Beijing

A lovelorn Chinese herdsman who is the world’s tallest man has finally found his other half in a sales clerk who comes up to his elbow, state media reported on Wednesday. Bao Xishun, who stands 2,36m, will marry 1,68m Xia Shujun, who is also half the groom’s age at just 28, the Beijing News reported.

A one-day extension on Thursday failed to kick-start stalled six-party negotiations on ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, with the chief North Korean negotiator apparently on his way back to Pyongyang. The talks were likely to be suspended following an unexpected delay in the transfer of frozen funds from a Macau bank.

Chinese cemeteries are selling paper replicas of Viagra pills to be burned for dead relatives as a wish for satisfying sex in the afterlife, state media reported on Wednesday. Customers are snapping up the paper Viagra ahead of the annual Tombsweeping Festival on April 5, the Nanjing Morning News reported.

Beijing will adopt emergency measures shutting down the capital’s industry if pollution threatens to disrupt next year’s Olympic Games, organising committee chief Liu Qi said on Tuesday. Poor air quality constitutes a serious problem for the August 8 to 24 Games next year in Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities.

North Korea refused to attend a session of six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear programmes on Tuesday while it awaits the return of $25-million in frozen assets, diplomats said. The US Treasury had announced on Monday that about $25-million in North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank could be released, although no timeframe was given.

A pro-Pyongyang newspaper on Friday hailed United States moves to resolve financial sanctions against North Korea as a ”landmark event”, raising hopes for progress in long-running disarmament talks. North Korea, however, has yet to give an official response to the US Treasury’s announcement on Wednesday that it had cleared the way for the release of about -million.

A Chinese lawmaker has proposed a "dog tax" to help discourage skyrocketing ownership of the pets and pay for faeces clean-up and rabies prevention, state media reported on Monday. Dog ownership is on the rise in China as urbanites find room in their increasingly comfortable lives for the status symbol of a pet.

Fearful of soaring internet addiction and juvenile crime, China has banned the opening of new internet cafés this year. The ban comes as lawmakers at China’s annual session of Parliament, the National People’s Congress, called for stricter regulations to keep teenagers away from internet cafés.

Beijing officials are planning to round up beggars and ship them out of the city as part of clean-up campaign ahead of next year’s Olympics Games, according to state media reports on Thursday. It said Beijing officials planned to expand holding centres for beggars who would then be shipped back to their home provinces.

A campaign to improve the manners of Beijing’s queue-jumping residents ahead of the Olympics is showing results, although a gold-medal standard is still a long way off, state press reported on Tuesday. Incidents of littering, spitting, flaunting traffic rules and pushing ahead in queues have all started to decline since 2005, the Xinhua news agency said.

Chief United States negotiator Christopher Hill cautioned on Wednesday that difficult work remained to implement the breakthrough energy-for-arms agreement with North Korea. The deal, hammered out at six-party talks in Beijing in the shadow of North Korea’s first nuclear test last October, requires the secretive state to shutter is Yongbyon reactor within 60 days.

China is pursuing a mutually beneficial relationship with Africa, in contrast to the West’s colonial exploitation of the continent, state-run press said on Monday following President Hu Jintao’s eight-nation tour. The 12-day visit cemented ties that were favourable to both sides, the official China Daily newspaper said.

Police officers in central China have launched a massive hunt for a poisonous carp that went missing from a line where it was hanging out to dry, the China Daily reported on Tuesday. The carp’s owner said he soaked the 3kg fish in an arsenic solution to be used in a traditional medical treatment.

China on Tuesday defended its arms exports to African nations, saying they are small in scale and do not violate United Nations rules that ban weapons sales to countries at war. ”On the arms exports to Africa, China takes a cautious and responsible attitude,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said shortly after President Hu Jintao left for an eight-nation tour of the continent.

Hundreds of chickens have been found dead in east China — and a court has ruled that the cause of death was the screaming of a four-year-old boy who in turn had been scared by a barking dog. The sequence of events began when the boy arrived at a village home in Jiangsu with his father who was delivering bottles of gas.

Five Chinese workers abducted earlier this month in Nigeria described their experience as ”hell on earth” after arriving in Beijing following their 13-day ordeal, state media reported on Tuesday. The five were freed in Nigeria’s oil-producing delta after gunmen broke into the rented apartment and forced them away at gunpoint before dawn.

A Chinese thief has returned a cellphone and thousands of yuan he stole from a woman after she sent him 21 touching SMSs, Xinhua news agency said on Monday. Pan Aiying, a teacher in the eastern province of Shandong, had her bag containing her cellphone, bank cards and 4 900 yuan () snatched by a man riding a motorcycle as she cycled home on Friday.

Broadcasting authorities in corruption-plagued China will allow television stations to air only "ethically inspiring" programmes in prime time from next month, state media reported on Monday. "The country’s satellite TV stations should only screen ethically inspiring TV series during prime time," Wang Weiping, deputy director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, said.

A studio audience at a Chinese television programme showcasing priceless ancient relics was shocked when a crew member accidentally smashed a 2 500-year-old bronze mirror, state media reported. The small gilded mirror inlaid with turquoise was being held by a presenter’s assistant when it fell out of its wooden box.