IN BRIEF (Page 4)

Beijing

Crackdown targets publications, sites

As part of its fight against pornography and illegal publications, China confiscated more than 9.8 million publications and dealt with 5,500 cases in the first half of this year. According to a statement on Tuesday by the Office of the Fight Against Pornography and Illegal Publications, authorities also deleted more than 27 million harmful or pornographic online posts, and shut down more than 62,000 websites and applications for publishing vulgar content. It said 565 of the cases were criminal ones.