Beijing Times
June 19, 2009

A 26-year-old woman went on trial yesterday in Beijing on fraud charge, reported today's Beijing Times.

Liang Jing, the defendant shown in the front-page photo, was charged with defrauding a total of over 14 million yuan by setting up a fictitious company and luring people into buying real estate she did not actually possess. According to the newspaper, Liang, a real estate agent, forged signatures and documents and "sold" apartments to 49 victims, some of the whom even lived in the properties for over a year before they eventually found out that it did not belong to them.

In other news of bad behavior, Shanghai Jiaotong University has decided to expel former table tennis world champion Liu Guozheng, who was accepted to the school in 2005. Liu was reportedly dismissed for poor attendance.

Universities sometimes extend enrollment offers to celebrities in the hopes of benefitting from media exposure, but in this case, it looks like Liu may have been kept out of the loop: when the newspaper contacted him, he said that he wasn't aware of the expulsion, and that he is currently in a postgraduate program at Beijing Sports University.

The top headline reports on the latest announcement from Beijing's education authorities, who will now schools to shut down if three or more students are diagnosed with A(H1N1) flu.