"Relationships are especially important in China, and we are fortunate that Governor Branstad welcomed a then local agricultural official from China over 30 years ago into Iowa named Xi Jinping, who is now the nation's president," said Reynolds

With regard to the May 25 bust of a drug trafficking ring and seizure of 604 kilograms of crystal meth, according to the meeting, the Chinese Customs officials discovered the attempt to smuggle the illegal drugs into the PhilippinesThe Chinese officials were from China's National Narcotics Control Commission and Ministry of Public Security while Philippine officials were from Philippines' Dangerous Drugs Board and Bureau of Customs

The comments and pledge came as officials from the two countries met here recently on the sidelines of the 11th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crimes[Photo/Agencies]MANILA - China and the Philippines have fully affirmed the positive results achieved so far in their anti-drug cooperation, vowing to further strengthen their cooperation in this regard in the futureIt was found out that the drugs have been delivered to the Philippines and the Chinese officials immediately informed their Philippine counterparts, alerting them about the drug shipment

The Chinese side reiterated that like the current Philippine government, the Chinese government maintains "zero tolerance" policy on illicit drugs, calling on the two sides to further enhance and strengthen collaborative efforts to bust drug smugglersThe two sides refuted distorted reports recently published by certain media, stressing that the fake news were neither in the interests of bilateral anti-drug cooperation, nor in the interests of the two peoples

According to the meeting, real-time intelligence sharing, coordination, drug rehabilitation are just some of the practices that both countries are looking at in their anti-drug cooperation

China will also be contributing technical expertise and equipment in the futureSeismologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California Santa Cruz also published a joint report on Saturday that said tests had shown the quake "clearly falls in the natural phenomena category" and was similar to the last natural earthquake in the region, which was recorded in December 2004

3 magnitude quake, while the strongest, this month, resulted in a 6"The incident was not a nuclear explosion, but had the characteristics of a natural quake," the China Earthquake Networks Center said late Saturday in a statement released online

"What the concerned parties should do now is to strictly and comprehensively implement UN Security Council resolutions and make positive efforts to resolve the issue through dialogue," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said at a news briefing on FridayThe official Korean Central News Agency claimed it was a hydrogen bomb