The 26˚ Law

The State Council on June 3 started to solicit public opinions about a draft regulation aimed at reducing energy consumed in China's residential and public buildings.

"The temperature of all China's air-conditioned public rooms should be no lower than 26˚ degrees centigrade in summer, and no higher than 20˚ degrees in winter," says the draft regulation.

These rules were put forward by the Central Government last month and are now set to be enshrined in a state regulation that is expected to be enforced more effectively through legal means.

The regulation will promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy, according to the draft. It also bans the use and import of energy-inefficient materials, techniques and facilities.

Panda's Scientific Journey

China is to send two giant pandas to Spain for research, Chinese authorities announced recently.

A seven-year-old male "Bing Xing" weighing 140 kg and a four-year-old female "Hua Zui Ba" weighing 93 kg will be sent to the Madrid zoo, said Zhang Zhihe, head of the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The international cooperation program between China and Spain on the protection of endangered pandas was launched at the Chengdu base.

The Spanish zoo raised the program with the Chengdu base in 2005, Zhang said, but he did not reveal how long the program will last, nor when the pandas would return.

Heaviest Dinosaur Found

Scientists in central China's Henan Province announced on July 2 that they had unearthed fossils of the heaviest dinosaur in Asia.

Discovered in an area between Santun Township and Liudian Township in Ruyang County, the dinosaur has been identified as Asia's heaviest, said Wu Guochang, general engineer of the provincial land resource department.

The dinosaur measures 18 meters long and its sacrum-part of the vertebrae in the lower back-is as broad as 1.31 meters, making it broader than that of the dinosaur fossil unearthed in Gansu last year, which was then identified as Asia's heaviest dinosaur, said Wu.

Wu said scientists had thought the land where the fossils were excavated was formed in the Cenozoic Era, which dates back 65 million years.

Root Out Fake Mascots

Authorities in Beijing will launch a weeklong campaign to root out street peddlers selling fake Olympic mascots.

The announcement came shortly after Beijing law enforcement agencies said they had destroyed three illegal workshops manufacturing fake "Fuwa" and confiscated 28,000 finished or half-finished products since the beginning of this year.

"The products were coarsely made with shoddy materials," the law enforcement bureau said.

"The new crackdown will shift focus from illegal manufacturers to street peddlers who usually appear in front of supermarkets, on overpasses and in subway stations between 4 p.m. and the early hours of the next day." It also called on consumers to boycott fake Olympic products.