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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Yun Feng in Beijing. Here is the news.
China has contributed over 120 million US dollars to fight the spread of Ebola, but its billionaire tycoons have donated little to the cause; and that is underscoring an immature culture of philanthropy in the world's second-biggest economy, which has more billionaire tycoons than anywhere outside the United States.
As the ranks of China's wealthy and the success of its corporations grow, donating to good causes has yet to take off in a significant way. China sits towards the bottom of the list of countries where people give money to charity, volunteer or help a stranger.
Donations to charities totaled almost 99 billion yuan, roughly 16 billion dollars, in China last year, recovering from two straight years of declines. For comparison, Americans gave around 340 billion dollars.
The World Food Program has called on Chinese firms and tycoons to donate more to fighting Ebola. The program's China representative says that no one has been willing to do anything big yet.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
China will need to train around half a million civilian pilots in the next 20 years, giving hope to wannabe fliers chasing dreams of landing lucrative jobs at new air service operators.
The aviation boom comes as China begins to allow private planes to fly below 1,000 meters without military approval. Commercial airlines won't be affected, but more than 200 new companies have applied for general-aviation operating licenses, while China's high-rollers are also eager for permits to fly in their own planes.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China's training unit can only handle up to 100 students a year. With the rest of China's 12 or so existing pilot schools bursting at the seams, foreign players are joining local firms in laying the groundwork for new courses that can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars per trainee.
The civil aviation authority's pilot school says that the first batch of students it enrolled in 2010 were mostly business owners interested in getting a private license; but now more and more young people also want to learn flying so that they can get a job at general-aviation companies.
Zong Rui is a 28-year-old former soldier in the People's Liberation Army who is attending a pilot school in Tianjin, an hour's drive from Beijing. Zong is optimistic, and he says that the salary is good for a general-aviation pilot; and even without a job lined up, he is certain the money he borrowed to learn how to fly will pay off. He says he can easily pay back the 500,000 yuan tuition, roughly 82,000 dollars, in two years, once he gets a job.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Yun Feng in Beijing.
Lei Chu-nian, who became an unlikely hero at age 15 following the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, stood trial at a court in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province in southwest China.
The former national hero is suspected of a fraud of more than 460,000 yuan, or around 75,000 US dollars, from 21 people, including his ex-girlfriend.
It was reported that when the magnitude-8.0 quake struck in May 2008, Lei was playing in the building in his school; and after he fled to the playground, he found several classmates had not come out of the building. He rushed back in and saw them shivering in a corner. After leading them to safety on the first floor, however, the staircase collapsed and he had to return to the second floor, leap to a tree near the building. After he slid down the tree, the building collapsed.
His teachers say that Lei was an ordinary student in class. After his story was publicized, Lei was granted the title of "heroic teenager" by several departments of the central government. He was invited to talk about his heroic act across China and participated in the torch relay for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
The court has found that early last year, Lei told Hao, who was then his girlfriend, that he would find her a very decent job but needed to give 100,000 yuan as gift for people who could help. However, Lei simply squandered the money he got from his girlfriend and then left for Guangdong in southern China.
In another case, two people he knew gave him 175,000 yuan after he said he could help their children get into good high schools. Lei did nothing for them and never returned the money.
In late June, Lei went to a police station in Shenzhen in Guangdong Province for his lost wallet and was detained by police who found out that Lei was a suspect wanted for connection of fraud.
