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BEIJING -- ''When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them,'' Confucius once said. Apparently, someone extremely powerful has taken the saying to heart, having decided that a 31-foot bronze statue of the ancient Chinese sage that was unveiled near Tiananmen Square four months ago did not belong on the nation's most hallowed slice of real estate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For much of his education, Xue Longlong was silently accompanied from grade to grade, school to school, by a sealed Manila envelope stamped top secret. Stuffed inside were grades, test results, evaluations by fellow students and teachers, his Communist Party application and -- most important for his job prospects -- proof of his 2006 college degree. Everyone in China who has been to high school has such a file. The files are irreplaceable histories of achievement and failure, the starting point for potential employers, government officials and others judging an individual's worth. Often keys to the future, they are locked tight in government, school or workplace cabinets to eliminate any chance they might vanish. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BEIJING -- The mystery over a series of vicious attacks on schoolchildren across China deepened Thursday, as reports emerged indicating that the latest and deadliest round of slaughter was committed not by a stranger to his victims, but rather by a man well known to them and their families, someone probably seen near the school almost every day. Meanwhile, in Hangzhou, the provincial capital of Zhejiang Province, police officers detained a woman on Thursday morning after she stormed into a youth center brandishing a rusty knife, according to a worker at the center and photographs posted by a local newspaper. (By Thursday night, the photographs and an accompanying article had been removed from the newspaper's Web site, possibly in keeping with government pressure to mute coverage.) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

JIEGU, China -- Rescue teams joined shovel-wielding monks in this devastated county seat on Thursday, a day after an earthquake that killed more than 700 people, as frigid temperatures threatened to claim hundreds more who remained missing, trapped beneath debris for more than a day. Scores of thousands who survived the 7.1-magnitude quake, in rural Qinghai Province, in western China, were left without heat or shelter in weather that included high winds, sleet and below-freezing cold; nighttime temperatures were forecast to drop to the 20s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The section presents economic news briefs around the world, including the rise of Japan's foreign exchange reserves.