Beijing’s food safety watchdog has begun a two-week sanitation inspection of the city’s restaurants.

This came after two Beijing branches of a popular hotpot chain were exposed to have operated in unhygienic conditions. Videos taken by hidden cameras showed rats infested the kitchen, a dishwasher was caked with oily food residue, and a worker tried to fix sewage clog with a soup ladle.

The Sichuan Province-based Haidilao hot pot has admitted its management faults in a frank public statement issued Friday, apologizing for the scandal.

In recent years, Haidilao took major Chinese cities by storm by its signature spicy Sichuanese hot pot and excellent service. According to its website, Haidilao is operating in about 60 Chinese cities and has expanded to Los Angeles, Singapore, Seoul, and Tokyo,

Beijing Food and Drug Administration said the inspection will target both restaurant chains and canteen suppliers. Business licenses, dishwashers, sanitation equipment, measures to keep off pests and diseases are the focus of the inspection.

The watchdog said it has also ordered Haidilao to open its kitchens to the public in a month and report the overhaul measures. The chain’s sanitation ratings will be downgraded.

Haidilao, meanwhile, promised to ensure all its restaurants both in China and abroad maintain good sanitation standards.

Beijing plans to replace coal with clean energy sources in 700 villages on its surrounding flatlands within the year. This would eliminate coal burning from seven of the city’s districts including Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai, Shijingshan, Daxing, Tongzhou and Fangshan, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Rural Affairs.

As of November 2016, Beijing had replaced coal with clean energy sources for 227,000 rural households in 663 villages, surpassing the target number by 43 percent. Of these households, 198,000 in 574 villages were fitted with electrical energy and 29,000 in 89 villages were provided with natural gas replacements.

In addition, Beijing will also promote clean energy use in 1,400 village committees and public areas as well as in agricultural facilities covering 790,000 square meters.

Air-source heat pumps, ground-source heat pumps and storage electric heaters are currently the three most common electricity-powered heating sources in Beijing. To ensure quality standard, the National Quality Surveillance and Testing Center of Air Conditioning Equipment is responsible for sample testing and giving feedbacks to districts, if there were any problem. Three hundred sets of equipment have been tested so far.

This year Beijing has launched the coal-to-power switch in nine rural towns and three sub-districts, benefiting 46,269 households. After open tendering and field visits, the capital city has selected 23 manufacturers of air-source heat pumps and 11 energy storage companies to contribute to the transition.

Beijing accommodated the most international conferences in China in 2016, an increase of nearly 20 percent from 2015, according to the 2017 China Incentive, Business Travel & Meetings Exhibition (CIBTM) in Beijing. The number ranks fourth in Asia and 15th globally.

In 2016, the yearly revenue from conferences in Beijing reached 10.96 billion yuan (US$1.65 billion), accounting for half of the total income of the city’s convention and exhibition industry.

Altogether 210,000 conferences were held, receiving over 16 million attendees. This included 5,000 international conferences, receiving 655,000attendees.

Xu Zhijun, deputy secretary of Beijing Municipal Government, said at the exhibition’s opening ceremony that the city has supported the development of the convention and exhibition industry, providing improvements to the facilities and the business environment, as well as nurturing clustered development of the industry.

Cao Pengcheng, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development, said the city has made revisions to its incentive programs in order to attract more international meetings and tours to Beijing.

Visitors watch the demostration of a welding robot at the World Robot Conference 2017 in Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 25, 2017. Over 300 artificial intelligent (AI) specialists and representatives of over 150 robot enterprises attended the conference. (Xinhua/Li Mingfang)

Beijing’s robotics industry aims to achieve a revenue of between 12 billion yuan and 15 billion yuan by 2020, according to the ongoing World Robot Conference 2017 which opened in Beijing on Wednesday.

At the conference, the Beijing Robotics Industry Innovation and Development Roadmap outlines a two-stage scheme to develop the robotics industry.

Beijing plans to achieve robotics industry revenue of between 12 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion) and 15 billion yuan, develop 10 leading enterprises in the sector and 10 research and development innovation headquarters by 2020.

By 2025, the city looks to achieve a revenue of 60 billion yuan in the industry. Beijing aims to form a top-notch robotics technology collaborative innovation system, develop a world-class artificial intelligence and construct a leading robotics innovation and application base.

Zhang Boxu, director of the Beijing Municipal Committee of Economic and Information Technology, said Beijing will strive to become a leader in robotics innovation with its advantage of scientific research, ecology and policy.

He added that Beijing is speeding up the development of its robotics industry, prioritizing the integrated application of industrial robots and supporting the development of service robots and special robots.

Forty-four telecom fraud suspects were repatriated from Malaysia to China late Thursday, police in eastern Zhejiang Province announced Friday.

Forty-four telecom fraud suspects were repatriated from Malaysia to China late Thursday, police in eastern Zhejiang Province announced Friday.

The suspects, all Chinese nationals residing in Malaysia, were captured in two Chinese-Malaysian joint operations over the past three months. They allegedly made phone calls to people in the Chinese mainland pretending to be law enforcers and were able to extort over 10 million yuan (1.51 million U.S. dollars).

The suspects were returned on a charter flight which arrived at Wenzhou Longwan International Airport Thursday night.

In recent years, Chinese police have tracked down Chinese nationals hiding overseas who have participated in telecom fraud, mainly targeting victims in the mainland.

Also on Thursday, police in Sichuan Province repatriated 144 suspects from Cambodia, bringing the number of repatriated telecom fraud suspects by Sichuan police this year to 197.