Land-grab payment rejected

    Farmers in Henan Province have refused to accept a local government proposal* which offered compensation* — in crops — in return for allowing local authorities to use the farmers’ land. However, the compensation will only be given after 65 years.

    Villagers from Shuanglong in Henan attempted to break into a construction site to express their anger on Sunday. The villagers vowed to protect their farms from what they saw as a government land grab, and they said the proposal was the same as handing the land over to the government for free.

    Man jailed for murder

    committed decades ago

    A local court in Zhejiang Province has sentenced an elderly man to jail for a murder committed during the 1966-76 period known as the Cultural Revolution, officials said on April 3. The trial* has caused anger as many see it as a sort of selective justice.

    Qiu Riren, who is now in his 80s, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for the 1967 killing, said a court official surnamed Chen in Rui’an City, but the court official declined* to give further details.

    Chinese will be protected in DPRK

    China said it will safeguard* the rights and safety of its citizens and businesses in North Korea.

    “As far as I know, the Chinese Embassy* in the DPRK (North Korea) is still operating normally,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Sunday.

    North Korean authorities told diplomatic missions* they could not guarantee their safety starting today.

    Biggest-spending tourists

    Americans and Germans, the top spenders on overseas travel for years, were overtaken by the Chinese last year, according to a United Nations report released in Madrid on Thursday.

    The report said most of the 83 million Chinese tourists who went overseas last year were members of the middle class, and the U.N.’s World Tourism Organization Secretary General Taleb Rifai said the growth from China “reflects the entry into the tourism market of a growing middle class.”(SD-Agencies)