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

Madrid has been the final destination for a train which has set the record for the longest train journey in history, 13,052 kilometers between the Chinese city of Yiwu and the Spanish capital.

The train departed from Yiwu in east China's Zhejiang Province on November 18th and arrived in Madrid on December 9th. It had 40 wagons, carrying 1,400 tons of cargo, consisting of stationary, craft products and products for the Christmas market. The train will return to China filled with luxury Spanish produce such as cured ham, olive oil and wine.

The historic journey marks the opening of a regular two-way rail link between China and Spain. The railway will commence operations early next year.

Two major advantages of rail travel are that it is much faster by rail than by boat, cutting the transportation time in half; and a train produces 60 percent less carbon dioxide pollution of a lorry making the same journey by road.

The marathon journey starts from eastern China and goes all the way to the west, passing through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany and France, before arriving in Spain.

The more than 13,000 kilometer journey between Madrid and Yiwu is a greater distance than that between the North and South Pole.

During the journey, the engine of the train has to be changed every 800 kilometers, while the crew shifts with each country the train traversed. Special stops were necessary at the frontier cities in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Spain, in order to deal with the different railway gauges encountered along the route.

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Madrid say the railway shows the great attention China has paid to strengthening relations with Europe, while Spanish officials commented that the railway is like a "new silk road for the 21st century, except that now the commerce travels in both directions".

This is NEWS Plus Special English.

Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi has launched a smart air purifier as it tries to tap into the growing market created by the country's hazardous air quality.

Besides traditional functions, the new Xiaomi product can be connected to a smartphone, allowing users to remotely control the device and receive air quality readings.

According to information from Xiaomi's website, the device can learn about air conditions in real time and tell users when to turn on the device. It can also warn users when the filter needs to be replaced.

The purifier sells at around 900 yuan, roughly 145 U.S. dollars. It can provide at least 400 cubic meters of clean air per hour. Xiaomi says the device can clean more than 99 percent of PM 2.5, air particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter which are the main contributor of China's air pollution and are believed to pose great health risks to humans.

Worsening air quality in recent years has spurred the rise of air purifier sales in Chinese cities, but some consumers complain that effectiveness differs between brands.

The smart air purifier is the latest one among Xiaomi's growing line of products, which already includes smartphones, routers, smart televisions, tablets, Internet television boxes and wristbands. Xiaomi is now the world's third largest smartphone maker in terms of shipments.

This is NEWS Plus Special English.

China has donated 500,000 U.S. dollars to the Maldives government to speed up repairs in a desalination plant and restore water to the capital.

The donation was done after the Maldives government announced an estimated 20 million U.S. dollars would be needed to repair the plant that was damaged in a fire resulting in the capital's population of 130,000 being without water for four days.

The Defense Minister of Maldives, Mohamed Nazim, said that the Chinese government has already come forward with the donation, and discussions are continuing with a number of Arab countries, hoping to get monetary aid from them.

The appeals are being made through the Foreign Ministry of Maldives. Private donors have also chipped in with 1 million U. S. dollars also coming in from an anonymous Saudi businessman.

Water services to the capital Mal were shut off on December 4th after a crippling fire damaged crucial components of the island's sole desalination facility the Mal Water and Sewerages Company leaving thousands of people without water for bathing, cleaning, and cooking.