The Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) announced Friday that three former senior officials have been charged with violations including taking bribes.

The three officials facing legal action are Wang Min, former Party chief of Jilin and Liaoning provinces, Wu Tianjun, former member of the standing committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Henan Provincial Committee, and Yao Zhongmin, former chairman of the board of supervisors at China Development Bank (CDB).

Luoyang City People’s Procuratorate in central China’s Henan Province filed the charge against Wang with Luoyang Intermediate People’s Court.

According to the indictment, Wang took advantage of his various posts to seek benefits for others, accepted “a huge amount” of bribes, and embezzled public funds while he served as Party chief in Jilin.

Wang, who is notorious for being responsible for serious electoral fraud, was also charged with dereliction of duty. His negligence had resulted in “major losses in the national and people’s interests and had an especially vile social impact,” according to the indictment.

Prosecutors filed the cases of Wu and Yao to the intermediate people’s courts in the cities of Xiangyang, Hubei and Baoding, Hebei respectively, with both indicted for taking advantage of their posts to seek benefits for others and accepting “a huge amount” of bribes.

A speech given by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the gathering to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to the motherland has been published by the People’s Publishing House.

The gathering on July 1 also saw the inauguration of the fifth-term government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The publication is available at Xinhua Bookstore outlets nationwide, the publisher said Friday.

China on Friday commemorated the 80th anniversary of the beginning of nationwide war against Japanese aggression.

A ceremony was held at the Museum of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression near Lugou Bridge, also known as Marco Polo Bridge, where Japan’s full-scale invasion of China began on July 7, 1937.

Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said at the ceremony that the war prompted national awakening and unity, changed the destiny of the Chinese nation, and safeguarded justice and world peace.

Any attempt to deny or whitewash the history of invasion and any deed to undermine trust between nations run counter to the historical trend, Liu said.

About 1,000 people, including veterans and relatives of the fallen, attended the ceremony, which was presided over by Liu Qibao, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

On July 7, 1937, Japanese soldiers attacked Chinese forces at the Lugou Bridge in suburban Beijing, which is recognized as the start of nationwide war against Japanese invasion. Actually, the Chinese people’s struggle against Japanese aggression started in September 1931 when Japanese troops began their invasion of northeast China.

A total of 44 people have been died or missing after floods hit Ningxiang County in central China’s Hunan Province, local flood prevention headquarters said Friday.

Heavy downpours pounded the county since June 22, leading to the area’s worst natural disaster in 60 years. A total of 44 people died or remain unaccounted for, the headquarters said.

About 815,000 people, or 56 percent of the county’s population, suffered property losses in the floods, it said.

In Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, to the south, flood left 20 people dead and 14 missing. Around 20,000 houses collapsed or were damaged.

Atrocities committed by Japanese Army Unit 731, a germ warfare unit once stationed in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, have been further exposed in newly found historical documents.

The 24 documents collected in Japan were written by members of Unit 731, according to Yang Yanjun, associate researcher at the Unit 731 Research Center of Harbin Academy of Social Sciences.

Unit 731 was established in Harbin in 1935, during the Japanese army’s occupation of northeast China.

Soldiers in the unit took photographs and wrote papers on the region’s wetlands, geology, mountains, and water resources to prepare for germ warfare and provide references for Japanese immigrants.

Other documents include materials collected by the unit on epidemic prevention, geology, transport and laws of the Soviet Union. The documents were produced between March 1937 and November 1939, Yang said.

According to Jin Chengmin, curator of the Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Japanese Army Unit 731, human experiments, production, experiments and use of germ weapons were the core of Unit 731 activity.

In 1941, a Chinese man named Li Pengge was detained after refusing to help Japanese Intelligence detect Soviet signals, Jin said. Li was sent to Unit 731 and met a gruesome death on an operating table aged 25.

Jin said more than 3,000 people died at Unit 731. The unit conducted experiments on at least 93 Soviet people during World War II. Among them were prisoners of war and civilians, including women and children.

The Japanese government continues to deny the crimes despite the evidence. No one involved with Unit 731 has ever been tried for war crimes.

Ordinary Japanese people feel sorry to war victims after knowing the truth. On this year’s Tomb Sweeping Day, a Japanese delegation including three war orphans visited the exhibition in Harbin.

After the war, many fleeing Japanese left their children behind, who were then cared for by Chinese families. These children, many now at least in their seventies, are called war orphans.

According to the museum, Unit 731 produced around 300 kilograms of plague bacillus, 600 kg of anthrax bacteria, 800 to 900 kg of typhoid bacteria, and thousands of kilograms of other deadly pathogens each month.

Between 1937 and 1942, the unit manufactured more than 2,000 germ bombs, loaded with fleas infected with plague bacillus.

“If war had not ended in 1945 and Japan had begun large-scale germ warfare, that could lead to the disappearance of humans, given the production capacity of Unit 731,” said Yang.