Chinese village headman living in cave for 2yrs to construct road

September 30th, 2009 MELBOURNE - A Chinese community of dwarves was so frustrated with people making fun of their height that they turned their remote village into a theme park. Initially the tiny group in Kunming, southern China, was established by dwarves who came together after complaining about being discriminated by 'big people".

September 15th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The government has set an ambitious target to construct as many as 12 million houses for rural poor during the next five years -- nearly double those built between 2005 and 2009, Rural Development Minister C.P. Joshi said Tuesday.

September 5th, 2009 WELLINGTON - New Zealand-born Indians and Chinese living in Wellington have been credited with helping the capital in its quest to become an international city. According to an Asia NZ Foundation report by Auckland University's Wardlow Friesen, India and China have close links with the city, as one-third of Indians and Chinese living in Wellington are New Zealand-born.

August 25th, 2009 LONDON - A freediver has set a new world record by swimming through Australia's longest underwater cave. Mike Wells swam almost 400ft to create a new record.

August 1st, 2009 NEW DELHI - Five generations of a Chinese family, having 81 members, are living under one roof. The oldest member of the family is 95 years of age.

June 30th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The ministry of road transport and highways has earmarked Rs.13,397.2 crore for road projects in Jammu and Kashmir and northeastern states, it said Tuesday while releasing its 100-day agenda. The ministry has also set time lines for 30 projects so that they will be executed on fast track.

June 30th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The government Tuesday said it will invest a huge fund for building and revamping road infrastructure in Jammu and Kashmir and northeastern states. The ministry of road transport and highways, while releasing its 100-day agenda, said it has earmarked Rs.13,397.2 crore ($2.8 billion) for road projects in Jammu and Kashmir and northeast.

June 28th, 2009 ADDIS ABABA - China continues to make inroads into Africa, as it bagged yet another major order for building infrastructure in the East African state of Ethiopia. China's state infrastructure major, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) has signed an agreement to construct a new expressway connecting Ethiopia's capital to another city in the centre of the country, Nazreth.

June 25th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Reports indicate that reinforcement has begun at the Peking Man site in China to prevent one of its walls from collapsing. 'Peking Man' is referred to a group of fossil specimens, hundreds of thousands of years old, discovered in 1923-27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing (at that time known as Peking), in China.

June 21st, 2009 NEW DELHI - An interstate wrestling champion, who allegedly worked as a sharpshooter for the notorious Krishan Pehlwan gang, was arrested here Sunday for his alleged involvement in a number of murder cases in Punjab and Haryana, police said. Rakesh Kumar alias Raka, a 22-year-old former interstate champion in the 84 kg freestyle wrestling, was wanted in several murder cases.

June 19th, 2009 LONDON - Brit man Hilaire Purbrick, who has been living in a homemade cave, is under threat of being evicted by health and safety officials after it was discovered the place did not have a fire escape. Purbrick, a 46-year-old dad-of-four, had carved the cave out of chalky rock himself with a pick and a spade, and ever since officials blocked the entrance to the cave, he has been living in a nearby shed.

May 9th, 2009 NEW DELHI - A group of construction workers have accidentally stumbled upon a prehistoric man's cave underneath a Buddhist temple in southwest China's Guizhou Province. The stone structure, containing hundreds of mammal fossils and stone implements, was between 10,000 and 40,000 years old and presumably dated back either to the end of the Old Stone Age or the start of New Stone Age, according to Cai Huiyang, a top archaeologist with the Guizhou Provincial Museum.

May 5th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Chinese scientists will soon launch an excavation at a cave where the first 'Peking Man' skull was found with an aim to find more relics of ape men who were believed to live as early as 770,000 years ago. According to Gao Xing, deputy director and a research fellow of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Palaeoanthropology, the excavation will start in mid May and last two months at the western slope of the Peking Man Site.

May 3rd, 2009 LAHORE - Deceased Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti's close aide has claimed that Bugti's death was caused by a rocket fired by the nationalist leader himself. "When security forces entered the cave where he (Bugti) was hiding, he attempted to fend them off by firing a shell.

April 19th, 2009 CHENGDU - China has announced plans to construct a new breeding center for giant pandas around May to replace the former quake-leveled habitat in southwestern Sichuan Province. Xinhua, the official news agency quoted officials as saying that the new China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center will be located in the Huangcaoping area, about 10 kilometers from the former one.