"Although the abduction of Chinese workers by Sudanese anti-government forces was an isolated incident, it harmed their physical and mental health and caused wicked effects," Liu told a regular press conference.

China firmly opposed the abduction, Liu said, noting that the abduction of civilians for political purposes is condemned by the international community as a whole.

Chinese enterprises have made positive contributions to the economic and social development of African countries and benefited their people in recent years, said the spokesman.

A camp of a Chinese company operating at a road construction site near Sudan's Al-Abbasiya Tagali town in the volatile South Kordofan state was attacked by a group of gunmen belonging to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement north sector on January 28.

In the camp at the time were a total of 47 Chinese, 29 of whom were abducted by the assailants while the other 18 managed to flee. Among the latter, 17 were later found by the Sudanese army and transferred to a safe place, and one was confirmed dead after having been missing for days.

The 29 workers were released on Tuesday and arrived in Beijing on Thursday afternoon.

"Although the abduction of Chinese workers by Sudanese anti-government forces was an isolated incident, it harmed their physical and mental health and caused wicked effects," Liu told a regular press conference.

China firmly opposed the abduction, Liu said, noting that the abduction of civilians for political purposes is condemned by the international community as a whole.

Chinese enterprises have made positive contributions to the economic and social development of African countries and benefited their people in recent years, said the spokesman.

A camp of a Chinese company operating at a road construction site near Sudan's Al-Abbasiya Tagali town in the volatile South Kordofan state was attacked by a group of gunmen belonging to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement north sector on January 28.

In the camp at the time were a total of 47 Chinese, 29 of whom were abducted by the assailants while the other 18 managed to flee. Among the latter, 17 were later found by the Sudanese army and transferred to a safe place, and one was confirmed dead after having been missing for days.

The 29 workers were released on Tuesday and arrived in Beijing on Thursday afternoon.

The Pudong-based park kicked off its first-phase expansion last year by merging five industrial parks in Hongkou, Xuhui, Changning, Songjiang and Minhang districts. The merger enlarged the park's total area from 63 square kilometers to 296.4 square kilometers.

The park's management hopes the merger will enable it to optimize its layout, facilitate its industrial upgrade and restructuring, and achieve higher efficiency of its resources.

The park is currently holding an exhibition at Shanghai Science and Technology Museum to show off its development in the past 20 years and high-tech products developed by companies in the park. The show opened today and is free to visitors.

The park was designated as the third national innovation hub last year after Beijing Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park and Wuhan Donghu New Technology Development Zone.

Shanghai has worked out a host of preferential policies for the development of the Zhangjiang High Tech Park, including tax breaks, incentives for talent, and flexible financing.

Gu Saihua, 24, came to Shanghai last June to find a job but she couldn't to find a suitable job and soon ran out of money. She then decided to steal iPhones and sell them for money, the court learned.

On December 12, Gu saw a woman walking on the sidewalk and talking to her iPhone. Gu ran up from behind, snatched the phone from her hand and fled immediately. She sold the phone for 1,000 yuan, the court was told.

Gu was arrested three days later and was formerly charged with robbery, the court said.

The Shanghai Composite index gained 0.09 percent, to 2,349.59 at the trading close with turnover at 89.7 billion yuan (US$14.3 billion).

China's CPI grew 4.5 percent from a year earlier in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said on its website today – the first rebound in six months, as the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday stimulated spending and food prices rose.

Producer Price Inflation retreated to 0.7 percent from December's 1.7 percent, the lowest level in 26 months.

"Most analysts anticipated the CPI in January to be as much as December's 4.1 percent, however it's much higher than expected," said Liu Qiang, analyst at Guosen Securities. "Market expectation for easing monetary policy was dispelled by the soaring figure."

Property developers continued to rally on the central bank's pledge to meet demand from first-home buyers seeking loans, and support for construction of affordable housing projects. China Vanke, the nation's biggest listed developer jumped 1.45 percent to 7.7 yuan. Poly Real Estate Group surged 1.34 percent to 10.56 yuan. Xi'an Gree Real Estate soared 2.04 percent to 5.49 yuan.

Hu Shijie, analyst at Orient Securities did not recommend holding developers' stocks for the long term. "The government will unlikely loosen property curbs in 2012," he said in a TV program today.

"The CPI's seasonal rebound in January will continue in February," said Pan Mingli, analyst at Orient Securities. "The figure should drop in March."

Local hospitals have not reported a single case of avian flu, SARS or pneumonia with an unknown cause. The incidence of influenza among adults and children is at the same level as in recent years.

Shanghai began to beef up efforts to prevent an outburst of respiratory diseases on November 15. A network of 31 medical institutions, nine poultry farms and 18 flu laboratories are monitoring the influenza activity and the spread of viruses by holiday travelers.

The health bureau requires local hospitals to tighten inspection of flu cases and asks schools to report to their district disease control center if any case with symptoms similar to that of avian flu or SARS is found.

Consumer Price Index, the main gauge of inflation, expanded 4.5 percent from a year earlier last month, up from the rate of 4.1 percent in December, the National Bureau of Statistics said today.

Food costs, which accounted for nearly one third in the basket, climbed 10.5 percent annually, picking up further from December's 9.1 percent and November's 8.8 percent.

It was the biggest driver of last month's CPI growth through contributing 3.29 percentage points in it.

"The outcome is quite contrary to market expectations which predicted inflation would continue to moderate," said Liu Ligang, an economist at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group. "The result may delay certain easing moves, like a reserve requirement ratio cut, due to the possible rebound in inflationary pressure."

China yesterday raised fuel prices by more than 3 percent, and commodity prices on the global market are also rising noticeably in recent months, which could bolster inflation in China, Liu said.

Wang Tao, an economist at UBS, said the spike in the CPI would make policy makers more cautious about sending monetary easing signals in the short term.

"The market should not expect any RRR cuts as a signal for easing in the next few weeks," Wang said. "Moreover, it is still difficult to discern the real strength of the economy at the current stage."

China's gross domestic product growth weakened to 8.9 percent in the final quarter of last year, the slowest pace in two and a half years that made some economists call for more supportive policies.

However, Wang with UBS said fundamentally, the downward trend of inflation has not been altered, and the continued drop in factory-gate prices also pointed to the absence of upstream pressures.

The Producer Price Index, which measures inflation at the factory gate, expanded 0.7 percent year on year in January, compared with 1.7 percent in December.

China's CPI settled at an annualized 5.4 percent in 2011, far above the 4 percent target. Economists expected the rate may contain itself at around 4 percent this year.

Zhu Shaozhong, former vice mayor of Xiangtan City, helped a businessman surnamed Qi to get construction projects and received 496,000 yuan and US$20,000 from Qi, the Zhuzhou City Intermediate People's Court said.

Most of the 14 people who bribed Zhu would bring cash to his home during the holidays such as the Spring Festival because giving gifts on holidays was a good excuse to cover up bribery, the court said.

The irony is that Zhu was always regarded as an official of integrity and was honored as an "anti-graft official," the report said.

Police of Heyuan City received a report on February 2 that a 91-year-old woman who lived alone was found dead in her house. Police reached the scene and confirmed that the woman surnamed Wei was raped before she was killed.

Police screened potential suspects in the vicinity and soon zoomed in on the 19-year-old Zeng.

Zeng was nabbed in a hotel on February 3. He allegedly admitted to breaking into Wei's house and raping the old woman. After robbing her money, he killed Wei to prevent her from reporting to police.

Police in Dongyang City said Wu Ying, once the sixth richest woman in China, also owned jewelry, mostly of jade, worth more than 100 million yuan (US$15.89 million) and a hotel before her arrest in 2007.

Most of her properties have been used to pay her debts and 30 of her cars have been auctioned, fetching 3.9 million yuan. Her hotel was sold for 4.5 million yuan, the China News Service reported today.

The remaining 11 cars, including a 3.75-million-yuan Ferrari, are still not sold, police said.

Seven years ago, Wu Ying, then 24 with secondary education, used the pyramid scheme to raise 770 million yuan from 19 investors until she was arrested in 2007.

The Zhejiang Province Higher People's Court has rejected her appeal against the death sentence, saying the verdict made by the Jinhua City Intermediate People's Court in December 2009 was based on real evidence.

The key index gained 0.02 percent, to 2,347.90 points by the noon break with turnover standing at 49.8 billion yuan (US$7.9 billion).

China's CPI grew 4.5 percent from a year earlier in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said on its website today.

Inflation rebound for the first time in six months, as the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday stimulated spending and food prices rose.

"Holiday distortion will not refrain the inflation from falling in the future. Surging food prices contributed to the CPI's rebound in January. February's reading is expected to drop below 4 percent," said Ba Shusong, a senior economist at the State Council's Development Research Center.

"As the CPI is higher than expected, easing monetary policy and a cut in banks' reserve requirements are very likely to be delayed," said Liu Yuanchun, deputy director of the Institute of Economic Research at Renmin University of China.

Lenders retreated 0.49 percent on average in the morning session. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China lost 0.45 percent to 4.39 yuan. Bank of Communications plunged 1.18 percent to 5.02 yuan. China Citic Bank climbed against the rest by 0.22 percent to 4.47 yuan.

The pace was slightly up from December's 4.1 percent.

Food costs, accounting for nearly a third of the basket, rose an annual 10.5 percent in January, higher than the 9.1 percent recorded in the previous month.

The Producer Price Index, a factory-gate measurement of inflation and a harbinger of future CPI, expanded 0.7 percent from a year earlier in January, compared to 1.7 percent in December.

China's CPI settled at an annualized 5.4 percent in 2011, far above the 4 percent target set at the beginning of last year.

Benchmark crude rose by 30 cents to end the day at US$98.71 per barrel in New York.

Brent crude, which is used to price foreign oil varieties, rose by 97 cents to finish at US$117.20 a barrel in London.

The Energy Information Administration reported that the United States' crude supplies increased by 300,000 barrels last week, much less than the increase of 2.25 million barrels analysts expected.

Analysts were betting that refineries would continue to replenish stockpiles as they usually do in the first few months of the year. But last week they also cut back on imports as oil and gasoline demand dropped.

The EIA said that US petroleum demand fell by 4.8 percent to a four-week average of 18.1 million barrels per day. That's the weakest four-week average since April 1997, said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.

Earlier in the day oil prices rose above US$100 per barrel, after an industry survey predicted supplies would move in the opposite direction, dropping by 4.5 million barrels. The EIA report countered that.

"That took the wind out of the sails" of energy commodities, said Gene McGillian, a broker and oil analyst at Tradition Energy.

Meanwhile, doubts about Greece's ability to follow through with spending cuts and other austerity measures necessary to avoid bankruptcy pushed the dollar higher. Oil, which is priced in dollars, tends to drop in value as the dollar rises and makes crude more expensive for investors holding foreign money.

In other energy trading, heating oil was essentially flat, ending at US$3.19 per gallon, while gasoline futures rose by 5 cents to end at US$2.98 per gallon. Natural gas futures fell 2 cents to end at US$2.45 per 1,000 cubic feet.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 5.75 points to close at 12,883.95 after falling as much as 60 points at midday. It was the Dow's highest close since May 19, 2008, the last time it finished above 13,000.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index edged up 2.91 points to 1,346.96. The Nasdaq composite rose 11.78 points to 2,915.86, its highest close since December 2000.

After three days of delays, Greek government leaders met in Athens to go over a deal on steep cuts in public spending demanded by the country's lenders. European leaders will meet today in Brussels to discuss a €130 billion (US$172 billion) bailout for Greece.

Investors are worried that Greece will default on its debt next month, which could roil financial markets and cause major losses for banks and other investors that hold Greek debt. Several deadlines have passed without an agreement.

Stock trading has been relatively quiet this week after a slow but steady rise since the beginning of the year. The Dow has added 2 percent in February and is up 5.5 percent for the year.

Rick Fier, vice president of stock trading at Conifer Securities in New York, said he wasn't that worried that the market's advance has slowed this week. The S&P 500 is still up 7.3 percent for the year, and has fallen on only eight days in 2012.

Fier said he is concerned that the batch of earnings reports from US companies for the last three months of last year "hasn't been as robust" as previous quarters. Revenue growth has slowed even though profits have been strong, he said.

Walt Disney reported earnings Tuesday that beat analysts' estimates, but its revenue growth fell short. Movie revenue fell as Disney released fewer big films in the quarter than in previous years. Revenue from DVD sales and interactive media also declined. Disney's stock rose 0.7 percent nevertheless.

Caesars Entertainment Corp., the big casino operator, soared on its first day of trading. Caesars went as high as US$17.90, nearly double its offering price of US$9 per share. It finished at US$15.39, up 71 percent, but lost some of the gains in after-hours trading.

Caesars raised US$16 million, a sliver of the more than US$500 million its private owners hoped for when they first tried to go public in late 2010.

Ralph Lauren rose 9 percent after reporting higher net income and revenue in the latest quarter, a sign that wealthy customers are still spending even as the economy struggles with high unemployment. The purveyor of US$1,000 dresses and handbags said holiday sales had been strong.

Buffalo Wild Wings, a chicken-and-beer chain that has bucked the trend of weak revenue dogging many of its competitors, shot up 17 percent after reporting income and revenue that easily beat analysts' estimates.

Sprint Nextel, the phone company, fell 2 percent after reporting a fourth-quarter loss. It added subscribers but had to pay dearly for them. Sprint started offering customers iPhones, but it had to subsidize them so customers could buy them for as little as US$99.

OpenTable, which lets people book tables at restaurants online, plunged 12 percent. Investors had reservations about the company's cautious outlook. Executives said they expect the growth to slow this quarter in the number of diners it seats.

In other markets, Treasury prices were mostly flat, like stocks. The yield on the US government's 10-year note was unchanged at 1.98 percent. The price of oil rose 0.3 percent to US$98.71, and gold fell 1 percent to US$1,736.20.

The government also pledged to maintain an average 13 percent growth annually in the nation's minimum wage during the five-year period.

The government wants minimum wages to be 40 percent of average local salaries by 2015.

During the 2006-10 period, China raised minimum wages by a yearly average of 12.5 percent.

Currently, minimum wages in China range from 870 yuan (US$138) in Chongqing to 1,500 yuan per month in Shenzhen.

Last month, Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng said the city's minimum wage, currently 1,280 yuan, would be raised from April 1.

Government authorities will also work to spur employment while improving the employment structure and regulations that protect workers' rights and benefits, according to the plan.

A total of 57.71 million new jobs were created in urban areas during the 2006-10 period, official data shows.

By the end of 2011, China's urban unemployment rate stood at 4.1 percent, the same as in 2010.

China's job market conditions will be "complicated," the plan says, with the country facing increasing pressure in creating more job opportunities.

That complication is likely to increase if economic growth continues to decelerate, it says.

China's economy expanded 9.2 percent in 2011 from a year earlier, down from 10.3 percent in 2010, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

In the fourth quarter last year, economic growth slowed to a 10-quarter low of 8.9 percent year-on-year.

Structural problems, such as employees' skills not matching labor demand, are likely to worsen in the coming years, according to the plan. Employers have been suffering from a lack of experienced workers, especially those with skills in the manufacturing and service sectors.

At the same time, many college graduates were having problems finding satisfactory jobs. Official estimates put the number of college graduates in 2012 at 6.8 million, more than six times that in the early 2000s.

"Every year there are 25 million urban residents needing jobs and there is still a significant number of excess rural workers needing to find jobs," the plan says. "All levels of governments making fiscal, financial and industrial policies must consider the impact on employment and pay close attention to unemployment risks."

The government is to implement a more proactive employment policy by providing more fiscal, taxation and financial support.

Local authorities should give priorities to the development of industries that provide more job opportunities, with more funding flowing to the service sector and labor-intensive industries, as well as small and micro-enterprises, the plan says.

The draft also requires them to tell their spouses and sexual partners if they test positive for the HIV virus.

Wang Yu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said yesterday that using real names could help medical facilities locate HIV carriers, enabling them to give proper treatment and control the disease from spreading.

At present, China allows people to take HIV tests without having to give personal details.

Guangxi officials said the region allowed anonymous HIV tests to protect people's privacy, but it found that the health authority couldn't then contact people who had been tested. Some people just vanished after they had tested positive.

The draft, as well as requiring patients to show their identity cards, requires HIV carriers to inform their sexual partners within 30 days of the test result. If they fail to do so, the disease control center has the right to inform the spouse and sexual partners of the situation, the draft states.

Wang said anonymous HIV testing had limitations, especially in places with a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

"We sometimes can't find the carriers who didn't leave real information. HIV carriers could pose a risk to others through unsafe sexual behavior or other methods if their infection is hidden. Under such circumstances, what is more important - protecting privacy or controlling an infectious situation and protecting public health?"

Shanghai health officials said requiring real names could scare off people because of social prejudice against the disease.

Song Guofan, of Shanghai Health Bureau, said: "AIDS is such a stigma in China. Allowing voluntary tests without using real names can effectively promote the free HIV tests and make people feel comfortable and safe."

Sun Jian, the bureau's vice director, said the city would eliminate high-polluting vehicles and strengthen measures to control industrial plant emissions to reduce PM2.5, which is mainly caused by industrial processes and vehicle exhausts.

Sun said Shanghai would adopt a stricter emissions standard, equivalent to Europe's, on new cars from next year.

"Cleaner fuels will also be offered to control vehicle pollution," Sun said.

In December, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said Shanghai and Beijing would be among the first batch of cities to adopt PM2.5 and ozone monitoring, which will be widened to 113 key cities next year, all major cities in 2015 and nationwide in 2016.

Beijing started to release its PM2.5 data on January 21.

The PM2.5 measure is stricter than the current national PM10 standard as it monitors "fine" particles measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter.

Experts say such particles pose major health risks as they are small enough to lodge deep in the lungs and even enter the bloodstream.

Officials from the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission said effective measures to reduce PM2.5 in the air were its main task this year.

The commission's Yu Qing said: "We are studying equipment being installed into vehicle exhaust pipes to reduce pollutant discharges, new methods to further reduce discharges like nitrogen oxide during power production and techniques to control flying dirt in construction sites."

Dr Bai Chunxue, director of Shanghai Medical Association's respiratory branch, said the harm caused by PM2.5 was more severe than smoking.

"Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer are major respiratory killer diseases in the nation, so we want to detect chemicals causing inflammation and cancerous change through study of PM2.5," Bai said.

Shanghai has failed to meet a proposed air quality standard for PM2.5 for the past five years. Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center data showed that the average density of PM2.5 was higher than a proposed PM2.5 standard every year since a pilot study began in 2005.

A yellow cat sprang up from one, running across the small Tongzhou Road, jumping onto a bag of cat food.

"A cute and quiet one," murmured Wu Gendi, a 71-year-old woman, dressed in blue, one of her cotton shoes worn and with a hole in it.

She recognized the cat, one of the nearly 80 cats and dogs she helps raise inside the "home".

Wu emerged from one of the three shacks yesterday, where she lives with her husband, Zhou Hongnian, together with the cats and dogs, after waking up from a nap.

She waited alongside the road for Zhou, who had gone to take a sick cat for treatment.

"He's the one who loves the pets most for all his life," said Wu, talking about her 86-year-old husband.

The couple have been raising the stray and abandoned pets for more than 10 years.

The neighbors take walks on the same street in Hongkou District but seldom talk with the old couple. Wu, well-known within the community, seems not to be bothered by that.

The couple said the neighbors have petitioned the community and city sanitation departments to remove the "dog and cat shelter," and sometimes they've simply done it on their own.

"The makeshift shacks have been torn down several times," said Wu.

The couple moved out of their own home years ago and set up the temporary lodging, with cages occupying most of the space inside and empty ones stocked outside.

Wu's shack was torn down by the urban management team last year, she said.

"After they tore it down and carried the remaining materials away, we bought some waste board and plastic sheets and built the shacks again," Wu said. "They can't do much about us."

Wu said 14 cats once were poisoned to death but the suspects were never caught.

"They can ask us to narrow our space and not to affect others but they don't have the right to stop us from taking care of the homeless pets," Wu said.

By paying more than half of their 4,000 yuan (US$635) monthly pension to raise the dogs and cats, the duo don't have much left for themselves.

"We are now considering sterilizing the pets," said Wu, worrying they will have less ability to take care of them as they grow older and weaker.

Zhou had surgery last year and Wu worried that his health might worsen from taking care of the 70-plus pets every day. Zhou gets up early every day to clean up the waste from the cats and dogs, and the couple usually work until midnight to take care of them.

Now the two are getting some help from volunteers. Wu Jingying, a member of a civil organization dedicated to animal protection, started an online campaign last weekend to raise money for the sterilization of the couple's dogs and cats. So far the organization had collected more than 4,000 yuan, Wu told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

"Their living conditions are too poor. Look at Zhou; he's 86 and lives in a shabby board room aside the road," she said. "We're trying to improve their conditions."

The organization has ordered a military tent to replace one of the shacks to make the couple's life a little more comfortable.

However, not every animal-protection organization supports such benevolence.

"I'm worried about the health of the cats and dogs," said a member of JAR, an aid group for stray animals. "Finding adoption for the cats and dogs is the best way to save them. It's not good for them to be locked in the cages forever."