Beijing police smash Internet prostitution ring

BEIJING -- Police in Beijing have arrested 151 suspected prostitutes, customers, and pimps in one of China's biggest-ever crackdowns on organized Internet prostitution, state press said Tuesday.

Over 300 policemen fanned out last week, raiding 18 brothels, mostly located in luxurious villa compounds, and an Internet bar where organizers had posted the sex services online, the Beijing Morning Post said.

Police captured five ringleaders, 63 organizers, 38 prostitutes, and 45 customers, the report said.

The paper said that the crackdown was the biggest in China on an Internet prostitution ring in the past five years, but did not detail any other previous crackdowns.

Organizers had posted information on the sex workers in Internet chatrooms and blogs, offering the option of downloading pictures of the girls in various stages of undress, it said.

Potential customers would also be linked to the girls who would chat with them over the Internet to discuss prices and the places where the trysts would take place, it said.

Up to five prostitutes would be at each of the locales and were paid up to 300 yuan ($38) a day for serving as many as five customers, the paper said.

Beijing is making efforts to tidy up the capital ahead of the 2008 Olympics, with crackdowns on prostitution and drugs a major focus of attention.

Although prostitution was all but wiped out in China following the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, it has made a strong comeback after 25 years of booming economic reforms.

Pornography, which is also outlawed in China, has widely eluded Chinese censors on the Internet and is easily downloaded from sites both inside and outside China.

After SARS, Beijing on alert for mass fever cases

Source: reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, where the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) first emerged in 2002, is on the alert for fever among groups of flu sufferers in its freezing capital, Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.

The symptoms of SARS are similar to those of flu, spread as far afield as Canada before it was brought under control in 2003. It killed close to 800 people out of the 8,000 known to have been infected.

"Beijing municipal health authorities have called for close monitoring of people suffering respiratory infectious diseases as the city has been beset by flu and colds since the New Year," Xinhua said without reference to SARS which, at its height, put Chinese airports on alert, monitoring the temperature of incoming tourists.

"The Municipal Health Bureau ordered medical workers at disease control centres to remain on high alert and report the first occurrence of fever involving a group of people and handle such cases as quickly as possible."

The bureau had also urged hospitals to put more doctors and nurses on duty and take measures to prevent cross-infection between patients.

Cold and flu sufferers in Beijing had hit record highs in many hospitals this winter, Xinhua said on Monday, putting part of the blame on smog.