CREDIT CARD FRAUD

Oriental Outlook

November 10, 2011

Nowadays, it is convenient to make purchases with credit cards; along with the trend has come the criminal elements that find increasingly innovative ways to commit credit card fraud.

In this issue, the magazine looks at how these crimes are committed by overseas hackers.  

One of the reasons for this crime form is that there are still many loopholes in supervising the issue and the use of credit cards, said Dai Xinfu, a senior police officer dealing with credit card fraud. He thinks upgrading credit cards to a chip-and-pin system to replace current magnetic strips will significantly reduce crimes. Issuers, financial regulators and the police should work together to prevent and crack down on the crime, he adds.

GROUND SETTLEMENT

China Newsweek

November 14, 2011

Settlement is the technical term given to the way the ground moves around a hole after it has been dug out. Digging tunnels, shafts and basements always causes small movements in the ground. 

With the rapid development of urbanization and irrational pursuit of high-yield agriculture, the stress applied to China's land mass is resulting in widespread ground settlement, as evidenced in the North China Plain.

China Newsweek looks at the problem in this issue, believing overexploitation of groundwater to meet the great demand for water needed in industrial and agricultural development leads to the ground settlement.

As a solution, the farming practice of annual double-cropping in the North China Plain should be changed, according to Shen Yanjun, a research fellow on agricultural resources with Chinese Academy of Sciences.