Beijing

North Korea has agreed to return to talks on its nuclear programme and they could start within one month, the United States announced on Tuesday, just weeks after the regime stunned the world with an atomic test. Christopher Hill, Washington’s chief negotiator on North Korea, announced the sudden breakthrough after secret talks Tuesday in Beijing.

China has not only rolled out the red carpet, it has also redecorated its capital in red as it prepares to host more than 40 African heads of state for a summit billed as a warm-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. About 1 700 delegates and hundreds of journalists are expected for the November 1 to 6 China-Africa forum.

Thousands of extra video cameras are being installed on Beijing’s buses in an effort to improve public politeness ahead of the 2008 Olympics, state press said on Tuesday. The campaign is aimed at raising standards of courtesy in the capital, such as giving up bus seats to the elderly, children, pregnant women and the handicapped, Xinhua news agency said.

A Chinese entrepreneur is suing a Beijing trade bureau for denying him a permit to sell bags of ”World Cup air” and for scotching his plans to bottle and sell ”2008 Olympic air”, a newspaper said on Thursday. Li Jie, who describes himself as chief executive of the Lunar Embassy to China and once tried to sell land on the moon, sought a permit to sell ”World Cup air” for 50 yuan (,30).

HIV/Aids in China has spread beyond high risk groups such as drug users, prostitutes and homosexuals and the country was becoming ”like Africa” in how the virus is transmitted, a senior health official says. ”There are 190 new HIV infections every day … and 1% of all pregnant women in China are infected,” said Hao Yang.

A Chinese university aiming to produce ”socially elite” graduates is to make golf compulsory for students, state media reported on Tuesday. Golf was once reviled in Communist China as a symbol of western decadence, but has become hugely popular among the newly affluent since the first golf course opened on the mainland in the early 1980s.

World powers moved closer on Friday to a response to North Korea’s nuclear test, with a United Nations draft resolution that retains economic and weapons sanctions but specifically rules out military force. North Korea has said it would consider tough UN measures as tantamount to a declaration of war and would respond in kind.

China has warned image-conscious citizens against using the rack to lengthen their legs after several such operations went badly wrong, Xinhua news agency said. Ten people were reported to have been disfigured after they underwent stretching surgery last year, it added.

China declined on Tuesday to rule out possible United Nations sanctions against North Korea for carrying out a reported nuclear test but said any military action was unimaginable. It said it had no information about widespread speculation that the secretive North might be ready to conduct a second test.

A Chinese performance artist has locked himself up in a lion’s den to experience life as a caged animal, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Poet and performance artist Ye Fu, who once built himself a bird’s nest atop a Beijing building, locked himself in a lion’s cage on Tuesday in the eastern city of Qingdao.

A Chinese culture ministry official has denounced a university professor who stripped naked in front of students and teachers during an art class, a Chinese newspaper reported on Tuesday. Mo Xiaoxin, a 56-year-old assistant professor at a university in Changzhou, in eastern Jiangsu province, shocked students by stripping during a lecture on ”body art”.

China has shut down a Chinese magazine’s outspoken website, apparently because of the reported killing of a villager trying to stop demolition of his home, the editor said on Thursday. The online edition of the Baixing [People] Magazine, based in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, was closed on Wednesday, editor Huang Liantian told Reuters.

A woman said to be the tallest in the world has been fitted with new size-57 shoes from a German cobbler who travelled to China to meet her. ”If I’d known how poorly she was, I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to go there,” 54-year-old Georg Wessels said on Monday on his return from Anhui province where he met the 2,36m-tall Yao Defen.

Time is running out to reach an agreement on Tibet’s future which, if not sorted out by 2008, could become a blemish on the Beijing Olympics, a French parliamentary delegation said on Wednesday. The Dalai Lama, accused by Beijing of being a separatist, has lived in exile in the Indian hill station of Dharamsala since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese Communist rule.

China may be giving striptease funerals the last rites after officials arrested five people and ordered an end to the practice, state media said on Thursday. Strip shows have been commonly used to attract more mourners to funerals, as villagers believe a crowded send-off brings more honor to the deceased, Xinhua news agency said.

A flock of hungry sheep gobbled up banknotes totalling 100 000 yuan ($12 500) that were the public funds of a northern Chinese village, state media reported on Tuesday. A farmer who was also the treasurer of Linjiawan village in Shaanxi province was devastated when he found out the cash he had hidden underneath his sheep pasture was mostly chewed up by the beasts.

The death toll in China from Typhoon Saomai rose by 106 to 436 on Friday with the confirmation of dozens more deaths in the eastern province of Zhejiang, state media said. All 106 new fatalities were in the coastal province of Zhejiang, which had previously reported 87 dead and 52 missing, Xinhua news agency said.

The death toll from the strongest typhoon to hit China in half a century has reached 319 and could rise further, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. Much of southern China has been battered by a series of typhoons and tropical storms this year that have now killed about 1 300 people.