China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) has stressed tightened supervision over major environment-related cases.

The SPP will carry out special supervision focusing on air and water pollution from January 2017 to December 2018 in heavily polluted areas including the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the three northeastern provinces and the Yangtze River valley.

From March 2015 to December 2016, 3,868 environment-related criminal cases involving 4,982 suspects were transferred to police by administrative agencies upon suggestions from procuratorates.

During the same period, procuratorates at all levels also supervised public security organs in investigating 4,853 people suspected of damaging the environment and resources, and transferred 171 cases of duty-related crimes involving 246 officials.

The SPP alone or in cooperation with the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Environmental Protection directed the handling 62 major environmental violation cases during the period.

As people gathered to sweep tombs on Tomb-sweeping Day, some may find it hard to get one.

Suzhou city in eastern China’s Jiangsu province has banned the sale of tombs to people without a local hukou (household registration), unless there are “particular reasons.”

“Those who are not Suzhou citizens should get approval from the civil affairs authorities before they can buy a tomb here,” said Zhang Jihong, vice head of the civil affairs bureau of Suzhou.

Due to an aging society and urbanization, some cemeteries are already full. Many of the tombs do not belong to Suzhou citizens. The civil affairs bureau estimates that more than 6 million people will go to Suzhou to sweep tombs for their deceased relatives.

Many of the visitors are from Shanghai where the price of a tomb is almost double that in Suzhou. Also, there were no public cemeteries in Shanghai more than 30 years ago, so many chose Suzhou instead.

The policy was widely discussed online.

“After the house purchase restrictions for the living, officials are turning their eyes to the dead,” said Youming on Sina Weibo.

“People can not only speculate on houses but also on tombs,” said netizen Xingzhiyin.

Zhang hopes that public can understand the policy well. Suzhou had a similar policy in 2004, but it was not well implemented. Now that there are few spaces left in the cemeteries, the policy has been reiterated.

“But we are not keeping all the non-locals outside,” Zhang added. “For instance, those whose spouses are buried in Suzhou can still use the same grave after they die.”

The civil affairs authorities are also considering the demands of young people who have obtained a Suzhou hukou and need tombs for their non-Suzhou parents.

Police in central China’s Henan province have arrested 11 people on suspicion of involvement in the raping of minors.

According to a statement issued on Sunday by the Police Bureau of Kaifeng, Henan, a couple in Weishi county organized schoolgirls and forced them to have sex with two businessmen, both in their 40s.

The two businessmen were charged with rape. The couple and another two people were charged with organizing prostitution, which is punishable with sentences between five years and life in prison.

Another five people who took part in organizing the prostitution activities were detained.

The statement said police authorities at city and provincial levels arrived at Weishi county, which is under the jurisdiction of Kaifeng, a city known for being the capital for several dynasties in ancient China.

Police will thoroughly review the case, bring every criminal involved to justice and clamp down on crimes against minors, the statement said.

The news caught wide public attention after a Wechat post went viral, saying more than 30 middle school students in Weishi county were forced into prostitution.

Parents of the victims were shocked by the online post, which included the names and identification card numbers of their children, according to a news report from the Mirror, a Beijing newspaper.

The parents feared that the leak of personal information would bring the trauma of victimization to their children and asked police to help delete the information on the internet.

The report said the parents did not learn how their children’s personal information was leaked.

The case was uncovered when a victim told her aunt about what she went through and the aunt reported the case to police in February.

A mother of another victim told the Mirror that her girl said she was taken to a hotel room and was given 300 yuan ($44) after sex. The girl refused to accept the money.

Li Wei, a lawyer specializing in criminal law at Jie Qiang Law Firm in Beijing, said those who are convicted of raping multiple women or raping a minor who is under 14 face a severe penalty, which is normally between 10 years and life in prison, or even the death penalty if the rape resulted in severe harm, such as causing the death of a victim.

According to statistics from the Supreme People’s Court, the number of child molestation cases has risen in recent years. In 2012, 2,017 such cases were closed in courts across the country. The number rose to 2,828 in 2014.

The number of child sexual abuse cases filed in 2015 in the juvenile court of Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court increased by 50 percent year-on-year.

The toddler who fell into a 15-meter-deep dry well in East China’s Shandong province Monday afternoon was rescued early Tuesday morning.

The boy, two and a half years old, was pulled out of the well at 3:06 am, alive and clear in consciousness. He remains in hospital under observation.

The accident occurred at about 5:30 pm Monday as the boy in Fangdong village in Zhangdian district of Zibo City fell into the unprotected well with a diameter of 30 centimeters, the district government said.

The well is so narrow that rescuers could not go down to bring the boy to the ground. Dozens of excavators and bulldozers were used to dig a big hole near the mouth of the well to reach the boy.

When the well was reduced to around six to seven meters, rescuers managed to pull the child out with the help of underwater camera and a “shaft lifter” specially designed for such situation.

In November 2016, a six-year-old boy in Hebei province died after falling down a 80-meter-deep dry well with a diameter of 30 cm, despite a marathon rescue operation that attracted nationwide attention.

A Japanese man has donated 16 Chinese historical military documents to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.

76-year-old retired primary school principal, Iwamatsu, discovered the documents in a bookshop in Japan in 2007, and decided to return them to China after bought them.

They contain orders issued by a commander named Tang Shengzhi relating to the Battle of Nanjing in 1937 when the then Chinese capital was captured by Japanese troops, and a permit for foreign missionaries.

It’s not the first time that Iwamatsu has visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. Back in 1997 when he was a high school teacher, he was part of a delegation from the Japanese National Board of Education.

On returning to Japan, Iwamatsu told his students about the history of the Nanjing Massacre, where over 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were killed by Japanese soldiers.

Iwamatsu attended the donation ceremony in Nanjing with a Japanese delegation visiting Nanjing to commemorate the victims of the Nanjing Massacre by planting trees during the Tomb-sweeping Day holiday. The practice has been an annual event since 1986.