The middle-aged man in Nanjiang County bought 50 tickets for the China Welfare Lottery's Union Lotto, known as "two-colored ball," with 100 yuan and one ticket has the winning number.

The unidentified man is perhaps the biggest lottery winner in Sichuan, the local welfare lottery center told the Southern Metropolis Daily.

He needs to pay about 52 million yuan in windfall tax when he comes to claim the jackpot, the center's officials said.

China's biggest lottery winner emerged last June in Zhejiang Province when he won a record 514 million yuan, and the second biggest winner was a teacher in central Henan Province who scooped nearly 360 million yuan in October 2009.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a news briefing in Beijing that China wants the violence resolved through dialogue and said Beijing was considering sending officials to West Asian and North African countries to push forward a political solution to the Syrian crisis.

China has defended its veto of a United Nations vote on Syria, saying it was called before differences were bridged.

On December 16 last year the city required new microbloggers to register using their real names and the move was soon adopted in other major cities, including Shanghai, in what the authorities said was a bid to purge online rumors and enhance credibility.

Now, existing microbloggers in Beijing who fail to register using their real names by March 16 will only be able to view messages on microblogging platforms.

After that date, unregistered microbloggers who try to post messages will have them intercepted and stopped, officials with the Beijing Network Management Office told the Beijing Evening News yesterday.

So far, the new rule only applies to Beijing. Shanghai network management officials said they were not aware of the latest edict.

China's major microblogging platforms are already encouraging users to register with their real names.

Some platforms are even offering lottery prizes, which include prepaid mobile phone cards or gift coupons, as a reward.

On Weibo.com, new users have been required to provide their names and ID numbers during registration since January 1. Anyone registering with false information is banned from posting or reposting.

A total of 3 million new users have registered with their real names since the beginning of the year, Weibo officials said.

The new rule in Beijing sparked controversy online with some people saying they wanted to be able to speak freely on the Internet without anyone knowing their identity.

"Everything I have written on the microblog is words of my innermost thoughts and feelings, which I don't want to show to people who know me well," a microblogger called "Burnout" said. "The real name registration will inevitably put my secrets at risk of being exposed, and I will have to delete the account."

Another said: "I will certainly be more careful of what I say."

Under the real name regulation, users are banned from posting and duplicating illegal content, including information that leaks state secrets, damages national security and interests, and instigates ethnic resentment, discrimination or illegal rallies that disrupt social order.

The eggs, bought from northern China's Hebei Province, were barely edible and tasted like a rubber ball. Indeed the "yolks" could be bounced off the floor to 40 centimeters high, Guangzhou Daily reported yesterday.

Samples are awaiting exams, Leizhou Industry and Commerce Administration said.

More than 20 journalists dined in a local hotel restaurant and realized the steamed eggs were problematic. "They tasted like plastic," one said.

"You will be served the same eggs in every one of the restaurants in Leizhou," said a restaurant manager surnamed Chen.

Fake eggs cropped up a few years ago in some poor regions of northern and central China, and soon spread across the nation. Probes showed that fake eggs were made from industrial and commercial chemicals including alginic acid, calcium chloride and calcium carbonate. Long-term consumption of fake eggs can lead to memory loss or dementia, experts told the Labor Daily.

A worker can make 300 fake eggs per hour in a small room, and each kilogram sells for 1.2 yuan (19 US cents).

Owners of the Fulin seafood restaurant in Sanya, Hainan Province, were banned from operating restaurants for the next three years and were dealt the maximum fine, the Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

The restaurant created fancy names for normal seafood, deceived diners into thinking they were precious products and charged them excessively, said the Sanya Industry and Commerce Administration.

The oversight body also said it will launch an investigation into every seafood restaurant in the city to ensure a regulated market. This came after an apology from the Party chief of Sanya, Jiang Sixian.

Jiang made the public apology on February 1 after tens of thousands of netizens vented their anger regarding overcharging during the Spring Festival.

"Local authorities will carry out a zero-tolerance policy towards overcharging to make Sanya a high-end resort," Jiang said.

A microblogger named Luo Di triggered the online discussion by revealing a miserable dining experience endured by his friend during the holiday. Luo revealed that a simple three-course meal cost his friend surnamed Gao 4,000 yuan (US$634) at Fulin on January 25.

"My friend told me that a man sitting with him only inquired about the price of a fish without ordering it. But the restaurant owner immediately cooked the fish and charged him 1,160 yuan per kilogram," Luo wrote on Weibo.com.

His post was forwarded more than 40,000 times before he deleted it on Sunday.

The Fulin seafood restaurant denied the criticism, saying its pricing practice was perfect, China Central Television reported. But when its crimes were exposed, Fulin went silent.

Hainan is becoming many Chinese people's first choice to spend their holiday for its exotic island views and tropical climate. More than a million tourists were estimated to have swarmed to the province, pouring 4.3 billion yuan into the island during the week-long Spring Festival holiday this year from January 22, Hainan tourism officials said.

But Hainan, especially Sanya, was also slammed for soaring prices and scammers who allegedly fleeced island visitors.

Wu Kunxiong, Hainan's deputy tourism director, confirmed this and told Xinhua the problem could be attributed to "inadequate facilities."

The Beijing's Chaoyang District People's Court opened the case on Monday. The 26-year-old surnamed Zhang said the Beijing Kempinski Hotel banned her from staying at the hotel after she complained following an incident when a foreign man barged in on her as she was taking a sauna that was supposed to be open only to women that night.

Zhang is demanding 330,000 yuan (US$52,338) in compensation from the hotel, a public apology and having her name wiped off the blacklist.

The hotel claimed in Monday's court session that it had no blacklist and the banning of Zhang was due to her threatening behavior after the incident.

The court in Beijing is expected to open a second hearing on February 20.

"The whole thing is unfair to me," Zhang told Shanghai Daily. "I don't deserve this."

The incident happened in July when Zhang and her crew were staying in the Beijing hotel after a flight from Munich, Germany. A naked foreign man suddenly walked in on Zhang when she was also naked in the sauna room of the hotel.

"I was totally shocked," Zhang recalled.

Zhang said the incident was caused by the hotel's negligence, as access to the sauna room from the men's bathroom was not locked.

The hotel later apologized but Zhang thought it was "insincere" without an investigation or punishment of any hotel management staff.

Because of Zhang's inability to stay at the Kempinski, an appointed hotel of Lufthansa Airlines, Zhang was terminated by the company, she said. The airline did not comment on the incident.

Zhang also filed a labor arbitration in Germany against her former employer Lufthansa.

Ten batches of chocolate produced in German, Italy and Austria contained excessive amounts of the copper, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.

Products such as Rausch 75 percent dark chocolate from Germany, and Austrian Zotte chocolate, were on the blacklist.

Excessive amounts of copper can affect the liver and gall bladder and could eventually cause cirrhosis, officials said.

Meanwhile, Van Parijis fruit candy produced in Belgium was found to contain coloring which is banned in food production in China.

A type of dumpling made in South Korea was found to contain excessive amounts of bacteria which could cause intestinal and stomach diseases.

As for cosmetics, a Payot mineral facial mask from France contained high levels of arsenic, which can cause cancer. Another type of Payot facial mask contained excessive bacteria, which could result in skin infections.

The products have either been destroyed or returned to their producing countries and had not entered the Chinese market, officials said.

Some of the brands can be found online, but sellers said they stocked products from trading companies rather than from producing countries directly, so all products had passed the inspections.

The release followed a stream of intensive rescue efforts carried out by the Chinese government in collaboration with the Sudanese government and other parties.

On January 28, a group of gunmen belonging to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM)/northern sector attacked the camp of a Chinese company operating at a road construction site in South Kordofan State.

A total of 47 Chinese workers were in the camp then, among whom 29 were abducted by the assailants while the other 18 managed to escape.

Among the latter, 17 were later found by the Sudanese army and transferred to a safe place, and one was confirmed killed after having for days been unaccounted for.

The Henan Province native surnamed Cai, 37, allegedly robbed the store around 9:30am on January 30 with a self-made shotgun and escaped with 1,173 grams of jewelry valued over 300,000 yuan.

Cai was seized in a village near Daya Bay yesterday morning and police found a shotgun with four bullets and all the robbed jewelries in his rented house.

Police DNA tests showed the blood stains on a bag Cai left near the crime scene matched the DNA of blood collected at the scene of another jewelry store robbery he committed in Henan Province in 2004, local media said.

The woman surnamed Zhu hit the luxury sedan in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province on January 31. A traffic police judged that Zhu was mainly responsible for the accident.

It was just a minor accident with a small scratch on the door of the Rolls-Royce and a slight damage to one of its wheels. But a friend of the Rolls-Royce owner reached the scene and claimed it would take 2 million yuan to repair. This made Zhu sleepless for several nights.

Since the Rolls-Royce was insured in Shanghai, both car owners and the representatives of their insurance companies met in a Shanghai auto repair shop yesterday to settle the issue.

A check-up showed that no important parts of the Rolls-Royce were damaged in the accident. After negotiation, the compensation was set at 350,000 yuan with Zhu's insurance company paying 162,000 yuan of the total sum.

Tseng Kun-ti was accused of embezzling the painting valued at NT$30 million (US$1 million) while he was curator of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan's Central News Agency reported today.

Tseng was led away for investigation after prosecutors found the painting in his office. He was later released on a NT$100,000 bail.

The painting was sent as a gift by Beijing Sanbai Calligraphy and Painting Academy to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in June 2010 as a symbol of the blood bond between people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, the report said.

A well-known mainland artist was commissioned by the academy to make the painting, "Mazu Blesses China," in August 2009 when the island province was battered by typhoon Morakot.

Mazu is a goddess widely worshipped in Taiwan and Fujian Province.

The restrictions will be implemented depending on the last digit of the license plates of state-financed cars used by government agencies, the news service said citing a recent joint plan drawn up by 17 ministries including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance.
The excessive use of government cars has long been criticized in China, prompting the central government to issue restrictions in the sector.

Shanghai, Beijing and some other Chinese provinces started to implement similar restrictions on government cars in 2008. But there have been reports that the ban is no longer well implemented in some areas and some local government agencies simply purchased additional cars to avoid the ban.

The latest government plan also called on government workers to walk for a distance of less than 1 kilometer, to ride a bicycle for a trip of less than 3 kilometers and to use public transport if a trip is less than 5 kilometers.

They falsely claimed the imported amber was a kind of cheap rosin to the Shenzhen Customs and forged contracts to evade high import tariffs between 2006 and 2011, the prosecutors said.

Two Taiwanese businessmen in the case were arrested last May and authorities confiscated about 500 kilograms of amber, valued at 10 million yuan, and many forged documents found in their house, the New Express Daily reported today.

Amber is fossilized resin and is more expensive than resin. China has a rich supply of homegrown resin but a Shenzhen jewelry company always imported large quantities of resin. This made the local customs suspicious.

The custom officials raided the company and discovered their fraud, the paper said.