Beijing, Mar 4 : China, on Wednesday declared that its defense spending would rise by 14.9 per cent in 2009, but assured that its expanding military power posed no threat to the rest of the world.

The Dawn quoted China''s parliament spokesman, Li Zhaoxing as saying, ''China''s defense expenditure for the year will increase modestly.''

The defense budget for 2009 is 480.686 billion yuan (70.2 billion dollars), an increase of 62.482 billion yuan from the previous year, he said.

Beijing  - China announced another 15-per-cent hike in its annual military budget on Wednesday, amid international concern following similar large increases in recent years.

The draft defence budget for 2009 is set at 480.686 billion yuan (70.2 billion dollars), a rise of 62.482 billion yuan, or 14.9 per cent, from last year, a spokesman for China's nominal parliament told reporters.

Beijing - The hard economic times are also hitting China's legislature

Beijing - China has revoked the performance licenses for the first concerts on the mainland by pop band Oasis because guitarist Noel Gallagher took part in a Free Tibet benefit concert 12 years ago, the British band said.

Oasis had been scheduled to play in Beijing and Shanghai at the beginning of April but the licenses were revoked over the weekend, the band said in a statement.

A spokesman for China's Foreign Affairs Ministry, Qin Gang, said Tuesday that economic reasons were behind the cancellation of the concerts.

Beijing - Chinese authorities on Monday denied that police shot a Tibetan monk who had set himself on fire in the city of Aba in the south-western Chinese province of Sichuan.

Police when confronted by the burning man on Friday immediately put out the flames and brought the young monk to hospital, the authorities were quoted by the official Xinhua news agency.

The monk was in stable condition, state authorities said, adding that statements by independence groups that the 24-year-old monk was shot down were a complete fabrication.

Beijing, Mar 2 : Hostile men are more likely to become obese than their less-hostile peers, according to a new study.

In the study, Dr. Hermann Nabi of Hopital Paul Brousse in Villejuif, France and his colleagues found that the more hostile a man''s personality, the more his body mass index (BMI) increased over the following two decades, reports www. chinaview. cn.

BMI is the ratio of height to weight, used to determine if someone is within a normal weight range or is underweight, overweight or obese.