North Korean, Russian, United States and South Korean delegates discussing ways to scrap North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme returned to the main talks venue late on Wednesday, fuelling speculation they would meet overnight to try to agree on basic principles for ending the three-year stand-off.
North Korea said no progress was made in talks on Tuesday over the dismantlement of its nuclear-weapons programmes but insisted it is still working to find a solution. Deputy chief United States envoy Joseph DeTrani said the talks will continue into a ninth day on Wednesday.
Officials from six nations held a seventh day of talks on Monday, after China presented a second draft joint statement of principles on ending North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme. United States negotiators held more bilateral talks with North Korea and plan to continue talks on Tuesday, a US official said.
The United States said on Wednesday that fundamental differences remain with North Korea over its nuclear-weapons drive but it does not believe the issue of uranium enrichment will prove a stumbling block to progress. Highly enriched uranium can be used to produce nuclear explosive devices.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday said he was overjoyed at his red carpet welcome by China, as other countries pressed for a United Nations Security Council meeting on his slum demolition drive. Mugabe is on a six-day visit to China and has been warmly greeted as ”an old friend” by President Hu Jintao.
Six-nation talks aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff between North Korea and the United States will resume on Tuesday amid the highest hopes for a breakthrough since the process began two years ago. But the delegates gathered in Beijing know this fourth round of talks may represent the last as well as the best chance.
China has long resisted strong-arm tactics against ally North Korea despite pressure from the United States, conscious that turmoil in its neighbour could create instability across the border. China’s own interests rather than wider global concerns are at the heart of its decision-making process.
Disney came under fire from animal welfare groups on Monday for having stray dogs on its Hong Kong theme park site rounded up and killed. Around 40 dogs, some of which were used as unofficial guard dogs by construction workers, are believed to have been given lethal injections after being caught by government dog catchers.
It often takes more than brains to get a frontline job in Hong Kong, according to a new survey that found nearly half of all companies are also looking for a full head of hair. Forty-three percent of the 113 employers polled said they would not hire people with hair-loss for customer service jobs.
Joy at the birth on Tuesday of another pair of panda twins in China quickly turned to sorrow following the announcement that the world’s oldest giant panda had died after suffering from eating difficulties. Thirty-six-year old Mei Mei, equivalent in age to a 108-year-old human, died at a zoo in southern China’s Guilin city.
Forty-one miners died and 57 others are missing after two separate disasters in China’s beleagured coal-mine industry, a government agency and state media said on Monday. The bulk of the casualties came when a gas explosion ripped through a mine in China’s north-west Xinjiang region, killing at least 40 miners.
A Chinese herbalist will go without food for 50 days in full public view to prove he didn’t pull a fast one when he performed a similar feat last year, state media said on Wednesday. Chen Jianmin plans to live in a glass box placed on a stone platform in central Wuhan city from September 8, consuming only water.
The HIV/Aids pandemic could explode across Asia – where one in four new infections worldwide occurs – unless authorities do more to fight the disease.
All Chinese-run websites that fail to register with telecommunications authorities before June 30 will be temporarily closed down, state media said on Friday. The announcement was made on Friday by the Ministry of Information Industry in a bid ”to control domestic internet information services,” the Xinhua news agency said.
At least 40 children were killed on Friday when a flash flood struck a primary school in north-eastern China, hospital sources said. "There are at least 40 children who were sent to hospital to be saved and who did not survive," said a doctor at the hospital in Heilongjiang. A local bank worker said there were "at least 50 or 60 dead".
Taxis with "unlucky" number plates in Shanghai will stop operating during university entrance exams this week to appease superstitious parents, state media said on Monday. "Lots of parents refuse to use cabs with number plates they consider unlucky," said Zhao Leping, head of the Shanghai Dazhong taxi company.
At least 29 people died, 35 were missing and more than 60 000 were evacuated after flash floods and landslides swept down mountainsides in two areas of south-central China, state media said on Wednesday. National flood-control authorities on Wednesday forecast more heavy rain and flooding this month.
China lashed out at the European Union on Sunday after the 25-nation bloc took its dispute with Chinese textile imports to the World Trade Organisation, forcing an immediate curb in shipments of T-shirts and flax yarn. European and United States textile-makers say their livelihoods have been threatened by a surge in Chinese exports.
Nude business promotions have been banned in China, with Beijing taking aim at naked shop models and restaurants where food is served on the bodies of unclothed women, state media said on Sunday. The ban comes amid the increasing use of nudity or near-nakedness to advertise businesses.
Philandering communist-party officials in China’s eastern city of Nanjing will have to confess their extramarital affairs in a bid to stop corruption, according to a new regulation published on Friday. The regulation stems from concerns about declining morality among party ranks, and fears about the link between illicit affairs and corruption.
Fifty-one miners are missing and feared dead after a gas explosion early on Thursday ripped through an illegally operating coal mine near Chengde city in northern China’s Hebei province, the government said. China relies on coal for 70% of its energy needs, leading many mine owners to disregard safety in order to meet demand.
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Chinese President Hu Jintao and Taiwan’s opposition leader met on Friday, holding the highest-level talks since the two sides split amid civil war in 1949, with both calling for an end to decades of hostility. Beijing and Taipei should focus on ”peace, stability and development for the future”, Hu told Lien in a meeting shown live on television.
The sky’s the limit for the development of golf in China, according to world number three Ernie Els. The ”Big Easy”, speaking ahead of Thursday’s start of the ,5-million BMW Asian Open in Shanghai, said the understanding and appreciation of golf in the Middle Kingdom has grown in leaps and bounds over the past decade.
Thomas Bjorn on Wednesday hit back at critics who branded him a choker after a dismal final round ruined a promising US Masters. The Dane, playing in his first major since throwing away the 2003 British Open in a final-round tragedy worthy of Hamlet, was third after three rounds at Augusta and just four shots off the pace.
US Open champion Retief Goosen on Wednesday waded into the debate over women being invited to join men’s golf tournaments, saying they should be made to qualify like their male counterparts. The South African world number five said most male players think handing out sponsors’ invites to women is unfair.
World number three Ernie Els said on Wednesday that he was itching to get back into contention for golf’s biggest prizes after a disappointing United States Masters where he finished a distant 47th. The triple major-winner, launching his bid to become the first three-time winner of the Johnnie Walker Classic, said he would use the tournament to correct the ”technical faults” which plagued him at Augusta.
A man in eastern China tried to divorce his wife who has the same Chinese name as the cancer-causing dye Sudan I, which has made headlines across China in a recent food scare, state media reported on Friday. The husband of Su Danhong, the same Chinese name for the harmful Sudan Red dye, came home one day and told her he wanted a divorce.
An explosion killed at least 29 people early on Thursday when a passenger bus hit a truck carrying more than six tonnes of explosives in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, local police said. The double-decker bus collided with the truck, causing the explosives to detonate, as the bus driver was trying to overtake it.
A Nigerian man has been jailed for four years in Hong Kong over a global e-mail scam offering a ”secret fortune” of -million, a news report said on Thursday. The e-mail went around the world offering to deposit the fortune of a dead South African businessman in return for a fee of  000.
United States-made audio players installed at Beijing’s international airport to scare birds off the runway have failed because of the "language barrier", state media said on Thursday. The machines play sounds of predatory birds, such as hawks, to shoo away birds that pose a danger to aircraft. But the pests were apparently unruffled by the "foreign" squawks.
Up to 20 people, including children, were killed in northern China when explosives stored in the home of a mine operator blew up near a school, local officials and state media said on Thursday. Local press reports said at least 20 children died and the Beixinzhuang elementary school was badly damaged in the Wednesday-afternoon blast.