Death sentences were handed out today to five members of a Kunming-based gang accused of involvement in drug trafficking, fraud, racketeering, extortion, prostitution and selling counterfeit money, according to a Xinhua report.

The head of the gang, Jiang Jiatian, 56 was sentenced to death along with his mistress Yang Jufen, her father Yang Guoying, and Xie Mingxiang, a fourth member of the 41-member gang's core. Most of the gang members were relatives or friends of Jiang.

The four convicted gang leaders were sentenced in the Intermediate Court of Kunming, with Li Wencai, a fifth gang member, receiving a death sentence with two-year reprieve. The remaining members of the gang were dealt sentences ranging from 18 months to life in prison.

According to a spokesman for the court, Jiang made his initial money in the 1990s trafficking drugs, later investing his ill-gotten gains in hotels, teahouses and internet cafes around Kunming.

The gang reportedly came under police scrutiny after residents of more than three villages around Kunming complained about feeling unsafe. Some of the complaints included being threatened with violence until agreeing to pay 1,000 yuan (US$146) for a pot of tea, or being beaten up after objecting to receiving fake bills as change.

An American environmental activist evading the United States government was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday in Dali for manufacturing drugs, according to a New York Times report.

Former New Jersey resident Justin Franchi Solondz, 30, who had been living in Dali under the name Isaac Cox, was arrested in Dali in March of this year with illegal drugs and faked Canadian identification, the Times reported his parents as saying.

According to Solondz's father, police found more than 30 pounds of marijuana at the apartment he rented in Dali, where it was buried in the courtyard. The prosecutor for the case characterized the inside of the younger Solondz's home as a "drug laboratory", he said.

When finally brought before a court for trial in October, Solondz pleaded guilty to the drug charges he faced and requested deportation back to the US, which he was denied.

After finishing his Chinese prison sentence, Solondz will be deported to the United States where he awaits his arson-related charges.

On the other side of the Pacific, Solondz is on the FBI's wanted list for conspiracy to commit arson, arson of a government building, arson of property used in interstate commerce, use and carrying of a destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence and making unregistered destructive devices.

The FBI accuses Solondz of being involved with a splinter group of the Earth Liberation Front, a decentralized environmental activist group which the US government declared the top domestic terrorist threat in early 2001. He was indicted in absentia in 2006 for his alleged involvement in a three-state arson spree in the American west in 2005.

It is widely believed that the Chinese and American governments met regarding the case and that Solondz received a relatively mild sentence as a result of US diplomacy. In October of this year, UK citizen Akmal Shaikh was sentenced to death for dealing drugs in Xinjiang in northwestern China.

While standing before judges at the intermediate court in Dali, Solondz praised Dali as a "paradise" and apologized to the people of China for his actions.

Justin Solondz 2002 photo: FBI via New York Times

Kunming explorer finishes Sahara expedition
Kunming native and famous Chinese explorer/adventurer Jin Feibao completed his crossing of Africa's Sahara Desert last week.

Jin and geologist Fei Xuan spent 80 days crossing the desert by various modes of transportation from Ghana's Atlantic coast to Cairo on the Red Sea in an expedition that aimed to raise China's exploration credentials and study the effects of desertification.

During the course of their travels, Jin and Fei fell out of contact with their Kunming operations base, with Xinhua erroneously reporting that the two had disappeared and may have been abducted by "terrorists".

Visa problems became an issue when the two travelers were briefly arrested in Algeria for overstaying their visas while waiting for Egyptian visas after getting denied Libyan visas. Jin and Fei had to fly from Algiers to Beijing to Cairo, skipping Libya and thus being unable to traverse the Sahara without interruption.

The Yunnan Provincial Museum will hold an exhibition of Jin's photos from his Sahara expedition from July 8 through 13. A preview of some of the photos can be found on Jin's English-language blog.

Kunming rail station a 'drug control frontier'
As expected, recent upgrades in transport connectivity with Southeast Asia have helped boost Yunnan's foreign trade and regional influence. Also not surprisingly, it has led to increased inflows of illegal drugs.

The Kunming railway station has become a major jumpoff point for illegal drugs from Southeast Asia to make their way to other parts of China, so much so that China's Ministry of Railways is calling the station a "drug control frontier" according to a Xinhua report.

In the first five months of this year, police at Kunming's train station confiscated 31 kilograms of illegal drugs connected to 242 criminal cases in which 283 individuals were detained.

Pepsi to open 'green' plant in Kunming
PepsiCo Inc announced last Friday that it will build a 'green' bottling plant in Kunming and four other cities in China in the coming two years, according to a Reuters report.

The announcement comes after the world's second-largest soft drink producer announced the opening of a new facility in Chongqing that satisfies the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, which employ water- and energy-saving systems.

In addition to a plant in Kunming – where rival Coca-Cola Co already has a bottling facility – PepsiCo said it will open plants in the cities of Zhengzhou, Quanzhou, Lanzhou and Nanchang.

Jin Feibao image: jinfeibao8844.com

Kunming consumers can rest assured: there is no cocaine in their Red Bull.

In the wake of yesterday's announcement by Taiwanese health authorities that they had found trace amounts of cocaine in Austrian-produced Red Bull Cola, Shenghuo Xinbao reporter Dan Xiaoling visited local Carrefour, Wal-Mart and PARKnSHOP outlets - all of which said they stock their shelves with China-made Red Bull products that contain no cocaine.

According to Dan, Red Bull sales at the Century Plaza Carrefour in downtown Kunming were "normal".

Image: news.kunming.cn

The 2009 Kunming Sex Expo (性博会) will open this Saturday, hoping to lure people away from nearby Green Lake Park with photos, artifacts and exhibits highlighting sex today and through the ages in China and the rest of the world, according to a Dushi Shibao report.

In addition to the expo's exhibits about sex, there will be a wide assortment of sex-related items on sale, from 30,000 yuan "happy love chairs" (欢爱椅) to "music-activated massage wands" (音乐律动按摩棒) to "remote-controlled electric water balls" (遥控电动水球).

The Kunming Sex Expo will also feature a stage area with underwear models, body painting performances and an eclectic selection of dance performances.

"At last year's Sex Expo, the male and female underwear models and body painting were highlights for visitors, right before every performance upwards of a thousand people were already packed in front of the stage," an expo organizer told reporters.

"In this year's Sex Expo the underwear show and body painting will be innovative and just as before will be one of the expo's bright spots."

One of the other programs in this year's Sex Expo include male dancers performing a "large-scale protoecological dance" (大型原生态舞蹈) using fruit as a metaphor for the physical maturation of humans. Other dance performances include an anti-drug dance and belly dancing.

The 2009 Kunming Sex Expo will take place daily from May 16 through 26 at the Yunnan Provincial Science and Technology Hall on Cuihu Xi Lu, across from the southwest corner of Green Lake Park.

Tickets are 20 yuan per person – elderly, students, the handicapped and groups of 10 or more can get in for 15 yuan per person.

Images: news.kunming.cn, mcxb.com

In recent years, the relationship between Asian giants China and India has gradually shifted from vocal distrust to guarded optimism. With the political thaw between the two countries, an economic relationship has grown rapidly – in 2002 bilateral trade was a mere US$2 billion, last year that number surpassed US$51 billion.

As China and India continue to open up to each other, the lack of sufficient transportation links is hampering trade and tourism. With both countries eager to increase interconnectivity, Kunming is emerging as China's de facto gateway to India.

Beginning in June, China Eastern Airlines will increase its flight services between Kunming and Kolkata, capital of eastern India's West Bengal state, from four to seven flights weekly, according to Indian media reports.

Li Ji, general manager of China Eastern's Kolkata operations, told reporters in India that more flights will be added to the Shanghai-New Delhi route, which currently has only three flights weekly.

Li said increasing tourism between the two countries was the driving force behind the decision to increase flight services. At present, China Eastern flights between the two countries have full occupancy, he added.

Local politics in India, particularly the country's occasionally restive northeast, are also beginning to focus on increasing connectivity with Kunming. MP and parliamentary election candidate Sarbananda Sonowal, from Assam state's Dibrugarh constituency in the Lok Sabha (LS) – India's directly elected lower house of parliament – has become one of India's most vocal proponents of a road to Kunming.

Sonowal has been arguing for a reopening of the Stilwell Road, a former World War II supply route built in 1944 under the supervision of US General Joe Stilwell. The 1,700-kilometer (1,000-mile) road once connected Kunming with the city of Ledo in Assam state, with most of the road passing through northern Myanmar.

Rather than serving as a military supply road, Sonowal imagines a resuscitated Stilwell Road as becoming a new channel for trade between India and China. China's portion of the road – all of it located in Yunnan – has already been upgraded to a modern six-lane expressway.

The main obstacles to the road's revival have been the fact that it passes through Myanmar's politically volatile north, plus a general reluctance by the Indian government, which has voiced security and drug trafficking concerns about the road in the recent past.

"The reopening of Stilwell Road is important not only for people of ... Dibrugarh LS constituency, but also for entire (Indian) northeast, as it would re-establish this region's old trade links with China and other countries in Southeast Asia," Sonowal recently told Indian reporters.

Goods transported between India and China via a new Stilwell Road would take two days to make the trip. At present, sea cargo between the two countries must pass south of Singapore and through the Malacca Strait. Reopening the Stilwell Road would cut the distance between China and India by 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles).

After years of sometimes confused policy in which industrial hemp was lumped together with its psychoactive cousin marijuana, the Chinese government is now actively promoting hemp cultivation as a tool for lifting rural Chinese out of poverty.

China will build multiple hemp cultivation bases in Yunnan, Heilongjiang, Gansu and Anhui provinces as well as the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia by 2020, a project that is expected to bring three million people out of poverty, according to a Shanghai Daily report citing an official from the People's Liberation Army's General Logistics Department.

Production at one of the first facilities involved in this plan went online yesterday in Menghai County in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southern Yunnan. The hemp fiber processing factory, owned by China Hemp Industrial Holding Co Ltd, has an annual capacity of 2,000 tonnes.

In addition to being used to produce fibers for rope and clothing, hemp can also be used to make paper which is much less damaging to the environment than paper made from trees. Aside from causing deforestation, tree paper is bleached with toxic chlorine bleach. Hemp paper can be bleached with less environmentally harmful hydrogen peroxide.

Industrial hemp can also be used to produce fuel, biodegradable plastics, construction materials and health foods.

The government in Xishuangbanna now provides farmers with free hemp seeds plus technical training. According to the prefecture's party chief Jiang Pusheng, there are nearly 10,000 farmers growing hemp in the area, farmers who through hemp cultivation stand to double their annual income from 2,000 yuan (US$293) to 4,000 yuan.

Image: Baidu

Kunming's clear skies and abundant sun provide ideal conditions for small rooftop gardens, but as an 84-year-old woman living in Xiaoguangcun in the city's north discovered yesterday, not all gardens are welcome.

Early Wednesday, Dushi Shibao journalists were tipped off by another Xiaoguangcun resident that the elderly woman – surnamed Li – had a sizeable garden of Papaver somniferum, more commonly known as opium poppies.

The woman readily admitted to the police that she had been growing the poppies for the past two years and had been using them to treat a chronic cough she has had for the last several years. Li, who lives alone, had been given poppy seeds by her neighbors, who had purchased them at a local vegetable market.

Her neighbors corroborated the story, saying that they had been using the seeds to make chilli oil – they said the seeds made the oil more fragrant.

Growing opium poppies is illegal in China, according to rule 71 of the Public Security Management and Punishment Laws (治安管理处罚法), individuals growing fewer than 500 opium poppies can be detained by police for up to 15 days and fined as much as 3,000 yuan.

Police decided to neither detain nor fine Li, citing her old age, her open acknowledgement that she had made a mistake and the relatively small size of her garden – which had more than 60 plants.

The police confiscated all of Li's plants and gave Li and the neighbors who supplied her with the poppy seeds "education through severe criticism" (严厉的批评教育), according to the Dushi Shibao report.

Image: Kunming Information Hub