Thursday saw ZTE, the Chinese handset major, announcing that 20% of its global sales are being targeted from India and the company soon would be entering the retail market by the end of this year with its own independent brand. 

Brussels/Tianjin, China - China is failing to attract European investment as effectively as competing economies such as Russia and India and must open its markets if it wants to reverse the trend, the European Union's top trade official said Friday.

"European companies have invested more in both Russia and India since 2003. China is winning a decreasing share of the EU's foreign investment in the emerging economies. These are lost opportunities for China," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said.

Beijing - Global plane maker Airbus plans to formally launch its assembly plant in the northern Chinese port of Tianjin on Sunday, the company said on Friday.

"The completion of the first assembly line outside Europe, in China, is a visible cornerstone of Airbus internationalization strategy," Airbus said in a statement.

Beijing - The United Nations said it was concerned by high levels of ignorance and stigma towards HIV/AIDS in China, as it released the results of a survey of 6,000 people on Friday.

More than 48 per cent of respondents in six of China's major cities said they believed they could be infected with HIV through mosquito bites, while 83 per cent had never looked up information on HIV/AIDS and 30 per cent did not know how to use a condom, UNAIDS said in a report.

Nearly 65 per cent said they would not be willing to live with someone infected with HIV, 48 per cent said they were unwilling to eat with an HIV-infected person, and 41 per cent were unwilling to work with an HIV-infected person, the report said.

London, September 26: If reports are to be believed, China’s state news agency had published a dispatch from the country’s three latest astronauts describing their first night in space in the Shenzhou VII space craft before they had even left Earth, indicating that the agency had faked the report.

According to a report in the Telegraph, a message from the Chinese astronauts was released before the mission had even set off.

The article, by the Xinhua agency, described the Shenzhou VII space craft orbiting the Earth and outlined a conversation between the astronauts.

“First-level measurment arrangement,” said one taikonaut - the Chinese word for astronaut.

Beijing - Astronauts aboard China's Shenzhou VII spacecraft began assembling a spacesuit Friday in preparation for the country's first spacewalk, state media said.

The three astronauts unpacked the Chinese-made suit Friday morning but the complete assembly would take about 15 hours, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The agency also said the spacewalk was not expected until Saturday afternoon after earlier reports that it would take place Friday.

Shenzhou VII moved from an elliptical orbit into a circular orbit 343 kilometres above the Earth early Friday in preparation for the spacewalk, and the craft had completed 
11 orbits, as scheduled, from Thursday night to midday Friday.