UNEXPECTED FIND A construction worker shows dinosaur egg fossils at a building site in Nankang, Jiangxi Province, in May. Workers found some 22 round dinosaur egg fossils, each with a diameter of 10 to 12 cm (XU CHAOYANG)

Cross-Straits Meeting

Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, had invited Taiwan's Kuomintang Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung to visit Beijing and Wu accepted the invitation, a mainland official said on May 13.

During the trip, Wu would also attend activities in Nanjing, eastern Jiangsu Province, to remember Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a founder of the Kuomintang, said a State Council Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman.

Hu and Wu first met in Beijing on May 28 last year. They met again in August 2008 when Wu was invited to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Fatal Explosion Arrests

Forty-three suspects have been arrested following the police investigation of a March blast that killed two people and injured six others in a residential quarter of Wuhai City, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, local prosecutors said May 12.

Prosecutors said they approved the arrests on charges of illegal mining and trading and stocking of explosives, which caused the accident on March 18. Wang Ruifeng, a police officer in Wuhai, told Xinhua that explosives belonging to local mining firms were illegally stored in the residence.

The blast ripped through a single-story home at about 6:40 a.m. in Lasengmiao Township, Wuhai City, almost 530 km west of the regional capital Hohhot. The explosion damaged or destroyed several of the surrounding homes.

Mixed Signals

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said Paris should stop interfering in China's internal affairs after the French capital decided to give honorary citizenship to the Dalai Lama next month.

The Paris City Council approved a resolution last year to honor the Dalai Lama, which aroused indignation in China, Ma said on May 7.

He said he hoped France would work with China to remove obstacles and promote ties that would develop the relationship in a sound and stable way.

Bilateral tensions thawed after the two foreign ministries jointly released a communiqué on April 1 stating that France fully recognized "the sensitivity of the Tibet issue" and that France would not support "Tibet's independence" in any form.

Real Estate Bribery

A former senior official in Beijing has been jailed for life for accepting five apartments from development companies in return for helping them during the planning and building processes.

Xu Shuying, 68, was accused of using his position as deputy head of the Haidian District Government from 1995 to 2003 to seek illegal gains.

Xu was in charge of urban construction when he accepted two apartments worth 2.23 million yuan ($328,000) from the Taiyue Property Co. and two more from other companies.

He also demanded an apartment as a bribe from another company. The total value of the five homes exceeded 6.29 million yuan ($925,000), according to evidence the First Intermediate People's Court of Beijing heard.

BIRDS IN FOCUS Some 200 species of migrating birds were seen from May 7 to 13 on the Qinhuangdao seashore in Hebei Province, drawing a large number of bird watchers from Europe and America (LIU XUEZHONG)

BEAUTIFUL MOMS Children show drawings of their mothers at Yixiu Kindergarten in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, to celebrate Mother's Day on May 10 (HANG XINGWEI)

COMMEMORATIVE DRILL Nanjing primary school students take part in an earthquake rescue drill on May 11, one day before the anniversary of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (SUN CAN)