China

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.

China’s movie censor will not approve Golden Globe-honoured film The Departed for domestic cinematic release due to its mention of a Chinese plan to buy military equipment. Martin Scorsese was named best film director at the Golden Globes on Monday for the film, a crime thriller many think might earn him first Oscar either for best directing or for best film.

Police in southern China are probing a spate of grisly murders in which the victims were chopped into pieces, including one whose body parts were mailed across the country. Police in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong province, have set up a special task force to investigate the cases, the China Daily reported.

China banned government workers, Communist Party members and students in Tibet from marking a recent Buddhist festival, citing the need to ”tighten up education”, a Tibetan rights group reported. A notice in the official Lhasa Evening News said the ban also applied to ”retired cadres and staff”.

China dismissed a Taiwan accusation of buying diplomatic recognition in Africa with -million in aid and loans on Tuesday, saying it was like a burglar shouting: ”Stop thief!” Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province, said Beijing had offered five African nations aid, loans and debt write-offs during recent state visits.

China on Saturday ordered its Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Nigeria to ”give all their efforts” to free five Chinese telecommunications workers taken hostage a day earlier in the African nation. ”China’s leaders attach the highest importance to this,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao said in a statement released on Saturday.