UPDATE 1-PRESS DIGEST - China - June 26

(Adds newspapers)

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, June 26 (Reuters) - Chinese newspapers available in Beijing and Shanghai carried the following stories on Thursday. Reuters has not checked the stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

FINANCIAL NEWS

-- The Ministry of Commerce has urged local bureaux to closely monitor prices of grain, cooking oil, meat and vegetables after the fuel price rise last week and encouraged firms to try their best not to pass the extra cost to consumers.

-- The World Bank has approved more loans to China to make the total $1.513 billion in fiscal year 2008. The new loans will help improve rural sanitation, train rural workers, build urban transportation systems and railways.

CHINA DAILY

-- China will build a nuclear power plant in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing, as Beijing seeks ways to address the rising demand for energy.

-- Authorities in the southern booming city of Dongguan in Guangdong province plans to seek help from mistresses of officials in their anti-graft campaign as they find at least 80 percent of the corrupt officials exposed in the city had mistresses.

-- Hankou Bank, a small city bank in Wuhan, Hubei province, is in talks with several foreign banks and plans to float shares in the next three to five years.

PEOPLE'S DAILY

-- China will spend 12.7 billion yuan this year to improve the yield of farm lands so as to increase its grain output by 3 billion kilograms.

-- Beijing will hold a public hearing on the ticket for a new subway linking the airport and the downtown area on July 2. The reference price now is 25 or 30 yuan for a single journey.

CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL

-- A total of 65.8 billion yuan ($9.6 billion) of shares will become freely tradable in July as lock-up periods expire, down nearly 30 percent from June. July will be the lightest month so far this year for new share supply due to expiring lock-ups.

-- New A-share investment accounts opened in Shanghai and Shenzhen rose to a five-week high of 265,000 last week, ending a five-week downtrend.

SHANGHAI SECURITIES NEWS

-- The China Securities Regulatory Commission said it would not accept applications for share issues and stock incentive plans from companies which did not complete reforms of their corporate governance systems by a Nov. 30 deadline.

-- Senior managers of listed Chinese companies and their direct relatives sold a total of 3.22 billion yuan of their companies' shares during the 12 months through May, while they bought only 581 million yuan.

-- A new policy document from the China Banking Regulatory Commission does not include any mention of the possibility of raising the limits on foreign ownership of Chinese banks, nor does it include any fresh steps to open new business areas to Chinese banks.

-- The creation of almost 60 new mutual funds has been approved so far this year, not including conversions of closed-end funds into open-ended funds, and 40 of the new funds have started operating.

-- A total of 535 million A shares in China COSCO Holdings Co (601919.SS) (1919.HK) become freely tradable today as a lock-up period related to its Shanghai IPO expires, but most institutional investors are believed to be optimistic about the company's development and unlikely to cut their holdings.

SECURITIES TIMES

-- A total of 535 listed companies have issued preliminary profit estimates for the first half of this year, of which only 32.5 percent have forecast falling profits or losses, suggesting overall corporate profit growth remains good. ($1 = 6.86 yuan)

(Editing by Keiron Henderson)