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

An international AIDS conference has been held in Australia with tribute to several delegates who were killed en route to the gathering when their plane was shot down over Ukraine.

Officials at the opening ceremony for the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne held a moment of silence for the six AIDS researchers and activists killed aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. All 298 people on board the plane died when it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on July 17th as it flew over rebel-held eastern Ukraine.

Among the passengers was prominent Dutch researcher Joep Lange, former president of the International AIDS Society, and spokesman Glenn Thomas of the World Health Organization based in Geneva.

Around 12,000 scientists and activists from 200 countries attended the conference to discuss the latest developments in HIV and AIDS research.

This is NEWS Plus Special English.

A new government study shows the rate of HIV infections diagnosed in the United States each year fell by one-third over the past decade. Experts hailed it as hopeful news that the AIDS epidemic may be slowing in the U.S.

Researchers say that the reasons for the drop are not clear. It might mean fewer new infections are occurring, or that most infected people already have been diagnosed so more testing won't necessarily find many more cases.

The study result was released ahead of the International AIDS Conference which was held between July 20th and 25th in Melbourne, Australia.

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, which destroys the immune system. The World Health Organization estimates that 35 million people globally have the virus. In the United States, 1 million people are thought to be infected, though many don't know it.

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

Now is the time to get moonstruck. Forty-five years ago on Sunday, Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon. Armstrong's "one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind" on the dusty lunar surface on July 20th, 1969, still stirs hearts.

At the launch site at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, NASA honored Armstrong on Monday with a renaming ceremony of the historic Operations and Checkout Building. Both Aldrin and Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot who orbited the moon, were there.

People can join the celebration, at the very least, by walking out and looking at the moon over the weekend.

The Armstrong family had said following his death in 2012 that those who wish to honor Neil can simply honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty; and the next time we walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at us, we can think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.

This is NEWS Plus Special English.

China's first lunar rover, Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, is still functioning despite the malfunction of some of its equipment.

According to Wu Wei-ren, chief designer of China's lunar probe project, Yutu has been woken up after the past dormant period, but the problems still exist.

The rover will embrace another "working day", which is about 14 Earth days, in an abnormal state caused by mechanical failures.

During the lunar night, there is no sunlight to provide power to Yutu's solar panel, and the extremely low temperatures can damage its delicate electronics, so the rover must "hibernate".

The 140-kilogram, six-wheeled Yutu, is part of the Chang'e-3 lunar probe. It has outlived its designed lifespan of three months since it reached the moon in mid-December last year.

The rover has completed its designated scientific and engineering tasks, analyzed major elements on the lunar surface and studied mineral resources.

However, after almost six weeks of operation, the moon buggy reported a mechanical control problem in January, before entering its second period of dormancy.

Since then, it has been unable to move any farther, remaining around 20 meters southwest of where it landed. Its antenna and solar panels cannot be folded, either.

Chinese engineers blamed the problem on the "complicated lunar surface environment".

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

A 38-year-old man has died of plague in northwest China's Gansu Province.

The case was reported in Jiuquan City, and the man died on July 16th. He had been in contact with a dead marmot, which is a member of the squirrel family.

A total of 150 people who had close contact with him, have been put in quarantine and are under medical observation. None of them has reported any symptoms of the disease so far.

China's National Health and Family Planning Commission has sent disease prevention and control specialists to the city to prevent the plague from spreading.

Plague is categorized as a Class A infectious disease, the most serious category under China's Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases.