Beijing - China Tuesday called on French President Nicolas Sarkozy to cancel his planned meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

It was time for the French side to make a choice, foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in Beijing.

He also warned that political and economic ties between Paris and Beijing would suffer if Sarkozy pursued the planned talks.

France, which currently holds the EU presidency, should respect China's concerns and take concrete measures, he said.

Beijing, Dec. 2 : In a major revision of numbers, China’s Ministry of Health has acknowledged that nearly 300,000 children became sick after consuming milk tainted with the toxic plastic melamine.

According to the ministry’s web site, this casualty figure is probably the largest the country has ever experienced.

The ministry said in a statement late Monday that authorities across the country found that 294,000 babies had suffered from urinary problems after consuming milk powder tainted with melamine.

Beijing  - Chinese real-estate magnate Huang Junqin has followed his younger brother and billionaire businessman Huang Guangyu in being accused of "economic crimes," state media reported Saturday, citing police.

Huang Junqin, founder and chief executive of the Beijing Towercrest Group Ltd, was detained Wednesday, Beijing police said.

His brother - one of the country's wealthiest people as head of Gome Electrical Appliances, China's largest consumer electronics chain - was detained a week earlier for questioning.

The investigations relate to manipulation of share prices last year of a Shanghai pharmaceutical company run by Huang Junqin, the Caijing business magazine quoted unidentified sources as saying.

Beijing  - The family of a Chinese scientist and businessman convicted of spying for Taiwan expressed shock and outrage at his execution and charged the Chinese government with keeping it "in the dark."

Wo Weihan, 60, was executed Friday after being convicted in 2007 following a closed trial in which he had been charged with passing secret Chinese military data to Taiwan.

His daughters, who both are Austrian citizens, said in a statement that they were promised one last meeting with their father Friday but, as they tried to see him, were informed he had been executed.

Beijing - China's first internally developed regional jet, the ARJ21-700, completed its maiden test flight on Friday in Shanghai, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Unveiled last December, the 90-set aircraft named "Xiang Feng" or "Flying Phoenix" landed safely after an hour's flight, Xinhua said on its website.

"The jet was normal and the flight was smooth," said one of the three pilots aboard the jet which has a maximum flight range of 3,700 kilometresand maximum altitude of
11,900 metres.

During the maiden flight the ARJ21-700 flew at only 900 metres.

Beijing - Gome electronics retail chain appointed Chen Xiao as acting chairman on Friday, a day after Beijing police confirmed that billionaire chairman Huang Guangyu was under investigation for "economic crimes," the official Xinhua news agency reported,

Also on Friday, the company said that its chief financial officer, Zhou Yafei, was under police investigation. It said it had appointed an acting financial officer.