A range of photos picturing foreign language graffiti on the Great Wall, particularly at the Badaling section, are circulating online.

Korean words on a brick of the Great Wall on Aug 11. [Photo/Sina Weibo]

The images have sparked conversation among internet users, along with public anger, and a few netizens have even proposed the installation of signs around the area to limit the behavior.

The photographs on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like service, show Korean and English words, as well as Chinese characters, scratched onto the bricks of Great Wall.

While scratchings on the Great Wall at the Badaling and Mutianyu sections are not new, particularly among Chinese visitors, the behavior has now attracted the eye of foreign tourists, including Bobby Brown, an NBA player, who cribbled his name and number on the Great Wall in October 2016.

Web users have criticized the behavior as “ill-mannered and uncivilized”, and “heavy penalties should be required.”

A worker of the Badaling scenic area, who declined to be named, said there were more than 100 patrollers on the Great Wall to prevent damaging behaviors; however, the patrollers had difficult in monitoring the behavior of every one as there were too many tourists in summer.

“Tourists could also report such behaviors to workers on the Great Wall or call police,” the worker said.

The country listed the Great Wall’s Badaling section in the first group of key national heritage conservation units in 1961, and the State Council, or China’s cabinet, approved the scenic area in 1982. It was inscribed on the world heritage list by UNESCO in 1987.

China has the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics, but has not detailed the penalties on scratching behavior. The Beijing municipal government published a regulation on the protection of the Great Wall in 2003, and according to which, people who scratch the wall could face fines from 200 to 500 yuan ($29.9-$74.7).

Web users said that compared with the punishments on such behavior in other countries, the penalties in China are too light. In Egypt, people who damage cultural relics could face a maximum fine of $100,000 and life sentence, news website chinanews.com reported.

Two suspects in a murder that occurred 22 years ago in east China’s Zhejiang Province have been arrested, reports The Beijing News.

Suspect Wang Ming (an alias) is interrogated by police. [Photo provided by Huzhou police]

The killing happened early in the morning on November 29, 1995 at a family hotel in a village of Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province. The police found the hotel owner and a guest dead in one of the hotel rooms, while the owner’s wife and his grandson were found killed in a room nearby.

All the four victims died from blunt force trauma to the skull. Investigations showed it was a robbery-led murder.

Two hotel guests who checked in the day before and left the hotel after the murder were believed to be the killers, and their accents suggest that they were from the southern part of Anhui Province.

However, the two left no identity information. Although the police took their fingerprints, footprints and the towels they used, the limited technology at that time did not lead to a breakthrough in the case.

Investigations of the case restarted in June this year, with over 100 police officers inquiring of more than 30,000 people in order to find the killers.

DNA profiling matched the saliva left on a cigarette end found at the scene of the killings with the Liu family in Nanling County of Wuhu City, Anhui Province. One of the suspects Liu Biao (an alias) was identified later and arrested last Friday.

The other suspect, Wang Ming (also an alias), was then found and arrested in Shanghai.

According to information provided by the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department, the two suspects wanted to steal money from another hotel guest staying in the same room but killed him after their intention was uncovered.

The two then lured the hotel owner to come into the room and killed him. After killing the owner’s wife and grandson in a room nearby, they fled with a watch and some other items.

Liu, 53, had become a writer and the chief editor of a school magazine, and 64-year-old Wang was the legal representative of an investment consulting company.

A coal mine head turned himself in to police early Tuesday after failing to report a landslide that left at least four people dead and another five missing on Friday, according to authorities in north China’s Shanxi Province.

Gao Yang, legal representative and general manager of Lyuxin coal mine, surrendered himself to police at 0:52 a.m. and confessed that 10 people had been buried in the accident, which occurred at around 3 p.m. on Aug. 11 at the open-pit coal mine in Heshun County, a spokesperson with the county government said.

One person has been rescued and four bodies have been retrieved, according to Gao.

A man who had been detained for “fabricating information online” about the accident was released Tuesday.

The county government had visited the landslide site twice to investigate the online report, but the company had told them no one had been buried in the landslide.

The county’s coal administration head Zhang Ruiqing, who led the investigations, has been removed from his post.

Rescue work and further investigation are under way.

Lyuxin coal mine, under the Shanxi Coal Transportation and Sales Group Co., Ltd., has an annual coal capacity of 2 million tonnes.

The latest and fifteenth version of Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was released by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy on Tuesday, according to media reports.

According to the report, 45 universities on the Chinese mainland are among the top 500 universities in the world, while 12 universities in China’s Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are also on the list. That puts a total of 57 Chinese universities on the list, accounting for 11.4%.

Meanwhile, Tsinghua University in Beijing, ranked 48th, has entered the top 50 for the first time and become the third top ranked Asian university.

Peking University ranks 71st, followed by Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Science and Technology of China, and Zhejiang University, which all rank between 101st and 150th.

Four more top 500 universities on the Chinese mainland are on the ARWU list in 2017 than 2016, which is a demonstration of greater comprehensive strength and influence of Chinese universities in the world.

Universities from English-speaking countries still dominate the list, with 19 of the top 20 universities located in the US and the UK.

Harvard University remains number one in the world for the 15th consecutive year. Stanford University continues to be the second top university. The University of Cambridge overtakes MIT and Berkeley, rising to the third best university in the world.

According to Shanghai Ranking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, the institutions ranked between 501st and 800th have been included on an ARWU World Top 500 Candidates list for the first time. They demonstrate their potential of breaking into the Top 500 list in the near future. The US and China are the two biggest hosts of Top 500 Candidates. Both of them have 55 institutions recognized as candidates.

ARWU, also known as Shanghai Ranking, is an annual publication of university rankings by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy.

ARWU has been presenting the world Top 500 universities annually based on a transparent methodology and third-party data since 2003.

Severe rainstorms flooded stores and houses throughout Zhangguying county in Yueyang, Hunan province, on Saturday.

Liu Hongbo tries to help a shopkeeper when severe rainstorm hits Zhangguying county in Yueyang, Hunan province, Aug 12, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A shopkeeper was swept from her shoe store while trying to prevent stock from being washed away.

Seeing the woman being dragged from her shop, a man, Liu Hongbo, jumped into the rapidly flowing floodwaters to help the woman.

Liu tied her to a steel pipe using rope, but as the rope was not long enough for them both, he had to clutch onto the pipe.

After about 10 minutes, a truck arrived to rescue them. “If I didn’t help her, I would have felt guilty,” Liu said after the incident.