5.1-quake damages 1,907 Yunnan houses

More than 1,900 houses were damaged and over 300 residents relocated as of noon on Wednesday after a 5.1-magnitude earthquake jolted Qiaojia county in Southwest China's Yunnan province on Monday evening. The earthquake struck at 7:32 pm at a depth of 10 kilometers. No casualties or building collapses were reported. The assessment and verification of losses from the earthquake have been essentially completed, local authorities said. According to Cao Shanyou, deputy head of Qiaojia county, the earthquake has caused damage to a total of 1,907 residential houses and eight school buildings, primarily exhibiting minor cracks. Throughout the county, 466 cases of slope collapses and rockfalls on roads, as well as 483 sites with road surface damage, were recorded.

Ex-CCB executive sentenced for bribery

Zhang Gengsheng, former vice-president of China Construction Bank Corp, was sentenced to 18 years in prison and fined 4.1 million yuan ($589,000) on Wednesday for accepting bribes and illegally issuing loans, a court in Shandong province said. The Zibo Intermediate People's Court sentenced Zhang to 13 years in prison and fined him 4 million yuan for accepting bribes, and to 10 years in prison and a 100,000 yuan fine for illegal loan issuance. Zhang will serve a total of 18 years. The court also ordered that the seized bribes and related interest be turned over to the State treasury. The court found that between 2006 and September 2019, Zhang abused his positions at the bank, including as general manager of a client department and later as vice-president, to seek benefits for entities and individuals in matters involving loan credit, approvals and job adjustments. In return, he illegally accepted property worth more than 40.64 million yuan. The court said that from the second half of 2016 to April 2017, while serving as vice-president of the bank, Zhang knowingly arranged for the issuance of large loans to entities that did not meet lending requirements, causing particularly heavy losses.

Xinhua - China Daily