Police in Chongqing municipality and Sichuan and Guangdong provinces are warning parents to prevent their children from playing Blue Whale, the so-called suicide game.

According to the Chongqing Public Security Bureau, a small number of juveniles have been discovered participating in the game, which operates via social media groups.

The police and the cyberspace administration will crack down on any organizing, instigating or luring people to play the game, a source at the bureau said on Wednesday, asking not to be identified.

Severe penalties will be meted out to those who cause grave consequences, this person said.

The Nanjiang county public security bureau in Sichuan said on Tuesday that it had detained a suspect surnamed Liu, who is suspected of inviting his social media friends to play Blue Whale.

A whistleblower reported last week that the game was being promoted in a QQ circle of friends. About three hours later, police detained Liu, the bureau said.

It asked the public to report anyone promoting the game.

Mazhang district’s public security bureau in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, said on Tuesday that it had detained a 17-year-old boy on suspicion of spreading extremism.

A student identified only as Xue is accused of downloading photos showing how to make a whale pattern on one’s arm with a knife, and uploading the photos to his QQ circle of friends. He is also accused of starting a rumor that 11 friends in the circle had finished the game. He wanted to arouse friends’ interest and keep them in the circle, authorities said.

The suicide game, named for the way whales beach themselves and die, was invented by Philipp Budeikin, a 21-year-old psychology student from Russia. Budeikin started spreading the game in 2013 and was arrested in Russia in October.

The player signs up via a social media group and must agree to follow a series of instructions set by an “administrator” over the course of 50 days.

The administrator assigns tasks the player must accomplish to progress. These range from getting up at 4:20 a.m. every day, watching horror films for an entire day and carving the whale pattern on the arm with a knife.

The final “challenge” is committing suicide on the 50th day.

Players of the game are generally age 10 to 14. The game is believed to be responsible for more than 130 suicides in Russia and has spread to the United States, Italy, Eastern Europe and parts of China’s Anhui and Yunnan provinces, according to Chinese police.

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced Wednesday that 1,274 missing children had been found over the past year following the launch of an app in May 2016.

During the period, 1,317 updates on missing children were posted on the app, and the children found include 40 who had been abducted, 750 who had run away from home, 192 who had been lost, 75 who died by drowning, as well as 29 who were murdered, according to the MPS.

The app helps to ensure efficient sharing of information and collaboration between police in different regions, and encourages witnesses to report the whereabouts of missing or trafficked children, the MPS said.

Users near the site where a child disappeared receive push notifications, including photos and descriptions. The scope of these push notifications will be expanded over time.

An updated version of the platform that went live on Wednesday has expanded its reach through cooperation with seven other media platforms, such as an emergency broadcasting center under China National Radio, a news app from Tencent and Yidao Yongche.

So far, the MPS app has formed a cooperative partnership with 40 new media and mobile applications, including Taobao, Baidu and QQ.

Chinese metal scientists announced they had developed a plow using a new steel alloy.

Plow was initially used in China over 2,000 years ago, centuries earlier than in Europe. However, Chinese farmers nowadays would rather pay over the odds for imported plows because of their better quality and durability.

The situation may soon change, thanks to the new research.

Yan Desheng, of the Institute of Metal Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the new metal was developed on the basis of boron steel, with micro-alloying elements and fine carbide added, so as to increase its hardness while keeping its high ductility.

The new material had been used to make over 1,000 farming tools, such as moldboard plows and rotary blades.

These tools have been used in farms in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Jiangsu for tests and evaluation since 2012, Yan told Xinhua earlier this week.

“The new material has at least doubled the durability of plows compared with the traditional home-made ones, at only half the price of imported ones,” he said.

The edge of the plow has a better ground-breaking angle and has helped reduce abrasion and fuel consumption, according to a technician with a Hulun Buir-based farm in Inner Mongolia, which has tried the tools.

China’s Ministry of Education has announced that a braille test paper will be made available for the College English Test, Level 4, which is an English test for college students.

The Ministry has made the announcement after a blind girl successfully sued the Education Ministry after initially being denied access to the CET-4.

The unnamed young woman is a senior student at Changchun University.

She requested the CET-4 in Braille, but was unable to take it, as it was unavailable at the time. After being told it was not going to be made available to help her apply for her master’s degree for psychology, the girl decided to sue.

After winning her suit, the Ministry of Education has announced that CET-4 exams will be available for blind applicants as of next month.

Braille tests had already been available for many exams, including the national college entrance examination, the “gaokao.”

China plans to build an integrated national big data center as the country seeks to tap the value of massive data resources in a more efficient and safer way, an official said on Wednesday.

The center aims to promote better sharing of public data for wider application, especially for data in sectors such as credit, transportation, health and employment, said Zhang Feng, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

China will also study the formulation of a development roadmap for industrial data to push the integration of big data and manufacturing.

China will strengthen security protection in the collection, storing, application and sharing of big data.

Zhang shared the information at an MIIT conference to mark World Telecommunication and Information Society Day on May 17, with “Big Data for Big Impact” as this year’s theme.

China’s data volume is projected to expand at an annualized rate of over 50 percent and account for 21 percent of worldwide data by 2020.