This is People's Daily Tonight, your news source from China.
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HK business leaders to defend SAR government at UN meet
Two prominent Hong Kong business tycoons are set to attend a United Nations meeting this week in defense of the Hong Kong SAR government.
Macao casino heiress Pansy Ho and Annie Wu, daughter of catering group Maxim's founder James Tak Wu, will say the protesters who have been causing unrest in the city in the past three months do not represent the majority of Hong Kong people.
They will explain that Hong Kong has been under the "one country, two systems" for the past 22 years since the city's return to the motherland in 1997, and that the city will continue to enjoy a high degree of autonomy. (China Daily)
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China to subsidize pig farms to ensure supply
China has decided to offer subsidies from the central budget to large pig farms to support their facilities construction in the latest effort to stabilize pork supply.
One-off subsidies will be handed out to newly built or rebuilt pig farms, scale farmers as well as some relocation projects before the end of 2020.
The funds will be used to support the construction of facilities including epidemic prevention and automatic feed plants.
In 2020, China will also select 100 counties with breeding stocks of more than 100,000 pigs to push waste utilization, with subsidies of no more than 30 million yuan.
The move came as China's pig supply had shrunk substantially due to multiple factors including African swine fever and higher costs of pig breeding, which pushed up pork prices. (Xinhua)
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Search on for 4 missing after cargo ship overturned in Georgia, US
Rescuers scoured the Georgia coast on Sunday for four missing crew members of a cargo ship that overturned and caught fire.
But the US Coast Guard said efforts ran into trouble amid the flames and instability of the ship.
The Golden Ray cargo ship's problems began early Sunday morning when it listed heavily and rolled on its side in St. Simons Sound near the Port of Brunswick with 23 crew members and one pilot on board.
Search and rescue operations involve federal, state and local agencies. (AP)
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Beijing tops list of legal specialists
Lawyers based in Beijing top the list of legal experts in China qualified to handle foreign-related cases, according to a report.
The Ministry of Justice started the list of lawyers deemed competent enough to handle foreign-related cases in August last year. Now numbering 988, lawyers working at Beijing firms headed the list with 170, according to a report released by the Beijing Lawyers' Association in February.
Of the 170, about 90 percent focus on disputes relating to international trade and cross-border investment.
Compared with foreign attorneys, Chinese lawyers can more easily understand the requirements and ideas of Chinese clients wanting to start businesses overseas. This results in Chinese lawyers offering legal services more efficiently, the report said. (China Daily)
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Polar observation satellite will debut soon
China will soon launch the first satellite in its space-based polar observation network.
This, in an attempt to improve the nation's polar research capability.
Officials said the BNU-1 will be placed on a Long March 4B carrier rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province before the end of the month.
The company which designed and built the spacecraft is part of the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing.
The satellite will carry a multispectral camera, a high-resolution visible-light camera, and an automatic identification system receiver for ship identification. (China Daily)
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British Airways says almost all UK flights cancelled over strike
British Airways said Monday it has been forced to cancel almost all its flights from UK airports on the first day of a strike by pilots.
"After many months of trying to resolve the pay dispute, we are extremely sorry that it has come to this," BA said in a statement.
The airline said it remains willing to return to talks with the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA).
"Unfortunately, with no detail from BALPA on which pilots would strike, we had no way of predicting how many would come to work or which aircraft they are qualified to fly, so we had no option but to cancel nearly 100 percent of our flights".
The UK flag carrier and its 4,300 pilots have been locked in a nine-month pay dispute that could disrupt the travel plans of nearly 300,000 people. (AFP)
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French president apologizes over Albania national anthem mix-up
And French President Emmanuel Macron apologized to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama for a national anthem mix-up ahead of a football match on Saturday evening.
Macron said in his letter that he appreciated the reaction of Albania's national football team players and asked Rama to make his apology public.
Organizers played the national anthem of Andorra by mistake. (Xinhua)
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And that's People's Daily Tonight. Thanks for joining us.
(Produced by David Nye and Bai Yuanqi)