China

Medicine abuse is making about 10 000 Chinese children deaf each year, state media said on Friday, blaming doctors and parents alike. Parents had ”blind faith” in antibiotics and doctors, who often take kickbacks from drugs middlemen, were more than willing to prescribe them, the People’s Daily said.

China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and his United States counterpart discussed promoting the continued use of political and diplomatic efforts to resolve the Darfur problem. Dai and US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte discussed the crisis in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region in a late night phone call.

Working hard at the office is not enough to warrant a promotion in one Chinese county, where a new rule says government employees must also be nice to their parents, state press reported on Monday. Assessment teams interview officials’ relatives, neighbours and colleagues to determine if they are caring towards their mother and father.

The first gay-themed chat show to appear in China debuted online on Thursday, with the host and guests discussing the challenges of being homosexual in the country’s conservative society. The first of 12 episodes appeared on the website of Hong Kong-based broadcaster Phoenix Television and three other sites.

China and Sudan have agreed to strengthen military ties, state media reported, underscoring the two countries’ close and controversial cooperation as some Western nations seek United Nations action over bloodshed in Darfur. In Darfur, over 200 000 people are believed to have died and about 2,5-million have been driven from their homes.

Hail the size of eggs has ravaged southern parts of China, killing 13 people, closing an expressway and damaging crops on at least 81 300ha of farmland, the Xinhua news agency said on Monday. Seven people were killed and one was injured when a bus was hit in a landslide triggered by hailstorms since Sunday in mountainous areas in south-western Sichuan Province, Xinhua said.

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.