Hello, and welcome to CRI Roundup. I'm Paris in Beijing.

Hello, and welcome to CRI Roundup. I'm Paris in Beijing. Today is Saturday, February 23. Now, let's recap what has happened in the past week.

Reconstruction proceeds smoothly in South China after the snow and ice disaster.
China's CPI hits a new high of 7.1%.
Kosovo's declaration of independence triggers mixed reactions from the international community.
Oil futures closes above 100 US dollars for the first time.

China continues its efforts in disaster relief in the south as the region was hit by the worst snow and ice storm in 50 years.

In South China's Hunan province, the local government has been sparing no effort in repairing power supply networks, in order to restore power before the end of March.

Banking institutions in the province have provided loans of more than 7 billion Yuan, or nearly 1 billion US dollars, to support the reconstruction of snow-stricken regions.

Jiangxi province has arranged one and half billion Yuan, or 200 million US dollars, as financial funds for recovering production in the agricultural, forestry and fruit-manufacturing industries.

Railways and expressways across the country are now running smoothly, and commodity supplies for markets in disaster-hit areas have been stable.

China's consumer price index, or CPI, has hit its highest monthly level since 1997 with an increase of over 7 percent.

Li Daokui, Director of the Center for China in the World Economy from Beijing-based Tsinghua University, explains why the big increase occurred.

"One reason is the price increases in pork and grain, and second reason is the surging price of commodities, international price of commodities, such as fuel, aluminum and iron ore, and so on.'

Zhuang Jian is a senior economist with Asian Development Bank's Resident Mission in China.

"This severe storm distorted transportation and cause some shortage in food supply, especially vegetable. So as a result, vegetable prices rose by 13.3 pct in general, compare to 9.5 pct in December last year."

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, which aroused heated international reation.　

Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian-dominated Serb province of 2 million people, officially declared independence from Serbia on Sunday despite strong opposition from Serbia.

Serbian president Boris Tadic has rejected Kosovo's declaration, calling it a "unilateral and illegal" move.

"Serbia will never recognize Kosovo's independence. Serbia has remained calm to the Kosovo Issue and will continue to do so in the future. We will nullify Kosovo's unilateral independence through diplomatic and legal approach. "

As Serbia is trying every means to nullify Kosovo's decision, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon calls on all sides to act upon their commitments to refrain from actions that could endanger peace in Kosovo and the region.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao says China is deeply concerned over Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence.

Russia opposed Kosovo's latest move. While the United States refrained from recognizing Kosovo's independence, but later gave its support to the Albanians as their European counterparts, who gave the green light to Kosovo's independence.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he would not accept the position of president of Council of State.

The statement was published in the online version of the official daily Granma, and was broadcasted by local media.

"To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honoured me so much by electing me a member of the parliament...I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept - I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept - the positions of president of the state council and commander in chief."

Castro has temporarily handed over power to Defense Minister Raul Castro due to his gastro-intestinal surgery in July 2006. He was reelected a deputy of the National Assembly last month.

Oil futures moved higher in New York on Tuesday, closing above 100 US dollars for the first time as investors bet that crude prices will keep climbing despite evidence of plentiful supplies and falling demand.

Analysts say there seemed to be no single cause for the increase, although some investors blamed an explosion at the 67,000 barrel-a-day refinery at Big Spring, Texas as one of the reasons.

Other factors included a weak US dollar, a possible production cut by Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries next month and continuing tensions between the US and Venezuela.

Ira Eckstein, a trader with Area International Trading Corporation, offers his take on the issue.

"Just going back from last week with Venezuela and Exxon Mobile, we have an OPEC meeting coming up in March, they were actually talking about cuts earlier, and that kind of spooked the market up. Also everybody's going to look at tight supplies and world consumption of oil."

With that, we conclude this edition of CRI Roundup.

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I'm Paris, Bye for now!