons Rumker in Oceanus Procellarum, also known as the Ocean of Storms, on the near side of the moon on December 1, tasked with retrieving China’s first samples from an extraterrestrial body.
After the spacecraft worked for about 19 hours on the moon, the sampling ended at 10:00 p.m. on December 3 (Beijing Time), and the samples were stowed in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned, said the CNSA.
By using data sent back by the probe, researchers simulated the sampling procedure in a lab, providing an important basis for the operation on the moon.
RWANDA Fighting Against Corruption
Rwanda investigated 963 corruption cases in January-november 2020, a big sum compared with previous years, reflecting increasing public participation in reporting the crime, said a top official in investigation on December 9, 2020.
In 2018 and 2019, respectively 732 and 1,088 corruption cases were brought up for investigation, said Rwanda Investigation Bureau Secretary General Jeannot Ruhunga.
Embezzlement of public resources was the major type of corruption during 2018-2020, with 1,279 out of the total 2,783 cases involved during the period, which caused government projects to be stalled, he said.