The Beijing News
April 1, 2008

Big headline on the front page
President Hu Jintao announced the start of the Olympic torch relay yesterday. The first stop will be Kazakhstan.

Legal action on plastic bags
• One of the the small headlines in the bottom right box is about environment protection regulations: According to a law that takes effect on June 1, any company that makes, uses or provides the thin film plastic bags that were recently banned will be subject to legal punishment.

Other stories on the front page
• An interview with Wu Hua (吴华), the journalist who is responsible for the fake video of South China tiger reveals more details about the incident.
Mr. Wu said one of his motivations is that he thought the video might bring a better environmental protection to Pingjiang and he was also infuriated with Tiger Zhou, the farmer who involved in another fake tiger incident, for news fabrication.
• Xu Ting (许霆), a security guard who was earlier sentenced to life in prison for withdrawing 175,000 yuan from a malfunctioning ATM, had his term reduced to five years yesterday after a retrial. The ATM from which he withdrew 175,000 yuan only debited one yuan from his account for every 1,000 because of technical error. The article suggests that he should thank the media for his retrial.
• Subsidized low-rent apartments in Beijing will hopefully be available to more citizens as the qualification requirements are expanded to include people with slightly higher incomes.
• Beijing will introduce a stricter test for drivers licenses.
• Lhasa: 289 rioters turned themselves in to the police, 414 suspects were arrested.

Stories on the other pages
• According to a new regulation in Guangdong Province, violators can face fine up to 15,000 yuan for stealing QQ accounts from others.
• More than one year after a corruption case was adjudicated in Fuyang(阜阳), Anhui Province, most officials who got their jobs through bribery remain their positions. In response to questioning, an official in charge said: "If we dismiss all of them, some departments will be paralyzed." Another local official disagreed: "Fuyang has a backward economy, but we never have a shortage of officials."