Society

An injured worker receives treatment at a hospital in Kunming, Jan. 3, 2010.[

Seven people were killed and 34 injured at 7:30 pm today when an unfinished overpass of the under-construction Kunming Airport collapsed, according to officials of the General Office of Kunming Municipal Government, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Eight are in critical conditions.

Kunming Airport is designed to be China’s major hub and gateway to the Southeast Asia and South Asia and a total investment of 23 billion yuan was allocated to the project. It is expected to handle 38 million passengers when put into operation.

An increase in vegetable prices is expected in Beijing in the next two days due to the heavy snow yesterday.

According to statistics from Beijing Xinfadi Agro Wholesale Market yesterday, the prices of eight vegetables, including lettuce, rape and Chinese chives, have increased by 10 to 50 percent.

"Transportation became more difficult from the suburbs to the city as the snow became heavier. Therefore, the prices of the vegetables coming from Beijing's Daxing district and Hebei and Shandong provinces have been affected first," said Xie Lei, director of the Xinfadi Agro Wholesale Market.

At present, no obvious price change has occurred for more than 70 other vegetables in the market. No fruits also had price increases yet.

Beijing faces lowest temperature in half a century; schools closed today

The heaviest snow to hit North China in decades caused widespread chaos on roads and left tens of thousands of passengers stranded at airports yesterday - but worse is forecast for today and tomorrow.

Temperatures are forecast to drop to -16 C in Beijing, the lowest in half a century, when work resumes after a three-day New Year holiday.

The severe weather forced thousands of primary and high schools to suspend classes today.

The authorities in Beijing and Tianjin announced yesterday that classes in the two cities' 3,500 primary and high schools will be suspended, affecting more than 2.2 million students.

China's Ministry of Public Security announced Friday it has cracked down on more than 3,000 gangs involved in pyramid sales schemes in a one hundred day campaign ending Oct. 20.

The ministry cracked more than 2,200 pyramid sales cases, which involved a total amount of 7.1 billion yuan (1.04 billion U.S. dollars), it said in a statement.

The ministry froze or retrieved more than 1.3 billion yuan and destroyed more than 20,000 pyramid sales dens. More than 2,000 key members involved in the pyramid sales schemes were handed over to prosecutors.

More than 1,700 cases, or more than 70 percent of the total, were cracked in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and provinces of Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guangdong, according to the ministry.