Forty-two state and local laws and regulations went into effect Monday, involving price fixing and disease control.

Operators who overcharge consumers and refuse to refund will be confiscated of the illegal gain and compensate consumers' losses, according to a revised State Council regulation on delivering administrative penalty to illegal price fixing practice.

In another regulation on price fixing, government agencies are required to take the initiative in carrying out research on price range, conducting survey among social circles on price change and group reviews as well as publicizing final decisions.

To prevent schistosomiasis from spreading, the Ministry of Health has promulgated a regulation to control and treat the disease, which stipulates that the government offer farmers free preventive medicines and cut or exempt treatment fee of poor farmers .

The State Environmental Protection Administration has issued policy measures to ensure environment safety of pathogenic microbe labs, demanding the labs set up a dangerous waste registration system, not discard or pile up wastes at will or put them among other trash.

It highlighted that supervisors of the labs are responsible for preventing and addressing pollution caused by waste water and gas and dangerous wastes.

A new mandatory national standard has also come into effect Monday, banning production of "cup" jellies with a diameter smaller than 3.5 centimeters to curb the number of choking cases, particularly among children and the elderly.

In Beijing, a new regulation allowed college graduates who have not found jobs to apply for bank loans of up to 500,000 yuan (62,500 U.S. dollars) to start a business, the same as the unemployed, migrant workers from countryside and soldiers back to civilian work.

Source: Xinhua