Beijing

National authorities plan to ban indoor smoking

Health authorities plan to ban indoor smoking in public places, according to Mao Qun'an, spokesman for the National Health and Family Planning Commission. In a country of 1.34 billion, most nonsmokers have been affected by the 300 million smokers, and more than 1 million Chinese die from diseases caused by tobacco every year, Mao said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Report: Many people live in basements like rats

Many Chinese people are living like rats in basements because they can't afford housing in big cities, according to a Reuters report cited by local media. They are known as the "rat tribe", the report said. Statistics from Beijing's housing authorities show that about 280,000 people live in basements in the capital.

TV stations suspended for violating ad rule

Two satellite TV stations have been suspended from broadcasting commercial advertisements because they violated a regulation that took effect on Jan 1 that bans shopping advertisements longer than three minutes. Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps TV will be suspended from broadcasting ads for 15 days from Thursday to Jan 24, and Sichuan TV will be suspended from broadcasting ads for seven days from Thursday to Jan 16.

5 workers killed in fall at construction site

Five construction workers died after falling from scaffolding, local authorities announced on Wednesday. The accident happened at about 3 pm Tuesday at a construction site in Tongzhou district. The five workers fell from the sixth floor when the scaffolding leaned suddenly, sources with the district government told Xinhua News Agency.

Jiangsu

Female PhD becomes Internet sensation

A woman from Nanjing Normal University rocketed to popularity on the Internet after pictures of her were uploaded to weibo.com, China's largest platform for Twitter-like micro blogs. The blog said the single woman, a PhD, was seeking a "boyfriend" to accompany her back to her hometown during the Spring Festival. But an online survey by Modern Express showed that about 30 percent of men don't want to marry a PhD. The woman later denied the report, claiming her ID and picture were stolen by someone else.

Shaanxi

Tomb said to hold Tang poet-politician

A 982-word epitaph engraved on a slate at a tomb site indicates that the tomb belongs to Shangguan Wan'er, a well-known poet and politician in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), archaeologists said in a news report by China News Service on Wednesday. The tomb was unearthed by construction workers near Xi'an in August. The Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology has been handling the site.

Hebei

Son leaves father with $618 dinner bill unpaid

A man had to call police after he was abandoned by his own son in a restaurant after they racked up a 3,800 yuan ($618) bill in Shijiazhuang on Tuesday, Hebei Television station reported. The man said his son wanted to treat him to a dinner at the restaurant and ordered a lot of expensive dishes. The son then left after dinner without paying and never returned.

Hubei

Wuhan punishes 31for fireworks violations

Twenty-nine people were fined and another two were detained for breaking rules - introduced a month ago - that govern the use of fireworks in Wuhan, cnr.cn reported on Wednesday. The city revised its fireworks safety regulations on Dec 9, outlawing the sale or use of fireworks in seven downtown districts. The 31 individuals had illegally stored or discharged fireworks, the police said.

Zhejiang

Kindergartners develop fingernail infections

Children in a private kindergarten in Hangzhou were found to have infected fingernails, but the exact cause of the disease is still unclear, according to Hangzhou Daily. The kindergarten confirmed that 17 children had unhealthy symptoms and that the parents of 12 students had withdrawn them from school.

Spurned man in jail for bombing lover's home

The Lanxi people's procuratorate officially approved on Tuesday the arrest of a 58-year-old engineer who set off a homemade bomb near the home of a former girlfriend who refused his marriage proposal. The man, surnamed Yu, is a native of Lanxi and fell in love with his business partner, surnamed Jiang, in 2012. Shortly after Jiang rejected Yu's proposal, he made two bombs and set one off on Jiang's way back home. No one was injured.

Police find Siberian tiger carcass in sack

The carcass of a Siberian tiger was found in a sack about to be put into a trunk in Wenzhou, the city's news website 66wz.com reported on Wednesday. The report said that at about 9 am, the police became suspicious after they saw two men carrying a large sack to a trunk. When police inquired, one man fled and the other was arrested. The Siberian tiger weighed around 150 kg.

Chongqing

Housekeepers get more expensive

The pay rate for housekeepers is surging as the Spring Festival holiday approaches, cnr.cn reported on Wednesday. Many cities are experiencing a shortage of housekeepers as migrant workers head home for the festival, and, as a result, the average wage has increased by 200 yuan to 500 yuan ($33 to $83) per month for housekeeping staff. The monthly wage for a maternity nanny has grown to 8,000 yuan during the holiday season.

Teacher hailed after giving students hongbao

A teacher was voted "the best teacher" by her students after she gave every student in her class a red envelope, or hongbao, containing a 100 yuan ($16.50) banknote on Monday, Chongqing Commercial Daily reported. Ye Xiaoya, from the College of Mathematics and Statistics with Southwest University, exhausted her monthly salary filling the red envelopes.

Sichuan

Man accused of causing crash arrested

A young man was detained for attacking a bus driver and grabbing the steering wheel after missing a bus stop. His attack caused the bus to collide with seven vehicles in Chengdu on Tuesday morning. Nine people were hospitalized. The wounded included eight bus passengers and a passenger in a car.

Yunnan

Beer salesman thanks police for nabbing thieves

A beer sales representative presented a silk banner to a local police station on Monday to express his gratitude to officers for apprehending two thieves who made off with more than 80,000 beer bottle caps in Xishuangbanna. Police have recovered more than 30,000 caps thus far, Metropolis Times reported. The bottle caps are valued at 240,000 yuan ($39,700) as each cap can be cashed in for 3 yuan at local stores that sell the beer.

Xinjiang

Waste discharge fines increase 39.2 percent

The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region collected more than 708 million yuan ($117 million) in fines from companies that violated waste discharge regulations last year, China News Service reported. The record-setting figure is a 39.2-percent increase from the previous year. Authorities investigated 210 local pollution cases last year.

Guangxi

County highway project halted after complaints

Villagers in Xiangzhou county have forced a delay in a highway project amid accusations that the highway is substandard, Guangxi Daily reported. The 11.8-km highway will benefit more than 10 villages after it is finished in two years at a cost of more than 6 million yuan ($992,000). The Xiangzhou county bureau of communications denied the highway is poorly built.

Anhui

Wild boar shot dead after injuring 3 people

A wild boar broke into a residential community in Hefei and injured three people in a Tuesday morning rampage. Police officers managed to shoot the beast dead in a parking area. It remains unclear where the boar came from, People's Daily reported.

Xinhua - China Daily

Phony liquor seized Police destroy 552 bottles of counterfeit Moutai, China's best-known liquor, in Yunyang, a county in Chongqing, on Tuesday. The liquor, confiscated during an inspection of shops, hotels and Moutai distributors in March, would have been worth around 1 million yuan ($165,000) on the market. Photo by Liu Xingmin / for China Daily

(China Daily USA 01/09/2014 page3)