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THE housing price in 70 major Chinese cities jumped an average of 10.5 percent in December from a year earlier, equaling the two-year-high growth rate in November, the National Development and Reform Commission said today.

Average prices of new homes rose 11.4 percent on a yearly basis after gaining 10.6 percent in November, led by Urumqi, capital city of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where prices jumped 25.3 percent in the period, the commission said on its Website this morning

Beihai City in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region ranked second with 19.3 percent growth and Huizhou City in Guangdong Province was the third fastest with 19 percent growth, the commission said.

Shanghai’s new home prices jumped 9.3 percent in the period from a year earlier.

The average price of second-hand homes jumped 11.4 percent in the 70 cities year on year.

Urumqi again grew the fastest at 24.2 percent, followed by Ningbo in Zhejiang Province at 16.5 percent and Wuxi in Jiangsu Province at 15.2 percent.

Shanghai grew 10.8 percent in December year on year, according to the commission.

Last year, credit to developers was tightened, supervision over land use was increased and the enforcement of tax policies was improved to cool down a real estate boom.

However, these moves have not been as effective as the central government would have liked since major cities all reported rapid growth last year.

Former Chinese Dang Ye Seo fought hard to help South Korea take down France 3-0 in the women’s section of the World Team Table Tennis Championships here on Sunday.

Despite a slow start, South Korea’s Lee Eun Hee, ranked No. 31,shrugged off the threat from France’s Carole Grundisch, winning the first match 8-11, 11-8, 11-8, 11-9.

The second match between two former Chinese women turned out to be a thrilling seesaw battle. South Korea’s Dang Ye Seo, doubles runner-up in the 2005 Chinese National Games, was made to sweat for her victory over a determined Xian Yi Fang who fought to the very end.

With the game tied at 2-2, Dang kept cool to clinch the winning point for South Korea and finally beat Xian 11-8, 11-9, 10-12, 7-11, 11-5.

Dang, formerly named Tang Na, was born in northeastern Chinese city of Changchun and was said to have gained South Korean citizenship last year.

In the third match, Moon Hyun Jung, ranked 61, extinguished any faint hopes France had of winning, beating Aurore Dessaint 11-7, 11-9, 11-8.

Also in Group D, the Japanese squad hardly broke sweat in demolishing much lower ranked challengers from Italy 3-0.

Two recently discovered star systems share one characteristic: two stars that orbit each other so closely they share material, which makes them look like peanuts in space.

The systems were announced Monday and are the first and second of a new class of objects. The observations were made with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mt. Graham in Arizona

The first system found is 13 million light-years away inside a small galaxy named Holmberg IX. Both stars are very bright, yellow stars about 15 times the mass of our sun. In the pair’s orbital cycle, one star moves in front of the other, blocking its light from our vantage point, so astronomers see one star, then two, then one.

Jos?���rieto, Ohio State University graduate student and lead author on the journal paper, found another one much closer, less than 230,000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits our own Milky Way. The star system had been discovered in the 1980s, but was misidentified.

When Prieto re-examined the data that astronomers had recorded at the time, he saw the pattern of light was very similar to the one they had detected in the first pair. The stars were even the same size ?w 15 to 20 times the mass of the sun ?w and melded together in the same kind of peanut shape. The system was clearly a yellow supergiant eclipsing binary, the new name given to this class of objects.

“We didn’t expect to find one of these things, much less two,” said Kris Stanek, associate professor of astronomy at Ohio State and a colleague in the study. “We needed the 8.4-meter LBT to spot the first binary, but the second one is so bright that you could see it with binoculars in your back yard. Yet, if we hadn’t found the first one, we may never have found the second one.”

The finds may help solve another mystery. Of all the supernovas that have been studied over the years, two have been linked to yellow supergiants, but theory doesn’t predict any should be yellow supergiants.

Over millions of years, Prieto explained, a star will burn hotter or cooler as it consumes different chemical elements in its core. The most massive stars swing back and forth between being cool red supergiants or hot blue ones. They spend most of their lives at one end of the temperature scale or the other, but spend only a short time in-between, where they are classified as yellow. Most stars end their life in a supernova at the red end of the cycle; a few do at the blue end. But none do it during the short yellow transitional phase in between.

Prieto, Stanek and their colleagues suspect that yellow binary systems like the ones they found could be the progenitors of these odd yellow supernovas.

“When two stars orbit each other very closely, they share material, and the evolution of one affects the other,” Prieto said. “It’s possible two supergiants in such a system would evolve more slowly and spend more time in the yellow phase ?w long enough that one of them could explode as a yellow supergiant.”

Researchers from Cornell University has looked “closely” at the soil for the first time — at a scale of 50 nanometers, revealing an incredible variety of organic compounds in it, reported the April issue of Nature Geoscience which is available Monday.

“There is this incredible nanoscale heterogeneity of organic matter in terms of soil,” said Johannes Lehmann, lead author of the study, in a statement on Monday. “None of these compounds that you can see on a nanoscale level looks anything close to the sum of the entire organic matter.”

The authors of the article said that knowing the structure and detailed composition of soil carbon could provide a better understanding of the chemical processes that cycle organic matter in soil.

For example, the research may help scientists understand what happens when materials in the soil get wet, warm or cool and how soils sequester carbon, which has implications for climate change.

The nanoscale soil images were made at Brookhaven National Laboratory using an X-ray spectromicroscopy method, which allowed the researchers to identify forms of organic carbon in the samples.

While the composition of organic carbon in soils from North America, Panama, Brazil, Kenya or New Zealand proved remarkably similar within each sample, the researchers found that within spaces separated by mere micrometers, soils from any of these locations showed striking variation in their compositions. For example, the compounds that “hang on the right and left of a clay mineral may be completely different,” said Lehmann.

The researchers were also able to identify the origins of some of the nano-sized compounds, determining that some of them, for example, were microbe excretions and decomposed leaves. The researchers also recognized patterns of where types of compounds are likely to be found at the nanoscale.

The method now allows researchers to break soil down, separate compounds, conduct experiments on individual compounds and better understand the interactions, Lehmann said.

Mischa Barton left Los Angeles because it “stopped being fun.” The former “O.C.” star, who was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in West Hollywood last year, admits she stopped enjoying living the city so decided to move to Paris, France.

She said: “It simply stopped being fun in Los Angeles.” Mischa has also spoke about the photographs that appeared last month of her in a bikini with cellulite on her thighs.

The 22-year-old actress admits she was upset by the snaps but insists it is normal to have body imperfections.

She exclaimed: “Those pictures were retarded. Obviously it’s embarrassing and it’s un-cool but I just suck it up and live with it.” Mischa - who made her film debut in “Notting Hill” aged just 12 - recently said her movie career has been an emotional roller coaster.

She said: “I’ve grown up so much as an actress. There’s been times when I’ve thought, ‘I don’t want to be an actress forever,’ and there are times when I feel I can’t live without it because I love it so much. It’s a wild ride.”

The third “Mummy” installment dutifully sends its characters to China where they participate in international competitions of mummy fencing, yeti vaulting and synchronized senselessness.

“The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” finds Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and wife Evelyn (Maria Bello taking over for Rachel Weisz) heading East in hopes of recapturing the adrenaline of adventure.

They’re retired following World War II, apparently living richly off of the $800 million worldwide box office of the first two “Mummy” films. The O’Connells are British aristocrat-adventurers who have retired too young and are begging to get back in the mummy-slaying game.

The film, directed by Rob Cohen (”The Fast and the Furious”) who takes the franchise’s reins from Stephen Sommers, opens with our historical backdrop: a ludicrously extravagant tale of “a mythic battle between good and evil played out in ancient China,” as a narrator informs.

Egypt, it appears, no longer has the trademark on mummies.

Jet Li plays the Dragon Emperor, an emphatically bad dude who in 200 B.C. — as this film tells it — built the Great Wall of China on top of thousands of servants worked to death. In his search for immortality, he’s tricked and he and his army are mummified in a giant tomb.

A few thousands years later, enter the O’Connell’s grown son Alex (Luke Ford).

It’s been seven years since “The Mummy Returns” and fans will surely be surprised that their hero (Fraser, who’s 39 in real life) has already seeded ground to a younger actor. (Harrison Ford’s archaeologist action star has yet to cede to this progeny.)

Alex is just as intrepid as his parents. He uncovers the tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which has been styled on a real archaeological find: China’s Teracotta Army, the thousands of clay soldiers found in 1974. They’ve here been reimagined as mummies frozen in time, complete with mummy horses.

If this sounds absurd, it is. Like recent films such as “300″ or the new “Indiana Jones,” “Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” uses history like a prop — a loose costume for ludicrous plot lines.

These movies revel in telling “ancient” tales, but dodgy history doesn’t lead to anything but myths. Younger generations are going to have some funky ideas about the past.

Alex’s big find, as you might imagine, leads to considerable trouble that eventually unlocks further mysteries, such as a trio of yetis (they’re actually kind of cool) and Shangri-La. There’s an impressive chase scene through nighttime Shanghai and a giant battle sequence between thousands who have been raised from dead. (It looks a lot like the climax of the 1992 cult fave “Army of Darkness” without the comedy.)

The action is so relentless that Fraser has little room for any real comic work, which is a shame. He has to utter at one point: “Here we go again!”

With the jawline of a matinee idol but the geeky clumsiness to make him interesting, Fraser seemed poised for a more mature career after his performances in 1998’s “Gods and Monsters” and 2002’s “The Quiet American.”

But this summer, he’s packed the double whammy of the 3-D “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and this third “Mummy” — a combination that deserves a penance of at least a dozen indie films.

Ford may have the bangs to be Fraser’s heir apparent, but he has nothing else to supply. Isabella Leong is relatively forgettable as his love interest.

Ultimately, there’s something fitting to today’s Hollywood about a 9-year-old franchise devoted to raising grotesques from the dead. One of Fraser’s upcoming projects, after all, reunites him with Sommers for “G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra.”

Sequel- and remake-crazy Hollywood could learn from the “Mummy” series: better to leave it buried.

China is seeing more and more coal piles up at major transport harbors due to a weakening demand for the fossil fuel.

An official with the Qinhuangdao harbor bureau said Friday, on condition of anonymity, that Qinhuangdao harbor in northern China recorded a coal pileup of 8.44 million tons as of September 16. That is at least 3 million tons more than regular levels. He added, every day for the past two weeks, the surplus of coal has increased by 100,000 tons.

Qinhuangdao harbor is the largest coal transport site in China. Its coal storage acts as a barometer of the coal market across the country.

The official said the harbor was only able to accommodate a coal pileup of 10 million tons.

A surplus of coal at major consumption areas is also increasing. The Guangzhou harbor in southern China had about 2.2 million excess tons of coal as of September 17. That’s compared to a storage of 1.7 million tons at the beginning of June.

According to Guangzhou Port Group, trading volume has decreased since July, with a monthly turnover of only 3 million tons. In May and June the group was turning over 4-million-tons.

Coal is also piling up for major coal consumers.

According to Xie Juchen, head of the fuel section of China Electricity Council, coal pileup was 19.62 million tons in July. That’s enough to meet a 10-day demand. At the beginning of September, the figure went up to 29.3 million tons, or enough for 15 days, Xie said.

Official data showed nationwide coal supplies in August were at 70.76 million tons. However, coal consumption was at 62.25 million tons, leaving 8.51 million tons to pile up.

Industry observers credited the mounting pileup to less demand.

For one, electricity enterprises used less coal during the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics because production was restricted, said Xie.

In the long term, however, global economic slowdown received the majority of the blame for the country’s excess coal.

According to Wang Ling, a coal analyst with the United Metal Web, the slide of the economy squeezed demand for electricity, that from thermal power enterprises in particular.

Besides, Wang said, a relatively cool climate reduced demand for power this summer. He added, abundant rainfalls also ensured easier access to electricity generated by hydro power plants.

According to data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics, China generated 2.323 trillion kw of electricity in the first eight months of this year, a growth of 10.9 percent on the same period of last year.

Firefighters are battling to contain a string of wildfires that are encircling America’s second-largest city.

The firestorms are being driven by near-hurricane force winds that have incinerated thousands of acres of brush and forest since late last week.

Hundreds of homes have already been destroyed - thousands more are at risk from the fast-moving flames.

California’s governor has issued a state of emergency in four of the worst affected counties, including Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

LA’s mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa urged residents not to take any chances.

(SOUNDBITE) ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA, LOS ANGELES MAYOR , SAYING:

“People really need to understand that because of these winds this fire can be on you in a moment’s notice.

More than 20,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes.

Fires have closed major freeways and led to rolling blackouts after power lines feeding Los Angeles were destroyed.

So far no one has been reported killed but authorities fear there may be fatalities.

Rescue crews will have to wait for the ground to cool before conducting proper searches.

Lighter winds on Sunday offered some respite to exhausted firecrews but the battle to halt the advancing walls of flame and heat encircling LA is far from won.

Taking plenty of exercise is a great way of reducing stress, staying trim and warding off back, heart and circulatory problems. But some people are discouraged from paying regular visits to their gym by factors such as travel distance, inconvenient opening hours or they just feel uncomfortable exercising in public. Depending on how much space is available in your spare room, a home gym including a sauna might be the answer.

“A prerequisite for having a sauna is a high-voltage electricity supply,” says Professor Reiner Pohl of the Bavarian-based trade body Pro Keller, which seeks to promote homeowners’ use of their cellars.

It’s also a good idea to have a place to relax and cool down in a comfortable atmosphere. That makes having a sauna more fun and will encourage you to use it frequently. Another factor to consider is easy access to the outdoors and fresh air.

The sauna’s shower should be constructed with what’s known as a shower receptor - the base of the shower made from a single piece of material. Tiles encourage bacteria to grow in the seams, if the sauna is used a lot.

“We recommend a shower receptor that measures at least 120 by 120 cm,” says Martin Koch from the German bathtub maker Kaldewei.

Shower receptors are excellent at collecting water from very large showerheads and are more comfortable to stand in.

But before you get to the sauna there’s an exercise program to get through first. An exercise bike and a gym mat are no longer sufficient for the average home-gym.

There’s a wide range of expensive gym machines on offer to help you get ready for wearing a bikini or improve your stomach’s six-pack.

However, the experts advise anyone thinking of investing money in gym machines to carefully consider what their goal is first.

“Many of the gym machines on the market are simply rubbish,” says Georg Stingl, chairperson of Aktion Gesunder Ruecken, an initiative against back pain.

Many machines offer poor quality when it comes to their effectiveness and durability. Another problem is that incorrect use of a gym machine can damage your body.

“A layman who begins using a machine at home without expert advice often makes mistakes that can affect their health,” warns Claudia Ernst from the health insurance company Deutsche Angestellten Krankenkasse in Hamburg.

Ernst recommends getting advice from a qualified trainer in a commercial gym. She also recommends getting a check-up from a doctor before investing in gym machines for the home.

A compact home gym with a treadmill, stepper, cross trainer and mini trampoline comes at a cost of at least several hundred euros. “The way you equip your gym will depend on how much space you have,” says Ernst. There should always be at least one meter of free space around each machine with good ventilation.

However, even the most comfortable home gym cannot solve lack of motivation.

“Exercise should always be fun,” says Stingl. “At first, most people are very enthusiastic. But after just a few weeks the gym is hardly used at all because it can be boring exercising on your own in a cellar.”

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, but also was the ninth warmest year since continuous instrumental records were started in 1880.

The ten warmest years on record have all occurred between 1997 and 2008, according to the study available here on Monday.

The GISS analysis found that the global average surface air temperature was 0.44C (0.79F) above the global mean for 1951 to 1980, the baseline period for the study. Most of the world was either near normal or warmer in 2008 than the norm. Eurasia, the Arctic, and the Antarctic Peninsula were exceptionally warm, while much of the Pacific Ocean was cooler than the long-term average.

The relatively low temperature in the tropical Pacific was due to a strong La Nina that existed in the first half of the year, the research team noted. La Nina and El Nino are opposite phases of a natural oscillation of equatorial Pacific Ocean temperatures over several years. La Nina is the cool phase. The warmer El Nino phase typically follows within a year or two of La Nina.

The temperature in the United States in 2008 was not much different than the 1951-1980 mean, which makes it cooler than all the previous years this decade.

“Given our expectation that the next El Nino will begin this year or in 2010, it still seems likely that a new global surface air temperature record will be set within the next one to two years, despite the moderate cooling effect of reduced solar irradiance,” said James Hansen, director of GISS. The Sun is just passing through solar minimum, the low point in its 10- to 12-yearcycle of electromagnetic activity, when it transmits its lowest amount of radiant energy toward Earth.

The GISS analysis of global surface temperature incorporates data from the Global Historical Climatology Network of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climate Data Center; the satellite analysis of global sea surface temperature of Richard Reynolds and Thomas Smith of NOAA; and Antarctic records of the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

“GISS provides the ranking of global temperature for individual years because there is a high demand for it from journalists and the public,” said Hansen. “The rank has scientific significance in some cases, such as when a new record is established. But rank can also be misleading because the difference in temperature between one year and another is often less than the uncertainty in the global average.”