GUANGXI

Drinking water 'safe' in city

Drinking water in the southern Chinese city of Liuzhou is safe, said Zhang Lan, a researcher with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, in response to concerns triggered after the city's toxic cadmium spill.

Excessive cadmium had not been found in tap water in the city, and drinking water was up to the required health standards according to test results, Zhang said at a news conference held by the Ministry of Health.

Cadmium pollution was first detected in the Longjiang River on Jan 15 in Hechi city. It later spread downstream into the Liujiang River, threatening water safety in Liuzhou, a city with 1.5 million permanent residents in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Cleanup efforts that took days have managed to bring down the pollution levels near or within the official limit, authority said.

GUIZHOU

4 buried under scaffold collapse

Four people were buried when a scaffold toppled at a construction site in Southwest China's Guizhou province on Saturday, the local government said.

The accident happened at around 10 am in the city of Qingzhen, located about 22 km from the provincial capital of Guiyang, the Qingzhen city government said in a press release.

ANHUI

Wuhu home subsidies not a bailout

The government of Wuhu, a city in eastern Anhui province, announced on Thursday that it will grant subsidies and deed tax exemptions to first-home purchasers in 2012, making it the first Chinese city to boost home sales since 2010. The move triggered speculation that authorities may lift curbs on the real estate sector.

However, the Wuhu city government rebuffed bailout speculation on Friday, saying the policies are intended to meet consumers' rigid demands for home purchases and attract talented people to work in Wuhu.

JIANGSU

2 dead, 6 injured in freeway fog

A chain of accidents involving 21 vehicles killed two people and injured six others on Saturday morning on a fog-engulfed expressway in Jiangsu province, police said.

Most of the accidents were pileups or rear-end collisions reported around 8:20 am between the city of Changzhou and the provincial capital of Nanjing, according to a traffic police officer in Nanjing who participated in rescue efforts.

As of midday, traffic had resumed on two of the expressway's four lanes, while police are still working to open the other two.

BEIJING

Kidnapped workers return home

The 29 Chinese workers freed from abduction by Sudanese anti-government forces arrived at Beijing Capital International Airport on Thursday afternoon.

They were released by the rebels and taken to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, on Tuesday by a plane chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin urged countries to take tangible measures to guarantee the security of overseas Chinese citizens and institutions.

CPI jumps to three-month high

The consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 4.5 percent in January from a year earlier, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Thursday.

Food prices, which account for about one-third of the CPI basket, gained 10.5 percent year-on-year in January, compared with a 9.1 percent increase in December. Surging food prices have driven the CPI up by 3.29 percentage points.

College entrance examinations begin

More than 60,000 high school students around the country attended two separate entrance examinations jointly held by two university alliances on Saturday.

The alliance headed by Peking University groups 11 universities, including Hong Kong University, while that headed by Tsinghua University boasts seven, including Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Renmin University of China.

The examination held by the Peking University alliance covers literature, mathematics, and different subjects for arts and science students, while that of the Tsinghua University focuses on the innovation abilities of students.

Individual entrance examinations by the university alliances were launched at the beginning of 2011.

China Daily - Xinhua

(China Daily 02/12/2012 page2)