Morning round-up

There's lots of fun China-related items in the news this morning. The New York Times reports that, as early as next year, the entity responsible for how billions of people enter website addresses--ICANN--will allow website addresses with non-Latin character sets. So rather than requiring users to surf to website addresses like www.zhongguofalu.cn, ICANN will instead allow Chinese users, for example, to type in 中国法律.中国 instead.

Choe Sang-hun, the Times reporter, suggested that the revised character set would allow for website addresses that entirely avoid the Latin alphabet. That may be true for languages like Arabic or Hebrew that use modified keyboard layouts, but entering any Chinese address into a browser will still require the use of a Latin keyboard and an Input Method Editor, or IME. (Granted, some IMEs do not require the use of the Latin alphabet, but most Chinese folks I know rely upon one to get online.)

The Chengdu Evening News reports (h/t: Danwei) that hospitals in Sichuan will go smoke-free by 2012. Just think about what's wrong about that statement, as well as what's wrong with the quotation in the article that suggests that Sichuanese doctors do not know enough about the deleterious effects of smoking.

Finally, American hog farmers can rejoice in the fact that China has decided to ease import restrictions on American pork products. The PRC earlier this year closed the market to American hog farmers over swine flu fears, but has now decided to allow American pork back in. As my favorite (and only) Colombian classmate once said, "in China, porks are stupid."