Beijing  - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung Friday to discuss trade, economic cooperation and a territorial dispute in the South China Sea, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.

There was dialogue but no sign of a resolution on the three archipelagos that both countries claim ownership to there.

Beijing  - China extended a 5-billion-dollar loan Friday to Kazakhstan to expand oil cooperation between the two countries.

The government-owned China National Petroleum Corp announced the loan to Kazakhstan's state-run KazMunaiGas National Co during a visit by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to China.

The two firms plan to jointly take over the large Kazakh oil company Mangistaumunaigas, which develops oil fields, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

Taipei  - China's senior envoy to Taiwan, Zheng Lizhong, led a group of negotiators to the island Friday for preparatory talks to set the stage for the third cross-strait summit planned later this month.

Zheng, vice chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) and his 20-member delegation were whisked to Taipei from Taoyuan International Airport amid a protest by a small group of pro-independence activists.

London, April 17 : An 8ft 1in tall man in China, who staggered staff at a hospital when he went there for a foot operation, may be the world’s tallest man.

Zhao Liang, 27, is a circus performer. His father is 5ft 11in and mum Wang Keyun 5ft 6in tall.

If Liang’s stature is confirmed, it would mean that he is nearly 4in taller than fellow 7ft 9in countryman Bao Xishun, 58, who holds the current Guinness world record.

Liang mother revealed how her son consumes three meals, and eight giant buns every day for lunch.

New Delhi, April 17 : A 7-year-old Chinese girl dialled a police hotline 700 times during in one month, thinking that it was fun to dial 110 and hear police talk.

Cops in Weng''an county, Guizhou province, revealed that the calls came from a mobile phone.

The police also revealed that the dialler uttered only a few soft words, reports the China Daily.

The newspaper report says that the little girl’s parents were away at work at the time, and that she lives with her grandparents.

She used her father’s mobile phone to dial the number.

Washington, April 17 : The discovery of an ancient flute in Xinglongwa, China, has suggested that Chinese musical instruments could be 3000 years older than previously calculated.

Traditional Chinese musical instruments are believed to have originated from the reign of Huangdi, or the Yellow Emperor, some two thousand years ago.

But, a flute made of bones, unearthed at the Xinglongwa Site in Inner Mongolian in 1986, has changed the timeline for musical instruments in China.

The ancient flute was made from the bones of bustard, a kind of bird usually seen in Northeast China. The tube is 18 centimeters long, with finger holes still evident.