Beijing - China's two stock markets on Friday lost about 3 per cent of their value, following an overnight fall on Wall Street.

The key Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks shares traded in foreign and local currencies, dropped 3.29 per cent, losing 74.96 points to end the week at 2,202.45.

The smaller Shenzhen Component Index also lost 3.74 per cent of its value to close at 608.18, down 23.62 points.

London, Sept. 5: Another British icon has gone the Chinese way. We are talking about taxis.

They are now not being made in Britain, but at a sprawling factory in the lush green suburbs of Shanghai.

Young Chinese workers have been roped in for the full-scale production of one of Britain's most emblematic vehicles.

London Taxi International, which will continue to build nine out ten cabs used in Britain at a factory in Coventry, could not expand at its small-scale, high-cost plant. So it turned to China to drive overseas expansion.

New Delhi, Sept. 5 : Poor design, the use of substandard materials and other defects are being blamed for the collapse of several school buildings during the May 12 earthquake in China’s south-west Sichuan Province.

Both Xinhua and The China Daily quoted Ma Zongjin, the director of the National Wenchuan Earthquake Expert Committee, as telling a press conference in Beijing that substandard materials were used to build the schools that collapsed.

It may be recalled that the 8.0 magnitude Wenchuan earthquake killed about 70,000 people, including thousands of students.

Hong Kong - Nearly 77,000 Chinese people a day visit Hong Kong as the former British colony welcomes record numbers of cross-border travellers, according to government figures released Friday.

The study by Hong Kong's Urban Planning and Design Department showed an 18-per-cent year-on-year jump in the number of mainland Chinese crossing the border to Hong Kong in 2007 to an average of 76,800 daily.

Singapore - China and Singapore concluded negotiations on a free trade agreement, China's first with an Asian country, news reports said Friday.

The agreement, finalized in talks this week between Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan in the northern coastal Chinese city of Tiajin, is likely to be signed at the Asia Europe Meeting Summit in Beijing on October 24-25.

Beijing  - Officials have tightened controls over mosques and religious practice in China's restive Xinjiang region for the ongoing Ramadan festival, according to exiled Uighurs and local government notices seen on Thursday.

Xinjiang officials ordered Muslim restaurants to stay open during the traditional Ramadan fasting and imposed restrictions on mosques and government work units, Dilxat Raxit of the Munich-based World Uighur Congress said in a statement.