Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010; the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorists in the past 40 years combined."It just seemed like it was back-to-back, and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the US Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010."The term '100-year event' really lost its meaning this year."And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.Disasters from the Earth, such as earthquakes and volcanoes, "are pretty much constant," said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. "All the change that's made is man-made."The January earthquake that killed well more than 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example. Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people, many of them living in poverty, and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. So had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, total deaths probably would have been in the 80,000 range, said Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida International University.

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Dekker's venture stirred an intense debate about whether young people should be allowed to sail the world's oceans alone. A Dutch court originally blocked the voyage and only permitted her to set off after she took measures to manage the risks.She bought a bigger, sturdier boat than the one she originally planned to use, fitted it with advanced navigation and radar equipment, and took courses in first aid and coping with sleep deprivation.In the end, the Dutch court ruled that her preparations were adequate and it was up to her parents, who are divorced, to decide whether to let her make the attempt. Dekker was born on a boat off New Zealand while her parents were sailing around the world.On a recent blog posting, Dekker said she "regularly wakes up after only one hour of sleep" and was looking forward to sleeping through the night while in St. Maarten.On Sunday, she told the AP that she wasn't sure how long she would stay in St. Maarten or precisely where her next leg would take her."I will just stay here now for a bit and I will think about that," Dekker said. "I've not really a plan. I just want to be in the Panama Canal in May, April, so until that time I will cross the islands, I think."Overall, the solitude of the trip wasn't difficult, she said, although she did have fleeting bouts of homesickness."There were two or three moments that I thought, 'OK, why the hell am I doing this?' But they were not for very long. If I feel really lonely I can always call my parents or something so then it's over," Dekker said.Her circumnavigation attempt started two months after Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old American, had to be rescued in a remote section of the Indian Ocean during an attempt to circle the globe. Earlier this year, Jessica Watson of Australia completed a 210-day voyage at age 16.But while Watson remained at sea nonstop, Dekker plans to stop at dozens of ports and may even return home to catch up on her studies before resuming her trip.If Dekker completes the voyage, any record she claims would be unofficial and likely to be challenged. The Guinness World Records and the World Sailing Speed Record Council have decided they will no longer recognize records for "youngest" sailors to avoid encouraging dangerous attempts.Dekker said she's in no rush at all and is having an "amazing" experience out on the ocean.

Italian Francesco De Bonis became the first cyclist to be given a doping ban because of discrepancies in his biological passport.Unlike conventional tests, which can detect the presence of a banned substance, the biological passport monitors swings in blood parameters that may indicate manipulation.The ground-breaking biological passport system, which was pioneered by cycling's world governing body UCI in 2008, may become a strong weapon to catch drug cheats even if they have never been tested positive.Citic International Contracting Inc, a unit of China's State-owned Citic Group, will build 10,000 housing units on the site of a Caracas military base in Venezuela, Bloomberg News reported Sunday, citing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.Citic is to receive $400 million as a first installment to build the units.The report said Venezuela will use part of a $20-billion loan from China to pay Citic. The project is part of a pledge to close a housing deficit aggravated by heavy rains, according to President Chavez.The company may build a series of 20-story towers on 40 hectares, the report cited Hong Bo, Citic Group's president, as saying. Fifteen-year-old Laura Dekker, aiming to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world, was in good spirits after completing the 2,200 nautical-mile (2,532 land-mile, 4,074-kilometer) trip from the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa.Dekker anchored Guppy, her 38-foot (11.5-meter) ketch, just outside Simpson Bay Lagoon after what she called "a very nice trip" so far. She later steered it into the lagoon as a crowd gathered at the docks and snapped pictures."It's really weird. It's not moving and not bouncy," she told The Associated Press as she tried to find her land legs while strolling in flip-flops along a sidewalk to the Dutch territory's immigration office. "I don't think I can live in a house at the moment."The Dutch teenager started her trip from Gibraltar on August 21 and spent two months in the Canary Islands waiting for the hurricane season to pass. She left the Cape Verde Islands on December 2.

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Through his Young Mercedes strategy with more affordable models, Maier also makes the three-pointed star attainable for more Chinese consumers, with a diversified and dynamic image.Moreover, to get further closer to Chinese customers, Maier helped establish three regional headquarters in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou this year, for demands in North China, East China and South China. In line with the company's booming sales, Maier also put heavy efforts to expand Mercedes' dealership network, with its high and strict global service standard. It will have 166 dealerships by the end of the year and will add 25 to 30 dealers into its national network every year in the future. Maier was in charge of network development at Daimler headquarters in Germany before he came to China.On November 26, when Maier paid a visit to Mercedes' 4S store in Zhuji, a county in Zhejiang province, he said that Mercedes will go to more second and third-tier cities in the future to further tap the potential of the Chinese market.Localization is another achievement Maier has made during his tenure. This year, he appoints three Chinese talents to be the vice-presidents of Mercedes-Benz China, in charge of sales, marketing and public relations issues, indicating his respect to local talent.Having been living in China for almost four years, Maier tried to understand China market and Chinese people through his daily life. One employee from Mercedes-Benz (China) Ltd said: "Mr Maier loves to participate in Mercedes' everything in China, communicating with colleagues, dealers, customers and media.""One must deeply understand the market and customer first, then do a good job in China," said Maier.Also blaming food containing the weight-loss and muscle-building clenbuterol was three-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador of Spain, who tested on July 21 and the analysis of that sample revealed traces of the banned steroid.The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rejected Contador's claims that his positive test was caused by contaminated meat bought in Spain. WADA even cited a European Union study from 2008 in which experts tested 300,000 meat samples but found evidence of the possible use of clenbuterol in only one of those.In the meanwhile, American cyclist Floyd Landis, stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for doping, told media that the use of clenbuterol is widespread in cycling, in one of his many striking remarks which included his attacks on seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.Landis previously alleged that Armstrong and members of their former US Postal team systematically doped and Armstrong has always denied doping.Many and explosive as the positive cases were, anti-doping experts considered it a proof of their effective work."I want to reiterate that zero tolerance does not mean zero positive case. On the contrary, positive cases prove that the system is working since drug cheats will always exist" said China Anti-Doping Agency deputy head Zhao Jian.ncluding China, many countries and regions, under the unified anti-doping regulation World Anti-doping Code, moved to crack down on doping with more stringent measures apart from traditional drug tests.

Mao Weiming, director of Jiangsu Development and Reform Commission, said the province increased the investment in R&D in the period of the 11th Five-Year Plan.At present, the fund set aside for R&D accounts for 2 percent of Jiangsu's GDP, and the province's capacity of regional innovation is ranked first in China.Nanjing Linkage Technology Co, Ltd in Jiangsu reaped the benefits from its growth in innovation capability."We invested 300 million yuan ($45.05 million) into research in 3G technology in recent years, and now we have more than 100 patents and have developed over 100 software products with independent intellectual property rights," said Tu Pingping, vice president of Nanjing Linkage.The company is now providing technological support for the country's three largest communications providers -- China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.Tu said with confidence that the company was planning to become a world-class software company and is expecting its software sales to reach 10 billion in 2012.Another good example of independent innovation is the rapid development of China's high-speed railway, which set a new operating speed record of 486.1 km per hour on a test run on the Beijing-Shanghai railway only two weeks ago.From introducing technologies from foreign companies to designing its own software and registering more than 900 patents, China has gradually become an independent researcher and developer in this field.Using cutting-edge technology and high-end products, China is on a path to become known as the nation with the best and most efficient high-speed rail network in the world.At present, there are 7,531 kilometers of high-speed tracks in use in China, which is the world's longest, according to the Ministry of Railways.

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In the period of China's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010), Chinese companies have been striving to raise the added value of their products by making independent technological innovations.Li Wei, vice-president of the sugar producer, Xiwang Group in eastern China's Shandong province, told Xinhua that the market value of their product would rise 20 percent by turning corn into starch, and from starch to crystalline dextrose the value would further rise 80 to 100 percent."By turning corn into crystalline fructose, we can raise the added value by 20 times," Li said with excitement, holding up the fructose product which was put on the market recently.This great leap forward became a reality due to the company's constant pursuit of technological innovations. Through independent research and development (R&D), Xiwang Group mastered several key technologies which were previously controlled only by a few developed countries.Since 2007, the corn used each year by Xiwang Group has remained at around 1.8 million tons, but the total output has increased annually by 30 percent.The Chinese government has long stressed the significance of independent innovation and encouraged companies to enhance their own capability of technological innovation.In the plan for the 11th Five-Year Plan, the government took enhancing the capability of independent innovation as a crucial step in China's industrial restructuring and the transformation of the growth pattern, which greatly promoted companies all over the country to invest more in technological innovation and adding more value to their products."China-made products should become more and more valuable," said Zhang Yansheng, a researcher with the National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC).To gain a foothold at the high end of the global industry chain, Chinese companies must improve their technology and raise the products' added value, according to Zhang.After the financial crisis, eastern China's Jiangsu province also realized that the traditional economic pattern relying heavily on low-cost resources and labor had come to an end, so it turned to the growth pattern driven by technological advancement and the improvement of efficiency.