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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.

Researchers have found no trace of reproduction for the Chinese sturgeon, leaving the rare species at the risk of extinction.

This is the first time scientists did not find any trace of natural reproduction of the sturgeon since records began 32 years ago, when a gigantic dam was built on the Yangtze River.

The Chinese sturgeon spawns in fresh water in the Yangtze River and migrates downstream to salt water in the sea to mature. It dwells along the coasts of China's eastern areas and migrates back up rivers for propagation upon reaching sexual maturity. The Chinese sturgeon has the longest migration of any sturgeon in the world, traveling more than 3,200 kilometers up the Yangtze in a single trip.

During their annual inspection trips in November and December last year, scientists found no eggs laid by the sturgeon in the river areas downstream of the Gezhouba Dam in central China's Hubei Province. What's more, a month-long search in August this year has found no young sturgeons showing up along the Yangtze River.

The number of Chinese sturgeons has seen sharp decline, from several thousand in the 1980s to around 100 now, due to human activities on the river and water pollution.

Experts say that without natural reproduction, the sturgeon population will shrink, leaving the species critically endangered.

The Chinese sturgeon is believed to have existed for more than 140 million years and lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. It is as rare as the giant panda in China and comes under top-level national protection.

This is NEWS Plus Special English.

China plans to select space engineers as potential astronauts.

A senior space program official has said China will finish the selection in the next two years.

Huang Weifen is deputy chief designer of China's astronaut system. She says China's 21 astronauts are all former air force pilots; and the country is going to select engineers from research departments of the space program and provide them with proper training.

China's future astronauts are expected to work at a space station and fulfill more complicated tasks so they must have more comprehensive professional skills and meet higher physical and psychological requirements.

The official says future astronauts will also be selected from medical workers as well.

This is the third round of selections which has not included women because there have already been two female astronauts on active service.

China plans to establish its first space station in 2022. China's first space lab was launched in 2011. It has since docked with two manned spaceships, each with three astronauts onboard.

You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.

Alibaba debuted as a publicly traded company recently and swiftly climbed almost 40 percent in a mammoth IPO that offered eager investors seemingly unlimited growth potential and a way to tap into the burgeoning Chinese middle class.

The sharp demand for shares sent the market value of the e-commerce giant soaring well beyonds that of Amazon, eBay and even Facebook. The initial public offering was on track to be the world's largest, with the possibility of raising as much as 25 billion U.S. dollars.

Alibaba's Taobao, TMall and other platforms account for some 80 percent of Chinese online commerce. Most of the company's almost 280 million active buyers visit the sites at least once a month on smartphones and other mobile devices, adding to the stock's attractiveness as online shopping shifts away from laptops and desktop machines.

Online spending by Chinese shoppers is forecast to triple from its 2011 size by 2015. Beyond that, Alibaba has said it plans to expand into emerging markets and, eventually, into Europe and the United States.

In its last fiscal year ending at the end of March, Alibaba earned 3.7 billion U.S. dollars, making it more profitable than eBay and Amazon combined.

Based in founder Jack Ma's hometown of Hangzhou in eastern China, Alibaba began in 1999 when Ma and 17 friends developed a fledgling e-commerce business on the cusp of the Internet boom. Today, its main platforms are its original business-to-business service, Alibaba.com, consumer-to-consumer site Taobao and TMall, a place for brands to sell to consumers.

This is NEWS Plus Special English.