Lionel Messi beating Christiano Ronaldo, death sentences and, of course, the Chinese New Year holiday were among the most talked about topics on China’s Twitter clone, Sina Weibo microblog, on Thursday.

1. With the Chinese New Year holidays just days away, those who are still working complain they aren’t in the mood to work any more.

2. Barcelona trumped Real Madrid 2-1 to win the first leg of the Copa del Rey quarter-finals.

3. Zhejiang’s Higher People’s Court has upheld the original death sentence handed down to Wu Ying (吴英), a 30-year-old businesswoman who was originally sentenced to death by an intermediate court in December 2009 on charges of “illegal fund-raising”.

4. Zhang Yimou’s (张艺谋) The Flowers of War (金陵十三钗) did not make it onto the Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film shortlist. Taiwan’s historic epic Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (賽德克‧巴萊), directed by Wei Te-Sheng (魏德聖), is among the nine films which will advance to the next round of voting in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

5. Writer Han Han (韩寒) published a blog post, saying he accepted tech blogger Mai Tian’s (麦田) apology.