Xinhua News Agency

Blizzards in remote western China have trapped 8,000 gold prospectors for more than a month and 36 have died, the official Xinhua News Agency said Friday. Altitude sickness caused the deaths, it said. Helicopters on Friday dropped 8 1/2 tons of food into the Hoh Xil Lake area of Qinghai province, more than 16,500 feet above sea level, the report said.

A 50-year-old Chinese peasant woman "returned to life" after her heart stopped beating eight times during an operation, once for as long as 20 minutes, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday. She was undergoing an operation in Xiamen, southeast China, for gallstones and myocarditis. She subsequently recovered her hearing, sight and ability to talk and is expected to leave the hospital soon for her village home.

China and Mongolia on Friday completed a first round of talks on a draft treaty on boundary rules and regulations and on handling border questions, the official Xinhua News Agency said. In 1983, Mongolia expelled 2,000 Chinese citizens, but strain between the two Communist nations eased recently. China and Mongolia signed a consular treaty last year and have also reached trade agreements.

Women in eastern Jiangsu province are organizing night patrols and joining police to stamp out the spreading vice of gambling, the Xinhua News Agency said Friday. The official report said 600,000 women from 3,540 rural communities around Yancheng city have joined "women's anti-gambling associations" to combat gambling, described as a serious problem in the province.

An official once in charge of guarding cultural relics has been sentenced to death in China's biggest antiquities theft case since the start of Communist rule in 1949. Li Haitao was convicted of stealing 259 objects, some of them national treasures, from an imperial villa in Chengde, a city north of Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported this week. Four accomplices were sentenced to terms ranging from two to seven years for trafficking in stolen relics, Xinhua said.

A musical based on the 1942 movie "Casablanca" will make its world debut in China next month, the official Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday. The film starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as former lovers in Casablanca, Morocco, during World War II. The stage version in Beijing will feature tap dance numbers and the theme "As Time Goes By," Xinhua said. The project was developed by the China Arts and Entertainment Group and Time Warner Inc., said Yang Xuan, a China Arts spokeswoman.

Ants can help cure hepatitis-B and various rheumatoid diseases, China's Xinhua news agency said Friday. The Jinling Medical Ants Center in the east China city of Nanjing has treated more than 28,000 patients in the past few years using medicine made from ants, which are rich in zinc and trace elements, the agency said.