Ex-Wcup ref jailed

A Chinese court has sentenced four soccer referees, including a former World Cup match official, to up to seven years in jail for involvement in match-fixing* and gambling on Thursday.

About 60 local players, referees, coaches and officials were put on trial in December following a two-year investigation into match-fixing that has blighted the country’s struggling soccer leagues in recent years.

Bank reserves cut

China cut the amount of cash that banks must set aside as reserves* for the second time in three months to spur* lending as Europe’s debt crisis and a cooling property market threaten economic growth.

Reserve requirements would fall by 50 basis points from Friday, the People’s Bank of China said on Saturday. Before the move, the ratio for the nation’s biggest lenders stood at 21 percent.

Proview to sue Apple

Proview Shenzhen’s tumultuous* dispute with Apple intensified on Friday, when Proview said it plans to sue Apple in a United States court for alleged violation of a 2009 agreement involving the iPad trademark.

“If everything goes well, we might file a claim against Apple in the United States a month from now,” Proview Group founder Yang Longsan said in a Beijing news conference on Friday.

Space mission

Three astronauts* will blast off* on a Long March rocket and board the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) space laboratory, orbiting* above the earth, between June and August, space authorities said on Saturday.

The taikonauts, whose identities remain secret, would break many records in China’s brief history of human space flight, space experts said.

Their spaceship, Shenzhou IX, will rendezvous and dock with the Tiangong laboratory under manual control, a spokesman for China’s manned space program said.

(SD-Agencies)