According to Beijing Daily Messenger , a thief with a pistol was arrested only 20 minutes after he robbed a company near Beijing's famous Wangfujing shopping street. The thief had been an employee of the company; he stole RMB 18,501. (The pictured front page shows the arrested thief.)

Airlines in China have been a source of much bad news lately. Just this month, two boys climbed onto a plane in Kunming airport; one fell off as the plane was taking off and died. The other survived a one hour flight hanging on to some part of the undercarriage. The airliner crash in Baotou killed 55. As a result, there have been many news items about planes discovering technical problems and returning to airports immediately after take-off.

A plain-clothes air martial on an Air China flight beat a passenger. Soon afterwards, an air martial in a plane taking off from Linyi, Shandong got beaten up by a passenger who turned out to be a big shot: a village general secretary of the CCP who was a delegate at the 10th People's Congress.

Other hot non-violent news is the new Chinese People's Liberation Army's winter uniform. Finally we say goodbye with the old uniform which has been around for 30 years. The picture below shows the new uniform: (army on the left, air force on the right).