China

Leading golfers, including world number three Ernie Els and sixth-ranked Sergio Garcia, have signed up for the ,3-million Johnnie Walker Classic in Beijing. The event, which counts towards the European, Asian and Australasian tours, will be held at the Jack Nicklaus-designed Pine Valley Golf Resort and Country Club from April 21 to 24.

It was billed as a chance for British Minister of Finance Gordon Brown to quiz China’s young elite about what they want from the future. And he got his answer — more Harry Potter memorabilia. In a lengthy question-and-answer session, Brown, currently on a three-day visit to China, chatted to about a dozen teenage pupils, all star English students.

A government agency’s ban on visitors bearing Lunar New Year gifts from entering its building to curb corruption has stirred ridicule from the public, state media said on Monday. Gift-giving is a long-practised tradition during the new-year period but in present-day China it has become a way to bribe government officials.

The world’s first newspaper made of gold has been published in south China, selling for 69&nbsp;000 yuan (about R51&nbsp;000) a copy, state media reported on Thursday. The one-off publishing event was launched by the <i>China Economic Daily</i> in the boom city of Shenzhen, the Xinhua news agency said.

China issued emergency regulations on Tuesday to counter an outbreak of the deadly spinal disease meningitis that has killed at least 16 people among 258 cases this month. The whole country has been affected with the exception of Fujian province in the south-east, Hainan in the south and the Tibet region.

China has ordered education authorities and schools across the country to ban beauty contests in schools, state media reported on Tuesday. "The ministry of education explicitly opposes holding beauty contests in primary and high schools," a ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

China is considering setting up a post office in Antarctica after several trial deliveries to the world’s southernmost continent, state media reported on Wednesday. The Beijing International Post Office plans to send an official to the Great Wall research station near the South Pole to investigate if there is a need for such a service.

The family of a newborn baby who last week became the poster child for China’s one-child policy has turned down a number of lucrative advertising contracts for diapers and milk formula, state media said on Monday. Zhang Yichi was declared China’s 1,3-billionth citizen when he was born to a huge media blitz in a Beijing hospital on Thursday.

Agencies in China’s Chengdu city are offering rented girlfriends to bachelors who need someone to show off to relatives during the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year, state press said on Wednesday. A hired girlfriend can cost as much as 300 yuan (about R200) a day.

A speeding taxi driver who ran a series of red lights trying to rush a heavily pregnant woman to hospital may face fines and have his licence endorsed, state media said on Thursday. Gao Haijun jumped several red lights on Sunday after an anxious couple asked him to take them to the closest delivery ward.

Modern Chinese couples spend 1 000 times more than their parents’ generation on lavish weddings and other expenses linked to starting a family, state media reported on Saturday. Twenty-five years ago, the shopping list of young couples planning to get married consisted of a wardrobe, bed and bedding, some candy and cigarettes.

An unidentified flying object (UFO) passed across the large north-western Chinese city of Lanzhou and apparently exploded in the suburbs, state media said on Monday. The unusual sighting of two bright trails of light, reported by several witnesses, took place on Saturday shortly before midnight.

China has banned a Nike television commercial showing United States basketball star LeBron James in a battle with a cartoon kung fu master, saying the ad insults Chinese national dignity. The commercial was broadcast on local Chinese stations and on state television’s national sports channel before being pulled last month.

At least eight miners were confirmed dead and rescue teams were battling to reach a further 78 workers trapped underground after a fire at five iron-ore mines in northern China, officials and media said on Sunday. By early Sunday, 20 miners had been rescued from the blaze at the mines in Baita township in Hebei province.

A passenger plane carrying 53 people crashed on Sunday in a lake in northern China immediately after takeoff, killing all aboard, the government said. The plane crashed into a frozen lake in Nanhai Park ”only about a dozen seconds” after it took off. Police and firefighters were breaking the ice on the lake to search for victims.

A homeless teenager who hid in the landing gear of a passenger plane survived a 700km flight across south-western China, but his companion fell and probably died, state media reported on Friday. The 14-year-old boy was found by airport porters after the plane landed.

Another day of unrest and violent clashes resulting in deaths and injuries were reported on Tuesday by local residents in China’s south-western province of Sichuan after more than 20 000 farmers protested against a dam project. Officials are putting ”the money into their own bag” said a farmer.

At least eight people have died from an outbreak of bubonic plague in north-western China but authorities said the disease has been brought under control, state media reported on Wednesday. The plague outbreak was controlled after local health authorities took swift measures to contain the disease.

Rescue workers recovered more bodies on Friday from a coal shaft where at least 66 miners died and 82 were missing with little hope of survival after a gas explosion in central China’s Henan province on Wednesday. Officials said 29 miners were trapped by floods on Wednesday at another coal mine in neighbouring Hebei province.

An underground gas explosion has ripped through a mine in central China, killing at least 56 workers and leaving nearly 100 missing in one of the worst mining disasters in recent memory, officials said on Thursday. The shafts of the Daping coal mine near Xinmi in Henan province were packed with about 450 workers when disaster struck.

A fossil of an apparently sleeping dinosaur found in north-eastern China may provide new evidence that dinosaurs had similar behaviour patterns to those later evolved in birds, the British-based magazine Nature reports. The Mei Long fossil is a young dinosaur curled up in what appears to be a sleeping position typical of birds.