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SCMP Reporter

ANHUI
Crowd-covered hills
Provincial tourism authorities expect more than 4 million visitors to Huangshan , one of the nation's most scenic and popular mountain regions, next week for the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, the Hefei Evening News reports. The government's biggest concern is that the park has only 10,000 car parking spaces.
Untapped wealth
The provincial government will invest more than 15 billion yuan (HK$18.3 billion) over the next decade on mineral surveys, the Anhui Business News reports. In the last few years, geologists have discovered several large untapped reserves of important minerals such as zinc, iron and tungsten. Minerals contributed to more than 14 per cent of the province's GDP last year.
FUJIAN
Indecent photos posted
Police arrested a man in Fuzhou on Tuesday for secretly filming women in a public toilet, the Fuzhou Daily reports. The man, a tenant, allegedly put a concealed camera in the building's bathroom a few months ago and posted some of the videos online. One of the women came across an image of herself online on Monday and called police, who searched the suspect's home and found the videos on his computer.
Illegal structure blitz
The county government of Xiapu in Ningde has issued warnings to 19 local officials for making illegal building extensions, including additional floors added onto rooftops of apartment buildings where they live, the Fujian Daily reports. The government also established a hotline for citizens to report unauthorised renovations. By the end of last week, authorities had removed about a dozen apartment add-ons made by county officials.
HENAN
Matter of principle
A company in charge of power lines says that it is not to blame because a tower carrying high-voltage cables has stood in the middle of a road in Zhengzhou for more than a year, the Henan Business News reports. The power grid company said the tower was there first, and that the road was not supposed to be there.
Spree of mirror thefts
Side-view mirrors were stolen from dozens of luxury cars in Zhengzhou this month, and police suspect an organised gang of thieves, Dahe.cn reports. Parts for imported cars such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW fetch high prices on the mainland, and a side mirror can go for several thousand yuan on the black market.
HUBEI
Family found slain
Four members of a family were found dead in a home in Changyang county, Yichang , on Tuesday, with the youngest victim just 18 months old, the Chutian Metropolis Daily reports. Police suspect murder. The victims were a 46-year-old woman, her 22-year-old son, her daughter-in-law and grandson. Police did not give their names or say how they died, and no possible motive was given for the killings.
Lucky escape
A high-rise window cleaner in Wuhan lost consciousness 30 metres above the ground on Tuesday, and dangled for nearly a half hour before being rescued by firefighters, the Wuhan Morning News reports. The 47-year-old man said he started to get dizzy after being bitten on his neck by a bug, but doctors were conducting tests to determine why he passed out.
HUNAN
Stalls anger residents
Residents of a neighbourhood in Changsha say sanitary conditions have deteriorated since the local government allowed overnight food stalls to operate on a nearby street, the Sanxiang City Express reports. Residents and shop owners say they have woken up to foul smells since the stalls opened a few months ago. They want a public toilet built in the area.
Taxi drags woman
A female passenger was pushed out of a moving taxi after quarrelling with the driver and dragged for more than 100 metres in Changsha on Tuesday night, the Sanxiang City Express reports. The victim, who suffered several cuts and bruises, told police that she had asked the driver why his meter seemed to be clocking faster than usual. When she took out her mobile phone and photographed his licence, he opened the door and pushed her out. Police said finding the driver could be hard as his licence appeared fake.
INNER MONGOLIA
Rapid growth slows
Economic growth in the region during the first half of the year fell by a third, to 12 per cent, compared with the average growth of 18 per cent seen from 2002 to last year, the Inner Mongolia Daily reports. The rapid development of coal and other mining had enabled the region to maintain such a high growth rate in the past decade, but a national decline in economic growth is starting to affect the regional economy.
Bullets on the border
Chinese troops patrolling the border with Mongolia have confiscated more than 400 bullets from herdsmen on the Inner Mongolia side this month, Xinhua reports. Most bullets were handed over voluntarily after the herdmen were told that possessing ammunition and weapons was illegal. No guns were seized.
JIANGXI
DIY disaster
Two farmers who were redecorating a flat set off an explosion when they mistakenly connected a water line to a gas pipe, the Jiangnan City Daily reports. They opened the tap, but when no water started coming out, they took a break and lit up a cigarette. Other people in the building said they heard a loud explosion from the fifth-floor apartment, and moments later saw the two men running from the building in panic. They were treated at hospital for mild burns.
Hospital's child influx
Doctors at the Jiangxi Children's Hospital, one of the most highly regarded paediatric facilities in the province, are calling for a charity fund to be set up to help hundreds of children who are abandoned at the hospital every year, including more than 400 last year, the Information Daily reports. Some parents leave their newborns at the hospital after not paying medical bills, and other infants are found near the hospital entrance. Many of the children have birth defects or diseases that require expensive treatment. The hospital spent more than 5 million yuan last year treating the abandoned children, but the bigger problem is finding homes for them.
XINJIANG
Desert hail a first
Turpan , an oasis city on the Silk Road, saw hail on Saturday for the first time since meteorological records started being kept in 1952, the Xinjiang Metropolis News reports. Weather authorities said the three-minute hailstorm featured pellets as wide as 8mm. Meteorologists had no explanation and were calling it an extreme weather event.
Deer selective breeding
A semi-military government organisation in Korla has found a way to control the sex of endangered Yarkand deer in the breeding process. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps said on its website that all 270 of the animals - a subspecies of red deer - that it had bred this month were male. The Yarkand, native to Central Asia, are bred for their antlers. Researchers said the sex-selection process involves freezing sperm and artificial insemination.


China Digest, September 27, 2012

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