Prepare to reopen Waitresses wash items stained by July 21 floodwaters in front of a restaurant in Shidu, Beijing's Fangshan district, on Wednesday. The restaurant and some other tourist attractions in Shidu plan to reopen by the end of the month. Photo by Cheng Gong / for China Daily

Beijing

Alert issued as Kai-Tak nears

Tropical storm Kai-Tak has developed into a typhoon, with the national observatory raising its emergency response to Level 2 from 4.

The China Meteorological Administration made the announcement at 9 am on Thursday, following an orange alert issued three hours earlier that Kai-Tak, 870 kilometers southeast of Zhanjiang city of coastal Guangdong province, had developed into a typhoon in the South China Sea.

According to the administration, Kai-Tak, with a maximum wind speed of 118 kilometers per hour, is heading for the southeastern coast at 20 to 25 km/h and is expected to land in Guangdong before noon on Friday.

Zhejiang

Driver dies after truck overturns

A driver of a fuel tanker has died after the vehicle overturned on an expressway in Zhejiang province. The incident on Thursday also caused a chemical spill.

The 30-ton truck was en route from Shanghai to Fujian province when it overturned on the road at around 9 am, a spokesman with the fire brigade in Zhejiang's Quzhou city said. Two people were on board the truck. One died and the other was injured.

The subsequent spill of acid oil left a strong smell within a 100-meter radius. Rescuers from the fire brigade stopped the spill and the tanker was removed from the expressway.

Tibet

Campaign busts 15 criminal rings

Police in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region, have busted 15 criminal gangs and seized nearly 300 firearms since a campaign to lower the crime rate began three months ago.

The campaign has brought the crime rate in Lhasa down by 50.2 percent year-on-year, Yalin, a senior public security official in the city, told a news conference on Wednesday.

He said 638 criminal cases have been cracked by police during the campaign, which also saw the seizure of more than 1 metric ton of explosives, 7,688 rounds of ammunition, 1,047 detonators and 1,128 knives.

Guangdong

Seized equipment auctioned off

Guangdong customs raised 2.62 million yuan ($415,000) for the national treasury after it auctioned off smuggled video and photographic equipment on Wednesday in the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone, which borders Macao.

Zhuhai's Gongbei customs officers seized 1,209 pieces of video and photographic equipment valued at 400 million yuan when they busted a major smuggling gang in February, destroying a major smuggling channel in the region.

It was the largest video and photographic equipment smuggling case cracked on the Chinese mainland.

Chongqing

Thousands face shortage of water

Thousands of people in Central and Southwest China are facing drinking-water shortages because of insufficient rainfall and scorching heat.

In the southwestern Chongqing municipality, 79,000 residents in the mountainous regions are facing temporary water shortages after rainfall in the megacity has dropped 20 to 60 percent year-on-year since June, according to the local flood control and drought relief office. The city has suffered from hot days with maximum temperatures at above 38 C since early August.

In Suizhou city of Central China's Hubei province, where temperatures have been as high as 35 C since July, insufficient rainfall over the past 25 months is endangering the drinking-water supply for more than 520,000 local residents and 160,000 livestock.

Gansu

Musk deer thrive in natural reserve

The number of alpine musk deer has grown to more than 1,000 in a natural reserve in Northwest China's Gansu province, making it Asia's largest captive breeding base for the endangered animals.

The Xinglong Mountain State Natural Reserve, set up in 2001, covers 4,667 hectares on highlands near Lanzhou. The number of musk deer has grown by almost 50 percent annually in the past four years, local officials said on Thursday.

The survival of wild alpine musk deer was threatened by poaching in the late 1990s after the rise in market value of "musk oil" - an extract from the animal's gland - for traditional medicine.

Shanghai

Fake Chateau Lafite wine seized

Police in Shanghai's Fengxian district have broken a counterfeit ring that produced and sold fake Chateau Lafite Rothschild, one of the most popular wines in China, police said on Thursday.

On April 5, police arrested six people and seized more than 4,000 bottles of counterfeit wine after receiving a tip.

Police also found a packing machine, dozens of wooden packing boxes, and hundreds of brand labels and bottle caps. Meanwhile, 1,678 bottles of fake Chateau Lafite and 684 bottles of Margaux were found in other two underground factories in Fengxian district and Minhang district.

Jiangsu

Police drill causes panic in Wuxi

A police drill simulating a bank robbery in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, caused panic because the exercise wasn't communicated to the public in advance, eastday.com reported on Thursday.

On Wednesday afternoon, a local netizen wrote on his micro blog that a bank robbery was made by two men who had knives and robbed some 100,000 yuan ($15,700). The note was widely read and caused widespread concern.

The city's police then informed the public that the so-called bank robbery was a practical exercise.

China Daily - Xinhua

(China Daily 08/17/2012 page2)