Shanghai

Wedding wave

THE number of weddings reached a peak over the seven-days?vacation. About 2,000 new couples were married on October 2, an auspicious day for weddings according to the lunar calendar. It is estimated that more than 20,000 new couples were married during the national holiday. Wedding banquets have taken up most of the space in the restaurants and hotels. According to an official from the Shanghai Marriage Registration Bureau, increasing numbers of couples are likely to register their marriage on a “picked?day. It is more convenient to register on the Internet in advance, with registration only taking four to five minutes.

Vacation choices

A TOTAL of 817 tour groups including 17,664 people took trips in foreign countries during the recent holiday, an increasing of 16.5 per cent on the previous year. The European tours which have become available to local people recently were especially popular. Of the total, 111 tour groups with 3,283 tourists seized this opportunity. Established tour trails to Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and Japan, were also heavily booked. The Chinese cities of Hong Kong and Macao were still the most strongly favoured destinations.

School security

SECURITY alarm systems has been established in the Xu Hui District, covering 13 communities and 180 schools. The measure has been introduced to defend against attacks on Shanghai schools. The system links together schools with local police stations and community centres. Infrared detectors, alarms and TV monitors have been installed in the schools. It is estimated that it would take less than five minutes for police to reach a school if the alarm was triggered. This move has been taken following recent violent attacks on schoolchildren in other parts of China.

Childhood dangers

A three-year-old girl named Lan Lan fell 6 metres from a window on October 2. She is still in a dangerous condition. According to her relatives, she was playing on a bed next to the window when she leant out and fell. Her mothers and other relative did not notice the potential danger until the fall occurred. An official survey found that accidents had become the biggest killer of children aged under 14.

Feline sacrifice

AN eight-year-old cat refused to eat for over a month after its owner ?an 80-year-old woman ?was hospitalized with a brain clot. The cat died of starvation on October 2. The old woman adopted the white cat eight years ago and got along with it very well. She set aside money to buy milk for the cat and even slept with it. After she fell ill and was taken to hospital the cat refused to eat or to move from her door.

Paternity suit

A MAN surnamed Jing faced a man of nearly 80-years in court and demanded to be accepted as his son. Jing was born illegitimate as the result of an ex-marital affair between his mother and a man surnamed Wang. In 1956, his mother sued Wang for alimony. Nearly forty years later, Jing travelled to Shanghai to find his father, on the basis of the 1956 alimony judgment. However, Wang’s memory had deteriorated due to illness and he was unable to confirm the relationship between them. The court, however, supported Jing’s claim.

Striking ingratitude

A YOUNG woman surnamed Jing was beaten by a foreign woman when she tried to help him communicate with a taxi driver. The foreign woman was haggling over the taxi fare to Hongqiao Airport, reluctant to pay the 15 yuan airport pike toll. Jing said she went to help them after seeing the driver and his passenger having trouble communicating. However, after Jing explained the issue to the foreigner, she became foul-mouthed and struck Jing’s face. After they were taken to the police station, the foreigner expressed regrets and agreed to pay compensation.

Beer face off

A MAN was recently jailed over two beers. When Xie Junhui, who worked in a local nightclub, wanted to give out free drinks to his customers on the early morning of July 26, Shen, the manager of the bar, stopped him. Thinking Shen’s decision made him lose face in public, Xie flew into a rage and hurled a can of beer at Shen, breaking his nose. Xie was sentenced to six-months imprisonment for the assault, with another six-months suspended, by the Jing’an District People’s Court.

SMS relief

AN astonishing phone bill of more than 1,600 yuan (US$193) for SMS, led to a court case. The bill was equivalent to more than 16,000 SMS messages in just one month, or one every three minutes. Wang bought the cellphone in question for his son last September and noticed the December bill amounted to a staggering 1,726 yuan (US$208). He went to China Unicom to cancel the SMS, yet bill continued to include charges for the service. Admitting that his son had subscribed to SMS through Internet though, Wang still thought Unicom should be held responsible for failing to cancel the service promptly, so he refused to pay the bill. He was sued by the phone company in July. The Pudong New Area District Court recently decided he should pay everything owed to the phone company except the SMS charges since December.

JIANGXI

Mine deaths

A GAS explosion struck a coal mine in East China’s Jiangxi Province on Monday, killing nine miners and injuring more than 20 others. The blast occurred at about 12:20pm on Monday in one of the shafts of the Shangzhuang Coal Company in Fengcheng city, Jiangxi Province, according to sources with the Jiangxi Provincial Coal Group Corp. So far, all of the bodies have been found. More than 20 miners were slightly injured. Further investigation into the cause and rescue work are underway.

ZHEJIANG

Fatal flight

A SIGHTSEEING aircraft which can land on water fell into a reservoir during its trial flight on the afternoon of September 30 in Shaoxing in East China’s Zhejiang Province, and the pilot is still missing. This was only a fortnight after a previous accident in which a helicopter crashed in neighbouring Ningbo city, killing four and injuring three. Dong Ning, the pilot, is 40 years old. In February, he was hired by Xinchang Flight Club as a pilot. On September 28, he succeeded in the first trial, but failed in the second flight. The water of the reservoir is 38 metres deep. Debris from the plane has already been removed from the water.

BEIJING

Bomb threats

TWO men in East China’s Jiangxi Province were detained by police for making bomb threats last week against six hotels, including three in Beijing. They called three Beijing hotels last Thursday morning and threatened to blow them up if they did not pay 100,000 yuan (US$12,000). An employee of the Holiday Inn Beijing Lido said all guests and employees were evacuated. Only after several hours were people allowed back in. Beijing police found the phone calls had come from Shangrao in Jiangxi Province. The two suspects, detained the next day, said they had made similar calls to three other hotels in East China’s Anhui Province.

YUNNAN

Making the connection

CHINA has brought its mobile phone network to the last of its ethnic minority regions, which had been previously cut off from communication with the outside world. The district of Drung in the mountainous county of Gongshan in southwestern Yunnan province was connected to the mobile phone network last Saturday ?the last of 55 ethnic minority regions to be hooked up, said the Xinhua news agency. The district has a population of 3,990 spread over an area of 2,000 square kilometres (781 square miles) and is one of the poorest areas in the country. The Drung ethnic group, with a total population of only 5,816, is one of the smallest ethnic minorities in China.

SHAANXI

Murdered official

AN official of Suide County in Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province was stabbed to death when he was taking a walk outside at around 9:00pm on October 3. The official, named Dang Suihong, was in charge of the county’s social security system. According to a woman witness, three men were involved in killing the official. One of the three people was also injured, but the murderers were still at large, Xinjing Newspaper reported.

SHENZHEN

Tour fraud

SOME 43 tourists from Guangzhou lost their tour guide on their first day of their tour of Shenzhen on October 1. Initial investigations showed that the travel agency they had booked with was a fake one. All the tourists said they had learnt about the travel agency through brochures handed to them on the streets. The pleasant tones of the agency and the low prices quoted proved very attractive. After paying the money and reaching Shenzhen on the tour bus, they found the situation had changed. The tour guide said something had gone wrong with the bus and all the people should take a taxi to Zhongying Street, a destination on their tour itinerary. But when they reached the site, the guide was no where to be found and the agency could not be reached by telephone.

world

Us troop cut

WASHINGTON ?The United States agreed under pressure from South Korea on Wednesday to stretch out over an additional three years until 2008 the withdrawal of 12,500 US troops from that country. The joint announcement came after Washington had signaled in June that it intended to remove the troops ?representing a third of the 37,000-strong US military presence in South Korea ?by the end of 2005. Under the plan, announced after weeks of negotiations, 5,000 US troops will leave South Korea this year, 3,000 next year, 2,000 in 2006 and the final 2,500 in 2007 and 2008.

Plutonium shipment

CHERBOURG, France ?A shipment of 140 kg of US Weapons-grade plutonium arrived in the French port of Cherbourg on Wednesday, despite protests by anti-nuclear campaigners who fear it is vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Two boats sailed into the northwestern port with the plutonium at around dawn after a more than two-week journey from Charleston in the United States. The cargo was expected to be unloaded in the next few hours. The plutonium shipment is part of a post-Cold War agreement between the United States and Russia to get rid of plutonium from excess nuclear warheads. Protesters from the environmental group Greenpeace have been barred from going within 100 metres of the shipment, but they watched the vessels from a distance in several small boats. Any protester who goes nearer faces a 75,000-euro (US$92,280) fine. The plutonium will be taken under armed guard to a nearby reprocessing plant in the La Hague peninsula in northwestern France and will then be driven nearly 1,000 km (660 miles) to a factory in southeastern France for recycling.

(Agencies via Xinhua)