No image available
/ 15 October 2005
Kimi Raikkonen wrapped up his preparations for the Chinese Grand Prix by posting the fastest time in final practice in Shanghai on Saturday, handing McLaren a boost in their push for the constructors’ title. The Finn powered round the Shanghai International Circuit in 1:33,212.
No image available
/ 14 October 2005
Seven lions attacked a cleaner on his first day at work after he took a short cut through their enclosure, state press said on Friday. Zhang Huabang was in a critical condition after mistakenly walking on Tuesday through the unlocked gate of the enclosure at Shanghai Wildlife Park to get to the other side, the <i>China Daily</i> said.
No image available
/ 12 October 2005
For a nation that is already two years into its manned space programme, China displays a remarkable lack of consensus on what to call its men in orbit. This is no trifling matter since space travellers are probably the only profession in the world with different names in different countries, reflecting their status as belonging to a tiny elite.
No image available
/ 12 October 2005
United States Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Wednesday that China’s ad-hoc financial system needs greater reform if the world’s fastest-growing economy is to fulfil its great economic potential. Snow is touring China ahead of a key meeting in Beijing of the Group of 20 larger developing countries and rich nations.
No image available
/ 12 October 2005
Waving banners and banging drums, thousands of primary school children on Wednesday paraded through the northwest Chinese city of Jiuquan, celebrating the nation’s second manned foray into space. ”Shenzhou VI successfully launched,” they chanted in not entirely perfect unison, one hour after China’s most ambitious space mission yet blasted off from a secretive launch site in the desert three hours’ drive away.
No image available
/ 10 October 2005
Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, stands 8Â 844,43m above sea level, about four meters shorter than previously thought, according to the latest Chinese survey. The new height compares with China’s previous measurement of Mount Qomolangma, the Tibetan name of the mountain, of 8Â 848,13m which was done in 1975.
There were grave fears on Wednesday about the fate of 36 police cadets still missing after a landslide killed 50 of their colleagues, as masses of people were evacuated from the worst floods in a decade swamping north China. More than 7Â 000 soldiers, police and local residents were carrying out a search-and-rescue operation.
Hope faded on Tuesday for 59 police trainees missing after a landslide in south-eastern China as the confirmed death toll from Typhoon Longwang rose to 15 and wild weather pummelled other parts of the country. Longwang landed in Fujian on Sunday after leaving at least one dead in Taiwan. So far, 15 are confirmed dead in China.
Fifty-nine trainee police officers were missing on Monday after mountain torrents swelled by Typhoon Longwang swept away two buildings at their academy in south-east China, state media reported. At least three people were killed as Typhoon Longwang brought heavy rain, flooding and strong winds to south-eastern China.
At least 34 miners were killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in China’s central province of Henan on Monday, local officials and state media reported, in yet another disaster to blight the beleaguered industry. The blast occurred around dawn in a pit belonging to the Henan Hebi Coal company, a large state-run enterprise in the north of the province.
No image available
/ 26 September 2005
Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers on Monday sought more talks with Beijing on political reform in the city after a historic first meeting with a senior Communist Party official ended in acrimony. They said tense opening talks with Zhang Dejiang, party chief of the southern economic powerhouse province of Guangdong, should be just the beginning and they should be allowed to continue pressing their case.
No image available
/ 26 September 2005
New restrictions on internet news content in China are aimed at controlling an increasingly independent society that is demanding more rights protections. The new rules issued on Sunday by the State Council, China’s Cabinet, require internet operators to re-register their news sites and police their sites for content that can "endanger state security" and "social order".
No image available
/ 23 September 2005
Can’t seem to navigate China’s mammoth city of Shanghai? Check your map, it’s probably counterfeit. An increasing number of drivers in Shanghai are having trouble getting to their destinations when they rely on their car’s global positioning system because many electronic maps installed are fake.
No image available
/ 23 September 2005
Like exhausted but triumphant climbers, pudgy Chinese officials wheezed between smiles atop Kunlun mountain pass before their oxygen-outfitted locomotive whisked them southwards along bare-backed snowy peaks to the Tibetan border. At 4Â 780m, Kunlun in China’s western Qinghai province is one of the highest passes along the new Tibet railway that is rapidly nearing completion.
No image available
/ 22 September 2005
Maria Sharapova piled on the first seven games before Shahar Peer could find her feet but then had to struggle to finally scrape a 6-0, 4-6, 6-2 win Thursday in her opening match at the China Open. Sharapova lifted the first five games against her fellow 18-year-old ranked 48th, in just 18 minutes.
No image available
/ 22 September 2005
With surveys showing Hong Kong men prefer work to sex, the city’s women are seeking help with their love life from a pharmacy chain that has begun stocking sex toys alongside soap and shampoo. Vibrators were a surprise hit at Watson’s chain of pharmacies and sex education officials were delighted, saying it could help the sexually repressed city come out of its shell.
No image available
/ 20 September 2005
Good news travels fast in the Williams household, with debutant Venus hyped up about this week’s China Open after glowing reports on the event from her 2004 defending champion sister Serena. ”It’s become a legend in our house, it’s hard to separate myth from reality about this tournament,” said treble Wimbledon winner Venus.
No image available
/ 19 September 2005
North Korea promised on Monday to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for pledges of aid and security, the first major breakthrough in more than two years of deadlock over the high-stakes crisis. The unexpected agreement also says the United States will respect the North’s sovereignty and will not attack.
No image available
/ 19 September 2005
A chain-smoker from eastern China who started smoking at the age of three has failed in an attempt to win a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, a news report said on Monday. The 37-year-old from Shanghai applied for a place in the record books as the world’s youngest smoker.
No image available
/ 18 September 2005
Delegates were engaged in last-ditch wrangling on Sunday over a proposed joint document aimed at breaking the deadlock in North Korean nuclear talks, but there was no sign of any compromise, and discussions will go into a seventh day. Failure to reach an agreement could force Washington to take the issue to the United Nations Security Council.
No image available
/ 16 September 2005
Music giants Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and their local subsidiaries are suing China’s largest search engine Baidu for allegedly infringing the copyright of hundreds of songs, the company said on Friday. The music companies allege Baidu has made it easy for users to download illegal copies of their songs via its MP3 search engine.
No image available
/ 13 September 2005
North Korea vowed on Tuesday to keep pushing for the right to peaceful atomic energy, putting it on a collision course with the United States as six-way talks on its nuclear weapons drive resumed. Repeating the demand that broke up the talks five weeks ago, the Stalinist state said it would not bow on the issue to Washington, which rejects nuclear reactors for Pyongyang.
No image available
/ 13 September 2005
Xiong Xianghui, a former assistant to Chinese premier Zhou Enlai who was involved in the rapprochement between Beijing and Washington in the early 1970s, has died of lung cancer, state media reported on Tuesday. He was 86. An official funeral was to be held at Babaoshan Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery in Beijing.
No image available
/ 12 September 2005
Last-minute preparations were under way on Monday ahead of the resumption of talks aimed at denuclearising the Korean peninsula, with the United States and North Korea showing few signs of relaxing their positions. Despite a flurry of diplomatic activity during five weeks of recess, no clear signals have emerged that the fourth round of talks restarting on Tuesday will be any different from the past ones, which all ended inconclusively.
No image available
/ 12 September 2005
The communist heirs of Mao Zedong and the capitalist successors of Walt Disney will share the stage in Hong Kong today with a near ,8-billion monument to globalisation: China’s first Disneyland. The meeting of the world’s biggest communist party and the planet’s best-known entertainment corporation would have been unthinkable to their founders.
No image available
/ 10 September 2005
Next year, residents of Beijing will be able to again enjoy their centuries-old custom of setting off fireworks during the Chinese Lunar New Year, a news report said. Beijing’s municipal legislature on Friday lifted a 12-year ban on fireworks during the Chinese Lunar New Year, also called the Spring Festival, in the Chinese capital.
No image available
/ 8 September 2005
A restaurant in north-east China has been raided and closed for listing stir-fried tiger meat on its menu, a dish that turned out to be donkey dressed with tiger urine. The Hufulou restaurant in Hailin city in Heilongjiang province is located barely 1km from the Hengdaohezi Siberian Tiger Park.
No image available
/ 7 September 2005
In Buddhist teachings, making money is an unlikely path to nirvana, but in increasingly iconoclastic China it just may well be a leap of faith. Taking a page from their Communist Party brethren, 18 monks in Shanghai have signed up for master of business administration classes in hopes of better managing their temple.
No image available
/ 7 September 2005
Internet giant Yahoo! supplied information to the Chinese government that led to the jailing of journalist Shi Tao for 10 years, international watchdog Reporters sans Frontières said on Wednesday. The California-based company’s Hong Kong subsidiary gave details to China’s state security, which helped to identify and convict Shi (37) the group said.
No image available
/ 7 September 2005
China could move ahead the launch of its next manned space mission to as early as this month, a state newspaper reported on Wednesday. ”The launch time for the Shenzhou VI is around September or October,” Zhang Qingwei, president of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told the Shanghai Morning Post.
No image available
/ 7 September 2005
Seventeen miners died, mostly from burns or suffocation, in a gas explosion at an illegal coal mine in northern China’s Shanxi province, state media said on Wednesday. The miners were killed when the blast happened on Tuesday in the Zhike Town Coal Mine in Zhongyang county, Luliang city, the Xinhua news agency said.
No image available
/ 5 September 2005
The European Union confirmed on Monday that a deal has been reached to end an impasse that has left millions of Chinese-made textiles blocked at European ports. "They have reached an agreement today [Monday]. This is what I have heard," Leonor Ribeiro Da Silva, spokesperson for European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, told reporters.