China

China, officially celebrating the ‘Year of Italy’, has reacted angrily to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s comments that Chinese people used to ”boil babies”. ”We are not satisfied with such remarks, which are groundless and lack any facts,” the foreign ministry said in a brief statement faxed to Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.

Thousands of people in south-west China, who were evacuated after a weekend gas explosion, remained unable to return home on Tuesday with dangerous gas still leaking, officials said. The explosion on Saturday in Chongqing municipality led to the evacuation of 11 500 people from villages near the site of the leak.

Nearly 60% of "foreign-brand" liquor found in four major Chinese cities is fake, according to a random check carried out by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. The administration inspected 40 bottles, mostly cognac and whisky, in 19 retail outlets and found 23 with Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and certain Scotch whisky labels were fake.

The British Museum’s first exhibition in China has left many Chinese wondering where their own country’s priceless artefacts in the collection from the world’s oldest museum have gone. ”Why are there no Chinese artefacts and [who] do the objects really belong to?” asked the official Xinhua news agency on Monday.

A Chinese dissident was jailed on Friday for 10 years over an essay he posted on the internet, a United States-based rights body said, as China continued its crackdown on people who express anti-government views. Ren Zhiyuan was sentenced by the Jining City Intermediate Court for ”subverting state sovereignty”, New York-based Human Rights in China said.

Jaywalkers in China beware. Crossing the street against the lights could lead to punishments at work, including being overlooked for a promotion and a loss of salary bonuses. China’s law on road safety states that every work unit or company has the responsibility to educate their staff on traffic regulations.

Forget the Mao suits of a generation ago. Actually, forget about any clothes at all. Naked wedding photos are the hot new trend among young couples in once deeply conservative China. Even in Anhui, a largely rural province in the east, many newly-weds are having their pictures taken in the nude, to the fury of their parents’ generation.

China expressed shock on Thursday after Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso called Taiwan a ”country”, and accused him of intervening in its internal affairs. Aso told a parliamentary committee that Taiwan is a ”law-governed country”, the latest in a series of remarks that have angered Beijing.

China’s agriculture minister has warned of a possible ”massive bird-flu outbreak” as the country announced two new human cases of the H5N1 flu strain, raising to 14 the number of reports of human infections since October. The latest human cases are a nine-year-old girl and a 26-year-old woman.

China warned outspoken Hong Kong Bishop Joseph Zen on Thursday not to mix politics and religion, after Pope Benedict XVI named him a cardinal. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao also said Beijing’s position on refraining from establishing diplomatic ties with Rome had not changed because of the appointment.

China has defended its internet censorship policies, saying its rules follow international norms and claims no one has been detained for writing online content. China is no different from Western nations, whose criticisms smack of ”double standards”, said Liu Zhengrong, deputy chief of the Internet Affairs Bureau.

The number of twin births is rising rapidly across China as more women take fertility drugs, often in order to circumvent the nation’s stern population policies, state media said on Monday. At the Maternal and Child Hygiene Hospital in east China’s Nanjing city, 90 sets of twins and triplets were born last year, compared with usually just 20 sets annually.

The Shanghai zoo, located in China’s economic capital, is storing the bones of dead tigers in distilled spirits and selling the resulting tonic as a health supplement, state press said on Friday. The zoo, which keeps up to a dozen tigers, has linked up with an alcohol producer to make the tiger-bone elixir.

China has made representations to Pretoria over a series of crimes and murders of Chinese citizens in South Africa and on Tuesday urged its nationals to step up their vigilance in the country. ”Recently there are repeated cases where Chinese citizens were robbed or even injured or killed,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Kong Quan.

A blast at a state-owned coal mine in northern China killed 23 workers and caused 53 others to be poisoned with carbon monoxide, the government said on Thursday. The blast occurred Wednesday at the Sihe coal mine in China’s Shanxi province when 697 workers were mining the pit, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

International media rights groups condemned China on Friday over the jailing of journalist Li Changqing for three years on charges of providing ”alarmist information” to an overseas website. Li was sentenced on Tuesday by a court in Fuzhou in the southeastern province of Fujian for publishing an article about a local dengue fever outbreak.

The frontman of United States rock band Nine Inch Nails has become the latest celebrity to speak out against Chinese cruelty towards cats and dogs, through an animal rights video launched on Friday. "Every year, millions of cats and dogs are killed for their fur," said Trent Reznor said.