A local tech company has been fined 15,000 yuan (US$2,260) and suspended for two months for releasing emoticon of “comfort women,” Shanghai police said yesterday.

Police said “frivolous” captions of photographs of comfort women were shown in a recent documentary film about their lives in World War II appeared on the Internet on August 18. The captions came under fire from both online users and the media.

“Comfort women” were women and girls forced into sex slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Police said the company, called Siyanhui, was punished according to Internet regulations for ignoring social morality in pursuit of business profit.

Responsible people from the company made to write letters of apology.

In its letter of apology published on its website, the firm put the blame on “a young editor” on the team, who was “ignorant of knowledge on history and politics” and created five emoticons from the trailer of the documentary “Twenty-two” and added words to three of them.

A thirteen year old girl has been accepted by a top Chinese university to study medicine, reports People’s Daily.

13-year-old Chen Shuyin, from Guangdong province, has been accepted by Zhejiang University School of Medicine. [Photo: sohu.com]

Chen Shuyin, who graduated from a high school this summer in the city of Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, is now a freshman at Zhejiang University School of Medicine.

Chen has excelled at every stage of her educational career. At the age of seven, she attended a middle school, after only just one year’s study in primary school.

She was always within the top 30 students while she was there.

When Chen turned 9, she was admitted to a local high school after gaining the 13th highest score in the city.

She took the National College Exam at 12, achieving a score that was more than one hundred points higher than that needed to be accepted by a first-class university in China.

Chen’s father says his daughter is not different from most kids of her age, is quite quiet and likes to read in her spare time, and has good learning skills.

When asked about her life at the university, Chen Shuyin says she enjoys making friends, and she has no difficulty in living and communicating with her classmates, who may be several years older than she is.

She also says she would like to do research in the field of clinical medicine while studying at university.

Typhoon Pakhar put the lives of a cargo ship crew in danger off Hong Kong as it uprooted trees and caused flooding and blackouts on Sunday in Guangdong province coastal cities, which were still recovering from Typhoon Hato’s devastation.

Pedestrians brave Typhoon Pakhar’s strong winds and rain in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, on Sunday. [Photo/Xinhua]

Pakhar packed winds up to 119 kilometers per hour when it made landfall at 9 am in Taishan, Guangdong. Four days before, Hato, the strongest typhoon in China this year, landed less than 100 kilometers away, leaving 18 dead in the province and neighboring Macao.

The Hong Kong Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre received a distress call on Sunday morning from a cargo vessel sinking in the storm 64 nautical miles east of Hong Kong. The 11 crew members onboard the Hong Tai 176 were safely rescued by two aircraft of the SAR’s Flying Service.

Meanwhile, on Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peak, two hikers had been stranded since Saturday night. The city dispatched firefighters, fire vehicles and ambulances to save them, and they were escorted downhill at noon and taken to a hospital.

Pakhar damaged power supply stations and caused blackouts affecting thousands in Foshan and Shenzhen, Guangdong.

Some roads in Zhuhai, one of the cities worse hit by Hato, were soaked again by Pakhar’s rainfall on Sunday morning. Several bridges, part of the expressways and some roads were temporarily closed.

Three security guards at a residential community in Shenzhen were injured when the wind toppled a tree that hit parking fee collection booth, Guangdong TV reported.

The Zhongshan Maritime Administration rescued 28 people on three fishing and merchant ships near Modaomen Estuary.

Zhang Jiarui, who lives in an abandoned factory in Magang, Jiangmen, hunkered down indoors with his parents when Pakhar came ashore, uprooting trees and causing power outages.

“We knew the typhoon was coming, and we bought food and daily necessities in town. … With our precautions, we’ve been calmly handling it.”

Armed Police officers helped check fishing boat berths and seaside resort businesses in Jiangmen starting on Saturday in preparation for Pakhar. Before the typhoon hit, 14,348 people were evacuated.

Power and water companies and the police worked overnight on Saturday to restore service cut by Typhoon Hato and clear roads blocked by fallen trees in Zhuhai.

Businesses and schools closed in Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Zhongshan and Yangjiang on Sunday.

Some rail service and intercity coach service in Guangdong was suspended on Sunday, and some expressways were closed

China Southern Airlines canceled 55 flights on Sunday to or from Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Jieyang.

Hainan maritime authorities suspended roll-on/roll-off ferry service and cross-sea trains in and out of the province.

To help Macao restore power, largely affected by Hato, China Southern Power Grid Co delivered 50 generators on Sunday, and Guangdong police delivered 20 fire engines to serve as mobile water supply vehicles.

In Yunnan province, two more people have been found dead, raising the provincial death toll from Typhoon Hato to five. Six people went missing after houses collapsed in a flood caused by heavy rain on Friday in Yanjin county. Rescuers found two bodies in the debris on Saturday and Sunday.

China has appointed a war hero as chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, according to the Defense Ministry.

General Li Zuocheng, 63, a native of Hunan province, met top-ranking military officers of Pakistan and Afghanistan over the weekend in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, in his new capacity as chief of the PLA Joint Staff Department, a news release from the ministry said.

This means Li, who was commander of the PLA Ground Force, is slated to become a member of the Central Military Commission, the top military ruling body in China, with President Xi Jinping as its chairman, because all of Li’s predecessors were included in the commission after they became the PLA’s chief of staff.

It remains unknown when Li received his new appointment, as the PLA does not publish detailed information about its personnel reshuffles.

However, the move had to be within this past week because General Fang Fenghui, Li’s predecessor, was reported－while still as chief of the PLA Joint Staff Department－to have had talks with a top Thai military commander on Aug 21 in Beijing.

Fang was named chief of staff of the PLA in October 2012. After transferring the post to Li, he remains a member of the Central Military Commission.

Born in October 1953, Li joined the PLA Ground Force in 1970. He became nationally known in 1979 after he led his company to victory through a fierce battle that lasted 26 consecutive days during Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts that year. Li later was awarded the title “Combat Hero” for his command of the company and the fact he remained at the front line of the battle despite multiple injuries.

After the war, he continued to move up through the ranks. In 1997, Li was promoted to major general. In 2009, he was advanced to lieutenant general in the office of the deputy chief of the former Chengdu Military Command. In 2013, he was named chief of the command. Two years later, he was given the PLA’s top rank－general－and was appointed as the first commander of the PLA Ground Force Headquarters, which was established on the last day of 2015.

The last time Li appeared in news reports as the Ground Force commander was on July 31, when he signed a letter to members of the service to mark PLA Day on Aug 1.